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Copyright  by 
D.    APPLETON   AND   COMPANY. 

1878. 


INDEX. 


PAGE 

Accident,  The  Romano*  of 571 

Acland,  H.  W.    Dos- Poison 338 

.Esthetic  Analysis  of  an  Obelisk 152 

Africa.  The  Future  of 408 

After-Life,  Education  of 25T 

Allen,  G.    Analysis  of  an  Obelisk 152 

"  Dissecting  a  Daisy 329 

Ancient  Silk-Traders'  Route  across  Central  Asia..  377 

Animal  Depravity 184 

Animals  and  Plants,  Colors  of 43 

Antiquity  of  Man 383 

Arnold,  M.    Equality 481 

Aspects,  Moral  and  Social,  of  Health 141 

Bastian,  H.  C.    Germ-Theory  of  Disease 310 

"        Spontaneous  Generation 434 

Bears,  Tame,  in  Sweden 179 

Bernard,  Claude.    Definition  of  Life  511 

Books  and  Critics 159 

Bridges,  J.  H.    Aspects  of  Health 141 

Broca  on  Antiquity  of  Man 383 

Carpenter,  W.  B.    Spiritualism Ill 

Credulity 308 

Carpenter.  Wallace,  and  Spiritualism 463 

Carrier-Pigeons 96 

li  Child,  The,"  Dr.  Ploss  on 240 

Clifford,  W.  K.    Cosmic  Emotion 74 

"         Things-in-Themselves 422 

Cobbe.  P.  P.    Little  Health  of  Ladies 355 

Color-  of  Animals  and  Plants 43 

Comparative  Illuminating  Power  of  Gas  and  Elec- 
tric Lights 575 

Con<tellalion-Figures,  Origin  of -..     49 

Cosmic  Emotion 74 

Curiosities  of  Credulity 308 

Curiosities  of  Spiritualism Ill 

Dale,  R.  W.    Impressions  of  America 524 

David,  King  of  Israel 13 

Definition  of  Life 511 

Delaire.  A.    Social  Science 1 

Disease,  Germ  Theory  of 310 

Dissecting  a  Daisy 329 

Dog-Poison  in  Man 338 

Education  of  After-Life 257 

Emotion,  Cosmic 74 

Equality 481 

Eucalyptus-Tree,  Anti-malarial  Action  of ...  576 

Evolution  and  the  Philosophy  of  Nature 289 


PAGE 

Famines,  Sun-Spots  and 128 

Flight,  W.    Meteorites 85 

Forest  and  Field  Myths 560 

France,  The  Ninety-Years'  Agony  ol 193 

Funeral  Ceremonies  at  the  Nicobar  Islands 191 

Gardner,  P.   The  Greek  Mind  in  Presence  of  Death  267 

Gases,  The  Last  of  the 465 

German  Universities 244 

Germ-Theory  of  Disease 310 

Great  Men,  their  Weaknesses 244 

|  Greek  Mind,  The.  in  Presence  of  Death 267 

Haeckel,  E.    The  Evolution  Theory 289 

Harvey,  William 385 

Health,  Learning  and H98 

Health,  Moral  and  Social  Aspeei  s  of 141 

Hell  and  the  Divine  Veracity . .   . .  493 

Hellwald,  F.  von.    Liberty  of  Science 458 

I  Hunter,  W.  W.    Sun-Spots 128 

Huxley,  T.    William  Harvey 385 

,  Hydrophobia,  its  Period  of  Incubation 96 

Hydrophobia  and  Ribies 218 

Iceland,  its  Volcanoes 95 

Iguana,  The 192 

Impressions  of  America 524 

Inland  Sea  in  Algeria 96 

Innes.  A.  T.    Trial  of  Jesus  Christ 61 

j  Jevons.  W.  S.,  on  Mill's  Philosophy 279,  317 

Kossuth.  L.    Russian  Aggression 205 

|  Ladies,  The  Little  Health  of 355 

Lael  of  the  Gases 465 

I 

;  Law  of  Likeness 551 

Learning  and  Health 398 

Liberty  of  Science  in  the  Modern  State 296,  458 

j  Life,  Definition  of 511 

Light,  Action  of,  on  Coloration  of  Organic  World.  367 

Little  Health  of  Ladies 355 

Livimistonia  Mission 91 

Lockyer.  J.  N.     Sun-Spots 128 

Macklin,  J.  T.    Livingstonia  Mission 91 

Man,  Antiquity  of 383 

Man.  Science  and 97 

Meteorites  and  the  Origin  of  Life 85 

Mill's  Philosophy  tested 279,  317 

Miiller,  Max.    Origin  of  Reason 534 


nama 


IV 


INDEX. 


PAQK 

Mushroom-Culture 95 

Natural  Philosophy,  Teaching 346 

Needed  Inventions 576 

Nicobar  Islands.  Funeral  Ceremonies  at  the 191 

Nieotine-Poisoninir 96 

Nile,  Utilizing  Flood-Wafer- of  the ' 384 

Obelisk.  ^Esthetic  Analysis  oi'  an 152 

Observation  in  Social  Science 1 

Origin  of  tlie'Constellation-Figu  res .' 49 

Origin  of  Reason 534 

Pattisou.  M.     Books  and  Critics  159  i 

Perry,  W.  C.    German  Universities 24! 

Ploss.  Dr..  on  •'  The  Child  " 240 

Proctor,  R.  A.    Constellation-Figures 49 

Proposed  Substitutes  for  Religion 498 

Psychological  Curiosities  of  Spiritualism 111.  230 

Rabies  and  Hydrophobia 218 

Ralston.  \V.  R.  S.    Forest  and  Field  Myths 560 

Reason.  Origin  of 534 

Religion,  Proposed  Substitutes  for 428 

Richardson.  B.  W.     Learning  and  Health 398 

Ring  of  Worlds 468 

Romance  of  Accident 571 

Russian  Aggression 205 

Science,  Liberty  of 458 

Science  and  Man 97 

Science  and  Theology  Two  Hundn  d  Years  ago.  . .  179 

Science  in  the  Modern  State 2;!6,  458 

Sea-Wave,  A  Mighty 171 

Silk-Traders'  Route  across  Central  Asia 377  | 

skepticism,  Psychological  Curiosities  of 230 

SUin,  Impervious  Coatings  of  the '■'■ 

Smith.  G.     Ninety-Years"  Agony  of  France 193 

Smith.  G.    Substitutes  for  Religion 428 


PAGK 

Smith.  W.  R.    King  David 13 

Social  Science,  Observation  in 1 

Sounding  Sea-Depths 192 

Spiritualism.  Carpenter.  "U  allace,  and 463 

Spiritualism,  Psychological  Cariosities  of Ill 

Spontaneous  Generation 434.  505 

Stanley,  A.  P.    Education  of  After-Life 257 

Stanley's  Discoveries  and  the  Future  of  Africa 408 

Sterne,  C.    Theology  and  Science 179 

Stewart,  J.    Livingstonia  Mission 91 

Sun-Spots  and  Famiues 128 

"  Symposium,"  A  Modern 20 

Tait.  P.  G.    Natural  Philosophy 346 

Tame  Bears  in  Sweden 479 

Teaching  Natural  Philosophy 346 

Theology  and  Science  Two  Hundred  Years  ago. . .  179 

Things-in-Themselves,  On  the  Nature  of 422 

Tollemache,  L.  A.    Hell  and  the  Divine  Veracity..  493 

Trial  of  Jesus  Christ 61 

Trichinosis 95 

Tylor,  E.  B.     "  The  Child  " 240 

Tyndall,  J.    Science  and  Man 97 

"  Spontaneous  Generation 505 

Universities,  German 244 

Virehow,  R.    Liberty  of  Science 296 

Volcanoes  of  Iceland 95 

Wager,  J.    Tame  Rears  in  Sweden 479 

Wallace,  A.  R.    Colors  of  Animals  and  Plants 43 

"        Skepticism .' 230 

Wa3te  Substances 574 

Watson,  T.     Hydrophobia 218 

Weaknesses  of  Great  Men 244 

When  and  how  much  to  eat 384 

Wilson.  A.    Law  of  Likeness 551 

Worlds.  A  Ring  ol 468 


THE 


POPULAR    SCIENCE    MONTHLY. 


SUPPLEMENT 


OBSERYxVTION  IN  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

By  ALEXIS  DELAIEE. 


AS  the  Count  Mole  ironically  observed,  on 
receiving  into  the  French  Academy  the  au- 
thor of  "  Chatterton,"  "  Every  epoch  has  a  litera- 
ture of  its  own ;  but  among  the  writings  which 
give  brilliancy  to  an  epoch  we  have  to  distinguish 
two  classes.  The  one,  possessing  comparative 
merit,  and  being  adapted  to  the  greater  number 
of  readers,  receives  loud  applause ;  this  is  con- 
temporaneous success.  The  other  class,  fed  from 
the  sources  of  undying  truths,  is  at  first  less  cor- 
dially received,  and  awaits  the  judgment  of  the 
elite  of  our  race."  If  the  writings  of  Alfred  de 
Vigny  were  scornfully  classed  by  the  great  states- 
man in  the  first  category,  surely  we  must  place 
in  the  second  the  work  whose  title  is  given  be- 
low.* This  work,  though  it  was  written  at  the 
request  of  Francois  Arago,  and  under  the  stress 
of  the  disquietude  produced  in  1848  by  the 
"  Organisation  du  Travail ; "  and  though  it  was 
crowned  by  the  Academy  of  Sciences  at  its  first 
publication,  nevertheless  has  attracted  hardly  any 
attention  save  from  a  select  few.  And  yet,  inas- 
much as  it  abounds  in  well-established  facts,  and, 
above  all,  is  sober  and  moderate  in  its  conclu- 
sions, it  offered  valuable  material  for  study  to  all 
parties,  liberals,  economists,  or  communists,  alike. 
-Out,  being  too  impartial  in  its  deductions  to  please 
any  party  without  qualification,  it  was  rather 
slighted  by  all.  Besides,  a  man  does  not  readily 
give  up  a  pet  theory,  nor  is  it  an  easy  thing  to 
throw  off  the  yoke  of  preconceived  opinions,  and 

1  Translated  from  the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes  (with 
some  abridgment),  by  J.  Fitzgerald,  A.  M. 

"  Les  Ouvriers  Europeens :  Etudes  sur  lesTravaux,  la 
Vie  domestique  et  les  Habitudes  morales  des  Populations 
ouvrieres  de  l'Europe,"  par  M.  F.  Le  Play.  2<*  edition, 
1877, 1«  livraison  :  Les  Ouvriers  de  VOrient. 

37 


with  docile  mind  to  have  recourse  to  the  scien- 
tific observation  of  facts.  Here,  again,  was  veri- 
fied the  old  saying  that  no  man  is  a  prophet  in 
his  own  country ;  but,  on  the  other  side  of  the 
ocean,  the  Americans,  with  their  practical  sense, 
have  understood  better  the  meaning  of  these 
studies  on  the  private  life,  the  moral  habits,  and 
the  occupations,  of  the  laboring  population.  Dur- 
ing the  last  two  years  several  official  commissions, 
instead  of  adopting  the  often  misleading  processes 
of  bureaucratic  statistics,  have  attempted,  accord- 
ing to  the  method  of  "  family  monographs,"  the 
solution  of  those  social  problems  which  arise  in 
the  New  "World  as  in  the  Old.  In  these  mono- 
graphs (which,  however,  do  not  equal  the  models 
given  in  the  "  Ouvriers  Europeans  ")  are  described 
nearly  four  hundred  households  of  working  peo- 
ple living  under  various  conditions.  At  last,  too, 
the  wish  expressed  by  the  Academy  of  Sciences 
in  1856  has  been  fulfilled.  That  learned  body, 
adopting  the  conclusions  of  its  commissioner, 
Baron  Charles  Dupin,  characterized  M.  Le  Play's 
method  as  a  model  one,  and  expressed  a  desire 
that  "  a  low-priced  edition  of  the  whole  work  in 
small  form  might  be  published,  so  as  to  bring 
within  the  means  of  all  purchasers  a  statistical 
work  treating  of  interests  so  numerous  and  so 
important."  The  first  volume  of  this  new  edition, 
enriched  with  the  results  of  the  author's  contin- 
ued researches,  is  now  at  the  disposition  of  the 
public.  Hence  it  may  be  interesting  briefly  to 
consider,  in  its  origin  and  its  essence,  the  method 
which,  in  Europe  as  in  America,  has  been  fol- 
lowed in  the  compilation  of  such  voluminous 
works. 

I.  Utility  op  Scientific  Method  in  Social 
Studies. — One  of  the  best  notes  of  the  present 


THE  POPULAR  SCIEXCE  MOXTIILY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


age  is  the  general  effort  at  submitting  to  the  or- 
deal of  enlightened  criticism  and  scientific  meth- 
ods studies  that  before  were  wont  to  deal  rather 
with  sentiments  or  tastes,  theoretic  ideas,  or  the 
caprices  of  art.  This  significant  change  may  be 
seen  in  the  researches  which  have  for  their  end 
to  unearth  extinct  civilizations,  and  to  trace  to  its 
source  the  life  of  nations.  Only  the  other  day  M. 
Yillemain,  in  one  of  his  most  piquant  lectures, 
while  enumerating  the  qualities  necessary  for  an 
historian,  very  coolly  placed  in  the  background 
truthfulness  and  exactitude,  and  gave  prominence 
only  to  the  art  of  literary  composition.  In  his 
opinion,  writing  history  means  skillfully  con- 
structing an  emotional  drama,  attending  to  the 
stage  perspectives,  and  so  ordering  the  action  of 
the  piece  as  to  produce  the  most  striking  effect. 

Great  masters,  no  doubt,  have  been  able  by 
the  inspiration  of  genius  to  divine,  so  to  speak, 
the  physiognomy  of  the  past,  and  with  exquisite 
skill  to  recall  to  life  all  unchanged  worlds  that 
have  perished.  Thus,  in  the  narrative  of  Augus- 
tin  Thierry,  we  have  pictured  the  gloomy  period 
of  the  Merovingians ;  in  the  romances  of  \V alter 
Scott,  the  struggles  of  Saxon  and  Norman ;  in  the 
sparkling  pages  of  Michelet,  one  or  another  as- 
pect of  the  middle  ages.  Still,  how  dangerous  a 
thing  it  is  to  blend  fables  with  truth,  and  how 
faint  is  the  distinction  between  the  dramaturgist 
and  the  historian!  One  writer,  sharpening  his 
fine  irony  to  gratify  the  wits,  yields  to  the  temp- 
tation of  portraying  the  men  of  his  time  in  the 
transparent  colors  of  an  antique  picture,  and 
thus  more  or  less  sacrifices  to  the  enticing  mirage 
of  allusions  either  the  likeness  of  the  past  or  the 
exactitude  of  the  present.  Another  excels  as  a 
composer  of  eloquent  speeches,  and  in  his  eyes 
the  annals  of  a  people  contain  nothing  but  jousts 
of  oratory :  the  fate  of  empires,  according  to 
him,  depends  on  the  harangue  of  a  general  on  the 
battle-field,  or  of  a  tribune  in  the  public  place  of 
some  little  borough.  They  both  forget  the  mass 
of  the  people,  and  personify  in  a  small  number  of 
individuals  the  societies  they  describe.  Besides, 
they  look  at  these  societies  only  from  the  outside, 
from  the  point  of  view  of  their  public  life ;  they 
are  like  travelers  who  judge  of  a  strange  country 
from  their  observations  during  a  flying  visit  to  a 
few  of  its  seaports.  In  man,  "fluctuating  and 
variable"  as  hi'  is,  they  observe  only  that  which 
changes  least — his  virtues,  his  vices,  his  caprices ; 
and  it  is  their  delight  to  excite  emotion  by  over 
and  over  again  describing  the  strife  of  the  self- 
same passions;  but  the  inner  life,  the  unambi- 
tious life,  the  homes  of  the  past,  they  do  not  no- 


tice at  all.  They  hardly  ever  step  beyond  the 
threshold  of  the  palace,  or  halt  before  the  arti- 
san's workshop  or  the  laboring-man's  hut;  still 
it  is  here  that  we  get  at  the  very  conditions  of 
national  life — the  organization  of  the  family,  the 
institution  of  property,  the  laws  of  labor,  the 
private  ethics  and  the  moral  habits  of  a  people. 
Fortunately,  we  can  restore  sundry  traits  of  the 
effaced  picture,  thauks  to  patient  research.  A 
monument  turns  up  which,  afcer  much  ingenious 
discussion,  enables  us  to  understand  the  sacred 
uses  of  fire  in  ancient  states,  or  the  importance  of 
luxury  in  the  ancient  mother-cities  of  Asia;  again, 
some  charter  or  some  inventory  gives  plain  evi- 
dence of  the  harmony  and  well-being  of  the  rural 
classes  in  the  middle  ages ;  or  some  lirrc  de  raison 
(book  of  accounts)  gives  us  an  insight  into  the 
inner  life  of  some  obscure  family  in  the  past. 

Still  these  are  only  the  too  rare  pages  of  a 
damaged  book,  the  leaves  of  which  will  never  be 
all  found.  But  if  we  must  make  up  our  minds 
to  remain  in  ignorance  of  much  of  the  past,  can 
we  not  at  least  collect  all  needed  information  re- 
garding the  present  ?  Something  more  than  vain 
curiosity  should  stimulate  us  here ;  indeed,  may 
we  not  expect  to  find  in  this  kind  of  researches 
the  solution  of  the  difficulties  which  weigh  most 
heavily  on  modern  civilization  ?  Humanity,  even 
on  the  privileged  shores  of  Greece  and  Italy,  is 
not  intended  for  the  luxurious  indolence  of  a  life 
of  opulence,  or  for  the  fruitless  agitations  of  the 
political  world.  Labor  is  its  law;  and  for  na- 
tions more  truly  even  than  for  animal  species  is 
the  "  struggle  for  life"  decreed  by  Fate.  Hence 
the  true  history  of  societies  must  embrace  the 
history  of  the  transformations  undergone  in  time 
and  space  by  the  institution  of  property,  whether 
collective  or  private,  and  by  the  conditions  of 
industry,  whether  rural  or  manufacturing,  under 
the  influence  of  the  natural  environment  and  the 
increasing  wants  of  the  population.  But  the 
most  attractive  prizes  of  progress — as  wealth, 
intellectual  culture,  political  power — are  perilous 
gifts ;  nations,  like  individuals,  seldom  enjoy  For- 
tune's favors  without  being  intoxicated  thereby. 
It  is  too  easy  to  abuse  them  ;  and  a  nation's  pros- 
perity, however  fair  its  exterior,  is  gravely  com- 
promised when  its  moral  is  slower  than  its  ma- 
terial progress. 

The  West  is  in  our  time  passing  through  a 
painful  ordeal.  Coal  and  steam  have  revolution- 
ized the  world.  Great  inventions,  machinery, 
Steam-engines,  and  railroads,  have  turned  topsy- 
turvy the  usages  of  labor,  and  in  part  substituted 
manufacture  on  the  large  scale  for  home-industry 


OBSERVATION  IX  SOCIAL  SCIENCE. 


If  one  result  has  been  an  energy  of  production 
that  has  created  unheard-of  wealth,  another  re- 
sult is  no  less  evident,  namely,  the  infliction  of 
evils  that,  owing  to  their  continuity,  are  more 
formidable  than  the  most  cruel  ravages  ever 
wrought  in  tinier  past  by  famines  and  other  tem- 
porary scourges.  Formerly,  the  working-popu- 
lation, simple  in  their  desires  and  frugal  in  their 
lives,  were  contented  with  their  lot.  This  is  still 
the  case  in  many  regions  of  Europe,  wherever  the 
soil  is  not  strictly  measured  out  to  them,  and 
especially  in  the  Mussulman  countries  of  which 
we  know  so  little.  Not  only  is  this  fact  estab- 
lished by  the  precise  observations  of  travelers, 
but  we  daily  see  confirmation  of  it  in  the  letters 
of  newspaper  correspondents.  Indeed,  no  "  spe- 
cial correspondent,"  however  frivolous  he  may 
be,  can  fail  being  struck,  in  the  East,  by  two 
plain  tokens  of  the  well-being  and  tranquillity  of 
the  people,  viz.,  that  every  one,  however  humble, 
owns  his  home,  and  that  no  one,  even  the  poor- 
est, is  reduced  to  absolute  destitution.  But  in  the 
West,  despite  the  augmentation  of  wealth,  and 
the  wonderful  progress  that  has  been  made,  the 
working-classes  are  restless  under  suffering,  and 
utter  only  cries  of  hatred.  In  the  manufacturing 
centres  of  Great  Britain  this  suffering  manifests 
itself  in  a  degree  of  wretchedness  which,  accord- 
ing to  the  official  reports,  reduces  the  working, 
people  to  the  level  of  beasts.  Incomparably  bet- 
ter was  the  lot  of  the  slave  in  ancient  times,  of 
the  puer,  the  child  of  the  family ;  or  that  of  the 
rnedieeval  serf,  the  tranquil  possessor  of  his  lowly 
paternal  cabin.  True,  our  French  factories  are, 
in  some  respects,  not  so  ill  organized,  but  never- 
theless the  evil  exists  among  us  under  a  different 
form,  and  in  a  greatly  aggravated  character,  as 
social  antagonism  and  political  instability.  As 
for  the  moral  corruption,  they  who  have  seen 
what  it  is,  in  the  low  quarters  of  our  cities,  know 
that  the  most  highly-drawn  pictures  of  it  fall  far 
short  of  the  hideous  reality.  Finally,  in  Ger- 
many, the  self-same  inquietude  is  causing  society 
to  rock  upon  its  old  feudal  foundations,  which 
are  falling  to  ruin  under  the  attacks  of  doctrina- 
rian socialism.  It  seems  as  though,  by  the  in- 
vention of  the  "  fire-machine,"  modern  civiliza- 
tion had  repeated  the  bold  theft  of  Prometheus, 
with  all  its  dread  consequences  : 

"  Post  ignem  rotherea  domo 
Subductum,  maeies  et  nova  febrium 

Terris  incubuit  cohors ; 
Semotique  prius  tarda  necessitas 

Leti  corripuit  gradum."  « 

1  After  fire  was  stolen  from  the  celestial  mansions,  con- 


In  France,  more  than  in  any  other  country, 
the  people  seem  to  have  lost  the  secret  of  order 
which  nations  are  wont  to  retain  while  gradually 
improving  their  social  constitution — a  certain 
agreement  of  ideas  concerning  religion,  the  fami- 
ly, property,  labor,  and  the  organization  of  the 
state.  The  progress  of  the  physical  sciences, 
though  the  way  was  prepared  for  it  by  long-con- 
tinued application  to  the  experimental  method, 
has  of  late  been  especially  rapid,  owing  to  certain 
discoveries  unparalleled  in  the  past.  From  an 
erroneously-assumed  analogy  between  the  mate- 
rial relations  of  things  and  the  moral  relations 
of  men,  it  has  been  inferred  that  the  social  state 
might  be  suddenly  bettered  by  means  of  certain 
new-fangled  theories  which  should  break  with  old 
traditions.  So  far  from  regarding  as  worthy  of 
respect  institutions  that  have  received  the  "  con- 
secration of  time,"  men  have  come  to  consider 
those  to  be  least  commendable  which  have  stood 
longest.  According  to  Karl  Marx,  the  accumula- 
tion of  capital  in  the  hands  of  a  few  will  inevita- 
bly lead  to  that  social  liquidation  so  eagerly 
longed  for  by  many,  and  which  will  make  com- 
mon property  of  all  the  instrumentalities  of  pro- 
duction. In  the  opinion  of  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer, 
property  and  capital  are  nothing  but  historic  cate- 
gories ;  that  is  to  say,  transitory  forms  which  will 
be  swept  away  in  the  fatal  evolution  of  progress. 
Some  there  are  who  hope,  in  spite  of  the  experi- 
ences of  1848  and  many  more  recent  failures, 
that  cooperation  will  free  them  from  the  yoke  of 
the  employer,  and  do  away  with  the  oppression 
of  capital.  Others,  like  the  Katheder-Socialisten, 
would  fain  see  in  state  intervention  a  middle 
term  between  the  laissez-faire  doctrine  and  the 
most  advanced  tendencies.  Again,  moralists  and 
positivists  agree  in  maintaining  that  the  benefi- 
cent influence  of  property  is  not  so  well  assured 
under  the  constraint  of  laws  of  succession  dic- 
tated by  the  Revolution  as  under  the  regime  of 
liberty  which  prevails  in  America  and  England. 
They  who  do  not  content  themselves  with  mere 
words  are  asking  whether  the  arts  and  trades 
corporations  that  were  dissolved  a  century  ago 
should  not  be  resuscitated  in  such  forms  as  might 
best  suit  our  times. 

In  view  of  opinions  so  conflicting,  can  wc 
still,  with  a  learned  academician,  hold  economic 
priaciples  to  be  the  only  firm  basis  of  morality? 
Is  not  one   rather  prepared,   with   an  eminent 

sumption  and  9  new  train  of  fevers  settled  upon  the  earth, 
and  the  slow-approaching  necessity  of  death,  which,  till 
now,  was  remote,  accelerated  its  pace. — (Smart's  '"Horace," 
Ode  III.) 


TEE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— -SUPPLEMENT. 


member  of  the  Political  Economy  Club,  on  the 
occasion  of  the  centenary  of  Adam  Smith,  to  hold 
that  the  role  of  the  political  economist  is  now 
ended  ?  At  the  very  least  we  must  agree  with 
Mr.  Stanley  Jevons,  that  never  before  were  we  so 
far  from  having  clear  ideas  of  political  economy, 
and  that  tbe  science  has  become  utterly  chaotic. 
In  this  new  Babel  one  voice  alone  could  make  it- 
self heard  amid  the  uproar  raised  by  conflicting 
passions  and  systems — the  voice  of  Experience. 
At  the  same  time  we  must  guard  against  attrib- 
uting to  experience  any  conventional  language, 
or  making  it  subservient  to  our  own  precon- 
ceived ideas.  When,  under  the  influence  of  the 
extension  of  exchanges,  increase  of  production, 
and  development  of  the  state,  political  economy 
was  founded  in  France  during  the  past  century, 
it  took  color  from  the  "  classical "  spirit  then  in 
the  ascendant.  Like  all  other  crude  sciences,  it 
has  more  than  once  yielded  to  the  temptation  of 
hastily  generalizing  an  isolated  fact,  or  of  putting 
forward  abstract  principles,  and  then  seeking  at 
most  merely  an  a  posteriori  verification  of  them 
in  experience.  Thus,  for  example,  one  distin- 
guished author,  instead  of  inquiring  how  things 
stand  in  countries  where  plenty  and  peace  are 
the  rule,  sententiously  declares  that  "  wealth 
must  be  consumed  according  to  the  principles  of 
sound  reason ; "  never  dreaming  that  he  reminds 
us  of  the  doctors  in  Moliere  who  wished  their 
patients  to  digest  "  according  to  the  principles 
of  sound  reason."  The  truly  scientific  method 
is  very  different  from  this.  Science  first  clears 
the  field  of  all  prejudgment,  and  admits  no  a 
priori  principle ;  it  interrogates  the  facts  and  al- 
lows them  to  answer  with  their  own  rude  elo- 
quence. Thanks  to  this  method,  which  of  itself 
corrects  errors  of  ratiocination  and  saves  us  from 
being  led  astray  by  the  imagination,  the  sciences 
have  in  less  than  two  centuries  made  enormous 
progress,  and  this  instead  of  growing  slower  is 
being  accelerated.  From  early  times  philosophers 
had  no  end  of  disputes  about  chemical  and  phys- 
ical theories,  without  ever  being  able  to  agree. 
Thus  it  was  that  during  the  whole  of  the  eigh- 
teenth century  chemists  were  divided  into  two 
camps  and  warred  for  or  against  pAlogiston,  the 
"inflammable  earth"  contained  in  bodies,  which 
combustion  alone  could  drive  out.  When  minds 
of  a  more  positive  turn,  instead  of  restricting 
themselves  simply  to  the  external  appearances 
of  facts,  and  considering  only  the  qualitative 
aspect  of  phenomena,  began  to  make  note  of  all 
the  observations,  and  to  study  the  quantitative 
relations,  they  were  not  long  in  finding  out  the 


baselessness  of  the  notion  of  phlogiston.  Soon, 
by  means  of  precise  measurements  and  exact 
analysis,  a  theory  was  established  which  is  itself 
simply  the  expression  of  the  facts.  Then  it  was 
that  chemistry,  which  before  Lavoisier  scarcely 
existed,  became  the  wonderful  science  which  it 
now  is. 

We  might  almost  say  the  same  of  geology  and 
biology — to  name  only  the  last-comers — sciences 
which  were  founded  only  the  other  day,  but  which 
are  already  rich  in  positive  results.  All  of  these 
sciences  have  followed  one  and  the  same  method — 
collecting  a  multitude  of  isolated  facts,  determin- 
ing the  degree  of  generalization  they  are  capable 
of,  establishing  the  natural  law,  i.  e.,  the  formula 
which  covers  each  group  of  facts,  and,  finally, 
subjecting  these  results  to  manifold  tests.  Social 
science,  called  by  M.  de  Bonald  the  science  of 
sciences,  could  attain  this  phase  of  evolution  only 
after  the  others :  it  was  of  necessity  the  last  to 
submit  to  the  stern  rule  of  exactitude.  But  now 
the  time  has  come  when  it,  too,  must  quit  the 
region  of  vague  hypotheses  and  hollow  theories, 
elect  for  itself  a  certain  method  of  observation, 
and  lay  its  foundations  in  the  solid  ground  of 
facts. 

II.  The  Method  to  be  chosen — Family  Mon- 
ographs.— The  methodical  verification  of  social 
facts  presents  peculiar  difficulties.  In  most  of 
the  physical  sciences,  if  we  gather  the  teachings 
of  Nature  by  observation,  we  also  elicit  the  same 
by  experiment;  and  these  two  processes  mutual- 
ly  assist  each  other.  In  the  study  of  social  phe- 
nomena, on  the  other  hand,  there  is  clearly  no 
room  for  scientific  experimentation.  No  man 
can  reproduce,  under  circumstances  judiciously 
chosen  and  varied  at  will,  the  phenomena  of  hu- 
man society.  It  is  not  that  venturesome  spirits 
have  hesitated  to  push  society  off  the  beaten 
paths,  at  the  risk  of  leading  it  into  a  cul-de-sac, 
or  ever  the  face  of  a  precipice.  They  would  fain 
compare  society  to  an  ingenious  piece  of  mechan- 
ism, and  their  purpose  has  been,  not  so  much  by 
their  experiments  to  discover  its  springs  as  by 
their  improvements  to  perfect  the  working  of  the 
mechanism.  How  many  are  the  plans  proposed 
by  Utopians,  and  condemned  by  common-sense  ; 
above  all,  what  mischief  and  ruin  have  been 
caused  by  the  awakening  of  illusory  fancies  and 
by  repeated  failures,  without  the  credit  of  the 
system-makers  being  impaired  !  The  best  of  men 
have  paid  tribute  to  this  passion  for  innovation. 
In  the  last  century,  even  Turgot,  who  executed 
so  many  beneficial  reforms,  gave  himself  up  to 
this  sort  of  enthusiasm,  and  set  about  insuring 


OBSERVATION  IN  SOCIAL  SCIENCE. 


the  happiness  of  the  working-men  ;  but,  instead 
of  reconstructing  established  institutions,  corpo- 
rations, or  guilds,  he  broke  them  up  violently 
without  listening  to  the  ^leas  of  the  parties  in- 
terested. The  result  was,  that  the  masters  freed 
themselves  from  all  obligations  to  their  men,  and 
the  workmen  lost  the  rights  which  had  been 
theirs  for  centuries.  About  the  same  period 
Adam  Smith,  after  ten  years  of  solitary  medita- 
tion in  a  place  remote  from  workshops,  explained 
better  than  any  writer  had  ever  explained  before 
the  part  played  by  labor  in  the  production  of 
wealth,  and  formulated  the  famous  law  of  supply 
and  demand.  This  law,  though  valid  with  re- 
spect to  prices  of  commodities,  cannot  be  applied, 
except  by  a  palpable  fallacy,  to  the  relations  be- 
tween master  and  workman,'  since  the  labor  of 
the  workman,  or,  in  other  terms,  the  daily  life 
of  his  family,  is  not  capable  of  being  accelerated 
or  suspended  according  to  the  fluctuations  of  the 
market,  and  herein  differs  from  merchandise. 
Sundry  other  writers  have  advocated  an  absolute 
/  tissez-faire :  enamored  of  sounding  phrases,  and 
heeding  little  the  stern  reality  of  facts,  they  even 
in  our  own  day  proclaim  "the  individual  freedom 
of  labor  "  as  the  only  solution  possible.  We  hear 
much  of  the  benefits  to  be  derived  from  associa- 
tion, free  competition,  participation  (sharing  in 
the  profits),  from  syndicates,  and  from  coopera- 
tion. One  cannot  be  too  wary  of  such  experi- 
ments. Being  inspired  by  generosity,  by  Utopian- 
ism,  or  by  ambition,  rather  than  by  experience, 
they  always  end  in  suffering  where  they  fail,  and 
sometimes  even  lead  to  bloodshed.  It  is  not  with 
the  mutual  relations  subsisting  between  men  as 
with  the  relations  between  man  and  the  physical 
world.  The  latter,  being  modified  by  material 
progress,  are  ever  assuming  new  forms ;  but  the 
former,  being  closely  connected  with  man's  moral 
nature,  are  hardly  subject  to  change.  The  expe- 
rience of  ages  has  firmly  established  the  funda- 
mental principles  of  social  life,  and  has  passed 
judgment  on  the  few  combinations  of  which  they 
are  susceptible.  In  truth,  there  remain  no  dis- 
coveries to  be  made,  whether  as  to  the  regulation 
of  the  family  at  home,  or  the  usages  of  labor  in 
the  workshop.  Nor  is  there  anything  novel  in 
the  much-lauded  schemes  of  reform.  Many  of 
.them  were  known  long  ago,  tried,  and  abandoned; 
and  most  of  the  difficulties  which  we  ourselves 
are  striving  to  overcome  have  been  obviated  or 
solved  in  divers  ways,  according  to  the  time  and 
the  place.  "Why  should  we  go  on  squandering  our 
means  on  experiments  that  our  predecessors  or  our 
rivals  have  already  made  at  their  own  expense  ? 


In  a  dialogue  preserved  for  us  by  Xenophon, 
Pericles  asks  how  might  the  Athenians  regain  their 
ancient  virtues,  and  the  reply  of  Socrates  was : 
"  There  is  nothing  like  mystery  here ;  let  them 
adopt  the  customs  of  their  forefathers  ....  else 
let  them  at  all  events  follow  the  example  of  the 
nations  that  are  now  dominant."  And  Montes- 
quieu says  the  same  thing.  Thus,  then,  the  coun- 
sel of  the  wisest  thinkers,  as  well  as  the  history 
of  modern  science,  warns  us  against  theoretical 
speculation  and  invites  us  to  direct  observation  of 
facts ;  by  these  means  only  can  we  reach  definite 
results,  or  conclusions  that  will  stand.  But  hu- 
man society  is  a  vast  field,  in  which  we  shall  be 
certain  to  lose  our  way,  unless  we  have  a  guide. 
What  guide  can  we  trust,  and  what  method  shall 
we  choose  ? 

First  of  all,  we  have  to  reject  that  method, 
however  plausible  it  may  appear,  which  would 
fain  discover  in  the  anatomical  constitution  of 
tissues  or  in  the  embryogenic  evolution  of  organs 
the  cause  of  man's  moral  faculties,  or  even  the 
secret  of  the  laws  of  society.  We  cannot  but 
regret  the  waste  of  energy  and  of  talent  on  the 
part  of  those  ingenious  philosophers  who  set  up 
the  principles  of  sociology  on  so  questionable  an 
experimental  basis  as  this.  We  can  understand 
the  ground  of  their  error :  many  of  them  are  of 
opinion  that  "  in  order  profitably  to  apply  to  so- 
cial science  the  habits  of  miud  produced  by  study- 
ing all  the  other  sciences,  it  suffices  to  master  the 
main  ideas  furnished  by  each."  Considering  how 
some  of  these  writers  handle  scientific  processes, 
one  is  tempted  to  say  that  they  are  easily  satis- 
fied, like  Figaro  when  he  mastered  the  "main 
ideas"  of  government  and  of  the  English  lan- 
guage. Does  any  one  suppose  that,  by  isolating 
the  ganglia  of  an  ant,  or  by  placing  under  a  micro- 
scope the  nerve-cells  of  a  bee,  he  is  enabled  to  un- 
derstand in  their  causes  and  in  their  details  the 
habits  of  ants  or  the  structure  of  the  honey- 
comb? Who  would  dream  of  preferring  such 
work  as  this  to  the  wonderfully  instructive,  direct 
observations  of  such  men  as  Reaumur  or  Huber  ? 
And  surely  it  were  still  more  preposterous  to  sup- 
pose that,  from  anatomical  dissection  of  the  dead 
body,  or  even  from  a  psychological  analysis  of  the 
living  subject,  we  could  infer  the  laws  of  human 
societies — laws  still  more  delicate  and  complex, 
inasmuch  as  here  the  fixity  of  instinct  is  super, 
seded  by  the  free  play  of  will. 

Nor  would  recourse  to  statistics  alone  be  x>f 
any  greater  avail.  How  should  we  find,  in  tW  ab- 
stract units  and  behind  the  nameless  totals,  the  man 
of  flesh  and  blood  who  lives,  loves,  and  suffers  ? 


6 


THE  POPULAR  SCIEXCE  M0XTELY.—SUPPLE1IEXT. 


And  do  not  statistical  tables  oftentimes  conceal 
from  the  observer  the  very  things  it  concerns 
him  to  know — the  thoughts  and  the  inmost  feel- 
ings, whereof  manners  and  institutions  are  only 
the  outer  forms'?  True  it  is  that  in  statistics  we 
possess  data  of  inestimable  value,  but  their  con- 
tents are  not  all  of  equal  weight  by  any  means. 
Even  when  they  have  been  collected  with  the  utmost 
care,  such  data  are  not  strictly  comparable  among 
themselves,  inasmuch  as  they  diifer  in  their  mode 
of  collection,  in  the  purposes  for  which  they  are 
brought  together,  and  in  the  methods  of  their  cal- 
culation. "  There  is  no  kind  of  information," 
says  the  "  Sixth  Annual  Report  of  the  Massachu- 
setts Bureau  of  Statistics  of  Labor,"  "so  valua- 
ble to  the  worker  in  problems  of  social  science  as 
the  statistical,  when  it  is  derived  from  original 
investigation,  honestly  made  by  competent  per- 
sons ;  but,  when  any  of  these  requisites  are  want- 
ing, it  is  the  most  misleading  and  worthless." 
The  same  "  Report  "  points  out  the  defects  of  the 
system  too  commonly  employed,  which  consists  in 
sending  out  blank  tables  to  be  filled  up  by  differ- 
ent hands  and  then  sent  back  to  a  central  bureau. 
All  that  then  remains  for  the  bureau  to  do  is  to 
make  additions  of  its  own,  to  calculate  averages 
which  oftentimes  are  erroneous,  and  finally  to 
publish  documents  whose  authority  is  always  ques- 
tionable. The  Massachusetts  Bureau,  however, 
combining  practice  with  precept,  adopts  the 
method  of  direct  investigation  and  actual  obser- 
vation. Its  officers  seem,  like  M.  Le  Play,  to  be 
inspired  by  the  counsels  of  Descartes :  "  I  aban- 
doned  entirely,"  writes  the  author  of  the  "Dis- 
cours  sur  la  Mcthode,"  "  the  study  of  letters.  1 
devoted  the  remainder  of  my  youthful  years  to 
traveling,  and  associating  with  people  of  differ- 
ent moods  and  conditions.  .  .  .  For  it  appeared 
to  me  that  I  should  find  far  more  truths  in  the 
I  asoningsof  men  concerning  their  own  affairs, 
where  mistakes  carry  their  own  penalties,  than  in 
the  reasonings  of  a  man  of  letters  in  his  cabinet, 
upon  speculations  that  produce  no  effect,  and 
whose  only  consequence  is,  that  perhaps  they 
inflate  their  author's  vanity  in  proportion  as  they 
depart  from  common-sense,  inasmuch  as  it  i 
art  and  skill  to  make  such  arguments  plausible." 
When,  in  a  personal  research  like  this,  we 
abandon  theoretical  speculation  and  deal  with 
facts,  we  quickly  discover  that,  if  we  would  gain 
corn'  :is  to  the  status  of  a  society,  or  even 

if  we  would  understand  the  special  condition  of  a 
working-population,  it  is  not  enough  to  study  in 
that  organism  the  atom,  that  is  to  say,  the  indi- 
vidual isolated  from  his  surroundings :  we  have 


to  observe  the  living  cell ;  in  other  words,  the 
family,  which  is  the  true  social  unit.  A  people  is 
not  made  up  of  citizens  that  were  born  foundlings 
and  that  will  die  celibates.  Memory  of  ancestors, 
interest  in  descendants,  care  of  infancy,  and  pro- 
tection of  old  age,  attachment  to  the  home  and 
domestic  occupations,  all  conspire  to  make  the 
family  a  little  world  of  sentiments  and  interests — 
the  type  and  at  the  same  time  the  groundwork  of 
the  nation.  The  families  of  working-people,  and 
more  especially  of  the  rural  population,  would  nat- 
urally be  chosen  by  the  observer  as  subjects  for 
investigation;  there,  in" fact,  is  to  be  found  the 
very  root  of  the  nation.--  Being  less  exposed  than 
the  higher  classes  to  social  fluctuations,  and  more 
subordinated  in  their  physical  life  and  activity  to 
the  climate  and  the  productions  of  the  soil,  the 
working-classes,  by  that  very  fact,  present  the 
best  characteristics  of  the  nationality  and  the 
plainest  impress  of  the  local  genius.  While  the 
traditions  of  the  past,  ancient  manners,  superan- 
nuated usages,  and  forgotten  patois,  are  here 
more  persistent,  at  the  same  time  the  slightest 
changes  produced  by  progress  do  not  fail  to  mani- 
fest themselves  in  modifications  of  land-tenure, 
of  factory-management,  of  family-customs,  of 
class-relations,  and  of  state-institutions.  A  thou- 
sand minute  details  of  social  relations,  that  would 
hardly  be  noticed  even  by  an  attentive  observer, 
will  be  found  reflected  in  the  home  life  of  the 
family.  Bousing,  food,  clothing,  rents,  taxes, 
insurance,  religion,  education,  sanitary  police, 
recreation,  revenues,  salaries,  commonage,  poor- 
law  relief — whatever  concerns  the  moral  needs  or 
the  economic  interests  of  the  household,  has  its 
corresponding  debit  or  credit  in  money  or  in 
kind.  Finally,  the  savings  of  a  family  furnish 
the  best  criterion  for  judging  whether  it  is  capa- 
ble of  rising,  by  its  virtues,  in  the  social  scale. 
Hence  the  main  thing  in  the  "  family  mono- 
graph "  is  to  fix  the  annual  budget :  this  is  the 
distinguishing  characteristic  of  the  method  set 
forth,  both  in  theory  sfnd  in  practice,  by  the  au- 
thor of  "  Lcs  Ouvricrs  Europeens,"  Let  us  brief- 
ly examine  this  method : 

In  the  first  place,  a  "  family  monograph,"  if  it 
is  to  be  of  any  use,  must  be  inspired  by  a  sincere 
love  of  science,  which  leads  to  investigation  of 
truth  and  scrupulous  exactitude  in  noting  down 
facts.  It  is  not  to  be  denied  that  an  author  will 
oftentimes  set  about  his  work  with  the  purpose 
of  demonstrating  an  erroneous  principle  with 
which  he  is  in  sympathy;  yet,  even  so,  impartial 
application  of  the  method  will  suffice  to  distin- 
guish for  him  the  true  from  the  false.     Then  we 


OBSERVATION  IN  SOCIAL  SCIENCE. 


7 


must  know  how  to  win  the  confidence  of  the 
modest  households  that  we  would  describe.  No 
remuneration  could  induce  a  family  for  eight  or 
ten  days  to  admit  an  outside  observer  to  all  the 
secrets  of  its  home-life  ;  but,  on  the  other  hand, 
if  it  is  understood  that  the  only  object  of  the 
inquiry  is  the  improvement  of  the  status  of  the 
working-classes  by  first  getting  at  the  actual 
facts  of  the  case,  the  family  will  not  object  to 
answering  the  minutest  questions.  There  is  a 
further  difficulty,  which  can  only  be  overcome  by 
the  most  patient  sagacity.  Not  only  is  the  at- 
tention of  the  family  wearied  by  a  long  process 
of  questioning,  but  oftentimes  these  worthy  peo- 
ple have  never  thought  at  all  about  how  they 
live ;  and,  when  they  have  to  reply  to  the  questions 
touching  the  minutire  of  the  housekeeping  ac- 
count, we  only  get  a  repetition  of  the  dialogue  of 
"  The  Cobbler  and  the  Financier"  ("Le  Savetier 
ct  le  Financier'') : 

F. — Well,  how  much  do  you  earn  a  day  ? 
C. — Sometimes  more,  sometimes  less. 

In  the  lives  of  these  people,  monotonous  as 
they  appear  at  the  first  glance,  there  are  ever  oc- 
curring a  thousand  events  that  disturb  the  uni- 
formity— sickness,  a  marriage,  a  baptism,  a  sea- 
son of  idleness,  a  loss  of  cattle,  the  acquisition  of 
a  bit  of  land.  Hence  it  is  a  work  of  much  diffi- 
culty to  draw  up  the  balance-sheet  of  an  average 
year.  Around  each  of  the  budgets  thus  made 
out  will  be  grouped  a  multitude  of  observations 
showing  the  natural  conditions  of  the  climate  and 
the  soil ;  the  occupations  and  industries  of  the 
family,  its  habits  and  mode  of  life,  its  history,  and 
its  moral  wants.  Next  come  more  general  ob- 
servations on  the  elements  of  the  social  consti- 
tution of  the  country,  as  exhibited  in  the  mon- 
ographs— as  spontaneous  products  of  Nature ; 
methods  of  husbandry ;  mode  of  procuring  labor- 
ers ;  civil  and  commercial  legislation ;  ancient 
communities  and  modern  associations,  from  the 
artels  of  Russia  or  the  bcrgslags  of  Sweden  to  the 
trades-unions  of  England  ;  patriarchal  rule,  feudal 
institutions,  serfdom,  emigration,  etc.  The  most 
interesting  facts  are  precisely  those  of  which  the 
family  itself  is  unconscious,  and  which  statistics 
as  usually  collected  do  not  touch.  As  illustrative 
of  this  sort  of  facts,  we  might  name  "  subven- 
tions" of  all  kinds,  such  as  the  free  enjoyment 
of  a  house,  a  garden-plot,  or  a  field ;  the  allow- 
ances made  by  employer  or  landlord  for  doctors' 
fees  or  schooling ;  free  pasturage,  fuel ;  the  right 
to  fish  or  to  hunt.  Then  there  comes  the  satis- 
fying of  moral  wants,  very  indefinitely  expressed 
under  the  general  term  of  "  sundry  expenses," 


and  embracing  such  subjects  as  support  of 
churches,  education  of  children,  mutual-aid  so- 
cieties, books,  newspapers,  and  recreation. 

It  would  appear  as  though  nothing  could  fail 
to  be  noted  where  this  method  is  employed.  The 
plan  of  the  "  family  monograph,"  as  elaborated 
and  improved  by  the  labors  of  twenty  years,  and 
tested  by  many  subsequent  works,  fixes  in  ad- 
vance the  compartments  to  which  the  various  re- 
sults of  observation  belong.  Besides — and  this 
is  indispensable  for  documents  that  are  designed 
to  be  of  any  scientific  value — all  monographs 
drawn  up  in  this  uniform  shape  are  strictly  com- 
parable one  with  another. 

III.  Generalization  of  the  Method,  and  the 
Objections  urged  against  it. — He  surely  would 
make  a  notable  discovery,  who,  in  deciphering 
some  forgotten  palimpsest,  should  bring  to  light  a 
monograph  of  this  kind  relating  to  life  in  ancient 
times  ;  who  should  make  us  acquainted  with  the 
lowly  history  of  some  boatman  on  the  Nile,  some 
fisher  in  the  iEgean,  some  Etrurian  potter,  or 
Phoenician  trader ;  some  artisan  of  Herculaneum, 
or  laborer  in  Latium ;  some  Cantabrian  miuer,  or 
Gaulish  goldsmith.  If  we  could  scrutinize  in  its 
minutest  details  the  daily  life  of  working-people 
in  all  times,  we  should  be  enabled  thus  better 
than  by  any  other  method  to  get  at  the  centrum 
vitale  of  all  societies,  namely,  the  relations  of  the 
protecting  classes  to  the  protected.  It  would  be 
interesting  to  sit  by  the  fireside  of  the  serf  at- 
tached to  the  glebe,  or  to  enter  the  shop  of  the 
burgher  proud  of  his  communal  liberties,  to  live 
their  life  and  think  their  thoughts.  In  the  ab- 
sence of  statistical  documents,  would  that  we 
possessed  some  little  interior  views  painted  by 
the  hands  of  masters  in  olden  time !  Thus,  when 
Froissart  writes,  "I  awoke  again  and  went  into 
my  smithy,  there  to  work  and  forge  away  on  the 
high  and  noble  matter  with  which  I  had  been 
busied  aforetime,"  one  is  disposed  to  regret  that 
this  incomparable  story-teller  finds  room  in  his 
tales  only  for  the  feats  of  high  and  mighty  barons, 
but  concerns  himself  not  about  a  less  noble  mat- 
ter to  which  his  genius  would  have  lent  an  in- 
comparable charm.  One  of  the  most  prominent 
of  M.  Le  Play's  disciples  has  shown  us  how  inter- 
esting successive  studies  of  one  and  the  same 
family  may  be.  He  has  followed,  step  by  step,  in 
the  varying  fortunes  of  their  period  of  decline, 
and  in  their  last  struggles,  the  Melagas,  a  family 
of  peasants  living  in  the  Pyrenees,  an  instructive 
account  of  whose  history  was  given  some  time  ago 
in  these  pages.1     No  less  interesting  would  lie  a 

1  Rente,  des  Deux  MonrJes,  1S72, 15  Avril,  article  "La 
Famille  et  la  Loi  de  Succession  en  France." 


8 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


series  of  monographics  describing  one  and  the 
same  social  type  at  different  epochs.  By  thus 
observing  in  each  walk  of  life  the  reflection  of 
the  transformation  of  society,  we  should  gain 
much  valuable  instruction.  Thus,  for  instance, 
we  should  find  that  in  carrying  on  the  sea-coast 
fishery,  where  but  little  capital  is  required,  and 
hardly  anything  but  physical  strength  is  con- 
tributed to  the  common  store,  cooperation  has 
always  been  the  rule,  while  in  other  occupations 
it  has  no  place.  On  the  other  hand,  we  should 
find  the  system  of  rural  communities  has  grad- 
ually declined,  and  that  this  form  of  communism, 
far  from  embodying  the  promise  of  the  future,  is 
but  an  antiquated  relic  of  the  past.  We  might 
find  in  the  history  of  a  family  during  several 
generations  a  firm  experimental  basis  for  many 
an  interesting  study.  Thus,  to  quote  one  instance, 
Mr.  It.  L.  Dugdale  has  based  on  a  monography 
of  a  family  of  thieves,  the  Jukes,  a  very  useful 
inquiry  into  the  subject  of  crime  and  pauperism 
in  the  State  of  Xew  York.1  The  author  of  this 
essay  on  social  pathology  traces  the  genealogy 
and  the  history  of  this  unfortunate  family:  he 
shows  from  facts  what  a  fearful  heritage  of  de- 
bauch and  disease,  of  misery  and  crime,  was  theirs 
ever  since  the  close  of  the  last  century ;  finally, 
he  deduces  from  observation  the  reforms  that  are 
needed,  laying  special  stress  on  the  extension  of 
the  family  system  throughout  all  correctional  in- 
stitutions for  the  young.  Many  other  aspects  of 
our  social  problems  might  be  better  understood, 
were  it  possible  to  make  inquiries  of  this  kind 
into  the  distant  past. 

Fortunately,  we  can  find  in  space  what  is  de- 
nied us  in  time.  As  was  remarked  by  M.  Charles 
Dupin,  in  the  "  Report  "  already  quoted,  "  the  si- 
multaneous study  of  the  lot  of  the  working-classes 
in  countries  lying  in  the  east,  the  centre,  and  the 
west  of  Europe,  is,  in  fact,  equivalent  to  the  study 
of  three  distinct  epochs — the  ancient,  the  tran- 
sition, and  the  modern  states  of  those  realms 
Which  to-day  arc  most  advanced  in  industry,  arts, 
and  sciences."  Hence  we  can,  without  much  risk 
of  error,  discover  in  the  present  age  most  of  the 
social  systems  of  the  past :  the  patriarchal  con- 
stitution in  Turkey,  the  regime  of  rural  communi- 
ties in  Russia,  feudal  institutions  in  Hungary,  and 
so  on.  By  analyzing  the  transjbrmations  going 
on  before  our  eyes  in  different  countries,  we  throw 
light  on  the  origin  and  history  of  modern  soci- 
ety. Sundry  observers  have  described  the  "  work- 
ing people  of  two  hemispheres,"  thus  enlarging 

1  "  The  Jukes,  a  Study  in  Crime,  Pauperism,  Disease, 
and  Heredity;  also,  Further  Studies  on  Criminals." 


on  the  plan  of  the  monographics  in  the  "  Ouvri- 
ers  Europeens."  In  this  way  many  curious  types 
— the  miner  of  the  placers  of  California,  the  Chi- 
nese peasant,  the  freedman  muleteer  of  Reunion, 
the  perfumer  of  Tunis,  the  Canadian  farmer — 
have  been  brought  together ;  but  there  is  still 
much  to  be  done.  Even  in  Europe  many  a  mo- 
nograph}' will  have  to  be  written  before  we  can 
be  said  to  know  certain  regions ;  in  particular 
Italy,  a  country  so  diversified  in  its  natural  char- 
acters. And  a  knowledge  of  the  family-life  of 
Slavs,  Greeks,  Latins,  and  Mussulmans,  in  the 
provinces  of  European  Turkey,  would  throw  light 
on  the  present  situation  and  on  the  future  lot  of 
those  countries  in  which  the  fortunes  of  the  world 
are  now  undergoing  the  arbitrament  of  war. 

Still  some  writers  of  note  have  urged  against 
the  generalization  of  the  monography  method 
certain  objections  which  we  must  notice.  The 
objection  most  commonly  raised  has  reference 
to  the  minuteness  of  the  details  of  family  ac- 
counts. "  Where  is  the  use,"  it  is  asked,  "  of 
knowing  just  what  quantity  of  worthless  utensils 
is  owned  by  each  household  ?  What  good  is  it 
to  know  the  exact  weight  of  salad  or  of  pepper 
consumed  in  a  year  ?  Why  note  down,  one  by 
one,  each  article  belonging  to  a  bride's  outfit  ?  " 
Perhaps  it  might  suffice,  and  certainly  it  were 
easier,  to  be  content  with  general  statements  and 
to  put  down  in  one  gross  sum  the  total  of  each 
kind  of  receipts  or  expenditures.  But  the  au- 
thor of  "  Les  Ouvriers  Europeens  "  is  not  a  man 
to  be  so  easily  satisfied.  As  a  mining  engineer  arid 
professor  of  metallurgy,  he  has  long  been  famil- 
iar with  the  precise  methods  of  weighing  em- 
ployed in  chemical  analyses,  and  he  would  im- 
port into  the  study  of  social  phenomena  a  like 
precision.  It  must  be  admitted  that  in  arith- 
metic there  is  no  such  thing  as  semi-exactness, 
and  that  a  balance-sheet  loses  all  its  value  if  it  is 
based  on  approximations.  Besides,  this  descend- 
ing to  the  minutest  details  necessitates  on  the 
part  of  the  observer  scrupulous- exactitude  in  his 
researches,  saves  him  from  many  a  mistake,  and 
not  unfrequently  leads  to  unexpected  discoveries. 
The  make-up  of  the  household  furniture,  the 
preparation  of  the  national  dish,  the  description 
of  antiquated  costumes,  the  ceremonies  of  be- 
trothal, and  other  like  pictures  of  national  man- 
ners and  customs,  serve  to  relieve  the  dullness 
and  dryness  of  statistics.  Then,  too,  the  com- 
parative study  of  one  and  the  same  item  of  the 
family  accounts  through  different  monojrraphies, 
while  it  awakens  the  attention  of  the  observer, 
brings  to  light  many  an  instructive  fact — as,  for 


OBSERVATION  IN  SOCIAL  SCIENCE. 


9 


instance,  the  considerable  profits  made  from  home- 
industries,  the  importance  of  woman's  domestic 
work,  the  improvidence  of  the  working-classes. 
Popular  recreations  exhibit  a  curious  aspect  of 
local  manners.*  Thus,  on  the  steppes  of  Russia, 
when  neighbors  come  together  to  assist  one  of 
their  number  in  performing  some  extraordinary 
work,  a  liberal  board  is  always  spread,  and  the 
occasion  becomes  a  regular  festival.  Such  gath- 
erings are  known  among  the  Bashkirs  as  heum- 
min,  and  among  the  peasants  of  Orenburg  as 
pomotch ;  and  they  have  their  counterparts  in 
the  deves-bras  of  the  Bretons  and  the  grandes- 
journies  of  the  Bearnais  peasants.  Then  we 
have  the  popular  amusements  of  country-fairs, 
family  anniversaries,  fireside  gatherings  in  win- 
ter for  story-telling  and  courtship,  the  har- 
vest-home, and  the  like.  These  modest  recrea- 
tions of  rustics  are  a  very  different  thing  from  the 
costly  pleasures  which  in  great  cities  too  often 
absorb  no  small  portion  of  the  yearly  earnings. 
In  taking  note  of  these  and  similar  aspects  of 
life  among  the  laboring-populations,  the  author 
of  "  Les  Ouvriers  Europeens  "  does  but  follow 
the  example  set  by  Yauban,  "  who,"  says  Fon- 
tenelle,  "  carefully  informed  himself  about  the 
value  of  soils,  their  products,  the  manner  of  cul- 
tivating them,  the  means  possessed  by  the  peas- 
ants, their  ordinary  diet,  their  daily  earnings ; 
details  which,  though  apparently  of  no  impor- 
tance, nevertheless  form  part  of  the  art  of  gov- 
ernment." 

In  the  next  place,  it  is  charged  that  the  au- 
thor of  "  Les  Ouvriers  Europeens  "  has  chosen  to 
write  in  an  abstract,  geometrical  style,  bristling 
with  technicalities  and  formulas,  and  difficult  to 
understand.  This  criticism,  which,  in  our  opin- 
ion, was  hardly  justified  by  the  first  edition  of 
the  work,  will  probably  be  passed  also  on  the 
second.  True,  we  have  here  nothing  like  that 
elegant  and  superficial  language  of  the  drawing- 
room  in  which  Diderot  used  to  discuss,  currente 
caJamo,  the  highest  social  problems,  without  dis- 
concerting even  those  whose  studies  had  not 
gone  beyond  their  prayer-books.  But  is  not  this 
a  necessity  ?  When  we  quit  venturesome  gen- 
eralizations for  the  firm  ground  of  experience,  it 
is  clear  that  we  must  adapt  the  exactitude  of  our 
language  to  the  precision  of  our  thoughts.  The 
sciences  as  they  develop  can  hardly  comply  with 
Buffon's  precept  of  giving  to  things  only  the  most 
generic  names  ;  they  must  have  a  nomenclature 
and  a  vocabulary  of  their  own.  The  science  of 
society,  in  proportion  as  it  becomes  more  clearly 
formulated,  must,  without  ceasing  to  be  literary, 


restrict  itself  to  the  use  of  terms  that  are  rigor- 
ously defined,  as  is  the  case  with  the  physical  sci- 
ences. 

Finally,  it  has  often  been  said  that,  instead 
of  devoting  time  and  labor  to  family  monographs, 
we  should  boldly  face  the  burning  questions  of 
the  day,  and  attack  our  most  difficult  problems. 
But  while  it  seems  as  though  by  such  a  course 
we  should  more  quickly  gain  a  knowledge  of  gen- 
eral laws,  the  reverse  is  shown  to  be  the  fact  by 
the  history  of  the  development  of  the  sciences. 
Thus  geology,  for  example,  for  a  long  time  fluctu- 
ated between  the  systems  of  the  philosophers  and 
the  fictions  of  the  poets :  the  first  researches 
which  won  for  it  a  solid  basis  did  not  have  for 
their  object  the  solution  of  any  general  question, 
and  were  restricted  to  closely  analyzing,  in  a  cir- 
cumscribed locality,  a  small  number  of  very 
definite  facts.  It  was  thus  that,  by  his  modest 
observations,  a  potter  and  a  genius,  Bernard 
Palissy,  outstripped  the  savants,  and  in  his  "  Dis- 
cours  Admirables  "  explained  the  laws  which  had 
regulated  the  formation  of  sedimentary  terrains, 
and  the  circulation  of  subterraneous  waters.  In 
like  manner,  the  fruitful  conception  of  substitu- 
tion, which  has  opened  such  broad  horizons  in 
organic  chemistry,  suggested  itself  to  Dumas 
while  making  a  minute  examination  of  the  reac- 
tions of  chlorine  with  hydrogen  carburets.  And 
the  domain  of  knowledge  is  still  daily  being  en- 
larged rather  by  painstaking  analyses  of  details 
than  by  brilliant  surveys  of  the  whole  field.  It 
will  be  the  same  with  social  science :  it  will 
make  real  progress  only  in  proportion  as  it  fol- 
lows in  the  track  of  the  sciences  which  have 
gone  before. 

It  is  incumbent,  especially  on  statistical  con- 
gresses and  geographical  societies,  to  encourage 
the  use  of  family  monographs  in  the  discussion 
of  economic  problems  and  in  describing  for- 
eign peoples.  Already,  as  we  have  said,  the  Bos- 
ton Bureau  of  Statistics  of  Labor,  while  adopt- 
ing as  its  method  of  investigation  personal  ob- 
servations, at  the  same  time  borrowed  from  the 
monographies  at  least  the  principal  divisions  of 
their  plan.  The  truth  is  that,  instead  of  paint- 
ing with  a  firm  hand  a  few  complete  pictures,  the 
commissioners  have  chosen  rather  to  present  a 
very  large  number  of  slight  sketches,  and  hence 
have  left  out  many  details  ;  thus,  under  the  head 
of  "Receipts,"  neither  "subventions"  nor  the 
fruits  of  home-industries  are  mentioned.  But, 
defective  though  they  are,  these  monographies, 
beins;  accompanied  with  reports  on  the  different 
sections  of  the  family  budgets,  lead  to  important 


10 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


conclusions.  Thus,  more  than  half  of  the  house- 
holds studied  were  making  savings  ;  the  majority 
of  them  had  comfortable  homes,  substantial  food, 
and  decent  attire  ;  in  hardly  a  single  instance  was 
the  mother  of  the  family  employed  in  any  work 
outside  of  her  house;  while,  on  the  contrary,  the 
labor  of  the  younger  members  contributed  largely 
to  the  receipts. 

Geography  is  not  less  interested  than  statis- 
tics in  developing  the  method  of  social  research. 
Nothing  could  show  more  clearly  than  does  the 
monograph  the  preponderant  influence  on  the 
social  constitution  of  a  race  of  the  extent  of  wild 
land  at  its  disposal,  and  the  amount  of  spontane- 
ous products  offered  by  its  territory.  For  the 
author  of  "  Les  Ouvriers  Europeens  "  these  two 
elements,  the  importance  of  which  is  shown  by 
figures  in  the  family  budgets,  are  decisive  with 
respect  to  the  organization  of  the  family,  the  in- 
stitution of  property,  the  labor-market,  and  emi- 
gration. Hence  it  is  to  be  desired  that  the  at- 
tention of  travelers  be  directed  toward  a  method- 
ical observation  of  social  facts,  so  as  constantly 
to  test  and  to  apply  to  new  territories  the  results 
of  prior  researches;  we  thus  meet  one  of  the 
most  urgent  needs  of  our  time.  In  England,  and 
also  in  the  United  States,  vigorous  social-science 
associations  are  already  concerning  themselves 
with  important  researches,  and  by  their  publica- 
tions and  annual  meetings  are  making  the  people 
familiar  with  economic  questions.  In  France, 
the  Societe  d'Ecoiiomie  Politique  and  the  Societe 
d'Economie  Sociale  combine  their  efforts  for  a 
common  object,  but  they  enjoy  neither  the  same 
means  nor  the  same  publicity  as  similar  bodies 
in  England  and  the  United  States. 

IV.  Application  of  this  Metiiod  to  the 
Study  op  Oriental  Workmen. — Inasmuch  as  the 
new  edition  of  Le  Play's  work  offers  for  criticism 
only  monographies  of  Eastern  countries,  it  were 
as  yet  premature  to  discuss  the  general  conclu- 
sions to  which  the  author  of  "  Les  Ouvriers  Eu- 
ropeens "  has  been  led  by  his  long-continued 
studies.  The  scheme  of  social  reform  with  which 
Le  Play's  name  is  identified,  though,  according 
to  him,  it  is  firmly  based  on  strict  observation 
of  facts,  gives  rise  to  considerable  difference  of 
opinion  among  the  best  minds.  Hence  to  defend 
or  to  attack  its  principles  would  necessitate  a 
thoro'i    I  -ion.     This  task  we  cannot 

undertake,  and  must  confine  ourselves  to  a  con- 
sideration of  the  actual  developments  of  the 
method  from  the  special  point  of  view  adopted 
by  the  Academy  of  Sciences  when  it  labored  to 
encourage  the  application  of  this  system  of  in- 


vestigation. "  Are  the  researches  original  ?  Is 
their  object  an  important  one  ?  Have  facts  been 
carefully  observed  ;  are  they  set  forth  methodi- 
cally ;  and,  above  all,  are  they  stated  fairly?" 
These  are  the  only  considerations  which  we  have 
to  take  into  account.  If  the  method  of  investi- 
gation is  rigorous,  and  employed  with  scientific 
impartiality,  then  the  facts  set  down  will  carry 
their  own  logical  conclusions.  Still,  in  order  to 
give  a  better  idea  of  the  value  and  interest  of 
these  family  monographies,  it  will  be  well  to  in- 
dicate a  few  of  the  principal  facts  brought  into 
relief  by  the  methodical  study  of  the  workmen 
of  the  East. 

There  exists,  as  one  might  say,  a  "home 
(patrie)  of  virtue,"  or,  in  other  words,  an  ensem- 
ble of  natural  conditions,  which  make  it  easier 
for  a  man  to  discharge  his  duty ;  whereas,  in 
other  regions,  on  the  contrary,  the  manner  of  life 
increases  the  difficulty  of  well-doing,  and  requires 
of  a  man  a  higher  and,  in  so  far,  a  rarer  degree 
of  virtue.  For  M.  Le  Play  this  "  native  land  of 
virtue  "  is  the  great  steppe — the  vast  region  of 
grassy  plains  which  constitutes  Southern  Russia, 
and  which  extends  far  into  Asia.  Devoid  of 
trees,  intersected  by  few  streams,  and  they  deep- 
ly embanked ;  exposed  to  all  meteorological  in- 
fluences, this  grassy  region  is  hardly  inhabitable 
during  the  droughts  of  summer  or  the  colds  of 
winter,  with  the  exception  of  some  few  sheltered 
districts  lying  at  the  foot  of  hills.  In  spring, 
however,  grasses  and  flowers  grow  there  in 
abundance,  and  horses  and  oxen,  camels  and 
tents,  disappear,  buried  in  an  ocean  of  verdure. 
From  time  immemorial  this  has  been  the  home 
of  nomads;  the  patriarchal  life  still  subsists  here 
in  Biblical  majesty,  and  with  a  serene  moral  ele- 
vation. The  results  yielded  by  the  study  of  sun- 
dry families  living  on  the  Siberian  slope  of  the 
Ural  Mountains  have  been  confirmed  by  inde- 
pendent and  competent  authors,  as  by  the  Abbe 
Hue  in  Mongolia,  and  by  General  Ylangaly  in 
Peking.  The  simplicity  of  manners,  the  cor- 
rectness of  relations,  the  haughtiness  of  charac- 
ter, which  characterize  the  nomads,  have  been 
lauded  by  all  the  writers  of  ancient  times — by 
poets,  geographers,  and  historians,  from  Homer  to 
Horace,  from  Herodotus  to  Strabo  and  Justin. 

"When  we  leave  the  grassy  plains  and  travel 
toward  Europe  through  Paissia,  we  observe  the 
various  phases  of  social  transformation  which 
have  been  brought  about  in  the  "West  by  the 
clearing  of  woodland  and  the  development  of  sed- 
entary life.  M.  Le  Play  selects  for  publication 
five  monographies  of  Russian  families.     First,  we 


OBSERVATION  IN  SOCIAL  SCIENCE. 


11 


have  a  family  of  Bashkirs,  inhabiting  a  country 
that  is  renowned  for  the  beauty  of  its  vernal  sea- 
son :  they  are  still  half  nomadic,  spurn  agricultu- 
ral labor,  and  live  upon  the  milk  of  their  young 
rnares  like  the  Hippomulga?  and  Galactophagae  of 
antiquity.  Then  comes  a  family  of  laborers  em- 
ployed in  the  gold-washings  and  the  iron-works 
of  the  Ural :  these  devote  themselves  to  the  work 
of  making  clearings  and  garden-patches  in  the 
midst  of  the  woods.  Next  come  regular  cultiva- 
tors of  the  soil,  peasants  of  the  "  black  land  " 
of  Orenburg,  who  are  attached  to  the  seigniorial 
demesne  by  a  system  of  corvees  (husbandry-ser- 
vice). Still  farther  to  the  west,  and  especially  in 
districts  where,  as  in  the  basin  of  the  Oka,  the 
peasants  are  able  to  increase  their  little  store  by 
periodical  emigrations  of  young  laborers  to  the 
towns, -the  plan  of  rent  (ob?-ok)  takes  the  place  of 
husbandry-service.  The  social  constitution  which 
among  nomads  makes  each  head  of  a  family  a 
sort  of  petty  sovereign  has  here  been  supplanted 
by  the  feudal  system ;  still  the  patriarchal  spirit 
has  survived.  Prior  to  the  reforms  of  1861,  the 
landed  proprietor  exercised  a  paternal  authority 
over  his  laborers,  and  the  young  were  taught  to 
respect  the  ancient  traditions.  Land-owners  and 
factory-proprietors  were  held  morally  responsible 
for  the  well-being  of  their  subordinates,  and  mas- 
ter and  workman  were  united  by  feelings  of  soli- 
darity that  resembled  the  ties  of  family.  The 
transition  from  husbandry-service  to  rent  was  the 
prelude  to  emancipation,  which  would  have  come 
about  spontaneously  by  the  gradual  evolution  of 
interests,  had  it  not  been  hastened  by  the  gener- 
ous initiative  of  the  sovereign.  Among  the  good 
results  of  emancipation,  M.  Le  Play  enumerates 
increased  industry,  increased  savings,  more  ambi- 
tion among  the  better  class  of  laborers,  less  ab- 
senteeism on  the  part  of  the  rural  proprietors, 
and  an  increase  of  comfort  for  both  of  these  class- 
es in  the  fertile  regions.  But,  on  the  other  hand, 
weak  or  improvident  families  have  parted  with 
their  traditional  well-being ;  a  pauper  class  is 
springing  up,  and  the  inferior  nobility,  especially 
those  of  that  class  whose  estates  were  encum- 
bered with  debt,  have  been  reduced  to  penury. 
Then,  too,  the  compulsory  suppression  of  seign- 
iorial authority  has  dealt  a  blow  at  Russian  nation- 
ality by  weakening  the  moral  influences  which 
were  wont  to  uphold  religious  belief  and  respect 
for  authority.  Finally,  the  trade  in  spirituous 
liquors  has  suddenly  reached  a  considerable  de- 
velopment, the  consequence  being  here,  as  else- 
where, a  degradation  of  the  race.  The  best  as- 
surance for  the  future  of  Russia  is  to  be  found  in 


the  rural  communities,  which  have  been  wisely 
strengthened  by  the  provisions  of  the  emancipa- 
tion act.  These  institutions,  while  they  do  but 
little  to  stimulate  the  energies  of  the  peasants, 
and  oftentimes  check  the  career  of  eminent  indi- 
vidualities, nevertheless  insure  to  the  great  ma- 
jority of  the  people  a  competency.  At  the  same 
time  they  serve  to  prepare  these  populations  for 
the  enjoyment  of  the  benefits  of  individual  prop- 
erty. 

The  monography  of  the  Jobajjy  family,  living 
on  the  banks  of  the  Theiss,  presents  in  miniature 
the  old  feudal  regime  of  Hungary.  The  con- 
cession of  the  seigniorial  lands,  at  first  only  a 
usufruct,  had  become,  by  force  of  custom  and 
under  the  influence  of  material  progress,  strict 
property  almost.  The  peasant  could  freely  trans- 
mit landed  property,  in  accordance  with  the  local 
usage ;  but  he  could  not  mortgage  it,  neither 
could  he  parcel  it  out  beyond  a  certain  fixed 
limit.  When  a  family  became  extinct,  its  inher- 
itance did  not  go  to  increase  the  reserve  of  the 
proprietary,  but  was  granted  to  other  peasants. 
The  rent  was  paid  either  in  kind  or  in  service. 
Some  lands  were  held  in  fee  by  peasants,  or  even 
by  day-laborers,  thus  showing  the  degree  of  fore- 
sight reached  by  the  population.  All  the  taxes, 
except  the  church  tithes,  were  collected  gratui- 
tously with  the  rent  of  the  estate  by  the  pro- 
prietary, who  also  bore  the  expenses  of  police 
and  of  courts  of  justice;  furthermore,  he  was 
required  by  self-interest  still  more  than  by  cus- 
tom always  to  assist  his  tenants.  The  Revolution 
of  1848  put  an  end  to  these  institutions,  and  now 
from  among  its  manifold  complicated  and  contra- 
dictory results  there  are  a  few  that  are  easily 
recognized.  As  a  rule,  the  redemption  of  the 
enforced  husbandry-service  and  of  the  tithe 
has  benefited  all  classes,  whether  proprietaries  or 
peasants :  there  is  now  more  industry,  agricult- 
ure is  more  prosperous,  and  wealth  brings  better 
returns.  But  some  of  the  changes  have  been  of 
benefit  only  to  the  proprietors :  the  taxes,  which 
they  used  to  collect  without  charge  to  the  treas- 
ury, and  in  such  a  way  as  to  cause  the  least  pos- 
sible distress  to  the  tax-payers,  are  now  levied  by 
the  fiscal  authorities  with  all  the  rigor  of  official- 
ism. Patrimonial  justice  is  succeeded  by  public 
tribunals,  which  are  oftentimes  strangers  to  the 
local  usages  or  are  held  in  distant  places,  but  are 
always  costly,  especially  on  account  of  the  neces- 
sity of  hiring  lawyers.  But  what  most  seriously 
compromises  the  economic  future  of  the  middle 
classes  is  the  endless  division  of  small  estates, 
resulting  in  social  degradation  of  the  peasantry, 


12 


TUB  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


and  the  alarming  progress  of  usury,  which  threat- 
ens the  ruin  of  improvident  landlords. 

Long  ago,  in  France  as  also  iu  England,  the 
emancipation  of  the  serfs  was  brought  about  by 
the  same  economic  causes,  but  under  circum- 
stances far  more  favorable  than  at  present  attend 
the  transformation  of  the  feudal  system  in  Hun- 
gary and  in  Russia.  Iustead  of  occurring  pre- 
maturely, as  the  result  of  social  revolution  or 
theoretic  speculations,  this  change  of  social  rela- 
tions was  the  gradual  product  of  time,  and  its 
realization  was  due  far  less  to  the  progress  of  the 
idea  of  freedom,  the  political  efforts  of  legists,  or 
the  civilizing  influence  of  the  clergy,  than  to  the 
free  play  of  interests.  Kings,  no  doubt,  wishing 
to  reduce  the  powers  of  the  nobles  and  to  enlarge 
those  of  the  crown,  issued  many  a  decree  of  en- 
franchisement, but  these  had  again  and  again  to 
be  renewed ;  and  the  serfs,  far  from  looking  on 
freedom  as  a  deliverance,  oftentimes  shunned  it 
as  a  burden  and  an  expense.  To  cite  one  in- 
stance among  many,  consider  how  the  serfs 
of  Pierrefond,  emancipated  by  Philip  the  Bold, 
straightway  went  and  married  serf-women,  so 
that  they  might  have  ground  for  demanding  of 
the  Parliament  a  return  to  the  glebe.  Feudalism 
has  always  rested  on  the  necessities  of  the  weak, 
who  offered  their  services  in  exchange  for  pro- 
tection. So  long  as  the  rich  and  the  powerful 
possessed  forests  and  other  wild  lands,  it  was  to 
their  interest  to  attach  to  themselves  the  peas- 
antry and  their  descendants.  Thanks  to  these 
new  relations  between  tenants  and  landlords,  the 
latter  saw  the  produce  of  their  domains  steadily 
augmenting,  while  the  former,  insured  against 
untoward  accidents,  found  ample  resources  in 
the  cultivation  of  their  patrimonial  properties  or 
in  the  enjoyment  of  the  rights  of  usage.  This 
condition  of  well-being  everywhere  underwent  a 
change  when  disposable  land  began  to  be  scarce. 
The  proprietors,  instead  of  insisting  on  their 
right  of  keeping  their  tenantry  on  their  native 
soil,  saw  the  advantage  of  being  freed  from  the 
obligation  of  supporting  them,  which  custom  re- 
quired them  to  do,  but  which  had  now  become 
more  difficult,  owing  tq  the  complete  occupation 
of  the  land.  Finally,  the  evolution  of  society, 
which  by  degrees  substituted  in  lieu  of  hus- 
bandry-service payment  first  in  kind  and  then  in 
money,  ultimately  resulted  in  quit-rent  leases. 
Long  before  the  turmoil  of  the  Revolution,  the 
tenants  had  been  gradually  becoming  actual  pro- 
prietors, and  the  facts  developed  by  the  new 
school  of  history,  from  study  of  documents,  have 
a  flood  of  light  thrown  upon  them  by  the  anal- 


ysis of  the  conditions  still  existent  in  Russia  and 
Hungary. 

As  for  Turkey,  sundry  monographies  of  work- 
ing-people's families  exhibit  in  their  details  a 
constitution  of  society  as  yet  patriarchal.  The 
Mussulmans  have  always  rejected  feudal  institu- 
tions as  a  means  of  relieving  the  wants  of  the 
improvident  families  that  multiply  by  the  crowd- 
ing together  of  sedentary  populations.  Their 
religion  teaches  the  equality  of  all  Mussulmans, 
and  they  hold  that,  as  compared  with  the  poor 
man  who  practises  the  divine  law,  the  rich  man 
is  but  the  steward  of  goods  that  belong  to  God. 
Hence  the  institution  of  the  wakfi — lands  form- 
ing a  great  part  of  Turkey,  the  revenues  of 
which  are  saved  for  the  benefit  of  the  poor.  A 
few  examples  will  exhibit  in  a  favorable  light 
the  relations  between  masters  and  servants. 
There  is,  for  instance,  the  quasi-perpetual  debt, 
without  interest,  contracted  by  the  Christian 
Bulgarians  of  the  iron-works  in  the  Balkans  tow- 
ard their  Mussulman  employers.  So  far  from 
regarding  this  as  a  burdensome  obligation,  the 
workmen  are  rather  inclined  to  be  vain  of  the 
large  amount  of  their  debt,  as  showing  the  con- 
fidence reposed  in  them  by  their  masters.  Then 
we  must  note  the  sort  of  family  relationship  sub- 
sisting between  slave  and  master.  Stimulated 
by  their  religious  sentiments  to  emancipate  at 
least  one  slave  in  each  generation,  some  be- 
lievers, even  though  they  be  not  at  all  wealthy, 
willingly  devote  their  first  savings  to  the  pur- 
chase of  a  slave,  who  soon  becomes  the  com- 
panion and  the  equal  in  all  respects  of  their  own 
children.  Without  in  the  least  cloaking  the 
vices  which  have  transformed  the  ancient  man- 
ners of  Turkey,  the  monographies  do  thus  bring 
out  cleai'ly  many  a  useful  lesson  in  social  har- 
mony, that  other  nations  might  study  with 
profit. 

Facts  like  these  might  be  multiplied,  but  the 
foregoing  will  suffice  to  show  how  the  author  has 
reached  the  conclusions  which  he  now  submits  for 
criticism  and  correction.  In  his  opinion,  the  well- 
being  enjoyed  undisturbed  by  the  lower  classes 
in  the  East — a  state  of  things  which  offers  so 
sharp  a  coutrast  to  the  sufferings  and  the  com- 
plaints of  the  laboring-populations  of  the  West — 
has  hitherto  been  dependent  on  three  causes,  viz. : 
1.  The  fact  that  both  among  the  Mussulmans  and 
the  Christians,  whether  Orthodox  or  Catholic,  the 
observance  of  the  moral  law  is  firmly  based  on 
religious  belief  ;  2.  The  institution  of  the  patriar- 
chal family,  which  brings  all  the  descendants  un- 
der the  strong  authority  of  the  father,  and  checks 


DA  VID,  JTIXG   OF  ISRAEL. 


13 


the  ambition  of  the  more  gifted  members  for 
the  benefit  of  the  greater  number;  3.  The  free 
use  of  uncultivated  land  and  of  the  spontaneous 
products  of  the  earth,  which  is  permitted  to  all. 
The  first  of  these  causes  is  not  the  exclusive  priv- 
ilege of  any  one  age  or  country ;  the  second  is 
capable  of  being  advantageously  modified  under 
the  influence  of  economic  and  moral  progress;  the 
third  alone  is  fated  to  disappear,  as  land  is  more 
and  more  completely  occupied  for  culture.  Now 
that  the  study  of  the  working-people  in  the  East 
has  shown  the  social  importance  of  this  element 
of  well-being,  it  is  for  other  family  monographies 
to  exhibit  the  means  whereby  the  ruling  classes 
have  at  all  times  endeavored  to  fill  its  place  and  to 
maintain  harmony  by  insuring  to  the  lower  classes 


equivalent  resources.  It  is  not  enough  to  show 
that  societies  have  everywhere  found,  in  the  con- 
tinuous nature  of  the  engagements  between  em- 
ployer and  workman,  strong  guarantees  against 
antagonism  and  suffering.  It  has  still  to  be 
shown,  with  the  clearness  characteristic  of  the 
method  of  observation,  how  model  workshops 
may,  by  harmonizing  apparently  conflicting  inter- 
est, and  without  impairing  any  of  the  rights  either 
of  employer  or  employed,  produce  that  stability  of 
relations  which  formerly  in  the  West,  as  still  in  the 
East,  was  based  on  a  system  of  constraint.  Knowl- 
edge of  these  processes  is  of  the  highest  impor- 
tance for  the  solution  of  the  problems  which  now 
vex  all  manufacturing  nations.  On  this  point  we 
demand  of  the  author  full  and  definite  information. 


DAVID,   KIIG    OF    ISRAEL.1 

By  Professor  W.  ROBEKTSON  SMITH,  of  the  University  of  Aberdeen. 


"T~^v  AVID,  beloved  son  of  Jesse,  second  King  of 
-*— '  Israel,  and  founder  of  the  dynasty  which 
continued  to  reign  at  Jerusalem  until  the  Baby- 
lonian captivity.  According  to  the  usual  chro- 
nology, he  reigned  1055-1015  b.  c,  but  the  com- 
putations which  produce  this  date  by  counting 
back  from  the  destruction  of  Jerusalem,  588  b.  c, 
or  the  fall  of  Samaria,  *722  b.  c,  contain  nu- 
merous precarious  elements.  Ewald  puts  the 
date  ten  years  earlier,  but  recent  investigations, 
on  the  contrary,  make  it  not  improbable  that  Da- 
vid flourished  as  much  as  from  thirty  years  to 
half  a  century  later  than  is  usually  assumed. 

David  is  the  greatest  of  the  kings  of  Israel, 
and  his  reign  changed  the  whole  face  of  Hebrew 
history.  During  the  period  of  the  Judges,  the 
Hebrews  were  weakened  by  an  exaggerated  love 
of  personal  independence,  divided  by  tribal  jeal- 
ousies, and  oppressed  by  a  succession  of  foreign 
enemies,  of  whom  the  latest  and  most  dangerous 
were  the  Philistines,  an  immigrant  people  whose 
main  settlements  in  the  fruitful  coast-land  of  South- 
ern Canaan  appear  to  have  taken  place  after  the 
Hebrews  were  established  in  the  land.  Forcing 
their  way  inland,  the  Philistines  struck  a  decisive 
blow  in  the  battle  of  Ebenezer  (1  Samuel  iv.), 
when  the  collapse  of  the  ancient  hegemony  of 
Ephraim,  and  the  destruction  of  the  sanctuary 
of  the  ark  at  Shilo,  left  the  Hebrews  without  na- 

1  From  the  new  edition  of  the  "  Encyclopaedia  Bri- 
tannica,"  vol.  vi. 


tional  leaders  and  without  a  centre  of  national 
action.  Then  arose  Samuel,  whose  prophetic  ac- 
tivity rallied  the  Israelites  around  Jehovah  God 
of  hosts,  and  brought  about  a  great  national  and 
religious  revival.  The  struggle  with  the  Philis- 
tines was  renewed  with  better  success,  though 
without  decisive  issue,  and  at  length  the  election 
of  Saul  as  king  embodied  in  a  permanent  institu- 
tion the  stronger  sense  of  national  unity  which 
had  grown  up  under  Samuel.  But  Saul  was  not 
equal  to  the  task  set  before  him.  He  broke  with 
the  prophetic  party,  which  was  the  mainstay  of 
the  national  revival  which  the  king  was  called  to 
lead.  He  felt  himself  forsaken  by  Jehovah,  and 
his  last  years  were  clouded  by  accesses  of  a  furi- 
ous melancholy  which  destroyed  his  vigor  and 
alienated  his  subjects.  When  at  length  he  was 
defeated  and  slain  at  Gilboa,  the  Philistines  ap- 
peared to  be  absolute  masters  of  the  position. 
They  even  moved  forward  and  occupied  the  cities 
in  the  plain  of  Jezreel  and  on  the  Jordan,  which 
the  Israelites  forsook  in  terror — a  movement 
which  cut  the  country  as  it  were  in  two,  and  ap- 
parently made  it  impossible  for  the  Hebrews  again 
to  unite  under  a  single  head.  From  this  humilia- 
tion David  in  a  few  years  raised  his  country  to 
the  highest  state  of  prosperity  and  glory,  sub- 
duing his  enemies  on  every  side,  and  extending 
his  suzerainty,  as  he  expresses  himself  in  Psalm 
xviii.,  even  over  nations  that  he  had  not  known. 
To  do  this  work,  other  qualities  than  mere  mili- 


1J: 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


tary  capacity  were  required.  David  was  not  only 
a  great  captain — he  was  a  national  hero,  who 
united  in  his  own  person  the  noblest  parts  of 
Hebrew  genius,  and  drew  to  himself  by  an  unfail- 
ing personal  attraction  the  best  valor,  patriotism, 
and  piety  of  the  nation  ;  while  his  political  tact 
and  inborn  talent  for  rule  enabled  him  to  master 
the  old  tribal  particularism,  and  to  shape  at  Jeru- 
salem a  kingdom  which,  so  long  as  he  lived,  rep- 
resented the  highest  conception  of  national  life 
that  was  possible  under  the  rude  social  condi- 
tions then  existing.  The  structure  erected  by 
David  was,  in  truth,  too  much  in  advance  of  the 
times,  and  too  wholly  the  creation  of  unique 
genius  to  be  permanent.  Under  a  successor 
whose  wisdom  lacked  the  qualities  of  personal 
force  and  sympathy  with  popular  feeling,  the 
kingdom  of  David  began  to  decay,  and  in  the  next 
generation  it  fell  asunder,  and  lived  only  in  the 
hearts  of  the  people  as  the  proudest  memory  of 
past  history,  and  the  prophetic  ideal  of  future 
glory. 

The  books  of  Samuel,  which  are  our  principal 
source  for  the  history  of  David,  show  how  deep 
an  impression  the  personality  of  the  king,  his 
character,  his  genius,  and  the  romantic  story  of 
his  early  years,  had  left  on  the  mind  of  the  na- 
tion. Of  no  hero  of  antiquity  do  we  possess  so 
life-like  a  portrait.  Minute  details  and  traits  of 
character  arc  preserved  with  a  fidelity  which  the 
most  skeptical  critics  have  not  ventured  to  ques- 
tion, and  with  a  vividness  which  bears  all  the 
marks  of  contemporary  narrative.  But  the 
record  is  by  no  means  all  of  one  piece.  The  his- 
tory, as  we  now  have  it,  is  extracted  from  various 
sources  of  unequal  value,  which  are  fitted  to- 
gether in  a  way  which  offers  considerable  difficul- 
ties to  the  historical  critic.  In  the  history  of 
David's  early  adventures  the  narrative  is  not  sel- 
dom disordered,  and  sometimes  seems  to  repeat 
itself  with  puzzling  variations  of  detail,  which 
have  led  critics  to  the  almost  unanimous  conclu- 
sion that  the  first  book  of  Samuel  is  drawn  from 
at  least  two  parallel  histories.  It  is  indeed  easy 
to  understand  that  the  romantic  incidents  of  this 
period  were  much  in  the  mouths  of  the  people, 
and  in  course  of  time  were  written  down  in  vari- 
ous forms  which  were  not  combined  into  perfect 
harmony  by  later  editors,  who  gave  excerpts  from 
several  sources  rather  than  a  new  and  indepen- 
dent history.  These  excerpts,  however,  have 
been  so  pieced  together  that  it  is  often  impos- 
sible to  separate  them  with  precision,  and  to  dis- 
tinguish accurately  between  earlier  and  later  ele- 
ments.    It  even  appears  that  some  copies  of  the 


books  of  Samuel  incorporated  narratives  which 
other  copies  did  not  acknowledge.  From  the 
story  of  Goliath,  the  Septuagint  omits  many 
verses — 1  Samuel  xvii.  12-31,  xvii.  55-xviii.  5. 
The  omission  makes  the  narrative  consistent,  and 
obviates  serious  difficulties  involved  in  the  He- 
brew text.  Hence  some  have  supposed  that  the 
Greek  translators  arbitrarily  removed  passages 
that  puzzled  them.  But  this  hypothesis  does  not 
meet  the  facts,  and  is  inconsistent  with  what  we 
know  of  the  manner  of  this  part  of  the  Sep- 
tuagint. There  can  be  little  doubt  that  both 
here  and  in  other  cases  the  shorter  text  is  origi- 
nal, and  that  the  disturbing  additions  came  in 
later  from  some  other  document,  and  were  awk- 
wardly patched  on  to  the  older  text.  So,  too, 
the  history  of  the  gradual  estrangement  of  Saul 
from  David  is  certainly  discontinuous,  and  in  the 
opinion  of  most  critics  the  two  accounts  of  David 
sparing  Saul's  life  are  duplicate  narratives  of  one 
event.  Even  in  the  earlier  part  of  the  history 
these  minor  difficulties  do  not  affect  the  essential 
excellence  of  the  narrative  preserved  to  us  ;  and 
for  the  period  of  David's  kingship  the  accounts 
are  still  better.  All  that  relates  to  personal  and 
family  matters  at  the  court  of  Jerusalem  (2  Sam. 
uel  xi.-xx.)  seems  to  come  from  some  writer  who 
had  personal  cognizance  of  the  events  recorded. 
It  does  not  appear  that  the  plan  of  this  author 
included  the  history  of  David's  foreign  campaigns. 
The  scanty  account  of  great  wars  in  chapter 
viii.  is  plainly  from  another  source,  and  in  gen- 
eral our  information  is  less  adequate  on  public 
affairs  than  on  things  that  touched  the  personal 
life  of  the  king.  The  narrative  is  further  en- 
riched with  poetical  pieces,  of  which  one  at  least 
(2  Samuel  i,  19-27)  is  known  to  be  extracted 
from  an  anthology  entitled  "  The  Book  of  the  Up- 
right." Several  brief  lists  of  names  and  events 
seem  also  to  have  been  taken  from  distinct  sources, 
and  sometimes  interrupt  the  original  context  (e.  g., 
2  Samuel  iii.  2-5).  Some  important  lists  were 
still  accessible  to  the  author  of  Chronicles  in  a 
separate  form.  1  Chronicles  xi.  10-47  is  fuller 
at  the  end  than  the  corresponding  list  in  2  Sam- 
uel xxiii.,  and  1  Chronicles  xii.  contains  valuable 
matter  altogether  wanting  in  Samuel.  See  also  1 
Chronicles  xxvii.  Besides  the  books  of  Samuel 
(with  1  Kings  i.,  ii.),  and  the  parallel  narrative  of 
the  Chronicler,  we  have  a  few  hints  for  the  his- 
tory of  David  in  1  Kings  xi.  and  in  the  titles  of 
Psalms  (especially  Psalms  vii.  and  lx.);  and,  of 
course,  such  psalms  as  can  be  made  out  to  be  really 
by  David  are  invaluable  additions  to  the  Davidic 
poems  incorporated  in  the  books  of  Samuel. 


DA  VID,   KING   OF  ISRAEL. 


15 


Jesse,  the  father  of  David,  was  a  substantial 
citizen  of  Bethlehem.  He  claimed  descent  through 
Boaz  from  the  ancieut  princes  of  Judah  (Ruth  iv. 
18,  seq.),  but  the  family  connection  was  not  of 
note  in  Israel  (1  Samuel  xviii.  18).  As  the  young- 
est son  of  the  house  David  spent  his  youth  in  an 
occupation  which  the  Hebrews  as  well  as  the 
Arabs  seem  to  have  held  in  low  esteem.  He  kept 
his  father's  sheep  in  the  desert  steppes  of  Judah, 
and  there  developed  the  strength,  agility,  en- 
durance, and  courage,  which  distinguished  him 
throughout  life,  and  are  referred  to  in  Psalm 
xviii.  32,  seq.  (compare  1  Samuel  xvii.  34,  xxiv.  2  ; 
2  Samuel  xvii.  9).  There,  too,  he  acquired  that 
skill  in  music  that  led  to  his  first  introduction  to 
Saul.  Theu  he  became  Saul's  armor-bearer,  and 
in  this  capacity,  according  to  the  shorter  and 
more  consistent  form  of  the  narrative,  David  took 
part  in  the  campaign  in  which  he  slew  the  Philis- 
tine champion  Goliath,  and  became  by  one  exploit 
a  popular  hero,  and  an  object  of  jealousy  to  Saul. 
According  to  the  Massoretic  text  of  1  Samuel, 
Saul's  jealousy  leaped  at  once  to  the  conclusion 
that  David's  ambition  would  not  stop  short  of  the 
kingship.  Such  a  suspicion  would  be  intelligible 
if  we  could  suppose  that  the  king  had  heard  some- 
thing of  the  significant  act  of  Samuel,  which  now 
stands  at  the  head  of  the  history  of  David  in  wit- 
ness of  that  divine  election  and  unction  with  the 
spirit  of  Jehovah  on  which  his  whole  career  hung 
(1  Samuel  xvi.  1-13).  But  there  is  not  the  least 
trace  in  the  history  that  even  David  and  David's 
family  understood  at  the  time  the  meaning  that 
underlay  his  unction  by  Samuel,  which  would  nat- 
urally be  taken  as  a  special  mark  of  favor  and  a 
part  of  the  usual  "  consecration  "  of  the  guests  in 
a  sacrificial  feast.  The  shorter  text  of  1  Samuel 
xviii.,  represented  by  the  Septuagint,  gives  an 
account  of  Saul's  jealousy,  which  is  psychologi- 
cally more  intelligible.  According  to  this  text 
Saul  was  simply  possessed  with  such  a  personal 
dislike  and  dread  of  David  as  might  easily  occupy 
his  disordered  brain.  To  be  quit  of  his  hateful 
presence  he  gave  him  a  military  command.  In 
this  charge  David  increased  his  reputation  as  a 
soldier,  and  became  a  general  favorite.  Saul's 
daughter,  Michal,  loved  him ;  and  her  father, 
whose  jealousy  continued  to  increase,  resolved  to 
put  the  young  captain  on  a  perilous  enterprise, 
promising  him  the  hand  of  Michal  as  a  reward 
of  success,  but  secretly  hoping  that  he  would 
perish  in  the  attempt.  David's  good  fortune  did 
not  desert  him  ;  he  won  his  wife,  and  in  this  new 
advancement  continued  to  grow  in  the  popular 
favor,  and  to  gain  fresh  laurels  in  the  field. 


At  this  point  it  is  necessary  to  look  back  on 
an  episode  which  is  found  in  the  Hebrew  text,  but 
not  in  the  Greek — the  proposed  marriage  of  David 
with  Saul's  eldest  daughter  Merab,  who  at  the 
time  when  the  proposal  was  made  was  already 
the  wife  of  a  certain  Adriel.  What  is  said  of  this 
affair  interrupts  the  original  context  of  chapter 
xviii.,  to  which  the  insertion  has  been  clumsily 
fitted  by  an  interpolation  in  v.  21.  We  have  here, 
therefore,  a  notice  drawn  from  a  distinct  source, 
and  of  uncertain  value.  Merab  and  Michal  are 
confounded  in  2  Samuel  xxi.  8,  and  perhaps  the 
whole  episode  of  Merab  and  David  rests  on  a 
similar  confusion  of  names. 

As  the  king's  son-in-law,  David  was  necessari- 
ly again  at  court.  He  became  chief  of  the  body- 
guard, as  Ewald  rightly  interprets  1  Samuel  xxii. 
14,  and  ranked  next  to  Abner  (1  Samuel  xx.  25), 
so  that  Saul's  insane  fears  were  constantly  exas- 
perated by  personal  contact  with  him.  On  at 
least  one  occasion  the  king's  frenzy  broke  out  in 
an  attempt  to  murder  David  with  his  own  hand. 
At  another  time  Saul  actually  gave  commands  to 
assassinate  his  son-in-law,  but  the  breach  was 
made  up  by  Jonathan,  whose  chivalrous  spirit 
had  united  him  to  David  in  a  covenant  of  closest 
friendship  (1  Samuel  xix.  l-*7).  The  circum- 
stances of  the  final  outburst  of  Saul's  hatred, 
which  drove  David  into  exile,  are  not  easily  dis- 
entangled. The  narrative  of  1  Samuel  xx.,  which 
is  the  principal  account  of  the  matter,  caunot 
originally  have  been  preceded  by  chapter  xix. 
11-24,  for  in  chapter  xx.  David  appears  to  be 
still  at  court,  and  Jonathan  is  even  unaware  that 
he  is  in  any  danger,  while  the  preceding  verses 
represent  him  as  already  a  fugitive.  It  may  also 
be  doubted  whether  the  narrative  of  David's  es- 
cape from  his  own  house  by  the  aid  of  his  wife 
Michal  (chapter  xix.  11—17)  has  any  close  connec- 
tion with  verse  10,  and  does  not  rather  belong  to 
a  later  period.  David's  daring  spirit  might  very- 
well  lead  him  to  visit  his  wife  even  after  his  first 
flight.  The  danger  of  such  an  enterprise  was 
diminished  by  the  reluctance  to  violate  the  apart- 
ments of  women  and  attack  a  sleeping  foe,  which 
appears  also  in  Judges  xvi.  2,  and  among  the 
Arabs.  In  any  case  it  is  certain  that  chapter  xx. 
must  be  taken  by  itself;  and  it  seems  safer  to 
conclude  that  chapter  xix.  11-24  are  fragments 
which  have  been  misplaced  by  an  editor,  than  to 
accept  the  opinion  of  those  critics  who  hold  that 
we  have  two  distinct  and  quite  inconsistent  ac- 
counts of  the  same  events. 

According  to  chapter  xx.,  David  was  still  at 
court  in  his  usual  position,  when  he  became  cer- 


16 


TEE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


tain  that  the  king  was  aiming  at  his  life.  lie  be- 
took himself  to  Jonathan,  who  thought  his  sus- 
picions groundless,  but  undertook  to  test  them. 
A  plan  was  arranged  by  which  Jonathan  should 
draw  from  the  king  an  expression  of  his  feelings, 
and  a  tremendous  explosion  revealed  that  Saul 
regarded  David  as  the  rival  of  his  dynasty,  and 
Jonathan  as  little  better  than  a  fellow-conspira- 
tor. The  breach  was  plainly  irreparable.  Jon- 
athan sought  out  his  friend,  and  after  mutual 
pledges  of  unbroken  friendship  they  parted,  and 
David  fled.  His  first  impulse  was,  to  seek  the 
sanctuary  at  Nob,  where  he  had  been  wont  to 
consult  the  priestly  oracle  (chapter  xxii.  15),  and 
where,  concealing  his  disgrace  by  a  fictitious 
story,  he  also  obtained  bread  from  the  conse- 
crated table,  and  the  sword  of  Goliath.  It  was, 
perhaps,  after  this  that  David  made  a  last  attempt 
to  find  a  place  of  refuge  in  the  prophetic  circle 
of  Samuel  at  Ramah,  where  he  was  admitted  into 
the  prophetic  ccenobium,  and  was  for  a  time  pro- 
tected by  the  powerful  and  almost  contagious 
influences  which  the  religious  exercises  of  the 
prophets  exerted  on  Saul's  emissaries,  and  even 
on  the  king  himself.  The  episode  now  stands  in 
another  connection  (chapter  xix.  18  ct  seq.),  where 
it  is  certainly  out  of  place.  It  would,  however, 
fit  excellently  into  the  break  that  plainly  exists 
in  the  history  at  xxi.  10,  after  the  affiiir  at  Nob. 
Deprived  of  the  protection  of  religion  as  well  as 
of  justice,  David  tried  his  fortune  among  the 
Philistines  at  Gath.  But  he  was  recognized,  and 
suspected  as  a  redoubtable  foe.  Escaping  by 
feigning  madness,  which  in  the  East  has  inviola- 
ble privileges,  he  returned  to  the  wilds  of  Judah, 
and  was  joined  at  Adullam  by  his  father's  house 
and  by  a  small  band  of  outlaws,  of  which  he  be- 
came the  head.  Placing  his  parents  under  the 
charge  of  the  King  of  Moab,  he  took  up  the  life 
of  a  guerrilla-captain,  cultivating  friendly  relations 
with  the  townships  of  Judah  (1  Samuel  xxx.  26), 
which  were  glad  to  have  on  their  frontiers  a  pro- 
tector so  valiant  as  David,  even  at  the  expense 
of  the  black-mail  which  he  levied  in  return.  A 
clear  conception  of  his  life  at  this  time,  and  of 
the  respect  which  he  inspired  by  the  discipline  in 
which  he  held  his  men,  and  of  the  generosity 
which  tempered  his  fiery  nature,  is  given  in  1 
Samuel  xxv.  Biis  force  gradually  swelled,  and  he 
was  joined  by  the  prophet  Gad  and  by  the  priest 
Abiathar,  the  only  survivor  of  a  terrible  massacre 
by  which  Saul  took  revenge  for  the  favors  which 
David  had  received  at  the  sanctuary  of  Nob.  He 
was  even  able  to  strike  at  the  Philistines,  and  to 
rescue  Kcilah,  in  the  low  country  of  Judah,  from 


their  attack.  Had  he  been  willing  to  raise  the 
standard  of  revolt  against  Saul,  he  might  proba- 
bly have  made  good  his  position,  for  ho  was  now 
openly  pointed  to  as  divinely  designed  for  the 
kingship.  But,  though  Saul  was  hot  in  pursuit, 
and  though  he  lived  in  constant  fear  of  being  be- 
trayed, David  refused  to  do  this.  His  blameless 
conduct  retained  the  confidence  of  Jonathan  (1 
Samuel  xxiii.  16),  and  he  deserved  that  confidence 
by  sparing  the  life  of  Saul.  But  at  length  it  be- 
came plain  that  he  must  either  resist  by  force  or 
seek  foreign  protection.  He  went  to  Achish  of 
Gath,  and  was  established  in  the  outlying  town 
of  Ziklag,  "where  his  troops  might  be  useful  in 
chastising  the  Amalekites  and  other  robber  tribes 
who  made  forays  on  Philistia  and  Judah,  without 
distinction. 

At  Ziklag  David  continued  to  maintain  amica- 
ble relations  with  his  friends  in  Judah,  and  his 
little  army  received  accessions  even  from  Saul's 
own  tribe  of  Benjamin  (1  Chronicles  xii.  1).  At 
length,  in  the  second  year,  he  was  called  to  join 
his  master  in  a  great  campaign  against  Saul. 
The  Philistines  directed  their  forces  toward  the 
rich  valley  of  Jezreel ;  and  Saul,  forsaken  by 
Jehovah,  already  gave  himself  up  for  lost.  It 
may  be  doubted  whether  the  men  of  Judah  took 
part  in  this  war ;  and  on  his  march  David  was 
joined  by  influential  deserters  from  Israel  (1 
Chronicles  xii.).  The  prestige  of  Saul's  reign  was 
gone ;  and  the  Hebrews  were  again  breaking  up 
into  parties,  each  ready  to  act  for  itself.  Under 
such  circumstances,  David  might  well  feel  that 
loyalty  to  his  new  master  was  his  first  duty.  But 
he  was  providentially  saved  from  the  necessity 
of  doing  battle  with  his  countrymen  by  the  jeal- 
ousy of  the  Philistine  lords,  who  demanded  that 
he  be  sent  back  to  Ziklag.  He  returned  to  find 
the  town  pillaged  by  the  Amalekites ;  but,  pursu- 
ing the  foes,  he  inflicted  upon  them  a  signal  chas- 
tisement, and  took  a  great  booty,  part  of  which 
he  spent  in  politic  gifts  to  the  leading  men  of  the 
Judean  towns. 

Meantime  Saul  had  fallen,  and  Northern  Is- 
rael was  in  a  state  of  chaos.  The  Philistines 
took  possession  of  the  fertile  lowlands  of  Jezreel 
and  the  Jordan ;  and  the  shattered  forces  of  Is- 
rael were  slowly  rallied  by  Abner  in  the  remote 
city  of  Mahanaim  in  Gilead,  under  the  nominal 
sovereignty  of  Saul's  son  Ishbaal.  The  tribe  of 
Judah,  always  loosely  attached  to  the  northern 
Hebrews,  was  in  these  circumstances,  compelled 
to  act  for  itself.  David  saw  his  opportunity,  and 
advanced  to  Hebron,  where  he  was  anointed 
King  of  Judah  at  the  age  of  thirty,  and  continued 


DA  YID,  KING   OF  ISRAEL. 


17 


to  reign  for  seven  years  and  a  half.  His  noble 
ele"7  on  the  death  of  Saul  and  Jonathan,  and  his 
message  of  thanks  to  the  men  of  Jabesh  Gilead 
for  their  chivalrous  rescue  of  the  bodies  of  the  i 
fallen  heroes,  show  how  deeply  he  sympathized 
with  the  disasters  of  his  nation ;  aud  even  in 
Northern  Israel  many  now  looked  to  him  as  their 
only  helper  (2  Samuel  iii.  17).  But  David  was 
not  lacking  in  the  caution  and  even  craftiness 
proper  to  an  Oriental  hero ;  and  he  appears  to 
have  been  careful  not  to  irritate  the  Philistines 
by  any  premature  national  movement.  As  he 
retained  Ziklag,  we  must  suppose  that  he  had 
some  agreement  with  his  former  suzerain  Achish. 
Abner  gradually  consolidated  the  authority  of 
Ishbaal  in  the  north,  and  at  length  his  forces  met 
those  of  David  at  Gibeon.  A  sham  contest  was 
changed  into  a  fatal  fray  by  the  treachery  of Ish- 
baal's  men,  and  in  the  battle  which  ensued,  Ab- 
ner was  not  only  defeated,  but,  by  slaying  Asa- 
hel,  drew  upon  himself  a  blood  feud  with  Joab. 
The  war  continued.  Ishbaal's  party  waxed  weak- 
er and  weaker ;  and  at  length  Abner  quarreled 
with  his  nominal  master,  and  offered  the  kingdom 
to  David.  The  base  murder  of  Abner  by  Joab 
did  not  long  defer  the  inevitable  issue  of  events. 
Ishbaal  was  assassinated  by  two  of  his  own  fol- 
lowers, and  all  Israel  sought  David  as  king. 

The  Biblical  narrative  is  not  so  constructed 
as  to  enable  us  to  describe  in  chronological  order 
the  thirty-three  years  of  David's  reign  over  all 
Israel.  Let  us  look  at  (1)  his  internal  policy,  (2) 
his  relations  to  foreign  nations,  (3)  other  events. 

1.  Under  the  judges  all  authority  was  at  bot- 
tom local  or  tribal,  and  the  wider  influence 
wielded  by  the  more  famous  of  these  rulers  took 
the  form  of  a  temporary  preeminence  or  he- 
gemony of  the  judge's  own  tribe.  The  kingdom 
of  Saul  was  not  radically  different  in  character. 
There  was  no  national  centre.  Saul  ruled  as  a 
Benjamite  from  his  paternal  city  of  Gibeah  (see 
1  Samuel  xxii.  7).  At  the  risk  of  alienating  the 
men  of  Judah,  who  in  fact  appear  as  the  chief 
malcontents  in  subsequent  civil  disturbances, 
David  resolved  to  break  through  these  prece- 
dents, and  to  form  a  truly  national  kingdom  in- 
dependent of  tribal  feeling.  The  success  of  so 
bold  a  conception  was  facilitated  by  the  circum- 
stance that,  unlike  previous  kings,  he  was  sur- 
rounded by  a  small  but  thoroughly-disciplined 
standing  army,  having  gradually  shaped  his  troop 
of  freebooters  into  an  organized  force  of  six  hun- 
dred "  mighty  men "  (Gibborim),  always  under 
arms,  and  absolutely  attached  to  his  person.  The 
king  began  the  execution  of  his  plan  by  a  stroke 
38 


which  at  once  provided  a  centre  for  future  action, 
and  gave  the  necessary  prestige  to  his  new  king- 
dom. Be  stormed  the  Jebusite  fortress  of  Jerusa- 
lem, which  its  inhabitants  deemed  impregnable,  and 
here,  in  the  centre  of  the  country,  on  the  frontier 
between  Judah  and  Benjamin,  he  fortified  the 
"city  of  David,"  the  stronghold  of  Zion,  and  gar- 
risoned it  with  his  Gibborim.  His  next  aim  was 
to  make  Jerusalem  the  religious  as  well  as  the 
political  centre  of  the  kingdom.  The  ark  of  Je- 
hovah, the  only  sanctuary  of  national  significance, 
had  remained  in  obscurity  since  its  return  from 
the  Philistines  in  the  early  youth  of  Samuel. 
David  brought  it  up  from  Kirjath-Jearim  with 
great  pomp,  and  pitched  a  tent  for  it  in  Zion, 
amid  national  rejoicings.  No  action  of  David's 
life  displayed  truer  political  insight  than  this. 
But  the  whole  narrative  (2  Samuel  vi.)  shows 
that  the  insight  was  that  of  a  loyal  and  God- 
fearing heart,  which  knew  that  the  true  prin- 
ciple of  Israel's  unity  and  strength  lay  in  na- 
tional adherence  to  Jehovah  (compare  Psalms 
xv.  and  xxiv.,  one  or  both  of  which  may  refer  to 
this  occasion).  It  was  probably  at  a  later  period, 
when  his  kingdom  was  firmly  established,  that 
David  proposed  to  erect  a  permanent  temple  to 
Jehovah.  The  prophet  Nathan  commanded  the 
execution  of  this  plan  to  be  delayed  for  a  gen- 
eration ;  but  David  received  at  the  same  time 
a  prophetic  assurance  that  his  house  and  king- 
dom should  be  established  forever  before  Jeho- 
vah. 

In  civil  and  military  affairs  David  was  careful 
to  combine  necessary  innovations  with  a  due  re- 
gard for  the  old  habits  and  feelings  of  the  people, 
which  he  thoroughly  understood  and  turned  to  good 
account.  The  six  hundred  Gibborim,  and  a  small 
body-guard  of  foreign  troops  from  Philistia  (the 
Cherethites  and  Pelethites),  formed  a  central 
military  organization,  not  large  enough  to  excite 
popular  jealousy,  but  sufficient  to  provide  officers 
and  furnish  an  example  of  discipline  and  endur- 
ance to  the  old  national  militia,  exclusively  com- 
posed of  foot-soldiers.  In  civil  matters  the  king 
looked  heed  fully  to  the  execution  of  justice  (2 
Samuel  viii.  15),  and  was  always  accessible  to  the 
people  (2  Samuel  xiv.  4).  But  he  does  not  appear 
to  have  made  any  change  in  the  old  local  adminis- 
tration of  justice,  or  to  have  appointed  a  central 
tribunal  (2  Samuel  xv.  2,  where,  however,  Absa- 
lom's complaint  that  the  king  was  inaccessible  is 
merely  factious).  A  few  great  officers  of  state 
were  appointed  at  the  court  of  Jerusalem  (2  Sam- 
uel viii.),  which  was  not  without  a  splendor  hith- 
erto unknown  in  Israel.     The  palace  was  built 


18 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


by  Tyrian  artists.  Royal  pensioners,  of  whom 
Jonathan's  son  Mephibosheth  was  one,  were 
gathered  round  a  princely  table.  Tire  art  of 
music  was  not  neglected  (2  Samuel  xix.  35).  A 
more  dangerous  piece  of  magnificence  was  the 
harem,  which,  though  always  deemed  an  indis- 
pensable part  of  Eastern  state,  did  not  befit  a 
servant  of  Jehovah,  and  gave  rise  to  public  scan- 
dal as  well  as  to  fatal  disorders  in  the  king's 
household.  Except  in  this  particular,  David 
seems  to  have  ventured  on  only  one  dangerous 
innovation,  which  was  undertaken  amid  univer- 
sal remonstrances,  and  was  checked  by  the  re- 
bukes of  the  prophet  Gad  and  the  visitation  of 
a  pestilence.  To  us,  the  proposal  to  number  the 
people  seems  innocent  or  laudable.  But  David's 
conscience  accepted  the  prophetic  rebuke,  and 
he  tacitly  admitted  that  the  people  were  not 
wrong  in  condemning  his  design  as  an  attempt 
upon  their  liberties,  and  an  act  of  presumptuous 
self-confidence  (2  Samuel  xxiv.). 

2.  David's  wars  were  always  successful,  and, 
so  far  as  we  can  judge  from  the  brief  record,  were 
never  provoked   by  himself.     His  first  enemies 
were  the  Philistines,  who  rose  in  arms  as  soon  as 
he  became  king  of  all  Israel.     W     read  of  two 
great  battles  in  the  valley  of  Rephaim,  westward 
from  Jerusalem  (2  Samuel  v.);  and  a  record  of 
individual  exploits  and  of  personal  dangers  run 
by  David  is  preserved  in  2  Samuel  xxi.  and  xxiii. 
At  length  the  Philistines  were  entirely  humbled, 
and  the  "  bridle "   of  sovereignty  was  wrested 
from  their   hands  (chapter  viii.    1,    Heb.)      But 
the  long  weakness  of  Israel  had  exposed  the  na- 
tion to  wrongs  from  their  neighbors  on  every  side ; 
and  the  Tynans,  whose  commerce  was  benefited 
by  a  stable  government  in  Canaan,  were  the  only 
permanent  allies  of  David.     Moab,  an  ancient  and 
bitter  foe,  was  chastised  by  David  with  a  severity 
for  which  no  cause  is  assigned,  but  which  may 
pass  for  a  gentle  reprisal  if  the  Moabites  of  that 
day  were  not  more  humane  than  their  descendants 
in  the  days  of  King  Mesha.     A  deadly  conflict 
with  the  Ammonites  was  provoked  by  a  gross  in- 
sult to  friendly  embassadors  of  Israel ;  and  this 
war,  of  which  we  have  pretty  full  details  in  2 
Samuel  x.  1-xi.  1,  xii.  26-31,  assumed  dimensions 
of  unusual  magnitude  when  the  Ammonites  pro- 
cured the  aid  of  their  Aramean  neighbors,  and 
especially  of  Hadadezer,  whose  kingdom  of  Zoba 
seems  to  have  held  at  that  time  a  preeminence  in 
Syria  at  least  equal  to  that  which  was  afterward 
gained  by  Damascus.     The  defeat  of  Hadadezer 
in  two  great  campaigns  brought  in  the  voluntary 
or  forced  submission  of  all  the  lesser  kingdoms 


of  Syria  as  far  as  the  Orontes  and  the  Euphrates. 
The  glory  of  this  victory  was  increased  by  the 
simultaneous  subjugation  of  Edom  in  a  war  con- 
ducted by  Joab  with  characteristic  severity.  Af- 
ter a  great  battle  on  the  shores  of  the  Dead  Sea, 
the  struggle  was  continued  for  six  months.  The 
Edomites  contested  every  inch  of  ground,  and  all 
who  bore  arms  perished  (2  Samuel  viii.  13;  1 
Kings  xi.  15-17;  Psalm  lx.,  title).  The  war 
with  Ammon  was  not  ended  till  the  following 
year,  when  the  fall  of  Rabbah  crowned  David's 
warlike  exploits.  But  the  true  culminating  point 
of  his  glory  was  his  return  from  the  great  Syrian 
campaign,  laden  with  treasures  to  enrich  the 
sanctuary ;  and  it  is  at  this  time  that  we  may 
suppose  him  to  have  sung  the  great  song  of  tri- 
umph preserved  in  2  Samuel  xxii.  (Psalm  xviii.). 
Before  the  fall  of  Rabbah  this  glory  was  clouded 
with  the  shame  of  Bath-sheba,  and  the  blood  of 
Uriah. 

3.  As  the  birth  of  Solomon  cannot  have  been 
earlier  than  the  capture  of  Rabbah,  it  appears 
that  David's  wars  were  ended  within  the  first  half 
of  his  reign  at  Jerusalem,  and  the  tributary  na- 
tions do  not  seem  to  have  attempted  any  revolt 
while  he  and  Joab  lived  (compare   1  Kings  xi. 
14-25).     But  when  the  nation  was  no  longer  knit 
together  by  the  fear  of  danger  from  without,  the 
internal  difficulties  of  the  new  kingdom  became 
more  manifest.      The    inveterate  jealousies   of 
Judah  and  Israel  reappeared;  and,  as  has  been 
already  mentioned,  the  men  of  Judah  were  the 
chief  malcontents.     In  this  respect,  and  presuma- 
bly not  in  this  alone,  David  suffered  for  the  very 
excellence  of  his  impartial  rule.     In  truth,  all  in- 
novations are  dangerous  to  an  Eastern  sovereign, 
and  all  Eastern  revolutions  are  conservative.     On 
the  other  hand,  David  continued  to  tolerate  some 
ancient  usages  inconsistent  with  the  interests  of 
internal  harmony.     The  practice  of  blood-revenge 
was  not  put  down,  and  by  allowing  the  Gibeon- 
ites  to  enforce  it  against  the  house  of  Saul,  the 
king  involved  himself  in  a  feud  with  the  Benja- 
mites  (compare  2  Samuel  xxi.  with  chapter  xvi. 
8,  which  refers  to  a  later  date).     Yet  he  might 
have  braved  all  these  dangers  but  for  the  disorders 
of  his  own  family,  and  his  deep  fall  in  the  matter 
of  Bath-sheba,  from  which  the  prophet  Nathan 
rightly  foresaw   fatal   consequences,  not   to   be 
averted  even  when  divine   forgiveness  accepted 
the  sincere  contrition  of  the  king.     That  the  na- 
tion at  large  was  not  very  sensitive  to  the  moral 
enormities  which  flow  from  the  system  of  the 
harem  is  clear  from  2  Samuel  xvi.  21.     But  the 
kingdom  of  David  was  strong  by  rising  above  the 


DAVID,   KIXG    OF  ISRAEL. 


10 


level  of  ordinary  Oriental  monarchy,  and  express- 
in"-  the  ideal  of  a  rule  alter  Jehovah's  own  heart 
(1  Samuel  xiii.  14),  and  in  the  spirit  of  the  high- 
est teaching  of  the  prophets.  This  ideal,  shat- 
tered by  a  single  grievous  fall,  could  be  restored 
by  no  repentance.  Within  the  royal  family  the 
continued  influence  of  Bath-sheba  added  a  new 
element  to  the  jealousies  of  the  harem.  David's 
sons  were  estranged  from  one  another,  and  ac- 
quired all  the  vices  of  Oriental  princes.  The 
severe  impartiality  of  the  sacred  historian  has 
concealed  no  feature  in  this  dark  picture :  the 
brutal  passion  of  Amuon,  the  shameless  counsel 
of  the  wily  Jonadab,  the  black  scowl  that  rested 
on  the  face  of  Absalom  through  two  long  years 
of  meditated  revenge,  the  panic  of  the  court  when 
the  blow  was  struck  and  Amuon  was  assassinated 
in  the  midst  of  his  brethren.  Three  years  of  ex- 
ile, and  two  of  further  disgrace,  estranged  the 
heart  of  Absalom  from  his  father.  His  personal 
advantages,  and  the  princely  lineage  of  his  moth- 
er, gave  him  a  preeminence  among  the  king's 
sons,  to  which  he  added  emphasis  by  the  splendor 
of  his  retinue,  while  he  studiously  cultivated  per- 
sonal popularity  by  a  pretended  interest  in  the 
administration  of  kingly  justice.  Thus  ingratiated 
with  the  mass,  he  raised  the  standard  of  revolt 
in  Hebron,  with  the  malcontent  Judeans  as  his 
first  supporters,  and  the  crafty  Ahithophel,  a  man 
of  Southern  Judah,  as  his  chief  adviser.  Arrange- 
ments had  been  made  for  the  simultaneous  proc- 
lamation of  Absalom  in  all  parts  of  the  land. 
The  surprise  was  complete,  and  David  was  com- 
pelled to  evacuate  Jerusalem,  where  he  might 
have  been  crushed  before  he  had  time  to  rally  his 
faithful  subjects.  Ahithophel  knew  better  than 
any  one  how  artificial  and  unsubstantial  was  the 
enthusiasm  for  Absalom.  He  hoped  to  strike 
David  before  there  was  time  for  second  thoughts ; 
and  when  Absalom  rejected  this  plan,  and  acted 
on  the  assumption  that  he  could  count  on  the  whole 
nation,  he  despaired  of  success  and  put  an  end  to 
his  own  life.  David,  in  fact,  was  warmly  re- 
ceived by  the  Gileadites,  and  the  first  battle  de- 
stroyed the  party  of  Absalom,  who  was  himself 
captured  and  slain  by  Joab.  Then  all  the  people, 
except  the  Judeans,  saw  that  they  had  been  be- 
fooled; but  the  latter  were  not  conciliated  with- 
out a  virtual  admission  of  that  prerogative  of  kin- 
ship to  the  king  which  David's  previous  policy 
had  steadily  ignored.  This  concession  involved 
important  consequences.  The  precedence  claimed 
by  Judah  was  challenged  by  the  northern  tribes 
even  on  the  day  of  David's  solemn  return  to  his 
capital,  and  a  rupture  ensued,  which,  but  for  the 


energy  of  Joab,  might  have  led  to  a  second  and 
more  dangerous  rebellion.  The  remaining  years 
of  David's  life  appear  to  have  been  untroubled, 
and  according  to  the  narrative  of  Chronicles 
the  king  was  much  occupied  with  schemes  con- 
cerning the  future  temple.  He  was  already  de- 
crepit and  bedridden  under  the  fatigues  of  seventy 
years,  when  the  last  spark  of  his  old  energy  was 
called  forth  to  secure  the  succession  of  Solomon 
against  the  ambition  of  Adonijah.  It  is  notewor- 
thy that,  as  in  the  case  of  Absalom,  the  preten- 
sions of  the  latter,  though  supported  by  Joab  and 
Abiathar,  found  their  chief  stay  among  the  men 
of  Judah  (1  Kings  i.  9). 

The  principles  that  guided  David's  reign  are 
worthily  summed  up  in  his  last  words,  2  Samuel 
xxiii.  1,  seq.,  with  which  must  be  compared  his 
great  song  of  triumph,  2  Samuel  xxii.  The  foun- 
dation of  national  prosperity  is  a  just  rule  based 
on  the  fear  of  Jehovah,  strong  in  his  help,  and 
swift  to  chastise  wrong-doers  with  inflexible  se- 
verity. That  the  fear  of  Jehovah  is  viewed  as 
receiving  its  chief  practical  expression  in  the 
maintenance  of  social  righteousness  is  a  necessary 
feature  of  the  Old  Testament  faith,  which  regards 
the  nation  ra'her  than  the  individual  as  the  sub- 
ject of  the  religious  life.  Hence  the  influence 
upon  his  life  of  David's  religious  convictions  is 
not  to  be  measured  by  the  fact  that  they  did  not 
wholly  subdue  the  sensuality  which  is  the  chief 
stain  on  his  character,  but  rather  by  his  habitual 
recognition  of  a  generous  standard  of  conduct,  by 
the  undoubted  purity  and  lofty  justice  of  an  ad- 
ministration which  was  never  stained  by  selfish 
considerations  or  motives  of  personal  rancor, 
and  was  never  accused  of  favoring  evil-doers,  and 
finally  by  the  calm  courage,  rooted  in  faith  in 
Jehovah's  righteousness,  which  enabled  him  to 
hold  an  even  and  noble  course  in  the  face  of  dan- 
gers and  treachery.  That  he  was  not  able  to  re- 
form at  a  stroke  all  ancient  abuses  appears  par- 
ticularly in  relation  to  the  practice  of  blood-re- 
venge ;  but  even  in  this  matter  it  is  clear  from  2 
Samuel  iii.  28,  seq.,  xiv.  1-10,  that  his  sympathies 
were  against  the  barbarous  usage.  Nor  is  it  just 
to  accuse  him  of  cruelty  in  his  treatment  of  ene- 
mies. Every  nation  has  a  right  to  secure  its 
frontiers  from  hostile  raids;  and  as  it  was  im- 
possible to  establish  a  military  cordon  along  the 
borders  of  Canaan,  it  was  necessary  absolutely  to 
cripple  the  adjoining  tribes.  From  the  lust  of 
conquest  for  its  own  sake  David  appears  to  have 
been  wholly  free. 

The  generous  elevation  of  David's  character 
is  seen  most  clearly  in  those  parts  of  his  life 


20 


TEE  POPULAR  SCIEXCE  MONTELY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


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


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


A    MODERN    "SYMPOSIUM." 

THE    SOUL   AND   FUTUFtE    LIFE. 


LORD  SELBORNE.— I  am  too  well  satisfied 
with  Lord  Blackford's  paper,  and  with  much 
that  is  in  the  other  papers  of  the  September 
number,1  to  think  that  I  can  add  anything  of  im- 
portance to  them.  The  little  I  would  say  has 
reference  to  our  actual  knowledge  of  the  soul 
during  this  life — meaning  by  the  soul  what  Lord 
Blachford  means,  viz.,  the  conscious  being  which 
each  man  calls  "  himself." 

It  appears  to  me  that  what  we  know  and  can 
observe  tends  to  confirm  the  testimony  of  our 
consciousness  to  the  reality  of  the  distinction  be- 
tween the  body  and  the  soul.  From  the  neces- 
sity of  the  case,  we  cannot  observe  any  manifes- 
tations of  the  soul  except  during  the  time  of  its 
association  with  the  body.  This  limit  of  our  ex- 
1  Supplement  No.  VI. 


perience  applies,  not  to  the  "  ego "  of  which 
alone  each  man  has  any  direct  knowledge,  but  to 
the  perceptible  indications  of  consciousness  in 
others.  It  is  impossible,  in  the  nature  of  things, 
that  any  man  can  ever  have  had  expeiience  of 
the  total  cessation  of  his  own  consciousness ; 
and  the  idea  of  such  a  cessation  is  much  less  nat- 
ural and  7imch  more  difficult  to  realize  than  that 
of  its  continuance.  We  observe  the  phenomena 
of  death  in  others,  and  infer,  by  irresistible  in- 
duction, that  the  same  thing  will  also  happen  to 
ourselves.  But  these  phenomena  carry  us  only 
to  the  dissociation  of  the  "ego"  from  the  body, 
not  to  its  extinction. 

Nothing  else  can  be  credible  if  our  conscious- 
ness is  not ;  and  I  have  said  that  this  bears  tes- 
timony to  the  reality  of  the  distinction  between 


A  MODERN  "SYMPOSIUM." 


21 


soul  and  body.  Each  man  is  conscious  of  using 
his  own  body  as  an  instrument,  in  the  same  sense 
in  which"  he  would  use  any  other  machine.  He 
passes  a  different  moral  judgment  on  the  me- 
chanical and  involuntary  actions  of  his  body, 
from  that  which  he  feels  to  be  due  to  its  actions 
resulting  from  his  own  free-will.  The  unity  and 
identity  of  the  "  ego,"  from  the  beginning  to  the 
end  of  life,  is  of  the  essence  of  his  consciousness. 

In  accordance  with  this  testimony  are  such 
facts  as  the  following :  that  the  body  has  no 
proper  unity,  identity,  or  continuity,  through  the 
whole  of  life — all  its  constituent  parts  being  in  a 
constant  state  of  flux  and  change ;  that  many 
parts  and  organs  of  the  body  may  be  removed 
with  no  greater  effect  upon  the  "  ego  "  than  when 
we  take  off  any  article  of  clothing ;  and  that 
those  organs  which  cannot  be  removed  or  stopped 
in  their  action  without  death  are  distributed  over 
different  parts  of  the  body,  and  are  homogeneous 
in  their  material  and  structure  with  others  which 
we  can  lose  without  the  sense  that  any  change 
has  passed  over  our  proper  selves.  If,  on  the 
one  hand,  a  diseased  state  of  some  bodily  organs 
interrupts  the  reasonable  manifestations  of  the 
soul  through  the  body,  the  cases  are,  on  the  oth- 
er, not  rare  in  which  the  whole  body  decays  and 
falls  into  extreme  age,  weakness,  and  even  de- 
crepitude, while  vigor,  freshness,  and  youtliful- 
ness,  are  still  characteristics  of  the  mind. 

The  attempt,  in  Butler's  work,  to  reason  from 
the  indivisibility  and  indestructibility  of  the  soul 
as  ascertained  facts,  is  less  satisfactory  than  most 
of  that  great  writer's  arguments,  which  are  gen- 
erally rather  intended  to  be  destructive  of  objec- 
tions than  demonstrative  of  positive  truths.  But 
the  modern  scientific  doctrine,  that  all  matter 
and  all  force  are  indestructible,  is  not  without 
interest  in  relation  to  that  argument.  There 
must  at  least  be  a  natural  presumption  from  that 
doctrine  that,  if  the  soul  during  life  has  a  real 
existence  distinct  from  the  body,  it  is  not  anni- 
hilated by  death.  If,  indeed,  it  were  a  mere 
"  force  "  (such  as  heat,  light,  etc.,  are  supposed 
by  modern  philosophers  to  be — though  men  who 
are  not  philosophers  may  be  excused  if  they  find 
some  difficulty  in  understanding  exactly  what  is 
meant  by  the  term  when  so  used),  it  would  be 
consistent  with  that  doctrine  that  the  soul  might 
be  transmuted  after  death  into  some  other  form 
of  force.  But  the  idea  of  "  force"  in  this  sense 
(whatever  may  be  its  exact  meaning)  seems 
wholly  inapplicable  to  the  conscious  being  which 
a  man  calls  "  himself." 

The  resemblances  in  the  nature  and  organiza- 


tion of  animal  and  vegetable  bodies  seem  to  me 
to  confirm,  instead  of  weakening,  the  impression 
that  the  body  of  man  is  a  machine  under  the 
government  of  the  soul,  and  quite  distinct  from 
it.  Plants  manifest  no  consciousness ;  all  our 
knowledge  of  them  tends  irresistibly  to  the  con- 
clusion that  there  is  in  them  no  intelligent,  much 
less  any  reasonable,  principle  of  life.  Yet  they  are 
machines  very  like  the  human  body ;  not,  indeed, 
in  their  formal  development  or  their  exact  chemi- 
cal processes,  but  in  the  general  scheme  and  func- 
tions of  their  organism — in  their  laws  of  nutrition, 
digestion,  assimilation,  respiration,  and  especially 
reproduction.  They  are  bodies  without  souls,  liv- 
ing a  physical  life,  and  subject  to  a  physical  death. 
The  inferior  animals  have  bodies  still  more  like  our 
own;  indeed,  in  their  higher  orders,  resembling 
them  very  closely  indeed ;  and  they  have  also  a 
principle  of  life  quite  different  from  that  of  plants, 
with  various  degrees  of  consciousness,  intelli- 
gence, and  volition.  Even  in  their  principle  of 
life,  arguments  founded  on  observation  and  com- 
parison (though  not  on  individual  consciousness), 
more  or  less  similar  to  those  which  apply  to  man, 
tend  to  show  that  there  is  something  distinct 
from,  and  more  than,  the  body.  But,  of  all  these 
inferior  animals,  the  intelligence  differs  from  that 
of  man,  not  in  degree  only,  but  in  kind.  Nature 
is  their  simple,  uniform,  and  sufficient  law ;  their 
very  arts  (which  are  often  wonderful)  come  to 
them  by  Nature,  except  when  they  are  trained  by 
man ;  there  is  in  them  no  sign  of  discourse  of 
reason,  of  morality,  or  of  the  knowledge  of  good 
and  evil.  The  very  similarity  of  their  bodily 
structure  to  that  of  man  tends,  when  these  dif- 
ferences are  noted,  to  add  weight  to  the  other 
natural  evidence  of  the  distinctness  of  man's  soul 
from  his  body. 

The  immortality  of  the  soul  seems  to  me  to 
be  one  of  those  truths  for  the  belief  in  which, 
when  authoritatively  declared,  man  is  prepared 
by  the  very  constitution  of  his  nature. 

Canon  BARRY. — Any  one  who  from  the  an- 
cient positions  of  Christianity  looks  on  the  con- 
troversy between  Mr.  Harrison  and  Prof.  Huxley 
on  "  The  Soul  and  Future  Life  "  (to  which  I  pro- 
pose mainly  to  confine  myself)  will  be  tempted 
with  Faulconbridge  to  observe,  not  without  a 
touch  of  grim  satisfaction,  how,  "from  north  to 
south,  Austria  and  France  shoot  in  each  other's 
mouth."  The  fight  is  fierce  enough  to  make  him 
ask,  Tantcene  animis  sapienlibus  irce?  But  he 
will  see  that  cacli  is  far  more  effective  in  batter- 
ing the  lines  of  the  enemy  than  in  strengthening 
his  own.     Nor  will  he  be  greatly  concerned  if 


22 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


both  from  time  to  time  lodge  a  shot  or  two  in  the 
battlements  on  which  he  stands,  with  some  beat- 
ing of  that  "  drum  scientific  "  which  seems  to  me 
to  be  in  these  days  always  as  resonant,  sometimes 
with  as  much  result  of  merely  empty  sound,  as 
"the  drum  ecclesiastic,"  against  which  Prof.  Hux- 
ley is  so  fond  of  warning  us.  Those  whom  Mr. 
Harrison  calls  "theologians,"  and  whom  Prof. 
Huxley  less  appropriately  terms  "  priests  "  (for  of 
priesthood  there  is  here  no  question),  may  indeed 
think  that,  if  the  formidable  character  of  an  op- 
ponent's position  is  to  be  measured  by  the  scorn 
and  fury  with  which  it  is  assailed,  their  ground 
must  be  strong  indeed ;  and  they  will  possibly 
remember  an  old  description  of  a  basis  less  arti- 
ficial than  "pulpit-stairs,"  from  which  men  may 
look  without  much  alarm,  while  "  the  floods  come 
and  the  winds  blow."  Gaining  from  this  convic- 
tion courage  to  look  more  closely,  they  will  per- 
ceive, as  I  have  said,  that  each  of  the  combatants 
is  far  stronger  on  the  destructive  than  on  the 
constructive  side. 

Mr.  Harrison's  earnest  and  eloquent  plea 
against  the  materialism  which  virtually,  if  not 
theoretically,  makes  all  that  we  call  spirit  a  mere 
function  of  material  organization  (like  the  apjxovia 
of  the  "  Phoedo"),  and  against  the  exclusive  "sci- 
entism  "  which,  because  it  cannot  find  certain  en- 
tities along  its  line  of  investigation,  asserts  loudly 
that  they  are  either  non-existent  or  "unknow- 
able," is  strong,  and  {pace  Prof.  Huxley)  needful ; 
not,  indeed,  against  him  (for  he  knows  better 
than  to  despise  the  metaphysics  in  which  he  is 
so  great  an  adept),  but  against  many  adherents, 
prominent  rather  than  eminent,  of  the  school  in 
which  he  is  a  master.  Nor  is  its  force  destroyed 
by  exposing,  however  keenly  and  sarcastically, 
some  inconsistencies  of  argument,  not  inaptly 
corresponding  (as  it  seems  to  me)  with  similar 
inconsistencies  in  the  popular  exposition  of  the 
views  which  it  attacks.  If  Prof.  Huxley  is  right 
(as  surely  he  is)  in  pleading  for  perfect  freedom 
and  boldness  in  the  investigation  of  the  phenom- 
ena of  humanity  from  the  physical  side,  the 
counter-plea  is  equally  irresistible  for  the  value 
of  an  independent  philosophy  of  mind,  start- 
ing from  the  metaphysical  pole  of  thought,  ami 
reasoning  positively  on  the  phenomena  which, 
though  they  may  have  many  connections  with 
physical  laws,  are  utterly  inexplicable  by  them. 
We  might,  indeed,  demur  to  his  inference  that 
the  discovery  of  "antecedence  in  the  molecular 
fact"  necessarily  leads  to  a  "physical  theory  of 
moral  phenomena,"  and  vice  versa,  as  savoring  a 
little  of  the  post  hoc,  ergo  propter  hoc.     Insepa- 


rable connection  it  would  imply ;  but  the  ultimate 
causation  might  lie  in  fcomething  far  deeper,  un- 
derlying both  "  the  molecular  "  and  "  the  spiritual 
fact."  But  still,  to  establish  such  antecedence 
would  be  an  important  scientific  step,  and  the 
attempt  might  be  made  from  either  side. 

On  the  other  hand,  Prof.  Huxley's  trenchant 
attack  on  the  unreality  of  the  positivist  assump- 
tion of  a  right  to  take  names  which  in  the  old 
religion  at  least  mean  something  firm  and  solid, 
and  to  sublime  them  into  the  cloudy  forms  of 
transcendental  theory,  and  on  the  arbitrary  ap- 
plication of  the  word  "selfishness,"  with  all  its 
degrading  associations,  to  the  consciousness  of 
personality  here  and  the  hope  of  a  nobler  per- 
sonality in  the  future,  leaves  nothing  to  be  de- 
sired. I  fear  that  his  friends  the  priests  would 
be  accused  of  the  crowning  sin  of  "  ecclesiasti- 
cism  "  (whatever  that  may  be)  if  they  used  de- 
nunciations half  so  sharp.  Except  with  a  few 
sarcasms  which  lie  cannot  resist  the  temptation 
of  flinging  at  them  by  the  way,  they  will  have 
nothing  with  which  to  quarrel ;  and  possibly  they 
may  even  learn  from  him  to  consider  these  as 
claps  of  "cheap  thunder"  from  the  "pulpit,"  in 
that  old  sense  of  the  word  in  which  it  designates 
the  professorial  chair. 

The  whole  of  Air.  Harrison's  two  papers  may 
be  resolved  into  an  attack  on  the  true  individu- 
ality of  man,  first  on  the  speculative,  then  on  the 
moral  side  ;  from  the  one  point  of  view  denounc- 
ing the  belief  in  it  as  a  delusion,  from  the  other 
branding  the  desire  of  it  as  a  moral  degradation. 
The  connection  of  the  two  arguments  is  instruc- 
tive and  philosophical.  For  no  argument  mere- 
ly speculative,  ignoring  all  moral  considerations, 
will  really  be  listened  to.  His  view  of  the  soul 
as  "a  consensus  of  human  faculties"  reminds  us 
curiously  of  the  Buddhist  "groups;"  his  de- 
scription of  a  "  perpetuity  of  sensation  as  the 
true  hell "  breathes  the  very  spirit  of  the  long- 
ing for  Nirvana.  Both  he  and  his  Asiatic  pred- 
ecessors are  certainly  right  in  considering  the 
"  delusion  of  individual  existence  "  as  the  chief 
delusion  to  be  got  rid  of  on  the  way  to  a  perfect 
Agnosticism,  in  respect  of  all  that  is  not  merely 
phenomenal.  It  is  true  that  he  protests  in  terms 
against  a  naked  materialism,  ignoring  all  spirit- 
ual phenomena  as  having  a  distinctive  character 
of  their  own ;  but  yet,  when  he  tells  us  that  "  to 
talk  about  a  bodiless  being  thinking  and  loving 
is  simply  to  talk  of  the  thoughts  and  feelings  of 
Nothing,"  he  certainly  appears  to  assume  sub- 
stantially the  position  of  the  materialism  he  de- 
nounces, which  (as  has  been  already  said)  holds 


A  MODERX  "SYMPOSIUM." 


23 


these  spiritual  energies  to  be  merely  results  of 
the  bodily  organization,  as  the  excitation  of  an 
electric,  current  is  the  result  of  the  juxtaposition 
of  certain  material  substances.  If  a  bodiless  be- 
ing is  Nothing,  there  can  be  no  such  thing  as  an 
intrinsic  or  independent  spiritual  life  ;  and  it  is 
difficult  for  ordinary  miuds  to  attach  any  distinct 
meaning  to  the  declaration  that  the  soul  is  "a 
conscious  unity  of  being,"  if  that  being  depends 
on  an  organization  which  is  unquestionably  dis- 
cerptible,  and  of  which  (as  Butler  remarks)  large 
parts  may  be  lost  without  affecting  this  conscious- 
ness of  personality. 

Now  this  is,  after  all,  the  only  point  worth 
fighting  about.  Mr.  Hutton  has  already  said 
with  perfect  truth  that  by  "  the  soul "  we  mean 
that  "  which  lies  at  the  bottom  of  the  sense  of 
personal  identity — the  thread  of  the  continuity 
running  through  all  our  checkered  life,"  and 
which  remains  uubroken  amid  the  constant  flux 
of  change  both  in  our  material  body,  and  in  the 
circumstances  of  our  material  life.  This  belief  is 
wholly  independent  of  any  "metaphysical  hypoth- 
esis" of  modern  "orthodoxy,"  whether  it  is,  or 
is  not,  rightly  described  as  a  "juggle  of  ideas," 
and  of  any  examination  of  the  question  (on  which 
Lord  Blachford  has  touched)  whether,  if  it  seem 
such  to  "  those  trained  in  positive  habits  of 
thought,"  the  fault  lies  in  it  or  in  them.  I  may 
remark,  in  passing,  that  in  this  broad  and  simple 
sense  it  certainly  runs  through  the  whole  Bible, 
and  has  much  that  is  "  akin  to  it  in  the  Old  Tes- 
tament." For  even  in  the  darkest  and  most 
shadowy  ideas  of  the  Sheol  of  the  other  world, 
the  belief  in  a  true  personal  identity  is  taken  ab- 
solutely for  granted  ;  and  it  is  not  a  little  curious 
to  notice  how  in  the  Book  of  Job  the  substitu- 
tion for  it  of  "  an  immortality  in  the  race"  (al- 
though there  not  in  the  whole  of  humanity,  but 
simply  in  the  tribe  or  family)  is  offered,  and  re- 
jected as  utterly  insufficient  to  satisfy  either  the 
speculation  of  the  intellect  or  the  moral  demands 
of  the  conscience.1  Now  it  is  not  worth  while  to 
protest  against  the  caricature  of  this  belief,  as  a 
belief  in  "man  plus  a  heterogeneous  entity" 
called  the  soul,  which  can  be  only  intended  as  a 
sarcasm.  But  we  cannot  acquiesce  in  any  state- 
ment which  represents  the  belief  in  this  imma- 
terial and  indivisible  personality  as  resting  simply 
on  the  notion  that  it  is  needed  to  explain  the 
acts  of  the  human  organism.  For,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  those  who  believe  in  it  conceive  it  to  be 
declared  by  a  direct  consciousness,  the  most 
simple  and  ultimate  of  all  acts  of  consciousness. 
1  See  Job  xiv.  21,22. 


They  hold  this  consciousness  of  a  personal  iden- 
tity and  individuality,  unchanging  amid  mate- 
rial change,  to  be  embodied  in  all  the  language 
and  literature  of  man ;  and  they  point  to  the 
inconsistencies  in  the  very  words  of  those  who 
argue  against  it,  as  proofs  that  man  cannot  di- 
vest himself  of  it.  No  doubt  they  believe  that  so 
the  acts  of  the  organism  are  best  explained,  but 
it  is  not  on  the  necessity  of  such  explanation  that 
they  base  their  belief:  and  this  fact  separates 
altogether  their  belief  in  the  human  soul,  as  an 
immaterial  entity,  from  those  conceptions  of  a 
soul,  in  animal,  vegetable,  even  inorganic  sub- 
stances, with  which  Mr.  Harrison  insists  on  con- 
founding it.  Of  the  true  character  of  animal 
nature  we  know  nothing  (although  we  may  con- 
jecture much),  just  because  we  have  not  in  regard 
to  it  the  direct  consciousness  which  we  have  in 
regard  of  our  own  nature.  Accordingly,  we  need 
not  trouble  our  argument  for  a  soul  in  man  with 
any  speculation  as  to  a  true  soul  in  the  brute 
creatures. 

In  what  relation  this  personality  stands  to  the 
particles  which  at  any  moment  compose  the  body, 
and  which  are  certainly  in  a  continual  state  of 
flux,  or  to  the  law  of  structure  which  in  living 
beings,  by  some  power  to  us  unknown,  assimilates 
these  particles,  is  a  totally  different  question.  I 
fear  that  Mr.  Harrison  will  be  displeased  with  me 
if  I  call  it  "  a  mystery."  But,  whatever  future 
advances  of  science  may  do  for  us  in  the  matter — 
and  I  hope  they  may  do  much — I  am  afraid  I 
must  still  say  that  this  relation  is  a  mystery,  which 
has  been  at  different  times  imperfectly  repre- 
sented, both  by  formal  theories  and  by  metaphors, 
all  of  which  by  the  very  nature  of  language  are 
connected  with  original  physical  conceptions. 
Let  it  be  granted  freely  that  the  progress  of 
modern  physiological  science  has  rendered  ob- 
solete the  old  idea  that  the  various  organs  of 
the  body  stand  to  the  true  personal  being  in  a 
purely  instrumental  relation,  such  us  (for  ex- 
ample) is  described  by  Butler  in  his  "Analogy," 
in  the  celebrated  chapter  on  "  The  Future  Life." 
The  power  of  physical  influences  acting  upon  the 
body  to  affect  the  energies  of  thought  and  will 
is  unquestionable.  The  belief  that  the  action  of 
all  these  energies  is  associated  with  the  molecu- 
lar change  is,  to  say  the  least,  highly  probable. 
And  I  may  remark  that  Christianity  has  no  quar- 
rel with  these  discoveries  of  modern  science  ;  for 
its  doctrine  is  that  for  the  perfection  of  man's  be- 
ing a  bodily  organization  is  necessary,  and  that 
the  "  intermediate  state  "is  a  state  of  suspense 
and  imperfection,  out  of  which,  at  the  word  of 


2± 


TUB  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


the  Creator,  the  indestructible  personality  of  man 
shall  rise,  to  assimilate  to  itself  a  glorified  body. 
The  doctrine  of  the  resurrection  of  the  body 
boldly  laces  the  perplexity  as  to  the  connection 
of  a  body  with  personality,  which  so  greatly 
troubled  ancient  speculation  on  the  immortality 
of  the  soul.  In  respect  of  the  intermediate 
"  state,"  it  only  extends  (I  grant  immeasurably) 
the  experience  of  those  suspensions  of  the  will 
and  the  full  consciousness  of  personality  which 
we  have  in  life,  in  sleep,  swoon,  stupor,  depend- 
ent on  normal  and  abnormal  conditions  of  the 
bodily  organization  ;  and  in  respect  of  the  resur- 
rection, it  similarly  extends  the  action  of  that 
mysterious  creative  will  which  moulds  the  human 
body  of  the  present  life  slowly  and  gradually  out 
of  the  mere  germ,  and  forms,  with  marvelous  ra- 
pidity and  exuberance  of  prolific  power,  lower 
organisms  of  high  perfection  and  beauty. 

But  while  modern  science  teaches  us  to  recog- 
nize the  influence  of  the  bodily  organization  on 
mental  energy,  it  has,  with  at  least  equal  clear- 
ness, brought  out  in  compensation  the  distinct 
power  of  that  mental  energy,  acting  by  a  process 
wholly  different  from  the  chain  of  physical  causa- 
tion, to  alter  functionally,  and  even  organically, 
the  bodily  frame  itself.  The  Platonic  Socrates 
(it  will  be  remembered)  dwells  on  the  power  of 
the  spirit  to  control  bodily  appetite  and  even 
passion  (rb  dv/xoeiSes),  as  also  on  its  having  the 
power  to  assume  qualities,  as  a  proof  that  it  is 
not  a  mere  apfxouia.  Surely  modern  science  has 
greatly  strengthened  the  former  part  of  his  argu- 
ment, by  these  discoveries  of  the  power  of  mind 
over  even  the  material  of  the  body.  This  is 
strikingly  illustrated  (for  example)  to  the  physi- 
cian, both  by  the  morbid  phenomena  of  what  is 
called  generally  "hysteria,"  in  which  the  belief 
in  the  existence  of  physical  disease  actually  pro- 
duces the  most  remarkable  physical  effects  on  the 
body  ;  and  also  by  the  more  natural  action  of  the 
mind  on  the  body,  when  in  sickness  a  resolution 
to  get  well  masters  the  force  of  disease,  or  a  de- 
sire to  die  slowly  fulfills  itself.  Perhaps  even 
more  extraordinary  is  the  fact  (I  believe  suffi- 
ciently ascertained)  that  during  pregnancy  the 
presentation  of  ideas  to  the  mind  of  the  mother 
actually  affects  the  physical  organization  of  the 
offspring.  Hence  I  cannot  but  think  that,  at 
least  as  distinctly  as  ever,  our  fuller  experience 
discloses  to  us  two  different  processes  of  causa- 
tion acting  upon  our  complex  humanity — the  one 
wholly  physical,  acting  sometimes  by  the  coarser 
mechanical  agencies,  sometimes  by  the  subtiler 
physiological  agencies,  and  in  both  cases  connect- 


ing man  through  the  body  with  the  great  laws 
ruling  the  physical  universe — the  other  wholly 
metaphysical,  acting  by  the  simple  presentation 
of  ideas  to  the  mind  (which  may,  indeed,  be 
so  purely  subjective  that  they  correspond  to  no 
objective  reality  whatever),  and,  through  them, 
secondarily  acting  upon  the  body,  producing,  no 
doubt,  the  molecular  changes  in  the  brain  and 
the  affections  of  the  nervous  tissue  which  ac- 
company and  exhibit  mental  emotion.  In  the 
normal  condition  of  the  earthly  life,  these  two 
powers  act  and  react  upon  each  other,  neither 
being  absolutely  independent  of  the  other.  In 
the  perfect  state  of  the  hereafter  we  believe  that 
it  shall  be  so  still.  But  we  do  know  of  cases  in 
which  the  metaphysical  power  is  apparently  dor- 
mant or  destroyed,  in  which  accordingly  all  emo- 
tions can  be  produced  automatically  by  physical 
processes  only,  as  happens  occasionally  in  dreams 
(whether  of  the  day  or  night),  and  in  morbid 
conditions,  as  of  idiocy,  which  may  themselves  be 
produced  either  by  physical  injury  or  by  mental 
shock.  I  cannot. myself  see  any  difficulty  in  con- 
ceiving that  the  metaphysical  power  might  act, 
though  no  doubt  in  a  way  of  which  we  have  no 
present  experience,  and  (according  to  the  Chris- 
tian doctrine)  in  a  condition  of  some  imperfection, 
when  the  bodily  organization  is  either  suspended 
or  removed.  For  to  me  it  seems  clear  that  there 
is  something  existent,  which  is  neither  material 
nor  even  dependent  on  material  organization. 
Whether  it  be  stigmatized  as  a  "  heterogeneous 
entity,"  or  graciously  designated  by  the  "  good 
old  word  soul,"  is  a  matter  of  great  indifference. 
There  it  is  ;  and,  if  it  is,  I  cannot  see  why  it  is 
inconceivable  that  it  should  survive  all  material 
change.  For  here,  as  in  other  cases,  there  seems 
to  be  a  frequent  confusion  between  conceiving 
that  a  thing  may  be,  and  conceiving  how  it  may 
be.  Of  course,  we  cannot  figure  to  ourselves  the 
method  of  the  action  of  a  spiritual  energy  apart 
from  a  bodily  organization ;  in  the  attempt  to  do 
so  the  mind  glides  into  quasi-corporeal  conceptions 
and  expressions,  which  are  a  fair  mark  for  satire. 
But  that  there  may  be  such  action  is  to  me  far 
less  inconceivable  than  that  the  mere  fact  of  the 
dissolution  of  what  is  purely  physical  should  draw 
with  it  the  destruction  of  a  soul  that  can  think, 
love,  and  pray. 

I  do  not  think  it  necessary  to  dwell  at  any 
length  on  the  second  of  Mr.  Harrison's  proposi- 
tions, denouncing  the  desire  of  personal  and 
individual  existence  as  "  selfishness,"  with  a 
vigor  quite  worthy  of  his  royal  Prussian  model. 
But  history,  after   all,  has  recognized  that  the 


A  MODFBX  "SYMPOSIUM." 


25 


poor  grenadiers  had  something  to  say  for  them- 
selves. Mr.  Hutton  has  already  suggested  that, 
if  Mr.  Harrison  had  studied  the  Christian  con- 
ception of  the  future  life,  he  could  not  have 
written  some  of  his  most  startling  passages,  and 
has  protested  against  the  misapplication  of  the 
word  "  selfishness,"  which  in  this,  as  in  other 
controversies,  quietly  begs  the  question  proposed 
for  discussion.  The  fact  is,  that  this  theory 
of  "  altruism,"  so  eloquently  set  forth  by  Mr. 
Harrison  and  others  of  his  school,  simply  con- 
tradicts human  nature,  not  in  its  weaknesses 
or  sins,  but  in  its  essential  characteristics.  It  is 
certainly  not  the  weakest  or  ignoblest  of  human 
souls  who  have  felt,  at  the  times  of  deepest  thought 
and  feeling,  conscious  of  but  two  existences — 
their  own  and  the  Supreme  Existence,  whether 
they  call  it  Nature,  Law,  or  God.  Surely  this 
humanity  is  a  very  unworthy  deity,  at  once  a 
vague  and  shadowy  abstraction,  and,  so  far  as  it 
can  be  distinctly  conceived,  like  some  many-head- 
ed idol,  magnifying  the  evil  and  hideousness,  as 
well  as  the  good  and  beauty,  of  the  individual 
nature.  But,  if  it  were  not  so,  still  that  individ- 
uality, as  well  as  unity,  is  the  law  of  human 
nature,  is  singularly  indicated  by  the  very  nature 
of  our  mental  operations.  In  the  study  and  per- 
ception of  truth,  each  man,  though  he  may  be 
guided  to  it  by  others,  stands  absolutely  alone ; 
in  love,  on  the  other  hand,  he  loses  all  but  the 
sense  of  unity ;  while  the  conscience  holds  the 
balance,  recognizing  at  once  individuality  and 
unity.  Indeed,  the  sacredness  of  individuality  is 
so  guarded  by  the  darkness  which  hides  each  soul 
from  all  perfect  knowledge  of  man,  so  deeply  im- 
pressed on  the  mind  by  the  consciousness  of  in- 
dependent thought  and  will,  and  on  the  soul  by 
the  sense  of  incommunicable  responsibility,  that 
it  cannot  merge  itself  in  the  life  of  the  race. 
Self-sacrifice  or  unselfishness  is  the  conscious 
sacrifice,  not  of  our  own  individuality,  but  of  that 
which  seems  to  minister  to  it,  for  the  sake  of 
others.  The  law  of  human  nature,  moreover,  is 
such  that  the  very  attempt  at  such  sacrifice  in- 
evitably strengthens  the  spiritual  individuality  in 
all  that  makes  it  worth  having.  To  talk  of  "  a 
perpetuity  of  sensation  as  a  true  hell"  in  a  being 
supposed  capable  of  indefinite  growth  in  wisdom, 
righteousness,  and  love,  is  surely  to  use  words 
which  have  no  intelligible  meaning. 

No  doubt,  if  we  are  to  take  as  our  guiding 
principle  either  altruism  or  what  is  rightly  desig- 
nated "  selfishness,"  we  must  infinitely  prefer  the 
former.  But  where  is  the  necessity  ?  No  doubt 
the  task  of  harmonizing  the  two  is  difficult.     But 


all  things  worth  doing  are  difficult ;  and  it  might 
be  worth  while  to  consider  whether  there  is  not 
something  in  the  old  belief  which  finds  the  key 
to  this  difficult  problem  in  the  consciousness  of 
the  relation  to  One  Supreme  Being,  and,  recog- 
nizing both  the  love  of  man  and  the  love  of  self, 
bids  them  both  agree  in  conscious  subordination 
to  a  higher  love  of  God.  What  makes  our  life 
here  will,  we  believe,  make  it  up  hereafter,  only 
in  a  purer  and  nobler  form.  On  earth  we  live  at 
once  in  our  own  individuality  and  in  the  life  of 
others.  Our  heaven  is  not  the  extinction  of 
either  element  of  that  life — either  of  individual- 
ity, as  Mr.  Harrison  would  have  it,  or  of  the  life 
in  others,  as  in  that  idea  of  a  selfish  immortality 
which  he  has,  I  think,  set  up  in  order  to  denounce 
it — but  the  continued  harmony  of  both  under  an 
infinitely  increased  power  of  that  supreme  prin- 
ciple. 

Mr.  W.  K.  GREG. — It  would  seem  impossible 
for  Mr.  Harrison  to  write  anything  that  is  not 
stamped  with  a  vigor  and  racy  eloquence  pecul- 
iarly his  own ;  and  the  paper  which  has  opened 
the  present  discussion  is  probably  far  the  finest 
he  has  given  to  the  world.  There  is  a  lofty  tone 
in  its  imaginative  passages  which  strikes  us  as 
unique  among  negationists,  and  a  vein  of  what  is 
almost  tenderness  pervading  them,  which  was  not 
observed  in  his  previous  writings.  The  two  com- 
bined render  the  second  portion  one  of  the  most 
touching  and  impressive  speculations  we  have 
read.  Unfortunately,  however,  Mr.  Harrison's 
innate  energy  is  apt  to  boil  over  into  a  vehe- 
mence approaching  the  intemperate ;  and  the  an- 
tagonistic atmosphere  is  so  native  to  his  spirit 
that  he  can  scarcely  enter  the  lists  of  controversy 
without  an  irresistible  tendency  to  become  ag- 
gressive and  unjust;  and  he  is  too  inclined  to 
forget  the  first  duty  of  the  chivalric  militant  logi- 
cian— namely,  to  select  the  adversary  you  assail 
from  the  nobler  and  not  the  lower  form  and  rank 
of  the  doctrine  in  dispute.  The  inconsistencies 
and  weaknesses  into  which  this  neglect  has  be- 
trayed him  in  the  instance  before  us  have,  how- 
ever, been  so  severely  dealt  with  by  Mr.  Hutton 
and  Prof.  Huxley,  that  I  wish  rather  to  direct 
attention  to  two  or  three  points  of  his  argument 
that  might  otherwise  be  in  danger  of  escaping 
the  appreciation  and  gratitude  they  may  fairly 
claim. 

We  owe  him  something,  it  appears  to  me,  for 
having  inaugurated  a  discussion  which  has  stirred 
so  many  minds  to  give  us  on  such  a  question  so 
much  interesting  and  profound,  and  more  espe- 
cially so  much  suggestive,  thought.     We  owe  him 


26 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


1 1 null,  too,  because,  in  dealing  with  a  thesis  which 
it  is  specially  the  temptation  and  the  practice  to 
handle  as  a  theme  for  declamation,  he  has  so 
written   as   to  force  his  antagonists  to  treat  it 
argumentatively  and  searchingly  as  well.     Sonic 
gratitude,  moreover,  is  due  to  the  man  who  had 
the  moral  courage  boldly  to  avow  his  adhesion  to 
the  negative  view,  when  that  view  is  not  only  in 
the  highest  degree  unpopular,  but  is  regarded  for 
the  most  part  as  condemnable  into  the  bargain, 
and  when,  besides,  it  can  scarcely  fail  to  be  pain- 
ful to  every  man  of  vivid  imagination   and  of 
strong  affections.     It  is  to  his  credit  also,  I  vent- 
ure to  think,  that,  holding  this  view,  he  has  put 
it  forward,  not  as  an  opinion  or  speculation,  but 
as  a  settled  and  deliberate  conviction,  maintain- 
able by  distinct  and  reputable  reasonings,  and  to 
be  controverted  only  by  pleas  analogous  in  char- 
acter.    For  if  there  be  a  topic  within  the  wide 
range  of  human  questioning  in  reference  to  which 
tampering  with  mental  integrity  might  seem  at 
first  sight  pardonable,  it  is  that  of  a  future  and 
continued  existence.      If  belief  be  ever  permis- 
sible— perhaps  I  ought  to  say,  if  belief  be  ever 
possible — on  the  ground  that  "  there  is  peace  and 
joy  in  believing,"  it  is  here,  where  the  issues  are 
so  vast,  where  the  conception  in  its  highest  form 
is  so  ennobling,  where  the  practical  influences  of 
the  Creed  are,  in  appearance  at  least,  so  benefi- 
cent.    But  faith  thus  arrived  at  has  ever  clinging 
to  it  the  curse  belonging  to  all  illegitimate  pos. 
sessions.     It  is  precarious,  because  the  flaw  in  its 
title-deeds,  barely  suspected  perhaps  and  never 
acknowledged,  may  any  moment  be  discovered  ; 
misgivings  crop  up  most  surely  in  those  hard  and 
gloomy  crises  of  our  "lives  when  unflinching  confi- 
dence is  most  essential  to  our  peace;  and  the 
fairy  fabric,  built  up  not  on  grounded  conviction 
but   on  craving  need,  crumbles  into  dust,  and 
leaves  the  spirit  with  no  solid  sustenance  to  rest 
upon. 

Unconsciously,  and  by  implication,  Mr.  Harri- 
son bears  a  testimony  he  little  intended,  not,  in- 
deed, to  the  future  existence  he  denies,  but  to  the 
irresistible  longing  and  necessity  for  the  very  be- 
lief  he  labors  to  destroy.  Perhaps  no  writer  has 
more  undesignedly  betrayed  his  conviction  that 
men  will  not  and  cannot  be  expected  to  surrender 
their  faith  and  hope  without  at  least  something 
like  a  compensation  ;  certainly  no  one  has  ever 
toiled  with  more  noble  rhetoric  to  gild  and  illumi- 
nate the  substitute  with  which  he  would  fain  per- 
suade us  to  rest  satisfied.  The  nearly  universal 
craving  for  posthumous  existence  and  enduring 
consciousness,  which  he  depreciates  with  so  harsh 


a  scorn,  and  which  he  will  not  accept  as  offering 
even  the  shadow  or  simulacrum  of  an  argument 
for  the  Creed,  he  yet  respects  enough  to  recognize 
that  it  has  its  foundation  deep  in  the  framework 
of  our  being,  that  it  cannot  be  silenced,  and  may 
not  be  ignored.  Having  no  precious  metal  to  pay 
it  with,  he  issues  paper-money  instead,  skillfully 
engraved  and  gorgeously  gilded  to  look  as  like 
the  real  coin  as  may  be.  It  is  in  vain  to  deny 
that  there  is  something  touching  and  elevating  in 
the  glowing  eloquence  with  which  he  paints  the 
picture  of  lives  devoted  to  efforts  in  the  service 
of  the  race,  spent  in  laboring,  each  of  us  in  his 
own  sphere,  to  bring  about  the  grand  ideal  he 
fancies  for  humanity,  and  drawing  strength  and 
reward  for  long  years  of  toil  in  the  anticipation 
of  what  man  will  be  when  those  noble  dreams 
shall  have  been  realized  at  last — even  though  we 
shall  never  see  what  we  have  wrought  so  hard  to 
win.  It  is  vain  to  deny,  moreover,  that  these 
dreams  appear  more  solid  and  less  wild  or  vague 
when  we  remember  how  close  an  analogy  we  may 
detect  in  the  labors  of  thousands  around  us  who 
spend  their  whole  career  on  earth  in  building  up, 
by  sacrifice  and  painful  struggles,  wealth,  station, 
fame,  and  character,  for  their  children,  whose  en- 
joyment of  these  possessions  they  will  never  live 
to  witness,  without  their  passionate  zeal  in  the 
pursuit  being  in  any  way  cooled  by  the  discour- 
aging reflection.  Does  not  this  oblige  us  to  con- 
fess that  the  posthumous  existence  Mr.  Harrison 
describes  is  not  altogether  an  airy  fiction?  Still, 
somehow,  after  a  few  moments  spent  in  the  thin 
atmosphere  into  which  his  brilliant  language  and 
unselfish  imagination  have  combined  to  raise  us, 
we — ninety-nine  out  of  every  hundred  of  us  at  the 
least — sink  back  breathless  and  wearied  after  the 
unaccustomed  soaring  amid  light  so  dim,  and 
craving,  as  of  yore,  after  something  more  per* 
sonal,  more  solid,  and  more  certain. 

To  that  more  solid  certainty  I  am  obliged  to 
confess,  sorrowfully  and  with  bitter  disappoint* 
ment,  that  I  can  contribute  nothing — nothing,  I 
mean,  that  resembles  evidence,  that  can  properly 
be  called  argument,  or  that  I  can  hope  will  be  re- 
ceived as  even  the  barest  confirmation.  Alas  ! 
can  the  wisest  and  most  sanguine  of  us  all  bring 
anything  beyond  our  own  personal  sentiments  to 
swell  the  common  hope  ?  We  have  aspirations 
to  multiply,  but  who  has  any  knowledge  to  enrich 
our  store  ?  I  have  of  course  read  most  of  the 
pleadings  in  favor  of  the  ordinary  doctrine  of  the 
future  state ;  naturally  also,  in  common  with  all 
graver  natures,  I  have  meditated  yet  more ;  but 
these  pleadings,  for  the  most  part,  sound  to  anx- 


A  MODERN  "SYMPOSIUM." 


27 


ious  ears  little  else  than  the  passionate  outcries 
of  souls  that  cannot  endure  to  part  with  hopes  on 
which  they  have  been  nurtured,  and  which  are  in- 
tertwined with  their  tenderest  affections.  Logi- 
cal reasons  to  compel  conviction,  I  have  met  with 
none — even  from  the  interlocutors  in  this  actual 
Symposium.  Yet  few  can  have  sought  for  such 
more  yearningly.  I  may  say  I  share  in  the  an- 
ticipations of  believers  ;  but  I  share  them  as  aspi- 
rations, sometimes  approaching  almost  to  a  faith, 
occasionally,  and  for  a  few  moments,  perhaps 
rising  into  something  like  a  trust,  but  never  able 
to  settle  into  the  consistency  of  a  definite  and  en- 
during creed.  I  do  not  know  how  far  even  this 
incomplete  state  of  mind  may  not  be  merely  the 
residuum  of  early  upbringing  and  habitual  asso- 
ciations. But  I  must  be  true  to  my  darkness  as 
courageously  as  to  my  light.  I  cannot  rest  in 
comfort  on  arguments  that  to  my  spirit  have  no 
cogency,  nor  can  I  pretend  to  respect  or  be  con- 
tent with  reasons  which  carry  no  penetrating  con- 
viction along  with  them.  I  will  not  make  but- 
tresses do  the  work  or  assume  the  posture  of 
foundations.  I  will  not  cry  "  Peace,  peace,  when 
there  is  no  peace."  I  have  said  elsewhere,  and 
at  various  epochs  of  life,  why  the  ordinary 
"proofs  "  confidently  put  forward  and  gorgeously 
arrayed  "  have  no  help  in  them ; "  while,  never- 
theless, the  pictures  which  imagination  depicts 
are  so  inexpressibly  alluring.  The  more  I  think 
and  question,  the  more  do  doubts  and  difficulties 
crowd  around  my  horizon,  and  cloud  over  my 
sky.  Thus  it  is  that  I  am  unable  to  bring  aid  or 
sustainment  to  minds  as  troubled  as  my  own,  and 
perhaps  less  willing  to  admit  that  the  great  enig- 
ma is,  and  must  remain,  insoluble.  Of  two  things, 
however,  I  feel  satisfied — that  the  negative  doc- 
trine is  no  more  susceptible  of  proof  than  the  af- 
firmative, and  that  our  opinion,  be  it  only  honest, 
can  have  no  influence  whatever  on  the  issue,  nor 
upon  its  bearing  on  ourselves. 

Two  considerations  that  have  been  borne  in 
upon  my  mind  while  following  this  controversy 
may  be  worth  mentioning,  though  neither  can  be 
called  exactly  helpful.  One  is,  that  we  find  the 
most  confident,  unquestioning,  dogmatic  belief  in 
heaven  (and  its  correlative)  in  those  whose  heaven 
is  the  most  unlikely  and  impossible,  the  most 
entirely  made  up  of  mundane  and  material  ele- 
ments, of  gorgeous  glories  and  of  fading  splen- 
dors 1 — just  such  things  as  uncultured  and  un- 

1  "There  may  be  crowns  of  material  splendor,  there 
may  be  trees  of  unfading  loveliness,  there  may  be  pave- 
ments of  emerald,  and  canopies  of  the  brightest  radiance, 
and  gardens  of  deep  and  tranquil  security,  and  palaces  of 
proud  and  stately  decoration  and  a  city  of  lofty  pinna- 


disciplined  natures  most  envied  or  pined  after  on 
earth,  such  as  the  lower  order  of  minds  could 
best  picture  and  would  naturally  be  most  dazzled 
by.  The  higher  intelligences  of  our  race,  who 
need  a  spiritual  heaven,  find  their  imaginations 
fettered  by  the  scientific  training  which,  imper- 
fect though  it  be,  clips  their  wings  in  all  direc- 
tions, forbids  their  glowing  fancy,  and  annuls 
that  gorgeous  creation,  and  bars  the  way  to  each 
successive  local  habitation  that  is  instinctively 
wanted  to  give  reality  to  the  ideal  they  aspire 
to ;  till,  in  the  effort  to  frame  a  future  existence 
without  a  future  world,  to  build  up  a  state  of 
being  that  shall  be  worthy  of  its  denizens,  and 
from  which  everything  material  shall  be  excluded, 
they  at  last  discover  that  in  renouncing  the 
"  physical "  and  inadmissible  they  have  been 
forced  to  renounce  the  "conceivable"  as  well; 
and  a  dimness  and  fluctuating  uncertainty  gathers 
round  a  scene  from  which  all  that  is  concrete 
and  definable,  and  would  therefore  be  incongru- 
ous, has  been  shut  out.  The  next  world  cannot, 
it  is  felt,  be  a  material  one ;  and  a  truly  "  spirit- 
ual" one  even  the  saint  cannot  conceive  so  as 
to  bring  it  home  to  natures  still  shrouded  in  the 
garments  of  the  flesh. 

The  other  suggestion  that  has  occurred  to  me 
is  this :  It  must  be  conceded  that  the  doctrine  of 
a  future  life  is  by  no  means  as  universally  diffused 
as  it  is  the  habit  loosely  to  assert.  It  is  not 
always  discoverable  among  primitive  and  savage 
races.  It  existed  among  pagan  nations  in  a  form 
so  vague  and  hazy  as  to  be  describable  rather  as 
a  dream  than  a  religious  faith.  It  can  scarcely 
be  determined  whether  the  Chinese,  whose  culti- 
vation is  perhaps  the  most  ancient  existing  in  the 
world,  can  be  ranked  among  distinct  believers; 
while  the  conception  of  Nirvana,  which  prevails 
in  the  meditative  minds  of  other  Orientals,  is 
more  a  sort  of  conscious  non-existence  than  a 
future  life.  With  the  Jews,  moreover,  as  is  well 
known,  the  belief  was  not  indigenous,  but  im- 
ported, and  by  no  means  an  early  importation. 
But  what  is  not  so  generally  recognized  is  that, 
even  among  ourselves  in  these  days,  the  convic- 
tion of  thoughtful  natures  varies  curiously  in 
strength  and  in  features  at  different  periods  of 
life.  In  youth,  when  all  our  sentiments  are  most 
vivacious   and   dogmatic,  most  of  us  not  only 

cles,  through  which  there  unceasingly  flows  a  river  of 
gladness,  and  where  jubilee  is  ever  sun::  by  a  concord 
of  seraphic  voices." — Dr.  Chalmeri 'a  Sermons. 

"  Poor  fragments  all  of  this  low  earth  — 
Such  as  in  dreams  could  hardly  soothe 
A  soul  that  once  had  tasted  of  immortal  truth." 

Christian  Year. 


2S 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


cling  to  it  as  an  intellectual  creed,  but  are  accus- 
tomed to  say  and  feel  that,  without  it  as  a  solace 
and  a  hope  to  rest  upon,  this  world  would  be 
stripped  of  its  deepest  fascinations.  It  is  from 
minds  of  this  age,  whose  vigor  is  unimpaired  and 
whose  relish  for  the  joys  of  earth  is  most  expan- 
sive, that  the  most  glowing  delineations  of  heaven 
usually  proceed,  and  on  whom  the  thirst  for  fe- 
licity and  knowledge,  which  can  be  slaked  at  no 
earthly  fountains,  has  the  most  exciting  power. 
Then  comes  the  busy  turmoil  of  our  mid-career, 
when  the  present  curtains  off  the  future  from  our 
thoughts,  and  when  a  renewed  existence  in  a 
different  scene  is  recalled  to  our  fancy  chiefly  in 
crises  of  bereavement.  And,  finally,  is  it  not  the 
case  that  in  our  fading  years — when  something 
of  the  languor  and  placidity  of  age  is  creeping 
over  us,  just  when  futurity  is  coming  consciously 
and  rapidly  more  near,  and  when  one  might  nat- 
urally expect  it  to  occupy  us  more*  incessantly 
and  with  more  anxious  and  searching  glances — 
we  think  of  it  less  frequently,  believe  in  it  less 
confidently,  desire  it  less  eagerly,  than  in  our 
youth  ?  Such,  at  least,  hss  been  my  observation 
and  experience,  especially  among  the  more  re- 
flective and  inquiring  order  of  men.  The  life  of 
the  hour  absorbs  us  most  completely,  as  the 
hours  grow  fewer  and  less  full;  the  pleasures, 
the  exemptions,  the  modest  interests,  the  after- 
noon peace,  the  gentle  affections,  of  the  present 
scene,  obscure  the  future  from  our  view,  and  ren- 
der it,  curiously  enough,  even  less  interesting 
than  the  past.  To-day,  which  may  be  our  last, 
engrosses  us  far  more  than  to-morrow,  which  may 
be  our  forever;  and  the  grave  into  which  we 
are  just  stepping  down  troubles  us  far  less  than 
in  youth,  when  half  a  century  lay  between  us 
and  it. 

What  is  the  explanation  of  this  strange  phe- 
nomenon ?  Is  it  a  merciful  dispensation  arranged 
by  the  Ruler  of  our  life  to  soften  and  to  ease  a 
crisis  which  would  be  too  grand  and  awful  to 
be  faced  with  dignity  or  calm,  if  it  were  actually 
realized  at  all  ?  Is  it  that  thought — or  that  vague 
substitute  for  thought  which  we  call  time — has 
brought  us,  half  unconsciously,  to  the  conclusion 
that  the  whole  question  is  insoluble,  and  that  re- 
flection is  wasted  where  reflection  can  bring  us 
no  nearer  to  an  issue  ?  Or,  finally,  as  I  know  is 
true  far  often er  than  we  fancy,  is  it  that  three- 
score years  and  ten  have  quenched  the  passionate 
desire  for  life  with  which  at  first  we  stepped  upon 
the  scene  ?  We  are  tired,  some  of  us,  with  un- 
ending and  unprofitable  toil;  we  are  satiated, 
others  of  us,  with  such  ample  pleasures  as  earth 


can  yield  us ;  we  have  had  enough  of  ambition, 
alike  in  its  successes  and  its  failures ;  the  joys 
and  blessings  of  human  affection  on  which,  what- 
ever their  crises  and  vicissitudes,  no  righteous  or 
truthful  man  will  east  a  slur,  are  yet  so  blended 
with  pains  which  partake  of  their  intensity ;  the 
thirst  for  knowledge  is  not  slaked,  indeed,  but 
the  capacity  for  the  labor  by  which  alone  it  can 
be  gained  has  consciously  died  out ;  the  appetite 
for  life,  in  short,  is  gone,  the  frame  is  worn  and 
the  faculties  exhausted ;  and — possibly  this  is 
the  key  to  the  phenomenon  we  are  examining — 
age  cannot,  from  the  very  law  of  its  nature,  con- 
ceive itself  endowed  with  the  bounding  energies  of 
youth,  and  without  that  vigor,  both  of  exertion 
and  desire,  renewed  existence  can  offer  no  inspir- 
ing charms.  Our  being  upon  earth  has  been  en- 
riched by  vivid  interests  and  precious  joys,  and 
we  are  deeply  grateful  for  the  gift ;  but  we  are 
wearied  with  one  life,  and  feel  scarcely  qualified 
to  enter  on  the  claims,  even  though  balanced  by 
the  felicities  and  glories,  of  another.  It  may  be 
the  fatigue  which  comes  with  age — fatigue  of  the 
fancy  as  well  as  of  the  frame ;  but,  somehow, 
what  we  yearn  for  most  instinctively  at  last  is 
rest,  and  the  peace  which  we  can  imagine  the 
easiest  because  we  know  it  best  is  that  of  sleep. 

Rev.  BALDWIN  BROWN.— The  theologians 
appear  to  have  fallen  upon  evil  days.  Like  some 
of  old,  they  are  filled  with  rebuke  from  all  sides. 
They  are  bidden  to  be  silent,  for  their  day  is 
over.  But  some  things,  like  Nature,  are  hard 
to  get  rid  of.  Expelled,  they  "  recur "  swiftly. 
Foremost  among  these  is  theology.  It  seems  as 
if  nothing  could  long  restrain  man  from  this,  the 
loftiest  exercise  of  his  powers.  The  theologians 
and  the  Comtists  have  met  in  the  sense  which 
Mr.  Huxley  justly  indicates  ;  he  is  himself  work- 
ing at  the  foundations  of  a  larger,  nobler,  and 
more  complete  theology.  But,  for  the  present, 
theology  suffers  affliction,  and  the  theologians 
have  in  no  small  measure  themselves  to  thank 
for  it.  The  protest  rises  from  all  sides,  clear  and 
strong,  against  the  narrow,  formal,  and,  in  these 
last  days,  selfish  system  of  thought  and  expecta- 
tion, which  they  have  presented  as  their  kingdom 
of  heaven  to  the  world. 

I  never  read  Mr.  Harrison's  brilliant  essays, 
full  as  they  always  are  of  high  aspiration  and  of 
stimulus  to  noble  endeavor,  without  finding  the 
judgment  which  I  cannot  but  pass  in  my  own 
mind  on  his  unbeliefs  and  denials,  largely  tem- 
pered by  thankfulness.  I  rejoice  in  the  passion- 
ate earnestness  with  which  he  lifts  the  hearts  of 
his  readers  to  ideals  which  it  seems  to  me  that 


A  MODERX  "SYMPOSIUM." 


29 


Christianity — that  Christianity  which  as  a  living 
force  iu  the  apostles'  days  turned  the  world  up- 
side down,  that  is,  right  side  up,  with  its  face 
toward  heaven  and  God — alone  can  realize  for 
man. 

I  recall  a  noble  passage  written  by  Mr.  Karri- 
son  some  years  ago :  "  A  religion  of  action,  a 
religion  of  social  duty,  devotion  to  an  intelligible 
and  sensible  Head,  a  real  sense  of  incorporation 
with  a  living  and  controlling  force,  the  deliberate 
effort  to  serve  an  immortal  Humanity — this,  and 
this  alone,  can  absorb  the  musings  and  the  crav- 
ings of  the  spiritual  man." 1  It  seems  to  me  that 
it  would  be  difficult  for  any  one  to  set  forth  in 
more  weighty  and  eloquent  words  the  kind  of 
object  which  Christianity  proposes,  and  the  kind 
of  help  toward  the  attainment  of  the  object  which 
the  Incarnation  affords.  And  in  the  matter  now 
under  debate,  behind  the  stern  denunciation  of 
the  selfish  striving  toward  a  personal  immortality 
which  Mr.  Harrison  utters  with  his  accustomed 
force,  there  seems  to  lie  not  only  a  yearning  for, 
but  a  definite  vision  of,  an  immortality  which 
shall  not  be  selfish,  but  largely  fruitful  to  pub- 
lic good.  It  is  true  that,  as  has  been  forcibly 
pointed  out,  the  form  which  it  wears  is  utterly 
vain  and  illusory,  and  wholly  incapable,  one 
would  think,  of  accounting  for  the  enthusiastic 
eagerness  with  which  it  appears  to  be  sought. 
May  not  the  eagerness  be  really  kindled  by  a 
larger  and  more  far-reaching  vision — the  Christian 
vision,  which  has  become  obscured  to  so  many 
faithful  servants  of  duty  by  the  selfishness  and 
vanity  with  which  much  that  goes  by  the  name 
of  the  Christian  life  in  these  days  has  enveloped 
it ;  but  which  has  not  ceased  and  will  not  cease, 
in  ways  which  even  consciousness  cannot  always 
trace,  to  cast  its  spell  on  human  hearts  ? 

Mr.  Harrison  seems  to  start  in  his  argument 
with  the  conviction  that  there  is  a  certain  base- 
ness in  this  longing  for  immortality,  and  he  falls 
on  the  belief  with  a  fierceness  which  the  sense  of 
its  baseness  alone  could  justify.  But  surely  he 
must  stamp  much  more  with  the  same  brand. 
Each  day's  struggle  to  live  is  a  bit  of  the  base- 
ness, and  there  seems  to  be  no  answer  to  Mr. 
Hutton's  remark  that  the  truly  unselfish  action 
under  such  conditions  would  be  suicide.  But,  at 
any  rate,  it  is  clear  from  history  that  the  men 
who  formulated  the  doctrine  and  perfected  the 
art  of  suicide  in  the  early  days  of  imperial  Rome 
belonged  to  the  most  basely  selfish  and  heartless 
generation  that  has  ever  cumbered  this  sorrow- 
ful world.  The  love  of  life  is,  on  the  whole,  a 
1  Fortnightly  Review,  vol  xii.,  p.  529. 


noble  thing,  for  the  staple  of  life  is  duty.  The 
more  I  see  of  classes  in  which,  at  first  sight,  self- 
ishness seems  to  reign,  the  more  am  I  struck 
with  the  measure  in  which  duty,  thought  for 
others,  and  work  for  others,  enters  into  their 
lives.  The  desire  to  live  on,  to  those  who  catch 
the  Christian  idea,  and  would  follow  him  who 
"  came,  not  to  be  ministered  unto,  but  to  min- 
ister," is  a  desire  to  work  on,  and  by  living 
to  bless  more  richly  a  larger  circle  in  a  wider 
world. 

I  can  even  cherish  some  thankfulness  for 
the  fling  at  the  eternity  of  the  tabor  in  which 
Mr.  Harrison  indulges,  and  which  draws  on  him 
a  rebuke  from  his  critics  the  severity  of  which 
one  can  also  well  understand.  It  is  a  last  flin"- 
at  the  laus  perennis,  which  once  seemed  so  beau- 
tiful to  monastic  hearts,  and  which,  looked  at 
ideally,  to  those  who  can  enter  into  Mr.  Hutton's 
lofty  view  of  adoration,  means  all  that  he  de- 
scribes. But  practically  it  was  a  very  poor,  nar- 
row, mechanical  thing;  and  base  even  when  it 
represented,  as  it  did  to  multitudes,  the  loftiest 
form  of  a  soul's  activity  in  such  a  sad,  suffering 
world  as  this.  I,  for  one,  can  understand,  though 
I  could  not  utter,  the  anathema  which  follows  it 
as  it  vanishes  from  sight.  And  it  bears  closely 
on  the  matter  in  hand.  It  is  no  dead,  mediasval 
idea.  It  tinctures  strongly  the  popular  religious 
notions  of  heaven.  The  favorite  hymns  of  the 
evangelical  school  are  set  in  the  same  key. 
There  is  an  easy,  self-satisfied,  self-indulgent 
temper  in  the  popular  way  of  thinking  and  pray- 
ing, and  above  all  of  singing,  about  heaven, 
which,  sternly  as  the  singers  would  denounce 
the  cloister,  is  really  caught  from  the  monastic 
choir.  There  is  a  very  favorite  verse  which  runs 
thus: 

"  There,  on  a  green  and  flowery  mount, 
Our  weary  souls  shall  sit, 
And  with  transporting  joys  recount 
The  labors  of  our  feet. "  ! 

It  is  a  fair  sample  of  the  staple  of  much  pious 
forecasting  of  the  occupations  and  enjoyments  of 
heaven.  I  cannot  but  welcome  very  heartily  any 
such  shock  as  Mr.  Harrison  administers  to  this 
restful  and  self-centred  vision  of  immortality. 
Should  he  find  himself  at  last  endowed  with  the 
inheritance  which  he  refuses,  and  be  thrown  in 
the  way  of  these  souls  mooning  on  the  mount,  it 
is  evident  that  he  would  feel  tempted  to  give 
them  a  vigorous  shake,  and  to   set   them  with 

1  Mr.  Martin's  picture  of  "  The  Plains  of  Heaven  "  ex- 
actly presents  it,  and  it  Is  a  picture  greatly  admired  in 
the  circles  of  which  we  speak. 


30 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


some  stinging  words  about  some  good  work  for  j 
God  and  for  their  world.     And  as  many  of  us 
want  the  shaking  now  badly  enough,  I  can  thank 
him  for   it,  although   it  is    administered   by    an 
over-rough  and  contemptuous  hand. 

I  feel  some  hearty  sympathy,  too,  with  much 
which  he  says  about  the  unity  of  the  man.  The 
passage  to  which  I  refer  commences  on  page  242 
with  the  words  "  The  philosophy  which  treats 
man  as  man  simply  affirms  that  man  loves, 
thinks,  acts,  not  that  the  ganglia,  the  senses,  or 
any  organ  of  man,  loves,  thinks,  and  acts." 

So  far  as  Mr.  Harrison's  language  and  line  of 
thought  are  a  protest  against  the  vague,  blood- 
less, bodiless  notion  of  the  life  of  the  future, 
which  has  more  affinity  with  Hades  than  with 
heaven,  I  heartily  thank  him  for  it.  Man  is  an 
embodied  spirit,  and  wherever  his  lot  is  cast  he 
will  need  and  will  have  the  means  of  a  spirit's 
manifestation  to  and  action  on  its  surrounding 
world.  But  this  is  precisely  what  is  substan- 
tiated by  the  resurrection.  The  priceless  value 
of  the  truth  of  the  resurrection  lies  in  the  close 
interlacing  and  interlocking  of  the  two  worlds 
which  it  reveals.  It  is  the  life  which  is  lived 
here,  the  life  of  the  embodied  spirit,  which  is 
carried  through  the  veil  and  lived  there.  The 
wonderful  powers  of  the  gospel  of  "  Jesus  and 
the  resurrection  "  lay  in  the  homely  human  inter- 
est which  it  lent  to  the  life  of  the  immortals. 
The  risen  Lord  took  up  life  just  where  he  left 
it.  The  things  which  he  had  taught  his  disci- 
ples to  care  about  here,  were  the  things  which 
those  who  had  passed  on  were  caring  about 
there,  the  reign  of  truth,  righteousness,  and  love. 
I  hold  to  the  truth  of  the  resurrection,  not  only 
because  it  appears  to  be  firmly  established  on 
the  most  valid  testimony,  but  because  it  alone 
seems  to  explain  man's  constitution  as  a  spirit 
embodied  in  flesh  which  he  is  sorely  tempted  to 
curse  as  a  clog.  It  furnishes  to  man  the  key  to 
the  mystery  of  the  flesh  on  the  one  hand,  while 
on  the  other  it  justifies  his  aspiration  and  real- 
izes his  hope. 

Belief  in  the  risen  and  reigning  Christ  was  at 
the  heart  of  that  wonderful  uprising  and  outburst 
of  human  energy  which  marked  the  age  of  the 
Advent.  The  contrast  is  most  striking  between 
the  sad  and  even  despairing  tone  which  breathes 
through  the  noblest  heathen  literature,  which 
utlers  perhaps  its  deepest  wail  in  the  cry  of 
Epictetus,  "Show  me  a  Stoic — by  Heaven,  I  long 
to  see  a  Stoic  !  "  and  the  sense  of  victorious  pow- 
er, of  buoyant,  exulting  hope,  which  breathes 
through  the  word  and  shines  from  the  life  of 


the  infant  Church  :  "  As  dying,  and  behold  we 
live ;  as  sorrowful,  yet  always  rejoicing  ;  as  poor, 
yet  making  many  rich  ;  as  having  nothing,  and  yet 
possessing  all  things."  The  Gospel  which  brought 
life  and  immortality  to  light  won  its  way  just  as 
dawn  wins  it  way,  when  "jocund  day  stands  tip- 
toe on  the  misty  mountain-tops,"  and  flashes  his 
rays  over  a  sleeping  world.  Everywhere  the 
radiance  penetrates  ;  it  shines  into  every  nook 
of  shade;  and  all  living  creatures  stir,  awake, 
and  come  forth  to  bask  in  its  beams.  Just  thus 
the  flood  of  kindling  light  streamed  forth  from 
the  resurrection,  and  spread  like  the  dawn  in  the 
morning  sky ;  it  touched  all  forms  of  things  in  a 
dark,  sad  world  with  its  splendor,  and  called 
man  forth  from  the  tomb  in  which  his  higher 
life  seemed  to  be  buried,  to  a  new  career  of 
fruitful,  sunlit  activity  ;  even  as  the  Saviour 
prophesied,  "  The  hour  is  coming,  and  now  is, 
when  the  dead  shall  hear  the  voice  of  the  Son  of 
God,  and  they  that  hear  shall  live." 

The  exceeding  readiness  and  joyfulness  with 
which  the  truth  was  welcomed,  and  the  meas- 
ure in  which  Christendom  —  and  that  means 
all  that  is  most  powerful  and  progressive  in 
human  society — has  been  moulded  by  it,  are 
the  most  notable  facts  of  history.  Be  it  truth, 
be  it  fiction,  be  it  dream,  one  thing  is  clear : 
it  was  a  baptism  of  new  life  to  the  world  which 
was  touched  by  it,  and  it  has  been  near  the 
heart  of  all  the  great  movements  of  human  so- 
ciety from  that  day  until  now.  I  do  not  even 
exclude  "  the  Revolution,"  whose  current  is  un- 
der us  still.  Space  is  precious,  or  it  would  not 
be  difficult  to  show  how  deeply  the  Revolution 
was  indebted  to  the  ideas  which  this  gospel 
brought  into  the  world.  I  entirely  agree  with 
Lord  Blachford  that  revelation  is  the  ground 
on  which  faith  securely  rests.  But  the  history 
of  the  quickening  and  the  growth  of  Christian 
society  is  a  factor  of  enormous  moment  in  the 
estimation  of  the  arguments  for  the  truth  of  im- 
mortality. We  are  assured  that  the  idea  had  the 
dullest  and  even  basest  origin.  Man  has  a  shad- 
ow, it  suggested  the  idea  of  a  second  self  to  him  ! 
he  has  memories  of  departed  friends,  he  gave 
them  a  body  and  made  them  ghosts !  Very  won- 
derful, surely,  that  mere  figments  should  be  the 
strongest  and  most  productive  things  in  the 
whole  sphere  of  human  activity,  and  should  have 
stirred  the  spirit  and  led  the  march  of  the  strong- 
est, noblest,  and  most  cultivated  peoples ;  until 
now,  in  this  nineteenth  century,  we  think  that 
we  have  discovered,  as  Miss  Martineau  tersely 
puts  it,  that  "the  theological  belief  of  almost 


A  MODERN  "SYMPOSIUM." 


31 


everybody  in  the  civilized  world  is  baseless." 
Let  who  will  believe  it,  I  cannot. 

It  may  be  urged  that  the  idea  has  strong  fas- 
cination, that  man  naturally  longs  for  immortali- 
ty, and  gladly  catches  at  any  figment  which 
seems  to  respond  to  his  yearning  and  to  justify 
his  hope.  But  this  belief  is  among  the  clearest, 
broadest,  and  strongest  features  of  his  experience 
and  history.  It  must  flow  out  of  something  very 
deeply  imbedded  in  his  constitution.  If  the  force 
that  is  behind  all  the  phenomena  of  life  is  respon- 
sible for  all  that  is,  it  must  be  responsible  for 
this  also.  Somehow  man,  the  masterpiece  of  the 
Creation,  has  got  himself  wedded  to  the  belief 
that  all  things  here  have  relations  to  issues  which 
lie  in  a  world  that  is  behind  the  shadow  of  death. 
This  belief  has  been  at  the  root  of  his  highest 
endeavor  and  of  his  keenest  pain  ;  it  is  the  secret 
of  his  chronic.unrest.  Now  Nature,  through  all 
her  orders,  appears  to  have  made  all  creatures 
contented  with  the  conditions  of  their  life.  The 
brute  seems  fully  satisfied  with  the  resources  of 
his  world.  He  shows  no  sign  of  being  tormented 
by  dreams ;  his  life  withers  under  no  blight  of 
regret.  All  things  rest,  and  are  glad  and  beauti- 
ful in  their  spheres.  Violate  the  order  of  their 
nature,  rob  them  of  their  fit  surroundings,  and 
they  grow  restless,  sad,  and  poor.  A  plant  shut 
out  from  light  and  moisture  will  twist  itself  into 
the  most  fantastic  shapes,  and  strain  itself  to 
ghastly  tenuity ;  nay,  it  will  work  its  delicate 
tissues  through  stone-walls  or  hard  rock,  to  find 
what  its  nature  has  made  needful  to  its  life. 
Having  found  it,  it  rests  and  is  glad  in  its  beauty 
once  more.  Living  things,  perverted  by  human 
intelligent  effort,  revert  swiftly  the  moment  that 
the  pressure  is  removed.  This  marked  tendency 
to  reversion  seems  to  be  set  in  Nature  as  a  sign 
that  all  things  are  at  rest  in  their  natural  condi- 
tions, content  with  their  life  and  its  sphere.  Only 
in  ways  of  which  they  are  wholly  unconscious, 
and  which  rob  them  of  no  contentment  with  their 
present,  do  they  prepare  the  way  for  the  higher 
developments  of  life. 

What,  then,  means  this  restless  longing  in 
man  for  that  which  lies  beyond  the  range  of  his 
visible  world '?  Has  Nature  wantonly  and  cruelly 
made  man,  her  masterpiece,  alone  of  all  the  creat- 
ures, restless  and  sad?  Of  all  beings  in  the 
Creation  must  he  alone  be  made  wretched  by  an 
unattainable  longing,  by  futile  dreams  of  a  vi- 
sionary world  ?  This  were  an  utter  breach  of  the 
method  of  Nature  in  all  her  operations.  It  is 
impossible  to  believe  that  the  harmony  that  runs 
through  all  her  spheres  fails  and  falls  into  discord 


in  man.  The  very  order  of  Nature  presses  us  to 
the  conviction  that  this  insatiable  longing  which 
somehow  she  generates  and  sustains  in  man,  ami 
which  is  unquestionably  the  largest  feature  of  his 
life,  is  not  visionary  and  futile,  but  profoundly 
significant;  pointing  with  firm  finger  to  the  real- 
ity of  that  sphere  of  being  to  which  she  has 
taught  him  to  lift  his  thoughts  and  aspirations, 
and  in  which  he  will  find,  unless  the  prophetic 
order  of  the  Creation  has  lied  to  him,  the  har- 
monious completeness  of  his  life. 

And  there  seems  to  be  no  fair  escape  from 
the  conclusion  by  giving  up  the  order,  and  writ- 
ing Babel  on  the  world  and  its  life.  Whatever 
it  is,  it  is  not  confusion.  Out  of  its  disorder, 
order  palpably  grows  ;  out  of  its  confusion  arises 
a  grand  and  stately  progress.  Progress  is  a  sa- 
cred word  with  Mr.  Harrison.  In  the  progress 
of  humanity  he  fiDds  his  longed-for  immortality. 
But,  if  I  may  repeat  in  other  terms  a  remark 
which  I  offered  in  the  first  number  of  this  review, 
while  progress  is  the  human  law,  the  world,  the 
sphere  of  the  progress,  is  tending  slowly  but 
inevitably  to  dissolution.  Is  there  discord  again 
in  this  highest  region?  Mr.  Harrison  writes  of 
an  immortal  humanity.  How  immortal,  if  the 
glorious  progress  is  striving  to  accomplish  itself 
in  a  world  of  wreck  ?  Or  is  the  progress  that 
of  a  race  born  with  sore  but  joyful  travail  from 
the  highest  level  of  the  material  creation  into  a 
higher  region  of  being,  whence  it  can  watch  with 
calmness  the  dissolution  of  all  the  perishable 
wrorlds  ? 

The  belief  in  immortality  is  so  dear  to  man 
because  he  grasps  through  it  the  complement  of 
his  else  unshaped  and  imperfect  life.  It  seems 
to  be  equally  the  complement  of  this  otherwise 
hopelessly  jangled  and  disordered  world.  It  is 
asked  triumphantly,  "  Why,  of  all  the  hosts  of 
creatures,  does  man  alone  lay  claim  to  this  great 
inheritance  ?  "  Because  in  man  alone  we  see  the 
experiences,  the  strain,  the  anguish,  that  demand 
it,  as  the  sole  key  to  what  he  does  and  endures. 
There  is  to  me  something  horrible  in  the  thought 
of  such  a  life  as  ours,  in  which  for  all  of  us,  in 
some  form  or  other,  the  cross  must  be  the  most 
sacred  symbol,  lived  out  in  that  bare,  heartless, 
hopeless  world  of  the  material,  to  which  Prof. 
Clifford  so  lightly  limits  it.  And  I  cannot  but 
think  that  there  are  strong  signs  in  many  quar- 
ters of  an  almost  fierce  revulsion  from  the  ghast- 
ly drearihood  of  such  a  vision  of  life. 

There  seems  to  me  to  run  through  Mr.  Harri- 
son's utterances  on  these  great  subjects — I  say  it 
with  honest  diffidence  of  one  whose  large  range 


°>9 

Oil 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


of  power  I  so  fully  recognize,  but  one  must  speak 
frankly  if  this  Symposium  is  to  be  worth  any- 
thing—  an  instinctive  yearning  toward  Chris- 
tian ideas,  while  that  faith  is  denied  which  alone 
can  vivify  them  and  make  them  a  living  power 
in  our  world.  There  is  everywhere  a  shadowy 
image  of  a  Christian  substance ;  but  it  reminds 
one  of  that  formless  form,  wherein  "  what  seemed 
a  head,  the  likeness  of  a  kingly  crown  had  on." 
And  it  is  characteristic  of  much  of  the  finest 
thinking  and  writing  of  our  times.  The  saviour 
Deronda,  the  prophet  Mordecai,  lack  just  that 
living  heart  of  faith  which  would  put  blood  into 
their  pallid  lineaments,  and  make  them  breathe 
and  move  among  men.  Again  I  say  that  we  have 
largely  ourselves  to  thank  for  this  saddening  feat- 
ure of  the  higher  life  of  our  times — we  who  have 
narrowed  God's  great  kingdom  to  the  dimensions 
of  our  little  theological  sphere.  I  am  no  theolo- 
gian, though  intensely  interested  in  the  themes 
with  which  the  theologians  occupy  themselves. 
Urania,  with  darkened  brow,  may  perhaps  rebuke 
my  prating.  But  I  seem  to  see  quite  clearly  that 
the  sad  strain  and  anguish  of  our  life,  social,  in- 
tellectual, and  spiritual,  is  but  the  pain  by  which 
great  stages  of  growth  accomplish  themselves. 
We  have  quite  outgrown  our  venerable,  and  in  its 
time  large  and  noble,  theological  shell.  We  must 
wait,  not  fearful,  far  less  hopeless,  while  by  the 
help  of  those  who  are  working  with  such  admi- 
rable energy,  courage,  and  fidelity,  outside  the 
visible  Christian  sphere,  that  spirit  in  man  which 
searches  and  cannot  but  search  "  the  deep  things 
of  God,"  creates  for  itself  a  new  instrument  of 
thought  which  will  give  to  it  the  mastery  of  a 
wider,  richer,  and  nobler  world. 

Dr.  W.  G.  WARD. — Mr.  Harrison  considers 
that  the  Christian's  conception  of  a  future  life  is 
"  so  gross,  so  sensual,  so  indolent,  so  selfish,"  as 
to  be  unworthy  of  respectful  consideration.  He 
must  necessarily  be  intending  to  speak  of  this 
conception  in  the  shape  in  which  we  Christians 
entertain  it ;  because  otherwise  his  words  of  rep- 
rehension are  unmeaning.  But  our  belief  as  to 
the  future  life  is  intimately  and  indissolubly  bound 
up  with  our  belief  as  to  the  present ;  with  our 
belief  as  to  what  is  the  true  measure  and  stand- 
ard of  human  action  in  this  world.  And  I  would 
urge  that  no  part  of  our  doctrine  can  be  rightly 
apprehended,  unless  it  be  viewed  in  its  connection 
with  all  the  rest.  This  is  a  fact  which  (I  think) 
infidels  often  drop  out  of  sight,  and  for  that  reason 
fail  of  meeting  Christianity  on  its  really  relevant 
and  critical  issues. 

Of  course,  I  consider  Catholicity  to  be  exclu- 


sively the  one  authoritative  exhibition  of  revealed 
Christianity.  I  will  set  forth,  therefore,  the  doc- 
trine to  which  I  would  call  attention,  in  that  par- 
ticular form  in  which  Catholic  teachers  enounce 
it ;  though  I  am  very  far  indeed  from  intending 
to  deny  that  there  are  multitudes  of  non-Catholic 
Christians  who  hold  it  also.  What,  then,  accord- 
ing to  Catholics,  is  the  true  measure  and  standard 
of  human  action  ?  This  is  in  effect  the  very  first 
question  propounded  in  our  English  elementary 
Catechism:  "Why  did  God  make  you?"  The 
prescribed  answer  is,  "  To  know  him,  serve  him, 
and  love  him  in  this  world,  and  to  be  happy  with 
him  forever  in  the  next."  And  St.  Ignatius's 
"  Spiritual  Exercises  " — a  work  of  the  very  high- 
est authority  among  us — having  laid  down  the 
very  same  "foundation,"  presently  adds  that "  we 
should  not  wish  on  our  part  for  health  rather  than 
for  sickness,  wealth  rather  than  poverty,  honor 
rather  than  ignominy ;  desiring  and  choosing 
those  things  alone  which  are  more  expedient  to 
us  for  the  end  for  which  we  were  created."  Now, 
what  will  be  the  course  of  a  Christian's  life  in 
proportion  as  he  is  profoundly  imbued  with  such 
a  principle  as  this,  and  vigorously  aims  at  putting 
it  into  practice?  The  number  of  believers,  who 
apply  themselves  to  this  task  with  reasonable 
consistency,  is  no  doubt  comparatively  small. 
But  in  proportion  as  any  given  person  does  so, 
he  will  in  the  first  place  be  deeply  penetrated  with 
a  sense  of  his  moral  weakness ;  and  (were  it  for 
that  reason  alone)  his  life  will  more  and  more  be 
a  life  of  prayer.  Then  he  will  necessarily  give 
his  mind  with  great  earnestness  and  frequency  to 
the  consideration  what  it  is  which  at  this  or  that 
period  God  desires  at  his  hands.  On  the  whole 
(not  to  dwell  with  unnecessary  detail  on  this  part 
of  my  subject),  he  will  be  ever  opening  bis  heart 
to  Almighty  God ;  turning  to  him  for  light  and 
strength  under  emergencies,  for  comfort  under 
affliction ;  pondering  on  his  adorable  attributes ; 
animated  toward  him  by  intense  love  and  tender- 
ness. Nor  need  I  add  how  singularly — how  be- 
yond words — this  personal  love  of  God  is  pro- 
moted and  facilitated  by  the  fact  that  a  Divine 
Person  has  assumed  human  nature,  and  that  God's 
human  acts  and  words  are  so  largely  offered  to 
the  loving  contemplation  of  redeemed  souls. 

In  proportion,  then,  as  a  Christian  is  faithful 
to  his  creed,  the  thought  of  God  becomes  the 
chief  joy  of  his  life.  "  The  thought  of  God," 
says  F.  Newman,  "  and  nothing  short  of  it,  is  the 
happiness  of  man  ;  for  though  there  is  much  be- 
sides to  serve  as  subject  of  knowledge,  or  motive  for 
action,  or  instrument  of  excitement,  yet  the  affec- 


A  MODEEX  "SYMPOSIUM." 


33 


tions  require  a  something  more  vast  and  more  en- 
during than  anything  created.  He  alone  is  suffi- 
cient for  the  heart  who  made  it.  The  contempla- 
tion of  him,  and  nothing  but  it,  is  able  fully  to  open 
and  relieve  the  mind,  to  unlock,  occupy,  and  fix 
our  affections.  We  may  indeed  love  things  cre- 
ated with  great  intenseness ;  but  such  affection, 
when  disjoined  from  the  love  of  the  Creator,  is 
like  a  stream  running  in  a  narrow  channel,  im- 
petuous, vehement,  turbid.  The  heart  runs  out, 
as  it  were,  only  at  one  door;  it  is  not  an  expand- 
ing of  the  whole  man.  Created  natures  cannot 
open  to  us,  or  elicit,  the  ten  thousand  mental 
senses  which  belong  to  us,  and  through  which 
we  really  love.  None  but  the  presence  of  our 
Maker  can  enter  us ;  for  to  none  besides  can  the 
whole  heart  in  all  its  thoughts  and  feelings  be 
unlocked  and  subjected.  It  is  this  feeling  of 
simple  and  absolute  confidence  and  communion 
which  soothes  and  satisfies  those  to  whom  it  is 
vouchsafed.  We  know  that  even  our  nearest 
friends  enter  into  us  but  partially,  and  hold  in- 
tercourse with  us  only  at  times ;  whereas  the 
consciousness  of  a  perfect  and  enduring  presence, 
and  it  alone,  keeps  the  heart  open.  Withdraw 
the  object  on  which  it  rests,  and  it  will  relapse 
again  into  its  state  of  confinement  and  constraint ; 
and  in  proportion  as  it  is  limited,  either  to  cer- 
tain seasons  or  to  certain  affections,  the  heart  is 
straitened  and  distressed." 

Now,  Christians  hold  that  God's  faithful  ser- 
vants will  enjoy  hereafter  unspeakable  bliss, 
through  the  most  intimate  imaginable  contact 
with  him  whom  they  have  here  so  tenderly  loved. 
They  will  see  face  to  face  him  whose  beauty  is 
dimly  and  faintly  adumbrated  by  the  most  ex- 
quisitely transporting  beauty  which  can  be  found 
on  earth ;  him  whose  adorable  perfections  they 
have  in  this  life  imperfectly  contemplated,  and 
for  the  fuller  apprehension  of  which  they  have  so 
earnestly  longed  here  below.  I  by  no  means  in- 
tend to  imply  that  the  hope  of  this  blessedness 
is  the  sole  or  even  the  chief  inducement  which 
leads  saintly  men  to  be  diligent  in  serving  God. 
Their  immediate  reason  for  doing  so  is  their  keen 
sense  of  his  claim  on  their  allegiance ;  and,  again, 
the  misery  which  they  would  experience,  through 
their  love  of  him,  at  being  guilty  of  any  failure 
in  that  allegiance.  Still  the  prospect  of  that  fu- 
ture bliss,  which  I  have  so  imperfectly  sketched, 
is  doubtless  found  by  them  at  times  of  invaluable 
service  in  stimulating  them  to  greater  effort,  and 
in  cheering  them  under  trial  and  desolation. 

Such  is  the  view  taken  by  Christians  of  life 
in  heaven ;  and,  surely,  any  candid  infidel  will  at 
39 


once  admit  that  it  is  profoundly  harmonious  and 
consistent  with  their  view  of  what  should  be 
man's  life  on  earth.  To  say  that  their  anticipa- 
tion of  the  future,  as  it  exists  in  them,  is  gross, 
sensual,  indolent,  and  selfish,  is  so  manifestly  be- 
yond the  mark  that  I  am  sure  Mr.  Harrison  will, 
on  reflection,  retract  his  affirmation.  Apart,  how- 
ever, from  this  particular  comment,  my  criticism 
of  Mr.  Harrison  would  be  this :  He  was  bound, 
I  maintain,  to  consider  the  Christian  theory  of 
life  as  a  tcholc  ;  and  not  to  dissociate  that  part 
of  it  which  concerns  eternity  from  that  part  of  it 
which  concerns  time. 

And  now  as  to  the  merits  of  this  Christian 
theory.  For  my  own  part,  I  am,  of  course,  pro- 
foundly convinced  that,  as  on  the  one  hand  it  is 
guaranteed  by  revelation,  so  on  the  other  hand  it 
is  that  which  alone  harmonizes  with  the  dicta  of 
reason  and  the  facts  of  experience,  so  far  as  it 
comes  into  contact  with  these.  Yet  I  admit  that 
various  very  plausible  objections  may  be  adduced 
against  its  truth.  Objectors  may  allege  very 
plausibly  that  by  the  mass  of  men  it  cannot  be 
carried  into  practice ;  that  it  disparages  most  un- 
duly the  importance  of  things  secular ;  that  it  is 
fatal  to  what  they  account  genuine  patriotism ; 
that  it  has  always  been,  and  will  always  be,  in- 
jurious to  the  progress  of  science;  above  all, 
that  it  puts  men  (as  one  may  express  it)  on  an 
entirely  wrong  scent,  and  leads  them  to  neglect 
many  pursuits  which,  as  being  sources  of  true 
enjoyment,  would  largely  enhance  the  pleasura- 
bleness  of  life.  All  this,  and  much  more,  may 
be  urged,  I  think,  by  antitheists  with  very  great 
superficial  plausibility ;  and  the  Christian  contro- 
versialist is  bound  on  occasion  steadily  to  con- 
front it.  But  there  is  one  accusation  which  has 
been  brought  against  this  Christian  theory  of  life 
— and  that  the  one  mainly  (as  would  seem)  felt 
by  Mr.  Harrison — which  to  me  seems  so  obvious- 
ly destitute  of  foundation  that  I  find  difficulty  in 
understanding  how  any  infidel  can  have  per- 
suaded himself  cf  its  truth :  I  mean  the  accusa- 
tion that  this  theory  is  a  selfish  one.  There  is  no 
need  of  here  attempting  a  philosophical  discus- 
sion on  the  respective  claims  of  what  are  now 
called  "  egoism  "  and  "  altruism : "  a  discussion 
in  itself  (no  doubt)  one  of  much  interest  and 
much  importance,  and  one,  moreover,  in  which  I 
should  be  quite  prepared  (were  it  necessary)  to 
engage.  Here,  however,  I  will  appeal,  not  to 
philosophy,  but  to  history.  In  the  records  of  the 
past  we  find  a  certain  series  of  men,  who  stand 
out  from  the  mass  of  their  brethren,  as  having 
preeminently  concentrated  their  energy  on  the 


34 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


love  and  service  of  God,  and  preeminently  looked 
away  from  earthly  hopes  to  the  prospect  of  their 
future  reward.  I  refer  to  the  saints  of  the 
Church.  And  it  is  a  plain  matter  of  fact,  which 
no  one  will  attempt  to  deny,  that  these  very  men 
stand  out  no  less  conspicuously  from  the  rest  in 
their  self-sacrificing  and  (as  we  ordinary  men  re- 
gard it)  astounding  labors  in  behalf  of  what  they 
believe  to  be  the  highest  interests  of  mankind. 

Before  I  conclude,  I  must  not  omit  a  brief 
comment  on  one  other  point,  because  it  is  the 
only  one  on  which  I  cannot  concur  with  Lord 
Blachford's  masterly  paper.  I  cannot  agree  with 
him  that  the  doctrine  of  human  immortality  fails 
of  being  supported  by  "  conclusive  reasoning." 
I  do  not,  of  course,  mean  that  the  dogma  of  the 
Beatific  Vision  is  discoverable  apart  from  revela- 
tion ;  but  I  do  account  it  a  truth  cognizable  with 
certitude  by  reason,  that  the  human  soul  is  natu- 
rally immortal,  and  that  retribution  of  one  kind  or 
another  will  be  awarded  us  hereafter,  according 
to  what  our  conduct  has  been  in  this  our  state  of 
probation.  Here,  however,  I  must  explain  my- 
self. When  theists  make  this  statement,  some- 
times they  are  thought  to  allege  that  human  im- 
mortality is  sufficiently  proved  by  phenomena  ; 
and  sometimes  they  are  thought  to  allege  that  it 
is  almost  intuitively  evident.  For  myself,  how- 
ever, I  make  neither  of  these  allegations.  I  hold 
that  the  truth  in  question  is  conclusively  estab- 
lished by  help  of  certain  premises;  and  that 
these  premises  themselves  can  previously  be 
known  with  absolute  certitude,  on  grounds  of 
reason  or  experience. 

They  are  such  as  these :  1.  There  exists  that 
Personal  Being,  infinite  in  all  perfections,  whom 
we  call  God.  2.  He  has  implanted  in  his  ra- 
tional creatures  the  sense  of  right  and  wrong ; 
the  knowledge  that  a  deliberate  perpetration  of 
certain  acts  intrinsically  merits  penal  retribution. 
3.  Correlatively,  he  has  conferred  freedom  on 
the  human  will;  or,  in  other  words,  has  made 
acts  of  the  human  will  exceptions  to  that  law 
of  uniform  sequence  which  otherwise  prevails 
throughout  the  phenomenal  world.1  4.  By  the 
habit  of  prayer  to  God  we  can  obtain  augmented 
strength  for  moral  action,  in  a  degree  which 
would  have  been  quite  incredible  antecedently  to 
experience.  5.  Various  portions  of  our  divinely 
given  nature  clearly  point  to  an  eternal  destiny. 
C.  The  conscious  self  or  ego  is  entirely  hetero- 
geneous to  the  material  world:  entirely  hetero- 

1  I  shall  not,  of  course,  be  understood  to  deny  the 
existence  and  frequency  of  miracles. 


geneous,  therefore,  to  that  palpable  body  of  ours 
which  is  dissolved  at  the  period  of  death. 

I  do  not  think  any  one  will  account  it  extrav- 
agant to  hold  that  the  doctrine  of  human  im- 
mortality is  legitimately  deducible  from  a  com- 
bination of  these  and  similar  truths.  The  anti- 
theist  will  of  course  deny  that  they  are  truths. 
Mr.  Greg,  who  has  himself  "  arrived  at  no  con- 
viction" on  the  subject  of  immortality,  yet  says 
that  considerations  of  the  same  kind  as  those 
which  I  have  enumerated  "must  be  decisive"  in 
favor  of  immortality  "to  all  to  whose  spirits 
communion  with  their  Father  is  the  most  abso- 
lute of  verities."  *  Nor  have  I  any  reason  to 
think  that  even  Mr.  Huxley  and  Mr.  Harrison,  if 
they  could  concede  my  premises,  would  demur 
to  my  conclusion. 

Mr.  FREDERIC  HARRISON1.— [I  have  now, 
not  so  much  to  close  a  symposium,  or  general  dis- 
cussion, as  to  reply  to  the  convergent  fire  of  nine 
separate  papers,  extending  over  more  than  fifty 
pages.  Neither  time,  nor  space,  nor  the  indul- 
gence of  the  reader,  would  enable  me  to  do  jus- 
tice to  the  weight  of  this  array  of  criticism, 
which  reaches  me  in  fragments  while  I  am  other- 
wise occupied  abroad.  I  will  ask  those  critics 
whom  I  have  not  been  able  to  notice  to  believe 
that  I  have  duly  considered  the  powerful  ap- 
peals they  have  addressed  to  me.  And  I  will 
ask  those  who  are  interested  in  this  question  to 
refer  to  the  original  papers  in  which  my  views 
were  stated.  And  I  will  only  add,  by  way  of 
reply,  the  following  remarks,  which  were,  for  the 
most  part,  written  and  printed,  while  I  had  noth- 
ing before  me  but  the  first  three  papers  in  this 
discussion.  They  contain  what  I  have  to  say  on 
the  theological,  the  metaphysical,  and  the  mate- 
rialist aspect  of  this  question.  For  the  rest,  I 
could  only  repeat  what  I  have  already  said  in  the 
two  original  essays.] 

Whether  the  preceding  discussion  has  given 
much  new  strength  to  the  doctrine  of  man's  im- 
material soul  and  future  existence  I  will  not  pre- 
tend to  decide.  But  I  cannot  feel  that  it  has 
shaken  the  reality  of  man's  posthumous  influence, 
my  chief  and  immediate  theme.  It  seemed  to 
me  that  the  time  had  come,  when,  seeing  how 
vague  and  hesitating  were  the  prevalent  beliefs 
on  this  subject,  it  was  most  important  to  remem- 
ber that,  from  a  purely  earthly  point  of  view, 
man  had  a  spiritual  nature,  ami  could  look  for- 
ward after  death  to  something  that  marked  him 
off  from  the  beasts  that  perish.     I  cannot  see 

1  See  his  letter  in  the  Spectator  of  August  25th. 


A  MODERN  "SYMPOSIUM." 


35 


that  what  I  urged  has  been  in  substance  dis- 
placed; though  much  criticism  (and  some  of  it 
of  a  verbal  kind)  has  been  directed  at  the  lan- 
guage which  I  used  of  others.  My  object  was  to 
try  if  this  life  could  not  be  made  richer ;  not  to 
destroy  the  dreams  of  another.  But  has  the 
old  doctrine  of  a  future  life  been  in  any  way 
strengthened  ?  Mr.  Hutton,  it  is  true,  has  a 
"personal  wish"  for  a  perpetuity  of  volition. 
Lord  Blachford  "believes  because  he  is  told." 
And  Prof.  Huxley  knows  of  no  evidence  that 
"such  a  soul  and  a  future  life  exist;"  aud  he 
seems  not  to  believe  in  thtm  at  all. 

Philosophical  discussion  must  languish  a  lit- 
tle, if,  when  we  ask  for  the  philosophical  grounds 
for  a  certain  belief,  we  find  one  philosopher  be- 
lieving because  he  has  a  "  personal  wish"  for  it, 
and  another  "  believing  because  he  is  told."  Mr. 
Hutton  says  that,  as  far  as  he  knows,  "the 
thoughts,  affections,  and  volitions,  are  not  likely 
to  perish  with  his  body."  Prof.  Huxley  seems 
to  think  it  just  as  likely  that  they  should.  Argu- 
ments are  called  for  to  enable  us  to  decide  be- 
tween these  two  authorities.  And  the  only  argu- 
ment we  have  hitherto  got  is  Mr.  Hutton's  "  per- 
sonal wish,"  and  Lord  Blachford's  ila  scriptum 
est.  I  confess  myself  unable  to  continue  an  argu- 
ment which  runs  into  believing  "  because  I  am 
told."  It  is  for  this  reason  that  the  lazzarone  at 
Naples  believes  in  the  blood  of  St.  Januarius. 

My  original  proposftions  may  be  stated  thus : 

1.  Philosophy  as  a  whole  (I  do  not  say  spe- 
cially biological  science)  has  established  a  func- 
tional relation  to  exist  between  every  fact  of 
thinking,  willing,  or  feeling,  on  the  one  side,  and 
some  molecular  change  in  the  body  on  the  other 
side. 

2.  This  relation  is  simply  one  of  correspond- 
ence between  moral  and  physical  facts,  not  one 
of  assimilation.  The  moral  fact  does  not  become 
a  physical  fact,  is  not  adequately  explained  by  it, 
and  must  be  mainly  studied  as  a  moral  fact,  by 
methods  applicable  to  morals — not  as  a  physical 
fact,  by  methods  applicable  to  physics. 

3.  The  moral  facts  of  human  life,  the  laws  of 
man's  mental,  moral,  and  affective  nature,  must 
consequently  be  studied,  as  they  have  always 
been  studied,  by  direct  observation  of  these 
facts ;  yet  the  correspondences,  specially  discov- 
ered by  biological  science,  between  man's  mind 
and  his  body,  must  always  be  kept  in  view. 
They  are  an  indispensable,  inseparable,  but  sub- 
ordinate part  of  moral  philosophy. 

4.  We  do  not  diminish  the  supreme  place  of 
the  spiritual  facts  in  life  and  in  philosophy  by 


admitting  these  spiritual  facts  to  have  a  relation 
with  molecular  and  organic  facts  in  the  human 
organism — provided  that  we  never  forget  how 
small  and  dependent  is  the  part  which  the  study 
of  the  molecular  and  organic  phenomena  must 
play  in  moral  and  social  science. 

5.  Those  whose  minds  have  been  trained  in 
the  modern  philosophy  of  law  cannot  understand 
what  is  meant  by  sensation,  thought,  and  energy, 
existing  without  any  basis  of  molecular  change ; 
and  to  talk  to  them  of  sensation,  thought,  and 
energy,  continuing  in  the  absence  of  any  mole- 
cules whatever,  is  precisely  such  a  contradiction 
in  terms  as  to  suppose  that  civilization  will  con- 
tinue in  the  absence  of  any  men  whatever. 

6.  Yet  man  is  so  constituted  as  a  social  be- 
ing that  the  energies  which  he  puts  out  in  life 
mould  the  minds,  characters,  and  habits,  of  his 
fellow-men ;  so  that  each  man's  life  is,  in  effect, 
indefinitely  prolonged  in  human  society.  This  is 
a  phenomenon  quite  peculiar  to  man  and  to  hu- 
man society,  and  of  course  depends  on  there  be- 
ing men  in  active  association  with  each  other. 
Physics  and  biology  can  teach  us  nothing  about 
it ;  and  physicists  and  biologists  may  very  easily 
forget  its  importance.  It  can  be  learned  only  by 
long  and  refined  observations  in  moral  and  men- 
tal philosophy  as  a  whole,  and  in  the  history  of 
civilization  as  a  whole. 

V.  Lastly,  as  a  corollary,  it  may  be  useful  to 
retain  the  words  soul  and  future  life  for  their  as- 
sociations ;  provided  we  make  it  clear  that  we 
mean  by  soul  the  combined  faculties  of  the  liv- 
ing organism,  and  by  future  life  the  subjective 
effect  of  each  man's  objective  life  on  the  actual 
lives  of  his  fellow-men. 

I.  Now,  I  find  in  Mr.  Hutton's  paper  hardly 
any  attempt  to  disprove  the  first  six  of  these 
propositions.  He  is  employed  for  the  most  part 
in  asserting  that  his  hypothesis  of  a  future  state 
is  a  more  agreeable  one  than  mine,  and  in  ear- 
nest complaints  that  I  should  call  his  view  of  a  fu- 
ture state  a  selfish  or  personal  hope.  As  to  the 
first,  I  will  only  remark  that  it  is  scarcely  a  ques- 
tion whether  his  notion  of  immortality  is  beauti- 
ful or  not,  but  whether  it  is  true.  If  there  is  no 
rational  ground  for  expecting  such  immortality 
to  be  a  solid  fact,  it  is  to  little  purpose  to  show 
us  what  a  sublime  idea  it  would  be  if  there  were 
anything  in  it.  As  to  the  second,  I  will  only  say 
that  I  do  not  call  his  notion  of  a  future  existence 
a  selfish  or  personal  hope.  In  the  last  paragraph 
of  my  second  paper  I  speak  with  respect  of  the 
opinion  of  those  who  look  forward  to  a  future  of 
moral  development  instead  of  to  an  idle  eternity 


36 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


of  psalm-singing.  My  language  as  to  the  selfish- 
ness of  the  vulgar  ideas  of  salvation  was  directed 
to  those  who  insist  that,  unless  they  are  to  feel  a 
continuance  of  pleasure,  they  do  not  care  for  any 
continuance  of  their  influence  at  all.  The  vulgar 
are  apt  to  say  that  what  they  desire  is  the  sense 
of  personal  satisfaction,  and,  if  they  cannot  have 
this,  they  care  for  nothing  else.  This,  I  maintain, 
is  a  selfish  and  debasing  idea.  It  is  the  common 
notion  of  the  popular  religion,  and  its  tendency 
to  concentrate  the  mind  on  a  merely  personal  sal- 
vation does  exert  an  evil  effect  on  practical  con- 
duct. I  once  heard  a  Scotch  preacher,  dilating 
on  the  narrowness  of  the  gate,  etc.,  exclaim,  "  0 
dear  brethren,  who  would  care  to  be  saved  in  a 
crowd?" 

I  do  not  say  this  of  the  life  of  grander  activi- 
ty in  which  Mr.  Hutton  believes,  and  which  Lord 
Blachford  so  eloquently  describes.  This  is  no 
doubt  a  fine  ideal,  and  I  will  not  say  other  than 
an  elevating  hope.  But  on  what  does  it  rest  ? 
Why  this  ideal  rather  than  any  other  ?  Each  of 
us  may  imagine,  as  I  said  at  the  outset,  his  own 
Elysian  fields,  or  his  own  mystic  rose.  But  is 
this  philosophy  ?  Is  it  even  religion  ?  Besides, 
there  is  this  other  objection  to  it :  It  is  not 
Christianity,  but  Neo-Christianity.  It  is  a  fanta- 
sia with  variations  on  the  orthodox  creed.  There 
is  not  a  word  of  the  kind  in  the  Bible.  Lord 
Blachford  says  he  believes  in  it  "  because  he  is 
told."  But  it  so  happens  that  he  is  not  told  this, 
at  any  rate  in  the  creeds  and  formularies  of  or- 
thodox faith.  If  this  view  of  future  life  is  to  rest 
entirely  on  revelation,  it  is  a  very  singular  thing 
that  the  Bible  is  silent  on  the  matter.  Whatever 
kind  of  future  ecstasy  may  be  suggested  in  some 
texts,  certain  it  is  that  such  a  glorified  energy  as 
Lord  Blachford  paints  in  glowing  colors  is  no- 
where described  in  the  Bible.  There  is  a  con- 
stant practice  nowadays,  when  the  popular  re- 
ligion is  criticised,  that  earnest  defenders  of  it 
come  forward  exclaiming :  "  Oh  !  that  is  only  the 
vulgar  notion  of  our  religion.  My  idea  of  the 
doctrine  is  so  and  so,"  something  which  the 
speaker  has  invented  without  countenance  from 
official  authority.  For  my  part,  I  hold  Christian- 
ity to  be  what  is  taught  in  average  churches  and 
chapels  to  the  millions  of  professing  Christians. 
And  I  say  it  is  a  very  serious  fact  when  philo- 
sophical defenders  of  religion  begin  by  repudiat- 
ing that  which  is  taught  in  average  pulpits. 

Perhaps  a  little  more  attention  to  my  actual 
words  might  have  rendered  unnecessary  the  com- 
plaints in  all  these  papers  as  to  my  language 
about  the  hopes  which  men  cherish  for  the  fu- 


ture. In  the  first  place  I  freely  admit  that  the 
hopes  of  a  grander  energy  in  heaven  are  not  open 
to  the  charge  of  vulgar  selfishness.  I  said  that 
they  are  unintelligible,  not  that  they  are  unwor- 
thy. They  are  unintelligible  to  those  who  are 
continually  alive  to  the  fact  I  have  placed  as  my 
first  proposition — that  every  moral  phenomenon  is 
in  functional  relation  with  some  physical  phenom- 
enon. To  those  who  deny  or  ignore  this  truth, 
there  is,  doubtless,  no  incoherence  in  all  the  ide- 
als so  eloquently  described  in  the  papers  of  Mr. 
Hutton  and  Lord  Blachford.  But,  once  get  this 
conception  as  the  substratum  of  your  entire  men- 
tal and  moral  philosophy,  and  it  is  as  incoherent 
to  talk  to  us  of  your  immaterial  development  as 
it  would  be  to  talk  of  obtaining  redness  without 
any  red  thing. 

I  will  try  to  explain  more  fully  why  this  idea 
of  a  glorified  activity  implies  a  contradiction  in 
terms  to  those  who  are  imbued  with  the  sense 
of  correspondence  between  physical  and  moral 
facts.  When  we  conceive  any  process  of  think- 
ing, we  call  up  before  us  a  complex  train  of  con- 
ditions :  objective  facts  outside  of  us,  or  the  re- 
vived impression  of  such  facts ;  the  molecular 
effect  of  these  facts  upon  certain  parts  of  our 
organism,  the  association  of  these  with  similar 
facts  recalled  by  memory,  an  elaborate  mechan- 
ism to  correlate  these  impressions,  an  unknown 
to  be  made  known,  and  a  difficulty  to  be  over- 
come. All  systematic  thought  implies  relations 
with  the  external  world  present  or  recalled,  and 
it  also  implies  some  shortcoming  in  our  powers 
of  perfecting  those  relations.  When  we  medi- 
tate, it  is  on  a  basis  of  facts  wdiich  we  are  ob- 
serving, or  have  observed  and  are  now  recalling, 
and  with  a  view  to  get  at  some  result  which  baf- 
fles our  direct  observation  and  hinders  some 
practical  purpose. 

The  same  holds  good  of  our  moral  energy. 
Ecstasy  and  mere  adoration  exclude  energy  of 
action.  Moral  development  implies  difficulties  to 
be  overcome,  qualities  balanced  against  one  an- 
other under  opposing  conditions,  this  or  that  ap- 
petite tempted,  this  or  that  instinct  tested  by 
proof.  Moral  development  does  not  grow  like  a 
fungus  ;  it  is  a  continual  struggle  in  surrounding 
conditions  of  a  specific  kind,  and  an  active  put- 
ting forth  of  a  variety  of  practical  faculties  in 
the  midst  of  real  obstacles. 

So,  too,  of  the  affectjpns :  they  equally  im- 
ply conditions.  Sympathy  does  not  spurt  up 
like  a  fountain  in  the  air ;  it  implies  beings  in 
need  of  help,  evils  to  be  alleviated,  a  fellowship 
of  giving  and  taking,  the  sense  of  protecting  and 


A  MODERN  "SYMPOSIUM." 


37 


being  protected,  a  pity  for  suffering,  an  adniira-  ' 
tion  of  power,  goodness,  and  truth.     All  of  these 
imply  an  external  world  to  act  in,  human  beings 
as  objects,  and  human  life  under  human  condi- 
tions. 

Now,  all  these  conditions  are  eliminated  from 
the  orthodox  ideal  of  a  future  state.  There  are 
to  be  no  physical  impressions,  no  material  diffi- 
culties, no  evil,  no  toil,  no  struggle,  no  human 
beings,  and  no  human  objects.  The  only  condi- 
tion is  a  complete  absence  of  all  conditions,  or 
all  conditions  of  which  we  have  any  experience. 
And  we  say,  we  cannot  imagine  what  you  mean 
by  your  intensified  sympathy,  your  broader 
thought,  your  infinitely  varied  activity,  when  you 
begin  by  postulating  the  absence  of  all  that 
makes  sympathy,  thought,  and  activity  possible, 
all  that  makes  life  really  noble. 

A  mystical  and  inane  ecstasy  is  an  appropri- 
ate ideal  for  this  paradise  of  negations,  and  this 
is  the  orthodox  view  ;  but  it  is  not  a  high  view. 
A  glorified  existence  of  greater  activity  and  de- 
velopment may  be  a  high  view,  but  it  is  a  con- 
tradiction in  terms ;  exactly,  I  say,  as  if  you 
were  to  talk  of  a  higher  civilization  without  any 
human  beings.  But  this  is  simply  a  metaphysi- 
cal after-thought  to  escape  from  a  moral  dilemma. 
Mr.  Hutton  is  surely  mistaken  in  saying  that 
Positivists  have  forgotten  that  Christians  ever 
had  any  meaning  in  their  hopes  of  a  "  beatific 
vision."  He  must  know  that  Dante  and  Thomas 
a  Kempis  form  the  religious  books  of  Positivists, 
and  they  are,  with  some  other  manuals  of  Catho- 
lic theology,  among  the  small  number  of  volumes 
which  Comte  recommended  for  constant  use. 
We  can  see  in  the  celestial  "  visions  "  of  a  mys- 
tical and  unscientific  age  much  that  was  beauti- 
ful in  its  time,  though  not  the  highest  product 
even  of  theology.  But  in  our  day  these  visions 
of  paradise  have  lost  what  moral  value  they  had, 
while  the  progress  of  philosophy  has  made  them 
incompatible  with  our  modern  canons  of  thought. 

Kr.  Hutton  supposes  me  to  object  to  any  con- 
tinuance of  sensation  as  an  evil  in  itself.  My 
objection  was  not  that  consciousness  should  be 
prolonged  in  immortality,  but  that  nothing  else 
but  consciousness  should  be  prolonged.  All 
real  human  life,  energy,  thought,  and  active  af- 
fection, are  to  be  made  impossible  in  your  celes- 
tial paradise,  but  you  insist  on  retaining  con- 
sciousness. To  retain  the  power  of  feeling, 
while  all  means  and  objects  are  taken  away  from 
thinking,  all  power  of  acting,  all  opportunity  of 
cultivating  the  faculties  of  sympathy  are  stifled  : 
this  seems  to  me  something  else  than  a  good. 


It  would  seem  to  me  that  simply  to  be  conscious, 
and  yet  to  lie  thoughtless,  inactive,  irresponsive, 
with  every  faculty  of  a  man  paralyzed  within 
you,  as  if  by  that  villainous  drug  which  produces 
torpor  while  it  intensifies  sensation — such  a  con- 
sciousness as  this  must  be  a  very  place  of  tor- 
ment. 

I  think  some  contradictions,  which  Mr.  Hut- 
ton supposes  he  detects  in  my  paper,  are  not  very 
hard  to  reconcile.  I  admitted  that  death  is  an 
evil,  it  seems ;  but  I  spoke  of  our  posthumous 
activity  as  a  higher  kind  of  influence.  We  might 
imagine,  of  course,  a  Utopia,  with  neither  suffer- 
ing, waste,  nor  loss  ;  and  compared  with  such  a 
world,  the  world,  as  we  know  it,  is  full  of  evils, 
of  which  death  is  obviously  one.  But  relatively, 
in  such  a  world  as  alone  we  know,  death  be- 
comes simply  a  law  of  organized  Nature,  from 
which  we  draw  some  of  our  guiding  motives  of 
conduct.  In  precisely  the  same  way  the  neces- 
sity of  toil  is  an  evil  in  itself;  but,  with  man  and 
his  life  as  we  know  them,  we  draw  from  it  some 
of  our  highest  moral  energies.  The  grandest 
qualities  of  human  nature,  such  as  we  know  it  at 
least,  would  become  forever  impossible  if  Labor 
and  Death  were  not  the  law  of  life. 

Mr.  Hutton  again  takes  but  a  pessimist  view 
of -life  when  he  insists  how  much  of  our  activity 
is  evil,  and  how  questionable  is  the  future  of  the 
race.  I  am  no  pessimist,  and  I  believe  in  a  prov- 
idential control  over  all  human  actions  by  the 
great  Power  of  Humanity,  which  indeed  brings 
good  out  of  evil,  and  assures,  at  least  for  some 
thousands  of  centuries,  a  certain  progress  toward 
the  higher  state.  Pessimism,  as  to  the  essential 
dignity  of  man  and  the  steady  development  of  his 
race,  is  one  of  the  surest  marks  of  the  enervating 
influence  of  this  dream  of  a  celestial  glory.  If  I 
called  it  as  wild  a  desire  as  to  go  roving  through 
space  in  a  comet,  it  is  because  I  can  attach  no 
meaning  to  a  human  life  to  be  prolonged  without 
a  human  frame  and  a  human  world  ;  and  it  seems 
to  me  as  rational  to  talk  of  becoming  an  angel  as 
to  talk  of  becoming  an  ellipse. 

By  "  duties  "  of  the  world  beyond  the  grave,  I 
meant  the  duties  which  are  imposed  on  us  in  life, 
by  the  certainty  that  our  action  must  continue  to 
have  an  indefinite  effect.  The  phrase  may  be  in- 
elegant, but  I  do  not  think  the  meaning  is  ob- 
scure. 

II.  I  cannot  agree  with  Lord  Blachford  that 
I  have  fallen  into  any  confusion  between  a  sub- 
stance and  an  attribute.  I  am  quite  aware  that 
the  word  "  soul "  has  been  hitherto  used  for 
some  centuries  as  an  entity.     And  I  proposed  to 


38 


THE  POPULAR  SCIEXCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


retain  the  term  for  an  attribute.  It  is  a  very 
common  process  in  the  history  of  thought.  Elec- 
tricity, life,  heat,  were  once  supposed  to  be  sub- 
stances. We  now  very  usefully  retain  these 
words  for  a  set  of  observed  conditions  or  quali- 
ties. 

I  agree  with  Mr.  Spencer  that  the  unity  of  the 
social  organism  is  quite  as  complete  as  that  of 
the  individual  organism.  I  do  not  contuse  the 
two  kinds  of  unity ;  but  I  say  that  man  is  in  no 
important  sense  a  unit  that  society  is  not  also  a 
unit. 

With  regard  to  the  "  percipient "  and  the 
"perceptible"  I  cannot  follow  Lord  Blachford. 
He  speaks  a  tongue  that  I  do  not  understand. 
I  have  no  means  of  dividing  the  universe  into 
"  percipients  "  and  "  perceptibles."  I  know  no 
reason  why  a  "  percipient  "  should  not  be  a  "  per- 
ceptible," none  why  I  should  not  be  "  percepti- 
ble," and  none  why  beings  about  me  should  not 
be  "  perceptible."  I  think  we  are  all  perfectly 
"  perceptible " —  indeed,  some  of  us  are  more 
"  perceptible  "  than  "  percipient " — though  I  can- 
not say  that  Lord  Blachford  is  always  "  percepti- 
ble "  to  me.  And  how  does  my  being  "  percepti- 
ble," or  not  being  "perceptible,"  prove  that  I 
have  an  immortal  soul  ?  Is  a  dog  "  perceptible," 
is  he  "  percipient  ?  "  Has  he  not  some  of  the 
qualities  of  a  "  percipient,"  and,  if  so,  has  he  an 
immortal  soul  ?  Is  an  ant,  a  tree,  a  bacterium, 
"  percipient,"  and  has  any  of  these  an  immortal 
soul :  for  I  find  Lord  Blachford  declaring  there 
is  an  "  ineradicable  difference  between  the  mo- 
tions of  a  material  and  the  sensations  of  a  living 
being,"  as  if  the  animal  world  were  "  percipient," 
and  the  inorganic  "  perceptible  ?  "  But  surely  in 
the  sensations  of  a  living  being  the  animal  world 
must  be  included.  Where  does  the  vegetable 
world  come  in  ? 

I  used  the  word  "  organism  "  advisedly,  when 
I  s:.id  that  will,  thought,  and  affection,  are  func- 
tions of  a  living  organism.  I  decline  exactly  to 
localize  the  organ  of  any  function  of  mind  or  will. 
When  I  am  asked,  What  are  we?  I  reply  we  are 
men.  When  I  am  asked,  Are  ice  our  bodies  ?  I 
say  no,  nor  are  we  our  minds.  Have  we  no  sense 
of  personality,  of  unity  ?  I  am  asked.  I  say  cer- 
tainly ;  it  is  an  acquired  result  of  our  nervous  or- 
ganization, liable  to  be  interrupted  by  derange- 
ments of  that  nervous  organization.  What  is  it 
that  makes  us  think  and  feel  ?  The  facts  of  our 
human  nature ;  I  cannot  get  behind  this,  and  I 
need  no  further  explanation.  We  are  men,  and 
can  do  what  men  can  do.  I  say  the  tangible  col- 
lection of  organs  known  as  a  "  man "  (not  the 


consensus  or  the  condition,  but  the  man)  thinks, 
wills,  and  feels,  just  as  much  as  that  visible  or- 
ganism lives  and  grows.  We  do  not  say  that  this 
or  that  ganglion  in  particular  lives  and  grows ; 
we  say  the  man  grows.  It  is  as  easy  to  me  to 
imagine  that  we  shall  grow  fifteen  feet  high,  when 
we  have  no  body,  as  that  we  shall  grow  in  knowl- 
edge, goodness,  activity,  etc.,  etc.,  etc.,  when  we 
have  no  organs.  And  the  absence  of  all  molecu- 
lar attributes  would  be,  I  should  think,  particu- 
larly awkward  in  that  life  of  cometary  motion  in 
the  interstellar  spaces  with  which  Lord  Blachford 
threatens  us.     But,  as  the  poet  says : 

"  Trasumanar  significar  per  verba 
Non  si  porria  " — 

"If"  says  he,  "  practical  duties  are  necessary  for 
the  perfection  of  life,"  we  can  take  a  little  inter- 
stellar exercise.  Why,  practical  duties  are  the 
sum  and  substance  of  life ;  and  life  which  does 
not  centre  in  practical  duties  is  not  life,  but  a 
trance. 

Lord  Blachford,  who  is  somewhat  punctilious 
in  terms,  asks  me  what  I  consider  myself  to  un- 
derstand "by  the  incorporation  of  a  consensus 
of  faculties  with  a  glorious  future."  Well,  it  so 
happens  that  I  did  not  use  that  phrase.  I  have 
never  spoken  of  an  immortal  soul  anywhere,  nor 
do  I  use  the  word  soul  of  any  but  the  living  man. 
I  said  a  man  might  look  forward  to  incorporation 
with  the  future  of  his  race,  explaining  that  to 
mean  his  "  posthumous  activity."  And  I  think 
at  any  rate  the  phrase  is  quite  as  reasonable  as 
to  say  that  I  look  forward,  as  Mr.  Hutton  does, 
to  a  "  union  with  God."  What  does  Mr.  Hntton, 
or  Lord  Blachford,  understand  himself  to  mean 
by  that  ? 

Surely  Lord  Blachford's  epigram  about  the  fid- 
dle and  the  tune  is  hardly  fortunate.  Indeed,  that 
exactly  expresses  what  I  find  faulty  in  the  view  of 
himself  and  the  theologians.  He  thinks  the  tune 
will  go  on  playing  when  the  fiddle  is  broken  up 
and  burned.  I  say  nothing  of  the  kind.  I  do  not 
say  the  man  will  continue  to  exist  after  death.  I 
simply  say  that  his  influence  will ;  that  other  men 
will  do  and  think  what  he  taught  them  to  do  or 
to  think.  Just  so,  a  general  would  be  said  to 
win  a  battle  which  he  planned  and  directed,  even 
if  he  had  been  killed  in  an  early  part  of  it. 
What  is  there  of  fiddle  and  tune  about  this  ?  I 
certainly  think  that  when  Mozart  and  Beethoven 
have  left  us  great  pieces  of  music,  it  signifies  lit- 
tle to  art  if  the  actual  fiddle  or  even  the  actual 
composer  continue  to  exist  or  not.  I  never  said 
the  tune  would  exist.  I  said  that  men  would 
remember  it  and  repeat  it.     I  must  thank  Lord 


A  MODERN  "SYMPOSIUM." 


39 


Blachford  for  a  happy  illustration  of  my  own 
meaning.  But  it  is  he  who  expects  the  tune  to 
exist  without  the  fiddle.  /  say,  you  can't  have  a 
tunc  without  a  fiddle,  nor  a  fiddle  without  wood. 

III.  I  luve  reserved  the  criticism  of  Prof. 
Huxley,  because  it  lies  apart  from  the  principal 
discussion,  and  turns  mainly  on  some  incidental 
remarks  of  mine  on  "  biological  reasoning  about 
spiritual  things." 

I  note  three  points  at  the  outset.  Prof.  Hux- 
ley does  not  himself  pretend  to  any  evidence  for 
a  theological  soul  and  future  life.  Again,  he 
does  not  dispute  the  account  I  give  of  the  func- 
tional relation  of  physical  and  moral  facts.  He 
seems  surprised  that  I  should  understand  it,  not 
being  a  biologist ;  but  he  is  kind  enough  to  say 
that  my  statement  may  pass.  Lastly,  he  does 
not  deny  the  reality  of  man's  posthumous  activ- 
ity. Now,  these  three  are  the  main  purposes  of 
my  argument ;  and  in  these  I  have  Prof.  Huxley 
with  me.  He  is  no  more  of  a  theologian  than 
I  am.  Indeed,  he  is  only  scandalized  that  I 
should  see  any  good  in  priests  at  all.  He  might 
have  said  more  plainly  that,  when  the  man  is 
dead,  there  is  an  end  of  the  matter.  But  this 
clearly  is  his  opinion,  and  he  intimates  as  much 
in  his  paper.  Only  he  would  say  no  more  about 
it,  bury  the  carcass,  and  end  the  tale,  leaving  all 
thoughts  about  the  future  to  those  whose  faith  is 
more  robust  and  whose  hopes  are  richer ;  by 
which  I  understand  him  to  mean  persons  weak 
enough  to  listen  to  the  priests. 

Now,  this  does  not  satisfy  me.  I  call  it  ma- 
terialism, for  it  exaggerates  the  importance  of 
the  physical  facts,  and  ignores  that  of  the  spir- 
itual facts.  And  the  object  of  my  paper  was 
simply  this  :  that  as  the  physical  facts  are  daily 
growing  quite  irresistible,  it  is  of  urgent  impor- 
tance to  place  the  spiritual  facts  on  a  sound  sci- 
entific basis  at  once.  Prof.  Huxley  implies  that 
his  business  is  with  the  physical  facts,  and  the 
spiritual  facts  must  take  care  of  themselves.  I 
cannot  agree  with  him.  That  is  precisely  the 
difference  between  us.  The  spiritual  facts  of 
man's  nature  are  the  business  of  all  who  under- 
take to  denounce  priestcraft,  and  especially  of 
those  who  preach  "  Lay  Sermons." 

Prof.  Huxley  complains  that  I  should  join  in 
the  view-halloo  against  biological  science.  Now, 
I  never  have  supposed  that  biological  science 
was  in  the  positio::  of  the  hunted  fox.  I  thought 
it  was  the  hunter,  booted  and  spurred  and  riding 
over  us  all,  with  Prof.  Huxley  leaping  the  most 
terrific  gates  and  cracking  his  whip  with  intense 
gusto.     As   to   biological  science,  it  is  the  last 


thing  that  I  should  try  to  run  down  ;  and  I  must 
protest,  with  all  sincerity,  that  I  wrote  without  a 
thought  of  Prof.  Huxley  at  all.  He  insists  on 
knowing,  in  the  most  peremptory  way,  of  whom 
I  was  thinking,  as  if  I  were  thinking  of  him. 
Of  whom  else  could  I  be  thinking,  forsooth,  when 
1  spoke  of  biology  ?  Well !  I  did  not  bite  my 
thumb  at  him,  but  I  bit  my  thumb. 

Seriously,  I  was  not  writing  at  Prof.  Huxley, 
or  I  should  have  named  him.  I  have  a  very 
great  admiration  for  his  work  in  biology  ;  I  have 
learned  much  from  him ;  I  have  followed  his 
courses  of  lectures  years  and  years  ago,  and 
have  carefully  studied  his  books.  If,  in  ques- 
tions which  belong  to  sociology,  morals,  and  to 
general  philosophy,  he  seems  to  me  hardly  an 
authority,  why  need  we  dispute  ?  Dog  should 
not  bite  dog ;  and  he  and  I  have  many  a  wolf 
that  we  both  would  keep  from  the  fold. 

But,  if  I  did  not  mean  Prof.  Huxley,  whom 
did  I  mean  ?  Now,  my  paper,  I  think  clearly 
enough,  alluded  to  two  very  different  kinds  of 
materialism.  There  is  systematic  materialism, 
and  there  is  the  vague  materialism.  The  emi- 
nent example  of  the  first  is  the  unlucky  remark 
of  Cabanis  that  the  brain  secretes  thought,  as 
the  liver  secretes  bile  ;  and  there  is  much  of  the 
same  sort  in  many  foreign  theories — in  the  tone 
of  Moleschott,  Biichner,  and  the  like.  The  most 
distinct  examples  of  it  in  this  country  are  found 
among  phrenologists,  spiritualists,  some  mental 
pathologists,  and  a  few  communist  visionaries. 
The  far  wider,  vaguer,  and  more  dangerous  school 
of  materialism  is  found  in  a  multitude  of  quar- 
ters— in  all  those  who  insist  exclusively  on  the 
physical  side  of  moral  phenomena— all,  in  short, 
who,  to  use  Prof.  Huxley's  phrase,  are  employed 
in  "  building  up  a  physical  theory  of  moral  phe- 
nomena." Those  who  confuse  moral  and  physical 
phenomena  are  indeed  few.  Those  who  exag- 
gerate the  physical  side  of  phenomena  are  many. 

Now,  though  I  did  not  allude  to  Prof.  Huxley 
in  what  I  wrote,  his  criticism  convinces  me  that 
he  is  sometimes  at  least  found  among  these  last. 
His  paper  is  an  excellent  illustration  of  the  very 
error  which  I  condemned.  The  issue  between  us 
is  this :  We  both  agree  that  every  mental  and 
moral  fact  is  in  functional  relation  with  some 
molecular  fact.  So  far  we  are  entirely  on  the 
same  side,  as  against  all  forms  of  theological  and 
metaphysical  doctrine  which  conceive  the  possi- 
bility of  human  feeling  without  a  human  body. 
But,  then,  says  Prof.  Huxley,  if  I  can  trace 
the  molecular  facts  which  are  the  antecedents 
of  the  mental  aud  moral  facts,  I  have  explained 


40 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


these  mental  and  moral  facts.  That  I  deny ; 
just  as  much  as  I  should  deny  that  a  chem- 
ical analysis  of  the  body  could  ever  lead  to  an 
explanation  of  the  physical  organism.  Then, 
says  the  professor,  when  I  have  traced  out  the 
molecular  facts,  I  have  built  up  a  physical  theory 
of  moral  phenomena.  That  again  I  deny.  I  say 
there  is  no  such  thing,  or  no  rational  thing,  that 
can  be  called  a  physical  theory  of  moral  phenom- 
ena, any  more  than  there  is  a  moral  theory 
of  physical  phenomena.  What  sort  of  a  thing 
would  be  a  physical  theory  of  history — history 
explained  by  the  influence  of  climate  or  the  like  ? 
The  issue  between  us  centres  in  this  :  I  say  that 
the  physical  side  of  moral  phenomena  bears 
about  the  same  part  in  the  moral  sciences  that 
the  facts  about  climate  bear  in  the  sum  of  human 
civilization.  And  that  to  look  to  the  physical 
facts  as  an  explanation  of  the  moral,  or  even  as 
an  independent  branch  of  the  study  of  moral 
facts,  is  perfectly  idle  ;  just  as  it  would  be  if  a 
mere  physical  geographer  pretended  to  give  us, 
out  of  his  geography,  a  climatic  philosophy  of 
history.  Yet,  Prof.  Huxley  has  not  been  deterred 
from  the  astounding  paradox  of  proposing  to 
us  a  physiological  theory  of  religion.  He  tells 
us  how  "the  religious  feelings  maybe  brought 
within  the  range  of  physiological  inquiry."  And 
he  proposes  as  a  problem — "  What  diseased  viscus 
may  have  been  responsible  for  the  'priest  in  ab- 
solution ? '"  I  will  drop  all  epithets  ;  but  I  must 
say  that  I  call  that  materialism,  and  materialism 
not  very  nice  of  its  kind.  One  might  as  reason- 
ably propose  as  a  problem — What  barometrical 
readings  are  responsible  for  the  British  Constitu- 
tion ?  and  suggest  a  congress  of  meteorologists 
to  do  the  work  of  Hallam,  Stubbs,  and  Freeman. 
No  doubt  there  is  some  connection  between  the 
House  of  Commons  and  the  English  climate,  and 
so  there  is  no  doubt  some  connection  between 
religious  theories  and  physical  organs.  But  to 
talk  of  "bringing  religion  within  the  range  of 
physiological  inquiry1'  is  simply  to  stare  through 
the  wrong  end  of  the  telescope,  and  to  turn  phi- 
losophy and  science  upside  down.  Ah  !  Prof. 
Huxley,  this  is  a  bad  day's  work  for  scientific 
progress — 

77  Kev  yrjBrio'ai  Xlpla/j-os,  TIpid^oi6  re  ira7oes. 
Pope  Pius  and  his  people  will  be  glad  when  they 
read  that  fatal  sentence  of  yours.  When  I  com- 
plained of  the  "  attempt  to  dispose  of  the  deep- 
est moral  truths  of  human  nature  on  a  bare  physi- 
cal or  physiological  basis,"  I  could  not  have  ex- 
pected to  read  such  an  illustration  of  my  mean- 
ing by  Prof.  Huxley. 


Perhaps  he  will  permit  me  to  inform  him 
(since  that  is  the  style  which  he  affects)  that 
there  once  was — and,  indeed,  we  may  say  still  is 
— an  institution  called  the  Catholic  Church  ;  that 
it  has  had  a  long  and  strange  history,  and  subtile 
influences  of  all  kinds  ;  and  I  venture  to  think 
that  Prof.  Huxley  may  learn  more  about  the 
priest  in  absolution  by  a  few  weeks'  study  of  the 
Catholic  system  than  by  inspecting  the  diseased 
viscera  of  the  whole  human  race.  When  Prof. 
Huxley's  historical  and  religious  studies  "  have 
advanced  so  far  as  to  enable  him  to  explain  "  the 
history  of  Catholicism,  I  think  he  will  admit 
that  "  priestcraft "  cannot  well  be  made  a  chap- 
ter in  a  physiological  manual.  It  may  be  cheap 
pulpit  thunder,  but  this  idea  of  his  of  inspecting 
a  "  diseased  viscus  "  is  precisely  what  I  meant 
by  "  biological  reasoning  about  spiritual  things." 
And  I  stand  by  it,  that  it  is  just  as  false  in  science 
as  it  is  deleterious  in  morals.  It  is  an  attempt 
(I  will  not  say  arrogant,  I  am  inclined  to  use  an- 
other epithet)  to  explain,  by  physical  observa- 
tions, what  can  only  be  explained  by  the  most 
subtile  moral,  sociological,  and  historical  observa- 
tions. It  is  to  think  you  can  find  the  golden  eggs 
by  cutting  up  the  goose,  instead  of  watching  the 
goose  to  see  where  she  lays  the  eggs. 

I  am  quite  aware  that  Prof.  Huxley  has  else- 
where formulated  his  belief  that  biology  is  the 
science  which  "  includes  man  and  all  his  ways 
and  works."  If  history,  law,  politics,  morals, 
and  political  economy,  are  merely  branches  of 
biology,  we  shall  want  new  dictionaries  indeed ; 
and  biology  will  embrace  about  four-fifths  of  hu- 
man knowledge.  But  this  is  not  a  question  of 
language ;  for  we  here  have  Prof.  Huxley  actual- 
ly bringing  religion  within  the  range  of  physio- 
logical inquiry,  and  settling  its  problems  by  ref- 
erences to  "diseased  viscus."  But  the  differences 
between  us  are  a  long  story ;  aud  since  Prof. 
Huxley  has  sought  me  out,  and  in  somewhat 
monitorial  tone  has  proposed  to  set  me  right,  I 
will  take  an  early  occasion  to  try  and  set  forth 
what  I  find  paradoxical  iu  his  notions  of  the  rela- 
tions of  biology  and  philosophy. 

I  note  a  few  special  points  between  us,  and  I 
have  done.  Prof.  Huxley  is  so  well  satisfied 
with  his  idea  of  a  "  physical  theory  of  moral 
phenomena,"  that  he  constantly  attributes  that 
sense  to  my  words,  though  I  carefully  guarded 
my  language  from  such  a  construction.  Thus  he 
quotes  from  me  a  passage  beginning,  "  Man  is 
one,  however  compound,"  but  he  breaks  off  the 
quotation  just  as  I  go  on  to  speak  of  the  direct 
analysis  of  mental  and  moral  faculties  by  mental 


A  M0DER2T  "SYMPOSIUM." 


41 


and  moral  science,  not  by  physiological  science. 
I  say  :  "  philosophy  and  science "  have  accom- 
plished explanations  ;  I  do  not  say  biology  ;  and 
the  biological  part  of  the  explanation  is  a  small 
and  subordinate  part  of  the  whole.  I  do  not  say 
that  the  correspondence  between  physical  and 
moral  phenomena  is  an  explanation  of  the  human 
organism.  Prof.  Huxley  says  that,  and  I  call  it 
materialism.  Nor  do  I  say  that  "spiritual  sen- 
sibility is  a  bodily  function."  I  say,  it  is  a  moral 
function ;  and  I  complain  that  Prof.  Huxley  ig- 
nores the  distinction  between  moral  and  physical 
functions  of  the  human  organism. 

As  to  the  distinction  between  anatomy  and 
physiology,  if  he  will  look  at  my  words  again,  he 
will  see  that  I  use  these  terms  with  perfect  accu- 
racy. Six  lines  below  the  passage  he  quotes,  I 
speak  of  the  human  mechanism  being  only  ex- 
plained by  a  "  complete  anatomy  and  biology,'1'' 
showing  that  anatomy  is  merely  one  of  the  in- 
struments of  biology. 

He  might  be  surprised  to  hear  that  he  does 
not  himself  give  an  accurate  definition  of  physi- 
ology. But  so  it  is.  He  says,  "  Physiology  is 
the  science  which  treats  of  the  functions  of  the 
living  organism."  Not  so,  for  the  finest  spiritual 
sensibility  is,  as  Prof.  Huxley  admits,  a  function 
of  a  living  organism  ;  and  physiology  is  not  the 
science  which  treats  of  the  spiritual  sensibilities. 
They  belong  to  moral  science.  There  are  mental, 
moral,  affective  functions  of  the  living  organism  ; 
and  they  are  not  within  the  province  of  physiol- 
ogy. Physiology  is  the  science  which  treats  of 
the  bodily  functions  of  the  living  organism ;  as 
Prof.  Huxley  says  in  his  admirable  "  Elementary 
Lessons,"  it  deals  with  the  facts  "  concerning  the 
action  of  the  body.''''  I  complain  of  the  pseudo- 
science  which  drops  that  distinction  for  a  min- 
ute. He  says,  "  The  explanation  of  a  physio- 
logical function  is  the  demonstration  of  the  con- 
nection of  that  function  with  the  molecular  state 
of  the  organ  which  exerts  the  function."  That  I 
dispute.  It  is  only  a  small  part  of  the  explana- 
tion. The  explanation  substantially  is  the  dem- 
onstration of  the  laws  and  all  the  conditions  of 
the  function.  The  explanation  of  the  circulation 
of  the  blood  is  the  demonstration  of  all  its  laws, 
modes,  and  conditions ;  and  the  molecular  ante- 
cedents of  it  are  but  a  small  part  of  the  explana- 
tion. The  principal  part  relates  to  the  molar 
(and  not  the  molecular)  action  of  the  heart  and 
other  organs.  "  The  function  of  motion  is  ex- 
plained," he  says,  "  when  the  movements  of  the 
living  body  are  found  to  have  certain  molecular 
changes  for  their  invariable  antecedents."    Noth- 


ing of  the  kind.  The  function  of  bodily  motion 
is  explained  when  the  laws,  modes,  and  condi- 
tions, of  that  motion  are  demonstrated  ;  and  mo- 
lecular antecedents  are  but  a  part  of  these  condi- 
tions. The  main  part  of  the  explanation,  again, 
deals  with  molar,  not  molecular,  states  of  certain 
organs.  "  The  function  of  sensation  is  explained,'' 
says  Prof.  Huxley,  "  when  the  molecular  changes, 
which  are  the  invariable  antecedents  of  sensa- 
tions, are  discovered."  Not  a  bit  of  it.  The 
function  of  sensation  is  only  explained  when  the 
laws  and  conditions  of  sensation  are  demonstrated. 
And  the  main  part  of  this  demonstration  will 
come  from  direct  observation  of  the  sensitive  or- 
ganism organically,  and  by  no  molecular  discov- 
ery whatever.  All  this  is  precisely  the  material- 
ism which  I  condemn  ;  the  fancying  that  one  sci- 
ence can  do  the  work  of  another,  and  that  any 
molecular  discovery  can  dispense  with  direct  study 
of  organisms  in  their  organic,  social,  mental,  and 
moral  aspects.  Will  Prof.  Huxley  say  that  the 
function  of  this  Symposium  is  explained,  when 
we  have  chemically  analyzed  the  solids  and 
liquids  which  are  now  effecting  molecular  change 
in  our  respective  digestive  apparatus  ?  If  so,  let 
us  ask  the  butler  if  he  cannot  produce  us  a  less 
heady  and  more  mellow  vintage.  What  irritated 
viscus  is  responsible  for  the  materialist  in  philos- 
ophy? We  shall  all  philosophize  aright,  if  our 
friend  Tyndall  can  hit  for  us  the  exact  chemical 
formula  for  our  drinks. 

It  does  not  surprise  me,  so  much  as  it  might, 
to  find  Prof.  Huxley  slipping  into  really  inaccu- 
rate definitions  in  physiology,  when  I  remember 
that  hallucination  of  his  about  questions  of  sci- 
ence all  becoming  questions  of  molecular  physics. 
The  molecular  facts  are  valuable  enough  ;  but  we 
are  getting  molecular-mad,  if  we  forget  that  molec- 
ular facts  have  only  a  special  part  in  physiology, 
and  hardly  any  part  at  all  in  sociology,  history, 
morals,  and  politics ;  though  I  quite  agree  that 
there  is  no  single  fact  in  social,  moral,  or  mental 
philosophy,  that  has  not  its  correspondence  in 
some  molecular  fact,  if  we  only  could  know  it. 
All  human  things  undoubtedly  depend  on,  and 
are  certainly  connected  with,  the  general  laws  of 
the  solar  system.  And  to  say  that  questions  of 
human  organisms,  much  less  of  human  society, 
tend  to  become  questions  of  molecular  physics,  is 
exactly  the  kind  of  confusion  it  would  be,  if  I 
said  that  questions  of  history  tend  to  become 
questions  of  astronomy,  and  that  the  more  refined 
calculations  of  planetary  movements  in  the  future 
will  explain  to  us  the  causes  of  the  English  Rebel- 
lion and  the  French  Revolution. 


42 


THE  POPULAR  SCIEXCE  MOXTELY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


There  is  an  odd  instance  of  this  confusion  of 
thought  at  the  close  of  Prof.  Huxley's  paper, 
which  still  more  oddly  Lord  Blachford,  who  is  so 
strict  in  his  logic,  cites  with  approval.  "  Has  a 
stone  a  future  life,"  says  Prof.  Huxley,  "because 
the  wavelets  it  may  cause  in  the  sea  persist 
through  space  and  time  ?  "  Well !  has  a  stone  a 
life  at  all  ?  because,  if  it  has  no  present  life,  I 
cannot  see  why  it  should  have  a  future  life.  How 
is  any  reasoning  about  the  inorganic  world  to  help 
us  here  in  reasoning  about  the  organic  world  ? 
Prof.  Huxley  and  Lord  Blachford  might  as  well 
ask  if  a  stone  is  capable  of  civilization  because  I 
said  that  man  was.  I  think  that  man  is  wholly 
different  from  a  stone ;  and  from  a  fiddle ;  and 
even  from  a  dog;  and  that  to  say  that  a  man 
cannot  exert  any  influence  on  other  men  after  his 
death,  because  a  dog  cannot,  or  because  a  fiddle, 
or  because  a  stone  cannot,  may  be  to  reproduce 
with  rather  needless  affectation  the  verbal  quib- 
bles and  pitfalls  which  Socrates  and  the  sophists 
prepared  for  each  other  in  some  wordy  sympo- 
sium of  old. 

Lastly,  Prof.  Huxley  seems  to  think  that  he 
has  disposed  of  me  altogether,  so  soon  as  he  can 
point  to  a  sympathy  between  theologians  and 
myself.  I  trust  there  are  great  affinity  and  great 
sympathy  between  us  ;  and  pray  let  him  not  think 
that  I  am  in  the  least  ashamed  of  that  common 
ground.  Positivism  has  quite  as  much  sympathy 
with  the  genuine  theologian  as  it  has  with  the 
scientific  specialist.  The  former  may  be  working 
on  a  wrong  intellectual  basis,  and  often  it  may 
be  by  most  perverted  methods ;  but,  in  the  best 
types,  he  has  a  high  social  aim  and  a  great  moral 
cause  to  maintain  among  men.  The  latter  is 
usually  right  in  his  intellectual  basis  as  far  as  it 
goes ;  but  it  does  not  go  very  far,  and  in  the 
great  moral  cause  of  the  spiritual  destinies  of  men 
he  is  often  content  with  utter  indifference  and 
simple  nihilism.  Mere  raving  at  priestcraft,  and 
beadles,  and  outward  investments,  is  indeed  a 
poor  solution  of  the  mighty  problems  of  the  hu- 
man soul  and  of  social  organization.  And  the 
instinct  of  the  mass  of  mankind  will  long  reject  a 
biology  which  has  nothing  for  these  but  a  sneer. 
It  will  not  do  for  Prof,  nuxley  to  say  that  he  is 
only  a  poor  biologist  and  careth  for  none  of  these 
things.  His  biology,  however,  "  includes  man 
and  all  his  ways  and  works."  Besides,  he  is  a 
leader  in  Israel ;  he  has  preached  an  entire  vol- 
ume of  "  Lay  Sermons  ;  "  and  he  has  waged  many 
a  war  with  theologians  and  philosophers  on  reli- 
gious and  philosophic  problems.  "What,  if  I  may 
ask  him,  are  his  own  religion  and  his  own  philoso- 


phy ?  He  says  that  he  knows  no  scientific  men 
who  "  neglect  all  philosophical  and  religious  syn- 
thesis." In  that  he  is  fortunate  in  his  circle  of 
acquaintance.  But  since  he  is  so  earnest  in  ask- 
ing me  questions,  let  me  ask  him  to  tell  the  world 
what  is  his  own  synthesis  of  philosophy,  what  is 
his  own  idea  of  religion  ?  He  can  laugh  at  the 
worship" of  priests  and  positivists :  whom,  or 
what,  does  he  worship  ?  If  he  dislikes  the  word 
soul,  does  he  think  man  has  anything  that  can  be 
called  a  spiritual  nature  ?  If  he  derides  my  idea 
of  a  future  life,  does  he  think  that  there  is  any- 
thing which  can  be  said  of  a  man,  when  his  car- 
cass is  laid  beneath  the  sod,  beyond  a  simple  final 
vale  ? 

P.  S. — And  now  space  fails  me  to  reply  to  the 
appeals  of  so  many  critics.  I  cannot  enter  with 
Mr.  Roden  Noel  on  that  great  question  of  the  ma- 
terialization of  the  spirits  of  the  dead ;  I  know 
not  whether  we  shall  be  "  made  one  with  the  great 
Elohim,  or  angels  of  Nature,  or  if  we  shall  grovel 
in  dead  material  bodily  life."  I  know  nothing  of 
this  high  matter:  I  do  not  comprehend  this  lan- 
guage. Nor  can  I  add  anything  to  what  I  have 
said  on  that  sense  of  personality  which  Lord  Sel- 
borne  and  Canon  Barry  so  eloquently  press  on 
me.  To  me  that  sense  of  personality  is  a  thing 
of  somewhat  slow  growth,  resulting  from  our  en- 
tire nervous  organization  and  our  composite  men- 
tal constitution.  It  seems  to  me  that  we  can 
often  trace  it  building  up  and  trace  it  again  decay- 
ing away.  We  feel  ourselves  to  be  men,  because 
we  have  human  bodies  and  human  minds.  Is 
that  not  enough  ?  Has  the  baby  of  an  hour  this 
sense  of  personality  ?  Are  you  sure  that  a  dog 
or  an  elephant  has  not  got  it  ?  Then  has  the 
baby  no  soul ;  has  the  dog  a  soul  ?  Do  you  know 
more  of  your  neighbor,  apart  from  inference,  than 
you  know  of  the  dog  ?  Again,  I  cannot  enter 
upon  Mr.  Greg's  beautiful  reflections,  save  to 
point  cut  how  largely  he  supports  me.  He  shows, 
I  think  with  masterly  logic,  how  difficult  it  is  to 
fit  this  new  notion  of  a  glorified  activity  on  to  the 
old  orthodoxy  of  beatific  ecstasy.  Canon  Barry  re- 
minds us  how  this  orthodoxy  involved  the  resur- 
rection of  the  body,  and  the  same  difficulty  has 
driven  Mr.  Roden  Noel  to  suggest  that  the  mate- 
rial world  itself  may  be  the  debris  of  the  just  I 
made  perfect.  But  Dr.  Ward,  as  might  be  ex-  I 
pected,  falls  back  on  the  beatific  ecstasy  as  con-  I 
ceived  by  the  mystics  of  the  thirteenth  century.  I 
No  word  here  about  moral  activity  and  the  social  | 
converse,  as  in  the  Elysian  fields,  imagined  by  I 
philosophers  of  less  orthodox  severity. 


THE  COLORS  OF  ANIMALS  AXD  PLANTS. 


43 


One  word  more.  If  my  language  has  given  any 
believer  pain,  I  regret  it  sincerely.  It  may  have 
been  somewhat  obscure,  since  it  has  been  so 
widely  arraigned,  and  I  think  misconceived.  My 
position  is  this :  The  idea  of  a  glorified  energy 
iu  an  ampler  life  is  an  idea  utterly  incompati- 
ble with  exact  thought,  one  which  evaporates  in 
contradictions,  in  phrases  which  when  pressed 
have  no  meaning.  The  idea  of  beatific  ecstasy  is 
the  old  and  orthodox  idea ;  it  does  not  involve  so 
many  contradictions  as  the  former  idea,  but  then 
it  does  not  satisfy  our  moral  judgment.  I  say 
plainly  that  the  hope  of  such  an  infinite  ecstasy 
is  an  inane  and  unworthv  crown  of  a  human  life. 


And  when  Dr.  Ward  assures  me  that  it  is  merely 
the  prolongation  of  the  saintly  life,  then  I  say  the 
saintly  life  is  an  inane  and  unworthy  life.  The 
words  I  used  about  the  "  selfish  "  view  of  futurity, 
I  applied  only  to  those  who  say  they  cure  for 
nothing  but  personal  enjoyment,  and  to  those 
whose  only  aim  is  "to  save  their  own  souls." 
Mr.  Baldwin  Brown  has  nobly  condemned  this 
creed  in  words  far  stronger  than  mine.  And 
here  let  us  close  with  the  reflection  that  the  lan- 
guage of  controversy  must  always  be  held  to  apply 
not  to  the  character  of  our  opponents,  but  to  the 
logical  consequences  of  their  doctrines,  if  uncor- 
rected and  if  forced  to  their  extreme. 


THE  COLOES  OF  AXIMALS  AXD  PLAXTS.1 

By  ALFRED  EUSSEL  WALLACE. 


II.— THE    COLORS    OF    PLANTS. 


THE  coloring  of  plants  is  neither  so  varied 
nor  so  complex  as  that  of  animals,  and  its 
explanation,  accordingly,  offers  fewer  difficulties. 
The  colors  of  foliage  are,  comparatively,  little 
varied,  and  can  be  traced  in  almost  all  cases  to  a 
special  pigment  termed  chlorophyl,  to  which  is 
due  the  general  green  color  of  leaves  ;  but  the 
recent  investigations  of  Mr.  Sorby  and  others 
have  shown  that  chlorophyl  is  not  a  simple  green 
pigment,  but  that  it  really  consists  of  at  least 
seven  distinct  substances,  varying  in  color  from 
blue  to  yellow  and  orange.  These  differ  in  their 
proportions  in  the  chlorophyl  of  different  plants ; 
they  have  different  chemical  reactions  ;  they  are 
differently  affected  by  light ;  and  they  give  dis- 
tinct spectra.  Mr.  Sorby  further  states  that 
scores  of  different  coloring-matters  are  found  in 
the  leaves  and  flowers  of  plants,  to  some  of  which 
appropriate  names  have  been  given,  as  erythro- 
phyl,   which    is   red,    and    phaiophyl,    which   is 

1  In  the  first  part  of  this  paper  I  used  the  term  "  vol- 
untary sexual  selection  "  to  indicate  the  theory  that  many 
of  the  ornaments  of  male  animals  have  been  produced  by 
the  choice  of  the  females,  and  to  distinguish  it  from  that 
form  of  sexual  selection  which  explains  the  acquisition  of 
weapons  peculiar  to  male  animals  as  due  to  the  selective 
influence  of  their  combats  and  struggles  for  the  possession 
of  the  females.  I  find  that  Mr.  Darwin  thinks  the  term 
"voluntary"  not  strictly  applicable,  and  I  therefore  pro- 
pose to  alter  it  to  li conscious"  or  '-perceptive,"  which 
seem  free  from  any  ambiguity,  and  make  not  the  least 
difference  to  my  argument. 


brown ;  and  many  of  these  differ  greatly  from 
each  other  in  their  chemical  composition.  These 
inquiries  are  at  present  in  their  infancy,  but,  as 
the  original  term  chlorophyl  seems  scarcelv  ap- 
plicable under  the  present  aspect  of  the  subject, 
it  would  perhaps  be  better  to  introduce  the  anal- 
ogous word  chromophyl  as  a  general  term  for  the 
coloring-matters  of  the  vegetable  kingdom. 

Light  has  a  much  more  decided  action  on 
plants  than  on  animals.  The  green  color  of  leaves 
is  almost  wholly  dependent  on  it ;  and  although 
some  flowers  will  become  fully  colored  in  the 
dark,  others  are  decidedly  affected  by  the  absence 
of  light,  even  when  the  foliage  is  fully  exposed  to 
it.  Looking,  therefore,  at  the  numerous  colored 
substances  which  are  developed  in  the  tissues  of 
plants — the  sensitiveness  of  these  pigments  to 
light,  the  changes  they  undergo  during  growth 
and  development,  and  the  facility  with  which  new 
chemical  combinations  are  effected  by  the  physio- 
logical processes  of  plants,  as  shown  by  the  end- 
less variety  in  the  chemical  constitution  of  vege- 
table products — we  have  no  difficulty  in  compre- 
hending the  general  causes  which  aid  in  produc- 
ing the  colors  of  the  vegetable  world,  or  the 
extreme  variability  of  those  colors.  We  may, 
therefore,  here  confine  ourselves  to  an  inquiry 
into  the  various  uses  of  color  in  the  economy  of 
plants ;  and  this  will  generally  enable  us  to  un- 
derstand how  it  has  become  fixed  and  specialized 


4A 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


in  the  several  genera  and  species  of  the  vegetable 
kiugdom. 

In  animals,  as  we  have  seen,  color  is  greatly 
influenced  by  the  need  of  protection  from,  or  of 
warning  to,  tbeir  numerous  enemies,  and  to  the 
necessity  for  identification  and  easy  recognition. 
Plants  rarely  need  to  be  concealed,  and  obtain 
protection  either  by  their  spines,  their  hardness, 
their  hairy  covering,  or  their  poisonous  secretions. 
A  very  few  cases  of  what  seem  to  be  true  protec- 
tive coloring  do,  however,  exist,  the  most  remark- 
able being  that  of  the  "  stone  mesembryanthe- 
mum,"  of  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope,  which  in  form 
and  color  closely  resembles  the  stones  among 
which  it  grows  ;  and  Dr.  Burchell,  who  first  dis- 
covered it,  believes  that  the  juicy  little  plant  thus 
generally  escapes  the  notice  of  cattle  and  wild 
herbivorous  animals.  Mr.  J.  P.  Mansel  Weale 
also  noticed  that  many  plants  growing  in  the 
stony  Karoo  have  their  tuberous  roots  above  the 
soil,  and  these  so  perfectly  resemble  the  stones 
among  which  they  grow  that,  when  not  in  leaf,  it 
is  almost  impossible  to  distinguish  them  {Nature, 
vol.  Hi.,  p.  50V).  A  few  cases  of  what  seem  to  be 
protective  mimicry  have  also  been  noted,  the  most 
curious  being  that  of  three  very  rare  British  fungi, 
found  by  Mr.  Worthington  Smith,  each  in  com- 
pany with  common  species,  which  they  so  closely 
resembled  that  only  a  minute  examination  could 
detect  the  difference.  One  of  the  common  species 
is  stated  in  botanical  works  to  be  "bitter  and 
nauseous,"  so  that  it  is  not  improbable  that  the 
rare  kind  may  escape  being  eaten  by  being  mis- 
taken for  an  uneatable  species,  though  itself  pal- 
atable. Mr.  Mansel  Weale  also  mentions  a  labi- 
ate plant,  the  Ajuga  ophrydis,  of  South  Africa,  as 
strikingly  resembling  an  orchid.  This  may  be  a 
means  of  attracting  insects  to  fertilize  the  flower 
in  the  absence  of  sufficient  nectar  or  other  attrac- 
tion in  the  flower  itself ;  and  the  supposition  is 
rendered  more  probable  by  this  being  the  only 
species  of  the  genus  Ajuga  in  South  Africa. 
Many  other  cases  of  resemblances  between  very 
distinct  plants  have  been  noticed — as  that  of 
some  Euphorbias  to  Cacti ;  but  these  very  rarely 
inhabit  the  same  country  or  locality,  and  it  has 
not  been  proved  that  there  is  in  any  of  these  cases 
the  amount  of  inter-relation  between  the  species 
which  is  the  essential  feature  of  the  protective 
"  mimicry  "  that  occurs  in  the  animal  world. 

The  different  colors  exhibited  by  the  foliage 
of  plants,  and  the  changes  it  undergoes  during 
growth  and  decay,  appear  to  be  due  to  the  gen- 
eral laws  already  sketched  out,  and  to  have  little, 
if  any,  relation  to  the  special  requirements  of  each 


species.  But  flowers  and  fruits  exhibit  definite 
and  well-pronounced  tints,  often  varying  from 
species  to  species,  and  more  or  less  clearly  related 
to  the  habits  and  functions  of  the  plant.  With 
the  few  exceptions  already  pointed  out,  these  may 
be  generally  classed  as  (((tractive  colors.  The 
seeds  of  plants  require  to  be  dispersed,  so  as  to 
reach  places  favorable  for  germination  and  growth. 
Some  are  very  minute,  and  are  carried  abroad  by 
the  wind,  or  they  are  violently  expelled  and  scat- 
tered by  the  bursting  of  the  containing  capsules. 
Others  are  downy  or  winged,  and  are  carried  long 
distances  by  the  gentlest  breeze.  But  there  is  a 
large  class  of  seeds  which  cannot  be  dispersed 
in  cither  of  these  ways,  and  are  mostly  contained 
in  eatable  fruits.  These  fruits  are  devoured  by 
birds  or  beasts,  and  the  hard  seeds  pass  through 
their  stomachs  undigested,  and,  owing  probably 
to  the  gentle  heat  and  moisture  to  which  they 
have  been  subjected,  in  a  condition  highly  favor- 
able for  germination.  The  dry  fruits,  or  capsules 
containing  the  first  two  classes  of  seeds  are  rare- 
ly, if  ever,  conspicuously  colored,  whereas  the 
eatable  fruits  almost  invariably  acquire  a  bright 
color  as  they  ripen,  while  at  the  same  time  they 
become  soft  and  often  full  of  agreeable  juices. 
Our  red  haws  and  nips,  our  black  elderberries, 
our  blue  sloes  and  whortleberries,  our  white  mis- 
tletoe and  snowberry,  and  our  orange  sea-buck- 
thorn, are  examples  of  the  color-sign  of  edibility ; 
and  in  every  part  of  the  world  the  same  phenome- 
non is  found.  The  fruits  of  large  forest-trees, 
such  as  the  pines,  oaks,  and  beeches,  are  not 
colored,  perhaps  because  their  size  and  abundance 
render  them  sufficiently  conspicuous,  and  also  be- 
cause they  provide  such  a  quantity  of  food  to  such 
a  number  of  different  animals  that  there  is  uo 
danger  of  their  being  unnoticed. 

The  colors  of  flowers  serve  to  render  them 
visible  and  recognizable  by  insects  which  are  at- 
tracted by  secretions  of  nectar  or  pollen.  During 
their  visits  for  the  purpose  of  obtaining  these 
products,  insects  involuntarily  carry  the  pollen 
of  one  flower  to  the  stigma  of  another,  and  thus 
effect  cross-fertilization,  which,  as  Mr.  Darwin 
was  the  first  to  demonstrate,  immensely  increases 
the  vigor  and  fertility  of  the  next  generation  of 
plants.  This  discovery  has  led  to  the  careful 
examination  of  great  numbers  of  flowers,  and  the 
result  has  been  that  the  most  wonderful  and  com- 
plex arrangements  have  been  found  to  exist,  all 
having  for  their  object  to  secure  that  flowers 
shall  not  be  self-fertilized  perpetually,  but  that 
pollen  shall  be  carried,  either  constantly  or  occa- 
sionally, from  the  flowers  of  one  plant  to  those  of 


THE  COLORS  OF  ANIMALS  AND  PLANTS. 


45 


another.  Mr.  Darwin  himself  first  worked  out 
the  details  in  orchids,  primulas,  and  some  other 
groups ;  and  hardly  less  curious  phenomena  have 
since  been  found  to  occur,  even  among  some  of 
the  most  regularly-formed  flowers.  The  arrange- 
ment, length,  and  position,  of  all  the  parts  of  the 
flower  are  now  found  to  have  a  purpose,  and  not 
the  least  remarkable  portion  of  the  phenomenon 
is  the  great  variety  of  ways  in  which  the  same 
result  is  obtained.  After  the  discoveries  with  re- 
gard to  orchids,  it  was  to  be  expected  that  the 
irregular,  tubular,  and  spurred  flowers,  should 
present  various  curious  adaptations  for  fertiliza- 
tion by  insect-agency.  But  even  among  the  open, 
cup-shaped,  and  quite  regular  flowers,  in  which  it 
seemed  inevitable  that  the  pollen  must  fall  on  the 
stigma,  and  produce  constant  self-fertilization,  it 
has  been  found  that  this  is  often  prevented  by  a 
physiological  variation — the  anthers  constantly 
emitting  their  pollen  either  a  little  earlier  or  a 
/ittle  later  than  the  stigmas  of  the  same  flower, 
or  of  other  flowers  on  the  same  plant,  were  in  the 
best  state  to  receive  it ;  and  as  individual  plants 
in  different  stations,  soils,  and  aspects,  differ 
somewhat  in  the  time  of  flowering,  the  pollen  of 
one  plant  would  often  be  conveyed  by  insects  to 
the  stigmas  of  some  other  plant  in  a  condition  to 
be  fertilized  by  it.  This  mode  of  securing  cross- 
fertilization  seems  so  simple  and  easy,  that  we 
can  hardly  help  wondering  why  it  did  not  always 
come  into  action,  and  so  obviate  the  necessity  for 
those  elaborate,  varied,  and  highly-complex  con- 
trivances found  in  perhaps  the  majority  of  col- 
ored flowers.  The  answer  to  this  of  course  is, 
that  variation  sometimes  occurred  most  freely  in 
one  part  of  a  plant's  organization,  and  sometimes 
in  another,  and  that  the  benefit  of  cross-fertiliza- 
tion was  so  great  that  any  variation  that  favored 
it  was  preserved,  and  then  formed  the  starting- 
point  of  a  whole  series  of  further  variations,  re- 
sulting in  those  marvelous  adaptations  for  insect 
fertilization,  which  have  given  much  of  their  va- 
riety, elegance,  and  beauty,  to  the  floral  world. 
For  details  of  these  adaptations  we  must  refer 
the  reader  to  the  works  of  Darwin,  Lubbock, 
Herman  Midler,  and  others.  We  have  here  only 
to  deal  with  the  part  played  by  color,  and  by 
those  floral  structures  in  which  color  is  most  dis- 
played. 

The  sweet  odors  of  flowers,  like  their  colors, 
seem  often  to  have  been  developed  as  an  attrac- 
tion or  guide  to  insect  fertilizers,  and  the  two 
phenomena  are  often  complementary  to  each 
other.  Thus,  many  inconspicuous  flowers — like 
the  mignonette  and  the  sweet-violet — can  be  dis- 


tinguished by  their  odors  before  they  attract 
the  eye,  and  this  may  often  prevent  their  be- 
ing passed  unnoticed  ;  while  very  showy  flowers, 
and  especially  those  with  variegated  or  spotted 
petals,  are  seldom  sweet.  White,  or  very  pale 
flowers,  on  the  other  hand,  are  often  exces- 
sively sweet,  as  exemplified  by  the  jasmine  and 
clematis ;  and  many  of  these  are  only  scented 
at  night,  as  is  strikingly  the  case  with  the 
night  smelling  stock,  our  butterfly  orchis  (Ha- 
benaria  chlorantha),  the  greenish-yellow  Daphne 
pontica,  and  many  others.  These  white  flowers 
are  mostly  fertilized  by  night-flying  moths,  and 
those  which  reserve  their  odors  for  the  evening 
probably  escape  the  visits  of  diurnal  insects  which 
would  consume  their  nectar  without  effecting 
fertilization.  The  absence  of  odor  in  showy 
flowers  and  its  preponderance  among  those  that 
are  white  may  be  shown  to  be  a  fact  by  an  ex- 
amination of  the  lists  in  Mr.  Mongredien's  work 
on  hardy  trees  and  shrubs.1  He  gives  a  list  of 
about  one  hundred  and  sixty  species  with  showy 
flowers,  and  another  list  of  sixty  species  with 
fragrant  flowers ;  but  only  twenty  of  these  latter 
are  included  among  the  showy  species,  and  these 
are  almost  all  white-flowered.  Of  the  sixty  spe- 
cies with  fragrant  flowers,  more  than  forty  are 
white,  and  a  number  of  others  have  greenish, 
yellowish,  or  dusky  and  inconspicuous  flowers. 
The  relation  of  white  flowers  to  nocturnal  insects 
is  also  well  shown  by  those  which,  like  the  even- 
ing primroses,  only  open  their  large  white  blos- 
soms after  sunset.  The  red  Martagon  lily  has 
been  observed  by  Mr.  Herman  Miiller  to  be  fer- 
tilized by  the  humming-bird  hawk-moth,  which 
flies  in  the  morning  and  afternoon  when  the 
colors  of  this  flower,  exposed  to  the  nearly  hori- 
zontal rays  of  the  sun,  glow  with  brilliancy,  and 
when  it  also  becomes  very  sweet-scented. 

To  the  same  need  of  conspicuousness  the  com- 
bination of  so  many  individually  small  flowers 
into  heads  and  bunches  is  probably  due,  pro- 
ducing such  broad  masses  as  those  of  the  elder, 
the  guelder-rose,  and  most  of  the  Umbelliferas,  or 
such  elegant  bunches  at  those  of  the  lilac,  labur- 
num, horse-chestnut,  and  wistaria.  In  other  cases 
minute  flowers  are  gathered  into  dense  heads,  as 
with  Globularia,  Jasione,  clover,  and  all  the  Com- 
posite; and  among  the  latter  the  outer  flowers 
are  often  developed  into  a  ray,  as  in  the  sunflow- 
ers, the  daisies,  and  the  asters,  forming  a  starlike 
compound  flower,  which  is  itself  often  produced 
in  immense  profusion. 

1  "  Trees  and  Shrubs    for    English   Plantations,"  by 
Augustus  Mongredien.    Murray,  1S70. 


4G 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


The  beauty  of  Alpine  flowers  is  almost  prover- 
bial. It  consists  either  in  the  increased  size  of 
the  individual  flowers  as  compared  with  the  whole 
plant,  in  increased  intensity  of  color,  or  in  the 
massing  of  small  flowers  into  dense  cushions  of 
bright  color ;  and  it  is  only  in  the  higher  Alps, 
above  the  limit  of  forests  and  upward  toward  the 
perpetual  snow-line  that  these  characteristics  are 
fully  exhibited.  This  effort  at  conspicuousness 
under  adverse  circumstances  may  be  traced  to 
the  comparative  scarcity  of  winged  insects  in  the 
higher  regions,  and  to  the  necessity  for  attracting 
them  from  a  distance.  Amid  the  vast  slopes  of 
debris  and  the  huge  masses  of  rock  so  prevalent 
in  higher  mountain-regions,  patches  of  intense 
color  can  alone  make  themselves  visible  and  serve 
to  attract  the  wandering  butterfly  from  the  val- 
leys. Mr.  Ilerman  Muller's  careful  observations 
have  shown  that  in  the  higher  Alps  bees  and 
most  other  groups  of  winged  insects  are  almost 
wanting,  while  butterflies  are  tolerably  abundant ; 
and  he  has  discovered  that  in  a  number  of  cases 
where  a  lowland  flower  is  adapted  to  be  fertilized 
by  bees,  its  Alpine  ally  has  had  its  structure  so 
modified  as  to  be  adapted  for  fertilization  only 
by  butterflies.1  But  bees  are  always  (in  the  tem- 
perate zone)  far  more  abundant  than  butterflies, 
and  this  will  be  another  reason  why  flowers  spe- 
cially adapted  to  be  fertilized  by  the  latter  should 
be  rendered  unusually  conspicuous.  We  find, 
accordingly,  the  yellow  primrose  of  the  plains  re- 
placed by  pink  and  magenta-colored  Alpine  spe- 
cies ;  the  straggling  wild-pinks  of  the  lowlands 
by  the  masses  of  large  flowers  in  such  mountain 
species  as  Dianthus  alpinus  and  J),  glacialis  ;  the 
saxifrages  of  the  high  Alps  with  bunches  of  flow- 
ers a  foot  long,  as  in  Saxifraga  longifolia  and  S. 
cotyledon,  or  forming  spreading  masses  of  flow- 
ers, as  in  S.  opposififolia  ;  while  the  soapworts, 
silenes,  and  louseworts,  are  equally  superior  to  the 
allied  species  of  the  plains. 

Again,  Dr.  Miiller  has  discovered  that  when 
there  are  showy  and  inconspicuous  species  in  the 
same  genus  of  plants,  there  is  often  a  correspond- 
ing difference  of  structure,  those  with  large  and 
showy  flowers  being  quite  incapable  of  self-fer- 
tilization, and  thus  depending  for  their  very  exist- 
ence on  the  visits  of  insects ;  while  the  others  are 
able  to  fertilize  themselves  should  insects  fail  to 
visit  them.  We  have  examples  of  this  difference 
in  Malva  sylveslris,  Epilobium  angnsiifolium,  Poly- 
gonum bistorta,  and  Geranium  pratense — which 
have  all  large  or  showy  flowers  and  must  be  fer- 
tilized by  insects — as  compared  with  Malva  ro- 
1  Nature,  vol.  xi.,  pp.  32, 110. 


tundifolia,  Epilobium  parviforum,  Polygonum  avi- 
culare,  and  Geranium  pusillum,  which  have  small 
or  inconspicuous  flowers,  and  are  so  constructed 
that  if  insects  should  not  visit  them  they  are  able 
to  fertilize  themselves.1 

As  supplementing  these  curious  facts  showing 
the  relation  of  color  in  flowers  to  the  need  of  the 
visits  of  insects  to  fertilize  them,  we  have  the 
remarkable,  and  on  any  other  theory  utterly  in- 
explicable circumstance,  that  in  all  the  numerous 
cases  in  which  plants  are  fertilized  by  the  agency 
of  the  wind  they  never  have  specially  colored 
floral  envelopes.  Such  are  our  pines,  oaks,  pop- 
lars, willows,  beeches,  and  hazel ;  our  nettles, 
grasses,  sedges,  and  many  others.  In  some  of 
these  the  male  flowers  are,  it  is  true,  conspicuous, 
as  in  the  catkins  of  the  willows  and  the  hazel, 
but  this  arises  incidentally  from  the  masses  of 
pollen  necessary  to  secure  fertilization,  as  shown 
by  the  entire  absence  of  a  corolla  or  of  those 
colored  bracts  which  so  often  add  to  the  beauty 
and  conspicuousness  of  true  flowers. 

The  adaptation  of  flowers  to  be  fertilized  by 
insects — often  to  such  an  extent  that  the  very 
existence  of  the  species  depends  upon  it — has  had 
wide-spread  influence  on  the  distribution  of  plants 
and  the  general  aspects  of  vegetation.  The  seeds 
of  a  particular  species  may  be  carried  to  another 
country,  may  find  there  a  suitable  soil  and  climate, 
may  grow  and  produce  flowers,  but  if  the  insect 
which  alone  can  fertilize  it  should  not  inhabit 
that  country,  the  plant  cannot  maintain  itself, 
however  frequently  it  may  be  introduced  or  how- 
ever vigorously  it  may  grow.  Thus  may  probably 
be  explained  the  poverty  in  flowering  plants  and 
the  great  preponderance  of  ferns  that  distin- 
guishes many  oceanic  islands,  as  well  as  the  de- 
ficiency of  gayly-colored  flowers  in  others.  This 
branch  of  the  subject  is  discussed  at  some  length 
in  my  address  to  the  Biological  Section  of  the 
British  Association,2  but  I  may  here  just  allude 
to  two  of  the  most  striking  cases.  New  Zealand 
is,  in  proportion  to  its  total  number  of  flowering 
plants,  exceedingly  poor  in  handsome  flowers, 
and  it  is  correspondingly  poor  in  insects,  espe- 
cially in  bees  and  butterflies,  the  two  groups 
which  so  greatly  aid  in  fertilization.  In  both 
these  aspects  it  contrasts  strongly  with  Southern 
Australia  and  Tasmania  in  the  same  latitudes, 
where  there  are  a  profusion  of  gayly-colored  flow- 
ers and  an  exceedingly  rich  insect-fauna.  The 
other  case  is  presented  by  the  Galapagos  Islands, 
which,  though  situated  on  the  equator  off  the 

1  Nature,  vol.  ix.,  p.  164. 

8  See  Nature,  September  6, 1870. 


TEE  COLORS  OF  ANIMALS  AND  PLANTS. 


47 


west  coast  of  South  America,  and  with  a  tolera- 
bly luxuriant  vegetation  in  the  damp  mountain- 
zone,  yet  produce  hardly  a  single  conspicuously- 
colored  flower ;  and  this  is  correlated  with,  and 
no  doubt  dependent  on,  an  extreme  poverty  of 
insect-life,  not  one  bee  and  only  a  single  butter- 
fly having  been  found  there. 

Again,  there  is  reason  to  believe  that  some 
portion  of  the  large  size  and  corresponding  show- 
iness  of  tropical  flowers  is  due  to  their  being  fer- 
tilized by  very  large  insects  and  even  by  birds. 
Tropical  sphinx-moths  often  have  their  probosces 
nine  or  ten  inches  long,  and  we  find  flowers  whose 
tubes  or  spurs  reach  about  the  same  length ;  while 
the  giant  bees,  and  the  numerous  flower-sucking 
birds,  aid  in  the  fertilization  of  flowers  whose 
corollas  or  stamens  are  proportionately  large. 

I  have  now  concluded  this  sketch  of  the  gen- 
eral phenomena  of  color  in  the  organic  world.  I 
have  shown  reasons  for  believing  that  its  pres- 
ence, in  some  of  its  infinitely-varied  hues,  is  more 
probable  than  its  absence,  and  that  variation  of 
color  is  an  almost  necessary  concomitant  of  vari- 
ation of  structure,  of  development,  and  of  growth. 
It  has  also  been  shown  how  color  has  been  ap- 
propriated and  modified  both  in  the  animal  and 
vegetable  world,  for  the  advantage  of  the  species 
in  a  great  variety  of  ways,  and  that  there  is  no 
need  to  call  in  the  aid  of  any  other  laws  than 
those  of  organic  development  and  "  natural  selec- 
tion "  to  explain  its  countless  modifications.  From 
the  point  of  view  here  taken,  it  seems  at  once 
improbable  and  unnecessary  that  the  lower  ani- 
mals should  have  the  same  delicate  appreciation 
of  the  infinite  variety  and  beauty — of  the  deli- 
cate contrasts  and  subtile  harmonies  of  color — 
which  are  possessed  by  the  more  intellectual 
races  of  mankind,  since  even  the  lower  human 
races  do  not  possess  it.  All  that  seems  required 
in  the  case  of  animals  is  a  perception  of  distinct- 
ness or  contrast  of  colors ;  and  the  dislike  of  so 
many  creatures  to  scarlet  may,  perhaps,  be  due 
to  the  rarity  of  that  color  in  Nature,  and  to  the 
glaring  contrast  it  offers  to  the  sober  greens  and 
browns  which  form  the  general  clothing  of  the 
earth's  surface. 

The  general  view  of  the  subject  now  given 
must  convince  us  that,  so  far  from  color  being — 
as  it  has  sometimes  been  thought  to  be — unim- 
portant, it  is  intimately  connected  with  the  very 
existence  of  a  large  proportion  of  the  species  of 
the  animal  and  vegetable  worlds.  The  gay  col- 
ors of  the  butterfly  and  of  the  Alpine  flower 
which  it  unconsciously  fertilizes  while  seeking 


for  its  secreted  honey,  are  each  beneficial  to  its 
possessor,  and  have  been  shown  to  be  dependent 
on  the  same  class  of  general  laws  as  those  which 
have  determined  the  form,  the  structure,  and  the 
habits  of  every  living  thing.  The  complex  laws 
and  unexpected  relations  which  we  have  seen  to 
be  involved  in  the  production  of  the  special  col- 
ors of  flower,  bird,  and  insect,  must  give  them 
an  additional  interest  for  every  thoughtful  mind  ; 
while  the  knowledge  that,  in  all  probability,  each 
style  of  coloration,  and  sometimes  the  smallest 
details  have  a  meaning  and  a  use,  must  add  a 
new  charm  to  the  study  of  Nature. 

Throughout  the  preceding  discussion  we  have 
accepted  the  subjective  phenomena  of  color — 
that  is,  our  perception  of  varied  hues,  and  the 
mental  emotions  excited  by  them — as  ultimate 
facts  needing  no  explanation.  Yet  they  present 
certain  features  well  worthy  of  attention,  a  brief 
consideration  of  which  will  form  a  fitting  sequel 
to  the  present  essay. 

The  perception  of  color  seems,  to  the  present 
writer,  the  most  wonderful  and  the  most  myste- 
rious of  our  sensations.  Its  extreme  diversities 
and  exquisite  beauties  seem  out  of  proportion  to 
the  causes  that  are  supposed  to  have  produced 
them,  or  the  physical  needs  to  which  they  minis- 
ter. If  we  look  at  pure  tints  of  red,  green,  blue, 
and  yellow,  they  appear  so  absolutely  contrasted 
and  unlike  each  other  that  it  is  almost  impossible 
to  believe  (what  we  nevertheless  know  to  be  the 
fact)  that  the  rays  of  light  producing  these  very 
distinct  sensations  differ  only  in  wave-length  and 
rate  of  vibration  ;  and  that  there  are  from  one  to 
the  other  a  continuous  series  and  gradation  of 
such  vibrating  waves.  The  positive  diversity  we 
see  in  them  must,  then,  depend  upon  special 
adaptations  in  ourselves  ;  and  the  question  arises, 
For  what  purpose  have  our  visual  organs  and 
mental  perceptions  become  so  highly  specialized 
in  this  respect  ?  When  the  sense  of  sight  was 
first  developed  in  the  animal  kingdom  we  can 
hardly  doubt  that  what  was  perceived  was  light 
only,  and  its  more  or  less  complete  withdrawal. 
As  the  sense  became  perfected,  more  delicate 
gradations  of  light  and  shade  would  be  perceived  ; 
and  there  seems  no  reason  why  a  visual  capacity 
might  not  have  been  developed  as  perfect  as  our 
own,  or  even  more  so,  in  respect  of  light  and 
shade,  but  entirely  insensible  to  differences  of 
color,  except  in  so  far  as  these  implied  a  differ- 
ence in  the  quantity  of  light.  The  world  would 
in  that  case  appear  somewhat  as  we  see  it  in  good 
stereoscopic  photographs  ;  and  we  all  know  how 


48 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


exquisitely  beautiful  such  pictures  are,  and  how 
completely  they  give  us  all  requisite  information 
as  to  form,  surface-texture,  solidity,  and  distance, 
and  even  to  some  extent  as  to  color — for  almost 
all  colors  are  distinguishable  in  a  photograph  by 
some  differences  of  tint,  and  it  is  quite  conceiv- 
able that  visual  organs  might  exist  which  would 
differentiate  what  we  term  color  by  delicate  gra- 
dations of  some  one  characteristic  neutral  tint. 
Now,  such  a  capacity  of  vision  would  be  simple 
as  compared  with  that  which  we  actually  possess 
— which,  besides  distinguishing  infinite  grada- 
tions of  the  quantity  of  light,  distinguishes  also, 
by  a  totally  distinct  set  of  sensations,  gradations 
of  quality,  as  determined  by  differences  of  wave- 
lengths or  rate  of  vibration.  At  what  grade  in 
animal  development  this  new  and  more  complex 
sense  first  began  to  appear  we  have  no  means  of 
determining.  The  fact  that  the  higher  verte- 
brates, and  even  some  insects,  distinguish  what 
are  to  us  diversities  of  color,  by  no  means  proves 
that  their  sensations  of  color  bear  any  resem- 
blance to  ours.  An  insect's  capacity  to  distin- 
guish red  from  blue  or  yellow  may  be  (and  prob- 
ably is)  due  to  perceptions  of  a  totally  distinct 
nature,  and  quite  unaccompanied  by  any  of  that 
sense  of  enjoyment  or  even  of  radical  distinctness 
which  pure  colors  excite  in  us.  Mammalia  and 
birds,  whose  structure  and  emotions  are  so  simi- 
lar to  our  own,  do  probably  receive  somewhat 
similar  impressions  of  color  ;  but  we  have  no  evi- 
dence to  show  that  they  experience  pleasurable 
emotions  from  color  itself  when  not  associated 
with  the  satisfaction  of  their  wants  or  the  gratifi- 
cation of  their  passions. 

The  primary  necessity  which  led  to  the  devel- 
opment of  the  sense  of  color  was  probably  the 
need  of  distinguishing  objects  much  alike  in  form 
and  size,  but  differing  in  important  properties — 
such  as  ripe  and  unripe,  or  eatable  and  poisonous 
fruits  ;  flowers  with  honey  or  without ;  the  sexes 
of  the  same  or  of  closely-allied  species.  In  most 
cases  the  strongest  contrast  would  be  the  most 
useful,  especially  as  the  colors  of  the  objects  to 
be  distinguished  would  form  but  minute  spots  or 
points  when  compared  with  the  broad  masses  of 
tint  of  sky,  earth,  or  foliage,  against  which  they 
would  be  set.  Throughout  the  long  epochs  in 
which  the  sense  of  sight  was  being  gradually  de- 
veloped in  the  higher  animals,  their  visual  organs 
would  be  mainly  subjected  to  two  groups  of  rays 
— the  green  from  vegetation  and  the  blue  from 
the  sky.  The  immense  preponderance  of  these 
over  all  other  groups  of  rays  would  naturally 
lead  the  eye  to  become  specially  adapted  for  their 


perception;  and  it  is  quite  possible  that  at  first 
these  were  the  only  kinds  of  light- vibrations 
which  could  be  perceived  at  all.  When  the  need 
for  differentiation  of  color  arose,  rays  of  greater 
and  of  smaller  wave-lengths  would  necessarily  be 
made  use  of  to  excite  the  new  sensations  re- 
quired ;  and  we  can  thus  understand  why  green 
and  blue  form  the  central  portion  of  the  visible 
spectrum,  and  are  the  colors  which  are  most 
agreeable  to  us  in  large  surfaces ;  while,  at  its 
two  extremities,  we  find  yellow,  red,  and  violet 
colors,  which  we  best  appreciate  in  smaller 
masses,  and  when  contrasted  with  the  other 
two  or  with  light  neutral  tints.  We  have 
here  probably  the  foundations  of  a  natural 
theory  of  harmonious  coloring,  derived  from 
the  order  in  which  our  color-sensations  have 
arisen,  and  the  nature  of  the  emotions  with  which 
the  several  tints  have  been  always  associated.1 
The  agreeable  and  soothing  influence  of  green 
light  may  be  in  part  due  to  the  green  rays  hav- 

1  There  is  reason  to  believe  that  our  capacity  of  dis- 
tinguishing colors  has  increased  even  in  historical  times. 
The  subject  has  attracted  the  attention  of  German  philol- 
ogists, and  I  have  been  furnished  by  a  friend  with  some 
notes  from  a  work  of  the  late  Lazarus  Geiger,  entitled 
"Zur  Entwickelungsgeschichte  der  Mensehheit"  (Stutt- 
gart, 1S71).    According  to  this  writer  it  appears  that  tho 
color  of  grass  and  foliage  is  never  alluded  to  as  a  beauty 
in  the  Vedas  or  the  Zenda-vesta,  though  these  produc- 
tions are  continually  extolled  for  other  properties.    Blue  • 
is  described  by  terms  denoting  sometimes  green,  some- 
times black,  showing  that  it  was  hardly  recognized  as  a 
distinct  color.    The  color  of  the  sky  is  never  mentioned 
in  the  Bible,  the  Vedas,  the  Homeric  poems,  or  even  in 
the  Koran.     The  first  distinct  allusion  to  it  known  to 
Geiger  is  in  an  Arabic  work  of  the  ninth  century.    "  Hya- 
cinthine  locks'"  are  black  locks,  and  Homer  calls  iron 
"violet-colored."     Yellow  was    often    confounded  with 
green,  but,  along  with  red,  it  was  one  of  the  earliest  colors 
to  receive  a  distinct  name.    Aristotle  names  three  colors 
in  the  rainbow— red,  yellow,  and  green.    Two  centuries 
earlier  Xenophanes  had  described  the  rainbow  as  purple, 
reddish,  and  yellow.     The  Pythagoreans  admitted  four 
primary  colors— white,  black,  red,  and  yellow  ;  the  Chi- 
nese the  same,  with  the  addition  of  green.    If  these  state- 
ments fairly  represent  the  early  condition  of  color-sensa- 
tion, they  well  accord  with  the  view  here  maintained,  that 
green  and  blue  were  first  alone  perceived,  and  that  the 
other    colors  were    successively  separated    from    them. 
These  latter  would  be  the  first  to  receive  names  ;  hence 
we  find  purple,  reddish,  and  yellow,  first  noticed  in  tho 
rainbow  as  the  tints  to  be  separated  from  the  wide-spread 
blue  and  green  of  the  visible  world  which  required  no  dis- 
tinctive color-appellation.    If  the  capacity  of  distinguish- 
ing colors  has  increased  in  historic  times,  we  may,  per- 
haps, look  upon  color-blindness  as  a  survival  of  a  condi- 
tion once  almost  universal;  while  the  fact  that  it  is  still  so 
prevalent  is  in  harmony  with  the  view  that  our  present 
liiirh  perception  and  appreciation  of  color  is  a  comparative- 
ly recent  acquisition,  and  may  be  correlated  with  a  gen- 
eral advance  inmental  activity. 


TEE  ORIGIN'  OF  TEE   CONSTELLATION-FIGURES. 


49 


ing  little  heating  power;  but  this  can  hardly  be 
the  chief  cause,  for  the  blue  and  violet,  though 
they  contain  less  heat,  are  not  generally  felt  to 
be  so  cool  and  sedative.  But  when  we  consider 
how  dependent  are  all  the  higher  animals  on 
vegetation,  and  that  man  himself  has  been  de- 
veloped in  the  closest  relation  to  it,  we  shall  find, 
probably,  a  sufficient  explanation.  The  green 
mantle  with  which  the  earth  is  overspread  caused 
this  one  color  to  predominate  over  all  others  that 
meet  our  sight,  and  to  be  almost  always  asso- 
ciated with  the  satisfaction  of  human  wants. 
Where  the  grass  is  greenest,  and  vegetation  most 
abundant  and  varied,  there  has  man  always  found 
his  most  suitable  dwelling-place.  In  such  spots 
hunger  and  thirst  are  unknown,  and  the  choicest 
productions  of  Nature  gratify  the  appetite  and 
please  the  eye.  In  the  greatest  heats  of  summer, 
coolness,  shade,  and  moisture,  are  found  in  the 
green  forest-glades ;  and  we  can  thus  understand 
how  our  visual  apparatus  has  become  especially 
adapted  to  receive  pleasurable  and  soothing  sen- 
sations from  this  class  of  rays. 


The  preceding  considerations  enable  us  to 
comprehend,  both  why  a  perception  of  difference 
of  color  has  become  developed  in  the  higher 
animals,  and  also  why  colors  require  to  be  pre- 
sented or  combined  in  varying  proportions  in 
order  to  be  agreeable  to  us.  But  they  hardly 
seem  to  afford  a  sufficient  explanation,  either  of 
the  wonderful  contrasts  and  total  unlikeness  of 
the  sensations  produced  in  us  by  the  chief  pri- 
mary colors,  or  of  the  exquisite  charm  and  pleas- 
ure we  derive  from  color  itself,  as  distinguished 
from  variously-colored  objects,  in  the  case  of 
which  association  of  ideas  comes  into  play.  It 
is  hardly  conceivable  that  the  material  uses  of 
color  to  animals  and  to  ourselves  required  such 
very  distinct  and  powerfully-contrasted  sensa- 
tions ;  and  it  is  still  less  conceivable  that  a  sense 
of  delight  in  color  per  se  should  have  been  neces- 
sary for  our  utilization  of  it. 

The  emotions  excited  by  color  and  by  music 
alike  seem  to  rise  above  the  level  of  a  world  de- 
veloped on  purely  utilitarian  principles. — Mac- 
millcm's  Magazine. 


THE  OKIGIN  OF  THE  CONSTELLATION-FIGUBES. 


By  RICHARD  A.  PROCTOR. 


ALTHOUGH  the  strange  figures  which  as- 
tronomers still  allow  to  straggle  over  their 
star-maps  no  longer  have  any  real  scientific  in- 
terest, they  still  possess  a  certain  charm  not  only 
for  the  student  of  astronomy,  but  for  many  who 
care  little  or  nothing  about  astronomy  as  a  science. 
When  I  was  giving  a  course  of  twelve  lectures  in 
Boston,  America,  a  person  of  considerable  cult- 
ure said  to  me :  "I  wish  you  would  lecture  about 
the  constellations;  I  care  little  about  the  sun 
and  moon  and  the  planets,  and  not  much  more 
about  comets ;  but  I  have  always  felt  great  in- 
terest in  the  Bears  and  Lions,  the  Chained  and 
Chaired  Ladies,  King  Cepheus  and  the  Rescuer, 
Perseus,  Orion,  Ophiucus,  Hercules,  and  the  rest 
of  the  mythical  and  fanciful  beings  with  which 
the  old  astronomers  peopled  the  heavens.  I  say 
with  Carlyle,  '  Why  does  not  some  one  teach  me 
the  constellations,  and  make  me  at  home  in  the 
starry  heavens,  which  are  always  overhead,  and 
which  I  don't  half  know  to  this  day.'  "  We  may 
notice,  too,  that  the  poets  by  almost  unanimous 
consent  have  recognized  the  poetical  aspect  of 
the  constellations,  while  they  have  found  little  to 
40 


say  about  subjects  which  belong  especially  to  as- 
tronomy as  a  science.  Milton  has  indeed  made 
an  archangel  reason  (not  unskillfully  for  Milton's 
day)  about  the  Ptolemaic  and  Copernican  sys- 
tems, while  Tennyson  makes  frequent  reference 
to  astronomical  theories.  "  There  sinks  the  neb- 
ulous star  we  call  the  Sun,  if  that  hypothesis  of 
theirs  be  sound,"  said  Ida ;  but  she  said  no  more, 
save  "  let  us  down  and  rest,"  as  though  the  sub- 
ject was  wearisome  to  her.  Again,  in  "  The 
Palace  of  Art,"  the  soul  of  the  poet  having  built 
herself  that  "  great  house  so  royal  rich  and  wide," 
thither— 

"...  W"hen  all  the  deep  unsounded  skies 

Shuddered  with  silent  stars,  she  elomb, 
And  as  with  optic  glasses  her  keen  eyes 

Pierced  through  the  mystic  dome, 
Regions  of  lucid  matter  taking  forma, 

Brushes  of  fire,  hazy  gleams, 
Clusters  and  beds  of  worlds  and  beelike  swarms, 

Of  suns,  and  starry  streams: 
She  saw  the  snowy  poles  of  moonless  Mars, 

That  marvelous  round  of  milky  light 
Below  Orion,  and  those  double  stars 

Whereof  the  one  more  bright 

Is  circled  by  the  other." 


50 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


But  the  poet's  soul  so  wearied  of  these  astro- 
nomical researches  that  the  beautiful  lines  I  have 
quoted  disappeared  (more's  the  pity)  from  the 
second  and  all  later  editions.  Such  exceptions, 
indeed,  prove  the  rule.  Poets  have  been  chary 
in  referring  to  astronomical  researches  and  re- 
sults, full  though  these  have  been  of  unspeakable 
poetry;  while,  from  the  days  of  Homer  to  those 
of  Tennyson,  the  constellations  which  garland 
the  heavens  have  always  been  favorite  subjects 
of  poetic  imagery. 

It  is  not  my  present  purpose,  however,  to  dis- 
cuss the  poetic  aspect  of  the  constellations.  I 
propose  to  inquire  how  these  singular  figures  first 
found  their  way  to  the  heavens,  and,  so  far  as 
facts  are  available  for  the  purpose,  to  determine 
the  history  and  antiquity  of  some  of  the  more 
celebrated  constellations. 

Long  before  astronomy  had  any  existence  as 
a  science,  men  watched  the  stars  with  wonder 
and  reverence.  Those  orbs,  seemingly  countless 
— which  bespangle  the  dark  robe  of  night — have 
a  charm  and  beauty  of  their  own  apart  from  the 
significance  with  which  the  science  of  astronomy 
has  invested  them.  The  least  fanciful  mind  is 
led  to  recognize  on  the  celestial  concave  the  em- 
blems of  terrestrial  objects,  pictured  with  more 
or  less  distinctness  among  the  mysterious  star- 
groupings.  We  can  imagine  that,  long  before 
the  importance  of  the  study  of  the  stars  was  rec- 
ognized, men  had  begun  to  associate  with  certain 
star-groups  the  names  of  familiar  objects  animate 
or  inanimate.  The  flocks  and  herds  which  the 
earliest  observers  of  the  heavens  tended  would 
suggest  names  for  certain  sets  of  stars,  and  thus 
the  Bull,  the  Ram,  the  Kids,  would  appear  in  the 
heavens.  Other  groups  would  remind  those  early 
observers  of  the  animals  from  whom  they  had  to 
guard  their  flocks,  or  of  those  animals  to  whose 
vigilance  they  trusted  for  protection ;  and  thus 
the  Bear,  and  the  Lion,  and  the  Dogs,  would  find 
their  place  among  the  stars.  The  figures  of  men 
and  horses,  of  birds  and  fishes,  would  naturally 
enough  be  recognized,  nor  would  cither  the  im- 
plements of  husbandry  or  the  weapons  by  which 
the  huntsman  secured  his  prey  remain  unrepre- 
sented among  the  star-groupings.  And  lastly, 
the  altar  on  which  the  first-fruits  of  harvest  and 
vintage  were  presented,  or  the  flesh  of  lambs  and 
goats  consumed,  would  be  figured  among  the  in- 
numerable combinations  which  a  fanciful  eye  can 
recognize  among  the  orbs  of  heaven. 

In  thus  suggesting  that  the  first  observers  of 
the  heavens  were  shepherds,  huntsmen,  and  hus- 
bandmen, I  am  not  advancing  a  theory  on  the 


difficult  questions  connected  with  the  origin  of 
exact  astronomy.  The  first  observations  of  the 
heavens  were  of  necessity  made  by  men  who  de- 
pended for  their  subsistence  on  a  familiarity  with 
the  progress  and  vicissitudes  of  the  seasons,  and 
doubtless  preceded  by  many  ages  the  study  of 
astronomy  as  a  science.  And  yet  the  observa- 
tions made  by  those  early  shepherds  and  hunters, 
unscientific  though  they  must  have  been  in  them- 
selves, are  full  of  interest  to  the  student  of  mod- 
ern exact  astronomy.  The  assertion  may  seem 
strange  at  first  sight,  but  is  nevertheless  strictly 
true,  that,  if  we  could  but  learn  with  certainty  the 
names  assigned  to  certain  star-groups  before  as- 
tronomy had  any  real  existence,  we  could  deduce 
lessons  of  extreme  importance  from  the  rough  ob- 
servations which  suggested  those  old  names.  In 
these  days,  when  observations  of  such  marvel- 
ous exactness  are  daily  and  nightly  made,  when 
instruments  capable  of  revealing  the  actual  con- 
stitution of  the  stars  are  employed,  and  thousands 
of  observers  are  at  work,  it  may  seem  strange  to 
attach  any  interest  to  the  question  whether  half- 
savage  races  recognized  in  such  and  such  a  star- 
group  the  likeness  of  a  bear,  or  in  another  group 
the  semblance  of  a  ship.  But  though  we  could 
learn  more,  of  course,  from  exacter  observations, 
yet  even  such  rough  and  imperfect  records  would 
have  their  value.  If  we  could  be  certain  that  in 
long-past  ages  a  star-group  really  resembled  some 
known  object,  we  should  have  in  the  present  re- 
semblance of  that  group  to  the  same  object  evi- 
dence of  the  general  constancy  of  stellar  lustre, 
or,  if  no  resemblance  could  be  recognized,  we 
should  have  reason  to  doubt  whether  other  suns 
(and,  therefore,  our  own  sun)  may  not  be  liable 
to  great  changes. 

The  subject  of  the  constellation-figures  as  first 
known  is  interesting  in  other  ways.  For  instance, 
it  is  full  of  interest  to  the  antiquary  (and  most 
of  us  are  to  some  degree  antiquaries)  as  relating 
to  the  most  ancient  of  all  human  sciences.  The 
same  mental  quality  which  causes  us  to  look  with 
interest  on  the  buildings  raised  in  long-past  ages, 
or  on  the  implements  and  weapons  of  antiquity, 
renders  the  thought  impressive  that  the  stars 
which  we  see  were  gazed  on  perhaps  not  less 
wonderingly  in  the  very  infancy  of  the  human 
race.  It  is,  again,  a  subject  full  of  interest  to 
the  chronologist  to  inquire  in  what  era  of  the 
world's  history  exact  astronomy  began,  when 
the  moon  was  assigned  her  twenty-eight  zodiacal 
mansions,  the  sun  his  twelve  zodiacal  signs.  It 
is  well  known,  indeed,  that  Newton  himself  did 
not  disdain  to  study  the  questions  thus  suggested ; 


TEE   ORIGIN  OF  TEE   CONSTELLATION-FIGURES. 


51 


and  the  speculations  of  the  ingenious  Dupuis 
found  favor  with  the  great  mathematician  La- 
place. 

Unfortunately,  the  evidence  is  not  sufficiently 
exact  to  be  very  trustworthy.  In  considering, 
for  instance,  the  chronological  inquiries  of  New- 
ton, one  cannot  but  feel  that  the  reliance  placed 
by  him  on  the  statements  made  by  different  writ- 
ers is  not  justified  by  the  nature  of  these  state- 
ments, which  are  for  the  most  part  vague  in  the 
extreme.  We  owe  many  of  them  to  poets  who, 
knowing  little  of  astronomy,  mixed  up  the  phe- 
nomena of  their  own  time  with  those  which  they 
found  recorded  in  the  writings  of  astronomers. 
Some  of  the  statements  left  by  ancient  writers 
are,  indeed,  ludicrously  incongruous  ;  insomuch 
that  Grotius  not  unjustly  said  of  the  account  of 
the  constellations  given  by  the  poet  Aratus,  that 
it  could  be  assigned  to  no  fixed  epoch  and  to  no 
fixed  place.  However,  this  could  not  be  the 
place  to  discuss  details  such  as  are  involved  in 
exact  inquiries.  I  have  indicated  some  of  these 
in  an  appendix  to  my  treatise  on  "  Saturn,"  and 
others  in  the  preface  to  my  "  Gnomonic  Star  At- 
las ;  "  but,  for  the  most  part,  they  do  not  admit 
very  readily  of  familiar  description.  Let  us  turn 
to  less  technical  considerations,  which,  fortunate- 
ly, are  in  this  case  fully  as  much  to  the  point 
as  exact  inquiries,  seeing  that  there  is  no  real 
foundation  for  such  inquiries  in  any  of  the  avail, 
able  evidence. 

The  first  obvious  feature  of  the  old  constella- 
tions is  one  which  somehow  has  not  received  the 
attention  it  deserves.  It  is  as  instructive  as  any 
of  those  which  have  been  made  the  subject  of 
profound  research. 

There  is  a  great  space  in  the  heavens  over 
which  none  of  the  old  constellations  extend — ex- 
cept the  River  Eridanus  as  now  pictured,  but  we 
do  not  know  where  this  winding  stream  of  stars 
was  supposed  by  the  old  observers  to  come  to 
an  end.  This  great  space  surrounds  the  southern 
pole  of  the  heavens,  and  this  shows  that  the  first 
observers  of  the  stars  were  not  acquainted  with 
the  constellations  which  can  be  seen  only  from 
places  far  south  of  Chaldea,  Persia,  Egypt,  India, 
China,  and  indeed  of  all  the  regions  to  which  the 
invention  of  astronomy  has  been  assigned.  What- 
ever the  first  astronomers  were,  however  profound 
their  knowledge  of  astronomy  may  have  been  (as 
some  imagine),  they  had  certainly  not  traveled  far 
enough  toward  the  south  to  know  "the  constella- 
tions around  the  southern  pole.  If  they  had 
been  as  well  acquainted  with  geography  as  some 
assert,  if  even  any  astronomer  had  traveled  as 


far  south  as  the  equator,  we  should  certainly  have 
had  pictured  in  the  old  star-charts  some  constella- 
tions in  that  region  of  the  heaveus  wherein  modern 
astronomers  have  placed  the  Octant,  the  Bird-of- 
Paradise,  the  Sword-fish,  the  Flying-fish,  the  Tou- 
can, the  Net,  and  other  uncelestial  objects. 

In  passing  I  may  note  that  this  fact  disposes 
most  completely  of  a  theory  lately  advanced — that 
the  constellations  were  invented  in  the  southern 
hemisphere,  and  that  thus  is  to  be  explained  the  an- 
cient tradition  that  the  sun  and  stars  have  changed 
their  courses.  For  though  all  the  northern  con- 
stellations would  have  been  more  or  less  visible 
from  parts  of  the  southern  hemisphere  near  the 
equator,  it  it  absurd  to  suppose  that  a  southern 
observer  would  leave  untenanted  a  full  fourth  of 
the  heavens  round  the  southern  or  visible  pole, 
while  carefully  filling  up  the  space  around  the 
northern  or  unseen  pole  with  incomplete  constel- 
lations whose  northern  unknown  portions  would 
include  that  pole.  Supposing  it  for  a  moment 
to  be  true,  as  a  modern  advocate  of  the  southern 
theory  remarks,  that  "  one  of  a  race  migrating 
from  one  side  to  the  other  of  the  equator  would 
take  his  position  from  the  sun,  and  fancy  he  was 
facing  the  same  way  when  he  looked  at  it  at  noon, 
and  so  would  think  the  motion  of  the  stars  to 
have  altered  instead  of  his  having  turned  round," 
the  theory  that  astronomy  was  brought  us  from 
south  of  the  equator  cannot  possibly  be  admitted 
in  presence  of  that  enormous  vacant  region  around 
the  southern  pole.  I  think,  however,  that,  apart 
from  this,  a  race  so  profoundly  ignorant  as  to 
suppose  any  such  thing,  to  imagine  they  were 
looking  north  when  in  reality  they  were  looking 
south,  can  hardly  be  regarded  as  the  first  founders 
of  the  science  of  astronomy. 

The  great  gap  I  have  spoken  of  has  long  been 
recognized.  But  one  remarkable  feature  in  its 
position  has  not,  to  the  best  of  my  remembrance, 
been  considered.  The  vacant  space  is  eccentric 
with  regard  to  the  southern  pole  of  the  heavens. 
The  old  constellations,  the  Altar,  and  the  Centaur, 
and  the  ship  Argo,  extend  withfn  twenty  degrees 
of  the  pole,  while  the  Southern  Fish  and  the 
great  sea-monster  Cetus,  which  are  the  southern, 
most  constellations  on  the  other  side,  do  not 
reach  within  some  sixty  degrees  of  the  pole. 

Of  course,  in  saying  that  this  peculiarity  has  not 
been  considered,  I  am  not  suggesting  that  it  has 
not  been  noticed,  or  that  its  cause  is  in  any  way 
doubtful  or  unknown.  We  know  that  the  earth, 
besides  whirling  once  a  day  on  its  axis,  and  rush- 
ing on  its  mighty  orbit  around  the  sun  (spanning 
some  184,000,000  miles),  reels  like  a  gigantic  top, 


52 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


with  a  motion  so  slow  that  25,868  years  are  re- 
quired for  a  single  circuit  of  the  swaying  axis 
around  an  imaginary  line  upright  to  the  plane  in 
which  the  earth  travels.  And  we  know  that  in 
consequence  of  this  reeling  motion  the  points  of 
the  heavens  opposite  the  earth's  poles  necessarily 
change.  So  that  the  southern  pole,  now  eccen- 
trically placed  amid  the  region  where  there  were  no 
constellations  in  old  times,  was  once  differently  sit- 
uated. But  the  circumstance  which  seems  to  have 
been  overlooked  is  this,  that,  by  calculating  back- 
ward to  the  time  when  the  southern  pole  was  in  the 
centre  of  that  vacant  region,  we  have  a  much  bet- 
ter chance  of  finding  the  date  (let  us  rather  say  the 
century)  when  the  older  constellations  were  formed 
than  by  any  other  process.  We  may  be  sure  not 
to  be  led  very  far  astray,  for  we  are  not  guided 
by  one  constellation  but  by  several,  whereas  all 
the  other  indications  which  have  been  followed 
depend  on  the  supposed  ancient  position  of  sin- 
gle constellations.  And  then  most  of  the  other 
indications  are  such  as  might  very  well  have  be- 
longed to  periods  following  long  after  the  inven- 
tion of  the  constellations  themselves.  An  as- 
tronomer might  have  ascertained,  for  instance, 
that  the  sun  in  spring  was  in  some  particular 
part  of  the  Ram  or  of  the  Fishes,  and  later  a 
poet  like  Aratus  might  describe  that  relation 
(erroneously  for  his  own  epoch)  as  characteristic 
of  one  or  other  constellation ;  but  who  is  to  as. 
sure  us  that  the  astronomer  who  noted  the  rela- 
tion correctly  may  not  have  made  his  observation 
many  hundreds  of  years  after  those  constellations 
were  invented  ?  Whereas,  there  was  one  period, 
and  only  one  period,  when  the  most  southern- 
most of  the  old  constellations  could  have  marked 
the  limits  of  the  region  of  sky  visible  from  some 
northern  region.  Thus,  too,  may  we  form  some 
idea  of  the  latitude  in  which  the  first  observers 
lived.  For  in  high  latitudes  the  southernmost  of 
the  old  constellations  would  not  have  been  visi- 
ble at  all,  and  in  latitudes  much  lower  than  a 
certain  latitude  presently  to  be  noted  these  con- 
stellations would  have  ridden  high  above  the 
southern  horizon,  other  star-groups  showing  be- 
low them  which  were  not  included  among  the 
old  constellations. 

I  have  before  me,  as  I  write,  a  picture  of  the 
southern  heavens,  drawn  by  myself,  in  which  this 
vacant  space — eccentric  in  position,  but  circular 
in  shape — is  shown.  The  centre  lies  close  by 
the  Lesser  Magellanic  cloud,  between  the  stars 
Kappa  Toucani  and  Eta  Hydri  of  our  modern 
map?,  but  much  nearer  to  the  last  named.  Near 
this  spot,  then,  we  may  be  sure,  lay  the  southern 


pole  of  the  star-sphere,  when  the  old  constella- 
tions, or  at  least  the  southern  ones,  were  in- 
vented ;  and,  if  there  had  been  astronomers  in 
the  southern  hemisphere,  Eta  Hydri  would  cer- 
tainly have  been  their  pole-star. 

Now,  it  is  a  matter  of  no  difficulty  whatever 
to  determine  the  epoch  when  the  southern  pole 
of  the  heavens  was  thus  placed.1  Between  2,100 
and  2,200  years  before  the  Christian  era,  the 
southern  constellations  had  the  position  de- 
scribed, the  invisible  southern  pole  lying  at  the 
centre  of  the  vacant  space  of  the  star-sphere — 
or  rather  of  the  space  free  from  constellations. 
It  is  noteworthy  that,  for  other  reasons,  this 
period,  or  rather  a  definite  epoch  within  it,  is 
indicated  as  that  to  which  must  be  referred  the 
beginning  of  exact  astronomy.  Among  others 
must  be  mentioned  this — that  in  the  year  2170 
b.  c,  quam  proxime,  the  Pleiades  rose  to  their 
highest  above  the  horizon  at  noon  (or  technically 
made  their  noon  culmination)  at  the  spring  equi- 
nox. We  can  readily  understand  that,  to  minds 
possessed  with  full  faith  in  the  influence  of  the 
stars  on  the  earth,  this  fact  would  have  great 
significance.  The  changes  which  are  brought 
about  at  that  season  of  the  year,  in  reality,  of 
course,  because  of  the  gradual  increase  in  the 
effect  of  the  sun's  rays  as  he  rises  higher  and 
higher  above  the  celestial  equator,  would  be  at- 
tributed, in  part  at  least,  to  the  remarkable  star- 
cluster  coming  then  close  by  the  sun  on  the 
heavens,  though  unseen.  Thus  we  can  readily 
understand  the  reference  in  Job  to  the  "sweet 
influences  of  the  Pleiades."  Again,  at  that  same 
time,  2170  b.  c,  when  the  sun  and  the  Pleiades 
opened  the  year  (with  commencing  spring)  to- 
gether, the  star  Alpha  of  the  Dragon,  which  was 
the  pole-star  of  the  period,  had  that  precise  posi- 
tion with  respect  to  the  true  pole  of  the  heavens 
which  is  indicated  by  the  slope  of  the  long  pas- 
sage extending  downward  aslant  from  the  north- 
ern face  of  the  Great  Pyramid ;  that  is  to  say, 
when  due  north  belowr  the  pole  (or  at  what  is 
technically  called  its  sub-polar  meridional  pas- 
sage), the  pole-star  of  the  period  shone  directly 
down  that  long  passage,  and  I  doubt  not  could 
be  seen  not  only  when  it  came  to  that  position 
during  the  night,  but  also  when  it  came  there 
during  the  daytime. 

But  some  other  singular  relations  are  to  be 

1  It  is.  by-the-way,  somewhat  amusing  to  find  Baron 
Humboldt  referring  a  question  of  this  sort  to  the  great 
mathematician  Gauss,  and  describing  the  problem  as 
though  it  involved  the  most  profound  calculations.  Ten 
minutes  should  suffice  to  deal  with  any  problem  of  the 
kind. 


TEE  ORIGIN  OF  TEE  COFSIELLATION-FIGURES. 


53 


noted  in  connection  with  the  particular  epoch  I 
have  indicated. 

It  is  tolerably  clear  that,  in  imagining  figures 
of  certain  objects  in  the  heavens,  the  early  ob- 
servers would  not  be  apt  to  picture  these  objects 
in  unusual  positions.  A  group  of  stars  may  form 
a  figure  so  closely  resembling  that  of  a  familiar 
object,  that  even  a  wrong  position  would  not 
prevent  the  resemblance  from  being  noticed,  as 
for  instance  the  "  Chair,"  the  "Plough,"  and  so 
forth.  But  such  cases  are  not  numerous ;  in- 
deed, to  say  the  truth,  one  must  "  make  believe 
a  good  deal "  to  see  resemblance  between  the 
star-groups  and  most  of  the  constellation-figures, 
even  under  the  most  favorable  conditions.  When 
there  is  no  very  close  resemblance,  as  is  the  case 
with  all  the  large  constellations,  position  must 
have  counted  for  something  iu  determining  the 
association  between  a  star-group  and  a  known 
object. 

Now,  the  constellations  north  of  the  equator 
assume  so  many  and  such  various  positions  that 
.  this  special  consideration  does  not  apply  very 
forcibly  to  them.     But  those  south  of  the  equator 
I  are  only  seen  above  the  southern  horizon,  and 
i  change  little  in  position  during  their  progress 
from  east  to  west  of  the  south  point.     The  lower 
i   down  they  are,  the  less  they  change  in  position. 
^  And  the  very  lowest — such  as  those  were,  for 
\  instance,  which  I  have  been  considering  in  de- 
li termining  the  position  of  the  southern  pole — are 
only  fully  visible  when  due  south.     They  must, 
then,  in  all  probability,  have  stood  upright  or  in 
t  their  natural  position  when  so  placed,  for,  if  they 
were  not  rightly  placed  then,  they  only  were  so 
•  when  below  the  horizon,  and  consequently  in- 
visible. 

Let  us,  then,  inquire  what  was  the  position 
of  the  southernmost  constellations  when  fully 
seen  above  the  southern  horizon  at  midnight. 

The  Centaur  stood  then  as  he  does  now,  up- 
right, only — whereas  now  in  Egypt,  Chaldea,  In- 
dia, Persia,  and  China,  only  the  upper  portions 
of  his  figure  rise  above  the  horizon,  he  then 
stood,  the  noblest  save  Orion  of  all  the  constella- 
tions, with  his  feet  (marked  by  the  bright  Alpha 
and  Beta  still  belonging  to  the  constellation,  and 
by  the  stars  of  the  Southern  Cross  which  have 
been  taken  from  it)  upon  the  horizon  itself.  In 
latitude  20°  or  so  north  he  may  still  be  seen 
thus  placed  when  due  south. 

The  Centaur  was  represented  in  old  times  as 
placing  an  offering  upon  the  altar,  which  was  pict- 
ured, says  Manilius,  as  bearing  a  fire  of  incense, 
represented  by  stars.     This  to  a  student  of  our 


modern  charts  seems  altogether  perplexing.  The 
Centaur  carries  the  wolf  on  the  end  of  his  spear ; 
but,  instead  of  placing  the  wolf  (not  a  very  accept- 
able meat-offering,  one  would  suppose)  upon  the 
altar,  he  is  directing  this  animal  toward  the  base 
of  the  altar,  whose  top  is  downward,  the  flames 
represented  there  tending  naturally  downward 
also.  It  is  quite  certain  the  ancient  observers 
did  not  imagine  anything  of  this  sort.  As  I  have 
said,  Aratus  tells  us  that  the  celestial  Centaur 
was  placing  an  offering  upon  the  altar,  which 
was  therefore  upright ;  and  Manilius  describes 
the  altar  as 

"  Ferens  thuris,  stellis  imitantibus,  ignem," 

so  that  the  fire  was  where  it  should  be,  on  the 
top  of  an  upright  altar,  where  also  on  the  sky 
itself  were  stars  looking  like  the  smoke  from  in- 
cense-fires. Now,  that  was  precisely  the  appear- 
ance presented  by  the  stars  forming  the  constel- 
lation at  the  time  I  have  indicated,  some  2170 
years  b.  c.  Setting  the  altar  upright  above  the 
southern  horizon  (that  is,  inverting  the  absurd 
picture  at  present  given  of  it),  we  see  it  just 
where  it  should  be  placed  to  receive  the  Centaur's 
offering,  and  a  most  remarkable  portion  of  the 
Milky-Way  is  then  seen  to  be  directly  above  the 
altar  iu  such  a  way  as  to  form  a  very  good  imita- 
tion of  smoke  ascending  from  it.  This  part  of 
the  Milky- Way  is  described  by  Sir  J.  Herschel, 
who  studied  it  carefully  during  his  stay  at  the 
Cape  of  Good  Hope,  as  forming  a  complicated 
system  of  interlaced  streaks  and  masses  which 
covers  the  tail  of  Scorpio  (extending  from  the 
altar  which  lies  immediately  south  of  the  Scor- 
pion's Tail).  The  Milky- Way  divides,  in  fact, 
just  above  the  altar,  as  the  constellation  was  seen 
4,000  years  ago  above  the  southern  horizon,  one 
branch  being  that  just  described,  the  other  (like 
another  stream  of  smoke)  "  passing,"  says  Her- 
schel, "  over  the  stars  Iota  of  the  Altar,  Theta 
and  Iota  of  the  Scorpion,  etc.,  to  Gamma  of  the 
Archer,  where  it  suddenly  collects  into  a  vivid 
oval  mass,  so  very  rich  in  stars  that  a  very  mod- 
erate calculation  makes  their  number  exceed 
100,000."  Nothing  could  accord  better  with  the 
descriptions  of  Aratus  and  Manilius. 

But  there  is  another  constellation  which 
shows  in  a  more  marked  way  than  either  the 
Centaur  or  the  Altar  that  the  date  when  the  con- 
stellations were  invented  must  have  been  near 
that  which  I  have  named.  Both  Ara  and  Cen- 
taurus  look  now,  in  suitable  latitudes  (about 
20°  north),  as  they  looked  in  higher  latitudes 
(about  40°    north)  4,000   years  ago.      For  the 


5± 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


reeling  motion  of  our  earth  has  changed  the 
place  of  the  celestial  pole  in  such  a  way  as  only 
to  depress  these  constellations  southward  with- 
out much  changing  their  position  ;  they  are  near- 
ly upright  when  due  south  now  as  they  were 
4,000  years  ago,  only  lower  down.  But  the  great 
ship  Argo  has  sufi'ered  a  much  more  serious  dis- 
placement. One  cannot  now  see  this  ship  like  a 
ship  at  any  time  or  from  any  place  on  the  earth's 
surface.  If  we  travel  south  till  the  whole  con- 
stellation comes  into  visibility  above  the  southern 
horizon  at  the  proper  season  (January  aud  Feb- 
ruary for  the  midnight  hours)  the  keel  of  the  ship 
is  aslant,  the  stern  being  high  above  the  waist 
(the  fore-part  is  wanting).  If  we  travel  still  far- 
ther south,  we  can  indeed  reach  places  where  the 
course  of  the  ship  is  so  widened,  and  the  changes 
of  position  so  increased,  that  she  appears  along 
part  of  her  journey  on  an  even  keel,  but  then  she 
is  high  above  the  horizon.  Now,  4,000  years 
ago  she  stood  on  the  horizon  itself  at  her  south- 
ern culmination,  with  level  keel  and  upright 
mast. 

In  passing,  I  may  note  that  there  are  those 
who  imagine  that  this  great  ship  represented  the 
ark,  its  fore-part  formerly  being  the  portion  of 
the  Centaur  now  forming  the  horse,  so  that  the 
Centaur  was  represented  as  a  man  (not  as  a  man- 
horse)  offering  a  gift  on  the  altar.  Thus,  in  this 
group  of  constellations  men  recognized  the  ark5 
and  Noah  going  up  from  the  ark  toward  the  altar 
"  which  he  builded  unto  the  Lord ;  and  took  of 
every  clean  beast,  and  of  every  clean  fowl,  and 
offered  burnt-offerings  on  the  altar."  One  here- 
tic has  even  imagined  that  the  constellation-fig- 
ures of  the  ship,  the  man  with  an  offering,  and  the 
altar,  painted  or  sculptured  in  some  ancient  astro- 
logical temple,  came  at  a  later  time  to  be  under- 
stood as  picturing  a  series  of  events,  interpreted 
and  expanded  by  a  poetical  writer  into  a  com- 
plete narrative.  Without  venturing  to  advocate 
here  so  heterodox  a  notion,  I  may  remark  as 
an  odd  coincidence  that  probably  such  a  pict- 
ure or  sculpture  would  have  shown  the  smoke 
ascending  from  the  altar  which  I  have  already 
described,  and  in  this  smoke  there  would  be 
shown  the  bow  of  Sagittarius.  This,  interpreted 
and  expanded  in  the  way  I  have  mentioned, 
might  have  accounted  for  the  "  bow  set  in  the 
clouds,  for  a  token  of  a  covenant."  It  is  note- 
worthy that  all  the  remaining  constellations  form- 
ing the  southern  limit  of  the  old  star-domes  or 
charts,  were  watery  ones — the  Southern  Fish, 
over  which  Aquarius  is  pouring  a  quite  unnec- 
essary stream  of  water,  the  great  sea-monster, 


toward  which  in  turn  flow  the  streams  of  the  River 
Eridanus.  The  equator,  too,  was  then  occupied 
along  a  great  part  of  its  length  by  the  great 
sca-serpeut  Hydra,  which  reared  its  head  above 
the  equator,  very  probably  indicated  then  by  a 
water  horizon,  for  nearly  all  the  signs  below  it 
were  then  watery.  At  any  rate,  as  the  length 
of  Hydra  then  lay  horizontally  above  the  ship, 
whose  masts  reached  it,  we  may  well  believe 
that  this  part  of  the  picture  of  the  heavens 
showed  a  sea-horizon  and  a  ship,  the  great  sea- 
serpent  lying  along  the  horizon.  On  the  back 
of  Hydra  is  the  raven,  which  again  may  be  sup- 
posed by  those  who  accept  the  theory  men- 
tioned above  to  have  suggested  the  raven  which 
went  forth  to  and  fro  from  the  ark.  He  is  close 
enough  to  the  rigging  of  Argo  to  make  an  easy 
journey  of  it.  The  dove,  however,  must  not  be 
confounded  with  the  modern  constellation  Co- 
lumba,  though  this  is  placed  (suitably  enough) 
near  the  ark.  We  must  suppose  the  idea  of  the 
dove  was  suggested  by  a  bird  pictured  in  the 
rigging  of  the  celestial  ship.  The  sequence  in 
which  the  constellations  came  above  the  horizon 
as  the  year  went  round  corresponded  very  satis- 
factorily with  the  theory,  fanciful  though  this 
may  be.  First  Aquarius  pouring  streams  of 
water,  the  three  fishes  (Pisces  and  Piscis  Aus- 
tralis),  and  the  great  sea-monster  Cetus,  show- 
ing how  the  waters  prevailed  over  the  highest 
hills,  then  the  ark  sailing  on  the  waters,  a  lit- 
tle later  the  raven  (Corvus),  the  man  descending 
from  the  ark  and  offering  a  gift  on  the  altar  ;  and 
last,  the  bow  set  amid  the  clouds. 

The  theory  just  described  may  have  little  in 
its  favor.  But  wilder  theories  of  the  story  of  the 
deluge  have  been  adopted  and  advocated  with 
considerable  confidence.  One  of  the  wildest,  I 
fear,  is  the  Astronomer  Royal's,  that  the  deluge 
was  simply  a  great  rising  of  the  Nile.  Sir  G. 
Airy  is  so  confident  respecting  this  that  he  says, 
"  I  cannot  entertain  the  smallest  doubt  that  the 
flood  of  Noah  was  a  flood  of  the  Nile,"  precise- 
ly as  he  might  say,  "  I  cannot  entertain  the 
smallest  doubt  that  the  earth  moves  round  the 
On  one  point  we  can  entertain  very  little 


sun. 


doubt  indeed.  If  it  ever  rained  before  the  flood, 
which  seems  probable,  and  if  the  sun  ever  shone 
on  falling  rain,  which  again  seems  likely,  nothing 
short  of  a  miracle  could  have  prevented  the 
rainbow  from  making  its  appearance  before  the 
flood.  The  wildest  theory  that  can  be  invented 
to  explain  the  story  of  the  deluge  cannot  be  wild- 
er than  the  supposition  that  the  rays  of  sunlight 
shining   on  falling  rain-drops   could   have   ever 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  TEE  CONSTELLATION-FIGURES. 


55 


failed  to  show  the  prismatic  colors.  The  theory 
I  have  suggested  above,  without  going  so  far  as 
to  advocate  it,  is  free  at  any  rate  from  objection 
on  this  particular  score,  which  cannot  be  said  of 
the  ordinary  theory.  I  am  not  yet  able,  how- 
ever, to  say  that  "  I  cannot  entertain  the  smallest 
doubt "  about  that  theory. 

We  may  feel  tolerably  sure  that  the  period 
when  the  old  southern  constellations  were  formed 
must  have  been  between  2,400  and  2,000  years 
before  the  present  era.  This,  period,  by-the- 
way,  includes  the  date  usually  assigned  to  the 
deluge,  which,  however,  must  really  occupy  our 
attention  no  further.  In  fact,  let  us  leave  the 
watery  constellations  below  the  equator  of  those 
remote  times,  and  seek  at  once  the  highest  heav- 
ens above  them. 

Here,  at  the  northern  pole  of  those  days,  we 
find  the  great  Dragon,  which  in  any  astrological 
temple  of  the  time  must  have  formed  the  highest 
or  crowning  constellation,  surrounding  the  very 
key-stone  of  the  dome.  He  has  fallen  away  from 
that  proud  position  since.  In  fact,  even  4,000 
years  ago  he  only  held  to  the  pole,  so  to  speak, 
by  his  tail,  and  we  have  to  travel  farther  back 
2,000  years  or  so  to  find  the  pole  situate  in  a 
portion  of  the  length  of  the  Dragon  which  can 
be  regarded  as  central.  One  might  almost,  if 
fancifully  disposed,  recognize  the  gradual  dis- 
placement of  the  Dragon  from  his  old  place  of 
honor,  in  certain  traditions  of  the  downfall  of  the 
great  Dragon  whose  "  tail  drew  the  third  part  of 
the  stars  of  heaven." 

The  central  position  of  the  Dragon — for  even 
when  the  pole-star  had  drawn  near  to  the  Drag- 
on's tail  the  constellation  was  still  central — will 
remind  the  classical  reader  of  Homer's  descrip- 
tion of  the  shield  of  Hercules : 

"  The  scaly  horror  of  a  dragon,  coiled 
Full  in  the  central  field,  unspeakable, 
With  eyes  oblique  retorted,  that  askant 
Shot  gleaming  tire." 

Elton's  translation. 

I  say  Homer's  description,  for  I  cannot  un- 
derstand how  any  one,  who  compares  together 
the  description  of  the  shield  of  Achilles  in  the. 
"  Iliad  "  and  that  of  the  shield  of  Hercules  in  the 
fragmentary  form  in  which  we  have  it,  can  doubt 
for  a  moment  that  both  descriptions  came  from 
the  same  hand.  (The  theory  that  Hesiod  com. 
posed  the  latter  poem  can  scarcely  be  enter- 
tained by  any  scholar.)  As  I  long  since  pointed 
out  in  my  essay,  "  A  New  Theory  of  Achilles's 
Shield"  ("Light  Science,"  first  series),  no  poet, 
so  inferior  as  actually  to  borrow  Homer's  words 


in  part  of  the  description  of  the  shield  of  Her- 
cules, could  have  written  the  other  parts  not 
found  in  the  shield  of  Achilles.  "  I  cannot,  for 
my  own  part,  entertain  the  smallest  doubt" — 
that  is  to  say,  I  think  it  altogether  probable — 
that  Homer  composed  the  lines  supposed  to  de- 
scribe the  shield  of  Hercules  long  before  he  intro- 
duced the  description,  pruned  and  strengthened, 
into  that  particular  part  of  the  "  Iliad  "  where 
it  served  his  purpose  best.  And  I  have  as  little 
doubt  that  the  original  description,  of  which  we 
only  get  fragments  in  either  poem,  related  to 
something  far  more  important  than  a  shield. 
The  constellations  are  not  suitable  adornments 
for  the  shield  of  a  fighting-man,  even  though  he 
was  under  the  special  care  of  a  celestial  mother, 
and  had  armor  made  for  him  by  a  celestial  smith. 
Yet  we  learn  that  Achilles's  shield  displayed — 

"  The  starry  lights  that   heaven's  high  convex 

crowned, 
The  Pleiads,  Hyads,  and  the  northern  beam, 
And  great  Orion's  more  refulgent  beam, 
To  which,  around  the  cycle  of  the  sky, 
The  Bear  revolving,  points  his  golden  eye, 
Still  shines  exalted  on  th'  ethereal  plain," 

and  so  forth.  The  shield  of  Hercules  displayed 
at  its  centre  the  polar  constellation,  the  Dragon. 
We  read  also  that — 

"  There  was  the  knight  of  fair-haired  Danae  born, 
Perseus." 

Orion  is  not  specially  mentioned,  but  Orion,  Le- 
pus,  and  the  Dogs,  seem  referred  to  : 

"  .  .  .  .  Men  of  chase 
Were  taking  the  fleet  hares ;  two  keen-toothed 

dogs 
Bounded  beside." 

Homer  would  find  no  difficulty  in  pluralizing  the 
mighty  hunter  and  the  hare  into  huntsmen  and 
hares  when  utilizing  a  description  originally  re- 
ferring to  the  constellation.  I  conceive  that  the 
original  description  related  to  one  of  those  zodiac 
temples  whose  remains  are  still  found  in  Egypt, 
though  the  Egyptian  temples  of  this  kind  were 
probably  only  copies  of  more  ancient  Chaldean 
temples.  We  know  from  Assyrian  sculptures 
that  representations  of  the  constellations  (and 
especially  the  zodiacal  constellations)  were  com- 
mon among  the  Babylonians ;  and,  as  I  point  out 
in  the  essay  above  referred  to,  "  it  seems  prob- 
able that  in  a  country  where  Sabianism  or  star- 
worship  was  the  prevailing  form  of  religion,  yet 
more  imposing  proportions  would  be  given  to 
zodiac  temples  than  in  Egypt."  My  theory, 
then,  respecting  the  two  famous  "  shields  "  is,  that 


56 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


Homer  in  his  Eastern  travels  visited  imposing 
temples  devoted  to  astronomical  observation  and 
star-worship,  and  that  nearly  every  line  in  both 
descriptions  is  borrowed  from  a  poem  in  whrch 
he  described  a  temple  of  this  sort,  its  domed 
zodiac,  and  those  illustrations  of  the  labors  of 
different  seasons  and  of  military  or  judicial  pro- 
cedures which  the  astrological  proclivities  of 
star-worshipers  led  them  to  associate  with  the 
different  constellations.  For  the  arguments  on 
which  this  theory  is  based  I  have  not  hei-e 
space.  They  are  dealt  with  in  the  essay  from 
which  I  have  quoted.  One  point  only  I  need 
touch  upon  here,  besides  those  I  have  mentioned 
already.  It  may  be  objected  that  the  description 
of  a  zodiac  temple  has  nothing  to  connect  it  with 
the  subject  of  the  "  Iliad."  This  is  certainly  true  > 
but  no  one  who  is  familiar  with  Homer's  man- 
ner can  doubt  that  he  would  work  in,  if  he  saw 
the  opportunit}-,  a  poem  on  some  subject  outside 
that  of  the  "  Iliad,"  so  modifying  the  language  that 
the  description  would  correspond  with  the  sub- 
ject in  hand.  There  are  many  passages,  though 
none  of  such  length,  in  both  the  "  Iliad  "  and  the 
"  Odyssey,"  which  seem  thus  to  have  been  brought 
into  the  poem ;  and  other  passages  not  exactly 
of  this  kind  yet  show  that  Homer  was  not  insen- 
sible to  the  advantage  of  occasionally  using  mem- 
ory instead  of  invention. 

Any  one  who  considers  attentively  the  aspect 
of  the  constellation  Draco  in  the  heavens,  will  per- 
ceive that  the  drawing  of  the  head  in  the  maps  is 
not  correct ;  the  head  is  no  longer  pictured  as  it 
must  have  been  conceived  by  those  who  first  formed 
the  constellation.  The  two  bright  stars,  Beta 
and  Gamma,- are  now  placed  on  a  head  in  profile. 
Formerly  they  marked  the  two  eyes.  I  would 
not  lay  stress  on  the  description  of  the  Dragon 
in  the  shield  of  Hercules,  "  with  eyes  oblique 
retorted,  that  askant  shot  gleaming  fire;"  for 
the  reader  may  not  be  prepared  to  accept  my 
opinion  that  the  description  related  to  the  con- 
stellation Draco.  But  the  description  of  the 
constellation  itself  by  Aratus  suffices  to  show 
that  the  two  bright  stars  I  have  named  marked 
the  eyes  of  the  imagined  monster — in  fact,  Aratus's 
account  singularly  resembles  that  given  in  the 
shield  of  Hercules.  "  Swol'n  is  his  neck,"  says 
Aratus  of  the  Dragon — 

"  .  .  .  .  Eyes  charged  with  sparkling  fire 
His  crested  head  illume.    As  if  in  ire 
To  Helice  he  turns  his  foaming  jaw, 
And  darts  his  tongue,  barbed  with  a  blazing  star." 

And  the  Dragon's  head  with  sparkling  eyes  can 
be  recognized  to  this  day,  so  soon  as  this  change 


is  made  in  its  configuration,  whereas  no  one  can 
recognize  the  remotest  resemblance  to  a  dragon's 
head  in  profile.  The  star  barbing  the  Dragon's 
tongue  would  be  Xi  of  the  Dragon  according  to 
Aratus's  account,  for  so  only  would  the  eyes  be 
turned  toward  Helice  the  Bear.  But,  when  Ara- 
tus wrote,  the  practice  of  separating  the  constella- 
tions from  each  other  had  been  adopted  ;  in  fact, 
he  derived  his  knowledge  of  them  chiefly  from 
Eudoxus  the  astronomer  and  mathematician,  who 
certainly  would  not  have  allowed  the  constellations 
to  be  intermixed.  In  the  beginning  there  are  rea- 
sons for  believing  it  was  different ;  and  if  a  group 
of  stars  resembled  any  known  object  it  would  be 
called  after  that  object,  even  though  some  of  the 
stars  necessary  to  make  up  the  figure  belonged 
already  to  some  other  figure.  This  being  remem- 
bered, we  can  have  no  difficulty  in  retorting  the 
Dragon's  head  more  naturally — not  to  the  star 
Xi  of  the  Dragon,  but  to  the  star  Iota  of  Her- 
cules.    The  four  stars  are  situated  thus,  *    *  the 

larger  ones  representing  the  eyes,  and  so  far  as 
the  head  is  concerned  it  is  a  matter  of  indiffer- 
ence whether  the  lower  or  the  upper  small  star 
be  taken  to  represent  the  tongue.  But,  as  any 
one  will  see  who  looks  at  these  stars  when  the 
Dragon  is  best  placed  for  (ordinary  non-telescop- 
ic) observation,  the  attitude  of  the  animal  is  far 
more  natural  when  the  star  Iota  of  Hercules 
marks  the  tongue,  for  then  the  creature  is  situ- 
ated like  a  winged  serpent  hovering  above  the 
horizon  and  looking  downward;  whereas,  when 
the  star  Xi  marks  the  tongue,  the  hovering 
Dragon  is  looking  upward  and  is  in  an  unnatu- 
rally constrained  position.  (I  would  not,  indeed, 
claim  to  understand  perfectly  all  the  ways  of 
dragons ;  still  it  may  be  assumed  that  a  dragon 
hovering  above  the  horizon  would  rather  look 
downward  in  a  natural  position  than  upward  in 
an  awkward  one.) 

The  star  Iota  of  Hercules  marks  the  heel  of 
this  giant,  called  the  Kneeler  (Engonasin)  from 
time  immemorial.  He  must  have  been  an  im- 
portant  figure  on  the  old  zodiac  temples,  and  not 
improbably  his  presence  there  as  one  of  the 
largest  and  highest  of  the  human  figures  may 
have  caused  a  zodiac  dome  to  be  named  after  Her- 
cules. The  Dome  of  Hercules  would  come  near 
enough  to  the  title,  "  The  Shield  of  Hercules," 
borne  by  the  fragmentary  poem  dealt  with  above. 
The  foot  of  the  kneeling  man  was  represented  on 
the  head  of  the  dragon,  the  dragon  having  hold 
of  the  heel.     And  here,  again,  some  imagine  that 


TEE  ORIGIN  OF  TEE  CONSTELLATION-FIGURES. 


57 


a  sculptured  representation  of  these  imagined 
figures  in  the  heavens  may  have  been  interpreted 
and  expanded  into  the  narrative  of  a  contest 
between  the  man  and  the  old  serpent  the  dragon, 
Ophiuchus  the  serpent-bearer  being  supposed  to 
typify  the  eventual  defeat  of  the  dragon.  This 
fancy  might  be  followed  out  like  that  relating  to 
the  deluge  ;  but  the  reader  has  possibly  no  de- 
sire for  further  inquiries  iu  that  particular  direc- 
tion. 

Some  interest  attaches  to  the  constellation 
Ophiuchus,  to  my  mind,  in  the  evidence  it  affords 
respecting  the  way  in  which  the  constellations 
were  at  first  intermixed.  I  have  mentioned  one 
instance  in  which,  as  I  think,  the  later  astrono- 
mers separated  two  constellations  which  had 
once  been  conjoined.  Many  others  can  be  rec- 
ognized when  we  compare  the  actual  star-groups 
with  the  constellation-figures  as  at  present  de- 
picted. No  one  can  recognize  the  poop  of  a 
ship  in  the  group  of  stars  now  assigned  to  the 
stern  of  Argo ;  but  if  we  include  the  stars  of  the 
Greater  Dog,  and  others  close  by,  a  well-shaped 
poop  can  be  clearly  seen.  The  head  of  the  Lion 
of  our  maps  is  as  the  head  of  a  dog,  so  far  as 
stars  are  concerned  ;  but,  if  stars  from  the  Crab 
on  one  side  and  from  Virgo  on  the  other  be  in- 
cluded in  the  figure,  and  especially  Berenice's 
Hair  to  form  the  tuft  of  the  lion's  tail,  a  very  fine 
lion  with  waving  mane  can  be  discerned,  with  a 
slight  effort  of  the  imagination.  So  with  Bootes 
the  herdsman.  He  was  of  old  "  a  fine  figure  of 
a  man,"  waving  aloft  his  arms,  and,  as  his  name 
implies,  shouting  lustily  at  the  retreating  bear. 
Now,  and  from  some  time  certainly  preceding 
that  of  Eudoxus,  one  arm  has  been  lopped  off  to 
fashion  the  northern  crown,  and  the  herdsman 
holds  his  club  as  close  to  his  side  as  a  soldier 
holds  his  shouldered  musket.  The  constellation 
of  the  Great  Bear,  once  I  conceive  the  only  bear 
(though  the  lesser  bear  is  a  very  old  constella- 
tion), has  suffered  wofully.  Originally  it  must 
have  been  a  much  larger  bear,  the  stars  now 
forming  the  tail  marking  part  of  the  outline  of 
the  back ;  but  first  some  folks  who  were  unac- 
quainted with  the  nature  of  bears  turned  the 
three  stars  (the  horses  of  the  plough)  into  a  long 
tail,  abstracting  from  the  animal  all  the  corre- 
sponding portion  of  his  body,  and  then  modern 
astronomers,  finding  a  great  vacant  space  where 
formerly  the  bear's  large  frame  extended,  incon- 
tinently formed  the  stars  of  this  space  into  a  new 
constellation,  the  Hunting  Dogs.  No  one  can 
recognize  a  bear  in  the  constellation  as  at  present 
shaped  ;  but  any  one  who  looks  attentively  at 


the  part  of  the  skies  occupied  by  the  constella- 
tion will  recognize  (always  "  making  believe  a 
good  deal ")  a  monstrous  bear,  with  the  proper 
small  head  of  creatures  of  the  bear  family, 
and  with  exceedingly  well-developed  plantigrade 
feet.  Of  course,  this  figure  cannot  at  all  times 
be  recognized  with  equal  facility ;  but  before 
midnight  during  the  last  four  or  five  months  in 
the  year,  the  bear  occupies  positions  favoring 
his  recognition,  being  either  upright  on  his  feet, 
or  as  if  descending  a  slope,  or  squatting  on  his 
great  haunches.  As  a  long-tailed  animal  the 
creature  is  more  like  one  of  those  wooden  toy- 
monkeys  which  used  to  be  made  for  children 
(and  may  be  now),  in  which  the  sliding  motion 
of  a  ringed  rod  carried  the  monkey  over  the  top 
of  a  stick.  The  Little  Bear  has  I  think  been 
borrowed  from  the  dragon,  which  was  certainly 
a  winged  monster  originally. 

Now,  the  astronomers  who  separated  from 
each  other  (and  in  so  doing  spoiled)  the  old  con- 
stellation-figures seem  to  have  despaired  of  free- 
ing Ophiuchus  from  his  entanglements.  The  Ser- 
pent is  twined  around  his  body,  the  Scorpion  is 
clawing  at  one  leg.  The  constellation-makers 
have  per  fas  et  nefas  separated  Scorpio  from  the 
Serpent-Holder,  spoiling  both  figures.  But  the 
Serpent  has  been  too  much  for  them,  insomuch 
that  they  have  been  reduced  to  the  abject  neces- 
sity of  leaving  one  part  of  the  Serpent  on  one 
side  of  the  region  they  allow  .to  Ophiuchus,  and 
the  other  part  of  the  Serpent  on  the  other. 

A  group  of  constellations  whose  origin  and 
meaning  are  little  understood  remains  to  be  men- 
tioned. Close  by  the  Dragon  is  King  Cepheus  ; 
beside  him  his  wife  Cassiopeia  (the  Seated  Lady), 
near  whom  is  Andromeda,  the  Chained  Lady. 
The  Sea  Monster  Cetus  is  not  far  away,  though 
not  near  enough  to  threaten  her  safety,  the  Ram 
and  Triangle  being  between  the  monster's  head 
and  her  feet,  the  Fishes  intervening  between  the 
body  of  the  monster  and  her  fair  form.  Close  at 
hand  is  Perseus,  the  Rescuer,  with  a  sword  (look- 
ing very  much  like  a  reaping-hook  in  all  the  old 
pictures)  in  his  right  hand,  and  bearing  in  his  left 
the  head  of  Medusa.  The  general  way  of  ac- 
counting for  the  figures  thus  associated  has  been 
by  supposing  that,  having  a  certain  tradition 
about  Cepheus  and  his  family,  men  imagined  in 
the  heavens  the  pictorial  repsesentation  of  the 
events  of  the  tradition.  I  have  long  believed  that 
the  actual  order  in  this  and  other  cases  was  the 
reverse  of  this — that  men  imagined  certain  figures 
in  the  heavens,  pictured  these  figures  in  their  as- 
tronomical temples  or  observatories,  and  made 


5S 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


stories  afterward  to  fit  the  pictures,  probably 
many  generations  afterward.  Be  this  as  it  may, 
we  can  at  present  give  no  satisfactory  account  of 
the  group  of  constellations. 

AVilford  describes,  in  his  "  Asiatic  Research- 
es," a  conversation  with  a  pundit  or  astronomer 
respecting  the  names  of  the  Indian  constellations. 
"  Asking  him,"  he  says,  "  to  show  me  in  the 
heavens  the  constellation  Antarmada,  he  imme- 
diately pointed  to  Andromeda,  though  I  had  not 
given  him  any  information  about  it  beforehand. 
He  afterward  brought  me  a  very  rare  and  curious 
work  in  Sanskrit,  which  contained  a  chapter  de- 
voted to  Upanachatras,  or  extra-zodiacal  constel- 
lations, with  drawings  of  Capuja  (Cepheus)  and 
of  Casyapi  (Cassiopeia)  seated  and  holding  a 
lotus-flower  in  her  hand,  of  Antarmada  chained 
with  the  Fish  beside  her,  and  last  of  Paraseia 
(Perseus),  who,  according  to  the  explanation  of 
the  book,  held  the  head  of  a  monster  which  he 
had  slain  in  combat ;  blood  was  dripping  from  it, 
and  for  hair  it  had  snakes."  Some  have  inferred, 
from  the  circumstance  that  the  Indian  charts 
thus  showed  the  Cassiopeian  set  of  constellations, 
that  the  origin  of  these  figures  is  to  be  sought  in 
India.  But  probably  both  the  Indian  and  the 
Greek  constellation-figures  were  derived  from  a 
much  older  source. 

The  zodiacal  twelve  are  in  some  respects  the 
most  important  and  interesting  of  all  the  ancient 
constellations.  If  we  could  determine  the  origin 
of  these  figures,  their  exact  configuration  as  at 
first  devised,  and  the  precise  influences  assigned 
to  them  in  the  old  astrological  systems,  we  should 
have  obtained  important  evidence  as  to  the  origin 
of  astronomy  itself.  Not,  indeed,  that  the  twelve 
signs  of  the  zodiac  were  formed  at  the  beginning 
or  even  in  the  early  infancy  of  astronomy.  It 
seems  abundantly  clear  that  the  division  of  the 
zodiac  (which  includes  the  moon's  track  as  well 
as  the  sun's)  had  reference  originally  to  the 
moon's  motions.  She  circuits  the  star-sphere  in 
about  twenty-seven  and  a  third  days,  while  the 
lunation  or  interval  from  new  moon  to  new  moon 
is,  as  we  all  know,  about  twenty-nine  and  a  half 
days  in  length.  It  would  appear  that  the  ear- 
liest astronomers,  who  were  of  course  astrologers 
also,  of  all  nations— the  Indian,  Egyptian,  Chi- 
nese, Persian,  and  Chaldean  astronomers — adopt- 
ed twenty-eight  days  (probably  as  a  rough  mean 
between  the  two  periods  just  named)  as  their  chief 
lunar  period,  and  divided  the  moon's  track  round 
the  ecliptic  into  twenty-eight  portions  or  man- 
sions. How  they  managed  about  the  fractions  of 
days  outstanding — whether  the  common  lunation 


was  considered  or  the  moon's  motion  round  the 
star-sphere — is  not  known.  The  very  circum- 
stance, however,  that  they  were  for  a  long  time 
content  with  their  twenty-eight  lunar  mansions 
shows  that  they  did  not  seek  great  precision  at 
first.  Doubtless  they  employed  some  rough  sys- 
tem of  "leap-months"  by  which,  as  occasion  re- 
quired, the  progress  of  the  month  was  reconciled 
with  the  progress  of  the  moon,  just  as  by  our 
leap-years  the  progress  of  the  year  is  reconciled 
with  the  progress  of  the  sun  or  seasons. 

The  use  of  the  twenty-eight-day  period  nat- 
urally suggested  the  division  of  time  into  weeks 
of  seven  days  each.  The  ordinary  lunar  month 
is  divided  in  a  very  obvious  manner  into  four 
equal  parts  by  the  lunar  aspects.  Every  one  can 
recognize  roughly  the  time  of  full  moon  and  the 
times  of  half-moon  before  and  after  full,  while 
the  time  of  new  moon  is  recognized  from  these 
last  two  epochs.  Thus  the  four  quarters  of  the 
month,  or  roughly  the  four  weeks  of  the  month, 
would  be  the  first  time  measure  thought  of,  after 
the  day,  which  is  the  necessary  foundation  of  all 
time  measures.  The  nearest  approach  which  can 
be  made  to  a  quarter-month  in  days  is  the  week 
of  seven  days  ;  and  although  some  little  awkward- 
ness arose  from  the  fact  that  four  weeks  differ 
appreciably  from  a  lunar  month,  this  would  not 
long  prevent  the  adoption  of  the  week  as  a  meas- 
ure of  time.  In  fact,  just  as  our  years  begin  on 
different  days  of  the  week  without  causing  any 
inconvenience,  so  the  ancient  months  might  be 
made  to  begin  with  different  week-days.  All  that 
would  be  necessary  to  make  the  week  measure 
fairly  well  the  quarters  of  the  month,  would  be 
to  start  each  month  on  the  proper  or  nearest 
week-day.  To  inform  people  about  this  some 
ceremony  could  he  appointed  for  the  day  of  the 
new  moon,  and  some  signal  employed  to  indicate 
the  time  when  this  ceremony  was  to  take  place. 
This — the  natural  and  obvious  course — we  find, 
was  the  means  actually  adopted,  the  festival  of 
the  new  moon  and  the  blowing  of  trumpets  in 
the  new  moon  being  an  essential  part  of  the  ar- 
rangements adopted  by  nations  who  adopted  the 
week  as  a  chief  measure  of  time.  The  seven  days 
were  not  affected  by  the  new  moons  so  far  as  the 
nomenclature  of  these  days,  or  special  duties 
connected  with  any  one  of  them,  might  be  con- 
cerned. Originally  the  idea  may  have  been  to 
have  festivals  and  sacrifices  at  the  time  of  new 
moon,  first  quarter,  full  moon,  and  third  quarter; 
but  this  arrangement  would  naturally  (and  did,  as 
we  know,  actually)  give  way  before  long  to  a  new- 
moon  festival  regulating  the  month,  and  seven 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  TEE  CONSTELLATION- FIGURES. 


59 


daily  festivals,  each  class  of  festival  having  its 
appropriate  sacrifices  and  duties. 

This,  I  say,  was  the  natural  cause.  Its  adop- 
tion may  have  been  aided  by  the  recognition 
of  the  fact  that  the  seven  planets  of  the  old  sys- 
tem of  astronomy  might  conveniently  be  taken  to 
rule  the  days  and  the  hours  in  the  way  described 
in  my  essay  on  astrology.  That  that  nomen- 
clature and  that  system  of  association  between 
the  planets  and  the  hours,  days,  and  weeks  of 
time  measurement  were  eventually  adopted,  is  cer- 
tain ;  but  whether  the  convenience  and  apparent 
mystical  fitness  of  this  arrangement  led  at  all  to 
the  use  of  weekly  festivals  in  conjunction  with 
monthly  ones,  or  whether  those  weekly  festivals 
were  first  adopted  in  the  way  described  above,  or 
whether  (which  seems  altogether  more  likely) 
both  sets  of  considerations  led  to  the  arrange- 
ment, we  cannot  certainly  tell.  The  arrangement 
was  in  every  way  a  natural  one,  and  one  may  say, 
considering  all  the  circumstances,  that  it  was  al- 
most an  inevitable  one.  There  was,  however,  an- 
other possible  arrangement,  viz.,  the  division  of 
time  into  ten  daily  periods,  three  to  each  month, 
with  corresponding  new-moon  festivals.  But  as 
the  arrival  of  the  moon  at  the  thirds  of  her  prog- 
ress are  not  at  all  so  well  marked  as  her  arrival 
at  the  quarters,  and,  as  there  is  no  connection  be- 
tween the  number  ten  and  the  planets,  this  ar- 
rangement was  far  less  likely  to  be  adopted  than 
the  other.  Accordingly,  we  find  that  only  one  or 
two  nations  adopted  it.  Six  sets  of  five  days 
would  be  practically  the  same  arrangement ;  five 
sets  of  six  for  each  month  would  scarcely  be 
thought  of,  as  with  that  division  the  use  of  sim- 
ple direct  observations  of  the  moon  for  time 
measurement,  which  was  the  real  aim  of  all  such 
divisions,  would  not  be  convenient  or  indeed  even 
possible  for  the  generality  of  persons.  Few  could 
tell  easily  when  the  moon  is  two-fifths  or  four- 
fifths  full,  whereas  every  one  can  tell  when  she  is 
half  full  or  quite  full  (the  requisite  for  weekly 
measurement) ;  and  it  would  be  possible  to  guess 
pretty  nearly  when  she  is  one-third  or  two-thirds 
full,  the  requisite  for  the  tridecennial  division. 

My  object  in  the  above  discussion  of  the  ori- 
gin of  the  week  (as  distinguished  from  the  origin 
of  the  Sabbath,  which  I  considered  in  my  paper 
on  astrology),  has  been  to  show  that  the  use  of 
the  twelve  zodiacal  signs  was  in  every  case  pre- 
ceded by  the  use  of  the  twenty-eight  lunar  man- 
sions. It  has  been  supposed  that  those  nations 
in  whose  astronomy  the  twenty-eight  mansions 
still  appear  adopted  one  system,  while  the  use  of 
the  twelve  signs  implies  that  another  system  had 


been  adopted.  Thus  the  following  passage  occurs 
in  Mr.  Blake's  version  of  Flammarion's  "  History 
of  the  Heavens :  "  "  The  Chinese  have  twenty- 
eight  constellations,  though  the  word  sion  does 
not  mean  a  group  of  stars,  but  simply  a  mansion 
or  hotel.  In  the  Coptic  and  ancient  Egyptian 
the  word  for  constellation  has  the  same  meaning. 
They  also  had  twenty-eight,  and  the  same  num- 
ber is  found  among  the  Arabians,  Persians,  and 
Indians.  Among  the  Chaldeans  or  Accadians  we 
find  no  sign  of  the  number  twenty-eight.  The 
ecliptic,  or  '  yoke  of  the  sky,'  with  them,  as  we 
see  in  the  newly-discovered  tablets,  was  divided 
into  twelve  divisions,  as  now  ;  and  the  only  con- 
nection that  can  be  imagined  between  this  and 
the  twenty-eight  is  the  opinion  of  M.  Biot,  who 
thinks  that  the  Chinese  had  originally  only  twen- 
ty-four mansions,  four  more  being  added  by  Chen- 
kung,  1100  b.  c,  and  that  they  corresponded  with 
the  twenty-four  stars,  twelve  to  the  north  and 
twelve  to  the  south,  that  marked  the  twelve  signs 
of  the  zodiac  among  the  Chaldeans.  But  under 
this. supposition  the  twenty-eight  has  no  reference 
to  the  moon,  whereas  we  have  every  reason  to 
believe  it  has  "  The  last  observation  is  undoubt- 
edly correct — the  twenty-eight  mansions  have 
been  mansions  of  the  moon  from  the  beginning. 
But  in  this  very  circumstance,  as  also  in  the  very 
tablets  referred  to  in  the  preceding  passage,  we 
find  all  the  evidence  needed  to  show  that  origi- 
nally the  Chaldeans  divided  the  zodiac  into  twenty- 
eight  parts.  For  we  find  from  the  tablets  that, 
like  the  other  nations  who  had  twenty-eight  zodi- 
acal mansions,  the  Chaldeans  used  a  seven-day 
period,  derived  from  the  moon's  motions,  every 
seventh  day  being  called  sabbatu,  and  held  as  a 
day  of  rest.  We  may  safely  infer  that  the  Chal- 
dean astronomers,  advancing  beyond  those  of 
other  nations,  recognized  the  necessity  of  divid- 
ing the  zodiac  with  reference  to  the  sun's  mo- 
tions instead  of  the  moon's.  They  therefore  dis- 
carded the  twenty-eight  lunar  mansions,  and 
adopted  instead  twelve  solar  signs ;  this  number 
twelve,  like  the  number  twenty-eight  itself,  being 
selected  merely  as  the  most  convenient  approxi- 
mation to  the  number  of  parts  into  which  tin 
zodiac  was  naturally  divided  by  another  period. 
Thus  the  twenty-eighth  part  of  the  zodiac  corre- 
sponds roughly  with  the  moon's  daily  motion, 
and  the  twelfth  part  of  the  zodiac  corresponds 
roughly  with  the  moon's  monthly  motion ;  and 
both  the  numbers  twenty-eight  and  twelve  admit 
of  being  subdivided,  whereas  twenty-nine  (a  near- 
er approach  than  twenty-eight  to  the  number  of 
days  in  a  lunation)  and  thirteen  (almost  as  near 


60 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


an  approach  as  twelve  to  the  number  of  months 
in  a  year)  do  not. 

It  seems  to  me  highly  probable  that  the  date 
to  which  all  inquiries  into  the  origin  of  the  con- 
stellations and  the  zodiacal  signs  seems  to  point 
— viz.,  2170  b.  c. — was  the  date  at  which  the 
Chaldean  astronomers  definitely  adopted  the  new 
system,  the  luni-solar  instead  of  the  lunar  divi- 
sion of  the  zodiac  and  of  time.  One  of  the  ob- 
jects which  the  architects  of  the  Great  Pyramid 
(not  the  king  who  built  it)  may  have  had,  was  not 
improbably  this — the  erection  of  a  building  indi- 
cating the  epoch  when  the  new  system  was  en- 
tered upon,  and  defining  in  its  proportions,  its 
interior  passages,  and  other  features,  the  funda- 
mental elements  of  the  new  system.  The  great 
difficulty,  an  overwhelming  difficulty  it  has  always 
seemed  to  me,  in  accepting  the  belief  that  the 
year  2170  b.  c.  defined  the  beginning  of  exact  as- 
tronomy, has  been  this — that  several  of  the  cir- 
cumstances insisted  upon  as  determining  that 
date  imply  a  considerable  knowledge  of  astron- 
omy. Thus  astronomers  must  have  made  great 
progress  in  their  science  before  they  could  select, 
as  a  date  for  counting  from,  the  epoch  when  the 
slow  reeling  motion  of  the  earth  (the  so-called 
preeessional  motion)  brought  the  Pleiades  cen- 
trally south  at  the  time  of  the  vernal  equinox. 
The  construction  of  the  Great  Pyramid,  again,  in 
all  its  astronomical  features,  implies  considerable 
proficiency  in  astronomical  observation.  Thus 
the  year  2170  b.  c.  may  very  well  be  regarded  as 
defining  the  introduction  of  a  new  system  of  as- 
tronomy, but  certainly  not  the  beginning  of  as- 
tronomy itself.  Of  course,  we  may  cut  the  knot 
of  this  difficulty,  as  Prof.  Smythe  and  Abbe 
Moigno  do,  by  saying  that  astronomy  began  2170 
b.  c,  the  first  astronomers  being  instructed  su- 
pernatural!)-, so  that  the  astronomical  Minerva 
came  full-grown  into  being.  But  I  apprehend 
that  argument  against  such  a  belief  is  as  unneces- 
sary as  it  would  certainly  be  useless. 

And  now  let  us  consider  how  this  theory  ac- 
cords with  the  result  to  which  we  were  led  by 
the  position  of  the  great  vacant  space  around  the 
southern  pole.  So  far  as  the  date  is  concerned, 
we  have  already  seen  that  the  epoch  2170  b.  c. 
accords  excellently  with  the  evidence  of  the  va- 
cant space.  But  this  evidence,  as  I  mentioned 
at  the  outset,  establishes  more  than  the  date ;  it 
indicates  the  latitude  of  the  place  where  the  most 
ancient  of  Ptolemy's  forty-eight  constellations 
were  first  definitely  adopted  by  astronomers.  If 
we  assume  that  at  this  place  the  southernmost 
constellations  were  just  fully  seen  when  due  south, 


we  find  for  the  latitude  about  38°  north.  (The 
student  of  astronomy  who  may  care  to  test  my 
results  may  be  reminded  here  that  it  is  not 
enough  to  show  that  every  star  of  a  constella- 
tion would  when  due  south  be  above  the  ho- 
rizon of  the  place :  what  is  wanted  is,  that  the 
whole  constellation  when  toward  the  south  should 
be  visible  at  a  single  view.  However,  the  whole 
constellation  may  not  have  included  all  the  stars 
now  belonging  to  it.)  The  station  of  the  astrono- 
mers who  founded  the  new  system  can  scarcely 
have  been  more  than  a  degree  or  two  north  of 
this  latitude.  On  the  other  side,  we  may  go  a  lit- 
tle farther,  for  by  so  doing  we  only  raise  the  con- 
stellations somewhat  higher  above  the  southern 
horizon,  to  which  there  is  less  objection  than  to  a 
change  thrusting  part  of  the  constellations  below 
the  horizon.  Still,  it  may  be  doubted  whether 
the  place  where  the  constellations  were  first 
formed  was  less  than  32°  or  33°  north  of  the 
equator.  The  Great  Pyramid,  as  we  know,  is 
about  30°  north  of  the  equator;  but  we  also 
know  that  its  architects  traveled  southward  to 
find  a  suitable  place  for  it.  One  of  their  objects 
may  well  have  been  to  obtain  a  fuller  view  of  the 
star-sphere  south  of  their  constellations.  I  think 
from  35°  to  89°  north  would  be  about  the  most 
probable  limits,  and  from  32°  to  41°  north  the 
certain  limits  of  the  station  of  the  first  founders  . 
of  solar  zodiacal  astronomy.  What  their  actual 
station  may  have  been  is  not  so  easily  estab- 
lished. Some  think  the  region  lay  between  the 
sources  of  the  Oxus  (Amoor)  and  Indus  ;  others 
think  that  the  station  of  these  astronomers  was 
not  very  far  from  Mount  Ararat — a  view  to  which 
I  was  led  long  ago  by  other  considerations,  dis- 
cussed in  the  first  appendix  to  my  treatise  on 
"Saturn  and  its  System." 

At  the  epoch  indicated,  the  first  constellation 
of  the  zodiac  was  not,  as  now,  the  Fishes,  nor,  as 
when  a  fresh  departure  was  made  by  Hipparchus, 
the  Bam,  but  the  Bull,  a  trace  of  which  is  found 
in  Virgil's  words, 

"  Candidus  auratis  aperit  cum  cornibus  annum 
Taurus." 

The  Bull  then  was  the  spring  sign,  the  Pleiades 
and  ruddy  Aldebaran  joining  their  rays  with  the 
sun's  at  the  time  of  the  vernal  equinox.  The 
midsummer  sign  was  the  Lion  (the  bright  Cor 
Leonis  nearly  marking  the  sun's  highest  place). 
The  autumn  sign  was  the  Scorpion,  the  ruddy 
Antares  and  the  stars  clustering  in  the  head  of 
the  Scorpion  joining  their  rays  with  the  sun's  at 
the  time  of  the  autumnal  equinox.     And,  lastly) 


THE  TRIAL   OF  JESUS  CHRIST. 


61 


the  winter  sign  was  the  "Water-Bearer,  the  bright 
Foroalhant  conjoining  his  rays  with  the  sun's  at 
mid-winter.  It  is  noteworthy  that  all  these  four 
constellations  really  present  some  resemblance 
to  the  objects  after  which  they  are  named.  The 
Scorpion  is  in  the  best  drawing ;  but  the  Bull's 
head  is  well  marked,  and,  as  already  mentioned, 
a  leaping  Lion  can  be  recognized.  The  streams 
of  stars  from  the  urn  of  Aquarius  and  the  urn 
itself  are  much  better  defined  than  the  Urn- 
Bearer. 

I  have  not  left  myself  much  space  to  speak 
of  the  finest  of  all  the  constellations,  the  glorious 
Orion — the  giant  in  his  might,  as  he  was  called 
of  old.  In  this  noble  asterism  the  figure  of  a 
giant  ascending  a  slope  can  be  readily  discerned 
when  the  constellation  is  due  south.  At  the 
time  to  which  I  have  referred  the  constellation 
Orion  was  considerably  below  the  equator,  and 
instead  of  standing  nearly  upright  when  due 
south  high  above  the  horizon,  as  now  in  our 
northern  latitudes,  he  rose  upright  above  the 
southeastern  horizon.  The  resemblance  to  a 
giant  figure  must  then  have  been  more  striking 
than  it  is  at  present  (except  in  high  northern 
latitudes,  where  Orion,  when  due  south,  is  just 
fully  above  the  horizon).  The  giant  Orion  has 
long  been  identified  by  nations  with  Nimrod ; 
and  those  who  recognize  the  antetypes  of  the 
Ark  in  Argo,  of  the  old  dragon  in  Draco,  and  of 
the  first  and  second  Adams  in  the  kneeling  Her- 
cules defeated  by  the  serpent,  and  the  upright 
Ophiuchus  triumphant  over  the  serpent,  may,  if 
they  so  please,  find  in  the  giant  Orion,  the  Two 
Dogs,  the  Hare,  and  the  Bull  (whom  Orion  is 
more  directly  dealing  with)  the  representations 


of  Nimrod,  "  that  mighty  hunter  before  the 
Lord,"  his  hunting  dogs,  and  the  animals  he 
hunted.  Pegasus,  formerly  called  the  Horse,  was 
regarded  in  very  ancient  times  as  the  steed  of 
Nimrod. 

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

— Belgravia. 


THE   TEIAL   OF  JESUS   CHEIST. 


Br  ALEXANDER   TAYLOR  INNES. 


II.— THE   ROMAN   TRIAL. 

rpHE  trial  of  their  Messiah  by  the  Sanhedrim, 
-*-  had  it  stood  alone,  would  have  no  doubt 
been  the  most  interesting  judicial  transaction  in 
history.  The  law  of  Moses,  perpetuated  though 
modified  by  Christianity,  has  perhaps  been  more 
influential  than  any  other  code  of  the  world. 
Yet  that  law  has  had  one  rival,  in  the  mighty 
jurisprudence  of  Rome.  "The"  written  reason 
of  the  Roman  law  has  been  silently  or  studiously 


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


62 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


ness  "  as  might  have  originally  led  it  to  religion. 
Their  whole  history  and  literature  indicate,  on 
the  contrary,  that  it  was  the  intense  sense  of  the 
Divine  which  moulded  the  nation  originally,  and 
which  afterward  led  to  a  wide-spread  though  im- 
perfect cultivation  of  the  ars  boni  et  cequi.  Even 
that  Rabbinic  cultivation,  as  we  have  seen,  was 
marred  by  continual  exaggerations  and  artifices 
which  reveal  the  original  inaptitude  of  the  race 
for  high  judicial  excellence.  Accordingly,  down 
to  the  time  with  which  we  are  dealing,  it  remained 
a  small,  isolated  Asiatic  tribe,  filled  through  and 
through  with  national  and  religious  prejudices. 
It  is  not  to  such  that  men  look  for  a  model  of  the 
administration  of  equal  laws.  But  there  have 
been  races  in  the  world  who  reflected,  as  there 
are  races  who  do  reflect,  in  an  eminent  degree, 
that  deep  sense  of  righteousness  which  lies  at  the 
root  of  all  law.  And  of  all  such  races,  ancient 
and  modern,  the  greatest  was  that  which  at  this 
time  ruled  over  Palestine  and  over  the  world. 
When  the  sceptre  departed  from  Judah,  it  passed 
into  the  strong,  smiting  hands  of  Rome ;  and  al- 
ready all  the  nations  had  begun  to  exchange  their 
terror  of  its  warlike  might  for  that  admiration 
of  its  administrative  wisdom  which  has  grown 
upon  the  world  ever  since.  And  already,  too, 
that  admiration  was  mingled  with  confidence  and 
trust.  Those  Eastern  races  felt,  what  we  two 
thousand  years  after  can  historically  trace,  that 
the  better  part  of  the  unequnled  authority  of  the 
Roman  law  was  due  to  the  stern,  hard  virtues  of 
the  early  race  and  early  republic.  Its  influence 
was  dimly  recognized  then,  and  it  is  clearly  trace- 
able now,  as  having  sprung  from  the  instinct  of 
righteousness  which  guided  prater  and  proconsul 
in  every  subject  land,  long  before  Ulpian  or  Gaius 
had  written  out  that  instinct  into  immortal  law. 

Pontius  Pilate  was  at  this  time  the  represent- 
ative of  Rome  in  Judea ;  the  governor,  as  he  is 
called  in  the  Gospels.  But  it  will  be  found  in- 
structive to  note  more  carefully  what  his  exact 
position  was.  lie  was  the  procurator  Ccesaris  ; 
the  procurator,  deputy,  or  attorney,  of  Tiberius  in 
that  province.  And  he  was  no  procurator  fisca- 
lis,1  with  functions  equivalent  to  those  of  quaes- 
tor. Pilate's  was  no  such  subordinate  or  finan- 
cial office.  He  was  a  procurator  cum  potentate  ; 
a  governor  with  civil,  criminal,  and  military  ju- 
risdiction ;  subordinated  no  doubt  in  rank  to  the 
adjacent  Governor  of  Syria,  but  directly  respon- 
sible to  his  great  master  at  Rome.     And  what 

1  The  name  is  still  used  in  Scotland,  having  had  there  \ 
originally  its  old  sense  of  "  the  deputy  of  a  provincial 
judge  appointed  by  him  to  look  after  money-matters."        I 


was  the  relation  of  the  emperor  himself  to  the 
inhabitants  of  Judea  and  to  the  world?  The 
answer  is  important.  The  emperor  was  neither 
more  nor  less  than  the  representative  of  Rome. 
In  modern  times  men  associate  the  imperial  title 
with  absolutism  and  a  more  than  royal  power. 
To  Romans,  even  in  the  days  of  Tiberius,  the 
name  of  a  king  was  intolerable,  and  absolutism, 
except  under  republican  forms,  distasteful.  Ac- 
cordingly, when  Augustus  became  the  undisputed 
chief  of  the  republic,  and  determined  so  to  con- 
tinue, he  remained  nominally  a  mere  private 
nobleman  or  citizen.  The  saviour  of  society  did 
not  dare  to  attack  the  constitution  of  the  state. 
He  effected  his  object  in  another  way.  He 
gathered  into  his  own  hands  the  whole  powers 
and  functions,  and  accumulated  upon  his  own 
head  the  whole  honors  and  privileges,  which  the 
state  had  for  centuries  distributed  among  its 
gi*eat  magistrates  and  representatives.  He  be- 
came perpetual  Princeps  Senatus,  or  leader  of 
the  legislative  house.  He  became  perpetual  Pon- 
tifex  Maximus,  or  chief  of  the  national  religion. 
He  became  perpetual  tribune,  or  guardian  of  the 
people,  with  his  person  thereby  made  sacred  and 
inviolable.  He  became  perpetual  consul,  or  su- 
preme magistrate  over  the  whole  Roman  world, 
with  the  control  of  its  revenues,  the  disposal  of 
its  armies,  and  the  execution  of  its  laws.  And, 
lastly,  he  became  perpetual  imperator,  or  military 
chief,  to  whom  every  legionary  throughout  the 
world  took  the  sacramentum,  and  whose  sword 
swept  the  globe  from  Indus  and  Gibraltar  to  the 
pole.  And  yet  in  all  he  was  a  simple  citizen — a 
mere  magistrate  of  the  republic.  Only,  in  this 
one  man  was  now  visibly  accumulated  and  con- 
centrated all  that  for  centuries  had  broadened 
and  expanded  under  the  magnificent  abstraction 
of  Rome.  Tiberius,  therefore,  the  first  inheritor 
of  this  constitution  of  Caesar  Augustus,  was  in 
the  strictest  sense  the  representative  of  that 
great  city  that  ruled  over  the  kings  of  the  earth. 
And  the  Roman  knight  who  now  governed  in 
Judea  was  his  representative  in  his  public  capa- 
city. For  Augustus,  as  is  well  known,  had  divided 
the  provinces  into  two  classes.  To  the  more 
peaceful  and  central,  he  allowed  the  Senate  to 
send  proconsuls,  while  even  over  these  he  re- 
served his  own  consular  and  military  power. 
But  some  provinces,  like  Judea,  he  retained  in 
his  own  hands  as  their  proconsul  or  governor. 
Strictly  and  constitutionally,  the  governor  of  the 
Jewish  nation,  at  the  time  of  which  we  write, 
was  not  Pilate  at  Csesarea  or  Vitellius  at  Antioch, 
but  Tiberius  at  Rome.     He  was  the  Proconsul  or 


TEE  TRIAL    OF  JESUS  CHRIST. 


63 


Governor  of  Judea  under  the  still-existing  re- 
public, a  republic  now  almost  identified  with 
himself.  And  Pilate,  whom  the  Jews  popularly 
called  their  governor,  was  strictly  the  procurator 
of  the  great  proconsul,  holding  civil  and  military 
authority  by  delegation  from  him  in  whom  was 
now  concentrated  the  boundless  authority  of 
Rome.  Such  was  the  tribunal  before  which  the 
council  of  the  Sanhedrim  is  now  to  lead  a  pris- 
oner. 

Pilate  sat  in  his  praetorium  on  the  morning  of 
that  "  preparation-day,"  to  transact  business  and 
administer  justice  as  usual.  In  what  spot  in 
Jerusalem  his  judgment-seat  was  on  this  occasion 
set  up,  cannot  certainly  be  known.  It  may  have 
been  within  the  fortress  and  under  the  tower  of 
Antonia,  the  visible  symbol  of  Roman  predomi- 
nance which  frowned  beside  the  temple.  Much 
more  probably  it  was  "  Herod's  praetorium,"  that 
magnificent  palace  to  the  north  of  the  temple 
which  Josephus  describes,  and  which  had  been 
recently  built  by  the  Idumean  kings.  Their  for- 
mer palace  was  also  still  in  existence,  and  the 
visit  of  the  Roman  procurator  and  the  Tetrarch 
of  Galilee  to  the  same  feast,  while  it  raises  the 
question  which  of  them  occupied  the  new  and 
more  splendid  residence,  suggests  the  inevitable 
rivalry  and  possible  "  enmity  "  of  their  relation. 
If  we  suppose  that  Pilate,  like  Floras,  asserted 
his  right  to  occupy  the  new  palace,  we  may  re- 
member that  its  white  marble  semicircle  in- 
closed an  open  place  which  looked  out  on  the 
sacred  city,  and  was  almost  as  public  as  the 
space  between  Antonia  and  the  temple.  In  the 
open  space  in  front  of  this  or  any  other  praeto- 
rium  the  movable  Bema  or  tribunal  could  at  once 
be  set  up.  But  on  this  morning  Pilate  was  still 
sitting  in  the  judgment-hall.  Outside  was  the 
roar  of  the  Eastern  city  awakening  on  a  passovcr 
dawn ;  within,  the  clash  of  Roman  steel,  the  al- 
tars of  the  Roman  gods,  and  perhaps  the  sculpt- 
ured frown  of  the  distant  demigod  Tiberius. 
Into  that  heathen  chamber  the  priests  and  doc- 
tors of  the  separated  nation  would  not  enter 
during  their  sacred  week  ;  and  the  Roman,  with 
his  Roman  smile,  willingly  removed  their  diffi- 
culty by  coming  with  his  soldier-lictors  to  the 
gate.  But  his  first  words  there,  as  his  eyes  fell 
upon  the  prisoner,  who  stood  with  his  hands 
bound  before  him,  were,  "  What  accusation  bring 
ye  against  this  man  ?  "  We  recognize  instantly 
the  spontaneous  voice  of  Roman  justice.  It  was 
no  doubt  meant  to  suggest  his  own  authority  and 
power  of  review,  and  in  that  respect  we  must 
presently  consider  it.     But  it  was  before  every- 


thing else  the  instinctive  utterance  of  a  judge, 
and  it  at  once  recalls  that  singularly  noble  dic- 
tum of  Pilate's  successor  in  the  same  seat,  "  It  is 
not  the  manner  of  the  Romans  to  deliver  any 
man  to  die,  until  that  he  which  is  accused  have  the 
accusers  face  to  face,  and  have  license  to  answer 
for  himsef  concerning  the  crime  laid  against  him." 
So  ever  spoke  the  worst  of  the  Roman  governors 
— and  neither  Pilate  nor  Festus  was  among  the 
best — out  of  the  mere  instinct  and  tradition  of 
justice  which  clung  to  their  great  office  among 
the  treacherous  tribes  around.  The  chief  priests 
and  scribes  on  this  occasion  avoided  the  demand 
to  know  the  accusation.  "  If  he  were  not  a  male- 
factor, we  would  not  have  delivered  him  to  thee." 
The  insolent  evasion  of  his  question  was  not  likely 
to  propitiate  Pilate,  who  instantly  puts  the  mat- 
ter on  its  true  footing  by  the  calm  but  somewhat 
contemptuous  reply,  "  Take  ye  him,  and  judge 
him  according  to  your  law."  Sullenly  came  the 
answer,  "  It  is  not  lawful  for  us  (it  is  not  permis- 
sible— ovk  e|e<TTii/)  to  put  any  man  to  death." 
The  answer  revealed  (what  the  word  "malefac- 
tor "  had  perhaps  already  implied,  and  what  may 
have  been  involved  in  their  bringing  their  pris- 
oner to  Pilate  at  all)  that  it  was  a  capital  charge 
which  they  had  come  to  make.  But  it  closed 
this  important  opening  dialogue.  The  conversa- 
tion just  narrated  is  only  found  in  the  Gospel  of 
John  ;  and  it  is  remarkable  that  a  narrative  ap- 
parently very  much  later  than  the  others  should 
record  words  which  not  only  have  the  strongest 
internal  evidence  of  truth,  but  to  which  subse- 
quent investigation  has  given  immensely  increased 
historical  value. 

For  at  this  point  of  the  story  comes  in  the 
question  of  conflict  of  jurisdiction.  Why  did  the 
Jews  go  to  Pilate  at  all  ?  We  have  seen  that 
their  council  condemned  Jesus  "  to  be  guilty  of 
death."  Had  they  no  right  to  pass  such  a  sen- 
tence ?  or,  having  the  right  to  pass  it,  had  they 
merely  no  power  to  execute  it  ?  How  far  did  the 
authority  of  the  governor  trench  upon,  or  super- 
sede, the  authority  of  the  Sanhedrim  ?  Which 
of  them  had  the  jus  vitce  aut  nccis  ?  What  was 
the  relation  of  the  two  powers,  the  Jewish  and 
the  Roman,  to  each  other  at  this  time  ?  This 
broad  historical  question  lies  at  the  root  of  the 
views  which  may  be  taken  of  the  legal  point — 
views  which  have  sometimes  been  extremely  con- 
trasted. In  the  controversy  between  Salvador 
and  Dupin,  the  former  (true  in  this  to  the  sad 
claim  of  some  of  his  nation  of  old,  "  His  blood 
be  on  us  ")  urged  that  the  Sanhedrim  had  full 
authority  to  try  even  for  capital  crimes,  and  that 


64: 


TEE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


their  sentence  of  death  required  only  the  counter- 
sign or  indorsement  of  the  Roman  governor.  His 
opponent  held  that  the  Jewish  court  had  no  right 
to  try  for  grave,  or  at  least  capital,  crimes  at  all ; 
that  their  whole  procedure  was  a  usurpation  ; 
and  that  the  only  real  or  competent  trial  was  that 
which  we  are  about  to  consider.  I  have  no  inten- 
tion of  going  into  the  great  mass  of  historical  in- 
vestigation which  has  been  undertaken  on  this 
confessedly  difficult  point.  There  seems  no  one 
consideration  which  is  quite  conclusive  upon  it. 
Thus  it  would  be  rash  to  ascribe  to  the  assertion 
of  the  Talmud,  that  "  forty  years  before  the  de- 
struction of  the  temple  the  judgment  of  capital 
causes  was  taken  away  from  Israel,"  the  praise 
of  exact  chronological  accuracy.  Yet  it  is  very 
striking  as  showing  the  time  about  which  the  doc- 
tors of  the  Jewish  law  were  willing  to  hold  that 
their  power  of  life  and  death  (no  doubt  already 
restricted  or  suspended  under  the  despotism  of 
Herod)  had  finally  passed  away.  But  on  the  gen- 
eral subject  of  the  relation  of  the  two  powers  in 
that  age,  there  are  some  considerations  which 
reasoners  on  either  side  do  not  seem  to  have  al- 
ways kept  in  view  :  1.  There  was  no  concordat  on 
this  subject  between  the  Romans  and  the  Jews. 
The  latter  were  the  conquered  nation  ;  their  juris- 
diction, including  the  power  of  life  and  death, 
was  wrested  from  them  de  facto,  and  they  were 
obliged  to  submit.  But  de  jure  they  never  did. 
To  them,  at  least  to  the  great  mass  of  the  nation, 
the  Sanhedrim  was  still  the  national  authority, 
especially  in  accusations  relating  to  religious 
matters.  2.  On  the  Roman  side,  the  matter  was 
of  course  precisely  otherwise.  Their  view  of  the 
jurisdiction  of  subject  races  generally,  and  of  the 
Jews  in  particular,  was  (I  suspect)  that  it  was 
just  so  much  as  they  chose  to  leave  them.  In 
most  cases  that  formed  a  very  large  field.  The 
Roman  governor  sanctioned,  or  even  himself  ad- 
ministered, the  old  law  of  the  region  ;  but  the  pol- 
icy of  the  ruling  power  was  to  concede  to  local 
self-government  as  much  as  possible.  The  conces- 
sion was  of  course  all  the  larger  where  there  was  no 
disposition  on  the  part  of  the  province  to  provoke  a 
contest.  In  Roman  law  as  in  Roman  campaigns, 
in  questions  of  jurisdiction  as  in  questions  of 
politics,  the  maxim  of  the  haughty  and  wise  rul- 
ers of  the  world  was  parcere  subjcctis  el  debel- 
lare  superbos.  3.  It  is  evident  that  a  large  lati- 
tude was  allowed  on  this  subject  to  the  great 
Roman  officers — proconsuls  or  procurators — who 
administered  la  haute  justice.  The  republic  and 
the  emperor  permitted,  and  indeed  demanded, 
that  they  should  stretch  or  relax  their  author- 


ity as  the  particular  case  or  exigency  required. 
In  ordinary  matters  brought  before  their  tribu- 
nals, the  rule  on  which  they  acted  is  perfectly 
expressed,  a  few  years  after  this,  by  Annagus 
Gallio,  the  humane  Proconsul  of  Achaia  and 
brother  of  the  philosopher  Seneca  :  "  If  it  were 
a  matter  of  wrong  or  wicked  lewdness,  0  ye 
Jews,  reason  would  that  I  should  bear  with  you : 
but  if  it  be  a  question  of  -words  and  names,  and 
of  your  law,  look  ye  to  it ;  I  will  be  no  judge  of 
such  matters."  But,  while  they  drove  such 
questions  from  the  judgment-seat,  so  long  as 
they  did  not  affect  the  rights  of  the  sovereign 
power,  the  least  hint  that  one  of  these  words  or 
names  or  questions  of  another  law  could  preju- 
dice the  supreme  power  of  Rome  was  enough  to 
authorize  the  governor  to  plunge  his  axe  into  the 
offending  part  of  the  body  politic  with  prompt 
and  savage  severity. — These  general  considera- 
tions should  never  be  forgotten  in  reading  the 
scattered  and  often  inconsistent  historical  no- 
tices on  the  subject.  They  show  that  the  ex- 
treme views,  which  critics  in  our  own  time  have 
maintained,  were  probably  held  even  then  by 
the  opposing  powers  whose  jurisdictions  were  in 
poise.  But  the  balance  of  evidence  is  very 
strong  that,  at  this  time,  all  questions  of  life 
and  death  in  Judea  were  by  Roman  law  and 
practice  reserved  for  the  final  decision  of  the 
Roman  governor.  In  such  cases  the  Jews  had, 
at  the  most,  only  the  cognilio  causa;.  Nor  can 
there  be  much  doubt  that  the  governor's  final 
power  in  these  cases  was  not  a  merely  ministe- 
rial right  of  indorsement  and  executio ;  it  was 
also  a  power  of  cogniiio,  or  review,  in  so  far  at 
least  as  he  chose  to  exercise  it.  Whether  this 
reservation  to  the  governor  was  such  as  to  de- 
prive the  Jewish  courts  of  their  rights  as  tribu- 
nals of  first  instance — whether  any  previous  trial 
of  a  capital  cause  before  the  Sanhedrim  was 
necessarily  a  usurpation — is  another  and  a  more 
difficult  question.  With  regard  to  ordinary  civil 
crimes — robberies  or  assassinations — the  Jewish 
rulers  may  have  been  content  not  to  interfere 
further  than  to  bring  the  perpetrators  to  the  Ro- 
man tribunal  for  judgment.  The  Roman  govern- 
or, on  the  other  hand,  may  have  been  quite  will- 
ing to  send  to  the  cross  without  much  inquiry 
any  ordinary  malefactors  against  whom  the  au- 
thorities of  their  country,  having  already  inquired 
into  the  case,  were  willing  to  appear  as  accusers. 
But  obviously  a  more  serious  question  arose 
when  the  alleged  crime  was  a  religious  one — a 
claim,  as  prophet  or  Messiah,  to  change  the  ec- 
clesiastical institutions.     In  such  a  case  the  San- 


TEE  TRIAL   OF  JESUS  CHE  1ST. 


G5 


hedrim  itself  no  doubt  maintained,  as  the  Jews 
generally  did  on  its  behalf,  an  exclusive  right  to 
judge  in  the  first  instance ;  and  its  tendency 
would  be  very  strong  to  deny  any  re-cognitio  by 
the  Roman  power,  and  either  not  to  call  in  that 
power  at  all,  or  to  limit  it  to  a  mere  right  of 
countersign.  What  view  the  Roman  governor 
might  take,  in  the  very  unusual  case  of  such  a 
charge  being  brought  to  his  tribunal,  was  an- 
other matter. 

But  in  truth,  while  the  dialogue-narrative  of 
the  fourth  Gospel  admirably  illustrates  the  his- 
torical relations  of  the  parties  at  the  time,  the 
narrative,  in  that  Gospel  and  in  the  others,  su- 
persedes the  necessity  for  referring  to  these  more 
general  relations.  Whether  it  was  legitimate  or 
not  for  the  Jews  to  condemn  for  a  capital  crime, 
on  this  occasion  they  did  so.  Whether  it  was 
legitimate  or  not  for  Pilate  to  try  over  again  an 
accused  whom  they  had  condemned,  on  this  oc- 
casion he  did  so.  There  were  certainly  two  tri- 
als. And  the  dialogue  already  narrated  expresses 
with  the  most  admirable  terseness  the  struggle 
which  we  should  have  expected  between  the  ef- 
fort of  the  Jews  to  get  a  mere  countersign  of 
their  sentence  and  the  determination  of  Pilate  to 
assume  his  full  judicial  responsibility,  whether 
of  first  instance  or  of  review.  The  reluctance 
of  the  Jews  on  the  present  occasion  was  no 
doubt  prompted  not  so  much  by  their  usual  ec- 
clesiastical independence  as  by  their  dread  lest 
inquiry  by  Pilate  should  prevent  his  carrying  out 
their  scheme.  But  as  matters  actually  turned 
out,  the  collision  which  the  procurator's  first 
words  provoked  had  the  effect  of  binding  him 
|  publicly,  before  the  men  of  both  nations  who 
surrounded  his  judgment-seat,  to  deal  with  this 
capital  case  in  his  judicial  capacity.  It  was 
henceforth  ho  mere  matter  of  administration ;  no 
incident  of  summary  police  jurisdiction  or  mili- 
tary court-martial :  it  was  a  deliberate  judgment 
of  life  and  death  by  the  supreme  civil  ruler  who 
had  interposed  his  jurisdiction  between  an  ac- 
cused man  and  the  chief  authorities  of  the  sub- 
ject nation. 

The  accusation  demanded  by  Pilate  neces- 
sarily followed,  now  that  he  had  insisted  on  be- 
ing judge  in  the  cause.  We  have  this  given 
with  considerable  formality  in  the  Gospel  of 
Luke ;  and,  though  it  is  omitted  in  the  three 
others,  the  first  question  of  Pilate  to  Jesus, 
which  they  all  record,  implies  a  previous  charge. 
Luke  gives  it  thus  :  "  We  found  this  man  per- 
verting the  nation,  and  forbidding  to  give  trib- 
ute to  Caesar,  saying  that  he  himself  is  Christ  a 

41 


king."  Had  the  accusation  retained  the  form  in 
which  it  was  brought  before  the  Sanhedrim — had 
it  been  a  merely  religious  or  ecclesiastical  crime 
which  was  now  named — a  different  question 
would  have  arisen.  Had  the  chief  priests,  when 
they  "  began  to  accuse  "  Jesus,  said  at  once  what 
they  passionately  exclaimed  at  a  later  stage  of  the 
cause,  "  We  have  a  law,  and  by  our  law  he  ought 
to  die,  because  he  made  himself  the  Son  of  God," 
it  may  be  doubtful  what  Pilate  would  have  done. 
He  was  authorized  as  governor  to  administer  their 
law,  or  to  preside  over  and  control  its  administra- 
tion ;  and  while  his  leaning  would  be,  like  that 
of  Gallio,  to  consider  this  question  a  matter  of 
words,  he  might  have  been  induced  to  see  that 
these  words  covered  grave  consequences  to  the 
state.  But  such  questions  are  superseded  by  the 
deliberate  change  in  the  form  of  the  accusation 
— or,  rather,  the  reverting  to  that  accusation 
which  had  been  originally  intended,  and  for  which 
the  ecclesiastical  procedure  of  the  night  before  was 
a  pretext  or  preliminary.  If  we  accept  the  sen- 
tence of  Luke  as  equivalent  to  the  nominis  delatio 
of  the  Roman  law,  or  to  the  affidavit  of  the  prose- 
cutor-witness of  the  Hebrew  law  already  consid- 
ered— and  it  has  resemblances  to  both — it  throws 
a  flood  of  light  before  as  well  as  behind.  The 
charge  of  "  perverting  "  (5iacrrp€(poi/Ta),  including 
perhaps  "  revolutionizing  "  as  well  as  "  seducing  " 
the  nation,  was  fairly  true,  and  was  distinctly  in- 
cluded in  the  Jewish  procedure  of  the  night  be- 
fore. No  doubt  to  Roman  ears  it  was  ambiguous, 
but  the  ambiguity  recalls  that  very  real  doubt 
which  had  governed  his  mind  who  said,  "If  we 
let  him  alone,  all  men  will  believe  on  him,  and 
the  Romans  will  come  and  take  away  our  place 
and  our  nation."  The  culminating  charge,  that 
Jesus  called  himself  "  Christ  a  king,"  was  also 
true,  and  had  just  been  acknowledged  to  be  true, 
though  scarcely  in  the  sense  in  which  the  accusers 
expected  that  the  ears  of  the  governor  would  re- 
ceive it.  But  if  we  are  to  take  Luke's  narrative, 
we  must  believe  that  the  charge  was  not  left  in 
this  doubtful  and  ineffective  form.  The  managers 
of  the  impeachment  had  no  doubt  not  intended 
to  make  a  deliberately  untrue  statement  before 
the  heathen  judgment-seat.  They  wished,  at  as 
small  an  expense  of  falsehood  as  possible,  to 
throw  upon  the  foreign  power  the  odium  of  a 
prophet's  death.  But  the  prompt  utterances  of 
Pilate  seem  to  have  forced  them  into  the  vil- 
lainy they  would  rather  have  avoided,  and,  be- 
tween the  more  ambiguous  charges  of  seducing 
the  nation  and  claiming  a  royal  Messiahship,  they 
add,  by  way  of  illustration,  "  forbidding  to  give 


6G 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY,— SUPPLEMENT. 


tribute  to  Cresar."  It  was  a  sheer  falsehood,  and 
some  of  the  accusers  must  have  known  it  to  be 
the  converse  of  the  fact  as  recently  ascertained. 
But  it  was  a  suggestion  which,  as  they  must  also 
have  known,  would  give  the  most  deadly  signifi- 
cance to  the  other  vaguer  and  truer  heads  of  the 
indictment,  and  would  make  it  impossible  for  the 
governor  to  waive  the  capital  charge. 

For  there  is  no  mistake  as  to  what  the  crime 
here  imputed  is.  It  is  majestas—  the  greatest 
crime  known  in  the  Roman  law,  the  greatest 
crime  conceivable  by  the  Roman  imagination — an 
attack  upon  the  sovereignty  or  supreme  majesty 
of  the  Roman  state.1  In  the  early  days  of  the 
republic  the  name  perduellio  was  applied  to  trea- 
son and  rebellion,  and  the  citizen  condemned  by 
the  people  for  that  crime  was  interdicted  from 
fire  and  water,  or  hanged  upon  au  arbor  infelix. 
As  the  rule  of  the  city  spread  over  the  world, 
treason  came  to  be  known  as  an  attack  upon  its 
majesty  ;  and  various  laws  were  passed  to  define 
this  crime  and  the  treatment  of  it,  the  chief  en- 
actment being  the  Lex  Julia.  According  to  this 
law  every  accusation  of  treason  against  a  Roman 
citizen  must  be  made  by  a  written  libel.  A  Jew- 
ish provincial  had,  of  course,  no  such  protection. 
He  stood  before  the  procurator  of  the  Cassar, 
with  no  defense  against  the  summary  exercise  of 
absolute  power  but  the  plea  of  justice. 

"We  come  now  to  the  defense.  All  the  nar- 
ratives bear  that  Pilate  put  the  same  question  to 
Jesus,  in  the  same  words,  "  Art  thou  the  King  of 
the  Jews  ?  "  but  that,  on  his  answering  in  the 
affirmative,  the  Roman  came  to  the  paradoxical 
conclusion  that  there  was  "no  fault  in  him."  The 
fourth  Gospel  contains  the  explanatory  conversa- 
tion which  these  facts  almost  necessarily  imply. 
The  statement  of  Jesus  is  unusually  impressive. 
It  is  couched,  no  doubt,  in  that  involved,  allusive, 
and  aphoristic  style  of  utterance  which  we  find  in 
this  Gospel  from  end  to  end.  But  we  must  re- 
member that  all  the  biographies  represent  this 
very  style  as  occasionally  used  by  Jesus,  and  as 
characteristic  of  him  in  critical  circumstances. 
It  comes  out  in  all  the  histories  when  he  touches 
on  the  esoteric  "  mysteries  of  the  kingdom  "  he 
preached,  or  where  his  own  claims  are  brought 
in  question ;  and  it  manifestly  grew  more  and 
more  his  manner  of  utterance  toward  the  close 


1  "  Crimen  adversus  populum  Romanum  vel  adversus 
seenritatem  ejus." — Ulpian,  "Digest,"  xlviii.,  4,  1.  The 
origin  of  the  name  is  plain.  Cicero  defines  majestas  as 
"magnitudo  populi  Romani,"'  and  the  full  name  of  the 
crime  is  "crimen  tesffi  aut  imminuta?  majestatis."  It  is 
very  adequately  expressed  by  our  word  treason. 


of  his  career.  We  hold,  therefore,  that  a  state- 
ment which,  though  only  recorded  in  the  latest 
Gospel,  must,  according  to  all  the  others,  have 
been  substantially  made,  and  which  as  reported  is 
at  once  startlingly  original  and  intensely  character- 
istic, has  every  internal  evidence  of  being  histori- 
cal. This  dialogue  took  place  in  the  pnetorium, 
where  Jesus  may  have  possibly  been  detained 
while  the  question  of  jurisdiction  was  settled  with 
his  accusers.  (It  rather  appears,  however,  that 
he  must  have  been  present  while  the  accusation 
was  made;  the  first  two  evangelists  state  that 
either  then  or  at  a  later  stage  his  silence  extorted 
the  marvel  of  the  governor,  who  said,  "  Hearest 
thou  not  how  many  things  they  witness  against 
thee  ?  ")  He  now,  however,  brings  his  prisoner 
within,  and  puts  the  sudden  question,  "Art  thou 
the  King  of  the  Jews  ?  "  Jesus's  answer,  "  Sayest 
thou  this  of  thyself,  or  did  others  tell  it  thee  of 
me  ? "  does  not  seem  to  have  been  a  request 
to  know  what  had  been  uttered  by  the  Jews  in 
his  absence.  The  words  evidently  have  a  deeper 
reference.  They  are  equivalent  to — "  In  what 
sense  dost  thou  use  the  expression?  If  thou 
sayest  it  of  thyself,  in  the  sense  in  which  a  Ro- 
man would  naturally  use  the  word,  then  I  am 
not  the  King  of  the  Jews.  But  if  others  told 
thee  this  of  me,  if  thou  art  using  the  words  of 
Hebrew  prophecy,  or  of  the  world's  hope,  that 
may  need  further  explanation."  Pilate  strives 
to  reply  as  a  Roman  should  :  "  Am  I  a  Jew  ?  Thine 
own  nation  and  the  chief  priests  have  delivered 
thee  to  me ;  what  hast  thou  done  ? "  It  was 
throwing  back,  and  not  unfairly,  the  burden  of 
explanation  upon  the  accused  ;  and  he  who  had 
kept  silence  before  the  midnight  Sanhedrim,  and 
who  made  no  answer  even  now  to  their  dissimu- 
lated accusation,  at  once  frankly  responded  to 
the  heathen  magistrate  who  desired  himself  to 
know  the  truth  of  the  case  :  "  My  kingdom  is  not 
of  this  world  :  if  my  kingdom  were  of  this  world, 
then  would  my  servants  fight :  .  .  .  .  but  now  is 
my  kingdom  not  from  hence."  In  considering 
words  so  memorable  we  must  avoid  as  much  as 
possible  the  theological  and  ecclesiastical,  and 
look  only  from  the  historical,  and  in  particular 
the  forensic  and  judicial,  point  of  view.  "What- 
ever else  these  words  import,  they  are  in  sub- 
stance, and  almost  in  form,  a  defense.  If  they 
imply  a  confession  of  kingship,  they  express  an 
avoidance  of  the  particular  kind  of  kingship 
charged.  They  do  not  set  up  a  plea  in  bar  of 
the  jurisdiction.  They  seem  to  acknowledge  that 
a  kingdom  of  this  world  would  be  a  legitimate 
object  of  attack  by  the  deputy  of  Ctesar,  but 


TEE  TRIAL    OF  JESUS  CERIST. 


07 


they  deny  that  the  kingship  of  Jesus  could  be  so 
described.  The  most  important  commentary  on 
the  words  is  of  course  the  recent  and  famous 
scene  of  the  tribute-money,  where  Jesus  being 
demanded  as  a  Jewish  patriot  and  prophet,  "  Is 
it  lawful  to  give  tribute  to  Caesar,  or  no?"  an- 
swered, "Show  me  a  penny,"  and,  having  asked 
the  significant  question  as  to  Caesar's  image  and 
superscription  engraved  upon  it,  closed  the  dis- 
cussion with  the  words,  "  Render  therefore  unto 
Caesar  the  things  that  are  Caesar's,  and  unto  God 
the  things  that  are  God's."  The  two  incidents, 
in  common  with  the  whole  of  the  history,  make 
it  certain  that  it  was  no  part  of  his  plan  of  king- 
dom, as  it  was  no  part  of  the  plan  of  Christianity 
historically,  to  attack  the  Roman  power.  But 
this  critical  utterance  to  Pilate  (like  that  former 
one)  seems  to  go  further.  On  the  face  of  it,  it 
indicates  that  there  was  no  necessary  collision 
between  the  kingdom  which  Jesus  was  prepared 
to  assert  as  his  own  and  that  great  "  kingdom 
of  this  world  "  which  his  judge  represented.  An 
actual  collision  there  too  probably  might  be. 
But  the  words  are  meaningless  unless  they  are 
taken  as  asserting  separate  spheres  within  which 
it  was  possible  for  each  power  to  confine  itself, 
and  by  confining  themselves  within  which  it  was 
possible  for  them  to  escape  collision.  Only  one 
of  these  kingdoms  is  described,  and  it  is  defined 
generally  as  "of  this  world,"  the  definition  being 
illustrated  by  the  suggestion  that  in  every  such 
kingdom  the  monarch  may  suitably  be  defended 
by  the  armed  force  of  his  subjects.  The  other 
is  as  yet  only  defined  by  the  negation  of  these 
characteristics.  Pilate,  as  the  result  indicates, 
was  already  impressed  by  the  statement,  and 
perhaps  convinced  by  it  of  the  innocence  of  the 
accused  of  all  conspiracy  against  Rome.  And 
yet  Jesus  still  spoke  of  a  kingdom — a  kingdom 
too  in  this  world,  though  not  of  it ; l  and  his 
words  of  renunciation  were  more  royal  than  all 
the  Roman  had  ever  listened  to  of  greatness. 
With  true  judicial  tact,  the  governor  lays  his 
finger  on  the  exact  point  which  required  to  be 
brought  from  negative  implication  into  express 
statement.  "  Art  thou  a  king  then  ?  "  he  asked 
the  prisoner  whose  kingdom  was  not  of  this 
world.  And  as  before,  to  the  adjuration  of  God's 
High-Priest,  so  how,  to  the  representative  of  all 
the  greatness  of  earth,  the  answer  came  back, 
making  a  crisis  in  the  world's  history,  "Thou 
aayest  it:  I  am  a  king."  He  who  spoke  so  to  a 
Roman  governor  knew  that  he  was  offering  him- 

1  ";  My  kingdom  is  not  of  this  icorld."1    The  word  used 
is  kootios.  not  aiwi'. 


self  to  the  cross,  and  that  the  next  few  hours 
might  close  that  fateful  life.  And  the  thought 
was  in  his  mind  when  he  deliberately  added, 
"To  this  end  was  I  born,  and  for  this  cause  came 
I  into  the  world,  that  I  might  bear  witness  unto 
the  truth."  Whatever  else  is  included  in  words 
so  great,  this  "  witness  to  the  truth  "  certainly 
embraces  the  testimony  which  a  moment  before 
had  been  given  by  the  speaker  himself — by  him 
"  who  before  Pontius  Pilate  witnessed  the  good 
confession" — to  the  existence  of  a  kingdom,  true 
and  real,  though  not  of  this  cosmos.  But  this 
supreme  utterance  struck  a  deeper  note  than 
even  the  assertion  of  a  spiritual  and  separate 
kingdom.  It  proclaimed  that  which  is  the  basis 
of  all  human  veracity  and  virtue,  but  which  in 
those  later  ages  was  becoming  strange  to  Roman 
ears — the  existence  of  an  eternal  world  of  truth 
outside  of  man — a  universal  divine  system  of 
things,  high  above  all  local  or  national  tradition, 
and  indeed  above  all  human  beliefs  and  desires. 
Over  that  objective  truth  men  have  no  power : 
their  highest  privilege  is  to  recognize  and  to  con- 
fess it.  And  those  do  recognize  it  who  have 
already  a  certain  kinship  and  relation  to  that 
central  truth — who  are  "  of  the  truth."  For  the 
last  words  of  him  who  now  claimed  to  be  both 
the  witness  and  the  king  of  that  greater  world 
were, "  He  that  is  of  the  truth  heareth  my  voice." 
Pilate  answered,  "  What  is  truth  ?  "  The  blank 
response,  half  sarcastic,  half  despairing,  wholly 
skeptical,  will  claim  notice  at  a  later  stage,  hi 
the  mean  time  we  follow  the  course  of  the  judge,1 
who,  thus  waiving  the  personal  question  presented 
to  him,  goes  on  to  deal  with  the  accusation  and 
the  accused.  The  narratives  all  bear  that  Pilate 
reached  and  expressed  the  conclusion  that  the 
crime  charged  had  not  been  proved — that  indeed 
he  found  in  the  accused  "no  fault  at  all."  And 
the  last  Gospel  distinctly  refers  the  first  public 
utterance  of  this  conviction  to  the  exact  point  in 
the  conversation  and  defense  at  which  we  have 
now  arrived.  It  was  the  only  defense  which  the 
accused  is  at  any  time  stated  to  have  offered ; 

1  The  apocryphal  "Acts  of  Pilate,"  after  giving  this 
conversation  with  much  accuracy,  adds  a  few  sentences 
which,  while  they  rather  vulgarize  the  previous  utter- 
ances, indicate  a  special  application  of  the  words  of  Jesus 
which  may  have  occurred  to  the  mind  of  the  governor  as 
he  passed  from  their  higher  suggestions  to  announce  his 
judgment  in  the  cause : 

"  Pilate  saith  unto  him,  What  is  truth  ?  Jesus  said, 
Truth  is  from  heaven.  Pilate  said.  Therefore  truth  is  not 
on  earth.  Jesus  said  to  Pilate.  Believe  that  truth  is  on 
earth  among  those  who.  when  they  have  the  power  of 
judgment,  are  governed  by  truth  and  form  right  judg- 
ment." 


68 


THE  POPULAR  SCIEXCE  MOXTLTLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


and  Pilate  now  went  straight  out  from  the  prae- 
torium,  and  announced  his  verdict,  perhaps  from 
the  judgment-seat.  Yet  was  this  utterance,  as  it 
turned  out,  only  the  first  step  in  that  downward 
course  of  weakness  the  world  knows  so  well :  a 
course  which,  beginning  with  indecision  and  com- 
plaisance, passed  through  all  the  phases  of  al- 
ternate bluster  and  subserviency ;  persuasion, 
evasion,  protest,  and  compromise ;  superstitious 
dread,  conscientious  reluctance,  cautious  duplici- 
ty, and  sheer  moral  cowardice  at  last ;  until  this 
Roman  remains  photographed  forever  as  the 
perfect  feature  of  the  unjust  judge,  deciding 
"against  his  better  knowledge,  not  deceived." 
Upon  some  of  the  points  in  the  evangelic  narra- 
tive we  need  not  dwell.  The  graphic  incident  of 
the  judge  catching  at  an  allusion  to  Galilee,  and, 
on  ascertaining  that  the  man  was  a  Galilean, 
sending  him  to  Herod,  may  be  just  noticed  in 
passing.  The  word  used  is  avetrentyev  (remmt), 
which  seems  the  proper  technical  term  for  re- 
storing an  accused  to  his  proper  jurisdiction,  as 
here  in  sending  him  from  a.  forum  apprehensionis 
to  a  forum  originis.  Herod's  declinature  was 
prudent  as  well  as  courteous,  when  we  remember 
the  terms  of  the  accusation.  A  man,  even  a  pro- 
vincial, accused  of  majestas,  "stood  at  Caesar's 
judgment-seat,  where  he  ought  to  be  judged;" 
and  the  Idumean  "fox"  may  have  dreaded  the 
lion's  paw,  while  very  willing  to  exchange  cour- 
tesies with  the  lion's  deputy.  The  second  ap- 
pearance at  the  tribunal  of  the  governor  shows 
a  distinct  accession  of  weakness  on  the  part  of 
the  judge,  and  of  pressure  upon  him  by  the  accus- 
ers. His  wife's l  morning  message  troubles  his 
conscience,  but  does  not  purify  his  heart.  Pilate 
is  now  willing  to  "  chastise  him  and  let  him  go," 
i.  e.,  to  mangle  an  innocent  man  with  the  savage 
Roman  scourge.  The  Jewish  accusers  refuse  the 
compromise ;  and  Pilate,  characteristically,  seems 
to  have  left  them  under  the  impression  that  he 
had  finally  sent  him  to  the  cross,  while  he  still 
intended  to  make  a  postponed  appeal  to  their 
compassion.  But  before  taking  his  first  step  in 
actual  guilt,  the  judge  washes  his  hands  with  the 
memorably  vain  words,  "  I  am  innocent  of  the 
blood  of  this  just  person:  see  ye  to  it."  After 
the  scourging,  the  three  evangelists  record  noth- 
ing but  the  insults  of  the  fierce  soldiery  to  one 
who  waa  given  up  to  them  as  a  Jewish  traitor  to 
their  emperor.     But  the  later   evangelist   inter- 

1  There  is  a  curious  historical  question  whether  the 
wives  of  governors  were  at  this  time  permitted  to  go 
down  to  the  province  with  their  husbands,  which  turns 
out  in  favor  of  Claudia  Procula. 


poses  a  series  of  incidents  which  are  now  as  be- 
fore noted  with  the  finest  characterization  and  the 
most  delicate  verisimilitude.  He  alone  records 
the  "Behold  the  man  ! "  with  which  the  struggling 
procurator,  whose  "faith  unfaithful"  still  made 
him  "  falsely  true,"  sought  to  move  the  multi- 
tude. He  alone  records  the  response,  "We  have 
a  law,  and  by  our  law  he  ought  to  die,  because 
he  made  himself  the  Son  of  God  " — an  utterance 
in  exact  accordance  with  that  narrative  of  the 
Hebrew  trial  which  is  given  by  all  the  Synoptics, 
but  which  John  has  omitted.  It  is  he  who  no- 
tices the  unexpected  but  most  natural  effect  of 
this  claim  upon  the  governor,  whom  the  former 
utterances  of  the  king  "come  into  the  world" 
had  deeply  impressed.  "  Whence  art  thou  ?  "  he 
almost  tremulously  demands.  But  from  the  first 
moment  of  his  vacillation  Jesus  had  given  him 
no  answer.  Pilate,  accordingly,  at  the  very  time 
when  he  is  described  as  inwardly  "  more  afraid," 
flashes  out  in  that  insolent  tone  which  less 
discriminating  secular  historians  regard  as  the 
only  one  characteristic  of  him :  "  Speakest  thou 
not  unto  me?  knowest  thou  not  that  I  have 
power  to  crucify  thee,  and  power  to  release 
thee  ?  "  Jesus  breaks  the  silence  by  a  final  word 
of  answer,  which  is  of  high  importance  for  our 
subject:  "Thou  couldest  have  no  power  at  all 
over  me,  unless  it  were  given  thee  from  above : 
therefore  he  that  delivered  me  unto  thee  had  the 
greater  sin."  Some  winters  who  hold  that  Pilate 
alone  had  "jurisdiction  "  in  this  case,  and  that 
the  proceedings  of  the  Sanhedrim  were  a  usurpa- 
tion, have  appealed  to  this  text,  as  containing  in 
its  first  clause  an  acknowledgment  of  the  exclu- 
sive right  of  the  Roman  tribunal,  and  in  its  last 
a  denunciation  of  the  illegality,  as  well  as  treach- 
ery, of  Caiaphas.  This  is  unwarranted,  and  in 
the  circumstances  grotesque.  Yet  while  we  no- 
tice here  first  of  all  the  extreme  consideration 
and  almost  tenderness  with  which  the  sufferer 
judges  his  judge,1  we  must  confess  that  the 
words,  "  Thy  power  (i^ovala)  is  given  thee  from 
above,"  do  relate  themselves  to  the  previous 
acknowledgment  of  a  "  kingdom  of  this  world," 
a  cosmos  in  which  men  are  to  give  to  Caesar  the 
things  that  are  Cresar's ;  while  they  add  to  that 
former  acknowledgment  the  explicit  idea  (after- 
ward enforced  by  the  apostles)  that  this  earthly 
kingdom  with  its  earthly  aims  is  also  from  above. 
The  powers  that  be  are  ordained  of  God;  Pilate, 
who  knew  this  not,  was  abusing  a  great  and  le- 
gitimate office  partly  through  a  heathen's  igno- 
rance ;  and  in  so  far  he  was  less  guilty  than  the 
i  "Judex  judicantiuni.'" — Gocsius. 


TEE  TRIAL    OF  JESUS  CEEIST. 


69 


false  accusers  who  sat  in  Mosss's  seat.     It  was 
not  strange  that  the  words  should  have  prompted 
one  last  effort  on  the  judge's  part  to  save  himself 
from  his  weakness ;   but  it  was  too  late.      The 
Jewish  hierarchs  had  now  taken  the  full  measure 
of  the  man,  and  their  final  argument  was  one  fit- 
ted to  bear  down  in  him  all  of  conscience  that 
remained.     "If  thou  let  this  man  go,  thou  art 
not  Caesar's  friend :  whosoever  maketh  himself  a 
kiDg  speaketh  against  Caesar."     Few  utterances 
are  more  valuable  historically  than  this  last  gen- 
eral statement.     To  feel  the  full  force  of  it  we 
must  recall  how,  as  already  explained,  the  Caesar 
had  gathered  up  in  himself  all  the  public  offices 
of  the  republic,  so  that  treason  against  the  state 
and  treason  against  him  had  become  almost  the 
same.    The  old  Roman  watchfulness  to  crush  out 
attempts  against  Rome  was  now  intensified  by 
being  absorbed  into  the  jealous  personal  suspi- 
cion of  a  despot.     It  was  no  anti-climax  when 
the  shrewd  Jewish  politicians,  instead  of  saving, 
"Whosoever   maketh   himself  a  king  speaketh 
against  the  majesty  of  the  state,"  preferred  to 
Bay,  "Whosoever  maketh  himself  a  king  speak- 
eth against  Caesar."     Long  before  this  period  of 
the  reign  of  Tiberius  the  latter  had  become  the 
deadlier  form  of  the  crime.     Some  of  the  ac- 
cusers must  have  remembered  the  early  days  of 
the  dynasty,   when  Julius  and  Octavius  perpe- 
trated their  own  successful  lese-majesie,  and  the 
nation  of  the  Jews,  adhering  to  them  in  the  great 
convulsion,  merited  the  name  which  came  after- 
ward to  be  known  as  a  title  of  honor,  of  "Cae- 
sar's friends."     And  all  of  them  must  have  been 
aware  that  while  the  first  emperor  had  extended 
the  law  of  treason  to  punish  libels  against  his 
own  person,  Tiberius,  still  more  watchful  in  his 
jealousy,    used   the   leges  majestatis   continually 
against  all  who  failed  in  respect  to  the  majesty 
of  Caesar,  even  if  they  did  not  speak  against  him 
(awriXeyeiv)   in  the  sense  of  favoring   counter- 
claims by  themselves  or  others.     The  great  his- 
torian records  how,  even  before  the  date  when 
Pilate  was  sent  to  Judea,  when  the  provinces  ap- 
peared before  Tiberius  with  complaints  against 
their  proconsuls,  they  took  care  to  throw  in  along 
with  the  usual  accusations  of  rapacity  the  added 
charge  of  treason — "Addito  majestatis  crimine, 
quod  turn  omnium  accusationum  complementum 
erat ! " '     To  Pilate,  as  a  personal  dependent  on 
the  favor  of  the  emperor  (a  favor  seemingly  ori- 
ginally procured  through  Sejanus,  about  this  time 
hurled  from  power),  all  this  must  have  been  con-  ! 
tinually  and  urgently  present,  the  more  as  he  had 
1  Tacitus,  ^Annales,"  iii.,  39. 


already  earned  the  hatred  of  his  province,  and 
dreaded  its  revenge.  His  fears  were  not  ground- 
less. Tiberius  was  still  upon  the  throne  when,  a 
few  years  later,  Pilate  was  superseded,  and  em- 
bassadors from  Palestine,  relying  on  the  heredi- 
tary attachment  of  the  nation  to  the  imperial 
house,  were  sent  to  Rome  to  witness  against  the 
recalled  and  degraded  governor.  The  shadow 
of  that  distant  day  paralyzed  Pilate  on  this 
morning.  What  if  he  were  to  be  accused  before 
Caesar  of  spoliation  and  bloodshed,  and,  too  well 
knowing  himself  to  be  guilty  of  those  wrongs, 
should  read  also  in  the  eyes  of  his  gloomy  master 
that  other  charge,  the  complement  and  the  crown 
of  every  lesser  crime  ?  He  who  had  so  long  per- 
sisted against  all  other  arguments  now  succumbed 
at  once  before  the  well-chosen  words:  "If  thou 
let  this  man  go,  thou  art  not  Caesar's  friend  :  who- 
soever maketh  himself  a  king  speaketh  against 
Caesar."  He  ascended  the  tribunal,  from  which 
alone  a  final  sentence  could  be  legally  pronounced 
by  a  Roman  judge — in  the  present  case,  apparent- 
ly, a  portable  seat  carried  out  from  the  praeto- 
rium,  and  placed  in  front  upon  a  lithostroton  or 
tesselated  pavemen  t.  Yet  even  here  he  relieved 
his  bitter  feelings  by  the  words  to  the  accusers, 
"  Shall  I  crucify  your  king  ?  "  But  on  the  chief 
priests  making  the  historical  answer,  "  We  have 
no  king  but  Caesar,"  the  judge  turned  to  him  who 
had  claimed  another  kingdom,  and,  in  such  words 
as  "  Ibis  ad  crucem,"  delivered  him  to  be  cruci- 
fied. 

"  Was  Pilate  right  in  crucifying  Christ  ?  "  The 
question  has  recently  been  asked  in  a  book  of 
extraordinary  ability,  which  opens  with  the  most 
powerful  attack  in  our  language  on  what  has  been 
known  in  modern  times  as  the  right  of  "  liberty 
of  conscience."  If  you  deny  that  right,  argued 
John  Stuart  Mill  and  others,  you  must  approve 
of  Marcus  Aurelius  and  the  other  persecutors  of 
Christianity — nay,  you  must  go  further,  and  find 
"a  principle  which  will  justify  Pontius  Pilate." 
A  keen  critic  has  accepted  the  challenge;  and 
his  argument,  while  in  the  first  instance  it  rather 
departs  from  the  question  of  principle  so  raised, 
ultimately  returns  to  it,  and,  I  think,  justifies  the 
selection  of  so  memorable  an  illustration.  The 
discussion  will  be  found  to  lead  directly  to  the 
only  legal  question  which  remains  for  me  to  take 
up — the  relation  of  the  Roman  state  and  the  Ro- 
man law  to  the  sentence  of  the  Roman  governor : 
1.  The  suggestion,  however,  which  is  first 
made,1  that  Pilate  may  have  "  believed  in  good 
1  "Was  Pilate  rigrht  iu  crucifying  Christ?     I   reply, 


70 


TEE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


faith  that  what  he  did  was  necessary  for  the  pres- 
ervation of  the  peace  of  Palestine,"  is  purely  gra- 
tuitous. Whether  that  would  have  justified  him  in 
condemning  a  man  he  believed  to  be  innocent,  we 
may  touch  upon  hereafter.  But,  in  the  mean  time, 
there  is  not  the  slightest  ground  for  the  suggestion 
itself.  The  narratives  are  uniform  in  asserting  his 
expressed  conviction  of  his  prisoner's  innocence, 
his  knowledge  that  Jesus  had  been  delivered 
"for  envy,"  his  scoffing  incredulity  in  speaking 
to  the  Jews  of  their  king,  and  his  final  yielding, 
as  a  judge,  to  those  vance  voces  populi  against 
which  his  own  law  warned  him,  only  when  his 
personal  and  private  interests  were  menaced. 
And  the  Christian  narratives  which  have  handed 
this  down  are,  strange  to  say,  in  no  respect  hos- 
tile to  Pilate.  Jewish  and  other  writers  who  ex- 
pressly treat  of  the  character  of  this  governor 
give  us  his  portrait  as  rapacious,  cruel,  and  un- 
just.  The  Christian  historians  give  no  portrait, 
and  have  occasion  to  refer  to  him  incidentally 
only  where  his  actions  are  fitted  to  excite  the 
keenest  exasperation.  Yet  these  few  historical 
side-touches  represent  the  man  within  the  gov- 
ernor with  a  delicacy,  and  even  tenderness,  which 
make  the  accusing  portrait  of  Philo  and  Joseph  us 
look  like  a  hard,  revengeful  daub.1  Is  there,  in 
the  Tito  or  Bulstrode  of  modern  delineation,  any- 
thing more  true  to  Nature,  more  provocative  of 
sudden  sympathy  from  men  who  know  the  press- 
ure of  public  life,  than  that  morning's  mental 
history  of  the  sixth  Procurator  of  Judea,  as  given 
by  the  friends  of  the  man  whom  he  crucified  ? 
The  motives  for  Pilate's  vacillation  are  only  too 
intelligible.  But  that  at  any  point  of  it  he  be- 
lieved his  sentence  was  called  for  to  preserve 
the  peace  of  the  province  is  an  unhistorical  sug- 
gestion. 

2.  Had  the  history  run  at  all  in  that  direction, 
there  are  various  situations  which  might  be  fig- 
Pilate's  paramount  duty  was  to  preserve  the  peace  in 
Palestine,  to  form  the  best  judgment  he  could  as  to  the 
means  required  for  that  pin-pose,  and  to  act  upon  it 
when  it  was  formed.  Therefore,  if  and  in  so  far  as  he 
believed  in  good  faith  and  on  reasonable  grounds  that 
what  he  did  was  necessary  for  the  preservation  of  the 
peace  of  Palestine,  he  was  right." — "Liberty,  Equality, 
Fraternity,"  by  J.  Fitzjames  Stephen,  Q.  C,  p.  87. 

1  My  view  of  his  true  character  scarcely  varies  from 
that  so  tersely  given  by  Dr.  Ellicott :  "  A  thorough  and 
complete  type  of  the  later-Roman  man  of  the  world  : 
Stern,  but  not  relentless  shrewd  and  world-worn, 
prompt  and  practical,  haughtily  just,  and  yet,  as  the 
early  writers  correctly  perceived,  self-seeking  and 
cowardly  ;  able  to  perceive  what  was  right,  but  with- 
out moral  strength  to  fol'ow  it  out."—"  Historical  Lect- 
ures,'" sixth  edition,  p.  3.-.O.  Compare  with  Philo,  in  his 
letter  on  "  Ambassadors." 


ured.  That  a  j»dge,  even  if  he  were  not  a  mili- 
tary governor  with  merum  imperium  delegated 
from  Borne,  should  slay  a  man  who  was  overtly 
and  iu  intent  seditious,  raises  no  question.  Nei- 
ther Mr.  Mill,  nor  any  other  advocate  of  liberty, 
questions  the  duty  of  government  to  preserve  the 
peace.  That  a  governor,  sitting  or  not  sitting  as 
a  judge,  should  deliver  to  death  a  man  whom  he 
believed  to  have  no  intentions  against  the  peace, 
because  he  was  in  point  of  fact  dangerous  to  it, 
might  raise  a  serious  question.1     In  particular, 

1  "If  this  should  appear  harsh  [the  assertion  that 
Pilate's  duty  was  simply  to  maintain  the  Roman 
power],  I  would  appeal  again  to  Indian  experience. 
Suppose  that  some  great  religious  reformer— say,  for 
instance,  some  one  claiming  to  be  the  Guru  of  the 
Sikhs,  or  the  Imam  in  whose  advent  many  Moham- 
medans devoutly  believe— were  to  make  his  appear- 
ance in  the  Punjaub  or  the  Northwest  Provinces. 
Suppose  that  there  was  good  reason  to  believe— and 
nothing  is  more  probable — that,  tvhatever  might  be  the 
preacher's  own  jxrsonal  intentions,  his  preaching  was 
calculated  to  disturb  the  public  peace  and  produce 
mutiny  and  rebellion  ;  and  suppose,  further  (though 
the  supposition  is  one  which  it  is  hardly  possible  to 
make  even  in  imagination),  that  a  British  officer,  in- 
stead of  doing  whatever  might  be  necessary,  or  ex- 
ecuting whatever  orders  he  might  receive,  for  the 
maintenance  of  British  authority,  were  to  consider 
whether  he  ought  not  to  become  a  disciple  of  the  Guru 
or  Imam  :  what  course  would  be  taken  toward  him? 
He  would  be  instantly  dismissed  with  ignominy  from 
the  service  which  he  would  disgrace  ;  and,  if  he  acted 
up  to  his  convictions,  and  preferred  his  religion  to  his 
queen  and  country,  he  would  be  hanged  as  a  rebel  and 
a  traitor."—"  Liberty,  Equality,  Fraternity,"  p.  94. 

Of  course,  the  true  parallel  would  rather  be:  Sup 
pose  that  the  Guru  or  Imam  were  delivered  to  a 
British  officer  by  his  coreligionists  on  a  charge  of 
erecting  a  national  system  against  the  English  raj, 
and  refusing  to  pay  an  English  tax  ;  that  the  officer, 
ou  personal  examination,  came  to  be  satisfied  that  the 
man  was  innocent  and  the  charge  was  false  ;  that,  to 
pacify  the  other  priests,  he  proposed  an  intermediate 
punishment  of  one  iu  whom  he  found  no  fault;  that, 
under  great  pressure  brought  against  him  to  act  con- 
trary to  his  view,  he  vacillated  half  a  day  ;  and  that, 
at  last,  on  being  threatened  with  a  complaint  to  his 
official  superiors,  which  might  endanger  his  place  or 
promotion,  he  ordered  his  prisoner  to  torture  or  to 
death.  Suppose  all  this,  and  suppose  tlTat  the  story 
came  out  fully  on  his  arrival  in  London,  in  how  many 
drawing-rooms  would  he  be  received  ? 

But  take  it  even  that  the  case  were  not  so  bad. 
Assume  that  a  British  officer  thought  himself  com. 
pclled  to  order  for  execution  a  native  preacher  whose 
"personal  intentions  "  were  not  in  the  least  hostile  or 
seditious,  because  his  preaching  might  in  point  of 
fact  be,  or  had  in  point  of  fact  been,  dangerous  to  the 
English  power,  and  because  the  example  would  have 
a  good  effect.  This  is  about  the  best  case  made  for 
Pilate.  If  done  judicially,  it  would  be  a  judicial  mur- 
der. If  done  administratively,  what  ought  it  to  be 
called  ?    I  believe  there  are  few  circles  which  would 


THE  TRIAL    OF  JESUS   CHRIST. 


71 


it  raises  the  distinction  between  the  judicial  and 
the  administrative.     What  Pilate,  as  administra- 
tor of  the  province,  might  do  in  the  way  of  de- 
porting or  even  killing  an  innocent  man  for  the 
sake   of  its  peace,  is  one  question.      What  he 
might  do  sitting  as  a  judge  and  inquiring  whether 
there   was    "  fault   in   this   man  touching  those 
things  whereof  ye  accuse  him,"  is  another  matter ; 
and  it  is  the  one  with  which  we  have  to  deal. 
The  distinction,  kept  sacred  in  all  jurisprudences, 
is  beginning  to  be  confused  in  the  minds  of  Eng- 
lish lawyers  by  the  powerful  but  provincial  theory 
of  utility  which  they  are  taught,  but  the  spread 
of  which  from  the  professor's  chair  to  the  judg- 
ment-seat will,   I  think,  be  prevented  by   both 
the  scientific  traditions  of  Europe  and  the  moral 
sense  of  mankind.     In  saying  so,  I  do  not  forget 
the  story  of  the  English  judge  who  told  a  pris- 
oner, "  I  sentence  you  to  die,  not  at  all  because 
vou  have  robbed  this  house,  but  in  order  that 
other  people  may  not  rob  other  houses  in  future." 
That  judge,  if  he  existed  and  pronounced  such  a 
sentence,  simply  committed  murder.     But  it  was 
Caiaphas,   not  Pilate,  who  thought  it  expedient 
that  one  man  should  die  for  the  people.     And 
neither  the  one  nor  the  other  grounded  the  ex- 
pediency on  any  immediately  apprehended  out- 
break or  on  any  danger  to  the  peace.     There 
was,  indeed,  no  such  immediate  danger.     How 
far  there  might  be  ultimate  danger  to  the  Roman 
state  from  the  spread  of  convictions  and  the  ac- 
ceptance of  claims  like  those  of  Jesus,  was  an- 
other matter,  and  it  was  the  really  important  one. 
The  true  question,  as  the  critic  of  the  "  Liberty, 
Equality,  and  Fraternity"  watchword  soon  dis- 
cerns, is  between  the  universal  supremacy  of  a 
government  whose  functions  extended  to  some- 
thing much  higher  than  keeping  the  peace  on  the 
one  hand,  and  the  claims  of  a  kingdom  not  of 
this  world  on  the  other. 

3.  Accordingly,  the  final  defense  made  for  the 
Roman  governor — the  only  one  which  can  be  of 
any  weight  in  consistency  with  the  history,  and 
the  only  one  also  which  bears  on  the  great  ques- 
tion of  liberty  of  conscience  or  repression  of 
opinion — is  contained  in  the  following  passage  of 
very  general  theory,  illustrated  in  the.  quotation 
in  my  note  on  the  previous  page : 

hold  that  mere  hesitation  by  a  British  officer  to  do 
such  an  act  would  infer  ignominy  or  disgrace  to  the 
service.  As  to  the  further  step  of  becoming  personally 
a  disciple  of  a  "  higher  form  of  morals  "  than  any  pre- 
viously known  (the  immediate  peace  of  the  region 
being  first  cared  for),  there  does  not  seem  any  other 
difficulty  than  what  is  dealt  with  in  the  test,  in  next 
column. 


"  Pilate's  duty  was  to  maintain  peace  and  ordei 
in  Judea,  and  to  maintain  the  Roman  power.  It  is 
surely  impossible  to  contend  seriously  that  it  was 
his  duty,  or  that  it  coidd  be  the  duty  of  any  one  in 
his  position,  to  recognize  in  the  person  brought  to 
his  judgment-seat,  I  do  not  say  God  incarnate,  but 
the  teacher  and  preacher  of  a  higher  form  of  morals 
and  a  more  enduring  form  of  social  order  than  that 
of  which  he  was  himself  the  representative.  To  a 
man  in  Pilate's  position,  the  morals  and  the  social 
order  which  he  represents  are  for  all  practical  pur- 
poses absolute  standards."— P.  93. 

Whether  this  was  the  theory  of  Roman  law, 
we  may  afterward  see.     But  it  is  here  presented 
as  the  universal  and  true  theory,  against  which  it 
is  difficult  to  contend  seriously.     It  may  be  so. 
This  at  all  events  is  not  the  place  to  deal  directly 
with  it,  further  than  by  recording  a  fundamental 
dissent  and  implacable  opposition.1     But  it  is  ex- 
actly the  place  to  point  out  that  this  was  the 
theory  which  the  defense  of  the  accused  seems 
directed  to  meet.     The  doctrine  of  the  powerful 
book  from  which  we  quote  is  that  "  skeptical  ar- 
guments in  favor  of  moderation  about  religion 
are  the  only  conclusive  ones."     To  suggest  such 
arguments  to  the  governor,  or  at  least  to  leave 
his  mind  to  the  skeptical  poise  of  the  average 
educated  Roman  of  the  day,  might  have  seemed 
the  prudent  part  in  a  prophet  accused  of  treason. 
His  words  take  very  much  the  opposite  course. 
The  assertion  of  a  kingdom— a  higher  and  ruling 
"  form  of  morals  and  social  order  "—set  up  in  the 
earth,  but  in  a  different  plane  and  cosmos  from 
the  secular  power  of  Rome,  might  of  itself  have 
implied  the  assertion  of  a  duty  to  recognize  that 
kingdom.    But  when  its  assertion  was  backed  by 
an  immediate  appeal  to  the  truth,  as  that  which 
men  are  born  into  the  world  to  confess,  the  de- 
fense plainly  resolved  into  a  claim  that  this  truth, 
and  not  any  social  order  or  traditional  belief, 
should   be   the  "final   and   absolute   standard." 
And  the  last  words  addressed  to   Pilate  clinch 
"  the  duty  of  any  one  in  his  position  to  recognize 
the  teacher"  of  that  higher   order   and  extra- 
mundane  truth ;  for  "  every  one  that  is  of  the 
truth  heareth  my  voice."     Besides,  even  if  we 
should  prefer  to  disbelieve  this  conversation,  we 
cannot  escape  from  the  fact  that  this  was  precise- 

J  It  is  the  same  theory,  mutatis  rnutandia,witt  Ultra  - 
montanism,  and  that  not  merely  because  in  both  the  indi- 
vidual conscience  is  crushed  under  authority.  "  It  appears 
to  me,"  says  the  author,  "  that  the  Ultramontane  view  of 
the  relation  between  church  and  state  is  the  true  one  "  (p. 
109),  because,  as  is  explained,  Ultramontanes  correctly 
hold  that  of  the  two  powers  one  must  be  supreme  and  the 
other  must  obey,  and  that  there  is  no  real  distinction  of  a 
spiritual  and  a  secular  province  in  human  life. 


72 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


ly  the  attitude  taken  up  historically  by  Christian- 
ity. It  did  not  claim  merely  to  be  one  higher 
form  of  morals  or  religion  among  others.  It 
claimed  to  be  the  true  religion — in  the  sense  of 
being  both  universal  and  obligatory.  And  the 
empire,  which  would  have  been  content  to  ignore 
it  while  it  presented  itself  as  simply  a  higher 
form  of  morals  or  even  of  social  order,  could  not 
ignore  it  when  it  appeared  as  the  universal  and 
obligatory  form.  When  it  claimed  to  be  the  truth, 
Rome  first  answered,  "  What  is  truth  ?  "  and  when 
it  insisted  on  the  right  of  truth  to  be  obeyed, 
Rome  answered  again  with  persecution.  And 
Christianity  responded  by  the  constant  reiteration 
of  the  duty  of  every  member  of  the  state,  whether 
an  official  or  not,  to  recognize  this  truth,  to  bear 
witness  to  it,  and,  if  need  be,  to  die  for  it.  Hence 
the  immense  interest  which  has  always  attached 
to  Pilate's  answering  inquiry.  It  was  the  utter- 
ance of  one  who  was  neither  a  philosopher  nor  a 
statesman,  but  simply  a  typical  Roman  gentle- 
man, in  a  position  where  he  represented  his  state. 
And  precisely  because  it  was  so,  the  question, 
"  What  is  truth  ? "  lays  bare  the  hinge  upon 
which  the  mighty  Roman  world  was  then  smooth- 
ly revolving  into  the  abyss.  The  republic,  we 
must  never  forget,  had  already  ceased  to  believe 
in  its  own  morals  and  social  order.  The  fact  is 
certain,  but  the  pathos  of  it  has  too  seldom  been 
acknowledged.  Again  and  again  in  the  past  we 
have  mused  and  mourned  over  Greece,  and  its 
search  of  truth  intellectual — its  keen  and  fruit- 
less search,  never  ending,  ever  beginning,  across 
wastes  of  doubt  and  seas  of  speculation,  lighted 
by  uncertain  stars.  But  to-day  let  us  for  once 
remember  that  greater  race,  the  greatest  this 
earth  has  known;  called  and  trained  through 
long  centuries  to  the  work  of  governing  a  world, 
and,  when  at  last  that  mighty  inheritance  came 
into  its  hands,  stricken  with  inward  paralysis  for 
want  of  a  motive  and  a  hope.  Too  well  has  our 
own  poet  drawn  the  picture  : 

"  In  his  cool  hall,  with  haggard  eyes, 
The  Roman  noble  lay  ; 
He  drove  abroad,  in  furious  guise, 
Along  the  Appian  Way  ; 

"  He  made  a  feast,  drank  fierce  and  fast, 
And  crowned  his  hair  with  flowers  : 
No  easier  and  no  quicker  passed 
The  impracticable  hours." 

And  so  there  crept  upon  men  that  moral  languor 
and  satiety  of  life  which  underlay  the  whole  time 
of  the  empire,  hardening  often  into  cruel  apathy 
or  reckless  despair.   But  have  we  always  reflected 


how  certainly  this  cynical  moral  mood  of  the 
dominant  race  was  the  result  of  the  new  circum- 
stances into  which  it  was  thrown  ?  In  early  days 
the  Roman  believed  in  himself,  in  his  gods,  in  his 
institutions,  and,  above  all,  in  his  state.  It  was 
for  him  theairum  satis  magnum — his  standard,  his 
rule,  his  righteousness.  And  so  he  was  righteous, 
in  his  stern,  relentless  way.  But  now  the  world 
had  grown  wider.  And  what  had  sufficed  for  vir- 
tue in  former  times  did  not  suffice  for  virtue  now. 
A  provincial  belief,  a  national  religion,  was  too 
narrow  for  a  world:  it  necessarily  collapsed,  and 
left  the  lords  of  earth,  with  strong  hands  and 
empty  hearts,  skeptical  as  to  truth,  and  so  laps- 
ing from  righteousness. 

That  this  had  become  largely  the  result,  even 
in  the  reign  of  Tiberius,  is  admitted.  And  it  was 
plainly  a  position  of  matters  very  unfortunate 
for  the  application  of  the  general  rule  suggested. 
That  Pilate  or  Pliny,  or  any  Roman  official, 
should  have  to  refuse  a  higher  order  of  morals 
which  his  conscience  approved,  simply  because 
his  state  believed  in  a  lower,  was  hard  enough. 
But  that  such  an  official  should  have  to  refuse 
that  higher  morality  or  religion,  after  both  he 
and  his  state  had  ceased  to  believe  in  the  lower, 
was  harder  still.  And  that  in  such  circumstances 
a  judge  should  have  to  use  systematic  persecu- 
tion against  the  confessedly  higher  convictions, 
simply  to  prevent  their  making  head  against  a 
legal  standard  of  faith  which  he  and  all  men  had 
begun  to  disbelieve,  was  the  most  unfortunate 
thing  of  all.  There  is  probably  nothing  which 
so  excites  the  loathing  of  mankind  as  when  the 
state  persecutes  for  a  faith  which  it  is  already  be- 
ginning to  lose.  And  yet,  obviously,  that  is  pre- 
cisely the  time  when  it  is  most  likely  to  happen, 
and  on  the  theory  with  which  we  are  dealing  it 
is  what  ought  to  happen.  That  theory  we  are 
not  to  discuss,  but  in  answering  the  question  by 
which  its  author  so  courageously  illustrates  it, 
"Was  Pilate  right  in  crucifying  Christ?"  we 
must  for  a  moment  shred  away  all  circumstances 
of  aggravation.  Suppose  that  Pilate  and  the  Ro- 
mans of  his  time  still  believed  in  the  old  religion 
of  the  little  Tiber  city,  that  Jesus  had  been  a  na- 
tive subject  of  that  city,  and  that  the  law  of  the 
city  demanded  persecution  of  all  religious  convic- 
tions hostile  to  its  old  faith.  What,  in  such  cir- 
cumstances, was  the  "  duty  of  a  man  in  Pilate's 
position  ?  "  I  answer  that  his  duty  was  (having 
first  cared  for  the  immediate  peace  of  his  district) 
to  refuse  to  obey  the  law,  and  to  resign  his  posi- 
tion rather  than  outrage  a  principle  of  conscience, 
which  lies  deeper  than  all  social  superstructures 


THE  TRIAL   OF  JESUS  CHRIST. 


73 


of  either  the  church  or  the  state.  There  are  laws 
which  are  invalid  because  they  strike  against  the 
basis  of  all  law.  But  this  brings  us  to  the  final 
question,  What  was  the  law  of  Rome  in  the  mat- 
ter of  the  trial  of  Jesus  Christ  ? 

My  space  warns  me  to  give  a  general  answer  to 
this  question,  and  to  avoid  references  to  sources. 
It  is  well  known  that  the  policy  of  Rome  as  a 
conquering  power  toward  the  religions  of  subject 
states  was  one  of  toleration.  But  that  meant  lit- 
tle more  than  toleration  of  existing  religions  in 
their  local  seats.  Because  the  worship  of  Serapis 
or  Isis  was  tolerated  on  the  Nile,  as  a  monothe- 
istic worship  was  in  Judea,  it  by  no  means  fol- 
lowed that  either  of  them  became  a  religio  licita 
on  the  banks  of  the  Tiber.  Even  if  such  a  re- 
ligion was  tolerated  on  the  Tiber,  exclusive  devo- 
tion to  it  was  tolerated  only  in  natives  of  the 
country  from  which  it  came,  and  was  at  no  time 
permitted  to  Roman  citizens.  For  them  all  over 
the  world  the  old  religion  was  imperative;  and 
for  the  world  the  religion  of  the  Tiber,  though 
not  imperative,  was  dominant.  The  concessions 
made  to  the  provinces  for  their  religions  were 
strictly  concessions,  not  concordats.  According- 
ly, the  concession  was  generally  limited  by  the 
idea,  Cvjus  regio,  ejus  religio.  Outside  the  re- 
gion or  province  where  the  local  cult  ruled,  it 
was  denied  the  rights  of  publicity  and  of  prose- 
lytism,  and  was  restricted  to  a  passive  and  a 
private  existence.  These  general  considerations 
explain  some  of  the  variations  in  the  Roman 
treatment  of  the  Jewish  and  Christian  faiths. 
The  old  Jewish  religion  had  the  paradoxical 
quality  of  being  national  or  local  on  the  one 
hand,  while  on  the  other  it  claimed  to  be  exclu- 
sive truth.  The  union  of  the  two  qualities  went 
far  to  explain  that  hostility  to  the  human  race 
which  the  Romans  were  fond  of  ascribing  to  it. 
A  faith  which  attacked  that  of  all  other  men, 
without  inviting  them  to  share  in  it,  invited  this 
misconstruction.  But  its  very  want  of  aggres- 
siveness saved  it  from  collisions.  When  Chris- 
tianity appeared,  a  different  problem  had  to  be 
dealt  with.  Here  was  a  faith  which  not  only 
claimed  to  be  the  absolute  truth,  but  which  re- 
fused to  be  confined  within  local  limits.  It  was 
essentially  proselytizing,  and  therefore  essentially 
public;  and  it  demanded  universal  individual  ac- 
ceptance— acceptance  by  the  Roman  as  by  the 
Greek  and  the  Jew.  What  was  the  result '? 
"The  substance  of  what  the  Romans  did  was  to 
treat  Christianity  by  fits  and  starts  as  a  crime." ' 

1  "  Liberty,  Equality,  Fraternity,"  p.  00. 


That  occasional  persecution  was  not  founded 
upon  any  specialties  in  the  nature  of  Christian- 
ity, or  excited  by  any  great  dislike  to  it  as  a  form 
of  worship  or  belief.  It  was  persecuted  gener- 
ally as  a  form  of  atheism,  or  of  opposition  to  the 
established  and  tolerated  institutions.  And  the 
opposition  to  it  on  this  ground  was  set  in  motion 
and  regulated  by  some  of  the  greatest  and  wisest, 
and  even,  in  a  sense,  most  tolerant  emperors. 
Trajan  and  the  Antonines  were  wise  and  large- 
hearted  monarchs.  There  was  little  in  Christian- 
ity to  repel,  and  there  was  much  in  it  to  attract, 
such  men.  They  were  not  bigots,  and  those 
around  them  were  generally  skeptics.  They  did 
not  believe  in  absolute  or  universal  truth  in  mat- 
ters of  religion,  and  they  did  believe  in  the  sover- 
eignty and  supremacy  of  the  Roman  state.  The 
consequence  was,  that  while  they  protected  in 
Egypt,  and  Palestine  and  Italy,  all  religiones  lici- 
f<-c  which  would  live  in  peace  with  each  other  and 
claim  no  universal  dominion,  they  bent  the  whole 
force  of  the  state  against  the  one  religion  which 
said,  "For  this  cause  are  men  born,  that  they 
should  bear  witness  unto  the  truth,"  and  "Every 
one  that  is  of  the  truth  heareth  His  voice."  There 
is  no  way  of  explaining  the  history  except  by  ac- 
knowledging that  the  constitutional  law  of  Rome 
reserved  to  the  state  the  right  on  the  one  hand  to 
approve  the  license,  or  on  the  other  to  repress  and 
forbid,  the  expression  of  new  religious  convic- 
tions, the  public  existence  of  a  new  faith.  And 
this  prerogative  was  held  to  form  part  of  the 
majestas  or  supremacy  of  the  state. 

It  was  so  in  the  days  of  Tiberius  as  truly  as  in 
the  Terreur  juridique  of  Domitian.  Pilate,  as 
his  deputy,  seems  to  have  been  convinced  that 
the  claim  of  Jesus  to  be  "  Christ  a  king  "  was 
not  a  claim  to  temporal  sovereignty.  He  ac- 
cepted in  some  sense  his  own  assurance  that  it 
was  a  kingdom  not  of  this  world.  Yet  this 
meant,  at  the  least,  that  his  kingdom  was  a  reli- 
gion, which  he  was  about  to  found.  It  meant 
more.  A  religion  which  takes  the  form  of  a  king- 
dom,  with  a  king  and  his  non-combatant  servants, 
however  little  of  "  of  this  cosmos  "  it  may  be, 
must  be  not  only  religion  but  a  church.  A  uni- 
versal religion,  starting  with  individual  faith,  but 
adding  immediately  an  obligation  to  confess  that 
faith  and  to  proselytize,  is  already  (according  to 
the  Protestant  definition)  a  church.  The  defense 
of  Jesus  gave  at  least  as  much  prominence  to  this 
as  his  disciples  did  during  the  early  ages  ;  and  it 
gave  additional  seriousness  to  the  charge  of  trea- 
son. A  great  student  of  history  of  our  time  has 
perhaps  gone  too  far  in  holding  that  the  Roman 


74 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


laws  againt  unlicensed  association  or  combina- 
tion were  the  unhappy  root  of  all  the  persecu- 
tions,1 too  far  even  in  holding  that  they  were  the 
instrument  by  which  all  these  persecutions  were 
carried  on.  These  laws  were  the  branches  rather 
than  the  root,  but  they  were  in  living  union  with 
it.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  laws  regu- 
lating colli ffia,  and  repressing  all  unlicensed  asso- 
ciations, had  from  the  beginning  a  close  connec- 
tion with  the  majeslas  of  the  state,  and  especially 
with  its  right  to  institute  and  enforce  religion.2 
The  two  things  worked  together,  and  they  did  so 
in  theory  and  practice.  A  claim  of  Jesus  merely 
to  found  a  universal  religion  might,  no  doubt,  in 
practice,  have  come  into  collision  with  the  laws 
of  Rome.  But  his  claim  to  found  it  as  a  king- 
dom, though  not  of  this  world — "  une  association 
dans  l'etat  en  dehors  de  l'etat,"  as  it  is  happily 
expressed — seems  to  me  to  have  been  essentially 
inconsistent  with  the  public  principle  of  that  law. 
Christianity,  in  short,  was  incompatible  with 
the  Roman  public  law,  and  that  not  merely  be- 
cause its  contents  were  different  from  those  of  the 
old  religion  of  Rome,  but  because  its  claim  to 
universal  individual  acceptance  and  public  con- 
fession conflicted  with  the  unlimited  and  un- 
balanced sovereignty  of  the  Roman  state.  And 
on  these  very  points  that  law  came  into  conflict 
with  the  Author  of  Christianity.  It  does  not, 
perhaps,  follow  that  Pilate,  as  its  administrator — 
supposing  him  to  have  apprehended  the  existence 
of  this  religious  conflict,  as  he  apprehended  the 
non-existence  of  any  civil  conspiracy — was  bound 


to  condemn  Jesus.  As  Trajan  explains  in  his  fa- 
mous letter  to  the  Governor  of  Bithynia,  it  was 
the  duty  of  the  higher  magistrate  to  use  his  own 
discretion  in  dealing  with  those  who  had  trans- 
gressed the  law  on  religion.  Pilate  seems,  in- 
deed, to  have  believed  Jesus  to  be  both  just  and 
harmless  ;  and,  so  believing,  he  sinned  in  swaying 
from  his  first  judgment,  and  betrayed  the  inno- 
cent blood.  But  when  he  ultimately  sent  him  to 
the  cross  it  was  as  claiming  to  be  a  king,  and  on 
the  original  charge  of  acting  advcrsus  majestatem 
populi  Romani.  And  in  point  of  fact,  whatever 
his  judge  may  have  thought,  the  claim  of  Christ 
was  truly  inconsistent  with  the  claim  of  the  state 
which  Pilate  represented ;  and  the  world  must 
judge  between  the  two. 

In  considering  the  most  famous  of  all  trials 
from  a  merely  legal  and,  indeed,  formal  point  of 
view,  we  have  come  to  some  conclusions.  We 
have  found  that  it  was  a  double  trial,  and  that 
both  parts  of  it  were  conducted  with  a  certain 
regard  to  the  forms  of  the  two  most  famous  juris- 
prudences of  the  world.  In  both  the  judges  were 
unjust,  and  the  trial  was  unfair ;  yet  in  both  the 
right  issue  was  substantially  raised.  And  in 
both  that  issue  was  the  same.  Jesus  Christ  was 
truly  condemned  on  a  double  charge  of  treason. 
He  died  because  in  the  ecclesiastical  council  he 
claimed  to  be  the  Son  of  God  and  the  Messiah  of 
Israel,  and  because  before  the  world-wide  tribunal 
he  claimed  to  be  Christ  a  king. —  Contemj^orary 
Review. 


COSMIC    EMOTION 

By  W.  KINGDON  CLIFFORD. 


BY  a  cosmic  emotion — the  phrase  is  Mr.  Henry 
Sidgwick's — I  mean  an  emotion  which  is 
felt  in  regard  to  the  universe  or  sum  of  things, 

1  "  La  seule  chose  a  laquelle  Vempire  Romain  ait  de- 
clare la  guerre,  en  fait  de  religion,  c'est  la  theocratie.  Son 
principe  etait  celui  de  l'etait  lai'que  ;  il  n'admettait  pas 
qu'une  religion  eut  des  consequences  civiles  ou  politiques 
a  aucun  degre  ;  il  n'admettait  surtout  aucune  association 
dans  l'etat  en  dehors  de  l'etat.  Ce  dernier  point  est  essen- 
tiel ;  il  est,  a  vrai  dire,  la  racine  de  toutes  les  persecutions. 
La  loi  sur  les  confreries,  Men  plus  que  Intolerance  reli- 
gicusc,  fut  la  cause  fatale  des  violences  qui  dcshonoroivnt 
ies  K-gnes  des  meilleurs souverains."— Eenans  "Les  Apo- 
tres,"  p.  351. 

2  "  La  pr6texte  de  religion  ou  d'accomplissement  de 
tc3ux  en  commun  est  prevu  et  formellementindiqu6  parmi 
les  circonstanees  qui  donnent  a  une  reunion  le  caractere  de 
delit ;  et  ce  delit  n'etalt  autre  que  celui  de  lese-majeste,  au 
moins  pour  l'individu  qui  avait  provoqu6  la  reunion."— 
P.  362. 


viewed  as  a  cosmos  or  order.  There  are  two 
kinds  of  cosmic  emotion — one  having  reference 
to  the  Macrocosm  or  universe  surrounding  and 
containing  us,  the  other  relating  to  the  Microcosm 
or  universe  of  our  own  souls.  When  we  try  to 
put  together  the  most  general  conceptions  that 
we  can  form  about  the  great  aggregate  of  events 
that  are  always  going  on,  to  strike  a  sort  of  bal- 
ance among  the  feelings  which  these  events  pro- 
duce in  us,  and  to  add  to  these  the  feeling  of 
vastness  associated  with  an  attempt  to  represent 
the  whole  of  existence,  then  we  experience  a  cos- 
mic emotion  of  the  first  kind.  It  may  have  the 
character  of  awe,  veneration,  resignation,  sub- 
mission ;  or  it  may  be  an  overpowering  stimulus 
to  action,  like  the  effect  of  the  surrounding  or- 
chestra upon  a  musician  who  is  thereby  caught 


COSMIC  EMOTION. 


75 


up  and  driven  to  play  his  proper  part  with  force 
and  exactness  of  time  and  tune.  If,  on  the  other 
hand,  we  consider  the  totality  of  our  own  actions 
and  of  the  feelings  that  go  with  them  or  spring 
out  of  them,  if  we  frame  the  highest  possible  gen- 
eralization to  express  the  character  of  those  which 
we  call  good,  and  if  we  contemplate  this  with  the 
feeling  of  vastness  which  belongs  to  that  which 
concerns  all  things  that  all  men  do,  we  shall  ex- 
perience a  cosmic  emotion  of  the  secod  kind. 
Such  an  emotion  finds  voice  in  Wordsworth's 
'•  Ode  to  Duty  :  " 

"  Stern  daughter  of  the  voice  of  God  I 
O  Duty,  if  that  name  thou  love, 
"Who  art  a  light  to  guide,  a  rod 

To  check  the  erring,  and  reprove  ; 
Thou  who  art  victory  and  law 
AY  hen  empty  terrors  overawe ; 
Prom  vain  temptations  dost  set  free 
And  calm'st  the  weary  strife  of  frail  humanity ! " 

A  special  form  of  each  of  these  kinds  of  cos- 
mic emotion  has  been  expressed  in  a  sentence  by 
Immanuel  Kant,  which  has  been  perfectly  trans- 
lated by  Lord  Houghton : 

"  Two  things  I  contemplate  with  ceaseless  awe  : 
The  stars  of  heaven,  and  man's  sense  of  law." 

For  the  star-full  sky  on  a  clear  night  is  the  most 
direct  presentation  of  the  sum  of  things  that  we 
can  find,  and  from  the  nature  of  the  circumstances 
is  fitted  to  produce  a  cosmic  emotion  of  the  first 
kind.  And  the  moral  faculty  of  man  was  thought 
of  by  Kant  as  possessing  universality  in  a  pe- 
culiar sense ;  for  the  form  of  all  right  maxims,  ac- 
cording to  him,  is  that  they  are  fit  for  universal 
law,  applicable  to  all  intelligent  beings  whatever. 
This  mode  of  viewing  the  faculty  is  clearly  well 
adapted  for  producing  cosmic  emotion  of  the  sec- 
ond kind. 

The  character  of  the  emotion  with  which  men 
contemplate  the  world,  the  temper  in  which  they 
stand  in  the  presence  of  the  immensities  and  the 
eternities,  must  depend  first  of  all  on  what  they 
think  the  world  is.  The  theory  of  the  universe, 
the  viev  of  things,  prevalent  at  any  time  and 
place,  will  rouse  appropriate  feelings  in  those 
who  contemplate  it ;  not  the  same  in  all,  for  tem- 
perament varies  with  the  individual,  and  the  same 
facts  stir  differently  different  souls,  yet  so  that, 
on  the  whole,  the  character  of  cosmic  emotion 
depends  on  the  nature  of  cosmic  ideas. 

When,  therefore,  the  inevitable  progress  of 
knowledge  has  changed  the  prevalent  cosmic 
ideas,  so  that  the  world  as  we  know  it  is  not  the 
world  which  our  fathers  knew,  the  old  cosmic 
emotions  are  no  longer  found  to  tit.     Knowledge 


must  have  been  in  men's  possession  for  a  long 
time  before  it  has  acquired  the  certainty,  the 
precision,  the  familiarity,  the  wide  diffusion  and 
comprehension  which  make  it  fit  to  rouse  feelings 
strong  enough  and  general  enough  for  true  poetic 
expression.  For  the  true  poetry  is  that  which 
expresses  our  feelings,  and  not  my  feelings  only — 
that  which  appeals  to  the  universal  in  the  heart 
of  each  one  of  us.  So  it  comes  about  that  the 
world  of  the  poet,  the  world  in  its  emotional  as- 
pect, always  lags  a  little  behind  the  world  of  sci- 
ence, not  merely  as  it  appears  to  the  few  who  are 
able  to  assist  at  the  birth  of  its  conceptions,  but 
even  as  it  is  roughly  and  in  broad  strokes  revealed 
to  the  many.  We  always  know  a  little  more  than 
our  imaginations  have  thoroughly  pictured.  To 
some  minds  there  is  hope  and  renewing  of  youth 
in  the  sense  that  the  last  word  is  not  yet  spoken, 
that  greater  mysteries  yet  lie  behind  the  veil. 
The  prophet  himself  may  say  with  gladness,  "  He 
that  cometh  after  me  shall  be  preferred  before 
me."  But  others  see  in  the  clearer  and  wider 
vision  that  approaches  them  the  end  of  all  beauty 
and  joy  in  the  earth  ;  because  their  old  feelings 
are  not  suited  to  the  new  learning,  they  think 
that  learning  can  stir  no  feelings  at  all.  Even 
the  great  poet  already  quoted,  whom  no  science 
will  put  out  of  date,  complained  of  the  prosaic 
effects  of  explanation,  and  said,  "  We  murder  to 
dissect." 

I  propose  to  consider  and  compare  an  ancient 
and  a  modern  system  of  cosmic  ideas,  and  to 
show  how  the  emotions  suited  to  the  latter  have 
already  in  part  received  poetic  expression. 

In  the  early  part  of  the  fifth  century  of  our 
era,  the  Neoplatonic  philosopher  Hierokles  was 
teaching  at  Alexandria.  He  was  an  Alexandrian 
by  birth,  and  had  studied  with  Proklos,  or  a  lit- 
tle before  him,  under  Plutarch  at  Athens.  He 
was  a  man  of  great  eloquence,  and  of  better  Greek 
than  most  of  his  contemporaries.  He  astonished 
his  hearers  everywhere,  says  Suidas,  by  the  calm, 
the  magnificence,  the  width  of  his  superlative  in- 
tellect, and  by  the  sweetness  of  his  speech,  full  of 
the  most  beautiful  words  and  things.  A  man  of 
manly  spirit  and  courage ;  for  being  once  at  By- 
zantium he  came  into  collision  with  the  ecclesias- 
tical authorities  (rots  Kparovai)  and  was  scourged 
in  court;  then,  streaming  with  blood,  he  caught 
some  of  it  in  his  hand  and  threw  it  at  the  magis- 
trate, with  this  verse  of  the  Odyssey:  "  Here, 
Cyclops,  drink  viine,  since  you  eat  human  flesh!" 
For  which  contempt  of  court  he  was  banished, 
but  subsequently  made  his  way  back  to  Alexan- 
dria.    Here  he  lectured  on  various  topics,  fore- 


76 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


knowledge,  will,  and  fate,  expounding  also  some 
of  the  dialogues  of  Plato  and  other  philosophical 
writings. 

But  the  matter  of  one  course  of  lectures  is 
preserved  to  us.     It  is  a  commentary  on  a  docu- 
ment in  hexameter  verse  belonging  to  the  Pythago- 
rean scriptures,  dating  apparently  from  the  third 
century  b.  c.     These  lines  were  called  by  Jam- 
blichus  the  "Golden  Verses;"  but  Gregory  of 
Nazianzum  did  them  the  honor  to  say  they  were 
rather  made  of  lead.     They  are  not  elegant  as 
poetry;  the  form  of  verse  seems  to  have  been 
adopted  as  an  aid  to  the  memory.     More  than 
half  of  them  consist  of  a  sort  of  versified  "  duty 
to  God  and  my  neighbor,"  except  that  it  is  not 
designed  by  the  rich  to  be  obeyed  by  the  poor, 
that  it  lays  stress  on  the  laws  of  health,  and  that 
it  is  just  such  sensible  counsel  for  the  good  and 
right  conduct  of  life  as  an  English  gentleman  might 
nowadays  give  to  his  son.     We  need  not  be  as- 
tonished that  the  step  from  the  Mediterranean  to 
Great  Britain,  over  two  thousand  years  of  time, 
should  make  no  great  difference  in  the  validity 
of  maxims  like  these.     We  might  go  back  four 
thousand  years  farther,  and  find  the  same  pre- 
cepts handed  down  at  Memphis  as  the  wisdom  of 
a  hoar  antiquity.     "There's  some  things  as  I've 
never  felt  i'  the  dark  about,"  says  Mrs.  Winthrop, 
"and  they're  mostly  what   comes  i'  the   day's 
work." 

There  are  curious  indications  that  the  point  of 
view  of  the  commentator  is  not  that  of  the  verses 
themselves.  "Before  all  things  honor  the  im- 
mortal gods,  as  they  are  ordained  by  law,"  begin 
the  verses,  with  the  frank  Erastianism  of  the 
Greeks,  who  held  that  every  man  should  worship 
the  gods  in  the  manner  belonging  to  his  city  and 
country ;  that  matter  being  settled  for  themselves 
by  the  oracle  of  the  Delphian  Apollo.  But  this 
did  not  suit  the  Neoplatonist  of  the  fifth  century, 
whom  the  "  law  "  of  his  country  required  to  wor- 
ship images  of  Mary  and  her  son  (to  be  sure,  they 
might  be  adapted  figures  of  Isis  and  Horns)  and 
the  miraculous  toe-nails  of  some  filthy  and  igno- 
rant monk.  The  law  named  in  the  verses  could 
not  be  that  which  had  scourged  and  banished  a 
philosopher ;  so  it  is  explained  to  mean  the  demi- 
urgic law,  which  assigns  to  the  gods  their  several 
orders,  the  law  of  the  divine  nature.  We  are  to 
honor  the  immortal  gods,  says  the  commentator, 
in  the  order  which  is  assigned  to  them  by  the 
law  of  their  being.  For  Hierokles  there  is  one 
supreme  deity  and  three  orders  of  angels — the 
immortal  gods,  the  illustrious  heroes,  and  the  ter- 
restrial demons  or  partially  deified  souls  of  men. 


The  bishops,  as  we  all  know,  multiplied  these 
numbers  by  three. 

As  to  the  kind  of  worship,  our  commentator 
quotes  some  old  Pythagorean  maxims  :  "  You  shall 
honor  the  god  best,  by  becoming  godlike  in  your 
thoughts.  Whoso  giveth  God  honor  as  to  one  that 
ncedcth  it,  that  man  in  his  folly  hath  made  himself 
greater  than  God.  The  wise  man  only  is  a  priest, 
is  a  lover  of  God,  is  skilled  to  pray."  "For," 
he  says,  "  that  man  only  knows  how  to  worship 
who  does  not  confound  the  relative  dignity  of 
worshipful  things,  who  begins  by  offering  himself 
as  the  victim,  fashions  his  own  soul  into  a  divine 
image,  and  furnishes  his  mind  as  a  temple  for  the 
reception  of  the  divine  light."  "  The  whole  force 
of  worship,"  he  says  in  another  place,  "lies  in 
knowledge  of  the  nature  of  that  which  is  wor- 
shiped." 

[It  is  interesting  to  compare  this  last  maxim 
with  the  proposition  of  Spinoza: '  "lie  who  clear- 
ly and  distinctly  understands  himself  and  what 
affects  him,  loves  God,  and  that  the  more,  the 
more  he  understands  himself  and  what  affects 
him."  For  to  understand  clearly  and  distinctly 
is  to  contemplate  in  relation  to  God,  to  the  cos- 
mic idea.  When  the  mind  contemplates  itself 
in  relation  to  God,  it  necessarily  rises  from  a 
lower  to  a  higher  grade  of  perfection.  Now  joy 
is  the  passage  from  a  lower  to  a  higher  grade 
of  perfection,  and  love  is  joy  associated  with  the 
idea  of  an  external  cause.  He,  then,  that  rises 
to  higher  perfection  in  the  presence  of  the  idea 
of  God,  loves  God.] 

But  it  is  in  the  latter  portion  of  the  "Golden 
Verses"  that  we  find  a  general  view  of  life  and 
of  Nature  assigned  as  the  ground  of  the  precepts 
which  have  gone  before.  There  are  in  all  seventy- 
one  lines  ;  of  the  last  thirty-two  I  venture  to  sub- 
join a  translation  as  nearly  literal  as  is  consistent 
with  intelligibility : 2 

"Let  not  soft  sleep  come  upon  thine  eyelids, 
till  thou  hast  pondered  thy  deeds  of  the  day: 

"  Wherein  have  I  sinned?  What  work  have  I 
done  ?     What  left  undone  that  I  was  bound  to  do  ? 

"  Beginning  at  the  first,  go  through  even  unto 
the  last ;  and  then  let  thy  heart  smite  thee  for  the 
evil  deed,  but  rejoice  in  the  good  work. 

"  Work  at  these  commandments,  and  think  upon 
them  ;  these  commandments  shalt  thou  love. 

1  "Qui  se  suoeque  affectus  clareet  distincte  intelli- 
git,  Deum  amat.  et  eo  magis,  quo  ee  suosque  nftectus 
magie  intelligit."— FAh.  v.,  prop.  xv.  Cf.  Aflecluum 
definitiones  ad  fin.  part.  iii. 

2  The  text  followed  is  that  of  Mullach,  in  the  "Frag- 
menta  Philosopliornm  Gracorum,"  Pari>.  I860,  from 
the  prolegomena  to  which  my  information  is  derived. 


COSMIC  EMOTIOX. 


T7 


"  They  shall  surely  set  thee  in  the  way  of  divine 
righteousness  ;  yea,  hy  him  who  gave  into  our 
soul  the  Tetrad,  well-spring  of  Nature  everlasting. 

"  Set  to  thy  work  with  a  will,  beseeching  the 
gods  for  the  end  thereof. 

"  And  when  thou  hast  mastered  these  command- 
ments, thou  shalt  know  the  being  of  the  gods  that 
die  not,  and  of  men  that  die  ;  thou  shalt  know  of 
things,  wherein  they  are  diverse,  and  the  kinship 
that  binds  them  in  one. 

"  Know,  so  far  as  is  permitted  thee,  that  Nature 
in  all  things  is  like  unto  herself, 

"  That  thou  mayst  not  hope  that  of  which  there 
is  no  hope,  nor  be  ignorant  of  that  which  may  be. 

"  Know  thou  also  that  the  woes  of  men  are  the 
work  of  their  own  hands. 

"Miserable  are  they,  because  they  see  not  and 
hear  not  the  good  that  is  very  nigh  them ;  and  the 
way  of  escape  from  evil,  few  there  be  that  under- 
stand it. 

"Like  rollers  they  roll  to  and  fro,  having  end- 
less trouble ;  so  hath  Fate  broken  the  wits «  of 
mortal  man. 

"  A  baneful  strife  lurketh  inborn  in  us,  and 
goeth  on  the  way  with  us  to  hurt  us  ;  this  let  not  a 
man  stir  up,  but  avoid  and  ti.ee. 

"  Verily,  Father  Zeus,  thou  wouldst  free  all 
men  from  much  evil,  if  thou  wouldst  teach  all  men 
what  manner  of  spirit  they  are  of. 

"  But  do  thou  be  of  good  cheer;  for  they  are 
gods'  kindred  whom  holy  Nature  leadeth  onward, 
and  in  due  order  showeth  them  all  things. 

"  And  if  thou  hast  any  part  with  them,  and 
keepest  these  commandments,  thou  shalt  utterly 
heal  thy  soul,  and  save  it  from  travail. 

"  Keep  from  the  meats  aforesaid,  using  judgment 
both  in  cleansing  and  in  setting  free  thy  soul. 

"  Give  heed  to  every  matter,  and  set  Keason  on 
high,  who  best  holdeth  the  reins  of  guidance. 

"  Then,  when  thou  lea  vest  the  body,  and  comest 
into  the  free  ether,  thou  shalt  be  a  god  undying, 
everlasting,  neither  shall  death  have  any  more 
dominion  over  thee." 

It  is  worth  while  to  notice  the  comment  of 
Hierokles  on  the  self-judgment  enjoined  in  the 
first  of  these  lines  : 

"The  judge  herein  appointed,"  he  says,  "is 
the  most  just  of  all,  and  the  one  which  is  most  at 
home  with  us ;  namely,  conscience  itself,  and  right 
reason.  And  each  man  is  to  be  judged  by  him- 
self, before  whom  our  bringing-up  has  taught  us 
to  be  more  shamefast  than  before  any  other.  (As 
a  previous  verse  commands;  of  all  men  be  most 
shamefast  before  thyself:  ■navTiav  Si  fxaXiar'  aio-xvveo 
cavrov.)  For  what  is  there  of  which  one  man  can 
so  admonish  another,  as  he  can  himself?  For  the 
free  will,  misusing  the  liberty  of  its  nature,  turns 
away  from  the  counsels  of  others,  when  it  does  not 

1  "My  brains  are  broken."— Sir  "Walter  Raleigh. 


wish  to  be  led  by  them  ;  but  a  man's  own  reason 
must  needs  obey  itself." 

"Whether  the  clear  statement  of  this  doctrine 
of  the  conscience,  dominans  Hie  deus  in  nobis,  as 
Cicero  calls  it,  is  originally  Stoic  or  Pythagorean, 
must  be  left  for  the  learned  to  decide.  Hierokles, 
however,  says  expressly  that  the  image  of  Reason 
guiding  the  lower  faculties  as  the  charioteer  guides 
his  chariot  was  derived  by  Plato  from  the  Pytha- 
goreans. 

Very  remarkable  indeed  is  the  view  of  Nature 
set  forth  in  the  subsequent  verses.  "  Know,  so 
far  as  is  permitted  thee,  that  Nature  is  in  ail 
things  uniform  "  (<pvati/  nep]  iravrSs  oyttoi'rji/).  This 
conception  of  the  world  as  a  great  cosmos  or 
order  is  the  primary  condition  of  human  prog- 
ress. In  the  earliest  steps  of  primitive  men  in 
the  simplest  arts  of  life  there  is  involved  a  dim 
recognition  and  practical  use  of  it  to  the  extent 
of  its  application  in  that  stage.  Every  step  for- 
ward is  an  increase  in  the  range  of  its  applica- 
tion. In  the  industrial  arts,  in  the  rules  of 
health,  the  methods  of  healing,  the  preparation 
of  food,  in  morals  and  politics,  every  advance  is 
an  application  of  past  experience  to  new  circum- 
stances, in  accordance  with  an  observed  order  of 
Nature.  Philosophy  consists  in  the  conscious 
recognition  of  this  method,  and  in  the  systematic 
use  of  it  for  the  complete  guidance  of  life.  Aber- 
ration from  it  is  the  death  of  the  rational  soul ; 
not,  says  Hierokles,  that  it  ceases  thereby  to 
exist,  but  that  it  falls  away  from  harmony  with 
divine  Nature  and  with  reason.  This  fatal  fall- 
ing away  brings  about  endless  waste  and  perver- 
sion of  strenuous  effort ;  a  hoping  for  things  of 
which  there  is  no  hope,  an  ignorance  of  what 
may  be ;  a  perpetual  striving  to  clamber  up  the 
back  stairs  of  a  universe  that  has  no  back  stairs. 
The  Neoplatonists  w.ere  not  wholly  spotless  in 
this  regard.  They  had  learned  evil  things  of  the 
Egyptians:  magic,  astrology,  converse  with  spir- 
its, theurgy,  and  the  endeavor  by  trances  and 
ecstasies  to  arrive  at  feelings  and  ideas  which  are 
alien  to  the  healthy  and  wakeful  mind.  And  so 
the  uniformity  of  Nature  gives  our  commentator 
some  little  trouble,  and  requires  to  be  interpreted. 

"  Know  so  far  as  is  permitted  thee  (y  0e>i?  eirri)," 
says  the  verses.  "  For  we  ought  not  to  yield  to 
unreasoning  prejudice,  and  accommodate  the  order 
and  dignity  .of  things  to  our  fancies ;  but  to  keep 
within  the  bounds  of  truth,  and  know  all  tilings 
as  it  is  permitted,  namely,  as  the  Demiurgic  law 
has  assigned  to  every  one  its  place." 

So   the   commentator,   reading   into   the  verses 


TS 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


more  than  the  writer  put  there,  not  without  edi- 
fication. We,  then,  on  our  part,  may  read  into 
them  this — that  it  is  not  "permitted"  to  regard 
the  uniformity  of  Nature  as  a  dogma  known  with 
certainty,  or  exactness,  or  universality ;  but  only 
within  the  range  of  human  conduct,  as  a  practi- 
cal rule  for  the  guidance  of  the  same,  and  as  the 
only  source  of  beliefs  that  will  not  lead  astray. 
For  to  affirm  any  general  proposition  of  this  kind 
to  be  certainly,  or  exactly,  or  universally  true,  is 
to  make  a  mistake  about  the  nature  and  limits 
of  human  knowledge.  But  at  present  it  is  a 
venial  mistake,  because  the  doctrine  of  the  na- 
ture of  human  knowledge,  Erkenniniss-Theorie, 
Ken-lore,  is  only  now  being  thoroughly  worked 
out,  so  that  our  children  will  know  a  great  deal 
more  about  it  than  we  do,  and  have  what  they 
know  much  better  and  more  simply  expressed. 
It  is  almost  infinitely  more  important  to  keep  in 
view  that  the  uniformity  of  Nature  is  practically 
certain,  practically  exact,  practically  universal, 
and  to  make  this  conception  the  guide  of  our 
lives,  tiian  to  remember  that  tins  certainty,  exact- 
ness, and  universality,  are  only  known  practically, 
not  in  a  theoretical  or  absolute  way. 

How  far  away  is  the  doctrine  of  uniformity 
from  fatalism  !  It  begins  directly  to  remind  us  that 
men  suffer  from  preventable  evils,  that  the  people 
perisheth  for  lack  of  knowledge.  "  Miserable  are 
they,  because  they  see  not  and  hear  not  the  good 
that  is  very  nigh  them ;  and  the  way  of  escape 
from  evil,  few  there  be  that  understand  it."  The 
practical  lesson  is  not  that  of  the  pessimist,  that 
we  should  give  up  the  contest,  recognize  that  life 
is  an  evil,  and  get  out  of  it  as  best  we  may  ;  but, 
on  the  contrary,  that,  having  found  anything 
wrong,  we  should  set  to  work  to  mend  it:  for  the 
woes  of  men  are  the  work  of  their  own  hands. 

"But  be  thou  of  trood  cheer,  for  they  are  of 
gods'  kindred  whom  holy  Nature  leadeth  onward, 
and  in  due  order  showeth  them  all  things." 

The  expression  (UpaTrpcHptpovrra  ....  St'iKwcnv 
tKairra)  belongs  to  the  right  of  initiation  into  the 
mysteries.  Nature  is  represented  as  the  hiero- 
phant,  the  guiding  priest  by  whom  the  faithful 
were  initiated  into  the  divine  secrets  one  by  one. 
The  history  of  mankind  is  conceived  as  such  a 
mystic  progress  under  the  guidance  of  divine  Na- 
ture. It  has  been  sometimes  said  that  the  ancient 
world  was  entirely  devoid  of  the  conception  of 
progress.  But  like  most  sweeping  antitheses  be- 
tween ancient  and  modern,  East  and  West,  and 
the  like,  when  we  come  to  look  a  little  closely 
into  this  assertion  it  becomes  difficult  to  believe 


that  any  definite  meaning  can  ever  have  been  as- 
signed to  it.  Certainly  in  the  matter  of  physical 
science  there  is  no  case  of  firmer  faith  in  progress 
than  that  of  Hipparchus,  who  having  made  the 
great  step  of  determining  the  solar  and  lunar  mo- 
tions, and  having  failed  to  extend  the  same  meth- 
ods to  the  planets,  stored  up  observations  in  the 
sure  and  certain  hope  that  a  more  fortunate  suc- 
cessor would  accomplish  that  work ;  which  in- 
deed was  done  by  Ptolemy.  And  it  is  very  im- 
portant to  notice  that  the  exact  sciences  were  re- 
garded as  the  standard  to  which  the  others  should 
endeavor  to  attain,  as  appears  by  the  commentary 
on  a  subsequent  passage  in  these  very  verses. 
On  the  phrase  "  using  judgment  both  in  cleansing 
and  in  setting  free  thy  soul,"  Hierokles  explains 
that  the  cleansing  or  lustration  of  the  rational  soul 
means  the  mathematical  sciences,  and  that  the 
upward-leading  liberation  (avaywybs  Xvais),  the 
freedom  that  is  progress,  is  scientific  inquiry, 
or  a  scientific  view  of  things  (SiaXeKTiKi)  rwv  uvtccv 
iiroiTTeia),  the  clear  and  exact  vision  of  one  who 
has  attained  the  highest  grade  of  initiation.  Ac- 
cordingly, the  medical  sciences  never  lost  the  tra- 
dition of  progress  by  continuous  observation,  im- 
pressed on  them  by  Hippocrates  ;  and  in  the 
Alexandrian  Museum  were  training  that  galaxy 
of  famous  physicians  and  naturalists  which  kept 
the  school  illustrious  until  the  claims  of  culture 
were  restored  by  the  Arab  conquest.  Nor  is  it 
possible  to  deny  the  conception  and  practice  of 
political  progress  to  the  great  jurists  of  Rome, 
any  more  than  that  of  ethical  progress  to  the 
Stoic  moralists.  To  the  best  minds,  with  what- 
ever subject  occupied,  there  was  present  this  con- 
ception of  divine  Nature  patiently  educating  the 
human  race,  ready  to  bring  out  of  her  store-house 
good  things  without  number  in  the  proper  time. 

Nor  was  this  hope  of  continued  progress  alto- 
gether a  vain  one,  if  we  will  only  look  in  the  right 
place  for  the  fulfillment  of  it.  Greek  polity  and 
culture  had  been  planted  in  the  East  by  Alexan- 
der's conquests  from  the  Nile  to  the  Indus,  there 
to  suck  up  and  gather  together  the  wisdom  of 
centuries  and  of  continents.  When  the  light  and 
the  right  were  driven  out  of  Europe  by  the  Church, 
they  found  in  the  far  East  a  home  with  the  Ommi- 
yade  and  Abbasside  caliphs,  whose  reign  gave 
peace  and  breathing-time  to  the  old  and  young  civ- 
ilization that  was  ready  to  grow.  Across  the  north 
of  Africa  came  again  the  progressive  culture  of 
Greece  and  Rome,  enriched  with  precious  jewels 
of  old-world  lore;  it  took  firm  ground  in  Spain, 
and  the  light  and  the  right  were  flashed  back  into 
Europe  from  the  blades  of  Saracen  swords.    From 


COSMIC  EMOTION. 


79 


Bagdad  to  Cordova,  in  the  great  days  of  the 
caliphate,  the  best  minds  had  faith  in  human 
progress  to  be  made  by  observation  of  the  order 
of  Nature.  Here,  again,  the  true  culture  was 
overridden  and  destroyed  by  the  development  of 
the  Mohammedan  religion ;  but  not  until  the  sa- 
cred torch  had  been  safely  handed  on  to  the  new 
nations  of  convalescent  Europe. 

If  the  singer  of  the  "  Golden  Verses  "  could 
have  contemplated  on  these  lines  the  history  of 
the  two  thousand  years  that  were  to  succeed  him, 
he  would  have  seen  an  uninterrupted  succession 
of  naturalists  and  physicians,  philosophers  and 
statesmen,  all  steadily  reaching  forward  to  the 
good  things  that  were  before,  never  losing  hold 
of  what  had  already  been  attained.  And  we, 
looking  back,  may  see  that  through  overwhelm- 
ing difficulties,  and  dangers,  and  diseases,  holy 
Nature  has  indeed  been  leading  onward  the  kin- 
dred of  the  gods,  slowly  but  surely  unfolding  to 
them  the  roll  of  the  heavenly  mysteries. 

Of  course,  if  we  restrict  our  view  to  Europe 
itself,  we  meet  with  a  far  more  complex  and  dif- 
ficult problem — a  problem  of  pathology  as  op- 
posed to  one  of  healthy  growth.  We  have  to  ex- 
plain the  apparent  anomaly  of  two  epochs  of  com- 
parative sanity  and  civilization  separated  by  the 
disease  and  delirium  of  the  Catholic  episode. 

Just  as  the  traveler,  who  has  been  worn  to 
the  bone  by  years  of  weary  striving  among  men 
of  another  skin,  suddenly  gazes  with  doubting 
eyes  upon  the  white  face  of  a  brother,  so,  if  we 
travel  backward  in  thought  over  the  darker  ages 
of  the  history  of  Europe,  we  at  length  reach  back 
with  such  bounding  of  heart  to  men  who  had  like 
hopes  with  ourselves ;  and  shake  hands  across 
that  vast  with  the  singers  of  the  "  Golden  Verses," 
our  own  true  spiritual  ancestors. 

Well  may  Greece  sing  to  the  earth  her  mother, 
in  the  "Litany  of  Nations: " 

"  I  am  she  that  made  thee  lovely  with  my  beauty 

From  north  to  south : 
Mine,  the  fairest  lips,  took  first  the  fire  of  duty 

From  thine  own  mouth. 
Mine,  the  fairest  eyes,  sought  first  thy  laws  and  knew 
them 

Truths  undefiled; 
Mine,  the  fairest  hands,  took  freedom  first  into  them, 

A  weanling  child."  ' 

Let  us  now  put  together  the  view  of  Nature 
and  of  lire  which  is  presented  to  us  by  the  "  Gol- 
den Verses,"  with  a  view  to  considering  its  fitness 
for  cosmic  emotion.  We  are  taught  therein  to 
look  upon  Nature  as  a  divine  order  or  cosmos, 

1  Swinburne,  "  Songs  before  Sunrise." 


acting  uniformly  in  all  of  its  diverse  parts ;  which 
order,  by  means  of  its  uniformity,  is  continually 
educating  us  and  teaching  us  to  act  rightly.  The 
ideal  character,  that  which  is  best  fitted  to  re- 
ceive the  teaching  of  Nature,  is  one  which  has 
conscience  for  its  motive  power  and  reason  for 
its  guide.  The  main  point  to  be  observed  is  that 
the  two  kinds  of  cosmic  emotion  run  together 
and  become  one.  The  macrocosm  is  viewed  only 
in  relation  to  human  action:  Nature  is  presented 
to  the  emotions  as  the  guide  and  teacher  of  hu- 
manity. And  the  microcosm  is  viewed  only  as 
tending  to  complete  correspondence  with  the  ex- 
ternal: human  conduct  is  subject  for  reverence 
only  in  so  far  as  it  is  consonant  to  the  demiurgic 
law,  in  harmony  with  the  teaching  of  divine 
Nature.  This  union  of  the  two  sides  of  cosmic 
emotion  belongs  to  the  essence  of  the  philosophic 
life,  as  the  corresponding  intellectual  conception 
is  of  the  essence  of  the  scientific  view  of  things. 

There  were  other  parts  of  the  Pythagorean 
conception  of  Nature  and  man  which  we  cannot 
at  present  so  easily  accept.  And  even  so  much 
as  is  here  suggested  we  cannot  hold  as  the  Py- 
thagoreans held  it,  because  there  are  the  thoughts 
and  the  deeds  of  two  thousand  years  between. 
These  ideas  fall  in  very  well  with  the  furniture 
of  our  minds ;  but  a  great  deal  of  the  furniture  is 
new  since  their  time,  and  changes  their  place  and 
importance.  Of  the  detailed  machinery  of  the 
Pythagorean  creed  these  verses  say  nothing.  Of 
the  sacred  fire,  the  hearth  of  the  universe,  with 
sun  and  planets  and  the  earth's  double  antich- 
thon  revolving  round  it,  the  whole  inclosed  in  a 
crystal  globe  with  nothing  outside — of  the  "  Great 
Age  "  of  the  world,  after  which  everything  occurs 
over  again  in  exactly  the  same  order — of  ,the 
mystic  numbers,  and  so  forth,  we  find  no  men- 
tion in  these  verses,  and  they  do  not  lose  much 
by  it,  though  on  that  account  Zeller  calls  them 
"  colorless."  But  a  remembrance  of  these  doc- 
trines will  help  us  to  appreciate  the  change  that 
has  come  over  our  view  of  the  world. 

First,  then,  the  cosmos  that  we  have  to  do 
with  is  no  longer  a  definite  whole  including  ab- 
solutely all  existence.  The  old  cosmos  had  a 
boundary  in  space,  a  finite  extent  in  time ;  for 
the  great  age  might  be  regarded  as  a  circle,  on 
which  you  return  to  the  same  point  after  going 
once  round.  Beyond  the  crystal  sphere  of  the 
fixed  stars  was  nothing;  outside  that  circle  of 
time  no  history.  But  now  the  real  universe  ex- 
tends at  least  far  beyond  the  cosmos,  the  order 
that  we  actually  know  of.  The  sum  total  of  our 
experience  and  of  the  inferences  that  can  fairly 


80 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


be  drawn  from  it  is  only,  after  all,  a  part  of  some- 
thing larger.  So  sings  one  whom  great  poets 
revere  as  a  poet,  but  to  whom  writers  of  excel- 
lent prose,  and  even  of  leading  articles,  refuse 
the  name : 

"  I  open  my  scuttle  at  night  and  see  the  far-sprin- 
kled systems, 

"  And  all  I  see,  multiplied  as  high  as  I  can  cipher, 
edge  but  the  rim  of  the  farther  systems. 

"  Wider  and  wider  they  spread,  expanding,  always 
expanding, 

'•  Outward  and  outward,  and  forever  outward. 

"  There  is  no  stoppage,  and  never  can  be  stoppage ; 

"  If  I,  you,  and  the  worlds,  and  all  beneath  or  upon 
their  surfaces,  were  this  moment  reduced  back  to  a 
pallid  float,  it  would  not  avail  in  the  long-run; 

"  We  should  surely  bring  up  again  where  we  now 
stand, 

"  And  as  surely  go  as  much  farther— and  then 
farther  and  farther. 

"  A  few  quadrillions  of  eras,  a  few  octillions  of 
cubic  leagues,  do  not  hazard  the  span,  or  make  it  im- 
patient; 

"  They  are  but  parts— anything  is  but  a  part. 

"  See  ever  so  far,  there  is  limitless  space  outside 
of  that ; 

"  Count  ever  so  much,  there  is  limitless  time 
around  that."  : 

"Whatever  conception,  then,  we  can  form  of  the 
external  cosmos  must  be  regarded  as  only  provi- 
sional and  not  final,  as  waiting  revision  when  we 
shall  have  pushed  the  bounds  of  our  knowledge 
farther  away  in  time  and  space.  It  must  always, 
therefore,  have  a  character  of  incompleteness 
about  it,  a  want,  a  stretching  out  for  something 
better  to  come,  the  expectation  of  a  further  les- 
son from  the  universal  teacher,  Experience.  And 
this  not  only  by  way  of  extension  of  space  and 
time,  but  by  increase  of  our  knowledge  even 
about  this  part  that  we  know  of.  Our  concep- 
tion of  the  universe  is  for  us,  and  not  for  our 
children,  any  more  than  it  was  for  our  fathers. 

But,  again,  this  incompleteness  does  not  be- 
long to  our  conception  of  the  external  cosmos 
alone,  but  to  that  of  the  internal  cosmos  also. 
Human  nature  is  fluent,  it  is  constantly,  though 
slowly,  changing,  and  the  universe  of  human  ac- 
tion is  changing  also.  Whatever  general  concep- 
tion we  may  form  of  good  actions  and  bad  ones, 
we  must  regard  it  as  quite  valid  only  for  our- 
selves ;  the  next  generation  will  have  a  slightly 
modified  form  of  it,  but  not  the  same  thing.  The 
Kantian  universality  is  no  longer  possible.  No 
maxim  can  be  valid  at  all  times  and  places  for 
all  rational  beings  ;  a  maxim  valid  for  us  can 
only  be  valid  for  such  portions  of  the  human  race 
as  are  practically  identical  with  ourselves. 
1  Whitman,  "Leaves  of  Grass." 


Here,  then,  we  have  two  limitations  to  keep 
in  mind  when  we  form  our  cosmic  conceptions. 
On  both  sides  they  are  provisional :  instead  of 
picturing  to  ourselves  a  universe,  we  represent 
only  a  changing  part ;  instead  of  contemplating 
an  eternal  order,  an  absolute  right,  we  find  only 
a  changing  property  of  a  shifting  organism. 

Are  we,  then,  to  be  disappointed  ?  I  think 
not ;  for,  if  we  consider  these  limitations  a  little 
more  closely,  we  shall  perceive  an  advantage  in 
each  of  them. 

First,  of  the  external  cosmos.  Our  concep- 
tion is  limited  to  a  part  of  things.  But  to  what 
part  ?  Why,  precisely  to  the  part  that  concerns 
us.  The  universe  we  have  to  consider  is  the 
whole  of  that  knowledge  which  can  rightly  in- 
fluence human  action.  For,  wherever  there  is 
a  question  of  guiding  human  action,  there  is  a 
possibility  of  profiting  by  experience  on  the  as- 
sumption that  Nature  is  uniform ;  that  is,  there 
is  room  for  the  application  of  science.  All 
practical  questions,  therefore,  are  within  the 
domain  of  science.  And  we  may  show  converse- 
ly that  all  questions  in  the  domain  of  science, 
all  questions,  that  is,  which  have  a  real  intelligi- 
ble meaning,  and  which  may  be  answered  either 
now  or  at  some  future  time  by  inferences  founded 
on  the  uniformity  of  Nature,  are  practical  ques- 
tions in  a  very  real  and  important  sense.  For 
the  interrogation  of  Nature,  without  and  within 
him,  is  a  most  momentous  part  of  the  work  of 
man  on  this  earth,  seeing  how  all  his  progress 
has  depended  upon  conscious  or  unconscious  la- 
bor at  this  task.  And,  although  the  end  of  all 
knowledge  is  action,  and  it  is  only  for  the  sake 
of  action  that  knowledge  is  sought  by  the  hu- 
man race,  yet,  in  order  that  it  may  be  gained  in 
sufficient  breadth  and  depth,  it  is  necessary  that 
the  individual  should  seek  knowledge  for  its  own 
sake.  The  seeking  of  knowledge  for  its  own 
sake  is  a  practical  pursuit  of  incalculable  value 
to  humanity.  The  pretensions  of  those  who 
would  presume  to  clothe  genius  in  a  strait-waist- 
coat, who  would  forbid  it  to  attempt  this  task 
because  Descartes  failed  in  it,  and  that  one  be- 
cause Comte  knew  nothing  about  it,  would  be 
fatally  mischievous  if  they  could  be  seriously 
considered  by  those  whom  they  might  affect. 
No  good  work  in  science  has  ever  been  done  un- 
der such  conditions  ;  and  no  good  worker  can 
fail  to  see  the  utter  futility  and  short-sightedness 
of  those  who  advocate  them.  For  there  is  no 
field  of  inquiry,  however  apparently  insignificant, 
that  does  not  teach  the  worker  in  it  to  distrust 
his  own  powers  of  prevision  as  to  what  he  is 


COSMIC  EMOTION. 


81 


likely  to  find  ;  to  expect  the  unexpected  ;  to  be 
suspicious  of  his  own  accuracy  if  everything 
conies  out  quite  as  it  "  ought  to ;  "  but  not  to 
hazard  the  shadow  of  a  guess  about  the  degree 
of  "  utility  "  that  may  result  from  his  investiga- 
tions. Man's  creative  energy  may  be  checked 
and  hindered,  or  perverted  from  the  truth  ;  but  it 
is  not  to  be  regulated  by  a  pedantic  schoolmaster 
who  thought  he  could  whip  the  centuries  with 
his  birch-broom. 

The  cosmos,  theD,  which  science  now  pre- 
sents to  our  minds,  is  only  a  part  of  something 
larger  which  includes  it.  But  at  the  same  time 
it  is  the  whole  of  what  concerns  us,  and  no 
more  than  what  concerns  us.  Wherever  human 
knowledge  establishes  itself,  that  point  becomes 
thenceforward  a  centre  of  practical  human  inter- 
est. It,  and  whatever  valid  inference  can  con- 
nect with  it,  is  the  business  of  all  mankind. 

So  also,  if  we  consider  the  limitation  imposed 
on  our  idea  of  the  internal  cosmos  by  the  chang- 
ing character  of  human  nature,  we  shall  find 
that  we  have  gained  more  than  we  have  lost  by 
it.  It  is  true  that  we  can  no  longer  think  of 
conscience  and  reason  as  testifying  to  us  of 
things  eternal  and  immutable.  Human  nature  is 
no  longer  there,  a  definite  thing  from  age  to  age, 
persisting  unaltered  through  the  vicissitudes  of 
cities  and  peoples.  Very  nearly  constant  it  is, 
practically  constant  for  so  many  centuries  ;  but 
not  constant  through  that  range  of  time  which 
it  practically  concerns  us  to  know  about  and  to 
ponder.  But,  on  the  other  side,  what  a  flood  of 
fight  is  let  in  by  this  very  fact,  not  only  on  hu- 
man nature,  but  on  the  whole  world  !  It  is  im- 
possible to  exaggerate  the  effect  of  the  doctrine 
of  evolution  on  our  conception  of  man  and  of 
Nature.  Suppose  all  moving  things  to  be  sud- 
denly stopped  at  some  instant,  and  that  we 
could  be  brought  fresh,  without  any  previous 
knowledge,  to  look  at  this  petrified  scene.  The 
spectacle  would  be  intensely  absurd.  Crowds  of 
people  would  be  senselessly  standing  on  one  leg 
in  the  street,  looking  at  one  another's  backs  ; 
others  would  be  wasting  their  time  by  sitting  in 
a  train  in  a  place  difficult  to  get  at,  nearly  all 
with  their  mouths  open  and  their  bodies  in  some 
contorted,  unrestful  posture.  Clocks  would 
stand  with  their  pendulums  on  one  side.  Every 
thing  would  be  disorderly,  conflicting,  in  its 
wrong  place.  But  once  remember  that  the 
world  is  in  motion,  is  going  somewhere,  and 
everything  will  be  accounted  for  and  found  just 
as  it  should  be.  Just  so  great  a  change  of  view, 
just  so  complete  an  explanation,  is  given  to  us 

42 


when  we  recognize  that  the  nature  of  man  and 
beast  and  of  all  the  world  is  changing,  is  going 
somewhere.  The  silly  maladaptations  in  organic 
Nature  are  seen  to  be  steps  toward  the  improve- 
ment or  discarding  of  imperfect  organs.  The 
baneful  strife  which  lurketh  inborn  in  us,  and 
cfoeth  on  the  way  with  us  to  hurt  us,  is  found  to  be 
the  relic  of  a  time  of  savage  or  even  lower  con- 
dition. 

It  is  probable  that  the  doctrine  of  evolution 
fills  a  somewhat  larger  space  in  our  attention 
than  belongs  to  its  ultimate  influence.  In  the 
next  century,  perhaps,  men  will  not  think  so 
much  about  it ;  they  will  be  paying  a  new  atten- 
tion to  some  new  thing.  But  it  will  have  seized 
upon  their  minds,  and  will  dominate  all  their 
thoughts  to  an  extent  that  we  cannot  as  yet  con- 
ceive. When  the  sun  is  rising  we  pay  special 
attention  to  him  and  admire  his  glories  ;  but 
when  he  is  well  risen  we  forget  him,  because  we 
are  busy  walking  about  in  his  light. 

Meanwhile,  the  doctrine  of  evolution  may  be 
made  to  compensate  us  for  the  loss  of  the  immu- 
table and  eternal  verities  by  supplying  us  with  a 
general  conception  of  a  good  action,  iu  a  wider 
sense  than  the  ethical  one. 

If  I  have  evolved  myself  out  of  something 
like  an  amphioxus,  it  is  clear  to  me  that  I  have 
become  better  by  the  change — I  have  risen  in  the 
organic  scale ;  I  have  become  more  organic.  Of 
all  the  changes  that  I  have  undergone,  the  great- 
er part  must  have  been  changes  in  the  organic 
direction ;  some  in  the  opposite  direction,  some 
perhaps  neutral.  But  if  I  could  only  find  out 
which,  I  should  say  that  those  changes  which 
have  tended  in  the  direction  of  greater  organiza- 
tion were  good,  and  those  which  tended  in  the 
opposite  direction  bad.  Here  there  is  no  room 
for  proof;  the  words  "good"  and  "bad"  be- 
long to  the  practical  reason,  and  if  they  are  de- 
fined it  is  by  pure  choice.  I  choose  that  defini- 
tion of  them  which  must,  on  the  whole,  cause 
those  people  who  act  upon  it  to  be  selected  for 
survival.  The  good  action,  then,  is  a  mode  of 
action  which  distinguishes  organic  from  inorganic 
things,  and  which  makes  an  organic  thing  more 
organic,  or  raises  it  in  the  scale.  I  shall  try 
presently  to  determine  more  precisely  what  is 
the  nature  of  this  action  ;  we  must  now  merely 
remember  that  my  actions  are  to  be  regarded  as 
good  or  bad  according  as  they  tend  to  improve 
me  as  an  organism — to  make  me  move  farther 
away  from  those  intermediate  forms  through 
which  my  race  has  passed,  or  to  make  me  re- 
trace these  upward  steps  and  go  down  again. 


82 


TEE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


Here  we  have  our  general  principle  for  the  inter- 
nal cosmos,  the  world  of  our  own  actions. 

What,  now,  is  our  principle  for  the  external 
cosmos  ?  We  consider  here  again  not  a  statical 
thing,  but  a  vast  series  of  events.  We  want  to 
contemplate,  not  the  nature  of  the  external  uni- 
verse as  it  now  is,  but  the  history  of  its  changes ; 
not  a  perpetual  cycle  of  similar  events,  with 
nothing  new  under  the  sun,  but  a  drama  whose 
beginning  is  different  from  its  middle,  and  the 
middle  from  the  end.  For  practical  purposes, 
which  are  what  concern  us,  the  solar  system  is  a 
quite  sufficient  cosmos.  We  have  certainly  a 
history  of  it  furnished  to  us  by  the  nebular  hy- 
pothesis ;  and  the  truth  of  this  hypothesis  is  a 
matter  of  practical  interest,  because  the  failure 
of  the  inferences  on  which  it  is  founded  would 
modify  our  actions  very  considerably.  Still  the 
great  use  of  it  is  to  show  that  the  life  upon  the 
earth  must  have  been  evolved  from  inorganic 
matter  ;  for  the  evolution  of  life  is  that  part  of 
the  history  of  the  cosmos  which  directly  concerns 
us.  Now  here  we  have  the  enormous  series  of 
events  which  bridges  over  the  gulf  between  the 
smallest  of  colloid  matter  and  the  human  organ- 
ism ;  this  is  our  external  cosmos.  Must  we  leave 
it  as  a  series  of  events  ?  or  can  we  find  a  general 
principle  by  which  the  series  shall  be  represented 
as  a  single  event  constantly  going  on  ?  Clearly 
we  can,  for  the  single  event  is  a  mode  of  ac- 
tion which  distinguishes  organic  from  inorganic 
things,  and  makes  organic  things  more  organic. 
We  may  regard  this  mode  of  action  as  the  gen- 
erating principle  which  has  produced  all  the  life 
upon  the  earth. 

We  arrive  thus  at  a  common  principle,  which 
at  once  distinguishes  good  actions  from  bad  in 
the  internal  world,  and  which  has  created  the 
external  world  so  far  as  it  is  living.  This  prin- 
ciple is,  then,  a  fit  object  for  cosmic  emotion  if 
we  can  only  get  rid  of  the  vagueness  of  its  defi- 
nition. And  it  has  this  great  advantage,  that  it 
does  not  need  to  be  personified  for  poetical  pur- 
poses. For  we  may  regard  the  result  of  this  mode 
of  action,  extended  over  a  great  length  of  time, 
as  in  some  way  an  embodiment  of  the  action  it- 
self. In  this  way  the  human  race  embodies  in 
itself  all  the  ages  of  organic  action  that  have  gone 
to  its  evolution.  The  nature  of  organic  action, 
then,  is  to  personify  itself,  and  it  has  personified 
itself  most  in  the  human  race. 

But  before  we  go  further  two  things  must  be 
remarked  :  First,  the  very  great  influence  of  life 
in  modifying  the  surface  of  the  earth,  so  great  as 
in  many  cases  to  be  comparable  to  the  effects  of 


far  ruder  changes.  Thus,  we  have  rocks  com- 
posed entirely  of  organic  remains,  and  climate 
changed  by  the  presence  or  absence  of  forests. 
Secondly,  although  we  have  restricted  our  cosmos 
to  the  earth  in  space,  and  to  the  history  of  life 
upon  it  in  time,  there  is  no  necessity  to  maintain 
the  restriction.  For  we  must  suppose  that  or- 
ganic action  will  always  take  place  when  the  ele- 
ments which  are  capable  of  it  are  present  under 
the  requisite  physical  conditions  of  temperature, 
light,  and  environment.  It  is,  therefore,  in  the 
last  degree  improbable  that  it  is  confined  to  our 
own  planet. 

In  this  principle,  therefore,  we  must  recognize 
the  mother  of  life,  and  especially  of  human  life, 
powerful  enough  to  subdue  the  elements,  and  yet 
always  working  gently  against  them  ;  biding  her 
time  in  the  whole  expanse  of  heaven,  to  make 
the  highest  cosmos  out  of  inorganic  chaos  ;  the 
actor,  not  of  all  the  actions  of  living  things,  but 
only  of  the  good  actions  ;  for  a  bad  action  is  one 
by  which  the  organism  tends  to  become  less  or- 
ganic, and  acts  for  the  time  as  if  inorganic. 

To  this  mother  of  life,  personifying  herself  in 
the  good  works  of  humanity,  it  seems  to  me  that 
we  may  fitly  address  a  splendid  hymn  of  Mr. 
Swinburne's,  whose  meaning  if  I  mar  or  mistake 
by  such  application,  let  the  innocency  of  my  in- 
tent plead  for  pardon  with  one  into  whose  work 
it  is  impossible  to  read  more  or  more  fruitful 
meaning  than  he  meant  in  the  writing  of  it : 

"Mother  of  man's  time-traveling-  generations, 

Breath  of  his  nostrils,  heart-blood  of  his  heart, 
God  above  all  gods  worshiped  of  all  nations, 
Light  above  light,  law  beyond  law,  thou  art. 

"  Thy  fare  is  as  a  sword  smiting  in  sunder 

Shadows,  and  chains,  and  dreams,  and  iron  things ; 
The  sea  is  dumb  before  thy  face,  the  thunder 
Silent,  the  skies  are  narrower  than  thy  wings. 

"All  old  gray  histories  hiding  thy  clear  features, 
O  secret  spirit  and  sovereign,  all  men's  tales, 
Creeds  woven  of  men  thy  children  and  thy  creatures, 
They  have  woven  for  vestures  of  thee  and  for  veils. 

"Thine  hands,  without  election  or  exemption, 

Feed  all  men  fainting  from  false  peace  or  strife, 
O  thou,  the  resurrection  and  redemption, 

The  godhead  and  the  manhood  and  the  life."  1 

Still  our  conception  is  very  vague.  We  have 
only  said,  "  Good  action  has  created  the  life  of  the 
world,  and  in  so  doing  has  personified  itself  in 
humanity ;  so  we  call  it  the  mother  of  life  and  of 
man."  And  we  have  defined  good  action  to  be 
that  which  makes   an  organism   more   organic. 

J  "  Songs  before  Sunrise." 


COSMIC  EMOTION. 


83 


We  want,  therefore,  to  know  something  more 
definite  about  the  kind  of  action  which  makes 
an  organism  more  organic. 

This  we  can  find,  and  of  a  nature  suitable 
for  cosmic  emotion,  by  paying  attention  to  the 
difference  between  molar  and  molecular  move- 
ment. We  know  that  the  particles,  even  of 
bodies  which  appear  to  be  at  rest,  are  really  in  a 
state  of  very  rapid  agitation,  called  molecular 
motion,  and  that  heat  and  nerve-discharge  are 
cases  of  such  motion.  But  molar  motion  is  the 
movement  in  one  piece  of  masses  large  enough 
to  be  seen. 

Now,  the  peculiarity  of  living  matter  is,  that 
it  is  capable  of  combining  together  molecular 
motions,  which  are  invisible,  into  molar  motions, 
which  can  be  seen.  It,  therefore,  appears  to 
have  the  property  of  moving  spontaneously, 
without  help  from  anything  else.  So  it  can  for 
a  little  while ;  but  it  is  then  obliged  to  take 
molecular  motion  from  the  surrounding  things 
if  it  is  to  go  on  moving.  So  that  there  is  no 
real  spontaneity  in  the  case.  But  still  its  changes 
of  shape,  due  to  aggregation  of  molecular  mo- 
tion, may  fairly  be  called  action  from  within,  be- 
cause the  energy  of  the  motion  is  supplied  by 
the  substance  itself,  and  not  by  any  external 
thing.  If  we  suppose  the  same  thing  to  be  true 
for  a  complex  organism  that  is  true  for  a  small 
speck  of  living  matter — that  those  changes  in  it 
which  are  directly  initiated  by  the  living  part  of 
the  organism  are  the  ones  which  distinguish  it 
from  inorganic  things,  and  tend  to  make  it  more 
organic — then  we  shall  have  here  the  nearer 
definition  of  organic  action.  It  is  probable  that 
the  definition,  as  I  have  stated  it,  is  rather  too 
precise — that  the  nature  of  the  action,  in  fact, 
varies  with  circumstances  in  the  complex  organ- 
ism, but  it  is  always  nearly  as  stated. 

Let  us  consider  what  this  means  from  the  in- 
ternal point  of  view.  When  I  act  from  within, 
or  in  an  organic  manner,  what  seems  to  me  to 
happen  ?  I  must  appear  to  be  perfectly  free,  for, 
if  I  did  not,  I  must  be  made  to  act  by  something 
outside  of  me.  "  We  think  ourselves  free,"  says 
Spinoza,  "  being  conscious  of  our  actions,  and 
not  of  the  causes  which  determine  them."  But 
we  have  seen  reason  to  believe  that,  although 
there  is  no  physical  spontaneity,  yet  the  energy 
for  such  an  action  is  taken  out  of  myself — i.  e., 
out  of  the  living  matter  in  my  body.  Ab,  there- 
fore, the  immediate  origin  of  my  action  is  in  my- 
self, I  really  am  free  in  the  only  useful  sense  of 
the  word.  "  Freedom  is  such  a  property  of  the 
will,"  says  Kant,  "as  enables  living  agents  to 


originate  events  independently  of  foreign  deter- 
mining causes." 

The  character  of  an  organic  action,  then,  is 
freedom — that  is  to  say,  action  from  within.  The 
action  which  has  its  immediate  antecedents  with- 
in the  organism  has  a  tendency,  in  so  far  as  it 
alters  the  organism,  to  make  it  more  organic,  or 
to  raise  it  in  the  scale.  The  action  which  is  de- 
termined by  foreign  causes  is  one  in  regard  to 
which  the  organism  acts  as  if  inorganic,  and,  in 
so  far  as  the  action  tends  to  alter  it,  it  tends  also 
to  lower  it  in  the  scale. 

It  is  important  to  remember  that  only  a  part 
of  the  body  of  a  complex  organism  is  actually 
living  matter.  This  living  matter  carries  about 
a  quantity  of  formed  or  dead  stuff;  as  Epictetus 
says,  tyvxapiov  el  ^acrra^ov  venpov — "  a  little  soul 
for  a  little  bears  up  this  corpse  which  is  man."  ' 
Only  actions  originating  in  the  living  part  of  the 
organism  are  to  be  regarded  as  actions  from 
within ;  the  dead  part  is,  for  our  purposes,  a  por- 
tion of  the  external  world.  And  so,  from  the 
internal  point  of  view,  there  are  rudiments  and 
survivals  in  the  mind  which  are  to  be  excluded 
from  that  me,  whose  free  action  tends  to  prog- 
ress ;  that  baneful  strife  which  lurketh  inborn 
in  us  is  the  foe  of  freedom — this  let  not  a  man 
stir  up,  but  avoid  and  flee. 

The  way  in  which  freedom,  or  action  from 
within,  has  effected  the  evolution  of  organisms, 
is  clearly  brought  out  by  the  theory  of  natural 
selection.  For  the  improvement  of  a  breed  de- 
pends upon  the  selection  of  sports— that  is  to 
say,  of  modifications  due  to  the  overflowing 
energy  of  the  organism,  which  happen  to  be  use- 
ful to  it  in  its  special  circumstances.  Modifica- 
tions may  take  place  by  direct  pressure  of  ex- 
ternal circumstances  ;  the  whole  organism,  or 
any  organ,  may  lose  in  size  or  strength  from 
failure  of  the  proper  food,  but  such  modifications 
are  in  the  downward,  not  in  the  upward,  direc- 
tion. Indirectly  external  circumstances  may,  of 
course,  produce  upward  changes ;  thus  the  drying 
up  of  axolotl  ponds  caused  the  survival  of  indi- 
viduals which  had  "  sported  "  in  the  direction  of 
lungs.  But  the  immediate  cause  of  change  in  the 
direction  of  higher  organization  is  always  the  in- 
ternal and  quasi-spontaneous  action  of  the  or- 
ganism. 

1  Swinburne,  "  Poems  and  Ballads."  I  am  aware  of 
the  difficulties  which  beset  Dr.  Beale's  theory  of  germinal 
matter,  as  they  are  stated  by  Mr.  G.  H.  Lewes  ;  but,  how- 
ever hard  it  may  be  to  decide  what  is  living  matter,  and 
what  is  formed  stuff,  the  distinction  appears  to  me  to  be 
a  real  one,  to  the  extent,  at  least,  of  the  use  here  made 
of  it. 


84 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


"  Freedom  we  call  it,  for  holier 

Name  of  the  soul"s  there  is  none ; 

Surelier  it  labors,  if  slowlier, 
Than  the  metres  of  star  or  of  sun  ; 

Slowlier  than  life  into  breath, 

Surelier  than  time  into  death, 
It  moves  till  its  labor  be  done."  • 

The  highest  of  organisms  is  the  social  organ- 
ism.    To  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer,  who  has  done  so 
much  for  the  whole  doctrine  of  evolution,  and  for 
all  that  is  connected  with  it,  we  owe  the  first 
clear  and  rational  statement  of  the  analogy  be- 
tween the  individual  and  the   social   organism, 
which,  indeed,  is  more  than  an  analogy,  being  in 
many  respects  a  true  identity  of  process,  and 
structure,  and  function.      Our  main  business  is 
with  one  property  which  the  social  organism  has 
in   common  with  the   individual — namely,  this, 
that  it  aggregates  molecular  motions  into  molar 
ones.    The  molecules  of  a  social  organism  are  the 
individual  men,  women,  and  children,  of  which  it 
is  composed.     By  means  of  it,  actions  which,  as 
individual,  are  insignificant,  are  massed  together 
into  the  important  movements  of  a  society.     Co- 
operation, or  band-work,  is  the  life  of  it.     Thus  it 
is  able  to  "  originate  events  independently  of  for- 
eign determining  causes,"  or  to  act  with  freedom. 
Freedom  in  a  society,  then,  is  a  very  different 
thing  from  anarchy.     It  is  the  organic  action  of 
the  society  as  such ;  the  union  of  its  elements  in 
a  common  work.      As  Mr.  Spencer  points  out, 
society  does  not  resemble  those  organisms  which 
are  so  highly  centralized  that  the  unity  of  the 
whole  is  the  important  thing,  and  every  part  must 
die  if  separated  from  the  rest,  but  rather  those 
which  will  bear  separation  and  reunion,  because, 
although  there  Is  a  certain  union  and  organiza- 
tion of  the  parts  in  regard  to  one  another,  yet  the 
far  more  important  fact  is  the  life  of  the  parts 
separately.     The  true  health  of  society  depends 
upon  the  communes,  the  villages  and  townships, 
infinitely  more  than  on  the  form  and  pageantry 
of  an  imperial  government.     If  in  them  there  is 
band-work,  union  for  a  common  effort,  converse 
in  the  working  out  of  a  common  thought,  then 
the  Republic  is,  and  needs  not  to  be  made  with 
hands,  though  Caesar  have  his  guns  in  every  cita- 
del.    None  the  less  it  will  be  part  of  the  business 
of  the  Republic,  as  she  grows  in  strength,  to  re- 
move him.     So  long  as  two  or  three  are  gathered 
together,  freedom  is  there  in  the  midst  of  them, 
and  it  is  not  until  society  is  utterly  divided  into 
its  elements  that  she  departs  : 
"  Courage  yet !  my  brother  or  my  sister ! 
Keep  on  1    Liberty  is  to  be  subserved,  whatever  occurs ; 

1  Swinburne,  "  Songs  before  Sunrise." 


That  is  nothing-,  that  is  quelled  by  one  or  two  failures,  or 

any  number  of  failures, 
Or  by  the  indifference  or  ingratitude  of  the  people,  or  by 

any  unfaithfulness, 
Or  the  show  of  the  tushes  of  power,  soldiers,  cannon,  penal 

statutes. 
Eevolt !  and  still  revolt !  revolt ! 
What  we  believe  in  waits  latent  forever  through  all  the 

continents,  and  all  the  islands  and  archipelagos  of  the 

sea; 
What  we  believe  in  invites  no  one,  promises  nothing,  sits 

in  calmness  and  light,  is  positive  and  composed,  knows 

no  discouragement, 
Waiting  patiently,  waiting  its  time. 

When  liberty  goes  out  of  a  place,  it  is  not  the  first  to  go, 

nor  the  second  or  third  to  go, 
It  waits  for  all  the  rest  to  go— it  is  the  last. 
When  there  are  no  more  memories  ofheroes  and  martyrs, 
And  when  all  life,  and  all  the  souls  of  men  and  women,  are 

discharged  from  any  part  of  the  earth, 
Then  only  shall  liberty,  or  the  idea  of  liberty,  be  discharged 

from  that  part  of  the  earth, 
And  the  infidel  come  into  full  possession."  > 

So  far  our  cosmic  conception  is  external. 
Starting  with  organic  action,  as  that  which  has 
effected  the  evolution  of  life,  and  all  the  works  of 
life,  we  have  found  it  to  have  the  character  of 
freedom,  or  action  from  within,  and  in  the  case 
of  the  social  organism  we  have  seen  that  freedom 
is  the  organic  action  of  society  as  such,  which  is 
what  we  call  the  Republic.  The  Republic  is  the 
visible  embodiment  and  personification  of  free- 
dom in  its  highest  external  type. 

But  the  Republic  is  itself  still  further  personi- 
fied, in  a  way  that  leads  us  back  with  new  light 
to  the  conception  of  the  internal  cosmos.  The 
practice  of  band-work,  or  comradeship,  the  or- 
ganic action  of  society,  has  so  moulded  the  nature 
of  man  as  to  create  in  it  two  specially  human 
faculties — the  conscience  and  the  intellect.  Con- 
science is  an  instinctive  desire  for  those  things 
which  conduce  to  the  welfare  of  society ;  intellect 
is  an  apparatus  for  connecting  sensation  and  ac- 
tion, by  means  of  a  symbolic  representation  of 
the  external  world,  framed  in  common,  and  for 
common  purposes,  by  the  social  intercourse  of 
men.  Conscience  and  reason  form  an  inner  core 
in  the  human  mind,  having  an  origin  and  a  nature 
distinct  from  the  merely  animal  passions  and  per- 
ceptions ;  they  constitute  the  soul  or  spirit  of 
man,  the  universal  part  in  every  one  of  us.  In 
these  are  bound  up,  embalmed  and  embodied,  all 
the  struggles  and  searchings  of  spirit  of  the  count- 
less generations  which  have  made  us  what  we  are. 
Action  which  arises  out  of  that  inner  core,  which 
is  prompted  by  conscience  and  guided  by  reason, 
is  free  in  the  highest  sense  of  all ;  this  at  least  is 

1  Whitman,  "Leaves  of  Grass,"  p.  363. 


METEORITES  AND   THE  ORIGIN  OF  LIFE. 


85 


good  in  the  ethical  sense.  And  yet,  when  we  act 
with  this  most  perfect  freedom,  it  may  be  said 
that  it  is  not  we  that  act,  but  Man  that  worketh 
in  us.  He  whose  life  is  habitually  governed  by 
reason  and  conscience  is  the  free  and  wise  man 
of  the  philosophers  of  all  ages.  The  highest  free- 
dom, then,  is  identical  with  the  Spirit  of  Man — 

"  The  earth-god  Freedom,  the  lonely 

Face  lightening,  the  footprint  unshod, 
Not  as  one  man  crucified  only 

Nor  scourged  with  but  one  life's  rod  ; 
The  soul  that  is  substance  of  nations, 
Eeiucarnate  with  fresh  generations  ; 
The  great  god  Man,  which  is  God."  1 

The  social  organism  itself  is  but  a  part  of  the 
universal  cosmos,  and  like  all  else  is  subject  to 
the  uniformity  of  Nature.  The  production  and 
distribution  of  wealth,  the  growth  and  effect  of 


administrative  machinery,  the  education  of  the 
race,  these  are  cases  of  general  laws  which  con- 
stitute the  science  of  sociology.  The  discovery 
of  exact  laws  has  only  one  purpose — the  guidance 
of  conduct  by  means  of  them.  The  laws  of  politi- 
cal economy  are  as  rigid  as  those  of  gravitation ; 
wealth  distributes  itself  as  surely  as  water  finds 
its  level.  But  the  use  we  have  to  make  of  the 
laws  of  gravitation  is  not  to  sit  down  and  cry 
"  Kismet ! "  to  the  flowing  stream,  but  to  construct 
irrigation-works.  And  the  use  which  the  Repub- 
lic must  make  of  the  laws  of  sociology  is  to 
rationally  organize  society  for  the  training  of  the 
best  citizens.  Much  patient  practice  of  comrade- 
ship is  necessary  before  society  will  be  qualified 
to  organize  itself  in  accordance  with  reason.  But 
those  who  can  read  the  signs  of  the  times  read  in 
them  that  the  kingdom  of  Man  is  at  hand. — The 
Nineteenth  Century. 


METEOKITES  AND   THE  OKIGIN  OF  LIFE. 


By  WALTER  FLIGHT,   D.  Sc,  F.  G.  S. 


THE  question  which  has  so  often  been  raised, 
How  did  life  originate  on  our  earth?  has 
again  been  brought  before  the  consideration  of 
the  scientific  world  by  Prof.  Allen  Thomson,  in 
the  presidential  address  delivered  at  the  Plymouth 
meeting  of  the  British  Association  during  the 
present  autumn.  One  explanation  to  which  he 
refers  is  that  which  formed  a  prominent  feature 
in  the  address  of  a  former  occupant  of  the  pres- 
idential chair,  Sir  William  Thomson,  who  six 
years  ago  suggested  as  a  possible  solution  of  this 
great  question  that  the  germs  of  life  might  have 
been  borne  to  our  globe  by  the  meteorites  which 
are  scattered  through  space,  and  which  from  time 
to  time  fall  upon  the  surface  of  our  planet.  If, 
he  maintained,  we  trace  back  the  physical  history 
of  our  earth,  we  are  brought  to  a  red-hot,  melted 
globe  on  which  no  life  could  exist.  The  earth 
I  was  first  fit  for  life,  and  there  was  no  living  thing 
i  upon  it.  Can  any  probable  solution,  consistent 
with  the  ordinary  course  of  Nature,  be  found  to 
explain  the  problem  of  its  first  appearance? 
When  a  lava-stream  flows  down  the  side  of  Vesu- 
vius or  Etna  it  quickly  cools  and  becomes  solid, 
and  after  a  ft-w  weeks  or  years  it  teems  with 
vegetable  and  animal  life,  which  life  originated  by 
1  Swinburne,  "  Songs  before  Sunrise." 


the  transport  of  seed  and  ova  and  by  the  migra- 
tion of  individual  living  creatures.  When  a  vol- 
canic island  emerges  from  the  sea,  and  after  a  few 
years  is  clothed  with  vegetation,  we  do  not  hesi- 
tate to  assume  that  seed  has  been  wafted  to  it 
through  the  air,  or  floated  to  it  on  rafts.  It  is  not 
possible — and  if  possible,  is  it  not  probable — 
that  the  beginning  of  vegetable  life  on  the  earth 
may  be  similarly  explained  ?  Every  year  thou- 
sands, probably  millions,  of  fragments  of  solid 
matter  fall  upon  the  earth.  Whence  came 
they  ?  What  is  the  previous  history  of  any 
one  of  them  ?  Was  it  created  in.  the  beginning 
of  time  an  amorphous  mass  ?  The  idea  is  so  un. 
acceptable  that,  tacitly  or  explicitly,  all  men  dis- 
card it.  It  is  often  assumed  that  all,  and  it  is 
certain  that  some,  meteorites  are  fragments  sev- 
ered from  larger  masses  and  launched  free  into 
space.  It  is  as  sure  that  collisions  must  occur 
between  great  masses  moving  through  space  as 
it  is  that  ships,  steered  without  intelligence  di- 
rected to  prevent  collisions,  could  not  cross  and 
recross  the  Atlantic  for  thousands  of  years  with 
immunity  from  such  catastrophes.  When  two 
great  masses  come  into  collision  in  space  it  is 
certain  that  a  large  part  of  each  of  them  is 
melted;    but  it  appears  equally  certain    that  in 


86 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


many  cases  a  large  quantity  of  debris  must  be 
shot  forth  in  all  directions,  much  of  which  may 
have  been  exposed  to  no  greater  violence  than 
individual  pieces  of  rock  experience  in  a  land-slip 
or  in  blasting  by  gunpowder.  Should  the  time 
when  this  earth  comes  into  collision  with  another 
body,  comparable  in  dimensions  to  itself,  be  when 
it  is  still  clothed,  as  at  present,  with  vegetation, 
many  great  and  small  fragments  carrying  seed 
and  living  plants  and  animals  would  undoubtedly 
be  scattered  through  space.  Hence  and  because 
we  all  confidently  believe  that  there  are  at  pres- 
ent, and  have  been  from  time  immemorial,  many 
worlds  of  life  besides  our  own,  we  must  regard  it 
as  probable  in  the  highest  degree  that  there  are 
countless  seed-bearing  meteoric  stones  moving 
about  through  space.  If  at  the  present  instant 
no  life  existed  upon  this  earth,  one  such  stone 
falling  upon  it  might  lead  to  its  becoming  covered 
with  vegetation.  "  I  am  fully  conscious,"  he  con- 
cludes, "  of  the  many  scientific  objections  which 
may  be  urged  against  this  hypothesis,  but  I  be- 
lieve them  to  be  all  answerable.  .  .  .  The  hy- 
pothesis that  life  originated  on  this  earth  through 
moss-grown  fragments  from  the  ruins  of  another 
world  may  seemVwild  and  visionary ;  all  I  main- 
tain is  that  it  is  not  unscientific." J 

Sir  William  Thomson's  views,  thus  plainly  set 
forth,  did  not  fail  to  attract  adverse  criticism. 
Before  we  proceed  to  consider  the  comments 
which  his  hypothesis  called  forth,  we  may  call 
the  reader's  attention  for  a  short  time  to  specu- 
lations in  the  same  direction  which  have  appeared 
in  the  writings  of  scientific* men  in  France  and 
Germany. 

First,  we  must  refer  to  a  remarkable  passage 
in  the  great  work  of  Count  A.  de  Bylandt  Palster- 
camp,  on  the  "  Theory  of  Volcanoes." 2  He  wrote 
in  1835,  at  a  time  when  Laplace's  theory  that  me- 
teorites were  hurled  at  us  from  lunar  volcanoes 
was  still  generally  received,  and  this  will  account 
to  some  extent  for  the  source  of  the  cosmical 
masses  of  which  he  treats.  What  is  mainly  worthy 
of  notice  is  their  character,  of  carriers  of  the  fac- 
ulty of  organization,  which  he  attributes  to  them. 
In  the  chapter  intituled  "  Principe  d'apres  lequel 
le  premier  Developpement  de  notre  Globe  peut 
s'ctre  effectue,"  he  writes :  "  It  may  be  amat- 
ter  of  curiosity,  but  it  is  in  no  wise  necessary, 
that  we  should  know  on  what  principle  or  from 

J  "  Address  of  Sir  "William  Thomson,  Knt.,  LL.  D., 
F.  K.  S.,  President."  London  :  Taylor  &  Francis,  1871, 
p.  27. 

2  "  Theorie  des  Volcans.  Par  le  Comte  A.  de  Bylandt 
Palstercamp."    Paris :  Levrault,  1838,  tome  i.,  p.  95. 


what  organized  body  the  great  mass  of  our  globe 
has  been  derived  ;  it  is  sufficient  for  us  that  we 
exist  in  a  manner  where  everything  is  perfectly 
organized,  at  least  in  so  far  as  the  aim  of  our  ex- 
istence is  concerned.  Many  scientific  men  have 
exercised  their  imagination  on  this  problem  with- 
out being  able  to  come  to  any  definite  decision. 
Some  maintain  that  the  nucleus  of  our  globe  was 
a  fragment  of  a  body  which  in  its  cosmical  path 
had  dashed  itself  into  fragments  against  the  sun, 
which  the  very  close  proximity  of  some  comet  to 
that  star  gives  grounds  for  believing.  Others 
suppose  us  to  be  a  vast  aerolite  thrown  off  from 
the  sun  himself1  with  a  force  proportional  to  its 
mass,  to  a  zone  where  the  motion  is  determined 
in  accordance  with  the  laws  of  reciprocal  attrac- 
tion, and  that  this  fragment  carried  in  itself  the 
germ  of  all  that  organization  which  we  see 
around  us,  and  of  which  we  form  a  part.  ( Que 
cet  eclat  port  ait  enlui  le  germe  de  ioute  cette  or- 
ganisation que  nous  observons  ici  et  dont  nous  fai- 
sons  partie.)  They  suppose  the  satellites  to  be 
small  parts  or  fragments  detached  from  the  chief 
mass  by  the  violence  of  the  rotation  at  the  time 
it  is  hurled  forth,  or  by  the  excessively  high  orig- 
inal temperature,  increased  by  the  fall,  which 
produced  a  very  violent  dilatation  of  the  matter, 
and  severed  some  portions  from  it.  These  aero- 
lites, it  is  said,  by  way  of  comparison,  contain 
within  them  the  principle  common  to  the  body 
whence  they  have  been  derived,  just  as  a  grain 
of  seed  carried  by  the  wind  is  able  to  produce  at 
a  remote  distance  a  tree  like  its  prototype,  with 
such  modifications  only  as  are  due  to  soil  or  cli- 
mate." 

In  the  spring  of  1871  Prof.  Helmholtz  de- 
livered at  Heidelberg  and  at  Cologne  a  discourse 
on  the  origin  of  the  solar  system,  which  he  printed 
in  the  third  collection  of  his  interesting  "  Po- 
puliire  wissenschaftliche  Vortrage,"  published  last 
year.2  He  directed  attention  on  that  occasion 
to  the  facts  that  meteorites  sometimes  contain 
compounds  of  carbon  and  hydrogen,  and  that  the 
light  emitted  by  the  head  of  a  comet  gives  a  spec- 
trum which  bears  the  closest  resemblance  to  that 
of  the  electric  light  when  the  arc  is  surrounded 
by  a  gaseous  hydrocarbon.  Carbon  is  the  char- 
acteristic element  of  the  organic  compounds  of 
which  all  things  living  are  built  up.  "  Who  can 
say,"  he  asks,  "  whether  these  bodies  which  wan- 

1  He  alludes  here  in  a  note  to  the  theory  held  by  La- 
place and  others. 

2  "  PopulSre  wissenschaftliche  Vortrage.  Von  H. 
Helmholtz."  Braunschweig :  Vieweg  und  Sohn,  1876. 
Drittes  Heft,  p.  135. 


METEORITES  AND   TEE  ORIGIN  OF  LIFE. 


87 


der  about  through  space  may  not  also  strew 
germs  of  life  where  a  new  heavenly  body  has  be- 
come fitted  to  offer  a  habitat  to  organized  creat- 
ures ?  "  The  hypothesis,  in  the  form  set  forth 
in  1871  by  Prof.  Helmholtz  and  Sir  William 
Thomson,  was  vigorously  handled  by  Zollner, 
of  Leipsic,  whose  work,  "  Ueber  die  Natur  der 
Cometen,"  appeared  in  the  following  year.  In 
the  Vorrede  of  his  book  he  passes  his  countryman 
by  unmentioned,  but  declares  Sir  William  Thom- 
son's proposition  to  be  unscientific,  and  that  in  a 
twofold  sense.  In  the  first  place  he  maintains  it 
is  unscientific  in  a  formal  or  logical  sense,  in  that 
it  changes  the  original  simple  question,  Why  has 
our  earth  become  covered  with  organisms  ?  into 
a  second,  Why  had  that  heavenly  body  the  frag- 
ment of  which  fell  upon  our  planet  become  cov- 
ered with  vegetation,  and  not  our  earth  itself? 
"  If,  however,"  he  adds,  "  bearing  in  mind  an 
earlier  dictum,1  we  regard  inorganic  and  organic 
matter  as  two  substances  from  all  eternity  di- 
verse, just  as  in  accordance  with  our  present 
views  we  consider  two  chemical  elements  to  be 
diverse,  such  an  hypothesis  as  that  now  advanced 
must  be  at  variance  with  the  destructibility  of 
organisms  by  heat  which  experience  has  taught 
us." 

"Again,"  contends  Zollner,  "the  hypothesis 
in  its  material  bearing  is  unscientific.  When  a 
meteorite  plunges  with  planetary  velocity  into 
our  atmosphere,  the  loss  of  vis  viva  arising  from 
friction  is  converted  into  heat,  which  raises  the 
temperature  of  the  stone  to  a  point  where  incan- 
descence and  combustion  take  place.  This,  at  all 
events,  is  the  theory  at  present  generally  held  to 
explain  the  phenomena  of  star-showers  and  fire- 
balls. A  meteorite,  then,  laden  with  organisms, 
even  if  it  could  withstand  the  sundering  of  the 
parent  mass  unscathed,  and  should  take  no  part 
in  the  general  rise  of  temperature  resulting  from 
this  disruption,  must  of  necessity  traverse  the 
,  earth's  atmosphere  before  it  could  deliver  at  the 
earth's  surface  organisms  to  stock  our  planet 
with  living  forms." 2 

Helmholtz  did  not  long  delay  in  replying  to 
Zbllner's  criticism  on  this  question.  An  oppor- 
tunity occurred  during  the  publication,  in  the  fol- 
lowing year,  1873,  of  the  second  part  of  the  Ger- 
man translation  of  Thomson  and  Tait's  "  Hand- 
book of  Theoretical  Physics."  The  preface  con- 
tains Helmholtz's  answer.3    He  points  to  the  fact, 

1 "  Dead  matter  cannot  become  living  matter  unless  it 
be  subject  to  the  influence  of  matter  already  living." 

2  "  Ueber  die  Natur  der  Cometen.     Von  J.  C.  F.  Zoll- 
ner."   Leipzig:  Engelmann,  1ST2,  p.  2i. 

3  "Handbuch    der   theoretischen    Physik.     Von  W. 


confirmed  by  numerous  observers,  that  the  larger 
meteoric  stones,  during  their  transit  through  our 
atmosphere,  become  heated  only  on  the  outer 
surface,  the  interior  remaining  cold — often  very 
cold.  Germs  which  may  happen  to  lie  in  the 
crevices  of  such  stones  would  be  protected  from 
scorching  while  traveling  through  the  air.  Those, 
moreover,  which  lie  on  or  near  the  surface  of  the 
aerolite  would,  as  soon  as  it  entered  the  upper 
and  most  attenuated  strata  of  our  atmosphere, 
be  blown  off  by  the  swift  and  violent  current  of 
air  long  ere  the  stone  can  rend  those  denser 
layers  of  our  gaseous  envelope  where  compres- 
sion is  sufficiently  great  to  cause  a  perceptible 
rise  of  temperature.  As  regards  that  other  point 
of  debate,  referred  to  by  Thomson  only,  the  col- 
lision of  two  cosmical  masses,  Helmholtz  shows 
that  the  first  result  of  contact  would  be  violent 
mechanical  movement,  and  that  it  is  only  when 
they  begin  to  be  worn  down  and  destroyed  by 
friction  that  heat  would  be  developed.  It  is  not 
known  whether  this  may  not  continue  for  hours 
or  days,  or  even  weeks.  Such  portions  as  at 
the  first,  moment  of  contact  are  hurled  away  with 
planetary  velocity  may  consequently  be  driven 
from  the  scene  of  action  before  any  rise  of  tem- 
perature may  have  taken  place.  "  It  is  not  im- 
possible," he  adds,  "  that  a  meteorite  or  a  swarm 
of  meteorites,  in  traversing  the  upper  layers 
of  the  atmosphere  of  a  heavenly  body,  may 
either  scatter  from  them  or  carry  with  them 
a  quantity  of  air  containing  unscorched  germs. 
These  are  possibilities  which  are  not  yet  to  be 
taken  as  probabilities;  they  are  questions  which, 
from  the  fact  of  their  existence  and  range,  are  to 
be  kept  in  sight,  so  that,  should  a  case  arise,  they 
may  receive  an  answer  either  by  actual  obser- 
vations or  by  some  conclusive  deduction."  It 
should  be  mentioned  here  that  these  views  of 
Helmholtz's  are  also  to  be  met  with  in  a  supple- 
ment to  his  lecture  on  the  origin  of  the  solar  sys- 
tem. 

In  tracing  the  gradual  development  of  this 
important  controversy,  we  now  arrive  at  the  pres- 
ent year,  and  proceed  to  discuss  the  allusion 
made  to  it  by  Prof.  Allen  Thomson  in  his  ad- 
dress at  Plymouth.  The  difficulty  regarding  the 
origin  of  life  is,  he  considers,  not  abolished,  but 
only  removed  to  a  more  remote  period,  by  the 
supposition  of  the  transport  of  germs  from  an- 
other planet,  or  their  introduction  by  means  of 
meteorites  or  meteoric  dust ;  for,  besides  the  ob- 

Tbomson  und  P.  G.  Tait."  TTebersetzung  von  H.  Helm- 
holtz und  G.  "Wertheim.  Braunschweig:  Vieweg  unci 
Sohn,  1874.    Erster  Band.    Zweiter  Theil.  11. 


88 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


jection  arising  from  the  circumstance  that  these 
bodies  must  hare  been  subjected  to  a  very  high 
temperature,  we  should  still  have  everything  to 
learn  as  to  the  way  in  which  the  germs  arose  in 
the  far-distant  regions  of  space  from  which  they 
have  been  conveyed.  At  one  of  the  sectional 
meetings,  a  few  days  later,  Sir  William  Thomson 
made  these  observations  the  text  of  a  further 
communication  on  the  now  well-worn  subject. 
He  desired  to  limit  the  discussion  to  the  bare, 
dry  question,  Was  life  possible  on  a  meteorite  ? 
The  hypothesis  which  was  to  explain  the  bring- 
ing of  life  to  our  earth  did  not  pretend  to  explain 
the  origin  of  life,  and  he  would  not  attempt  to 
offer  an  explanation  of  the  origin  of  life.  The 
three  questions  which  presented  themselves  were 
these :  Was  life  possible  on  a  meteorite  moving 
in  space  ?  Was  life  possible  on  a  meteorite 
while  falling  to  the  earth's  surface  ?  and,  Could 
any  germs  live  after  the  meteorite  had  become 
imbedded  in  the  earth  ?  A  meteorite  may  be 
exposed  to  great  heat  before  it  reaches  the  earth ; 
whether  or  not  life  on  that  meteorite  would  be 
destroyed  by  that  heat  was  dependent  on  the 
duration  of  exposure.  If  a  meteorite  traversed 
space  with  the  same  side  always  exposed  to  the 
sun,  that  side  would  be  strongly  heated,  the  oth- 
er would  be  cold  ;  if  it  spun  round  at  a  uniform 
rate  all  its  surface  would  be  of  one  uniform  tem- 
perature ;  and  if  it  rotated  once  per  hour  it  would 
have  a  high  temperature  on  one  side  and  be  as 
cold  as  ice  on  the  other.  The  whole  or  part  of 
the  surface  of  a  meteorite  might  afford  a  climate 
suitable  to  some  living  forms,  destructive  to  oth- 
ers. When  the  moss-covered  stone  enters  the 
atmosphere  the  germs  upon  its  surface  would  be 
torn  off  long  before  the  stone  became  heated, 
and  in  a  few  years  they  may  settle  down  on  the 
earth,  take  root  and  grow.  But  were  the  germs 
of  the  exterior  destroyed  by  heat,  there  might 
still  be  vegetable  life  in  the  interior.  The  time 
occupied  by  a  stone  in  its  passage  through  the 
air  would  not  be  more  than  twenty  or  thirty  sec- 
onds at  the  outside,  so  that  the  crust  might  be 
fused,  while  the  interior  might  have  a  moderate 
temperature,  and  anything  alive  in  it  would  fall 
to  the  earth  alive.  Sir  William  Thomson  con- 
cluded by  remarking  that  after  the  collision  of 
cosmical  masses  fragments  must  be  shot  off,  some 
of  which  must  certainly  carry  away  living  things 
not  destroyed  by  the  shock  of  the  collision,  and 
he  did  not  hesitate  to  maintain,  as  a  not  improb- 
able supposition,  that  at  some  time  or  other  we 
should  have  growing  on  this  earth  a  plant  of 
meteoric  origin.    At  this  particular  stage  of  the 


debate  (so  we  are  informed  by  The  Western 
Morning  News)  some  one  attending  the  meet- 
ing of  the  section  introduced  the  Colorado  bee- 
tle, and  this  was  held  to  be  irresistibly  funny; 
then  some  one  else  got  up  and  said  he  was  an 
Irishman,  which  was  judged  to  be  even  funnier 
still.  At  length  another  speaker  arose  to  breathe 
the  hope  that  when  Papa  Colorado  Beetle  dropped 
down  on  a  meteorite  he  would  leave  Mamma  Col- 
orado Beetle  behind,  which  was  felt  to  be  far  and 
away  the  funniest  thing  of  all.  Some  of  the  As- 
sociates, however — men  who  had  not  yet  learned 
to  know  the  length  and  depth  of  scientific  "wit" 
— began  to  feel  uneasy ;  and  although  a  gallant 
effort  appears  at  this  juncture  to  have  been  made 
to  win  back  their  confidence  by  assuring  them 
that  meteorites  really  do  not  contain  organic 
matter  of  any  kind,  the  section  was  not  to  be 
comforted  till  the  telephone  was  set  a-going. 
But  to  return. 

Nothing  bearing  the  semblance  of  a  plant  or 
even  of  its  seed  has  as  yet  been  met  with  in  a 
meteorite  ;  nor  have  any  of  the  masses  which 
have  fallen  on  our  planet  shown  anything  ap- 
proaching the  structure  which  distinguishes  sed- 
imentary rocks  from  those  of  a  purely  plutonic 
character.  The  occurrence,  however,  in  them, 
or  with  them,  of  organic  compounds,  of  com- 
pounds of  carbon  and  hydrogen,  which  it  is  hard 
to  suppose  could  owe  their  existence  to  any  oth- 
er agency  than  that  of  life  itself,  and  which  rep- 
resent the  final  stage  previous  to  their  final  de- 
struction, has  now  been  so  frequently  noticed 
that  I  have  put  together  in  chronological  order 
what  information  in  this  direction  from  a  "  world 
ayont  "  the  meteorites  have  brought  to  us. 

1806.  March  15th,  5  p.  m. — Two  stones,  weigh- 
ing together  six  kilogrammes,  fell  at  Alais,  departe- 
ment  du  Gard,  France.  They  have  the  appearanee 
of  an  earthy  variety  of  coal ;  the  color  of  the  crust 
is  a  dull  brownish-black,  so  is  that  of  the  interior. 
The  structure  is  very  soft  and  friable.  When 
heated  it  emits  a  faint  bituminous  odor.  It  was 
examined  at  the  time  of  its  fall  by  Thenard  and  a 
commission  appointed  by  the  Institute  of  France. 
The  French  observers  found  it  to  contain  2.5  per 
cent,  of  carbon  ;  while  Berzelius,  in  1834,  esti- 
mated the  amount  of  carbon  present  to  be  3.05 
per  cent.  In  1862  Roscoe  submitted  this  mete- 
orite to  a  very  thorough  investigation.  He  found 
the  carbon  present  to  amount  to  3.36  per  cent. 
Ether  dissolved  1.94  per  cent,  of  the  stone;  the 
solution  on  evaporation  left  crystals  which  have 
an  aromatic  odor,  and  a  fusing-point  of  114  C, 
and  which  sublime  on  the  application  of  heat, 


METEORITES  AND   THE   ORIGIN  OF  LIFE. 


89 


leaving  a  slight  carbonaceous  residue.  The  crys- 
tals really  appear  to  be  of  two  kinds :  acicular 
crystals,  which  are  sparingly  soluble  in  absolute 
alcohol,  but  are  readily  taken  up  by  ether,  car- 
bon disulphide,  turpentine,  and  cold  nitric  acid, 
and  dissolve  in  cold  sulphuric  acid,  striking  a 
brown  color ;  and  rhombic  crystals,  which  dis- 
solve in  ether  and  carbon  disulphide,  but  are 
unaffected  by  cold  nitric  acid,  sulphuric  acid,  or 
turpentine.  An  analysis  of  0.0078  gramme  of 
the  crystals  soluble  in  alcohol  gave  the  following 
numbers : 

Sulphurous  acid    .  0.010    Sulphur     .    .  0  005 
Carbonic  acid  .    .    0  008    Carbon    .    .    0.0022 
Water 0.003    Hydrogen     .  0.0003 

The  atomic  ratio  of  carbon  to  hydrogen,  then,  is 
nearly  1  :  1,  or  that  of  the  reddish-brown  and 
colorless  mineral  resin  konleinite,  which  occurs 
in  crystalline  plates  and  grains  in  the  lignite  of 
Uznach,  in  Switzerland.  Kraus  makes  the  fus- 
ing-point  of  konleinite  114°C. ;  it  is  slightly  solu- 
ble in  alcohol,  but  much  more  soluble  in  ether. 
Dr.  Lawrence  Smith,  who  has  recently  examined 
the  Alais  meteorite,  arrives  at  the  same  results 
as  Roscoe ;  and,  also,  that  the  carbonaceous  in- 
gredient of  this  meteorite  resembles,  in  all  its 
physical  characters,  those  of  a  substance  which 
he  obtained  from  the  graphite  of  the  Sevier  Coun- 
ty meteoric  iron,  to  which  I  shall  presently  refer. 
1838.  October  IZth,  9  a.  m.—  At  the  hour 
mentioned  a  great  number  of  large  stones  fell 
over  a  considerable  area  at  Kold-Bokkeveld, 
seventy  miles  from  Cape  Town.  Those  which 
fell  near  Tulbagh  are  estimated  to  have  weighed 
many  hundred-weights.  It  is  said  that  they 
were  soft  when  they  fell,  but  became  hard  after 
a  time.  This  material  has  a  dull,  black  color, 
and  is  very  porous  and  friable.  Harris,  who 
analyzed  it  in  1859,  determined  the  presence  of 
1.67  per  cent,  of  carbon,  and  somewhat  more 
than  0.25  per  cent,  of  an  organic  substance  solu- 
ble in  alcohol.  This  compound  is  described  as 
possessing  a  yellow  color,  and  a  soft,  resinous,  or 
waxy,  aspect.  It  readily  fused  with  a  slight  rise 
of  temperature,  and  when  heated  in  a  tube  it  was 
decomposed,  emitting  a  strong  bituminous  odor, 
and  leaving  a  carbonaceous  residue.  Some  four 
years  ago  I  was  considering  what  should  be  done 
with  a  trace  of  this  substance,  so  small  in  amount 
that  it  could  not  be  removed  from  the  vessel  con- 
taining it.  I  was  unwilling  to  throw  away  even 
so  small  a  quantity  of  so  precious  a  substance, 
so  I  drew  off  the  neck  of  the  flask  and  placed  it 
in  a  dark  cupboard  of  a  room,  the  temperature 
of  which,  during  the  greater  part  of  the  year,  is 


unusually  high.  In  the  interval  this  organic  com- 
pound has  sublimed,  and  is  deposited  on  the 
higher  parts  of  the  vessel  in  colorless  and  well- 
defined  crystalline  plates. 

1840. — During  this  year  a  large  mass  of  mete- 
oric iron  was  discovered  in  Sevier  County,  Ten- 
nessee,  inclosing  a  large  nodule  of  graphite.  "  It 
is,"  writes  Dr.  Lawrence  Smith,  "  the  largest  mass 
of  graphite  which  has  come  under  my  observa- 
tion, and  is  perhaps  the  largest  known."  Its  di- 
mensions are  60mm  by  20mm  and  35mm,  and  it 
weighs  ninety-two  grammes.  Two  grammes  of 
this  nodule  were  reduced  to  powder  and  treated 
with  ether,  and  the  liquid  on  evaporation  left  a 
residue  weighing  fifteen  milligrammes,  and  pos- 
sessing an  aromatic,  somewhat  alliaceous,  odor. 
It  consisted  of  long,  colorless  acicular  crystals, 
others  which  were  shorter,  as  well  as  some  rhom- 
boidal  crystals  and  rounded  particles.  This  ex- 
tracted substance  melted  at  about  120°C.  When 
heated  in  a  tube  closed  at  one  end  it  melts  and 
then  volatilizes,  condensing  in  yellow  drops,  and 
leaving  a  carbonaceous  residue.  Dr.  Lawrence 
Smith  believes  that  the  three  elements,  carbon, 
hydrogen,  and  sulphur,  which  they  contain,  may 
be  in  combination,  and  he  has  named  the  mete- 
oric sulphohydrocarbon  "  celestial ite." 

1857.  April  15th,  10.11  p.  M.— A  brilliant 
detonating  meteor  was  observed  at  this  hour 
over  Kaba,  southwest  of  Debreczin,  Hungary, 
and  a  meteorite  weighing  four  kilogrammes  was 
found  on  the  following  morning  imbedded  in  the 
hard  surface  of  a  road  close  by.  The  crust  is 
black,  and  the  mass  of  the  stone  dark  gray; 
throughout  the  structure  black  portions  of  the 
size  of  peas  lie  scattered,  giving  the  stone  a  por- 
phyritic  character.  Wohler  treated  the  stone 
with  alcohol,  which  removed  a  white,  apparently 
crystalline,  substance  possessing  a  peculiar  aro- 
matic odor.  With  ether  it  broke  up  into  oily 
drops,  and  appeared  to  be  decomposed  into  an 
insoluble  fluid  body  and  a  soluble  solid  portion. 
The  solid  substance  was  obtained  in  a  distinctly 
crystalline  condition  on  driving  off  the  ether.  It 
volatilizes  in  air,  fuses  in  a  close  tube,  and  is  de- 
composed when  greater  heat  is  applied,  a  fatty 
odor  being  observed,  and  a  black  residue  left. 
The  hydrocarbon  is  believed  by  Wohler  to  be 
allied  to  ozocerite  or  scheererite.  When  the 
powdered  stone  is  heated  in  oxygen  it  turns  of  a 
cinnamon-brown  color.  This  meteorite  contains 
0.58  per  cent,  of  carbon. 

1861. — The  huge  mass  of  meteoric  iron  dis- 
covered at  Cranboune,  near  Melbourne,  Australia, 
in  1861,  incloses  more  or  less  rounded  masses  of 


90 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


carbon.  They  are  pronounced  by  Berthelot,  who 
has  submitted  some  of  the  material  to  the  most 
powerful  oxidizing  reagents,  to  resemble  the  form 
of  carbon  which  separates  from  cast-iron  on  cool- 
ing rather  than  native  graphite. 

1864.  May  lith,  8  p.  m. — On  this  occasion 
more  than  twenty  stones  fell  at  Montauban,  Tarn- 
et-Garonne,  France,  some  of  them  being  as  large 
as  a  human  head,  and  most  of  them  smaller  than 
a  fist.  The  appearance  which  this  meteorite  ex- 
hibits closely  resembles  that  of  a  dull-colored 
earthy  lignite.  The  masses  are  black  and  very 
friable,  and  fall  to  powder  when  placed  in  water; 
this  is  due  to  the  removal  of  the  soluble  salts 
which  cement  the  ingredients  together.  A  shower 
of  rain  would  have  destroyed  them.  One  hundred 
parts  of  this  stone  contain  5.92  parts  of  carbon 
itself,  partly  as  a  constituent  of  one  organic  com- 
pound, which  Cloiiz  found  to  possess  the  follow- 
ing composition : 

Carbon 63.45 

Hydrogen 5.98 

Oxygen 30.57 

100.00 

Berthelot  endeavored  to  reconstruct  the  body 
of  which  this  is  a  decomposed  product  by  means 
of  hydriodic  acid,  and  obtained  a  considerable 
quantity  of  the  hydrocarbon  C2tlH2n+2  analogous 
to  rock-oil.  The  reduction  takes  place  less  readi- 
ly in  this  case  than  in  that  of  coal.  Dr.  Lawrence 
Smith  finds  the  combustible  portion  of  the  ma- 
terial to  amount  to  about  4.5  per  cent. 

1867. — This  Indian  meteorite,  which  fell  at 
Goalpara  about  the  year  1867  (the  exact  date  is 
not  known),  was  examined  by  Tschermak,  who 
found  it  to  contain  0.85  per  cent,  of  a  hydrocar- 
bon. The  quantity,  though  small,  materially 
affects  the  general  appearance  of  the  stone ;  it 
can  be  recognized  under  the  microscope  as  a 
smoky-brown,  lustreless  ingredient  accompanying 
the  fragments  of  nickel-iron.  Of  the  0.85  per 
cent.  0.72  is  carbon  and  0.13  hydrogen.  Tscher- 
mak  suggests  that  the  luminous  phenomena  so 
often  attending  the  fall  of  an  aerolite  and  the 
"  tail "  left  by  many  meteors  and  shooting-stars 
may  be  due  to  the  combustion  of  compounds  of 
which  carbon  forms  an  important  constituent. 

1868.  July  11th. — The  curious  meteorite  of 
dull  gray  hue  and  loose  structure  which  fell  on 
this  day  at  Ornans,  Doubs,  France,  partly  owes 
its  durk  color  to  the  presence  of  a  hydrocarbon. 

1869.  January  1st,  12.20  p.m. — A  most  re- 
markable fall  of  stones  took  place  on  New-Year's- 
day,  1869,  at  Hessle,  near  Upsala;  it  is  the  first 
aerolitic  shower  recorded  to  have  taken  place  in 


Sweden.  The  meteorites  have  so  loose  a  structure 
that  they  break  in  pieces  when  thrown  with  the 
hand  against  the  floor  or  frozen  ground.  The  most 
interesting  feature  of  the  Hessle  fall  is  the  asso- 
ciation, with  the  stones  referred  to,  of  matter 
mainly  composed  of  carbon.  The  peasants  of 
Hessle  noticed  that  some  of  the  meteorites  which 
fell  on  the  snow  near  Arno  soon  crumbled  to  a 
blackish-brown  powder  resembling  coffee-grounds. 
Similar  powder  was  found  on  the  ice  at  Hafslavi- 
ken  in  masses  as  large  as  the  hand,  which  float- 
ed on  water  like  foam,  and  could  not  be  held 
between  the  fingers.  A  small  amount  secured 
for  examination  was  found  under  the  microscope 
to  be  composed  of  small  spherules  ;  it  contained 
particles  extractible  by  the  magnet,  and  when 
ignited  left  a  reddish-brown  ash.  Heated  in  a 
closed  tube  it  gave  a  small  brown  distillate.  A 
quantity  dried  at  110°  C.  possessed  the  following 
composition : 

Carbon 51.6 

Hydrogen 3  8 

Oxygen  (calculated) 15.7 

Silicic  acid         ......  16.7 

Iron  protoxide 8.4 

Magnesia 1.5 

Lime 0.8 

Soda  and  lithia 1.5 

100.0 

The  combustible  ingredient  appears  to  have 
the  composition  ?iC9H402.  It  was  noticed  on 
this  occasion  that  the  stones  found  in  the  same 
district  with  the  carbonaceous  substance  were, 
as  a  rule,  quite  round  and  covered  on  all  sides 
with  a  black,  dull,  and  often  almost  sponge-like 
crust.  The  iron  particles  on  the  surface  of  the 
smaller  stones  were  usually  quite  bright  and  un- 
oxidized,  as  though  the  stone  had  been  heated  in 
a  reducing  atmosphere.  Nordenskjold,  who  ex- 
amined them,  expresses  the  belief  that  this  car- 
bon compound  frequently,  perhaps  invariably, 
occurs  in  association  with  the  meteorites,  and  he 
attributes  its  preservation  in  this  case  to  the  fall 
of  the  stones  on  snow-covered  ground. 

1870. — During  this  year  the  Swedish  Arctic 
Expedition  discovered  in  the  basalt  of  Ovifak, 
near  Godhavn,  island  of  Disko,  Greenland,  some 
enormous  metallic  masses  which  are  generally 
regarded  as  blocks  of  meteoric  iron.  Like  me- 
teoric iron,  they  contain  nickel  and  cobalt,  but 
unlike  that  iron,  they  are  but  slightly  attacked  by 
hydrochloric  acid.  The  metal,  moreover,  when 
heated,  evolves  more  than  one  hundred  times  its 
volume  of  a  gas  which  burns  with  a  pale-blue 
flame  and  is  carbonic  oxide  mixed  with  a  little 
carbonic  acid  ;  after  this  treatment  the  substance 


THE  LIVINGSTONIA  MISSION. 


91 


dissolves  in  acid,  leaving  a  carbonaceous  residue. 
The  composition  of  this  remarkable  "  iron,"  if  we 
may  call  it  by  that  name,  has  been  found  by 
Wohler  to  be  as  follows  : 

Iron 80.  64 

Nickel 1.19 

Cobalt 0.49 

Phosphorus 0.15 

Sulphur 2.82 

Carbon 3.67 

Oxygen 1109 

100.05 

It  appears  to  be  a  mixture  of  about  forty  per 
cent,  of  magnetite  with  metallic  iron,  its  carbide, 
sulphide,  and  phosphide,  and  its  alloys  of  nickel 
and  cobalt,  as  well  as  some  pure  carbon  in  iso- 
lated particles. 

From  all  this  we  see,  though  there  is  not  a 
particle  of  evidence  to  prove  the  persistence  of 
living  germs  on  meteorites  during  their  passage 
through  our  atmosphere,  it  is  quite  clear  that  the 
cosmical  bodies,  whatever  they  may  have  been, 
from  which  our  meteorites  were  derived,  may  very 
probably  have  borne  on  their  surface  some  forms 
of  organized  beings. 

One  objection  which  appears  to  have  been 
raised  to  Sir  William  Thomson's  theory  was  to 
the  effect  that  germs  could  not  exist  without  air ; 


another  that  the  low  temperature  to  which  they 
would  be  exposed  before  entering  our  atmosphere 
would  suffice  to  destroy  life.  Micheli,  in  his  valu- 
able "  Coup  d'ceil  sur  les  principales  Publications 
de  Physiologie  vegetale,"  refers  to  the  researches 
of  Uloth,1  who  found  that  twenty-four  species  of 
plants  which  had  been  placed  in  a  cave  in  the 
centre  of  a  glacier  germinated  after  the  lapse  of 
six  weeks.  Lepidium  ruderale  and  sativum,  Si- 
napis  alba,  and  £rassica  Napus,  had  germinated  ; 
and  at  the  close  of  four  months  other  crucifers 
and  some  grasses  and  leguminou^s  plants  had 
germinated  also.  Haberlandt  found  that  of  a 
number  of  seeds  which  had  been  exposed  for 
four  months  to  a  temperature  of  0°  to  10°,  the 
following  species  flourished :  rye,  hemp,  vetch, 
pea,  mustard,  camelina,  two  species  of  clover, 
and  lucerne.  The  influence  of  the  withdrawal 
of  air  from  seeds  on  their  power  of  germina- 
tion has  also  been  studied  by  Haberlandt.  He 
found  that  seeds  after  they  had  been  placed  in 
vacuo  germinated  as  usual.  A  slight  retardation 
was  noticed  in  the  case  of  the  seeds  of  the  oat, 
the  beet-root,  and  a  bean,  which  appear  to  re- 
quire the  air  contained  in  their  tissues.  In  three 
experiments  fifty-eight,  thirty-two,  and  forty  per 
cent,  of  the  seeds  germinated. 

— Popular  Science  Review. 


THE  LIYIXGSTOXIA  MISSION. 


NARRATIVES   OF  DRS.    J.    THORNTON  MACKLIN   AND   JAMES   STEWART. 


THE  following  interesting  letters  from  Dr.  J. 
Thornton  Macklin  and  Dr.  Stewart,  of  the 
Livingstonia  Mission,  have  been  forwarded  to  us 
from  the  Cape  by  Sir  Bartle  Frere  : 

"  The  site  on  which  Blantyre  Mission  Station 
rests  is  an  admirable  one  in  every  way,  and  re- 
flects great  credit  on  Mr.  Henderson,  who,  it 
must  be  remembered,  went  out  with  the  Free- 
Church  party,  under  Mr.  Young,  of  the  Royal 
Navy,  in  1875,  for  the  purpose  of  looking  round 
the  country  and  finding  out  a  suitable  place 
where  to  establish  our  mission.  In  the  course 
of  his  travels  Mr.  Henderson  came  to  the  con- 
clusion that  the  most  suitable  locality  would  be 
somewhere  in  the  Shire  Highlands,  among  the 
Ageneas,  and,  if  possible,  in  the  vicinity  of  Ma- 
gomero,  the  scene  of  the  University  Mission  la- 


bors. Accordingly,  when  our  party  had  arrived 
out  in  1876,  and  had  reached  Ramakukau's  vil- 
lage, which  it  may  be  said  is  practically  the  head 
of  the  Shire  navigation,  though  seven  miles  be- 
low Matili,  to  which  place  boats  can  reach,  here 
Mr.  Henderson  left  us,  and  went  up  the  hill  to 
fix  definitely  on  a  site  for  the  settlement.  I 
should  have  gone  with  him,  but  was  ill  with  fe- 
ver at  the  time.  The  carefulness  and  discrimi- 
nation shown  in  the  selection — the  result  of  a 
long  experience  in  Australia — clearly  points  out 
that  Mr.  Henderson  was  well  worthy  of  the  trust 
reposed  in  him,  and  well  fitted  to  perform  the 
difficult  task  laid  upon  him.  A  short  time  ago 
there  was  a  village  here,  but  it  was  deserted 
some  time  before  we  came,  as  the  head-man  had 
i  Flora,  1ST5,  No.  17. 


92 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


been  killed,  it  is  said,  by  Ramakukau.  He  was 
buried  in  his  hut,  which  was  knocked  down,  and 
the  place  was  left.  When  Mr.  Henderson  came 
he  found  several  standing,  and  these  he  had  re- 
paired and  put  in  order  for  us  to  dwell  in  until 
such  time  as  we  got  more  suitable  houses  built. 

"  Now  as  to  the  advantage  of  the  site,  and  first 
as  to  its  healthiness.  The  altitude  is  good,  as  we 
are  upon  the  third  plateau  of  the  Shire  Hill,  which 
is  about  3,000  feet  high.  Thus  we  are  high  above 
the  malarious  level,  not,  I  mean,  to  assert  that 
altitude  necessarily  procures  immunity  from  ma- 
laria, for  even  in  the  hills,  if  one  chooses  to  set- 
tle down  in  a  hollow  or  low-lying,  marshy  place, 
he  will  probably  find  more  than  enough  of  the 
miasmatic  poison  developed  than  is  conducive  to 
health.  The  temperature  is  very  suitable,  being 
equable,  rarely  in  the  shade  rising  above  80°,  and 
rarely  falling  below  70°.  Drainage  is  good,  and 
is  secured  by  the  settlement  standing  on  a  rising 
ground  or  knoll,  from  which  the  ground  slopes 
away  in  every  direction,  so  that  during  the  rainy 
season  no  water  accumulates  in  our  immediate 
vicinity. 

"  The  water-supply  is  good,  both  as  regards 
quality  and  quantity,  and  it  is  but  a  short  distance 
off.  Again,  almost  every  day  a  fine  breeze  pre- 
vails, which  is  cool  and  bracing,  yet  mild.  I 
think,  therefore,  all  things  being  considered,  I 
can  congratulate  both  ourselves  aud  the  friends 
of  the  mission  at  home  on  the  healthiness  of 
Blantyre.  Concerning  the  matter  of  cultivation, 
things  are  satisfactory.  The  soil  is  good,  and 
already  we  have  got  a  large  garden,  producing 
not  only  plants  indigenous  to  the  soil,  but  also 
home-plants  and  others  we  got  from  the  Cape. 
Now  a  few  words  as  to  the  conveniences  of  the 
situation.  We  are  but  two  days'  march  from 
Ramakukau's,  thus  we  can  have  speedy  access  to 
the  coast,  Kongoni,  or  Quillimane.  Again,  we 
are  within  the  same  number  of  days' journey  from 
Pimbe,  on  the  Upper  Shire,  the  place  to  which 
the  Uala,  the  steamer  of  the  Free-Church  party, 
comes  down,  so  we  are  also  within  speedy  com- 
munication with  Lake  Nyassa.  Lake  Shirwa  is 
only  three  days  off  at  the  most,  and  from  there 
the  natives  bring  us  very  good  fish.  We  are  also 
only  one  day's  journey  from  the  Ruo ;  but  as  it 
flows  through  a  bad  and  uninhabited  country,  it 
cannot  be  said  to  be  much  of  an  advantage  in  the 
mean  time. 

"  General  Aspect  of  the  Country. — Hills  and 
dales,  all  well  wooded  and  covered  with  vegeta- 
tion of  different  kinds — in  some  places  very  rank 
and  dense  indeed.     I  have  been  caught  and  held 


fast  in  the  thicket  more  than  once.  In  most 
parts  wild-flowers  abound  of  many  and  varied 
hues,  which,  in  the  midst  of  the  fresh  green  verd- 
ure that  prevails,  relieves  it,  and  is  very  pleasing 
to  the  eye,  and  in  some  cases  our  sense  of  smell 
is  much  gratified.  Our  water-courses  and  streams 
are  rich  with  vegetation  of  every  kind  and  variety. 
Many  different  kinds  of  ferns  abound ;  but  I  do 
not  think  any  have  yet  been  found  that  are  not 
also  to  be  found  at  home.  Very  fine  and  large 
trees  are  plentiful  on  the  banks  of  the  streams, 
too,  and  some  good  planks  might  be  got  out  of 
them  ;  but  generally  the  trees  which  prevail  over 
the  country  are  low  and  stunted :  they  are  prin- 
cipally acacias.  Sometimes  one  emerges  from 
the  wood  into  fine  glades  covered  with  long,  wav- 
ing green  grass ;  these,  in  some  cases,  much  re- 
semble the  parks  in  the  confines  of  a  gentleman's 
grounds  at  home.  They  are  very  picturesque.  The 
mountains  are  high  and  steep,  with  many  deep 
ravines.  They  are  clad  with  verdure  to  the  very 
top,  from  the  midst  of  which  the  brown  rocks  may 
be  seen  lifting  up  their  ancient,  weather-beaten 
heads,  lending  enchantment  to  the  view.  Here  and 
there  are  large  fields  of  corn  and  pumpkins  flour- 
ishing, helping  to  relieve  the  wild  appearance  of 
the  country.  The  gardens  are  often  far  away 
from  the  villages  in  the  season,  the  people  leav- 
ing their  homes,  aud  living  in  temporary  habita- 
tions for  the  purpose  of  cultivating  them. 

"The  people  are  quiet  and  peaceable  and  well 
disposed.  They  are  fond  of  fun  and  music.  They 
are  impressible,  expressing  great  surprise  and 
pleasure  at  the  sight  of  pictures,  our  guns,  pis- 
tols, watches,  and  other,  to  them,  wonderful 
things.  They  are  quick  and  intelligent,  and  pick 
up  with  a  wonderful  degree  of  alacrity  what  you 
want  or  mean.  Their  features  are  not  at  all  un- 
pleasant to  look  upon,  and  there  is  great  variety ; 
the  expression  is  generally  happy  and  compara- 
tively intelligent.  Their  stature  is  very  good, 
and  so,  too,  their  physique;  in  height,  on  an 
average,  of  about  5  feet  6  inches  to  5  feet  8 
inches.  The  following  measurements  I  have 
taken,  of  which  I  give  the  average  :  the  head,  in 
circumference,  21f  inches;  chest,  34£  inches; 
arm  in  length,  22^  inches ;  hand,  6£  inches.  The 
measurement  of  the  pelvis  by  a  foot  I  have  not 
yet  ascertained,  but  they  are  well  proportioned. 
They  are  lithe,  supple,  and  active  in  their  move- 
ments. They  are  a  bow-and-arrow  people,  and  dis- 
tinguished from  those  tribes  whose  chief  weapon 
is  the  spear,  though  now  many  of  them  have  flint- 
lock muskets,  which,  curiously  enough,  are  all 
branded  Forty-second  Regiment,  and  have  a  crown 


THE  LIYINGSTONIA  MISSION. 


93 


on  them.  There  is  one  thing  they  are  very  fond  of 
doing,  and  that  is,  gathering  themselves  together 
to  one  place,  talking  and  drinking  pombe,  i.  e., 
native  beer — of  course,  men  only ;  the  women  do 
not  take  part  in  these  proceedings.  Smoking  is 
a  common  habit  among  them ;  even  women  and 
very  little  boys  smoke,  and  if  they  would  confine 
themselves  to  tobacco  it  would  not  matter  much  ; 
but  they  have  a  very  pernicious  habit  of  smoking 
hemp  and  bangue,  which  produces  a  kind  of  intox- 
ication— an  hysterical  fit  I  should  be  inclined  to 
call  it ;  but  the  effect  it  produces,  be  it  what  it 
may,  seems  to  be  very  pleasant,  for  they  practise 
the  habit  most  pertinaciously,  though  it  produces 
a  severe  fit  of  coughing,  which  is  most  painful 
to  hear,  if  not  to  experience.  The  women,  like 
the  men,  are  well  formed,  and  of  a  good  height. 
They  seem  quite  contented  and  happy,  though 
undoubtedly  they  do  the  most  work ;  "till,  they 
are  not  in  any  way  ill-used  by  the  men.  The 
features  of  most  of  the  elderly  women  are  disfig- 
ured by  tattoo-marks,  and  the  hideous  lip-ring, 
or  pilele  ;  I  say  the  elder  women,  for  I  am  happy 
to  say  that  the  younger  women  are  not  adopting 
the  foolish  fashion  of  wearing  the  pilele,  though 
most  undergo  the  tattooing  operation. 

"  Industries. — These  are  chiefly  iron  manu- 
factured into  various  stages,  in  which  they  have 
reached  a  considerable  degree  of  perfection. 
Basket-making. — In  this  I  would  say  they  have 
reached  perfection,  but  then  I  am  not  a  compe- 
tent judge.  Cloth-Manufacture. — In  this  trade 
their  attainments  are  of  no  mean  order,  both  as 
regards  cloth  manufactured  from  the  bark  of 
trees  or  that  from  cotton.  Of  these  I  will  give 
you  more  details  in  a  future  letter,  when  I  will 
also  speak  of  their  habits,  houses,  food,  and  other 
matters  that  may  prove  of  interest." 

The  following  letter  is  from  the  leader  of  the 
expedition,  Dr.  Stewart,  to  Mr.  Dunn : 

"Livingstoxia,  Lake  Nyassa, 

"■February  27,  1877. 
"  Since  I  wrote  you  in  December,  I  am  glad 
to  be  able  to  say  that  things  here  have  been 
going  on  well,  nothing  of  any  consequence  of  an 
untoward  kind  having  occurred,  while  there  is 
much  to  be  thankful  for.  There  have  been  a  few 
cases  of  fever,  mostly  slight,  and  lasting  only  a 
day  or  two.  With  this  exception,  and  that  of 
a  chronic  case  which  improves  but  slowly,  the 
health  of  the  party  is  fairly  good ;  we  cannot  ex- 
pect, in  latitude  14°  in  Central  Africa,  the  robust 
vigor  and  energy  we  enjoy  in  latitude  80°  or  50°. 


"  During  the  last  few  weeks,  or  since  the  be- 
ginning of  this  year,  Livingstonia  seems  to  have 
taken  a  start,  and  begun  to  grow  in  one  of  the 
directions  we  specially  wish  it  to  grow — as  an 
antislavery  centre.  There  were  very  few  people 
actually  settled  here  in  1876:  up  to  October,  at 
least,  not  a  dozen.  Since  then,  some  five  or  six 
parties,  the  smallest  numbering  from  one  or  two 
up  to  twenty-two,  have  come  seeking  the  pro- 
tection of  the  English.  The  story  of  these  twen- 
ty-two is  this  :  A  man  arrived  here  in  the  middle 
of  the  night,  in  the  fragments  of  a  large  canoe,  in 
which  I  feel  certain  no  white  man  would  venture 
one  hundred  yards  from  the  shore,  yet  it  appears 
that  he  had  been  part  of  the  two  days  and  Dights 
in  this  crazy  affair.  He  had  slept  on  the  sand  all 
night,  and  made  his  appearance  in  the  station 
about  six  in  the  morning.  He  was  in  a  woful 
condition,  but  told  his  story  with  directness,  and 
said  he  and  twenty-one  others  were  about  to  be 
sold  by  Inpemba,  a  notorious  slaver  on  the  west- 
ern shore  of  the  lake ;  that  they  saw  the  dhow 
which  had  come,  and  having  got  information 
from  a  friend,  they  fled  in  the  night,  in  a  large 
canoe,  and  made  for  an  island  to  the  north ;  that 
their  canoe  had  got  broken  on  the  rocks  as  they 
landed,  and  he  had  come  in  the  patched-up  frag- 
ments to  ask  the  assistance  and  protection  of  the 
English ;  that  there  were  twenty-one  men,  wom- 
en, and  children,  on  the  island.  There  was  not 
much  time  for  delay  or  consideration — they  had 
nothing  to  eat,  and  no  means  of  getting  away. 
We  accordingly  got  up  steam  in  the  Ilala,  and, 
taking  the  fugitive  for  our  guide,  made  for  the 
island,  which  we  reached  about  one  o'clock.  We 
approached  it  cautiously,  partly  on  account  of  the 
rocks,  and  partly  because  I  was  not  sure  whether 
he  might  not  be  leading  us  into  some  trap, 
though  I  have  never  uttered  that  opinion  till 
now;  but  a  little  doubt  in  such  circumstances, 
and  with  new  men,  is  wholesome.  The  natives 
saw  us,  though  we  did  not  first  see  them,  as  the 
trees  come  down  to  the  water's  edge.  He  shout- 
ed, and  they  replied.  We  sent  off  the  boat,  and 
shortly  had  all  of  them  on  board.  There  they 
certainly  were  —  twenty-two  men,  women,  and 
children.  They  had  only  a  few  hoes,  the  bows 
and  arrows  usually  carried  by  the  natives,  a  little 
maize  in  a  calabash,  and  a  few  wild  roots  gath- 
ered on  the  island.  We  got  up  the  anchor  and 
steamed  off,  arriving  at  the  station  at  sunset ; 
and  the  Fugitive-Slave  Circular  never  crossed  my 
mind  till  I  sat  down  to  write  this.  On  the  con- 
trary, as  we  made  rapid  way  homeward  over  the 
glassy  lake,  on  a  very  fine  afternoon,  I  thought  the 


94 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


Lala  was  just  about  her  proper  work.  It  is  true 
she  is  not  a  fighting-ship,  intended  to  burn  and  sink 
dhows,  and  frighten  Arabs  out  of  their  skins  and 
color,  but  she  is  peacefully  circumventing  those 
senseless  chiefs  who  weaken  themselves  by  sell- 
ing their  people  ;  and  in  many  ways  the  steamer 
has  been  a  great  element  in  our  progress  and  in 
the  security  of  the  position  we  have  attained. 
Both  would  have  been  different  and  very  much 
less  without  the  steamer.  Of  course  the  slaving 
chiefs  cannot  look  with  friendly  eyes  on  these 
doings,  and  two  efforts  have  been  made  to  get 
back  the  refugees.  We  have  seen  no  occasion, 
except  in  one  instance,  to  give  them  up,  and  the 
applicants  have  generally  departed  crestfallen. 
We  tell  them — if  any  man  accused  of  a  serious 
crime  comes,  and  they  show  that  he  is  guilty,  we 
shall  not  receive  him ;  but  any  one  running  away 
to  escape  being  sold,  will  be  protected.  Out  of 
these  cases  some  complications  may  yet  arise  of 
an  unlooked-for  kind.  In  the  mean  time  we  can- 
not do  otherwise  than  as  we  are  doing,  even  though 
the  increasing  numbers  lead  us  into  a  difficulty 
about  food  till  their  crops  are  ready,  and  some 
were  rather  late  in  sowing.  We  have  to  feed 
about  one  hundred  daily,  and  even  though  the  ra- 
tion is  little  over  one  and  a  half  pound  of  maize, 
we  are  sometimes  in  a  strait ;  a  ton  of  maize  or 
Caffre  corn  does  not  last  much  more  than  a  fort- 
night or  three  weeks.  But  this  giving  out  of  food 
is  not  gratuitous;  all  work  at  roads,  fields,  or 
house-building,  or  whatever  is  on  hand.  We  have 
not  an  idler  about  the  place,  not  one.  The  rule  is 
simple :  He  who  will  not  work  for  his  daily  maize 
stays  not  here. 

"  The  school  goes  on  steadily ;  and  the  daily 
meeting  with  the  people,  now  generally  held 
in  the  evening,  is  kept  up  regularly,  and  ap- 
parently with  interest.  The  meeting  is  fre- 
quently closed  by  one  of  Moody  and  San- 
key's  hymns ;  and  when  it  is  well  sung  in 
parts,  it  produces  a  very  marked  effect,  even 
though  they  understand  but  generally  what  the 
hymn  is  about  from  a  few  words  of  previous  ex- 
planation. I  have  great  faith  in  the  daily  relig- 
ious service.     Some  time  soon  it  will  bear  fruit. 

"  The  first  tusk  of  ivory  was  brought  into  the 
settlement  a  fortnight  ago,  and  bought  by  Mr. 
Cotterill  for  £14.  I  shall  not  mention  the  weight 
of  it,  but  simply  say  I  would  not  recommend  any 
one  to  come  here  to  purchase  ivory  at  present, 
with  the  view  of  making  a  profitable  business  of 
it.  Mr.  Cotterill  apparently  bought  it  simply  to 
commence  operations  and  to  encourage  the 
others. 


"  Our  first  visitor  from  the  outside  world  also 
arrived  at  Livingstonia  the  other  day.  He  comes 
straight  from  the  Punjaub,  where  he  has  been 
working  as  an  engineer  for  eight  years  on  the  Sir- 
hind  Canal,  and  having  a  furlough  of  two  years, 
and  having  also  been  in  Europe  lately,  and  wish- 
ing to  spend  a  part  of  his  furlough  in  some  use- 
ful way,  comes  here  and  asks  if  he  can  help  us, 
and  place  himself  as  a  volunteer  on  the  Living- 
stonia force  for  a  year ;  and  all  this  from  pure 
interest  in  the  enterprise  and  in  the  success  of 
missionary  work.  If  he  was  not  a  relative  of  my 
own,  and  also  a  James  Stewart,  I  should  be  dis- 
posed to  say  this  example  is  worth  following  by 
Christian  men  who  have  occasional  periods  of 
leisure.  He  is  a  vigorous  young  fellow  who  does 
not  care  for  spending  two  years  in  lounging 
about  Continental  picture-galleries  or  in  the  pleas- 
ant work  of  the  old  country,  but  who  believes  he 
can  be  of  use  elsewhere,  and  forthwith,  after  one 
or  two  letters  on  the  subject,  starts  off,  and  we 
have  him  here  among  us.  The  idea  is  a  new  one  : 
and  it  suggests  that  many  young  men  of  dif- 
ferent professions  and  occupations  might  aid  the 
mission  cause  temporarily  and  yet,  permanently 
benefit  it  by  a  similar  course  of  action.  His 
coming  has  already  benefited  us,  and  cleared  up 
our  misty  news  on  various  pieces  of  work  going 
on  or  to  be  attempted.  The  first  important  work, 
however,  that  he  will  undertake  will  be  a  survey 
of  a  road  over  the  Murchison  Cataracts.  We 
shall  probably  offer  this  survey,  when  completed, 
to  one  of  the  branches  of  this  great  International 
Society  inaugurated  by  the  King  of  the  Belgians; 
it  will  form  an  experimenlum  cruris  as  to  whether 
actual  work  is  intended  by  that  Society.  If  they 
do  not  aid  in  the  making  of  the  road,  we  shall 
just  have  to  make  it  in  an  inferior  style  our- 
selves. 

"We  also  got  here  last  week  our  first  im- 
portation of  cattle,  consisting  of  seven  cows, 
three  calves,  and  a  bull.  They  were  brought  450 
miles,  partly  by  land  and  partly  in  the  steamer, 
and  the  business  was  well  managed  by  Dr.  Laws. 
I  fear,  however,  we  have  tsetse  in  this  district, 
and,  if  so,  it  is  a  heavy  blow  to  us.  A  short 
time  will  make  the  matter  plain — a  few  months 
at  most.  No  worse  blow  to  our  peaceful  progress 
and  prosperity  could  occur  than  this. 

"  Since  writing  the  above  an  accident  to  a 
portion  of  the  machinery  of  the  steamer  has 
caused  delay  in  sending  this  off.  The  mischief  is 
now  quite  repaired. 

"  March  is  one  of  the  most  unhealthy  months 
here  (April  farther  down),   and  both  Dr.  Laws 


BRIEF  NOTES. 


95 


and  myself  have  Lad  pretty  severe  attacks,  and 
some  of  the  others  have  also  suffered.  The  last 
man  to  succumb,  Shadrach  Ngunana,  from  Love- 
dale,  who  has  never  yet  had  the  slightest  touch 
of  fever,  has  suffered  slightly.     Average  health 


among  the  others.  A  greater  variety  and  better 
food  would  prevent  that  anremia  that  seems  to 
be  the  worst  part  of  the  fever. 

"  James  Stewart." 
—  Geographical  Magazine. 


BEIEF    NOTES. 


The  Volcanoes  of  Iceland. — Prof.  Johnstrup, 
sent  to  Iceland  by  the  Danish  Government  for 
the  purpose  of  exploring  the  scene  of  the  recent 
volcanic  disturbances  in  that  island,  has  made 
his  official  report,  a  summary  of  which  we  find 
in  Nature.  He  first  examined  the  volcanoes  of 
the  Dyngju  Mountains.  These  mountains  are 
not  of  volcanic  origin.  The  Askja  Valley,  which 
the  Dyngju  Mountains  encircle,  was  evidently 
much  deeper  in  former  times  than  at  present: 
repeated  flows  of  lava  have  gradually  filled  it  up. 
Along  the  outer  edge  of  the  Dyngju  Mountains 
are  numerous  craters,  which  have  contributed 
most  of  the  lava  covering  the  plain  of  Odadah- 
rann.  In  the  neighborhood  of  the  newly-found 
craters  the  earth  is  covered,  to  the  distance  of 
over  a  mile,  with  the  bright-yellow  pumice-stone 
ejected  during  the  eruption  of  March  29,  1875. 
In  places  where  the  pumice-stone  is  several  feet 
in  depth,  it  covers  a  layer  of  snow  twenty-five 
feet  deep,  and  this  snow  has  ever  since  been  pro- 
tected from  the  effects  of  solar  heat  by  the  feeble 
conducting  power  of  its  covering.  Not  a  trace 
of  a  lava-stream  is  to  be  found.  At  present  the 
craters  are  to  be  regarded  as  gigantic  steam-es- 
cape tubes,  the  activity  of  which  will  continue 
for  an  uncertain  period  with  gradually-decreasing 
intensity.  The  volcanoes  in  Myvatns  Oraefi  pre 
sented  entirely  different  characteristics.  In  the 
centre  of  this  barren  plain,  thirty-five  miles  long, 
thirteen  wide,  a  volcano  suddenly  appeared  on 
February  18,  1875,  and  four  others  appeared  sub- 
sequently. They  emitted  a  mass  of  lava  esti- 
mated at  10,000,000,000  cubic  feet.  This  lava 
was  basaltic  and  viscous  when  emitted,  and  crys- 
tals of  chloride  of  ammonium  were  found  in  the 
vicinity  of  the  craters. 

Epidemics  of  Trichinosis. — Between  the  years 
1860  and  1875  there  appeared  in  the  kingdom  of 
Saxony  39  epidemics  of  trichinosis,  with  1,267 
cases  of  this  disease  and  19  deaths.  From  a  brief 
digest  of  the  statistics  of  trichinosis  published  in 
the  Medical  and  Surgical  Reporter  it  appears  that 


only  a  small  proportion  of  the  cases  arose  from 
eating  raw  pork,  while  one-half  were  produced  by 
eating  smoked  sausages,  which,  however,  caused 
only  two  deaths.  Among  340  persons  who  partook 
of  well-cooked  sausages  eight  died.  The  epidemic 
appeared  in  15  places  once,  in  seven  places  more 
than  once,  and  in  Dresden  seven  times.  In  most 
instances  the  number  of  persons  attacked  was 
small,  the  highest  numbers  being  209, 140,  and  199, 
and  only  one  death  resulted  from  the  total  of  548 
cases  occurring  in  these  epidemics.  In  several  of 
the  "epidemics"  (?)  the  number  of  cases  was  as 
low  as  from  one  to  seven.  The  mean  (32^)  of  the 
39  epidemics  was  scarcely  exceeded  in  one-fourth 
of  the  places,  while  in  three-quarters  of  the  other 
places  the  mean  was  not  reached.  In  many  in- 
stances the  number  of  cases  was  so  small  as  to 
show  that  a  trichinized  animal  may  be  entirely 
consumed  without  inducing  the  disease  at  all.  It 
is  calculated  that  100  trichinized  pigs  will  give 
rise  to  only  four  cases  of  the  disease  in  man. 

Mushroom- Culture  in  Japan. — The  Japanese 
mode  of  raising  mushrooms,  as  described  by  Mr. 
Robertson,  British  consul,  is  as  follows:  About 
the  beginning  of  autumn  the  trunk,  about  five 
or  six  inches  in  diameter,  of  the  shu  or  some 
other  tree  of  the  oak  kind,  is  selected  and  cut 
into  lengths  of  four  or  five  feet ;  each  piece  is 
then  split  lengthwise  into  four,  and  on  the  outer 
bark  slight  incisions  are  either  made  at  once  with 
a  hatchet,  or  the  cut  logs  are  left  till  the  follow7  - 
ing  spring,  and  then  deep  wounds,  seven  or  eight 
inches  long,  are  incised  in  them.  In  the  former 
case  the  logs  are  placed  in  a  wood  or  grove, 
where  they  can  get  the  full  benefit  of  the  air  and 
heat;  in  about  three  years  they  will  be  tolerably 
rotten  in  parts.  After  the  more  rotten  parts  are 
removed,  they  are  placed  against  a  rack  in  a  slant- 
ing position,  and  about  the  middle  of  the  ensuing 
spring  the  mushrooms  will  come  forth  in  abun- 
dance. They  are  then  gathered.  The  logs  are, 
however,  still  kept,  and  submitted  to  the  follow- 
ing process  :  Every  morning  they  are  put  in  water 


96 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


where  they  remain  till  afternoon,  when  they  are 
taken  out,  laid  lengthwise  on  the  ground,  and 
beaten  with  a  mallet.  They  are  then  ranged  on 
end,  slanting  as  before,  and  in  two  or  three  days 
mushrooms  again  make  their  appearance.  In 
Yen-shin  the  custom  is  to  beat  the  log  so  heavily 
that  the  wood  swells,  and  this  induces  mushrooms 
of  more  than  ordinary  size.  If  the  logs  are  beat- 
en gently,  a  great  number  of  small  mushrooms 
grow  up  in  succession. 

TJic  Period  of  Incubation  in  Hydrophobia. — 
An  apparently  well-proved  case  of  hydrophobia, 
occurring  five  years  after  the  lesion  which  occa- 
sioned it,  is  reported  for  the  Lancet  by  Dr.  Hulme. 
The  history  of  the  case  is  as  follows  :  A  muscular 
agricultural  laborer,  fifty-one  years  of  age,  was 
very  slightly  bitten  in  the  finger  by  a  mad  dog  in 
1872.  He  had  the  wound  thoroughly  cauterized, 
and,  as  his  health  seemed  in  no  way  affected,  soon 
forgot  all  about  it.  But  on  Monday,  June  25th, 
in  the  present  year,  he  complained  of  a  general 
malaise  and  pain  in  the  arm  to  which  the  bitten 
finger  belonged.  The  next  day  this  pain  had  so 
increased  that  he  gave  up  work,  and,  becoming 
alarmed,  sent  for  a  surgeon.  By  ten  o'clock  on 
the  Wednesday  the  man  began  to  be  plainly  hy- 
drophobic. When  the  physician  saw  him,  three 
hours  later,  he  was  sitting  up  in  bed  very  quietly, 
but  troubled  with  a  terrible  misgiving,  because 
he  felt  frightened  at  the  water  in  the  room.  This 
terror  manifested  itself  when  the  doctor  present- 
ed the  medicine  in  a  fluid  state.  The  glass  was 
nervously  seized,  and  the  act  of  swallowing  was 
attended  with  convulsive  shuddering.  The  pain 
soon  extended  from  the  arm  to  the  neck,  and 
thence  to  the  diaphragm.  Respiration  became 
difficult;  saliva  was  ejected  by  jerky  discharges, 
and  the  jaws  moved  as  though  the  patient  were 
hawking  and  spitting.  The  snap  and  the  bark 
soon  followed,  and  he  threw  himself  on  and  off 
the  bed  with  loud,  hoarse  screams.  In  his  few 
moments  of  consciousness  he  begged  his  friends 
not  to  approach  him,  lest  he  should  bite  them. 
The  incessant  paroxysms  soon  began  to  tell  upon 
his  frame,  and  the  feeling  of  suffocation  grew 
more  severe  each  moment.  Nervous  exhaustion 
came  on,  but  the  patient  never  reached  coma,  for 
eleven  hours  after  his  seizure  he  died  of  suffoca- 
tion. 

Nicotine- Poisoning. — There  occurred  recently, 
in  England,  a  case  of  fatal  poisoning  by  nicotine, 


which  is  worthy  of  record,  inasmuch  as  it  may 
serve  as  a  warning.  A  child,  three  years  of  age, 
was  permitted  by  his  father  to  use  an  old  wooden 
pipe  for  blowing  soap-bubbles.  The  child  was 
then  quite  well,  but  an  hour  later  became  sick, 
vomited  very  much,  and  afterward  became  very 
drowsy  and  pale.  The  next  day  he  was  worse  ; 
castor-oil  was  .administered,  and  he  was  put  to 
bed.  After  a  bad  night,  he  was  very  much  worse 
on  the  following  morning,  and  in  the  evening 
medical  advice  was  sought.  But  to  no  avail,  for 
the  child  grew  steadily  worse,  and  died  after  a 
few  hours.  The  physician  said  that  the  deceased 
was  suffering  from  narcotic  poison  when  he  first 
saw  him  ;  that  he  was  easily  aroused,  and  could 
answer  questions.  Two  drops  of  nicotine  suffice 
to  kill  an  adult  man,  and  one  drop  would  kill  a 
large  dog ;  while  a  very  small  quantity  would  be 
enough  to  kill  a  child. 

The  subject  of  forming  an  inland  sea  in  Al- 
geria is  still  warmly  discussed  in  France.  At  one 
of  the  late  meetings  of  the  Paris  Academy  of  Sci- 
ences, M.  Augot  said  that  the  dominant  winds  of 
Algeria  are  not  those  which  have  hitherto  been 
regarded  as  such,  namely,  southeast,  south,  and 
southwest,  and  are  not  such  as  would  produce  the 
good  effects  expected  from  this  artificial  sea.  The 
favorable  winds  are  to  the  others  in  the  propor- 
tion of  one  to  nine.  The  vapor  which  they  would 
carry  would  be  borne  almost  entirely  toward  the 
Sahara,  without  benefit  to  Algeria.  M.  Augot 
further  estimates,  from  observation,  that  the  aver- 
age layer  of  water  raised  by  evaporation  from  the 
proposed  inland  sea  in  twenty-four  hours,  would 
be  more  than  six  millimetres ;  this  would  require 
the  canal  of  communication  to  bring  daily  at 
least  78,000,000  cubic  metres  of  water  to  keep 
the  lake-level  constant. 

A  mercantile  firm  in  Aberdeen,  interested  in 
the  herring-fisheries  of  Scotland,  keep  a  number 
of  carrier-pigeons,  one  of  which  is  sent  out  with 
each  boat  in  the  afternoon,  and  liberated  the  fol- 
lowing morning,  to  carry  intelligence  to  head- 
quarters of  the  quantity  of  herrings  taken,  posi- 
tion of  the  boat,  direction  of  the  wind,  prospects 
of  the  return-journey,  etc.  If  a  boat's  crew  need 
assistance,  a  tug  can  be  at  once  dispatched  to 
their  aid.  Another  advantage  of  this  system  is, 
that  the  men  ashore  know  exactly  what  quantity 
of  herrings  are  to  be  landed,  and  so  can  make 
preparations  for  expediting  the  delivery  and  cur- 
ing  of  the  fish. 


SCIEXCE  A2TD  MAK 


97 


SCIENCE  AND  MAN.1 


Br  JOHN    TYNDALL,  F.  E.  S.,  LL.  D. 


AMAGN'ET  attracts  iron,  but,  when  we  ana- 
lyze the  effect,  we  learn  that  the  metal  is 
not  only  attracted  but  repelled,  the  final  approach 
to  the  magnet  being  due  to  the  difference  of  two 
unequal  and  opposing  forces.  Social  progress  is, 
for  the  most  part,  typified  by  this  duplex  or  polar 
action.  As  a  general  rule,  every  advance  is  bal- 
anced by  a  partial  retreat,  every  amelioration  is 
associated  more  or  less  with  deterioration.  No 
great  mechanical  improvement,  for  example,  is 
introduced  for  the  benefit  of  society  at  large  that 
does  not  bear  hardly  upon  individuals.  Science, 
like  other  things,  is  subject  to  the  operation  of 
this  polar  law,  what  is  good  for  it  under  one  as- 
pect being  bad  for  it  under  another. 

Science  demands  above  all  things  personal 
concentration.  Its  home  is  the  study  of  the 
mathematician,  the  quiet  laboratory  of  the  ex- 
perimenter, and  the  cabinet  of  the  meditative 
observer  of  Nature.  Different  atmospheres  are 
required  by  the  man  of  science,  as  such,  and 
the  man  of  action.  The  atmosphere,  for  ex- 
ample, which  vivifies  and  stimulates  your  ex- 
cellent representative,  Mr.  Chamberlain,  would 
be  death  to  me.  There  are  organisms  which 
flourish  in  oxygen — he  is  one  of  them.  There 
are  also  organisms  which  demand  for  their 
duller  lives  a  less  vitalizing  air — I  am  one  of 
these.  Thus  the  facilities  of  social  and  inter- 
national intercourse,  the  railway,  the  telegraph, 
and  the  post-office,  which  are  such  undoubted 
boons  to  the  man  of  action,  react  to  some  extent 
injuriously  on  the  man  of  science.  Their  ten- 
dency is  to  break  up  that  concentrativeness 
which,  as  I  have  said,  is  an  absolute  necessity  to 
the  scientific  investigator. 

The  men  who  have  most  profoundly  influ- 
enced the  world  from  the  scientific  side  have 
habitually  sought  isolation.  Faraday,  at  a  cer- 
tain period  of  his  career,  formally  renounced 
dining  out.  Darwin  lives  apart  from  the  bustle 
of  the  world  in  his  quiet  home  in  Kent.  Mayer 
and  Joule  dealt  in  unobtrusive  retirement  with 
the  weightiest  scientific  questions.  None  of  these 
men,  to  my  knowledge,  ever  became  Presidents 
of  the  Midland  Institute  or  of  the  British  Asso- 
ciation. They  could  not  fail  to  know  that  both 
positions  are  posts  of  honor,  but  they  would  also 

1  Presidential  address,  delivered  before  the  Birming-ham 
and  Midland  Institute,  October  1, 1S77;  with  additions. 

43 


know  that  such  positions  cannot  be  filled  with- 
out grave  disturbance  of  that  sequestered  peace 
which,  to  them,  is  a  first  condition  of  intellectual 
fife. 

There  is,  however,  one  motive-power  in  the 
world  which  no  man,  be  he  a  scientific  student 
or  otherwise,  can  afford  to  treat  with  indif- 
ference, and  that  is  the  cultivation  of  right 
relations  with  his  fellow-men — the  performance 
of  his  duty,  not  as  an  isolated  individual, 
but  as  a  member  of  society.  Such  duty  often 
requires  the  sacrifice  of  private  ease  to  the  pub- 
lic wishes,  if  not  to  the  public  good.  From 
this  point  of  view,  the  invitation  conveyed  to  me 
more  than  once  by  your  excellent  senior  vice- 
president  was  not  to  be  declined.  It  was  an  in- 
vitation written  with  the  earnestness  said  to  be 
characteristic  of  a  radical,  and  certainly  with  the 
courtesy  characteristic  of  a  gentleman.  It  quick- 
ened within  me  the  desire  to  meet,  in  a  cordial 
and  brotherly  spirit,  the  wish  of  an  institution  of 
which  not  only  Birmingham,  but  England,  may 
well  be  proud,  and  of  whose  friendliness  to  my- 
self I  had  agreeable  evidence  in  the  letters  of 
Mr.  Thackray  Bunce. 

To  look  at  his  picture  as  a  whole  a  painter 
requires  distance,  and  to  judge  of  the  total 
scientific  achievement  of  any  age  the  stand- 
point of  a  succeeding  age  is  desirable.  We 
may,  however,  transport  ourselves  in  idea  into 
the  future,  and  thus  obtain  a  grasp,  more  or 
less  complete,  of  the  science  of  our  time.  We 
sometimes  hear  it  decried  and  contrasted  to  its 
disadvantage  with  the  science  of  other  times.  I 
do  not  think  that  this  will  be  the  verdict  of  pos- 
terity. I  think,  on  the  contrary,  that  posterity 
will  acknowledge  that,  in  the  history  of  science, 
no  higher  samples  of  intellectual  conquest  are  re- 
corded than  those  which  this  age  has  made  its 
own.  One  of  the  most  salient  of  these  I  pro- 
pose, with  your  permission,  to  make  the  subject 
of  our  consideration  during  the  coming  hour. 

It  is  now  generally  admitted  that  the  man  of  to- 
day is  the  child  and  product  of  incalculable  ante- 
cedent time.  His  physical  and  intellectual  text- 
ures have  been  woven  for  him  during  his  passage 
through  phases  of  history  and  forms  of  existence 
which  lead  the  mind  back  to  an  abysmal  past. 
One  of  the  qualities  which  he  has  derived  from 
that  past  is  the  yearning  to  let  in  the  light  of 


9S 


TEE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTELY.— SUPPLEMENT 


principles  on  the  otherwise  bewildering  flux  of 
phenomena.  He  has  been  described  by  the  Ger- 
man Licktenberg  as  "  das  rastlose  Ursachenthicr  " 
— the  restless,  cause -seeking  animal,  in  whom 
facts  excite  a  kind  of  hunger  to  know  the  sources 
from  which  they  spring.  Never,  I  venture  to  say, 
in  the  history  of  the  world,  has  this  longing  been 
more  liberally  responded  to,  both  among  men  of 
science  and  the  general  public,  than  during  the  last 
thirty  or  forty  years.  I  say  "  the  general  public," 
because  it  is  a  feature  of  our  time  that  the  man 
of  science  no  longer  limits  his  labors  to  the  so- 
ciety of  his  colleagues  and  his  peers,  but  shares, 
as  far  as  it  is  possible  to  share,  with  the  world 
at  large  the  fruits  of  inquiry. 

The  celebrated  Robert  Boyle  regarded  the  uni- 
verse as  a  machine ;  Mr.  Carlyle  prefers  regarding 
it  as  a  tree.  He  loves  the  image  of  the  umbrageous 
Igdrasil  better  than  that  of  the  Strasburg  clock. 
A  machine  may  be  defined  as  an  organism  with  life 
and  direction  outside ;  a  tree  may  be  defined  as 
an  organism  with  life  and  direction  within.  In 
the  light  of  these  definitions,  I  close  with  the 
conception  of  Carlyle.  The  order  and  energy  of 
the  universe  I  hold  to  be  inherent,  and  not  im- 
posed from  without — the  expression  of  fixed  law 
and  not  of  arbitrary  will,  exercised  by  what  Car- 
lyle would  call  an  almighty  clock-maker.  But  the 
two  conceptions  are  not  so  much  opposed  to  each 
other,  after  all.  In  one  fundamental  particular 
they,  at  all  events,  agree.  They  equally  imply  the 
interdependence  and  harmonious  interaction  of 
parts,  and  the  subordination  of  the  individual 
powers  of  the  universal  organism  to  the  working 
of  the  whole. 

Never  were  the  harmony  and  interdependence 
just  referred  to  so  clearly  recognized  as  now. 
Our  insight  regarding  them  is  not  that  vague 
and  general  insight  to  which  our  fathers  had 
attained,  and  which,  in  early  times,  was  more 
frequently  affirmed  by  the  synthetic  poet  than 
by  the  scientific  man.  The  interdependence 
of  our  day  has  become  quantitative — expres- 
sible by  numbers — leading,  it  must  be  added, 
directly  into  that  inexorable  reign  of  law  which 
so  many  gentle  people  regard  with  dread.  In  the 
domain  now  under  review,  men  of  science  had 
first  to  work  their  way  from  darkness  into  twi- 
light, and  from  twilight  into  day.  There  is  no 
solution  of  continuity  in  science.  It  is  not  given 
to  any  man,  however  endowed,  to  rise  spontane- 
ously into  intellectual  splendor  without  the  par- 
entage of  antecedent  thought.  Great  discoveries 
grow.  Here,  as  in  other  cases,  we  have  first  the 
•seed,  then  the  ear,  then  the  full  corn  in  the  ear, 


the  last  member  of  the  series  implying  the  first. 
Thus,  as  regards  the  discovery  of  gravitation, 
with  which  the  name  of  Newton  is  identified,  no- 
tions more  or  less  clear  concerning  it  had  entered 
many  minds  before  Newton's  transcendent  mathe- 
matical genius  raised  it  to  the  level  of  a  demon- 
stration. The  whole  of  his  deductions,  moreover, 
rested  upon  the  inductions  of  Kepler.  Newton 
shot  beyond  his  predecessors,  but  his  thoughts 
were  rooted  in  their  thoughts,  and  a  just  distribu- 
tion of  merit  would  assign  to  them  a  fair  portion 
of  the  honor  of  discovery. 

Scientific  theories  sometimes  float  like  rumors 
in  the  air  before  they  receive  definite  expression. 
The  doom  of  a  doctrine  is  often  practically 
sealed,  and  the  truth  of  one  is  often  practically 
accepted,  long  prior  to  the  theoretic  demon- 
stration of  either  the  error  or  the  truth.  Per- 
petual motion,  for  example,  was  discarded  before 
it  was  proved  to  be  in  opposition  to  natural  law  ; 
and,  as  regards  the  connection  and  interaction  of 
natural  forces,  prenatal  intimations  of  modern 
discoveries  and  results  are  strewed  through  scien- 
tific literature. 

Confining  ourselves  to  recent  times,  Dr.  Ingleby 
has  pointed  out  to  me  some  singularly  sagacious 
remarks  bearing  upon  this  question,  which  were 
published  by  an  anonymous  writer  in  1820.  Ro- 
get's  penetration  was  conspicuous  in  1829.  Mohr 
had  grasped,  in  1S37,  some  deep-lying  truth.  The 
writings  of  Faraday  furnish  frequent  illustrations 
of  his  profound  belief  in  the  unity  of  Nature. 
"I  have  long,"  he  writes,  in  1845,  "held  an 
opinion  almost  amounting  to  conviction,  in  com- 
mon, I  believe,  with  other  lovers  of  natural 
knowledge,  that  the  various  forms  under  which 
the  forces  of  matter  are  made  manifest  have  one 
common  origin ;  or,  in  other  words,  are  so  di- 
rectly related  and  mutually  dependent,  that  they 
are  convertible,  as  it  were,  one  into  another,  and 
possess  equivalence  of  power  in  their  action." 
His  own  researches  on  magneto-electricity,  on 
electro-chemistry,  and  on  the  "  magnetization  of 
light,"  led  him  directly  to  this  belief.  At  an 
early  date  Mr.  Justice  Grove  made  his  mark  upon 
this  question.  Colding,  though  starting  from  a 
metaphysical  basis,  grasped  eventually  the  re- 
lation between  heat  and  mechanical  work,  and 
sought  to  determine  it  experimentally.  And 
here  let  me  say  that  to  him  who  has  only  the 
truth  at  heart,  and  who  in  his  dealings  with 
scientific  history  keeps  his  soul  unwarped  by 
envy,  hatred,  or  malice,  personal  or  national,  every 
fresh  accession  to  historic  knowledge  must  be 
welcome.     For  every  new-comer  of  proved  merit, 


SCIENCE  AND  MAN 


99 


more  especially  if  that  merit  should  have  been 
previously  overlooked,  he  makes  ready  room  in 
his  recognition  or  his  reverence.  But  no  retro- 
spect of  scientific  literature  has  as  yet  brought  to 
light  a  claim  which  can  sensibly  affect  the  posi- 
tions accorded  to  two  great  Path-hewers,  as  the 
Germans  call  them,  whose  names  in  relation  to 
this  subject  are  linked  in  indissoluble  association. 
These  names  are  Julius  Robert  Mayer  and  James 
Prescott  Joule. 

In  his  essay  on  "  Circles,"  Mr.  Emerson,  if  I  re- 
member rightly,  pictured  intellectual  progress  as 
rhythmic.  At  a  given  moment  knowledge  is  sur- 
rounded by  a  barrier  which  marks  its  limit.  It 
gradually  gathers  clearness  and  strength,  until,  by- 
and-by,  some  thinker  of  exceptional  power  bursts 
the  barrier  and  wins  a  wider  circle,  within  which 
thought  once  more  intrenches  itself.  But  the  inter- 
nal force  again  accumulates,  the  new  barrier  is  in 
its  turn  broken,  and  the  mind  finds  itself  surround- 
ed by  a  still  wider  horizon.  Thus,  according  to 
Emerson,  knowledge  spreads  by  intermittent  vic- 
tories instead  of  progressing  at  a  uniform  rate. 

When  Dr.  Joule  first  proved  that  a  weight  of 
one  pound,  falling  through  a  height  of  V72  feet, 
generated  an  amount  of  heat  competent  to  warm 
a  pound  of  water  one  degree  Fahrenheit,  and  that 
in  lifting  the  weight  so  much  heat  exactly  disap- 
peared, he  broke  an  Emersonian  "  circle,"  re- 
leasing by  the  act  an  amount  of  scientific  energy 
which  rapidly  overran  a  vast  domain.  Helmholtz, 
Clausius,  Thomson,  Rankine,  Regnault,  Woods, 
Favre,  and  other  illustrious  names,  are  associated 
with  the  conquests  since  achieved  and  embodied 
in  the  great  doctrine  known  as  the  "  Conservation 
of  Energy."  This  doctrine  recognizes  in  the 
material  universe  a  constant  sum  of  power  made 
up  of  items  among  which  the  most  protean  fluc- 
tuations are  incessantly  going  on.  It  is  as  if  the 
body  of  Nature  were  alive,  the  thrill  and  inter- 
change of  its  energies  resembling  those  of  an 
organism.  The  parts  of  the  "  stupendous  whole  " 
shift  and  change,  augment  and  diminish,  appear 
and  disappear,  while  the  total  of  which  they  are 
the  parts  remains  quantitatively  immutable — im- 
mutable, because  when  change  occurs  it  is  always 
polar — plus  accompanies  minus,  gain  accompanies 
loss,  no  item  varying  in  the  slightest  degree  with- 
out an  absolutely  equal  change  of  some  other 
item  in  the  opposite  direction. 

The  sun  warms  the  tropical  ocean,  converting  a 
portion  of  its  liquid  into  vapor,  which  rises  in  the 
air  and  is  recondensed  on  mountain-heights,  re- 
turning in  rivers  to  the  ocean  from  which  it  came. 
Up  to  the  point  where  condensation  begins  an 


amount  of  heat  exactly  equivalent  to  the  molecular 
work  of  vaporization  and  the  mechanical  work  of 
lifting  the  vapor  to  the  mountain-tops  has  disap- 
peared from  the  universe.  What  is  the  gain  corre- 
sponding to  this  loss  ?  It  will  seem  when  mentioned 
to  be  expressed  in  a  foreign  currency.  The  loss 
is  a  loss  of  heat ;  the  gain  is  a  gain  of  distance, 
both  as  regards  masses  and  molecules.  Water 
which  was  formerly  at  the  sea-level  has  been 
lifted  to  a  position  from  which  it  can  fall ;  mole- 
cules which  had  been  locked  together  as  a 
liquid  are  now  separate  as  vapor  which  can  re- 
condense.  After  condensation  gravity  comes  in- 
to effectual  play,  pulling  the  showers  down  upon 
the  hills,  and  the  rivers  thus  created  through 
their  gorges  to  the  sea.  Every  rain-drop  which 
smites  the  mountain  produces  its  definite  amount 
of  heat ;  every  river  in  its  course  develops  heat 
by  the  clash  of  its  cataracts  and  the  friction  of 
its  bed.  In  the  act  of  condensation,  moreover, 
the  molecular  work  of  vaporization  is  accurately 
reversed.  Compare,  then,  the  primitive  loss  of 
solar  warmth  with  the  heat  generated  by  the  con- 
densation of  the  vapor,  and  by  the  subsequent 
fall  of  the  water  from  cloud  to  sea.  They  are 
mathematically  equal  to  each  other.  No  particle 
of  vapor  was  formed  and  lifted  without  being 
paid  for  in  the  currency  of  solar  heat ;  no  parti- 
cle returns  as  water  to  the  sea  without  the  exact 
quantitative  restitution  of  that  heat.  There  is 
nothing  gratuitous  in  physical  Nature,  no  expen- 
diture without  equivalent  gain,  no  gain  without 
equivalent  expenditure.  With  inexorable  con- 
stancy the  one  accompanies  the  other,  leaving  no 
nook  or  crevice  between  them  for  spontaneity  to 
mingle  with  the  pure  and  necessary  play  of  natu- 
ral force.  Has  this  uniformity  of  Nature  ever  been 
broken?  The  reply  is,  "Not  to  the  knowledge 
of  Science." 

What  has  been  here  stated  regarding  heat 
and  gravity  applies  to  the  whole  of  inorganic 
Nature.  Let  us  take  an  illustration  from  chem- 
istry. The  metal  zinc  may  be  burned  in  oxy- 
gen, a  perfectly  definite  amount  of  heat  being 
produced  by  the  combustion  of  a  given  weight  of 
the  metal.  But  zinc  may  also  be  burned  in  a 
liquid  which  contains  a  supply  of  oxygen — in 
water,  for  example.  It  does  not  in  this  case  pro- 
duce flame  or  fire,  but  it  does  produce  heat  which 
is  capable  of  accurate  measurement.  But  the 
heat  of  zinc  burned  in  water  falls  short  of  that 
produced  in  pure  oxygen,  the  reason  being  that 
to  obtain  its  oxygen  from  the  water  the  zinc  must 
first  dislodge  the  hydrogen.  It  is  in  the  per- 
formance of  this  molecular  work  that  the  missing 


100 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


heat  is  absorbed.  Mix  the  liberated  hydrogen  f 
with  the  oxygen  and  cause  them  to  recombine, 
the  heat  developed  is  mathematically  equal  to 
the  missing  heat.  Thus  in  pulling  the  oxygen 
and  hydrogen  asunder  an  amount  of  heat  is  con- 
sumed which  is  accurately  restored  by  their  re- 
union. 

.This  leads  up  to  a  few  remarks  upon  the  vol- 
taic battery.  It  is  not  my  design  to  dwell  upon 
the  technic  features  of  this  wonderful  instru- 
ment, but  simply  by  means  of  it  to  show  what 
varying  shapes  a  given  amount  of  energy  can 
assume  while  maintaining  unvarying  quantitative 
stability.  When  that  form  of  power  which  we 
call  an  electric  current  passes  through  Grove's 
battery,  zinc  is  consumed  in  acidulated  water,  and 
in  the  battery  we  are  able  so  to  arrange  matters 
that  when  no  current  passes  no  zinc  shall  be  con- 
sumed. Now  the  current,  whatever  it  may  be, 
possesses  the  power  of  generating  heat  outside 
the  battery.  We  can  fuse  with  it  iridium,  the 
most  refractory  of  metals,  or  we  can  produce  with 
it  the  dazzling  electric  light,  and  that  at  any  ter- 
restrial distance  from  the  battery  itself. 

We  will  now,  however,  content  ourselves  with 
causing  the  current  to  raise  a  given  length  of  plat- 
inum wire,  first  to  a  blood-heat,  then  to  redness, 
and  finally  to  a  white  heat.  The  heat  under  these 
circumstances  generated  in  the  battery  by  the 
combustion  of  a  fixed  quantity  of  zinc  is  no  longer 
constant,  but  it  varies  inversely  as  the  heat  gen- 
erated outside.  If  the  outside  heat  be  nil,  the  in- 
side heat  is  a  maximum  ;  if  the  external  wire  be 
raised  to  a  blood-heat,  the  internal  heat  falls 
slightly  short  of  the  maximum.  If  the  wire  be 
rendered  red-hot,  the  quantity  of  missing  heat 
within  the  battery  is  greater,  and,  if  the  external 
wire  be  rendered  white-hot,  the  defect  is  greater 
still.  Add  together  the  internal  and  external 
heat  produced  by  the  combustion  of  a  given 
weight  of  zinc,  and  you  have  an  absolutely  con- 
stant total.  The  heat  generated  without  is  so 
much  lost  within,  the  heat  generated  within  is 
so  much  lost  without,  the  polar  changes  already 
adverted  to  coming  here  conspicuously  into  play. 
Thus,  in  a  variety  of  ways,  we  can  distribute  the 
items  of  a  never-varying  sum,  but  even  the  sub- 
tile agency  of  the  electric  current  places  no  cre- 
ative power  in  our  hands. 

Instead  of  generating  external  heat  we  may 
cause  the  current  to  effect  chemical  decomposition 
at  a  distance  from  the  battery.  Let  it,  for  exam- 
ple, decompose  water  into  oxygen  and  hydrogen. 
The  heat  generated  in  the  battery  under  these  cir- 
cumstances by  the  combustion  of  a  given  weight 


of  zinc  falls  short  of  what  is  produced  when  there 
is  no  decomposition.  How  far  short  ?  The  ques- 
tion admits  of  a  perfectly  exact  answer.  When 
the  oxygen  and  hydrogen  recombine,  the  heat  ab- 
sorbed in  the  decomposition  is  accurately  restored, 
and  it  is  exactly  equal  in  amount  to  that  missing 
in  the  battery.  We  may,  if  we  like,  bottle  up  the 
gases,  carry  in  this  form  the  heat  of  the  battery, 
to  the  polar  regions,  and  liberate  it  there.  The 
battery,  in  fact,  is  a  hearth  on  which  fuel  is  con- 
sumed, but  the  heat  of  the  combustion,  instead 
of  being  confined  in  the  usual  manner  to  the 
hearth  itself,  may  be  first  liberated  at  the  other 
side  of  the  world. 

And  here  we  are  able  to  solve  an  enigma  which 
long  perplexed  scientific  men,  and  which  could 
not  be  solved  until  the  bearing  of  the  mechanical 
theory  of  heat  upon  the  phenomena  of  the  vol- 
taic battery  was  understood.  The  puzzle  was, 
that  a  single  cell  could  not  decompose  water. 
The  reason  is  now  plain  enough.  The  solution 
of  an  equivalent  of  zinc  in  a  single  cell  develops 
not  much  more  than  half  the  amount  of  heat  re- 
quired to  decompose  an  equivalent  of  water,  and 
the  single  cell  cannot  cede  an  amount  of  force 
which  it  does  not  possess.  But  by  forming  a 
battery  of  two  cells,  instead  of  one,  we  develop 
an  amount  of  heat  slightly  in  excess  of  that 
needed  for  the  decomposition  of  the  water.  The 
two-celled  battery  is  therefore  rich  enough  to 
pay  for  that  decomposition,  and  to  maintain  the 
excess  referred  to  within  its  own  cells. 

Similar  reflections  apply  to  the  thermo-elec- 
tric pile,  an  instrument  usually  composed  of  small 
bars  of  bismuth  and  antimony  soldered  alter- 
nately together.  The  electric  current  is  here 
evoked  by  warming  the  soldered  junctions  of  one 
face  of  the  pile.  Like  the  Voltaic  current,  the 
thermo-electric  current  can  heat  wires,  produce 
decomposition,  magnetize  iron,  and  deflect  a  mag- 
netic needle  at  any  distance  from  its  origin.  You 
will  be  disposed,  and  rightly  disposed,  to  refer 
those  distant  manifestations  of  power  to  the  heat 
communicated  to  the  face  of  the  pile,  but  the 
case  is  worthy  of  closer  examination.  In  1826 
Thomas  Seebeck  discovered  thermo-electricity, 
and  six  years  subsequently  Peltier  made  an  ob- 
servation which  comes  with  singular  felicity  to 
our  aid  in  determining  the  material  used  up  in 
the  formation  of  the  thermo-electric  current.  He 
found  that  when  a  weak  extraneous  current  was 
sent  from  antimony  to  bismuth,  the  junction  of 
the  two  metals  was  always  heated,  but  that  when 
the  direction  was  from  bismuth  to  antimony,  the 
junction  was  chilled.     Now,  the  current  in  the 


SCIESCE  AXD  MAX. 


101 


thernic-pile  itself  is  always  from  bismuth  to  an- 
timony, across  the  heated  junction — a  direction 
in  which  it  cannot  possibly  establish  itself  with- 
out consuming  the  heat  imparted  to  the  junction. 
This  heat  is  the  nutriment  of  the  current.  Thus 
the  heat  generated  by  the  thermo-current  in  a 
distant  wire  is  simply  that  originally  imparted  to 
the  pile,  which  has  been  first  transmuted  into 
electricity,  and  then  retransmuted  into  its  first 
form  at  a  distance  from  its  origin.  As  water  in 
a  state  of  vapor  passes  from  a  boiler  to  a  distant 
condenser,  and  there  assumes  its  primitive  form 
without  gain  or  loss,  so  the  heat  communicated 
to  the  thermo-pile  distills  into  the  subtiler  elec- 
tric current,  which  is,  as  it  were,  recondensed  into 
heat  in  the  distant  platinum  wire. 

In  my  youth  I  thought  an  electro-magnetic 
engine  which  was  shown  to  me  a  veritable  per- 
petual motion — a  machine,  that  is  to  say,  which 
performed  work  without  the  expenditure  of 
power.  Let  us  consider  the  action  of  such  a 
machine.  Suppose  it  to  be  employed  to  pump 
water  from  a  lower  to  a  higher  level.  On  ex- 
amining the  battery  which  works  the  engine  we 
find  that  the  zinc  consumed  does  not  yield  its 
full  amount  of  heat.  The  quantity  of  heat  thus 
missing  within  is  the  exact  thermal  equivalent 
of  the  mechanical  work  performed  without.  Let 
the  water  fall  again  to  a  lower  level,  it  is  warmed 
by  the  fall.  Add  the  heat  thus  produced  to 
that  generated  by  the  friction,  mechanical  and 
magnetical,  of  the  engine,  we  thus  obtain  the 
precise  amount  of  heat  missing  in  the  battery. 
All  the  effects  obtained  from  the  machine  are 
thus  strictly  paid  for;  this  "payment  for  re- 
sults "  being,  I  would  repeat,  the  inexorable  meth- 
od of  Nature. 

No  engine,  however  subtly  devised,  can  evade 
this  law  of  equivalence,  or  perform  on  its  own  ac- 
count the  smallest  modicum  of  work.  The  ma- 
chine distributes,  but  it  cannot  create.  Is  the  ani- 
mal body,  then,  to  be  classed  among  machines  ? 
When  I  lift  a  weight,  or  throw  a  stone,  or  climb  a 
mountain,  or  wrestle  with  my  comrade,  am  I  not 
conscious  of  actually  creating  and  expending 
force?  Let  us  look  to  the  antecedents  of  this 
force.  We  derive  the  muscle  and  fat  of  our 
bodies  from  what  we  eat.  Animal  heat  you 
know  to  be  due  to  the  slow  combustion  of  this 
fuel.  My  arm  is  now  inactive,  and  the  ordinary 
slow  combustion  of  my  blood  and  tissue  is 
going  on.  For  every  grain  of  fuel  thus  burned 
a  perfectly  definite  amount  of  heat  has  bsen  pro- 
duced. I  now  contract  my  biceps  muscle  with- 
out causing  it  to  perform  external  work.     The 


combustion  is  quickened  and  the  heat  is  increased, 
this  additional  lieat  being  liberated  in  the  muscle 
itself.  I  lay  hold  of  a  fifty-six-pound  weight,  and 
by  the  contraction  of  my  biceps  lift  it  through 
the  vertical  space  of  a  foot.  The  blood  and  tis- 
sue consumed  during  this  contraction  have  not 
developed  in  the  muscle  their  due  amount  of  heat. 
A  quantity  of  heat  is  at  this  moment  missing  in 
my  muscle  which  would  raise  the  temperature  of 
an  ounce  of  water  somewhat  more  than  one  degree 
Fahrenheit.  1  liberate  the  weight,  it  falls  to  the 
earth,  and  by  its  collision  generates  the  precise 
amount  of  heat  missing  in  the  muscle.  My  mus- 
cular heat  is  thus  transferred  from  its  local  hearth 
to  external  space.  The  fuel  is  consumed  in  my 
body,  but  the  heat  of  combustion  is  produced 
outside  my  body.  The  case  is  substantially  the 
same  as  that  of  the  voltaic  battery  when  it  per- 
forms external  work  or  produces  external  heat. 
All  this  points  to  the  conclusion  that  the  force  we 
employ  in  muscular  exertion  is  the  force  of  burn- 
ing fuel  and  not  of  creative  will.  In  the  light 
of  these  facts  the  body  is  seen  to  be  as  incapable 
of  generating  energy  without  expenditure  as  the 
solids  and  liquids  of  the  voltaic  battery.  The 
body,  in  other  words,  falls  into  the  category  of 
machines. 

We  can  do  with  the  body  all  that  we  have 
already  done  with  the  battery — heat  platinum 
wires,  decompose  water,  magnetize  iron,  and 
deflect  a  magnetic  needle.  The  combustion  of 
muscle  may  be  made  to  produce  all  these  effects, 
as  the  combustion  of  zinc  may  be  caused  to  pro- 
duce them.  By  turning  the  handle  of  a  magneto- 
electric  machine,  a  coil  of  wire  may  be  caused  to 
rotate  between  the  poles  of  a  magnet.  As  long 
as  the  two  ends  of  the  coil  are  unconnected  we 
have  simply  to  overcome  the  ordinary  inertia  and 
friction  of  the  machine  in  turning  the  handle. 
But  the  moment  the  two  ends  of  the  coil  are 
united  by  a  thin  platinum  wire  a  sudden  addition 
of  labor  is  thrown  upon  the  turning  arm.  When 
the  necessary  labor  is  expended,  its  equivalent 
immediately  appears.  The  platinum  wire  glows. 
You  can  readily  maintain  it  at  a  white  heat  or 
even  fuse  it.  This  is  a  very  remarkable  result. 
From  the.  muscles  of  the  arm,  with  a  temperature 
of  100°,  we  extract  the  temperature  of  molten 
platinum,  which  is  many  thousand  degrees.  The 
miracle  here  is  the  reverse  of  that  of  the  burning 
bush  mentioned  in  Exodus.  There  the  bush 
burned  but  was  not  consumed  :  here  the  body  is 
consumed  but  does  not  burn.  The  similarity  of 
the  action  with  that  of  the  voltaic  battery  when 
it  heats  an  external  wire  is  too  obvious  to  need 


102 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


pointing  out.  When  the  machine  is  used  to  de- 
compose water,  the  heat  of  the  muscle,  like  that 
of  the  battery,  is  consumed  in  molecular  work, 
being  fully  restored  when  the  gases  recombine. 
As  before,  also,  the  transmuted  heat  of  the  mus- 
cles may  be  bottled  up,  carried  to  the  polar  re- 
gions, and  there  restored  to  its  pristine  form. 

The  matter  of  the  human  body  is  the  same  as 
that  of  the  world  around  us,  and  here  we  find  the 
forces  of  the  human  body  identical  with  those  of 
inorganic  Nature.  Just  as  little  as  the  voltaic 
battery  is  the  animal  body  a  creator  of  force.  It 
is  an  apparatus  exquisite  and  effectual  beyond  all 
others  in  transforming  and  distributing  the  ener- 
gy with  which  it  is  supplied,  but  it  possesses  no 
creative  power.  Compared  with  the  notions  pre- 
viously entertained  regarding  the  play  of  "  vital 
force,"  this  is  a  great  result.  The  problem  of 
vital  dynamics  has  been  described  by  a  competent 
authority  as  "  the  grandest  of  all."  I  subscribe 
to  this  opinion,  and  honor  correspondingly  the 
man  who  first  successfully  grappled  with  the  prob- 
lem. He  was  no  pope  in  the  sense  of  being  in- 
fallible, but  he  was  a  man  of  genius  whose  work 
will  be  held  in  honor  as  long  as  science  endures. 
I  have  already  named  him  in  connection  with  our 
illustrious  countryman  Dr.  Joule.  Other  eminent 
men  took  up  this  subject  subsequently  and  inde- 
pendently; but  all  that  has  been  done  hitherto 
enhances,  instead  of  diminishing,  the  merits  of 
Dr.  Mayer. 

Consider  the  vigor  of  his  reasoning :  "  Be- 
yond the  power  of  generating  internal  heat,  the 
animal  organism  can  generate  heat  external  to 
itself.  A  blacksmith  by  hammering  can  warm  a 
nail,  and  a  savage  by  friction  can  heat  wood  to 
its  point  of  ignition.  Unless,  then,  we  abandon 
the  physiological  axiom  that  the  animal  body 
cannot  create  heat  out  of  nothing,  we  are  driven 
to  the  conclusion  that  it  is  the  total  heat,  within 
and  without,  that  ought  to  be  regarded  as  the 
real  calorific  effect  of  the  oxidation  within  the 
body."  Mayer,  however,  not  only  states  the 
principle,  but  illustrates  numerically  the  transfer 
of  muscular  heat  to  external  space.  A  bowler 
who  imparts  a  velocity  of  thirty  feet  to  an  eight- 
pound  ball  consumes  in  the  act  one-tenth  of  a 
grain  of  carbon.  The  heat  of  the  muscle  is  here 
distributed  over  the  track  of  the  ball,  being  de- 
veloped there  by  mechanical  friction.  A  man 
weighing  one  hundred  and  fifty  pounds  consumes 
in  lifting  his  own  body  to  a  height  of  eight  feet 
the  heat  of  a  grain  of  carbon.  Jumping  from  this 
height  the  heat  is  restored.  The  consumption  of 
two  ounces  four  drachms  twenty  grains  of  carbon 


would  place  the  same  man  on  the  summit  of  a 
mountain  10,000  feet  high.  In  descending  the 
mountain  an  amount  of  heat  equal  to  that  pro- 
duced by  the  combustion  of  the  foregoing  amount 
of  carbon  is  restored.  The  muscles  of  a  laborer 
whose  weight  is  one  hundred  and  fifty  pounds 
weigh  sixty-four  pounds.  When  dried  they  are 
reduced  to  fifteen  pounds.  Were  the  oxidation 
corresponding  to  a  day-laborer's  ordinary  work 
exerted  on  the  muscles  alone,  they  would  be  wholly 
consumed  in  eighty  days.  Were  the  oxidation 
necessary  to  sustain  the  heart's  action  concen- 
trated on  the  heart  itself,  it  would  be  consumed 
in  eight  days.  And  if  we  confine  our  attention 
to  the  two  ventricles,  their  action  would  consume 
the  associated  muscular  tissue  in  three  days  and 
a  half.  With  a  fullness  and  precision  of  which 
this  is  but  a  sample  did  Mayer,  between  1842 
and  1845,  deal  with  the  great  question  of  vital 
dynamics. 

In  direct  opposition,  moreover,  to  the  fore- 
most scientific  authorities  of  that  day,  with  Lie- 
big  at  their  head,  this  solitary  Heilbronn  worker 
was  led  by  his  calculations  to  maintain  that  the 
muscles,  in  the  main,  played  the  part  of  machin- 
ery, converting  the  fat,  which  had  been  previous- 
ly considered  a  mere  heat-producer,  into  the  mo- 
tive power  of  the  organism.  Mayer's  prevision 
has  been  justified  by  events,  for  the  scientific 
world  is  now  upon  his  side. 

We  place,  then,  food  in  our  stomachs  as  so 
much  combustible  matter.  It  is  first  dissolved 
by  purely  chemical  processes,  and  the  nutritive 
fluid  is  poured  into  the  blood.  Here  it  comes 
into  contact  with  atmospheric  oxygen  admitted 
by  the  lungs.  It  unites  with  the  oxygen  as  wood 
or  coal  might  unite  with  it  in  a  furnace.  The 
matter-products  of  the  union,  if  I  may  use  the 
term,  are  the  same  in  both  cases — viz.,  carbonic 
acid  and  water.  The  force-products  are  also  the 
same — heat  within  the  body,  or  heat  and  work 
outside  the  body.  Thus  far  every  action  of  the 
organism  belongs  to  the  domain  either  of  physics 
or  of  chemistry.  But  you  saw  me  contract  the 
muscle  of  my  arm.  What  enabled  me  to  do  so  ? 
Was  it  or  was  it  not  the  direct  action  of  my  will  ? 
The  answer  is,  the  action  of  the  will  is  mediate, 
not  direct.  Over  and  above  the  muscles  the  hu- 
man organism  is  provided  with  long,  whitish  fila- 
ments of  medullary  matter,  which  issue  from  the 
spinal  column,  being  connected  by  it  on  the  one 
side  with  the  brain,  and  on  the  other  side  losing 
themselves  in  the  muscles.  Those  filaments  or 
cords  are  the  nerves,  which  you  know  are  divided 
into  two  kinds,  sensor  and  motor,  or,  if  you  like 


SCIENCE  AND  MAN. 


103 


the  terms  better,  afferent  and  efferent  nerves. 
The  former  carry  impressions  from  the  external 
world  to  the  brain  ;  the  latter  convey  the  behests 
of  the  brain  to  the  muscles.  Here,  as  elsewhere, 
we  find  ourselves  aided  by  the  sagacity  of  Mayer, 
who  was  the  first  clearly  to  formulate  the  part 
played  by  the  nerves  in  the  organism.  Mayer 
saw  that  neither  nerves  nor  brain,  nor  both  to- 
gether, possessed  the  energy  necessary  to  animal 
motion ;  but  he  also  saw  that  the  nerve  could  lift 
a  latch  and  open  a  door  by  which  floods  of  energy 
are  let  loose.  "As  an  engineer,"  he  says  with 
admirable  lucidity,  "  by  the  motion  of  his  finger 
in  opening  a  valve  or  loosening  a  detent  can  lib- 
erate an  amount  of  mechanical  energy  almost  in- 
finite compared  with  its  exciting  cause,  so  the 
nerves,  acting  on  the  muscles,  can  unlock  an 
amount  of  power  out  of  all  proportion  to  the  work 
done  by  the  nerves  themselves."  The  nerves, 
according  to  Mayer,  pull  the  trigger,  but  the  gun- 
powder which  they  ignite  is  stored  in  the  muscles. 
This  is  the  view  now  universally  entertained. 

The  quickness  of  thought  has  passed  into  a 
proverb,  and  the  notion  that  any  measurable  time 
elapsed  between  the  infliction  of  a  wound  and  the 
feeling  of  the  injury  would  have  been  rejected 
as  preposterous  thirty  years  ago.  Nervous  im- 
pressions, notwithstanding  the  results  of  Haller, 
were  thought  to  be  transmitted,  if  not  instan- 
taneously, at  all  events  with  the  rapidity  of  elec- 
tricity. Hence,  when  Hclmholtz,  in  1851,  af- 
firmed, as  the  result  of  experiment,  nervous 
transmission  to  be  a  comparatively  sluggish  pro- 
cess, very  few  believed  him.  His  experiments 
may  now  be  made  in  the  lecture-room.  Sound  in 
air  moves  at  the  rate  of  1,100  feet  a  second  ; 
sound  in  water  moves  at  the  rate  of  5,000  feet  a 
second;  light  in  ether  moves  at  the  rate  of  186,- 
000  miles  a  second,  and  electricity  in  free  wires 
moves  probably  at  the  same  rate.  But  the  nerves 
transmit  their  messages  at  the  rate  of  only  70 
feet  a  second,  a  progress  which  in  these  quick 
times  might  well  be  regarded  as  intolerably 
slow. 

Tour  townsman,  Mr.  Gore,  has  produced  by 
electrolysis  a  kind  of  antimony  which  exhibits 
an  action  strikingly  analogous  to  that  of  nervous 
propagation.  A  rod  of  this  antimony  is  in  such 
a  molecular  condition  that,  when  you  scratch  or 
heat  one  end  of  the  rod,  the  disturbance  propa- 
gates itself  before  your  eyes  to  the  other  end,  the 
onward  march  of  the  disturbance  being  announced 
by  the  development  of  heat  and  fumes  along  the 
line  of  propagation.  In  some  such  way  the  mole- 
cules of  the  nerves  are  successively  overthrown  ; 


and  if  Mr.  Gore  could  only  devise  some  means  of 
winding  up  his  exhausted  antimony,  as  the  nu- 
tritive blood  winds  up  exhausted  nerves,  the  com- 
parison would  be  complete.  The  subject  may  be 
summed  up,  as  Du  Bois-Reymond  has  summed  it 
up,  by  reference  to  the  case  of  a  whale  struck  by 
a  harpoon  in  the  tail.  If  the  animal  were  seventy 
feet  long,  a  second  would  elapse  before  the  dis- 
turbance could  reach  the  brain.  But  the  im- 
pression after  its  arrival  has  to  diffuse  itself  and 
throw  the  brain  into  the  molecular  condition 
necessary  to  consciousness.  Then,  and  not  till 
then,  the  command  to  the  tail  to  defend  itself  is 
shot  through  the  motor  nerves.  Another  second 
must  elapse  before  the  command  can  reach  the  tail, 
so  that  more  than  two  seconds  transpire  between 
the  infliction  of  the  wound  and  the  muscular  re- 
sponse of  the  part  wounded.  The  interval  required 
for  the  kindling  of  consciousness  would  probably 
more  than  suffice  for  the  destruction  of  the  brain 
by  lightning  or  even  by  a  rifle-bullet.  Before 
the  organ  can  arrange  itself,  it  may,  therefore,  be 
destroyed,  and  in  such  a  case  we  may  safely  con- 
clude that  death  is  painless. 

The  experiences  of  common  life  supply  us 
with  copious  instances  of  the  liberation  of  vast 
stores  of  muscular  power  by  an  infinitesimal 
"priming"  of  the  muscles  by  the  nerves.  We 
all  know  the  effect  produced  on  a  "nervous" 
organization  by  a  slight  sound  which  causes 
affright.  An  aerial  wave  the  energy  of  which 
would  not  reach  a  minute  fraction  of  that 
necessary  to  raise  the  thousandth  of  a  grain 
through  the  thousandth  of  an  inch,  can  throw  the 
whole  human  frame  into  a  powerful  mechanical 
spasm,  followed  by  violent  respiration  and  palpi- 
tation. The  eye,  of  course,  may  be  appealed  to 
as  well  as  the  ear.  Of  this  the  lamented  Lange 
gives  the  following  vivid  illustration  : 

A  merchant  sits  complacently  in  his  easy-chair, 
not  knowing  whether  smokmg,  sleeping,  news- 
paper-reading, or  the  digestion  of  food,  occupies 
the  largest  portion  of  his  personality.  A  servant 
enters  the  room  with  a  telegram  bearing  the  words, 
"  Antwerp,  etc.  .  .  .  Jonas  &  Co.  have  failed." 
"  Tell  James  to  harness  the  horses  ! "  The  ser- 
vant flies.  Up  starts  the  merchant  wide  awake, 
makes  a  dozen  paces  through  the  room,  descends 
to  the  counting-house,  dictates  letters  and  for- 
wards dispatches.  He  jumps  into  his  carriage, 
the  horses  snort,  and  their  driver  is  immediately 
at  the  bank,  on  the  Bourse,  and  among  his  com- 
mercial friends.  Before  an  hour  has  elapsed  he 
is  again  at  home,  where  he  throws  himself  once 
more  into  his  easy-chair  with  a  deep-drawn  sigh, 


104 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


"  Thank  God  I  am  protected  against  the  worst, 
and  now  for  further  reflection  !  " 

This  complex  mass  of  action,  emotional,  in- 
tellectual, aud  mechanical,  is  evoked  by  the  im- 
pact upon  the  retina  of  the  infinitesimal  waves 
of  light  coming  from  a  few  pencil-marks  on  a 
bit  of  paper.  We  have,  as  Lange  says,  terror, 
hope,  sensation,  calculation,  possible  ruin,  and 
victory,  compressed  into  a  moment.  "What 
caused  the  merchant  to  spring  out  of  his 
chair  ?  The  contraction  of  his  muscles.  What 
made  his  muscles  contract  ?  An  impulse  of 
the  nerves,  which  lifted  the  proper  latch,  and 
liberated  the  muscular  power.  Whence  this  im- 
pulse ?  From  the  centre  of  the  nervous  system. 
But  how  did  it  originate  there?  This  is  the 
critical  question,  to  which  some  will  reply  that 
it  had  its  origin  in  the  human  soul. 

The  aim  and  effort  of  science  is  to  explain 
the  unknown  in  terms  of  the  known.  Expla- 
nation, therefore,  is  conditioned  by  knowledge. 
You  have  probably  heard  the  story  of  the 
German  peasaut  who,  in  early  railway  days,  was 
taken  to  see  the  performance  of  a  locomotive. 
He  had  never  known  carriages  to  be  moved  ex- 
cept by  animal  power.  Every  explanation  outside 
of  this  conception  lay  beyond  his  experience,  and 
could  not  be  invoked.  After  long  reflection, 
therefore,  and  seeing  no  possible  escape  from  the 
conclusion,  he  exclaimed  confidently  to  his  com- 
panion, "  Es  miissen  doch  Pferde  darin  sein" 
("There  must  be  horses  inside  ").  Amusing  as 
this  locomotive  theory  may  seem,  it  illustrates  a 
deep-lying  truth. 

With  reference  to  our  present  question,  some 
may  be  disposed  to  press  upon  me  such  con- 
siderations as  these :  Your  motor  nerves  are 
so  many  speaking-tubes,  through  which  mes- 
sages are  sent  from  the  man  to  the  world ; 
and  your  sensor  nerves  are  so  many  conduits 
through  which  the  whispers  of  the  world  are 
sent  back  to  the  man.  But  you  have  not  told 
us  where  is  the  man.  Who  or  what  is  it  that 
sends  and  receives  those  messages  through  the 
bodily  organism  ?  Do  not  the  phenomena  point 
to  the  existence  of  a  self  within  the  self,  which 
acts  through  the  body  as  through  a  skillfully-con- 
structed instrument  ?  You  picture  the  muscles 
as  hearkening  to  the  commands  sent  through  the 
motor  nerves,  and  you  picture  the  sensor  nerves 
as  the  vehicles  of  incoming  intelligence  ;  are  you 
not  bound  to  supplement  this  mechanism  by  the 
assumption  of  an  entity  which  uses  it?  In  other 
words,  are  you  not  forced  by  your  own  exposition 
into  the  hypothesis  of  a  free  human  soul  ? 


Is  this  reasoning  congruous  with  the  knowl- 
edge of  our  time  ?  If  so,  it  cannot  be  called  un- 
scientific. On  the  same  ground  the  anthropo- 
morphic notion  of  a  creative  architect,  endowed 
with  manlike  powers  of  indefinite  magnitude,  is 
to  be  regarded  with  consideration.  It  marks  a 
phase  of  theoretic  activity,  which  the  human 
race  could  not  escape,  and  our  present  objection 
to  such  a  notion  rests  on  its  incongruity  with  our 
knowledge.  "  When  God,"  says  the  great  Jesuit 
teacher,  Perrone,  "  orders  a  given  planet  to  stand 
still,  he  does  not  detract  from  any  law  passed  by 
himself,  but  orders  that  planet  to  move  round  and 
round  the  sun  for  such  and  such  a  time,  then  to 
stand  still,  and  then  to  move  again,  as  his  pleas- 
ure may  be."  You  notice  that  a  modicum  of 
science  has  entered  even  the  mind  of  Perrone. 
At  an  earlier  period  he  would  not  have  said, 
"  When  God  orders  a  planet  to  move  round  the 
sun,"  but  "  When  God  orders  the  sun  to  move 
round  a  planet."  And  why,  unless  the  com- 
mands of  the  Almighty  are  hampered  by  consid- 
erations of  mass,  should  he  not  give  this  latter 
order  ?  Why,  moreover,  has  he  suspended  his 
orders,  and  abandoned  sun  and  planets  to  the  law 
of  gravitation  during  those  particular  ages  when 
the  human  intellect  was  most  specially  prepared 
to  appreciate  the  wonder  ?  The  case,  to  say  the 
least,  is  suspicious.  In  Joshua's  time  such  an 
hypothesis  was  allowable,  and  the  error  of  Per- 
rone is  simply  a  sin  against  the  law  of  relativity. 
He,  and  such  as  he,  transport  into  the  nineteenth 
century  the  puerilities  of  a  by-gone  age.  No  won- 
der that  our  Catholic  youth  from  time  to  time  re- 
bel against  such  teaching. 

But  to  return  to  the  hypothesis  of  a  human 
soul,  offered  as  an  explanation  or  simplification  of 
a  series  of  obscure  phenomena.  Adequate  reflec- 
tion shows  that,  instead  of  introducing  light  into 
our  minds,  it  increases  our  darkness.  You  do  not 
in  this  case  explain  the  unknown  in  terms  of  the 
known,  which,  as  stated  above,  is  the  method  of 
science,  but  you  explain  the  unknown  in  terms 
of  the  more  unknown.  Try  to  mentally  visualize 
this  soul  as  an  entity  distinct  from  the  body,  and 
the  difficulty  immediately  appears.  From  the  side 
of  science  all  that  we  are  warranted  in  stating  is 
that  the  terror,  hope,  sensation,  and  calculation 
of  Lange's  merchant  are  psychical  phenomena 
produced  by,  or  associated  with,  the  molecular 
processes  set  up  by  the  waves  of  light  iu  a  pre- 
viously-prepared brain. 

When  facts  present  themselves  let  us  dare  to 
face  them,  but  let  us  equally  dare  to  confess  igno- 
rance where  it  prevails.  What  is  the  causal  connec- 


SCIEXCE  AND  MAX. 


105 


tion,  if  any,  between  the  objective  and  subjective, 
between  molecular  motions  and  states  of  con- 
sciousness ?  My  answer  is :  I  do  not  see  the  con- 
nection, nor  have  I  as  yet  met  anybody  who  does. 
It  is  no  explanation  to  say  that  the  objective  and 
subjective  effects  are  two  sides  of  one  and  the  same 
phenomenon.  Why  should  the  phenomenon  have 
two  sides  ?  This  is  the  very  core  of  the  difficulty. 
There  are  plenty  of  molecular  motions  which  do 
not  exhibit  this  two-sidedness.  Does  water  think 
or  feel  when  it  runs  into  frost-ferns  upon  a  win- 
dow-pane? If  not,  why  should  the  molecular 
motion  of  the  brain  be  yoked  to  this  mysterious 
companion,  consciousness '?  We  can  present  to 
our  minds  a  coherent  picture  of  the  physical  pro- 
cesses— the  stirring  of  the  brain,  the  thrilling  of 
the  nerves,  the  discharging  of  the  muscles,  and 
all  the  subsequent  mechanical  motions  of  the  or- 
ganism. But  we  cau  present  no  picture  of  the 
process  whereby  consciousness  emerges,  either  as 
a  necessary  link  or  as  an  accidental  by-product 
of  this  series  of  actions.  Yet  it  certainly  does 
emerge — the  prick  of  a  pin  suffices  to  prove  that 
molecular  motion  can  produce  consciousness. 
The  reverse  process  of  the  production  of  motion 
by  consciousness  is  equally  unpresentable  to  the 
mind.  "We  are  here,  in  fact,  upon  the  boundary- 
line  of  the  intellect,  where  the  ordinary  canons 
of  science  fail  to  extricate  us  from  our  difficulties. 
If  we  are  true  to  these  canons,  we  must  deny  to 
subjective  phenomena  all  influence  on  physical 
processes.  Observation  proves  that  they  interact, 
but  in  passing  from  the  one  to  the  other  we  meet 
a  blank  which  mechanical  deduction  is  unable  to 
fill.  Frankly  stated,  we  have  here  to  deal  witli 
facts  almost  as  difficult  to  be  seized  mentally  as 
the  idea  of  a  soul.  And  if  you  are  content  to  make 
your  "soul"  a  poetic  rendering  of  a  phenomenon 
which  refuses  the  yoke  of  ordinary  physical  laws, 
I,  for  one,  would  not  object  to  this  exercise  of 
ideality.  Amid  all  our  speculative  uncertainty, 
however,  there  is  one  practical  point  as  clear  as 
the  day — namely,  that  the  brightness  and  the  use- 
fulness of  life,  as  well  as  its  darkness  and  disaster, 
depend  to  a  great  extent  upon  our  own  use  or 
abuse  of  this  miraculous  organ. 

[In  an  article  betraying  signs  of  haste  and  its 
consequent  confusion,  a  well-known  and  accom- 
plished essayist  pulls  me  sharply  up  in  the  Spec- 
tator for  the  phraseology  here  employed.  In  a 
single  breath  he  brands  my  "poetic  rendering" 
as  a  "  falsehood  "  and  a  "  fib."  I  should  be  loath 
to  apply  to  any  utterance  of  my  respected  critic 
terms  so  uncivil  as  these.  They  are,  in  my  opin- 
ion, unmerited,  for  poetry  or  ideality  and  untruth 


are  assuredly  very  different  things.  The  one 
may  vivify  while  the  other  kills.  When  St.  John 
extends  the  notion  of  a  soul  to  "  souls  washed  in 
the  blood  of  Christ"  does  he  "fib?"  Indeed, 
Christ  himself,  according  to  my  critic's  canon, 
ought  not  to  have  escaped  censure.  Nor  did  he 
escape  it.  "  How  can  this  man  give  us  his  flesh 
to  eat?"  expressed  the  skeptical  flouting  of  un- 
poetic  natures.  Such  are  still  among  us.  Car- 
dinal Manning  would  doubtless  tell  my  critic  that 
he,  even  he,  "fibs"  away  the  plain  words  of  his 
Saviour  when  he  reduces  "  the  body  of  the 
Lord"  in  the  sacrament  to  a  mere  figure  of 
speech. 

Though  misuse  may  render  it  grotesque  or  in- 
sincere, the  idealization  of  ancient  conceptions, 
when  done  consciously  and  above  board,  has,  in 
my  opinion,  an  important  future.  We  are  not 
radically  different  from  our  historic  ancestors, 
and  any  feeling  which  affected  them  profoundly 
requires  only  appropriate  clothing  to  affect  us. 
The  world  will  not  lightly  relinquish  its  heritage 
of  poetic  feeling,  and  metaphysic  will  be  wel- 
comed when  it  abandons  its  pretensions  to  sci- 
entific discovery,  and  consents  to  be  ranked  as  a 
kind  of  poetry.  "A  good  symbol,"  says  Emer- 
son, "  is  a  missionary  to  persuade  thousands. 
The  Vedas,  the  Edda,  the  Koran,  are  each  re- 
membered by  its  happiest  figure.  There  is  no 
more  welcome  gift  to  men  than  a  new  symbol. 
They  assimilate  themselves  to  it,  deal  with  it  in 
all  ways,  and  it  will  last  a  hundred  years.  Then 
comes  a  new  genius  and  brings  another."  Our 
ideas  of  God  and  the  soul  are  obviously  subject 
to  this  symbolic  mutation.  They  are  not  now 
what  they  were  a  century  ago.  They  will  not  be 
a  century  hence  what  they  are  now.  Such  ideas 
constitute  a  kind  of  central  energy  in  the  human 
mind,  capable,  like  the  energy  of  the  physical 
universe,  of  assuming  various  shapes  and  under- 
going various  transformations.  They  baffle  and 
elude  the  theological  mechanic  who  would  carve 
them  to  dogmatic  forms.  They  offer  themselves 
freely  to  the  poet  who  understands  his  vocation, 
and  whose  function  is,  or  ought  to  be,  to  find 
"local  habitation  "  for  thoughts  woven  into  our 
subjective  life,  but  which  refuse  to  be  mechani- 
cally defined.] 

We  now  stand  face  to  face  with  the  final 
problem.  It  is  this :  Are  the  brain,  and  the 
moral  and  intellectual  processes  known  to  be 
a-soeiated  with  the  brain — and,  as  far  as  our 
experience  goes,  indissolubly  associated — subject 
to  the  laws  which  we  find  paramount  in  physi- 
cal Nature  ?     Is  the  will  of  man,  in  other  words, 


106 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


free,  or  are  it  and  Nature  equally  "  bound  fast 
in  fate  ? "  From  this  latter  conclusion,  after 
he  had  established  it  to  the  entire  satisfaction 
of  his  understanding,  the  great  German  thinker 
Fichte  recoiled.  You  will  find  the  record  of  this 
struggle  between  head  and  heart  in  his  book 
entitled  "  Die  Bestimmung  des  Menschen  "  ("  The 
Vocation  of  Man  ").1  Fichte  was  determined  at 
all  hazards  to  maintain  his  freedom,  but  the  price 
he  paid  for  it  indicates  the  difficulty  of  the  task. 
To  escape  from  the  iron  necessity  seen  every- 
where reigning  in  physical  Nature,  he  turned  defi- 
antly round  upon  Nature  and  law,  and  affirmed 
both  of  them  to  be  the  products  of  his  own  mind. 
He  was  not  going  to  be  the  slave  of  a  thing  which 
he  had  himself  created.  There  is  a  good  deal  to 
be  said  in  favor  of  this  view,  but  few  of  us  prob- 
ably would  be  able  to  bring  into  play  the  sol- 
vent transcendentalism  whereby  Fichte  melted  his 
chains. 

Why  do  some  of  us  regard  this  notion  of  ne- 
cessity with  terror,  while  others  do  not  fear  it 
at  all  ?  Has  not  Carlyle  somewhere  said  that  a 
belief  in  destiny  is  the  bias  of  all  earnest  minds? 
"It  is  not  Nature,"  says  Fichte,  "it  is  freedom 
itself,  by  which  the  greatest  and  most  terrible  dis- 
orders incident  to  our  race  are  produced.  Man  is 
the  crudest  enemy  of  man."  But  the  question 
of  moral  responsibility  here  emerges,  and  it  is  the 
possible  loosening  of  this  responsibility  that  so 
many  of  us  dread.  The  notion  of  necessity  cer- 
tainly failed  to  frighten  Bishop  Butler.  He 
thought  it  untrue,  but  he  did  not  fear  its  practi- 
cal consequences.  He  showed,  on  the  contrary, 
in  the  "  Analogy,"  that  as  far  as  human  conduct 
is  concerned  the  two  theories  of  free-will  and 
necessity  come  to  the  same  in  the  end. 

What  is  meant  by  free-will?  Does  it  imply 
the  power  of  producing  events  without  antece- 
dents— of  starting,  as  it  were,  upon  a  creative 
tour  of  occurrences  without  any  impulse  from 
within  or  from  without?  Let  us  consider  the 
point.  If  there  be  absolutely  or  relatively  no 
reason  why  a  tree  should  fall,  it  will  not  fall ;  and, 
if  there  be  absolutely  or  relatively  no  reason  why 
a  man  should  act,  he  will  not  act.  It  is  true  that 
the  united  voice  of  this  assembly  could  not  per- 
suade me  that  I  have  not,  at  this  moment,  the 
power  to  lift  my  arm  if  I  wished  to  do  so.  Within 
this  range  the  conscious  freedom  of  my  will  can- 
not be  questioned.  But  what  about  the  origin  of 
the  "wish?"  Are  we,  or  are  we  not,  complete 
masters  of  the  circumstances  which  create  our 
wishes,  motives,  and  tendencies  to  action  ?  Ade- 
i  Translated  by  Dr.  William  Smith.    Trubner,  1873. 


quate  reflection  will,  I  think,  prove  that  we  are  not. 
What,  for  example,  have  I  had  to  do  with  the  gen- 
eration and  development  of  that  which  some  will 
consider  my  total  being,  and  others  a  most  potent 
factor  of  my  total  being — the  living,  speaking  or- 
ganism which  now  addresses  you  ?  As  stated  at 
the  beginning  of  this  discourse,  my  physical  and  in- 
tellectual textures  were  woven  for  me,  not  by  me. 
Processes  in  the  conduct  or  regulation  of  which 
I  had  no  share  have  made  me  what  I  am.  Here, 
surely,  if  anywhere,  we  are  as  clay  in  the  hands 
of  the  potter.  It  is  the  greatest  of  delusions  to 
suppose  that  we  come  into  this  world  as  sheets 
of  white  paper  on  which  the  age  can  write  any- 
thing it  likes,  making  us  good  or  bad,  noble  or 
mean,  as  the  age  pleases.  The  age  can  stunt, 
promote,  or  pervert  preexistent  capacities,  but  it 
cannot  create  them.  The  worthy  Robert  Owen, 
who  saw  in  external  circumstances  the  great 
moulders  of  human  character,  was  obliged  to 
supplement  his  doctrine  by  making  the  man  him- 
self one  of  the  circumstances.  It  is  as  fatal  as  it 
is  cowardly  to  blink  facts  because  they  are  not 
to  our  taste.  How  many  disorders,  ghostly  and 
bodily,  are  transmitted  to  us  by  inheritance !  In 
our  courts  of  law,  whenever  it  is  a  question 
whether  a  crime  has  been  committed  under  the 
influence  of  insanity,  the  best  guidance  the  judge 
and  jury  can  have  is  derived  from  tne  parental 
antecedents  of  the  accused.  If  among  these  in- 
sanity be  exhibited  in  any  marked  degree,  the 
presumption  in  the  prisoner's  favor  is  enormously 
enhanced,  because  the  experience  of  life  has 
taught  both  judge  and  jury  that  insanity  is  fre- 
quently transmitted  from  parent  to  child. 

I  met  some  years  ago  in  a  railway-carriage  the 
governor  of  one  of  our  largest  prisons.  He  was 
evidently  an  observant  and  reflective  man,  pos- 
sessed of  wide  experience  gathered  in  various 
parts  of  the  world,  and  a  thorough  student  of  the 
duties  of  his  vocation.  He  told  me  that  the  prison- 
ers in  his  charge  might  be  divided  into  three  dis- 
tinct classes.  The  first  class  consisted  of  persons 
who  ought  never  to  have  been  in  prison.  External 
accident,  and  not  internal  taint,  had  brought  them 
within  the  grasp  of  the  law,  and  what  had  happened 
to  them  might  happen  to  most  of  us.  They  were 
essentially  men  of  sound  moral  stamina,  though 
wearing  the  prison-garb.  Then  came  the  largest 
class,  formed  of  individuals  possessing  no  strong 
bias,  moral  or  immoral,  plastic  to  the  touch  of 
circumstances  which  could  mould  them  into 
either  good  or  evil  members  of  society.  Thirdly 
came  a  class — happily  not  a  large  one — whom  no 
kindness  could  conciliate,  and  no  discipline  tame. 


SCIENCE  AXD  MAW. 


107 


They  were  sent  into  this  world  labeled  "  incor- 
rigible," wickedness  being  stamped,  as  it  were, 
upon  their  organizations.  It  was  an  unpleasant 
truth,  but  as  a  truth  it  ought  to  be  faced.  For 
such  criminals  the  prison  over  which  he  ruled 
was  certainly  not  the  proper  place.  If  confined 
at  all,  their  prison  should  be  on  a  desert  island 
where  the  deadly  contagium  of  their  example 
could  not  taint  the  moral  air.  But  the  sea  itself 
he  was  disposed  to  regard  as  a  cheap  and  appro- 
priate substitute  for  the  island.  It  seemed  to 
him  evident  that  the  state  would  benefit  if  pris- 
oners of  the  first  class  were  liberated  ;  prisoners 
of  the  second  class  educated ;  and  prisoners  of 
the  third  class  put  compendiously  under  water. 

It  is  not,  however,  from  the  observation  of  in- 
dividuals that  the  argument  against  "  free-will,"  as 
commonly  understood,  derives  its  principal  force. 
It  is,  as  already  hinted,  indefinitely  strengthened 
wheu  extended  to  the  race.  Most  of  you  have 
been  forced  to  listen  to  the  outcries  and  denun- 
ciations which  rung  discordant  through  the  land 
for  some  years  after  the  publication  of  Mr.  Dar- 
win's "  Origin  of  Species."  Well,  the  world — 
even  the  clerical  world — has  for  the  most  part 
settled  down  in  the  belief  that  Mr.  Darwin's  book 
simply  reflects  the  truth  of  Nature ;  that  we  who 
are  now  "foremost  in  the  files  of  time"  have 
come  to  the  front  through  almost  endless  stages 
of  promotion  from  lower  to  higher  forms  of  life. 

If  to  any  one  of  us  were  given  the  privilege  of 
looking  back  through  the  aeons  across  which  life 
has  crept  toward  its  present  outcome,  his  vision 
would  ultimately  reach  a  point  when  the  progeni- 
tors of  this  assembly  could  not  be  called  human. 
From  that  humble  society,  through  the  interac- 
tion of  its  members  and  the  storing  up  of  their 
best  qualities,  a  better  one  emerged ;  from  this 
again  a  better  still ;  until  at  length,  by  the  inte- 
gration of  infinitesimals  through  ages  of  ameliora- 
tion, we  came  to  be  what  we  are  to-day.  We  of 
this  generation  had  no  conscious  share  in  the 
production  of  this  grand  and  beneficent  result. 
Any  and  every  generation  which  preceded  us  had 
just  as  little  share.  The  favored  organisms  whose 
garnered  excellence  constitutes  our  present  store 
owed  their  advantages,  firstly,  to  what  we  in  our 
ignorance  are  obliged  to  call  "  accidental  varia- 
tion ; "  and,  secondly,  to  a  law  of  heredity  in  the 
passing  of  which  our  suffrages  were  not  collected. 
With  characteristic  felicity  and  precision  Mr. 
Matthew  Arnold  lifts  this  question  into  the  free 
air  of  poetry,  but  not  out  of  the  atmosphere  of 
truth,  when  he  ascribes  the  process  of  ameliora- 
tion to  "  a  power  not  ourselves  which  makes  for 


righteousness."  If,  then,  our  organisms,  with  all 
their  tendencies  and  capacities,  are  given  to  us 
without  our  being  consulted,  and  if,  while  capa- 
ble of  acting  within  certain  limits  in  accordance 
with  our  wishes,  we  are  not  masters  of  the  cir- 
cumstances in  which  motives  and  wishes  origi- 
nate; if,  finally,  our  motives  and  wishes  deter- 
mine our  actions — in  what  sense  can  these  actions 
be  said  to  be  the  result  of  free-will  ? 

Here,  again,  we  are  confronted  with  the  ques- 
tion of  moral  responsibility  which  it  is  desirable 
to  meet  in  its  rudest  form  and  in  the  most  uncom- 
promising way.  "  If,"  says  the  robber,  the  ravish- 
er,  or  the  murderer,  "  I  act  because  I  must  act, 
what  right  have  you  to  hold  me  responsible  for 
my  deeds  ?  "  ^The  reply  is,  "  The  right  of  society 
to  protect  itself  against  aggressive  and  injurious 
forces,  whether  they  be  bond  or  free,  forces  of 
Nature  or  forces  of  man."  "  Then,"  retorts  the 
criminal,  "  you  punish  me  for  what  I  cannot  help." 
"  Granted,"  says  society,  "  but  had  you  known 
that  the  treadmill  or  the  gallows  was  certainly  in 
store  for  you,  you  might  have  '  helped.'  Let  us 
reason  the  matter  fully  and  frankly  out.  We  en- 
tertain no  malice  or  hatred  against  you,  but  sim- 
ply with  a  view  to  our  own  safety  and  purifica- 
tion we  are  determined  that  you  and  such  as  you 
shall  not  enjoy  liberty  of  evil  action  in  our  midst. 
You,  who  have  behaved  as  a  wild  beast,  we  claim 
the  right  to  cage  or  kill  as  we  should  a  wild 
beast.  The  public  safety  is  a  matter  of  more  im- 
portance than  the  very  limited  chance  of  your 
moral  renovation,  while  the  knowledge  that  you 
have  been  hanged  by  the  neck  may  furnish  to 
others  about  to  do  as  you  have  done  the  precise 
motive  which  will  hold  them  back.  If  your  act 
be  such  as  to  invoke  a  minor  penalty,  then  not 
only  others,  but  yourself,  may  profit  by  the 
punishment  which  we  inflict.  On  the  homely 
principle  that  'a  burned  child  dreads  the  fire,' 
it  will  make  you  think  twice  before  venturing 
on  a  repetition  of  your  crime.  Observe,  finally, 
the  consistency  of  our  conduct.  You  offend,  be- 
cause you  cannot  help  offending,  to  the  public 
detriment.  We  punish,  because  we  cannot  help 
punishing,  for  the  public  good.  Practically, 
then,  as  Bishop  Butler  predicted,  we  act  as  the 
world  acted  when  it  supposed  the  evil  deeds  of 
its  criminals  to  be  the  products  of  free-will." 

"  What,"  I  have  heard  it  argued,  "  is  the  use 
of  preaching  about  duty  if  man's  predetermined 
position  in  the  moral  world  renders  him  incapa- 
ble of  profiting  by  advice  ?  "  Who  knows  that 
he  is  incapable  ?  The  preacher's  last  word  is  a 
factor  in  the  man's  conduct ;  and  it  may  be  a  most 


10S 


TEE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


important  factor,  unlocking  moral  energies  which 
might  otherwise  remain  imprisoned  and  unused. 
If  the  preacher  thoroughly  fdel  that  words  of 
enlightenment,  courage,  and  admonition,  enter 
into  the  list  of  forces  employed  by  Nature  her- 
self for  man's  amelioration,  since  she  gifted  man 
with  speech,  he  will  suffer  no  paralysis  to  fall 
upon  his  tongue.  Dung  the  fig-tree  hopefully, 
and  not  until  its  barrenness  has  been  demon- 
strated beyond  a  doubt  let  the  sentence  go  forth, 
*'  Cut  it  down,  why  cumbereth  it  the  ground  ?  " 

I  remember,  when  a  youth  in  the  town  of  Hali- 
fax, some  two-and-thirty  years  ago,  attending  a 
lecture  given  by  a  young  man  to  a  small  but  select 
audience.  The  aspect  of  the  lecturer  was  ear- 
nest and  practical,  and  his  voice  soon  riveted  at- 
tention. He  spoke  of  duty,  defining  it  as  a  debt 
owed,  and  there  was  a  kindling  vigor  in  his  words 
which  must  have  strengthened  the  sense  of  duty 
in  the  minds  of  those  who  heard  him.  No  specu- 
lations regarding  the  freedom  of  the  will  could 
alter  the  fact  that  the  words  of  that  young  man 
did  me  good.  His  name  was  George  Dawson. 
He  also  spoke,  if  you  will  allow  me  to  allude  to 
it,  of  a  social  subject  much  discussed  at  the 
time — the  Chartist  subject  of  "  leveling."  "  Sup- 
pose," he  said,  "  two  men  to  be  equal  at  night, 
and  that  one  rises  at  six,  while  the  other  sleeps 
till  nine  next  morning,  what  becomes  of  your  lev- 
1  cling  ? "  And  in  so  speaking  he  made  himself 
the  mouth-piece  of  Nature,  which,  as  we  have 
seen,  secures  advance,  not  by  the  reduction  of  all 
to  a  common  level,  but  by  the  encouragement 
and  conservation  of  what  is  best. 

It  may  be  urged  that,  in  dealing  as  above  with 
my  hypothetical  criminal,  I  am  assuming  a  state 
of  things  brought  about  by  the  influence  of  reli- 
gions which  include  the  dogmas  of  theology  and 
the  belief  in  free-will — a  state,  namely,  in  which 
a  moral  majority  control  and  keep  in  awe  an  im- 
moral minority.  The  heart  of  man  is  deceitful 
above  all  things,  and  desperately  wicked.  With- 
draw, then,  our  theologic  sanctions,  including  the 
belief  in  free-will,  and  the  condition  of  the  race 
will  be  typified  by  the  samples  of  individual  wick- 
edness which  have  been  adduced.  We  shall  all, 
that  is,  become  robbers,  and  ravishers,  and  mur- 
derers. From  much  that  has  been  written  of  late 
it  would  seem  that  this  astounding  inference  finds 
house-room  in  many  minds.  Possibly,  the  peo- 
ple who  hold  such  views  might  be  able  to  illus- 
trate them  by  individual  instances : 

"  The  fear  of  hell's  a  hansman's  whip, 
To  keep  the  wretch  in  order." 


Remove  the  fear,  and  the  wretch,  following  his 
natural  instinct,  may  become  disorderly;  but  I 
refuse  to  accept  him  as  a  sample  of  humanity. 
"  Let  us  eat  and  drink,  for  to-morrow  we  die,"  is 
by  no  means  the  ethical  consequence  of  a  rejection 
of  dogma.  To  many  of  you  the  name  of  George 
Jacob  Holyoake  is  doubtless  familiar,  and  you 
are  probably  aware  that  at  no  man  in  England 
has  the  term  atheist  been  more  frequently  pelted. 
There  are,  moreover,  really  few  who  have  more 
completely  liberated  themselves  from  theologic 
notions.  Among  working-class  politicians  Mr. 
Holyoake  is  a  leader.  Does  he  exhort  his  fol- 
lowers to  "  eat  and  drink,  for  to-morrow  we  die  ? " 
Not  so.  In  the  August  number  of  the  Nineteenth 
Century  you  will  find  these  words  from  his  pen  : 
"  The  gospel  of  dirt  is  bad  enough,  but  the  gos- 
pel of  mere  material  comfort  is  much  worse." 
He  contemptuously  calls  the  Comtist  champion- 
ship of  the  working-man  "  the  championship  of 
the  trencher."  He  would  place  "  the  leanest  lib- 
erty which  brought  with  it  the  dignity  and  power 
of  self-help  "  higher  than  "  any  prospect  of  a 
full  plate  without  it."  Such  is  the  moral  doctrine 
taught  by  this  "  atheistic  "  leader  ;  and  no  Chris- 
tian, I  apprehend,  need  be  ashamed  of  it. 

Most  heartily  do  I  recognize  and  admire  the 
spiritual  radiance,  if  I  may  use  the  term,  shed  by 
religion  on  the  minds  and  lives  of  many  personal- 
ly known  to  me.  At  the  same  time  I  cannot  but 
observe  how  signally,  as  regards  the  production 
of  anything  beautiful,  religion  fails  in  other  cases. 
Its  professor  and  defender  is  sometimes  at  bottom 
a  brawler  and  a  clown.  These  differences  depend 
upon  primary  distinctions  of  character  which  reli- 
gion does  not  remove.  It  may  comfort  some  to 
know  that  there  are  among  us  many  whom  the 
gladiators  of  the  pulpit  would  call  "atheists"  and 
"  materialists,"  whose  lives,  nevertheless,  as  test- 
ed by  any  accessible  standard  of  morality,  would 
contrast  more  than  favorably  with  the  lives  of 
those  who  seek  to  stamp  them  with  this  offensive 
brand.  When  I  say  "  offensive,"  I  refer  simply 
to  the  intention  of  those  who  use  such  terms,  and 
not  because  atheism  or  materialism,  when  com- 
pared with  many  of  the  notions  ventilated  in  the 
columns  of  religious  newspapers,  has  any  particu- 
lar offensiveness  for  me.  If  I  wished  to  find  men 
who  are  scrupulous  in  their  adherence  to  engage- 
ments, whose  words  are  their  bond,  and  to  whom 
moral  shiftiness  of  any  kind  is  subjectively  un- 
known ;  if  I  wanted  a  loving  father,  a  faithful 
husband,  an  honorable  neighbor,  and  a  just  citi- 
zen— I  should  seek  him  and  find  him  among  the 
band  of  "  atheists "  to  which  I  refer.     I  have 


SCIENCE  AND  MAN. 


100 


known  some  of  the  most  pronounced  among  them 
not  only  in  life  but  in  death — seen  them  approach- 
ing with  open  eyes  the  inexorable  goal,  with  no 
dread  of  a  "  hangman's  whip,"  with  no  hope  of  a 
heavenly  crown,  and  still  as  mindful  of  their  du- 
ties, and  as  faithful  in  the  discharge  of  them,  as 
if  their  eternal  future  depended  upon  their  latest 
deeds. 

In  letters  addressed  to  myself,  and  in  utter- 
ances addressed  to  the  public,  Faraday  is  often 
referred  to  as  a  sample  of  the  association  of  reli- 
gious faith  with  moral  elevation.  I  was  locally 
intimate  with  him  for  fourteen  or  fifteen  years 
of  my  life,  and  had  thus  occasion  to  observe  how 
nearly  his  character  approached  what  might, 
without  extravagance,  be  called  perfection.  He 
was  strong  but  gentle,  impetuous  but  self-re- 
strained; a  sweet  and  lofty  courtesy  marked  his 
dealings  with  men  and  women;  and  though  he 
sprung  from  the  body  of  the  people,  a  nature  so 
fine  might  well  have  been  distilled  from  the  flower 
of  antecedent  chivalry.  Not  only  in  its  broader 
sense  was  the  Christian  religion  necessary  to 
Faraday's  spiritual  peace,  but  in  what  many  would 
call  the  narrow  sense  held  by  those  described  by 
Faraday  himself  as  "  a  very  small  and  despised 
sect  of  Christians,  known,  if  known  at  all,  as 
Sandemanians,"  it  constituted  the  light  and  com- 
fort of  his  days. 

Were  our  experience  confined  to  such  cases, 
it  would  furnish  an  irresistible  argument  in  favor 
of  the  association  of  dogmatic  religion  with  mor- 
al purity  and  grace.  But,  as  already  intimated, 
our  experience  is  not  thus  confined.  In  further 
illustration  of  this  point  we  may  compare  with 
Faraday  a  philosopher  of  equal  magnitude,  whose 
character,  including  gentleness  and  strength,  can- 
dor and  simplicity,  intellectual  power  and  moral 
elevation,  singularly  resembles  that  of  the  great 
Sandemanian,  but  who  has  neither  shared  the 
tbeologic  views  nor  the  religious  emotions  which 
formed  so  dominant  a  factor  in  Faraday's  life.  I 
allude  to  Mr.  Charles  Darwin,  the  Abraham  of 
scientific  men — a  searcher  as  obedient  to  the 
command  of  truth  as  was  the  patriarch  to  the 
command  of  God.  I  cannot,  therefore,  as  so 
many  desire,  look  upon  Faraday's  religious  belief 
as  the  exclusive  source  of  qualities  shared  so  con- 
spicuously by  one  uninfluenced  by  that  belief. 
To  a  deeper  virtue  belonging  to  reviled  human 
nature  in  its  purer  forms  I  am  disposed  to  refer 
the  excellence  of  both. 

Superstition  may  be  defined  as  religion  which 
has  grown  incongruous  with  intelligence.  "  Su- 
perstition,"   says   Fichte,    "  has    unquestionably 


constrained  its  subjects  to  abandon  many  per- 
nicious practices  and  to  adopt  many  useful  ones." 
The  real  loss  accompanying  its  decay  at  the  pres- 
ent day  has  been  thus  clearly  stated  by  the  same 
philosopher  :  "  In  so  far  as  these  lamentations  do 
not  proceed  from  the  priests  themselves — whose 
grief  at  the  loss  of  their  dominion  over  the  hu- 
man mind  we  can  well  understand — but  from  the 
politicians,  the  whole  matter  resolves  itself  into 
this,  that  government  has  thereby  become  more 
difficult  and  expensive.  The  judge  was  spared 
the  exercise  of  his  own  sagacity  and  penetration 
when,  by  threats  of  relentless  damnation,  he  could 
compel  the  accused  to  make  confession.  The 
evil  spirit  formerly  performed  without  reward 
services  for  which  in  later  times  judges  and  po- 
licemen have  to  be  paid." 

No  man  ever  felt  the  need  of  a  high  and  en- 
nobling religion  more  thoroughly  than  this  pow- 
erful and  fervid  teacher,  who,  by-the-way,  did 
not  escape  the  brand  of  "  atheist."  But  Fichte 
asserted  emphatically  the  power  and  sufficiency 
of  morality  in  its  own  sphere.  "  Let  us  con- 
sider," he  says,  "  the  highest  which  man  can  pos- 
sess in  the  absence  of  religion — I  mean  pure  mo- 
rality. The  moral  man  obeys  the  law  of  duty  in 
his  breast  absolutely,  because  it  is  a  law  unto 
him  ;  and  he  does  whatever  reveals  itself  to  him 
as  his  duty  simply  because  it  is  duty.  Let  not 
the  impudent  assertion  be  repeated  that  such  an 
obedience,  without  regard  for  consequences,  and 
without  desire  for  consequences,  is  in  itself  im- 
possible and  opposed  to  human  nature."  So 
much  for  Fichte.  I  would  add  that  the  muse  of 
Tennyson  never  reached  a  higher  strain  than 
when  it  embodied  the  same  sentiment  in  "iEnone :" 

"  And,  because  right  is  right,  to  follow  right 
Were  wisdom  in  the  scorn  of  consequence." 

Not  in  the  way  assumed  by  our  dogmatic  teach- 
ers has  the  morality  of  human  nature  been  built 
up.  The  power  which  has  moulded  us  thus  far 
has  worked  with  stern  tools  upon  a  very  rigid 
stuff.  What  it  has  done  cannot  be  so  readily 
undone  ;  and  it  has  endowed  us  with  moral  con- 
stitutions which  take  pleasure  in  the  noble,  the 
beautiful,  and  the  true,  just  as  surely  as  it  has 
endowed  us  with  sentient  organisms  which  find 
aloes  bitter  and  sugar  sweet.  That  power  did 
not  work  with  delusions,  nor  will  it  stay  its  hand 
when  such  are  removed.  Facts  rather  than  dog- 
mas have  been  its  ministers — hunger  and  thirst, 
heat  and  cold,  pleasure  and  pain,  fervor,  sym- 
pathy, shame,  pride,  love,  hate,  terror,  awe — such 
were  the  forces  whose  interaction  and  adjust- 
ment throughout  an  immeasurable  past  wove  the 


110 


TUB  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


triplex  web  of  man's  physical,  intellectual,  and 
moral  nature,  and  such  are  the  forces  that  will 
be  effectual  to  the  end.1 

You  may  retort  that  even  on  my  own  showing 
"the  power  which  makes  for  righteousness  "  has 
dealt  in  delusions  ;  for  it  cannot  be  denied  that 
the  beliefs  of  religion,  including  the  dogmas  of 
theology  and  the  freedom  of  the  will,  have  had 
some  effect  in  moulding  the  moral  world.  Grant- 
ed ;  but  I  do  not  think  that  this  goes  to  the  root 
of  the  matter.  Are  you  quite  sure  that  those 
beliefs  and  dogmas  are  primary,  and  not  derived 
— that  they  are  not  the  products,  instead  of  be- 
ing the  creators,  of  man's  moral  nature  ?  I 
think  it  is  in  one  of  the  "  Latter-Day  Pamphlets  " 
that  Carlyle  corrects  a  reasoner,  who  deduced 
the  nobility  of  man  from  a  belief  in  heaven,  by 
telling  him  that  he  puts  the  cart  before  the  horse, 
the  real  truth  being  that  the  belief  in  heaven  is 
derived  from  the  nobility  of  man.  The  bird's 
instinct  to  weave  its  nest  is  referred  to  by  Emer- 
son as  typical  of  the  force  which  built  cathe- 
drals, temples,  and  pyramids : 

"  Knowest  thou  what  wove  yon  woodbird's  nest 
Of  leaves  and  feathers  from  her  breast, 
Or  how  the  fish  outbuilt  its  shell, 
Painting  with  morn  each  annual  cell? 
Such  and  so  grew  these  holy  piles 
While  love  and  terror  laid  the  tiles  ; 
Earth  proudly  wears  the  Parthenon 
As  the  best  gem  upon  her  zone  ; 
And  Morning  opes  with  haste  her  lids 
To  gaze  upon  the  Pyramids  ; 
O'er  England's  abbeys  bends  the  sky 
As  on  its  friends  with  kindred  eye  ; 
For  out  of  Thought's  interior  sphere 
These  wonders  rose  to  upper  air, 
And  Nature  gladly  gave  them  place, 
Adopted  them  into  her  race, 
Aud  granted  them  an  equal  date 
With  Andes  and  with  Ararat." 

Surely,  many  utterances  which  have  been  ac- 
cepted as  descriptions  ought  to  be  interpreted 
as  aspirations,  or  as  having  their  roots  in  aspira- 

1  My  Spectator  critic  says  that  I  give  up  approba- 
tion and  disapprobation ;  but,  as  already  indicated, 
the  critic  writes  hastily.  Each  of  them  is  a  subsec- 
tion of  one  or  another  of  the  influences  mentioned 
above. 


tion  instead  of  in  objective  knowledge.  Does  the 
song  of  the  herald  angels,  "  Glory  to  God  in  the 
highest,  and  on  earth  peace  and  good-will  toward 
men,"  express  the  exaltation  and  the  yearning  of 
a  human  soul,  or  does  it  describe  an  optical  and 
acoustical  fact — a  visible  host  and  an  audible 
song  ?  If  the  former,  the  exaltation  and  the 
yearning  are  man's  imperishable  possession — a 
ferment  long  confined  to  individuals,  but  which 
may  by-and-by  become  the  leaven  of  the  race. 
If  the  latter,  then  belief  in  the  entire  transac- 
tion is  wrecked  by  non-fulfillment.  Look  to  the 
East  at  the  present  moment  as  a  comment  on  the 
promise  of  peace  on  earth  and  good-will  toward 
men.  That  promise  is  a  dream  ruined  by  the 
experience  of  eighteen  centuries,  and  in  that  ruin 
is  involved  the  claim  of  the  "  heavenly  host"  to 
prophetic  vision.  But,  though  the  mechanical 
theory  proves  untenable,  the  immortal  song  and 
the  feelings  it  expresses  are  still  ours,  to  be  in- 
corporated, let  us  hope,  in  purer  and  less  shad- 
owy forms  in  the  poetry,  philosophy,  and  prac- 
tice, of  the  future. 

Thus,  following  the  lead  of  physical  science, 
we  are  brought  without  solution  of  continuity 
into  the  presence  of  problems  which,  as  usually 
classified,  he  entirely  outside  the  domain  of  phys- 
ics. To  these  problems  thoughtful  and  penetra- 
tive minds  are  now  applying  those  methods  of 
research  which  in  physical  science  have  proved 
their  truth  by  their  fruit.  There  is  on  all  hands 
a  growing  repugnance  to  invoke  the  supernatural 
in  accounting  for  the  phenomena  of  human  life ; 
and  the  thoughtful  minds  just  referred  to,  find- 
ing no  trace  of  evidence  in  favor  of  any  other 
origin,  are  driven  to  seek  in  the  interaction  of 
social  forces  the  genesis  and  development  of  man's 
moral  nature.  If  they  succeed  in  their  search 
— and  I  think  they  are  sure  to  succeed — social 
duty  would  be  raised  to  a  higher  level  of  signifi- 
cance, and  the  deepening  sense  of  social  duty 
will,  it  is  to  be  hoped,  lessen,  if  not  obliterate,  the 
strifes  and  heart-burnings  which  now  beset  and 
disfigure  our  social  life.  Toward  this  great  end 
it  behooves  us  one  and  all  to  work ;  and,  devoutly 
wishing  its  consummation,  I  have  the  honor,  ladies 
and  gentlemen,  to  bid  you  a  friendly  farewell. 


PSYCHOLOGICAL   CURIOSITIES  OF  SPIRITUALISE. 


Ill 


PSYCHOLOGICAL  CUKIOSITIES  OF  SPIRITUALISM. 


By  WILLIAM  B.  CARPENTER,  C.  B.,  M.  D.,  LL.D.,  F.  R.  S. 


SINCE  the  publication  in  Fraser  of  the  two 
lectures  on  "  Mesmerism,  Spiritualism,  etc.," 
which  I  delivered  at  the  London  Institution  near 
the  close  of  last  year,  I  have  learned  much  more 
than  I  had  previously  known,  both  of  the  extent 
of  what  I  hold  to  be  a  most  mischievous  epidemic 
delusion,  comparable  to  the  witchcraft  epidemic 
of  the  seventeenth  century ;  and  of  the  very  gen- 
eral existence  of  a  peculiar  state  of  mind,  which 
as  much  predisposes  to  attacks  of  spiritualism 
as  did  the  almost  universal  belief  in  Biblical  au- 
thority for  the  existence  of  witches  determine 
the  witch-persecution  in  Puritan  New  England. 

A  friend  residing  at  Boston  (United  States) 
has  kindly  sent  me  a  number  of  excerpts  from 
its  newspapers,  which  give  very  curious  indica- 
tions, alike  in  their  "  advertisements "  and  in 
their  "  intelligence,"  of  what  has  been  lately  tak- 
ing place  in  that  centre  of  enlightenment  and 
progress.  And  another  friend,  who  has  recently 
visited  that  city,  informs  me  that  its  "  Trades' 
Directory  "  has  whole  columns  of  the  names  of 
professors  of  the  different  forms  of  spiritualistic 
"  mediumship  " — rapping  mediums,  writing  me- 
diums, drawing  mediums,  materializing  mediums, 
test  mediums,  photographic  mediums,  trance  me- 
diums, healing  mediums,  and  the  like.  Many  of 
these  professors  occupy  some  of  the  best  houses 
in  Boston ;  and  must  be  carrying  on  a  first-class 
business  among  the  "  upper  then  thousand." 
Others  practise  in  a  humbler  sphere  ;  but,  though 
receiving  lower  fees,  get  so  many  of  them  as  to 
be  driving  a  very  profitable  trade  in  "  interview- 
ing the  spirits."  I  understand  the  like  to  be 
true,  in  a  greater  or  less  degree,  of  many  other 
towns,  small  as  well  as  large  (New  York  being  a 
conspicuous  example),  in  the  United  States. 

A  most  unexpected  revelation  of  another  kind 
has  been  made  by  the  perusal  of  the  recently- 
published  "Lights  and  Shadows  of  Spiritualism," 
by  Mr.  D.  D.  Home,  reputed  in  the  outer  world 
as  the  arch-priest  of  this  new  religion  ;  who,  pro- 
fessing an  earnest  desire  to  purify  the  system  from 
"  the  seething  mass  of  foil;!  and  imposture  which 
every  attempt  at  examination  discloses"  devotes 
not  less  than  200  octavo  pages  to  such  an  ex- 
posure of  the  "  Delusions,"  the  "  Absurdities," 
and  the  "  Trickeries  "  of  modern  spiritualism,  as, 
if  made  by  any  scientific  opponent,  would  have 


most  assuredly  subjected  him  to  a  crushing  fire 
of  the  most  tremendous  expletives  that  even 
spiritualistic  language  (choice  samples  of  which 
I  shall  presently  give)  can  convey.  No  unpre- 
judiced reader  can  rise  from  the  perusal  of  Mr. 
Home's  pages  without  the  melancholy  convic- 
tion that  the  honest  believers,  who  (to  use  his 
words)  "  accept  nothing  as  proof  which  leaves 
the  tiniest  loop-hole  for  the  entrance  of  doubt ; 
who  try  all  mediums  and  all  spirits  by  the  strict- 
est tests  ;  who  refuse  to  be  carried  away  by  en- 
thusiasm or  swayed  by  partisanship,"  are  few 
indeed  in  comparison,  on  the  one  hand,  with  the 
knavish  impostors  who  practise  on  the  folly  and 
credulity  of  their  victims,  and,  on  the  other,  with 
the gobe-mouches  who  (as  Mr.  Home  says)  "swal- 
low whatever  is  offered  them,  and  strain  neither 
at  camels  nor  at  gnats." 

My  knowledge  has  been  further  extended  by 
an  elaborate  review  of  my  lectures,  contributed 
by  Mr.  Wallace  to  the  July  number  of  the  Quar- 
terly Journal  of  Science.  As  Mr.  Crookes  is  the 
editor  of  that  journal,  I  may  fairly  regard  this 
review  as  representing  his  own  ideas  upon  the 
subject,  as  well  as  those  of  Mr.  Wallace,  who 
continually  refers  to  him ;  and  I  regard  it  as  a 
very  curious  revelation  of  the  state  of  mind  to 
which  two  honest  men,  both  highly  distinguished 
in  the  scientific  world,  can  bring  themselves,  by 
continually  dwelling  on  their  own  conclusions, 
and  discoursing  of  them  only  with  sympathizers ; 
without  bringing  them  to  the  test  of  calm  dis- 
cussion with  other  men  of  science,  who  are  cer- 
tainly no  less  competent  for  the  investigation 
than  themselves,  and  who  have  given  a  large 
amount  of  time  and  attention  to  it.  According 
to  Mr.  Wallace,  no  one  who  really  examines  the 
evidence  in  its  favor  can  honestly  refuse  to  ac- 
cept the  facts  of  mesmerism  from  a  distance  and 
of  clairvoyance  ;  or  can  fail  to  see,  with  Mr.  Wal- 
lace himself,  that  Mr.  Hewes's  "  Jack,"  who  was 
so  completely  detected  in  Manchester  that  his 
patron  at  once  gave  him  up,  was  all  the  while  a 
genuine  clairvoyant.  And  so,  every  one  who  can- 
not see,  as  Mr.  Wallace  does,  that  the  flowers, 
fruits,  etc.,  "  produced  "  at  spiritualistic  seances, 
are  "demonstrably  not  brought  in  by  the  me- 
diums," is  open  to  the  charge  of  willfully  shutting 
his  eyes  to  the  most  conclusive  proofs.     Further, 


112 


THE  POPULAR  SCIEXCE  MOXTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


taking  his  cue  from  Mr.  Crookes,  who  six  rears 
ago  rebuked  men  of  science  generally,  for  their 
"refusal  to  institute  a  scientific  investigation 
into  the  existence  and  nature  of  facts  asserted 
by  so  many  competent  and  credible  witnesses,  and 
which  they  are  so  freely  invited  to  examine  when 
and  where  they  please"  '  Mr.  Wallace  charges  the 
periodical  press  with  being  in  "  a  conspiracy  of 
silence"  to  prevent  the  spread  of  what  Ac  regards 
as  important  and  well-established  truth. 

Reserving  for  another  place2  my  reply  to  the 
grave  imputations  which  Mr.  Wallace  (indorsed 
by  the  editorial  authority  of  Mr.  Crookes)  has 
cast  upon  myself  personally,  I  shall  now  place 
before  the  readers  of  Fraser  a  series  of  psycholo- 
gical curiosities  collected  from  the  three  sources 
just  indicated  ;  and,  as  the  names  of  Messrs. 
Crookes  and  Wallace  will  continually  recur  in  this 
connection,  I  think  it  well  to  explain  my  reason 
for  so  frequently  introducing  them. 

Appreciating  most  highly  the  beautiful  dis- 
coveries recently  made  in  physical  science  by 
Mr.  Crookes,  and  the  large  and  varied  additions 
to  biological  knowledge  and  doctrine  made  at 
different  times  by  Mr.  Wallace,  I  cannot  blind 
myself  to  the  fact  that  the  very  scientific  distinc- 
tion they  have  so  deservedly  acquired  is  doing 
great  injury  to  the  cause  which  I  maintain  to  be 
that  of  reason  and  common-sense.  In  the  Uni- 
ted States  more  particularly — where,  since  the 
death  of  Prof.  Hare,  who  thought  he  had  ob- 
tained precise  experimental  proof  of  the  immor- 
tality of  the  soul,  not  a  single  scientific  man  of 
note  (so  far  as  I  am  aware)  has  joined  the  spirit- 
ualistic ranks — the  names  of  the  "  eminent  Brit- 
ish scientists  "  Messrs.  Crookes  and  Wallace  are 
a  "tower  of  strength."  And  it  consequently  be- 
comes necessary  for  me,  if  I  take  any  further 
part  in  the  discussion,  to  undermine  that  "  tower," 
by  showing  that  in  their  investigation  of  this  sub- 
ject they  have  followed  methods  which  are  thor- 
oughly imscientific,  and  have  been  led  by  their 
"  prepossession  "  to  accept  with  implicit  faith  a 
number  of  statements  which  ought  to  be  rejected 
as  completely  untrustworthy. 

My  call  to  take  such  a  part,  which  I  would 

'  It  would  seem  that  there  is  no  longer  the  same 
disposition  to  admit  scientific  inquirers  to  spiritual- 
istic seances.  Things  do  not  go  so  well  when  skeptics 
are  present  ;  and  while  Mr.  Home  rebukes  those  who 
would  exclude  nil  lmt  the  "faithful,"  his  reviewer 
says  that  "all  sitters  in  circle,  and  communicants 
with  the  spirit-world,  find  it  necessary  to  restrict  the 
company  to  those  who  are  in  sympathy  with  one  an- 
other, or  of  one  marked  form  of  thought,  or  degree  of 
moral  development." 

a  The  forthcoming  new  edition  of  my  lectures. 


most  gladly  lay  aside  for  the  scientific  investiga- 
tions which  afford  me  the  purest  and  most  undis- 
turbed enjoyment,  seems  to  me  the  same  as  is 
made  upon  every  member  of  the  profession  to 
which  I  have  the  honor  to  belong,  that  he  should 
do  his  utmost  to  cure  or  to  mitigate  bodily  dis- 
ease. Theoretical  and  experimental  studies,  ex- 
tending over  forty  years,  have  given  me  what  I 
honestly  believe  (whether  rightly  or  wrongly)  to 
be  a  rather  unusual  power  of  dealing  with  this 
subject.  Since  the  appearance  of  my  lectures,  I 
have  received  a  large  number  of  public  assurances 
that  they  are  doing  good  service  in  preventing 
the  spread  of  a  noxious  mental  epidemic  in  this 
country  ;  and  I  have  been  privately  informed  of 
several  instances  in  which  persons,  who  had  been 
"  bitten  "  by  this  malady,  have  owed  their  re- 
covery to  my  treatment.  Looking  to  the  danger 
which  threatens  us  from  the  United  States,  of  an 
importation  of  a  real  spiritualistic  mania,  far 
more  injurious  to  our  mental  welfare  than  that 
of  the  Colorado  beetle  will  be  to  our  material  in- 
terests, I  should  be  untrue  to  my  own  convictions 
of  duty  if  I  did  not  do  what  in  me  lies  to  prevent 
it.  I  know  too  well  that  I  thus  expose  myself  to 
severe  obloquy,  which  (as  I  am  not  peculiarly 
thick-skinned)  will  be  very  unpleasant  to  myself, 
and  unfm-tunately  still  more  so  to  some  who  are 
nearly  connected  with  me.  But  I  am  content  to 
brave  all,  if  I  can  console  myself  with  the  belief 
that  this  expose  will  be  of  the  least  service,  either 
to  individuals  or  to  society  at  large. 

That  I  do  not  take  an  exaggerated  view  of 
the  danger,  will  appear,  I  think,  from  the  follow- 
ing citations  from  Mr.  Home's  book  : 

"  In  dealing  with  spiritualism,  it  is  the  custom  of 
a  certain  class  of  weak  minds  to  break  loose  from 
all  restraint.  Eeason  being  weak  and  enthusiasm 
strong,  the  very  thought  of  communion  with  the 
dwellers  in  another  world  appears  to  intoxicate 
these  unfortunates  almost  to  madness.  Their  va- 
garies are  often  scarcely  distinguishable  from  those 
beheld  in  mad-houses  or  at  the  wilder  kind  of  re- 
vival-meetings. The  disease  manifests  itself  in 
a  variety  of  ways.  Some  of  the  men  and  women 
attacked  by  it  pin  themselves  to  a  particular  de- 
lusion, with  a  fanatical  tenacity  which  nothing  can 
affect." 

In  another  place  Mr.  Home  speaks  of  "the 
wild  dances  in  which  '  mediums '  (generally  fe- 
males) indulge  under  the  influence  of  imaginary 
Indian  controls." 

Can  anything  be  a  stronger  confirmation  of 
the  doctrine  of  "  Epidemic  Delusion  "  than  this 
reproduction  of  the  "Dancing  Mania"  under  a 
different  form  of  "  possession  ?  " 


PSYCHOLOGICAL    CURIOSITIES  OF  SPIRITUALISM. 


113 


Philosophy  of  Spirittalism. 
As  Moses  &  Son  kept  a  poet,  so  does  spiritual- 
Una  now  keep  a  philosopher — a  Master  of  Arts  of 
Oxford — who,  speculating  profoundly  on  the  con- 
stitution of  matter,  has  recently  announced  his 
conclusion  that  there  is  no  logical  distinction 
whatever  between  matter  and  spirit ;  and  that 
there  is,  consequently,  nothing  at  all  difficult  to 
believe,  either  in  the  "materialization''  of  de- 
parted spirits  who  return  to  earth,  or  in  the  "  de- 
materialization  "  and  "  ^materialization  "  of  solid 
fleshly  bodies.  Hence  he  considers  it  to  be  true, 
not  only  of  the  mind,  but  of  the  body,  that 

"  Stone-walls  do  not  a  prison  make, 
Nor  iron  bars  a  cage  " — 

a  doctrine  that  will  prove  extremely  convenient 
to  the  inmates  of  these  institutions,  if  only  they 
can  get  "  the  spirits  "  to  help  them  out.  And 
the  passage  of  Mrs.  Guppy  through  either  the 
walls,  the  closed  doors,  the  shuttered  windows, 
the  floor  beneath,  or  the  roof  and  ceilings  above, 
is  to  be  regarded  as,  though  somewhat  unusual,  a 
perfectly  "  natural "  phenomenon.1 

Now,  this  reasoning  seems  to  me  so  transpar- 
ently fallacious  as  not  to  require  wasting  many 
words  upon  it.  Even  if  we  accept,  as  Faraday 
showed  an  inclination  to  do,  the  physical  doctrine 
of  Boscovich,  that  what  we  call  a  "material" 
body  is  nothing  else  than  an  aggregation  of 
"  centres  of  force,"  and  if  we  psychologically  re- 
fine down  matter,  as  John  S.  Mill  did,  into  "  a 
permanent  possibility  of  sensation,"  I  cannot  see 
that  this  carries  us  one  single  step  toward  the 
M.  A.'s  deduction.  For  the  very  foundation  of 
our  conception  of  "  matter  "  is  the  sense  of  resist- 
ance which  we  experience  when  we  press  some 
part  of  our  body  against  it ;  and  as  we  cannot, 
take  any  such  cognizance  of  "  spirit,"  we  cannot 
conceive  of  it  as  having  anything  in  common  with 
matter;  the  two  remaining,  just  as  they  always 
have  been,  "  logically  distinct  entities." 

If  this  be  a  fair  sample  of  the  result  of  the 
philosophic  teaching  imparted  by  the  University 
of  Oxford,  the  sooner  that  teaching  is  reformed 
the  better  for  common-sense  and  rationality. 

Amenities  of  Spiritualism. 

It  has  been  the  boast  of  spiritualists  that,  if 
their  new  religion  does  not  supersede  Christianity, 
it  is  at  any  rate  to  supplement  it,  by  carrying  its 
teachings  to  a  higher  development,  and  by  thus 
leading  to  the  earlier  prevalence  of  that  universal 


1  "  Is  there  any  such.  Thing  as  Matter? ' 
(Oxon.).    Human  Xature  for  May,  1877. 

44 


By  M.  A. 


reign  of  peace  and  good-will  which  Christianity 
has  as  yet  failed  to  bring  about.  So  far,  how- 
ever, is  the  practice  of  "  professing  "  spiritualists 
from  being  much  better  in  this  particular  than 
that  of  "  professing  "  Christians,  that  it  seems  to 
me  to  be  worse  ;  instead  of  being  "  slow  to  anger  " 
and  "  forsaking  wrath,"  there  are  spiritualists 
who  carry  on  their  controversies,  even  among 
themselves,  with  most  reprehensible  bitterness  ; 
while  even  the  scientific  advocates  of  the  system, 
whose  position  should  place  them  above  personal 
animosity,  cannot  find  decent  language  to  put 
down  a  troublesome  skeptic,  who  imputes  to  them 
nothing  worse  than  a  too  easy  credulity. 

Thus  Mr.  Home's  book  affords  an  ample  store 
of  very  choice  samples  of  vituperative  eloquence, 
directed,  not  against  scientific  skeptics,  for  these 
he  treats  with  a  marked  consideration  which  Mr. 
Wallace  might  well  imitate,  but  against  certain 
spiritualists,  whom  he  regards  (for  reasons  not 
stated)  with  a  very  unchristian  hostility.  One  of 
these  is  Colonel  Olcott,  of  New  York,  President 
of  the  Theosophical  Society,  of  whom  I  shall  have 
more  to  say  presently.  This  gentleman  has  lately 
published  a  book  called  "People  from  the  Other 
World,"  dedicated  to  Messrs.  Crookes  and  Wal- 
lace, giving  an  account  of  the  "  materializations  " 
of  the  Eddy  brothers,  which  Mr.  Home  utterly 
discredits.  Of  this  book  Mr.  Home  says  that  "  it 
is  ten  times  more  meaningless  than  the  gospel  of 
Mormon,  or  the  speculations  of  Joanna  South- 
cote  ; "  that  "  seldom  before  have  human  minds 
been  astonished  at  such  utterances ;  "  and  that 
while  "  other  productions  of  the  kind  infest 
spiritual  literature,  there  are  few  which  display 
such  an  utter  lack  of  principle,  such  a  happy 
audacity  in  assertion,  or  so  complete  a  disregard 
of  facts." 

Of  course,  Mr.  Home  will  "  catch  it "  in  his 
turn  from  the  spiritualistic  critics  of  his  book. 
The  following  are  a  few  excerpts  from  the  only  re- 
view of  it  that  I  have  seen : J 

"  Mr.  Home  can  have  no  pretense  whatever  to 
occupy  that  lofty  and  interior  plane  from  which 
spirtualism  proper  is  capable  of  being  apprehended. 
He  is  simply  a  phenomenal  medium,  and  we  have 
yet  to  learn  that  this  class  contains  any  of  those  gift- 
ed with  glowing  inspiration,  placid  wisdom,  or  pure 
disinterestedness.  .  .  .  The  clay  of  human  mortal- 
ity is  attached  to  him  so  firmly  that  not  for  one 
moment  does  he  soar  into  the  feigner  realm  of 
spiritual  light  and  principles  [which  is,  of  course, 
inhabited  by  his  critic].  .  .  .  Eightly  or  wrongly, 
Mr.  Home  has  been  most  cruelly  attacked  by  a 

1  Human  Natwe,  a  Monthly  Journal  of  Zoistic  Sci- 
ence, May,  1877. 


m 


TEE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  EOETELY.-SUPPLEEEET. 


legion  of  opponents,  who  have  had  to  invent  most 
varied  excuses  for  being  his  implacable  foes. 
Strangely  enough,  these  adversaries  are,  most  of 
them,  in  the  same  sphere  of  spiritual  activity  with 
himself.  They  are  mediums — physical  or  phe- 
nomenal mediums — of  one  kind  or  another,  and 
therefore  brought  into  close  juxtaposition  with 
their  elder  brother.  .  .  .  This  inflated  selfishness 
only  leads  to  mutual  detraction  and  evil-speaking, 
which,  when  reproduced  and  carried  from  country 
to  country,  becomes  a  perfect  host  of  devils,  suffi- 
cient to  goad  to  madness  any  one  who  lives  on  the 
plane  of  their  action.  .  .  .  The  whole  proceeding 
is  an  instructive  illustration  of  the  too-extended 
development  of  physical  mediumship,  unsanctified 
by  spiritual  love  and  unselfish  beneficence." 

So  much  for  Mr.  Home  personally :  now  for 
his  book : 

"  Take  the  book  as  a  whole,  from  beginning 
to  end,  it  is  a  superficial  compilation  without  an 
original  thought  or  inspired  purpose,  and,  as  all 
such  performances  are,  it  is  charmingly  illogical." 

See  how  these  spiritualists  love  one  another. 

I  now  turn  to  Mr.  Wallace,  an  old  friend  with 
whom  I  have  never  had  the  slightest  personal 
disagreement,  except  that  which  has  arisen  (on 
his  side)  out  of  our  difference  of  opinion  on  the 
subjects  discussed  in  my  lectures. 

In  the  review  of  these  lectures  to  which  I 
have  already  referred,  Mr.  Wallace  charges  me 
with  "  complete  misrepresentations  of  the  opin- 
ions of  his  opponents,"  with  making  "  vague  gen- 
eral assertions,  without  a  particle  of  proof  offered, 
or  which  can  be  offered ;  "  and,  what  is  far  worse, 
with  willful  and  repeated  suppressio  veri.  One 
passage  in  particular,  reflecting  upon  what  I  con- 
sidered Mr.  Wallace's  too  ready  acceptance  of 
"  the  slenderest  evidence  of  the  greatest  mar- 
vels," is  denounced  by  Mr.  Wallace,  first,  as 
"  an  utterly  unjustifiable  remark  ; "  secondly,  as 
not  having  "  even  the  shadow  of  a  foundation ; " 
and  thirdly  (when  he  has  worked  himself  up  to 
the  highest  pitch  of  virtuous  indignation),  as  a 
"  reckless  accusation,  which  he  cannot  adequately 
characterize  without  using  language  which  he 
would  not  wish  to  use."  The  terrific  force  of  this 
last  dreadful  denunciation  (equivalent  to  the  speak- 
er's fearful  threat  of"  naming  "  an  honorable  mem- 
ber) makes  me  thankful  that,  as  spiritualism  is 
not  yet  a  dominant  power  in  the  state,  I  can  at 
present  be  only  morally  "  pilloried."  Looking, 
however,  to  the  case  of  the  unfortunate  minister 
who  was  hanged  during  the  Salem  epidemic,  for 
having  dared  to  call  in  question  the  very  exist- 
ence of  witchcraft,  I  cannot  contemplate  with- 
out a  shudder  the  doom  that  might  befall  me  if  I 


were  put  on  trial  for  my  spiritualistic  heresy, 
with  Messrs.  Crookes  and  Wallace  for  my  judges, 
the  Oxford  M.  A.  as  attorney-general  for  the 
prosecution,  and  Mrs.  Guppy  Volckman  as  the 
principal  witness  against  me  ! 

Having  introduced  these  citations  merely  as 
choice  samples  of  the  "  amenities  of  spiriual- 
ism,"  which  remind  one  of  the  "brief"  instruc- 
tions given  to  the  counsel  for  a  defendant — "  No 
case;  abuse  the  plaintiff's  attorney" — I  pass  on 
to  the  next  "  curiosity." 

What   Mr.   Wallace  means  by   "  Demonstra- 
tion." 

Every  one  who  has  studied  the  subject  of  evi- 
dence knows  perfectly  well  that  to  "  demon- 
strate" a  certain  proposition  is,  as  Dr.  Johnson 
defined  it,  "  to  establish  so  as  to  exclude  possi- 
bility of  doubt  or  denial ;  "  the  type  of  demonstra- 
tive reasoning  being  the  mathematical,  in  which 
every  step  in  the  deductive  process  is  so  com- 
pletely indubitable — either  the  contrary,  or  any- 
thing else  than  the  proposition  affirmed,  being 
"  unthinkable  " — that  we  have  as  firm  an  assur- 
ance of  the  final  Q.  E.  D.  as  we  have  of  the  ax- 
ioms from  which  we  first  started. 

No  evidence  as  to  either  scientific  or  ordinary 
facts  can  be,  in  the  strict  sense,  "  demonstra- 
tive ; "  for  it  is  open  to  various  sources  of  fal- 
lacy, such  as  errors  of  observation,  errors  of  inter- 
pretation, and  errors  (intentional  or  unintentional) 
of  statement.  But  what  we  ordinarily  proceed  up- 
on in  the  formation  of  our  convictions  is  a  con- 
currence of  testimony  given  by  competent  and 
disinterested  witnesses,  which,  if  it  does  not  abso- 
lutely "  exclude  possibility  of  doubt  or  denial," 
does  so  to  such  a  degree  as  to  establish  the  high- 
est moral  probability  that  the  case  admits  of. 
Where,  on  the  other  hand,  there  is  a  reasonable 
ground  for  doubt,  either  as  to  the  sufficiency  of 
the  testimony  for  the  establishment  of  (ho  factum 
probandum,  or  as  to  its  trustworthiness  (which 
may  be  questioned  not  only  on  the  ground  of  in- 
tentional deceit,  but  on  many  others),  it  would 
altogether  confuse  the  meaning  of  terms  to  call 
such  evidence  "  demonstrative." 

This,  however,  is  what  Mr.  Wallace  has  re- 
peatedly done ;  charging  me  with  willfully  shutting 
my  own  eyes  to,  and  endeavoring  to  hide  from 
the  eyes  of  others,  what  he  considers  the  demon- 
strative evidence  in  favor  of  certain  propositions; 
which  evidence,  so  far  from  being  free  from  "  the 
possibility  of  doubt  or  denial,"  appears  to  me 
open  to  question  on  every  one  of  the  grounds  I 
have  just  specified. 


PSYCHOLOGICAL   CURIOSITIES  OF  SPIRITUALISM. 


115 


It  has  also  appeared  to  me  that  the  "  spirit- 
ualistic "   production  of  flowers,  fruits,  etc.,  in 
dark  seances,  which  is  now  one  of  the  commonest 
"mediumistic  "  performances,  should,  even  more 
than  the  moving  of  tables  and  the  production  of 
"raps,"  be  regarded  as  so  completely  ex  rerum 
natura,  as  to  justify  the  assumption  that  it  is  a 
mere  piece  of  jugglery,  which  a  thorough  investi- 
gation must  detect ;  the  fact  of  its  non-detection 
merely  showing  that  the  investigation   has   not 
been  complete.     There  can  be  only  two  hypothe- 
ses about  the  matter :  either  that  the  fruit,  flow- 
ers, etc.,  have  been  brought  into  the  room  by  the 
"  medium,"  or  by  some  coufederate,  or  that  they 
have  been  dematerialized,  that  is,  resolved  into 
their    component   atoms,    which    after    passing 
through  either   walls,  doors,    or   window-panes, 
have  not  only  come  together  again  in  their  origi- 
nal forms,  but,  in  the  case  of  living  bodies,  have 
renewed  their  vital  activity.     Of  course,  if  we  be- 
lieve this  possible  of  live  eels  or  lobsters,  we  may 
believe  it  also  of  Mrs.  Guppy.     But,  to  myself, 
the  one  is  as  inconceivable  as  the  other ;  and  even 
Mr.  D.  D.  Home,  who  has   witnessed   many  in- 
stances in  which  this  "  passage  of  matter  through 
matter  "  was  said  to  have  occurred,  agrees  with 
me  in  considering  that  they  "  could  one  and  all 
be  explained  by  less  far-fetched  theories."     {Op. 
cit.,  p.  351.)     Yet  Mr.  Wallace  complains  of  my 
not  accepting  the  flowers  and  fruits  "  produced  " 
in  his  own  drawing-room,  and  those  which  made 
their  appearance  in  the  house  of  Mr.  T.  A.  Trol- 
lope  at  Florence  (related  in  the  "  Dialectical  Ke- 
port "),  as  "  demonstrably  not  brought  by  the  me- 
dium." 

I  shall  now,  with  Mr.  Home's  assistance,  in- 
quire into  the  probative  value  of  each  of  these 
cases: 

"  Let  me  give  "  (says  Mr.  Home,  op.  cit.,  page 
352)  "  an  idea  of  how  the  bringing  fruit,  fish,  etc., 
into  a  darkened  room  is  often  accomplished.  The 
expectant  circle,  we  will  suppose,  is  seated  round 
the  table.  The  stream  of  harmony  gushes  forth 
as  usual.  Presently  the  'medium'  (generally  a 
lady— ladies'  dresses  offer  such  facilities  for  con- 
cealment) feels  and  announces  the  presence  of  the 
'  spirits.'  She  commences  to  speculate  as  to  what 
they  will  bring.  '  Let  me  see !  at  our  last  seance 
the  dear  spirits  brought  in  some  cabbages.  Sup- 
pose they  were  to  bring  lilies-of-the-valley  this 
time,  how  nice  that  would  be  !  Oh,  dear,  no  !  "We 
must  not  ask  for  lilies-of-the-valley.  Let  us  think 
of  something  else.   "What  would  any  of  you  like  ? ' 

"  Naturally  a  voice  proceeds  from  some  one  in 
the  circle,  '/would  like  to  have  lilies-of-the-val- 
ley.' 


"  The  '  medium '  energetically  repudiates  the 
suggestion.  '  Perhaps  the  dear  spirits  could  not 
bring  them.  Why  will  you  ask  for  such  out-of- 
the-way  things  ? '  > 

"  '  If  they  bring  lilies-of-the-valley,  I  shall  con- 
sider it  a  test.' 

"  The  next  instant  a  scattering  sound  is  heard. 
A  '  spirit-voice  '  probably  announces,  '  We  have 
brought  you  the  lilies,  since  you  wish  for  them  so 
much.'  And,  sure  enough,  on  a  light  being  struck, 
the  table  is  found  strewed  with  the  flowers  in 
question.  And  the  next  issue  of  some  spiritual 
journal  describes,  as  a  '  good  test,'  that  '  at  Mrs. 

's  seance,  a  few  days  ago,  Mr.  A wished 

for  some  lilies-of-the-valley,  which  the  spirits 
"  instantly  brought." '  "    (Op.  cit.,  p.  353.) 

This  "  suggestive  "  method  is  well  known  to 
be  employed  by  conjurers ;  who  can  "  force  a 
card  "  upon  the  most  unwilling  victim,  or  compel 
him  to  select,  out  of  a  dozen  or  two  of  handker- 
chiefs, the  one  suitable  for  his  trick.  The  only 
difference  is,  that  the  suggestion  is  conveyed  oral- 
ly in  the  one  case,  and  presented  visually  in  the 
other.  But,  besides  this  unconscious  confeder- 
acy, there  is  full  opportunity  for  the  intentional 
complicity  w-hich  Sergeant  Cox  has  exposed  in 
the  case  of  the  "materialization"  imposture ; 
and  not  even  members  of  the  family  or  the  most 
intimate  friends  can  be  in  strictness  regarded  as 
beyond  the  pale  of  suspicion.  Clever  as  they 
are,  however,  "mediums'"  are  sometimes  caught 
in  their  own  trap. 

"I  recall  an  instance"  (says  Mr.  Home)  "in 
which  about  half  a  pint  of  gooseberries  were 
thrown  on  a  table  in  the  dark.  '  There,'  cried  the 
'  medium,'  '  is  not  that  a  beautiful  manifestation? 
Don't  you  think  it  is  perfectly  astonishing  ? '  A 
burst  of  indignation  ensued  when  the  two  other 
persons  present  '  could  find  nothing  astonishing 
in  it.'  'What!'  said  the  wonder,  'you  think  I 
had  the  berries  in  my  pocket,  do  you  ? '  And  to 
prove  the  honesty  of  all  this  wrath,  the  said  pock- 
et was  turned  inside  out.  Alas  for  the  result ! 
The 'medium'  had  forgotten  the  little"  withered 
ends  [of  the  corolla]  which  adhere  to  the  goose- 
berry. At  least  a  dozen  of  these  were  disen- 
tombed from  the  depths  of  that  pocket." 

The  "  medium,"  however,  was  quite  equal  to 
the  occasion:  "Evil  spirits  must  have  placed 
them  there  ! " 

Does  Mr.  Wallace  accept  this  explanation? 
If  not,  why  not  ?  It  is  surely  just  as  likely  as 
the  "  dematerialization  "  itself. 

Now  it  will  scarcely  be  believed  that  in  Mr. 

1  Provided  always  (saya  Mr.  Home)  they  are  in  sea- 
son. The  "  spirits"  never  bring  flowers  which  are 
out  of  season,  or  the  products  of  distant  lands. 


116 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MOXTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


Wallace's  own  case  no  precautions  whatever  had  ' 
been  employed  I  The  "  medium  "  was  Miss  Nichol 
(of  whom  more  anon) ;  and  the  production  took 
place  for  the  first  time,  and  "  at  a  very  early 
stage  of  her  development."  The  only  shred  of 
evidence  adduced  by  Mr.  Wallace  that  the  flow- 
ers and  ferns  had  not  been  brought  in  by  the 
"  medium,"  consists  in  what  he  asserts  to  have 
been  their  condition — they  being  "all  absolutely 
fresh  as  if  just  gathered  from  a  conservatory, 
and  covered  with  a  fine,  cold  dew."  This,  in  Mr. 
Wallace's  opinion,  made  it  "  absolutely  impos- 
sible "  for  Miss  Nichol  to  have  kept  them  con- 
cealed about  her  person  "  in  a  very  warm,  gas- 
lighted  room  four  hours  before  the  flowers  ap- 
peared." Now,  granting  Mr.  Wallace's  testimony 
on  this  point — as  to  which  I  fully  admit  that  he 
was  specially  qualified  to  judge — to  have  been 
entirely  unbiased,  there  is  one  little  defect  in  his 
narrative,  which,  as  will  presently  appear,  serious- 
ly impairs  its  probative  value.  The  whole  thing 
happened  more  than  ten  years  ago ;  and  such  a 
triviality  as  Miss  Nichol's  having  left  the  room 
during  these  four  hours,  or  having  had  an  opera- 
cloak  brought  in  to  prevent  her  feeling  chilly 
( it  being  mid-winter),  may  have  escaped  Mr.  Wal- 
lace's attention  at  the  time,  or  slipped  his  mem- 
ory since.  But,  even  taking  the  case  exactly  as 
Mr.  Wallace  puts  it,  what  is  the  proof  of  his 
"absolute impossibility?"  Every  one  has  seen 
conjurers  tumble  piles  of  bouquets  out  of  a  hat, 
in  which  it  was  "absolutely  impossible"  that 
they  could  have  been  all  contained.  And  most 
people  who  have  been  long  in  India  have  seen 
the  celebrated  "  tree-trick,"  which,  as  described 
to  me  by  several  of  our  most  distinguished  civil- 
ians and  scientific  officers,  is  simply  the  "greatest 
marvel  I  ever  heard  of.  That  a  mango-tree 
should  first  shoot  up  to  a  height  of  six  inches, 
from  a  grass-plot  to  which  the  conjurers  had  no 
previous  access,  beneath  an  inverted  cylindrical 
basket  whose  emptiness  has  been  previously 
"  demonstrated,"  and  that  this  tree  should  ap- 
pear to  grow  in  the  course  of  half  an  hour  from 
six  inches  to  six  feet,  under  a  succession  of  tall- 
er and  yet  taller  baskets,  quite  beats  Miss  Nichol. 
Does  Mr.  Wallace  attribute  this  to  "spiritual 
agency,"  in  like  manner  as  Mr.  Benjamin  Cole- 
man insists  that  Messrs.  Cooke  and  Maskelyne,  in 
spite  of  their  disclaimer,  "  are  the  best  of  living 
mediums  for  the  production  of  physical  effects  ?  " 
Or,  like  the  world  in  general,  and  the  perform- 
ers of  the  "tree-trick"  in  particular,  does  he 
regard  it  as  a  piece  of  clever  jugglery  ?  If  the 
former,  we  are  free  to  entertain  our  own  opinion 


of  the  healthful  condition  of  Mr.  Wallace's  mind. 
If  the  latter,  what  is  the  probative  value  of  the 
"demonstrative"  performance  in  Mr.  Wallace's 
drawing-room  ? 

But  now  for  the  other  case  specially  cited  by 
Mr.  Wallace,  that  of  Mr.  T.  A.  Trollope.  Here 
the  "  medium's  "  dress  had  been  carefully  exam- 
ined by  Mrs.  Trollope  before  the  seance  began, 
and  a  previous  search  of  the  room  had  been 
made  by  the  gentlemen  of  the  party.  Now,  con- 
sidering how  cleverly  (as  will  be  presently  shown) 
the  concealment  of  the  "  properties"  required  for 
"  spirit  materialization  "  can  be  managed  by  in- 
genious ladies,  it  would  have  been  more  satisfac- 
tory if  the  examination  of  Miss  Nichol's  dress 
had  been  effected  by  an  experienced  female 
searcher ;  and  the  assistance  of  a  clever  detec- 
tive might  have  been  a  useful  help  to  the  gentle- 
men-searchers of  the  room.  But  even  if  all  these 
precautions  had  been  adopted,  a  trick  so  simple 
that  (as  M.  Robin  the  conjurer  said)  "  it  makes 
one  laugh  to  see  how  easily  people  can  be  de- 
ceived," would  have  been  quite  sufficient  to  get 
over  the  little  difficulty. 

In  the  case  of  a  "  medium "  known  to  Mr. 
Home  {op.  cit.,  page  353),  "  in  more  than  one  in- 
stance, after  the  most  rigid  scrutiny  of  her  dress 
had  been  made,  flowers,  and  even  small  branches 
of  shrubs  with  the  leaves  attached,  were  brought, 
in  total  darkness,  of  course."  One  evening, 
however,  a  gentleman  who  had  come  too  late  to 
be  admitted  to  the  seance,  but  to  whom,  after  its 
conclusion,  one  of  the  little  "  spirit-branches  " 
had  been  given  to  examine,  happened  to  notice  a 
leaf  hanging  from  the  lower  part  of  the  red  opera- 
cloak  worn  by  the  "medium  ; "  and,  finding  that 
it  corresponded  exactly  with  the  leaves  of  the 
twig  he  held  in  his  hand,  he  caught  up  the 
cloak,  and  showed  to  all  present  that  the  "  spirit- 
ual "  productions  had  been  concealed  in  its  lin- 
ing. And  "it  was  then  remembered  that  the 
'  medium  '  had,  after  being  searched,  complained 
of  feeling  chilly,  and  had  requested  permission 
to  put  on  the  red  opera-cloak  which  she  had  left 
(quite  promiscuously,  of  course)  in  the  hall." 

Thus,  in  addition  to  a  very  thorough  search, 
alike  of  the  "  medium "  and  of  the  apartment, 
before  the  seance,  it  would  be  essential  that  after 
its  commencement  nothing  shoidd  be  brought  in. 

Even  this  precaution,  however,  would  not 
suffice  to  "  demonstrate  "  the  "  spiritual "  intro- 
duction of  the  articles  in  question.  For  there 
would  remain  full  scope  for  the  exercise  of  con- 
federacy, which,  says  Mr.  Home,  "  plays  a  great 
part  on  these  occasions.  ...  I  have  known  of 


PSYCHOLOGICAL   CURIOSITIES  OF  SPIRITUALISM. 


117 


eases,'1  he  continues,  "whore  servants  of  the 
house  were  bribed  into  acting  as  accomplices." 
And  Sergeant  Cox,  speaking  of  the  "  materializa- 
tion" performance,  refers  to  "people  who  knew 
it  was  a  trick,  and  lent  themselves  to  it." 

"  The  lesson,"  continues  Sergeant  Cox,  "  to  he 
learned  from  all  this  [the  system  of  cheating  he  has 
honestly  exposed]  is,  that  no  phenomena  should 
be  accepted  as  genuine  that  are  not  produced  un- 
der strict  test-conditions.  Investigators  should  be 
satisfied  with  no  evidence  short  of  the  very  best  that 
the  circumstances  will  ■permit.'1'' 

I  feel  sure,  therefore,  that,  as  an  experienced 
criminal  judge,  Sergeant  Cox  will  bear  me  out  in 
saying  that,  in  the  case  now  under  discussion, 
the  only  "  test-condition  "  that  could  be  consid- 
ered "  demonstrative  "  would  be  a  careful  search 
of  every  individual  admitted  to  the  seance.  Such 
a  test,  however,  would  probably  be  objected  to 
by  Mr.  Wallace,  as  showing  an  unreasonable  de- 
gree of  suspicion,  which  might  deter  the  "  dear 
spirits  "  from  favoring  the  seance  with  their  gifts ; 
and  he  would  argue  that  failure  under  such  "  rig- 
id conditions"  proved  nothing  against  the  gen- 
uineness of  successes  obtained  under  more  fa- 
vorable circumstances.  But  I  believe  that  the 
common-sense  of  such  as  have  not  surrendered  it 
to  the  spiritualistic  "  prepossession  "  will  bear  me 
out  in  the  conclusion  that  Mr.  Wallace's  "  demon- 
stration "  is  no  demonstration  at  all ;  and  that, 
until  some  better  shall  have  been  given,  we  are 
fully  justified  in  deeming  it  more  probable  that 
there  is  imposture  somewhere  than  that  "  matter 
can  pass  through  matter." 

That  there  is  good  ground  for  suspecting  even 
ladies  who  are  above  receiving  money  as  profes- 
sional "  mediums  "  of  occasionally  amusing  them- 
selves in  this  way  for  the  mere  pleasure  of  decep- 
tion, I  pointed  out  in  my  lectures,  as  a  probability 
well  known  to  medical  practitioners,  of  which 
Mr.  Wallace  has  not  had — what  I  have  had — per- 
sonal experience.  And  I  shall  now  give  the  par- 
ticulars of  a  case  of  this  kind,  referred  to  in  my 
second  lecture,  my  account  of  which  has  been 
called  in  question  by  Mr.  Wallace. 

In  his  zeal  to  defend  a  "  lady-medium,"  whom 
he  considers  that  I  have  most  unjustly  aspersed, 
Mr.  Wallace  suggests  that  my  informant  "  manu- 
factured the  evidence;"  asks  for  "independent 
testimony  that  the  salt  was  not  applied  to  the 
flowers  after  they  appeared  at  the  seance  ;  "  and 
states  that  "  some  of  the  flowers  were  sent  to  a 
medical  man  in  the  town,  and  that  no  trace  of 
ferrocyanide  of  potassium  could  be  detected." 
As  Mr.  Wallace  has  no  reserve  about  the  case,  I 


may  now  say  that  the  "  medium  "  was  Mr.  Wal- 
lace's favorite  performer — Miss  Nichol,  afterward 
Mrs.  Guppy,  and  now  Mrs.  Guppy  Volckman — 
the  subject  of  the  celebrated  aerial  transportation 
from  her  house  in  Highbury  Hill  Park  into  a  se 
curely-closed  room  in  Lamb's  Conduit  Street ; 
and  that  the  seance  was  one  of  several  held  dur- 
ing the  meeting  of  the  British  Association  at 
Belfast,  three  years  ago,  in  a  house  into  which 
Mrs.  Guppy  had  been  received  as  a  guest.  Hav- 
ing myself  seen  one  of  the  hollyhocks  "  pro- 
duced "  on  that  occasion,  and  having  learned 
that  a  fraud  had  been  chemically  detected  by  a 
young  gentleman  present  at  the  seance,  I  put  my- 
self into  communication  with  him,  and  soon  re- 
ceived an  explicit  statement  of  what  had  passed, 
not  only  at  this,  but  at  a  previous  seance,  with 
full  permission  to  publish  it.  The  following  vc /•- 
batim  extract  from  this  statement,  which,  having 
lain  in  my  desk  for  more  than  three  years,  has 
not  been  "  manufactured  "  to  meet  Mr.  Wallace's 
objections — as  its  precise  "  fit "  might  seem  to 
suggest — contains  all  that  is  essential  to  the 
case : 

"  Having  observed  [in  previous  seances]  that 
the  flowers  were  soaked  in  wet  (dew  does  not  soak 
to  the  heart  of  a  flower),  I  considered  that  the  dew 
on  them  was  artificially  produced  ;  and  on  August 
21st  I  mixed  a  small  quantity  of  solution  of  potas- 
sium ferrocyanide  with  the  water  on  the  wash-stand 
in  Mrs.  Guppy's  rooms. 

"  Seance  No.  4,  August  23,  1874.— Fifteen  per- 
sons sat;  of  these  five  were  strangers — viz.,  Mr. 
and  Mrs.  Guppy,  and  three  gentlemen  introduced 
by  them,  one  a  professed  medium.  The  candle 
was  put  out,  and  the  table  began  to  oscillate  vio- 
lently. We  were  asked  to  wish  for  three  kinds  of 
flowers.  The  table  now  jolted  violently,  and  1 
struck  some  matches.  It  at  once  stopped.  Mrs. 
Guppy  got  very  angry,  and  said  it  was  as  much  as 
to  say  they  were  cheating.  Being  pacified,  the 
candle  was  again  extinguished,  after  we  had  found 
on  the  table  some  sand,  a  plant  like  an  onion,  etc. 
The  table  rocked  violently,  and  scent  was  squirted 
from  one  of  the  mediums.  A  large  quantity  of 
flowers  were  thrown  from  their  side  of  the  table, 
among  which  were  china-asters,  which  I  took  out, 
and,  having  wet  a  piece  of  white  blotting-paper 
with  the  '  dew'  off  them,  poured  some  ferrous-sul- 
phate solution  on  it.  The  result  was  the  ordinary 
Prussian-blue  color.  A  spike  of  pink  hollyhock 
gave  a  very  decided  blue  color.  Similar  flowers. 
fresh  from  the  garden,  gave  no  reaction.  The 
flowers  were  allowed  to  remain  hi  my  laboratory, 
the  door  of  which  was  not  locked,  till  the  morning 
of  August  25th,  when  I  took  some  in  to  Dr.  Hodg- 
es, and  he  with  several  friends  could  find  no  trace 
of  the  salt  in  them.    I  immediately  wrote  to  a 


118 


THE  POPULAR  SCIEXCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


friend  who  had  been  present  at  the  seance,  and 
who  had  taken  an  aster  with  him  as  a  keepsake, 
to  have  it  tested.  He  writes :  '  I  have  had  the 
plants  analyzed  to-day  by  Professors  Delfs,  of  Hei- 
delberg, and  Koscoe,  of  Manchester.  The  asters 
showed  unmistakable  signs  of  ferrocyanide  of  po- 
tassium, and  in  no  small  quantity  either.'  I  be- 
lieve the  reason  Dr.  Hodges  could  find  nothing  in 
the  hollyhocks  was,  that  the  fresh  flowers  had 
been  substituted  for  them  on  Monday  evening 
(24th),  when  every  one  was  from  home  at  Sir  J. 
Lubbock's  lecture,  except  the  mediums." 

Being  able  to  add,  from  inquiries  I  have  made, 
that  my  informant  bears  an  unblemished  charac- 
ter, as  does  also  the  friend  to  whom  he  refers,  I 
ask,  Which  is  the  more  to  be  trusted — the  tes- 
timony of  these  two  gentlemen,  or  the  honesty 
of  Mrs.  Guppy  ?  It  will  be  observed  that  we 
have  here  no  evidence  whatever  that  the  flowers 
were  not  brought  in  by  the  medium ;  while  the 
immediate  detection  of  the  salt  by  one  of  the  wit- 
nesses, and  the  subsequent  confirmatory  testi- 
mony of  the  other,  affords  the  strongest  assur- 
ance that  the  flowers  had  been  watered  out  of 
the  decanter  in  Mrs.  Guppy's  room — by  whom  ?  I 
can  only  say,  as  an  ex-professor  of  medical  juris- 
prudence, that  I  have  not  the  least  doubt,  sup- 
posing this  to  have  been  a  case  of  poisoning,  as 
to  the  verdict  that  an  intelligent  jury  would  re- 
turn. 

What  Mr.  Wallace  deems  "  Rigid  Condi- 
tions." 

The  failure  of  each  of  the  three  claimants  for 
the  Burdin  prize,  as  narrated  in  my  second  lect- 
ure, is  thus  accounted  for  by  Mr.  Wallace :  "  The 
reader  might  well  doubt  if  offering  a  prize  for 
reading  under  rigid  conditions  was  an  adequate 
means  of  sifting  a  faculty  so  eminently  variable, 
uncertain,  and  delicate,  as  clairvoyance  is  ad- 
mitted to  be."  Now,  what  were  these  conditions  ? 
In  the  first  case,  Mademoiselle  Emelie  was  not 
permitted  to  acquaint  herself  by  ordinary  vision 
with  the  contents  of  a  book  which  she  was  to 
read  with  her  occiput.  In  the  second,  Mademoi- 
selle Pigeaire,  whose  eyes  were  covered  by  a 
black-velvet  bandage,  was  required  to  read  a 
book  held  directly  opposite  her  face,  and  was  not 
permitted  to  hold  it  for  herself  in  such  a  position 
that  she  could  see  it  downward  beneath  the  band- 
age. And,  in  the  third,  M.  Teste's  clairvoyante 
was  not  allowed  to  open  the  box  in  which  the 
test-lines  of  print  were  inclosed !  From  these 
examples  it  may  be  judged  what  are  the  tests 
which  Mr.  Wallace  would  consider  adequate. 


What  Messrs.  Wallace  and  Crookes  regard  as 
"  Trustworthy  Testimony." 

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

1 1  give  this  extract  on  tbe  authority  of  Mr.  Home 
(op.  "At.,  p.  247),  whom  I  can  scarcely  suppose  to  have 
deliberately  forged,  even  to  blacken  Colonel  Olcott, 


PSYCHOLOGICAL   CURIOSITIES  OF  SPIRITUALISM. 


119 


The  inditer  of  this  precious  stuff  is  the  trust- 
worthy witness  whose  assurance  that  he  has 
proved,  "  under  the  most  rigid  test-conditions," 
that  "  Katie  King  "  could  not  have  been  person- 
ated by  Eliza  White,  is  adduced  by  Messrs.  Wal- 
lace and  Crookes  in  support  of  the  above  charge ! 

Mr.  Crookes  and  his  "Scientific  Tests." 
As  Mr.  Crookes  has  in  more  than  one  instance 
pledged  his  scientific  reputation  to  the  genuine- 
ness of  the  performances  of  "  mediums,"  on  the 
strength  of  what  he  describes  as  "scientific 
tests,"  the  probative  value  of  these  tests  consti- 
tutes a  most  legitimate  subject  of  inquiry ;  and 
the  following  history  will  afford  some  means  of 
estimating  this : 

About  three  years  ago,  there  came  to  London 
from  Louisville,  Kentucky,  a  good-looking  young 
woman,  who,  having  come  out  as  "a  physical 
and  mental  test  medium,"  and  having  in  that 
capacity  made  the  tour  of  the  principal  cities 
and  towns  of  the  United  States,  gave  a  series  of 
performances  in  the  Hanover  Square  Rooms,  at 
one  of  which  I  was  myself  present.  A  short 
preliminary  lecture  was  given  by  a  gentlemanly- 
looking  man,  styling  himself  "Colonel"  Fay, 
whose  relation  to  the  lady  was  then  spoken  of 
as  paternal,  though  elsewhere  it  seems  to  have 
been  marital.  The  "  colonel "  candidly  informed 
his  audience  that  he  purposely  abstained  from 
saying  anything  about  the  nature  of  the  "mani- 
festations ;  "  he  did  not  claim  for  them  a  "  spirit- 
ualistic" character;  on  the  other  hand,  he  did 
not  present  them  as  conjuring  tricks.  He  left 
every  one  free  to  judge  for  himself  or  herself;  as 
the  showman  said  to  the  little  girl,  it  was  "which- 
ever you  please,  my  pretty  dear." 

The  performance  consisted  of  two  parts :  the 
first,  or  "light  seance"  being  a  new  version  of 
the  "  cabinet-trick "  originally  introduced  by 
the  Davenport  brothers ;  while  the  second  was 
a  "  dark  seance,"  for  "  manifestations"  of  a  differ- 
ent order.  Having  previously  seen  Maskelyne 
and  Cooke's  presentation  of  the  cabinet-trick, 
"  with  new  and  startling  effects,"  I  felt  perfectly 
sure  that  they  could,  without  the  least  difficulty, 
reproduce  everything  done  by  Eva  Fay  ;  her  per- 
formances being  all  explicable  on  the  very  simple 
hypothesis  that  her  hands  were  not  really  tied 

what  he  puts  forward  as  a  public  document.  And  I 
may  add  that  it  is  fully  borne  out  by  information  I 
have  received  direct  from  New  York  ;  which,  without 
at  all  calling  his  honesty  in  question,  makes  it  clear 
that  he  is  the  very  type  of  those  gdbe-monches  who,  as 
Mr.  Home  says,  are  ready  to  swallow  anything  from 
gnats  to  camels. 


behind  her  so  tightly  as  they  seemed  to  be.  And 
Mr.  Maskelyne  states  ("Modern  Spiritualism," 
page  121)  that  while  these  "manifestations" 
were  running  on  at  the  Hanover  Square  Rooms, 
Mr.  Cooke  was  actually  giving  an  exact  reproduc- 
tion of  them  twice  a  week  at  the  Egyptian  Hall. 

At  the  conclusion  of  the  first  part  of  the  per- 
formance, the  cabinet  was  moved  out  of  the  way ; 
and  Eva  Fay  having  taken  her  seat  on  a  stool  in 
the  centre  of  the  stage,  the  "colonel"  requested 
the  occupants  of  the  two  front  rows  of  reserved 
seats  to  come  up  and  sit  on  a  circle  of  chairs 
placed  around  her,  joining  their  hands  together, 
so  that  the  "  circle "  (of  which  the  colonel,  like 
myself,  was  a  component)  should  be  complete. 
Eva  Fay  then  began  clapping  her  hands  together 
with  a  steady  rhythmical  beat;  and  we  were 
directed  to  keep  our  attention  fixed  upon  the 
continuity  of  this,  after  the  lights  should  be 
turned  down,  as  a  proof  that  any  "manifesta- 
tion" which  should  require  manual  instrumen- 
tality could  not  be  her  doing.  Various  "  proper- 
ties " — such  as  guitars,  bells,  and  fans — were 
then  laid  about  "promiscuously,"  some  of  them 
on  the  knees  of  the  sitters ;  and  the  gas  having 
been  put  out  on  and  near  the  stage,  and  turned 
"  down  to  the  blue "  elsewhere,  the  darkness 
on  the  stage  was  so  complete  that  nothing 
whatever  could  be  discerned  by  any  one  not 
habituated  to  it.  Immediately  there  was  a 
rustling  sound  within  the  circle,  as  of  "  spirits  " 
moving  stealthily  about  ;  guitar-strings  were 
twanged,  bells  were  rung,  open  fans  were  moved 
before  our  faces,  our  legs  were  struck,  our  arms 
were  pinched,  our  whiskers  were  pulled,  and 
some  "  old  fogies  "  were  chucked  under  the  chin 
— while  all  this  time  the  clapping  sound  was  con- 
tinuously heard  !  Now,  granting  that  there  was 
no  confederacy,  that  the  "  colonel's  "  hands  were 
held  during  the  whole  time,  so  that  he  could  not 
give  any  assistance  to  his  partner,  would  it  not 
become  clear  to  any  man  of  average  shrewdness 
not  "possessed"  by  an  idea,  that,  while  Eva  Fay 
was  doing  all  this  "  business  "  with  one  hand,  she 
could  keep  up  the  clapping  sound  by  striking  her 
forehead,  cheek,  or  bared  arm,  with  the  other  ? 
But  if  this  should  be  openly  suggested  by  any 
troublesome  skeptic  (which  did  not  happen  when 
I  was  myself  present),  the  "  colonel "  was  pre- 
pared with  another  "  manifestation."  "  To  show 
the  impossibility  of  such  a  thing,  one  gentleman 
shall  now  be  allowed  to  hold  the  medium's  hands  ; 
still,  a  bell  shall  be  rung,  a  guitar  be  thrummed, 
and  possibly  the  gentleman  holding  the  medium's 
hands  shall  have  his  face  fanned."    All  this,  says 


120 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


Mr.  Maskelyne,  can  be  very  easily  accomplished. 
"  Miss  Fay  will  pass  a  bell  to  the  colonel's  mouth, 
which  he  will  shake  as  a  terrier  does  a  rat,  while 
his  boot  operates  upon  the  guitar-strings,  and 
produces  the  thrumming  ;  and  the  '  medium,' 
with  a  fan  held  between  her  teeth,  will  gently 
wave  it  iu  the  face  of  him  who  holds  her  hand." 
And  he  thus  explained  to  his  audience  at  the 
Egyptian  Hall  every  one  of  the  apparent  marvels 
of  Eva  Fay's  "  dark  seance  ;  "  these  being,  as  he 
truly  says,  "  too  simple  and  absurd  to  bear  any 
other  treatment." 

But,  while  not  putting  forth  any  public  claim 
as  a  spiritualistic  "medium,"  Eva  Fay  asserted 
herself  in  private  to  be  such  ;  and,  for  good  rea- 
sons of  her  own,  sought  to  convince  the  London 
spiritualists  iu  general,  and  Mr.  Crookes  in  par- 
ticular, that  she  really  was  so.  Accordingly,  Mr. 
Crookes  subjected  her  to  what  he  considered  to 
be  "  scientific  tests ; "  which,  as  I  am  assured 
on  good  authority,  could  be  evaded  by  a  "  dodge  " 
so  simple  (reminding  one  of  Edgar  Poe's  well- 
known  story  of  "  The  Lost  Letter ")  that  Mr. 
Crookes's  highly-trained  scientific  acumen  could 
not  detect  it.1  And  this  is  confirmed  by  the 
statement  of  Mr.  Maskelyne  ("  Modern  Spiritual- 
ism," p.  122),  that,  while  this  testing  was  in  prog- 
ress, Miss  Fay's  business  agent  made  Mr.  M 

an  offer,  at  first  verbally,  and  then  confirmed  by 
letters  in  his  possession  (dated  Birmingham,  May 
12  and  15,  18*75)— copies  of  which  I  have  my- 
self seen— that  for  an  adequate  sum  of  money 
the  "medium"  should  expose  the  whole  affair, 
"scientific  tests"  and  all—"  complicating  at  least 
six  big  guns,  the  F.  R.  S.  people  "—as  she  was  not 
properly  supported  by  the  spiritualists  ! 

This  offer  having  been  declined  by  Mr.  Maske- 
lyne, and  her  London  audiences  dwindling  away, 
Eva  Fay  returned  to  the  United  States,  carrying 
with  her  a  letter  from  Mr.  Crookes,  which  set 
forth  that,  since  doubts  had  been  thrown  on  the 
spiritualistic  nature  of  her  "  manifestations,"  and 
since  he,  in  common  with  other  Fellows  of  the 
Royal  Society,  had  satisfied  himself  of  their  gen- 
uineness by  "  scientific  tests,"  he  willingly  gave 
her  the  benefit  of  his  attestation.  This  letter 
was  published,  in  facsimile,  in  American  news- 
papers ;  and  Eva  Fay  announced  her  spiritual- 
istic seances  as  "  indorsed  by  Prof.  Crookes  and 
oiher  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society  !  " 

Unluckily,  however,  for  her  own  reputation 
and  for  that  of  Mr.  Crookes,  it  happened  that  a 

1 1  shall  give  the  whole  explanation  in  the  new  edi- 
tion of  my  lectures. 


young  gentleman  of  New  York,  Mr.  Washington 
Irving  Bishop,  of  excellent  soeial  position — his 
father  being  a  very  eminent  lawyer,  and  Wash- 
ington Irving  having  been  his  godfather — was 
moved  to  bestow  a  great  deal  of  time  and  atten- 
tion on  the  pretensions  of  the  spiritualistic  "me- 
diums." 

"  A  friend  whom  he  loved,  as  did  every  one 
else  who  enjoyed  his  acquaintance — a  young  man 
full  of  promise,  intellectual,  gifted,  brilliant — be- 
came ill,  and  was  sent  to  a  foreign  country  for 
treatment.  Here  he  finally  fell  under  the  infernal 
arts  of  the  spiritual  medinmistic  healers,  who  re- 
stored him  to  his  home  and  friends  hopelessly  in- 
sane ;  and  thus  he  remains  to  this  day.  Mr.  Bish- 
op covenanted  with  himself — those  bonds  are 
strong  ones  when  made  in  thorough  earnest — that 
he  would  leave  no  stone  unturned  until  he  had  fer- 
reted out  the  explanation  of  the  whole  mediumistic 
business." — (Boston  Herald,  November  6, 1870.) 

Convinced  that  there  was  deception  in  the 
matter,  he  devoted  many  months  to  the  investi- 
gation, and  finally  discovered  the  clew.  He  then 
trained  himself  to  do  everything  done  by  Eva 
Fay,  "  a  woman  who  had  successfully  cheated  two 
hemispheres  ;  who  had  fairly  drained  money  from 
rich  and  poor,  high  and  low  ;  who  fooled  men  of 
the  sharpest  intellects,  men  of  science  and  close 
students  of  human  and  every  other  nature ; "  and 
exhibited  to  his  circle  of  private  friends,  which  in- 
cluded several  of  the  most  distinguished  members 
of  the  clerical  and  medical  professions  in  New 
York,  an  exact  counterpart  of  Eva  Fay's  per- 
formances. Two  of  the  latter,  one  of  them  well 
known  in  this  country  as  an  eminent  physiologist 
as  well  as  an  able  surgeon,  and  the  other  an  ex- 
surcjeon-general  in  the  United  States  Arm)-,  ad- 
dressed to  him  the  following  letter  : 

"  New  York,  March  30, 1876. 

"  W.  Irving  Bishop,  Esq. 

"Dear  Sir  :  It  has  given  us  great  pleasure  to 
witness  the  very  satisfactory  manner  in  which  you 
show  the  fraudulent  nature  of  the  pretensions  of 
the  so-called  spiritual  mediums,  especially  those  of 
Annie  Eva  Fay,  who  has  received  the  indorsement 
of  Mr.  William  Crookes  and  other  Fellows  of  the 
Royal  Society.  We  believe  the  performances  of 
these  people  are  calculated  to  produce  evil  effects 
upon  the  credulous  and  disordered  imaginations 
of  many  persons ;  and,  with  a  view  to  put  an  ef- 
fectual stop  to  them,  we  earnestly  request  you  to 
communicate  to  the  public  the  manner  in  which 
the  so-called  spiritualists  conduct  their  deceitful 
practices.  Such  an  expose  as  we  refer  to  can  only 
be  productive  of  good  results  ;  and  we  trust, 
therefore,  in  view  of  the  importance  of  the  whole 


PSYCHOLOGICAL   CURIOSITIES  OF  SPIRITUALISM. 


121 


matter,  that  you  will  accede  to  our  request.    With 
great  respect,  we  are  your  obedient  servants, 

''  William  A.  Hammond,  M.  D., 
"  Alexander  B.  Mott,  M.  D." 

This  having  been  followed  a  month  later  by  a 
requisition  to  the  same  effect  by  twenty-four  gen- 
tlemen, mostly  well-known  clergymen  of  various 
denominations  and  eminent  M.  D.s,  a  public  per- 
formance was  arranged,  which  consisted  (1)  in 
the  repetition  of  the  most  mysterious  of  the 
"  mediumistic  "  feats,  including  "  slate-writing  " 
and  "  flowers  from  an  invisible  garden ;  "  and 
then  (2)  in  the  exhibition  and  explanation  of  the 
whole  modus  operandi,  in  full  view  of  the  specta- 
tors. From  among  the  various  attestations  to 
the  completeness  of  this  exposure,  I  select 
the  following,  because,  as  Dr.  Bellows  is  a  val- 
ued personal  friend  of  my  own,  I  can  bear  the 
strongest  testimony  to  his  intellectual  ability; 
moral  worth,  and  practical  clear-headedness.1 
The  style  in  which  Dr.  Bellows  delivers  his  tes- 
timony will  confirm  my  own  estimate  of  his  vig- 
orous and  thorough  grasp  of  the  subject : 

"  New  York,  232  East  15th  Street,  | 
'•October  16,  1876.     f 

"  Dear  Sir  :  I  had  the  pleasure  and  profit  of 
attending  your  exposure  of  the  acts  by  which  the 
alleged  proofs  of  spiritualism  are  foisted  upon  a 
credulous  public.  You  showed  in  a  most  effectual 
and  convincing  way  that  a  most  intelligent  audi- 
ence could  be  entirely  deceived  by  the  testimony 
of  its  own  senses,  in  regard  to  matters  which  were 
afterward  shown  openly  by  you  to  be  mere  tricks, 
in  which  sleight  of  hand  and  a  diversion  of  atten- 
tion from  the  real  to  the  artificial  and  chosen  con- 
ditions were  the  means  of  success.  After  puzzling 
the  audience,  as  no  juggler  could  puzzle  them,  for 
an  hour  and  a  half,  with  feats  that  seemed  super- 
natural, you  untied  all  the  riddles.  I  felt  con- 
vinced that  nothing  that  spiritualists  pretend  or 
believe  is  done  by  spirits  beyond  the  reach  of  a 
clever  juggler,  who  possesses  unusual  suppleness 
of  joints,  strength  of  muscles,  and  agility  of  move- 
ments, perfected  by  practice,  and  skillfully  plays 
upon  the  credulity  of  our  common  nature. 

"  I  am  of  the  opinion  that  your  exhibition  is 

1  It  may,  however,  be  not  amiss  for  me  to  state 
that  Dr.  B.  was  the  originator  and  organizer,  and  was 
then  appointed  by  universal  acclaim  the  chairman, 
of  that  great  volunteer  Sanitary  Commission  which, 
throughout  the  war  between  the  Northern  and  South- 
ern States,  supplemented  the  work  of  the  military  or- 
ganization of  the  North  in  every  way  that  could  "con- 
tribute to  the  health  and  welfare  of  the  army ;  the 
extent  of  its  operations  being  such  that  Dr.  Bellows 
assured  me  that  a  million  and  a  half  of  pounds  ster- 
ling passed  through  his  hands  during  his  four  years  of 
office. 


one  of  great  public  importance,  and  tends  to  dis- 
I  abuse  the  public  mind  of  a  very  mischievous  and 
;  very  general  delusion,  which  indeed  is  becoming  a 
|  vulgar  religion  with  thousands.     No  description  of 
it  can  take  the  place  of  an  actual  sight  of  it.     It 
might  advantageously  be  repeated  in  every  town, 
;  where  the  pretended  seances  of  the  modern  necro- 
j  mancer  have  played  upon  the  weaker  portion  of 
|  communities.     Without   attributing    any   exalted 
motive  to  the  business  which  engages  you,  I  de- 
liberately think,  independent    of  any  ends  you 
seek,  that  your  exhibition  is  one  of  the  most  in- 
structive and  useful  I  have  ever  seen,  as  well  as 
one  of  the  most  interesting  and  successful.    I  wish 
you  a  long  succession  of  fortunate  spectators. 
"  Yours  truly, 

"  Henry  W.  Bellows." 

The  immediate  effect  of  Mr.  Bishop's  ex- 
posure upou  Eva  Fay's  status  was,  we  are  as- 
sured by  the  Boston  Herald,  "  to  reduce  her  to 
the  level  of  a  pitiful  street  performer,  obliging 
her  to  take  out  a  license  as  a  juggler  before  she 
could  carry  on  the  nefarious  business  by  which 
her  ill-gotten  gains  could  be  continued."  It  is, 
perhaps,  to  be  wished  that  a  similar  legal  pro- 
cess could  be  applied  to  the  like  class  in  this 
country.  Let  them  not  be  martyrized  by  crimi- 
nal prosecutions ;  but  let  them  be  "  ticketed " 
as  "  licensed  jugglers ;  "  and  then  be  allowed  to 
carry  on  their  vocation  without  let  or  hinderance 
as  long  as  they  find  people  ready  to  pay  for  see- 
ing them. 

The  fame  of  Mr.  Bishop's  performances  hav- 
ing reached  Boston,  he  was  invited  by  a  commit- 
tee composed— like  that  of  New  York— of  some 
of  its  most  distinguished  members  of  the  medi- 
cal and  clerical  professions  (the  honored  name  of 
Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  standing  at  the  head  of 
a  requisition  now  before  me,  dated  October  18, 
1876),  to  repeat  them  in  that  great  intellectual 
centre ;  and  the  result  was  equally  satisfactory. 
The  newspapers  were  filled  with  the  accounts  of 
his  exposures,  not  only  of  Eva  Fay,  but  of  vari- 
ous other  "  mediums,"  including  the  Hardy  trick 
of  the  moulding  of  paraffin-hands,  and  the  so- 
called  "  thought-reading  "—the  first  of  which  I 
shall  presently  notice;  and  they  also  contain 
"  illustrations  "  of  the  manner  in  which  all  the 
tricks  were  worked.  It  is  not  a  little  significant 
of  the  effect  produced  by  Mr.  Bishop's  most  laud- 
able exertions  that  the  American  Graphic — which 
had  so  far  given  in  to  the  "materializations  "  of 
the  Eddy  brothers  as  to  send  a  special  "  com- 
missioner" to  report  upon  them  (the  Colonel 
Olcott  of  whom  I  have  already  spoken),  who  was 
known  to  favor  the  doctrine — thus  decidedly  ex- 


122 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


pressed  itself  after  seeing  in  private  Mr.  Bishop's 
imitation  of  them,  as  well  as  of  "  Katie  King," 
whom  the  Graphic's  "commissioner"  had  pre- 
viously tried  to  rehabilitate: 

"Mr.  Bishop  unraveled  the  Katie  King  mys- 
tery, that  seemed  for  a  time  to  defy  the  most  rigid 
scrutiny  ;  and  more  recently  he  has  been  engaged 
in  revealing  the  method  by  which  the  Eddy  broth- 
ers produced  those  sub-mundane  entertainments, 
which  long  harassed  the  public  mind  and  im- 
posed upon  the  credulity  of  many  thoughtful  and 
intelligent  men."— Graphic,  April  12,  1876. 

Returning  to  the  subject  a  month  afterward 
(May  10th),  the  Graphic  says : 

"  It  certainly  would  be  a  laudable  thing  for 
clergymen,  physicians,  and  leading  citizens  gener- 
ally, to  invite  Mr.  Bishop  to  exhibit  in  every  city 
and  town  in  the  country ;  for  the  exposure  he  gives 
of  the  mediumistic  tricks  is  so  complete  that  it 
could  not  but  convince  even  the  most  credulous 
that '  spirits '  have  nothing  to  do  with  these  mani- 
festations." 

Materialization  Seances. 
It  is,  I  suppose,  now  generally  known  that 
spiritualists  claim  not  only  to  hold  intercourse 
with  "the  spirits"  by  i*aps,  slate-writing,  and 
the  like,  but  also  to  induce  them  to  clothe  them- 
selves afresh  in  a  "materialized"  form,  possess- 
in.;'  the  substance  and  weight  of  ordinary  mortals. 
It  was  Mr.  Home,  I  believe,  who  first  "  produced  " 
spirit-hands  ;  but  he  has  been  so  far  outdone  by 
those  who  "  materialize  "  whole  figures,  that  he 
feels  it  incumbent  upon  him  not  only  to  denounce 
them  as  impostors,  but  to  make  a  full  exposure 
of  the  various  modes  in  which  the  trick  is  played. 
As  I  have  never  myself  been  present  at  any 
of  these  performances,  and  could  therefore  only 
describe  from  hearsay,  I  borrow  Mr.  Home's  ac- 
count of  them : 

"  Nothing  is  offered  that  can  in  the  slightest 
degree  be  considered  as  approaching  a  test;  the 
imposture  is  often  of  the  baldest  and  grossest  char- 
acter ;  yet  the  '  medium '  is  congratulated  on  the 
success  of  the  seance,  and  credulous  fools  are  hap- 
py. Perhaps  the  sitting  is  for  '  materialized ' 
forms  or  faces ;  in  such  case  the  proceedings  are 
regulated  according  to  the  character  of  the  per- 
sons present.  Should  these  be  unknown,  or  re- 
garded as  possessing  a  fair  share  of  common-sense, 
nothing  <roes  well.  The  circle  is  described  as  '  in- 
harmonious.' The  cabinet  is  jealously  guarded. 
A  distressincly  tiny  ray  of  light  having  been  in- 
troduced, '  materialization '  takes  place.  All  that 
the  persons  present  can  perceive  is  something 
white  ;  shape  and  features  there  are  none.  Such 
is  a  faithful  portraiture  of  perhaps  the  majority  of 


sittings  for  'spirit-forms.'  If,  however,  the  audi- 
ence consists  of  known  and  enthusiastic  dupes, 
the  conditions  are  at  once  pronounced  favorable. 
A  larger  share  of  light  is  admitted ;  the  form  ap- 
pears, and  moves  about  among  the  believers  pres- 
ent. Their  credulity  rapidly  mounts  to  fever-heat. 
Patched  and  darned  shawls  are  discovered  to  be 
'  robes  of  delicate  texture  and  surpassing  gorgeous- 
ness.'  A  kerchief  twisted  round  the  head  be- 
comes an  unmistakable  turban ;  false  whiskers 
and  Indian-ink  produce  '  a  manly  and  noble  face;' 
rouge  and  pearl-powder,  in  conjunction  with  a 
skillfully  -  arranged  head-dress,  are  sufficient  to 
send  the  credulous  into  raptures  over  the  '  vision 
of  surpassing  loveliness '  presented.  The  famil- 
iarity of  the  spiritual  visitors  is  charming ;  they 
have  been  known  to  seat  themselves  at  the  tea- 
table,  and  make  a  hearty  meal,  '  inquiring  jocular- 
ly whether  the  muffins  were  well  buttered.'  They 
have  mixed  stiff  glasses  of  grog  for  the  sitters, 
and,  not  satisfied  with  mixing,  have  themselves 
partaken  of  them.  In  such  little  reunions,  tests 
are  never  employed  or  mentioned.  Not  a  dupe 
present  but  would  rather  perish  than  take  a  sus- 
picious peep  into  the  cabinet  while  the  materialized 
form  is  out  and  moving  about  the  room.  Not  a 
hand  among  the  party  but  would  rather  be  cut  off 
at  the  wrist  than  grasp  in  detective  fashion  the 
said  form.  The  spirit  is  in  every  respect  at  home, 
and  may  walk  in  or  out  of  the  cabinet  as  he  or  she 
lists. 

"The  darkness  of  the  stance  is  thus  propor- 
tioned to  the  sense  of  the  sitters.  Where  skepti- 
cism is  rife,  the  most  jealous  precautions  are  taken 
lest  that  skepticism  should  behold  too  much.  If 
they  be  of  an  inconvenient  nature,  the  impostor 
whom  they  are  intended  to  unmask  usually  de- 
clines them.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  they  appear 
such  as  may  be  eluded  by  jugglery^  or  confederacy, 
they  are  at  once  adopted." 

In  the  simplest  form  of  these  performances, 
only  one  "  spirit "  appears ;  and,  if  it  should  be 
objected  that  it  "  is  very  like  the  medium,"  the 
incredulous  are  sometimes  admitted  into  the 
back-room,  or  cabinet,  where  either  a  "  dummy  " 
has  been  prepared,  or  a  confederate  introduced, 
to  represent  the  "medium"  as  in  a  state  of 
trance  ;  no  light  being  allowed  but  that  of  a  bot- 
tle of  phosphorized  oil,  or  some  similar  glimmer  ; 
and  no  handling  being  permitted.  A  wicked 
skeptic  has  been  known  to  endeavor  to  identify 
the  "  spirit "  and  the  "  medium  "  by  squirting 
ink  on  the  arm  of  the  former,  and  pointing  out 
its  presence  on  the  arm  of  the  latter  on  his  (or 
her)  return  to  the  company  ;  or  by  smearing  ink 
on  his  own  hand,  and  then,  by  a  friendly  grasp, 
imparting  some  of  it  to  the  hand  of  the  "  spirit," 
who  unsuspiciously  reappears  as  the  "medium" 
without  washing  it  off.     But  this  little  incident, 


PSYCHOLOGICAL    CURIOSITIES  OF  SPIRITUALISM. 


123 


it  appears,  is  referable  to  the  "  well-known  law 
of  spiritualism,"  that  any  impression  of  this 
kind  made  on  the  spirit  is  transferred  to  the 
medium.  Such  a  test  as  the  free  opening  of  the 
doors,  and  the  examination  of  both  figures  un- 
der a  full  light,  is,  of  course,  not  to  be  thought 
of. 

In  another  set  of  cases,  a  spirit  "  dummy  "  is 
made  up  with  a  life-sized  doll  head  and  shoul- 
ders, and  long,  flowing  robes ;  this  may  be  held 
up  by  the  medium,  who  is  ensconced  behind  the 
curtains,  and  who  passes  his  or  her  hand  between 
them ;  or  else  two  spirits  may  appear  at  once, 
performed  by  the  medium  and  the  dummy,  the 
latter  being  made  to  appear  to  sink  into  the  floor 
by  a  very  simple  contrivance. 

That  multitudes  of  men  and  women,  who  claim 
to  be  sensible  and  well  educated,  should  be  vic- 
timized by  such  an  obvious  imposture,  especially 
after  its  repeated  detection  and  exposure,  seems 
almost  incredible  ;  to  me  it  is  one  of  the  most 
pitiable  facts  in  the  mental  condition  of  our  time. 
Mr.  Home  tells  us  that  he  does  not  believe  that 
there  are  more  than  five  of  these  "  materializing 
mediums  "  who  have  not  been  found  out ;  and 
yet  the  thing  goes  on.  The  fact  seems  to  be,  that 
the  respectable  spiritualists  who  have  counte- 
nanced it  in  the  first  instance,  being  generally 
ashamed  of  their  gullibility,  refrain  from  publish- 
ing the  detection  themselves,  and  do  their  best  to 
keep  others  quiet.  Sergeant  Cox,  however,  who 
seems  to  have  been  partly  taken  in  at  first,  has 
since  honestly  and  vigorously  denounced  the 
cheat ;  a  long  letter  from  him  being  published  in 
Mr.  Home's  book,  which  contains  a  set  of  instruc- 
tions given  by  a  "  medium "  to  her  pupil ;  by 
which  we  find  inter  alia  that,  in  order  to  evade 
the  search  for  "  properties,"  which  is  sometimes 
made  on  entrance,  she  brings  in  a  veil  under  her 
drawers ! 

Now,  so  far  is  Mr.  Crookes  from  having  been 
a  cautious  scientific  investigator  of  these  "  mate- 
rializations," that  it  can  be  shown  from  his  own 
utterances  that  he  has  "gone  in  "  for  them  most 
enthusiastically.  One  of  his  favorite  "  spirits  "  is 
the  English  (not  the  American)  "  Katie  King ;  " 
of  whose  "  entrancing  loveliness  "  he  thus  speaks  : 

"  But  photography  is  as  inadequate  to  depict 
the  perfect  beauty  of  Katey's  face  as  words  are 
powerless  to  describe  her  charms  of  manner.  Pho- 
tography may,  indeed,  give  a  map  of  her  counte- 
nance ;  but  how  can  it  reproduce  the  brilliant 
purity  of  her  complexion,  or  the  ever-varying  ex- 
pression of  her  most  mobile  features,  now  over- 
shadowed with  sadness  when  relating  some  of  the 


bitter  experiences  of  her  past  life,  now  smiling 
with  all  the  innocence  of  happy  girlhood  when  she 
had  collected  my  children  round  her,  and  was 
amusing  them  by  recounting  anecdotes  of  her  ad- 
ventures in  India  ? — 

"  Hound  her  she  made  an  atmosphere  oflife. 

The  very  air  seemed  lighter  from  her  eyes  ; 
They  were  so  soft  and  beautiful,  and  rife 

"With  all  we  can  imagine  of  the  skies  ; 
Her  overpowering  presence  made  you  feel 
It  would  not  be  idolatry  to  kneel."  * 

Truly,  as  has  been  well  said,  "  the  '  scientist ' 
who  writes  like  this  is  much  too  far  gone  for  in- 
vestigation." We  shall  now  see  how  Mr.  Crookes, 
fascinated  by  these  "spiritual"  charms,  lent  him- 
self to  Katie  King's  influence,  and  was  rewarded 
by  her  fullest  confidence.     This,  he  says — 

"  Gradually  grew  until  she  refused  to  give  a  se- 
ance unless  I  took  charge  of  the  arrangements.  She 
said  she  always  wanted  me  to  keep  close  to  her 
and  near  the  cabinet ;  and  I  found  that  after  this 
confidence  was  established,  and  she  was  satisfied  I 
would  not  break  any  promise  I  might  make  to  her, 
the  phenomena  increased  greatly  in  power,  and 
tests  were  freely  given  that  would  have  been  un- 
obtainable had  I  approached  the  subject  in  another 
manner.  She  often  consulted  me  about  persons 
present  at  the  seances,  and  where  they  should  be 
placed ;  for  of  late  she  had  become  very  nervous, 
in  consequence  of  certain  ill-advised  suggestions  that 
force  should  be  employed  as  an  adjunct  to  more 
scientific  modes  of  research.'''1 2 

This  last  refers  to  an  unpleasant  circumstance 
which  took  place  in  an  early  stage  of  the  "Katie 
King"  materialization — the  unceremonious  clasp- 
ing of  her  spiritual  wraist  by  an  incredulous  "  Dia- 
lectical," for  whom  "materialization"  seems  to 
have  been  a  little  "  too  strong,"  and  who  was  re- 
warded for  his  impudence  by  a  very  forcible  tug 
at  his  beard,  which  is  said  to  have  despoiled  it  of 
some  of  its  beauty. 

Further,  the  Rev.  C.  Maurice  Davies,  a  well- 
known  author,  who  was  far  from  being  unfavora- 
bly disposed  to  spiritualism,  and  who  was  at  the 
time  a  member  of  the  Council  of  the  British  Na- 
tional Association  of  Spiritualists,  thus  describes, 
in  his  "  Mystic  London,"  the  part  taken  by  Mr. 
Crookes  (whom  he  styles  "  the  professor  ")  at  a 
seance  at  which  he  was  present : 

"  The  professor  acted  all  the  time  as  master  of 
the  ceremonies,  retaining  his  place  at  the  aperture ; 
and,  I  fear,  from  the  very  first,  exciting  suspicion 
by  his  marked  attention,  not  to  the  medium,  but 
to  the  ghost." 

And  he  afterward   speaks  of  Mr.   Crookes's 
1  The  Spiritualist,  June  5, 1874.  s  Ibid. 


12  i 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


conduct  in  the  matter  as  having  given  the  final 
death-blow  to  his  belief  that  there  might  be 
"something"  in  the  face-manifestations  ! 

It  has  been  rumored  that  Mr.  Crookes  has  pri- 
vately admitted  that  some  of  his  "  mediums," 
when  they  could  not  evoke  the  "  manifestations  " 
by  fair  means,  have  done  so  by  foul.  Now  that 
he  knows  (if  he  did  not  know  before)  how  his 
name  and  reputation  are  being  traded  upon  in 
the  United  States,  and  that  the  Royal  Society  is 
being  trailed  through  the  dirt  by  his  instrumen- 
tality, it  may  be  hoped  (if  this  rumor  be  true) 
that  he  will  honestly  come  forward,  and,  by  public 
admission  that  he  has  been  even  occasionally 
duped,  will  do  all  he  can  to  repair  the  mischief 
he  has  done  by  his  inconsiderate  "indorsement ' 
of  one  of  the  grossest  impostures  ever  practised — 
that  of  Eva  Fay. 

"  The  Last  New  Thing  "  in  Spiritualistic 
Materializations. 

Everybody  knows  that  Paris  "  sets  the  fash- 
ions "  in  ladies'  dress  ;  and,  in  like  manner,  Bos- 
ton (United  States)  "  sets  the  fashions  "  in  spirit- 
ualism. The  latest  "  manifestation,"  which  has 
not  yet  (so  far  as  I  am  aware)  been  imported  into 
England,  is  the  production  of  likenesses  of  the 
kernels  of  departed  friends,  "moulded"  by  "the 
spirits  "  in  paraffin.  A  "  circle,"  including  the 
"  medium,"  is  constituted  round  a  table,  beneath 
which  is  placed  a  bucket  of  hot  water,  wherein 
some  lumps  of  solid  paraffin  have  been  placed,  so 
as  to  form  when  melted  a  floating  stratum  two 
or  three  inches  thick.  After  a  longer  or  shorter 
interval,  the  "  spirits  "  announce  by  raps  that  the 
process  is  complete  ;  the  table-cloth  is  lifted  up, 
and  a  hand  moulded  in  solid  paraffin  is  found  on 
the  floor,  or  on  the  knees  of  the  "medium," 
which  the  "  faithful "  accept  as  their  indubitable 
production.  Of  course  the  hand  is  "  demonstra- 
bly not  brought  in  by  the  medium;"  for  how 
could  such  a  brittle  affair  have  been  carried  in 
her  pocket,  or  hid  in  the  folds  of  her  dress  ? 
Suspicious  half-believers  may  observe  shreds  of 
cotton-wool  adherent  to  the  hand  ;  or  may  notice 
that  the  hand  "  produced  "  at  one  seance  has  a 
very  suspicious  likeness  in  shape,  or  in  some 
little  defect  or  fracture,  to  one  they  have  pre- 
viously seen.  But,  of  course,  the  cotton-wool  has 
been  brought  by  the  "  bad  spirits ;  "  and,  as  even 
"  good  spirits "  sometimes  bungle  their  work, 
there  is  nothing  extraordinary  in  the  same  de- 
fect being  repeated,  when  the  same  spirits  are 
the   operators.      Everything   that   can    be    thus 


readily  explained  away  goes  for  nothing  with 
those  who  are  predetermined  to  believe. 

But  how  about  the  following  ?  A  set  of  trou- 
blesome skeptics,  Mr.  Home  tells  us,  bought  a 
proper  quantity  of  paraffin-lumps,  and  had  them 
carefully  weighed,  and  their  weight  recorded  by 
the  dealer.  After  the  conclusion  of  the  seance, 
when  the  water  had  cooled  and  the  paraffin  had 
solidified  again,  the  whole  of  it  was  collected ; 
and,  on  being  taken  back  to  the  same  dealer,  was 
found  to  weigh  exactly  the  same  as  it  had  weighed 
before.  Of  course,  the  explanation  is  ready: 
either  the  gentlemen  who  planned  this  test,  and 
the  dealer  on  whose  independent  verdict  the  re- 
sult depended,  were  leagued  together  to  "manu- 
facture evidence,"  or  else  the  "  spirits  "  could  not 
only  mould  the  hand,  but  could  supply  the  par- 
affin. To  doubt  the  "medium,"  in  Mr.  Wal- 
lace's view,  is  to  have  "a  reprehensible  eagerness 
to  accept  and  retail  whatever  falsehoods  may  be 
circulated  to  her  disadvantage."  To  doubt  the 
honesty  of  the  skeptics,  on  the  other  hand,  is 
perfectly  legitimate.  I  cannot  question  that  "  the 
spirits  "  could  as  easily  have  supplied  paraffin  as 
mould  it  into  a  hand ;  but  then  what  was  the 
need  of  the  bucket  under  the  table?  Messrs. 
Crookes  and  Wallace,  however,  may  say  that  it 
is  Mr.  Home  who  has  put  together  these  "idle 
tales,"  without  either  "time,  place,  or  circum- 
stance ; "  and  that  his  testimony,  on  account  of 
his  obvious  animus,  ought  not  to  be  received.  I 
will  give  them,  therefore,  another  case,  the  testi- 
mony in  regard  to  which,  having  been  given  on 
oath  by  a  gentleman  whose  high  character  and 
social  position  are  thoroughly  vouched  for,  my 
opponents  are  bound  to  admit  until  they  can  suc- 
ceed in  discrediting  it. 

On  Sunday  evening,  October  29,  1876,  a  se- 
ance, convened  by  public  advertisement  in  the 
Boston  Herald,  was  held,  "for  moulds  and  the 
materialization  of  spirit-forms,"  by  Mrs.  Hardy, 
residing  at  No.  4  Concord  Street,  Boston;  de- 
scribed in  the  Herald  as  a  "substantial  structure 
in  one  of  the  most  fashionable  neighborhoods  in 
Boston."  To  this  seance  the  Herald  sent  a  re- 
porter, who  was  accompanied  by  a  "  skeptical 
expert  " — no  other  than  the  troublesome  Mr.  W. 
Irving  Bishop.  The  usual  bucket  having  been 
brought  in,  and  all  who  desired  being  allowed  to 
examine  the  pail  and  its  contents — "  some  of 
them,  in  the  eagerness  of  their  curiosity,  even 
dipping  their  fingers  into  the  oleaginous  liquid  in 
which  angel-hands  were  soon  to  dabble  " — the 
IL  redd  representative  followed  their  example ; 
and,  "  while  he  plunged  his  finger  into  the  trans- 


PSYCHOLOGICAL   CURIOSITIES   OF  SPIRITUAL. 


125 


parent  fat,  he  emptied  from  the  hollow  of  his 
palm  an  ounce  or  two  of  that  harmless  substance 
with  which  the  New  England  dairy-women  are 
wont  to  give  a  red  color  to  their  cheeses,  and 
stirred  it  in  with  his  finger."  Mrs.  Hardy  seems 
to  have  "  smelt  a  rat ; "  for  at  first  "  she  declared 
that  it  was  doubtful  if  there  would  be  any  mani- 
festation of  spiritual  presence,  for  the  reason 
that  some  foreign  substance  had  been  put  into 
the  pail,"  the  "pure  spirits  with  whom  she  dealt 
abhorring  all  chemical  combinations."  Having 
been  asked,  however,  whether  they  could  favor 
,  the  company,  they  promised  that  in  seven  min- 
utes the  materialization  of  a  spirit-form  would  be 
produced ;  and,  after  only  five  minutes  of  breath- 
less expectation,  Mrs.  Hardy  announced  that  the 
spirits  had  done  their  work.  The  table-cloth  be- 
ing removed,  there  lay,  within  six  inches  of  Mrs. 
Hardy's  right  foot,  a  beautiful  model  of  a  human 
hand,  cold  as  marble,  and  white  as  alabaster. 
"  There  were  exclamations  of  surprise  and  won- 
der from  all  parts  of  the  room,  and  some  there 
were  who  felt  themselves  in  the  presence  of  the 
sublime  realities  of  the  unseen  world.  But  the 
Herald  observer  was  not  of  that  number."  While 
this  model  was  being  passed  round  for  inspection, 
he  dipped  four  fingers  again  and  again  into  the 
now  cooling  paraffin  in  the  bucket,  until  they 
were  incased  by  the  material ;  and  then,  as  it 
hardened,  he  peeled  it  off  and  rolled  it  into  a 
little  ball  of  the  size  of  a  nutmeg.  He  then 
pointed  out  that,  as  the  hand  was  admitted  by 
all  to  be  cold,  it  could  not  have  been  produced 
out  of  the  paraffin  in  the  pail,  which  could  not 
have  thus  completely  cooled  in  so  short  a  time, 
and  that,  as  it  was  pure  white,  it  did  not  corre- 
spond with  the  material  in  the  pail,  of  wrhich  the 
sample  he  had  taken  was  distinctly  red,  as  all 
could  see.  Some  demur  having  been  made  to 
this  conclusion,  on  the  ground  that  the  coloring- 
matter  might  have  been  unequally  mixed,  so  that 
some  of  the  paraffin  in  the  pail  might  have  re- 
mained untinged,  Mrs.  Hardy  was  offered  twenty 
dollars  to  mould  a  white  hand  out  of  it,  which 
challenge  she  declined.  Mr.  W.  Irving  Bishop 
then  took  another  sample  from  the  pail,  and 
broke  off  a  piece  of  the  hand.  The  next  day  he 
took  both  samples  to  Prof.  Horsford,  of  Cam- 
bridge University;  and  the  day  after  that  he  made 
the  following  affidavit: 

"  I,  "W.  Irving  Bishop,  of  New  York,  on  oath  de- 
pose and  say,  that  on  Sunday  evening,  October  29, 
.  I  was  present  at  a  seance  held  by  Mrs.  Hardy, 
4  Concord  Square,  for  the  production  of  moulds  and 
materialization  of  spirit-hands.     A  paraffin-form 


of  a  hand  was  produced,  which  Mrs.  Hardy  alleged 
was  made  by  the  spirits,  from  the  conteuts  of  a 
pail  of  melted  paraffin  placed  under  the  table. 
And  I  here  state  that  coloring-matter  had  been 
placed  in  the  said  paraffin,  and  that  I  took  a  piece 
of  the  hand  produced,  and  also,  by  dipping  my 
finger  into  the  heated  paraffin,  obtained  an  impres- 
sion of  the  contents  of  said  pail,  for  the  purpose  of 
comparison. 

"  That,  subsequently,  I  submitted  both  pieces 
to  Frof.  Horsford,  of  Cambridge,  who  placed  a  por- 
tion of  each  in  test-tubes,  and,  by  the  applica- 
tion of  proper  chemicals,  found  that  the  paraffin 
taken  from  the  pail  exhibited  a  slight  reddish 
color,  while  that  from  the  mould  gave  no  appear- 
ance of  the  existence  of  coloring-matter. 
"  W.  Irving  Bishop, 
of  98  Fifth  Avenue,  New  York. 
Suffolk,  ss. 

"  Sworn  and  subscribed  to  this  31st  day  of  Octo- 
ber, 1S7G.  Charles  J.  Brooks, 

"  Justice  of  Peace.'1'' 

May  we  not  now  affirm  with  Prince  Hal,  that 
"these  lies  are  like  the  father  that  begat  them, 
gross  as  a  mountain,  open,  palpable  ? "  Well 
might  the  reporter  of  the  Herald  say  of  the 
moulded  hand  that  "  it  symbolized  the  cunning 
and  the  craft  of  the  woman  who  produced  it,  and 
who  for  years  had  speculated  upon  the  credulity  of 
the  commnnity,  and  made  heartless  traffic  of  the 
tenderest  sympathies  of  human  nature."  Well 
might  he  be  convinced  that  "  all  the  much-vaunted 
spiritual  manifestations  at  the  Hardy  mansion  are 
the  grossest  impostures,  and  that  they  deserve  to 
be  ranked  in  the  same  category  with  those  cf 
such  charlatan  pretenders  as  Eatie  King,  the 
Eddy  brothers,  and  Mrs.  Bennett,  the  exposure  of 
whose  consummate  knavery  was  recently  made  in 
those  columns."  And  well  might  he  urge  that 
the  time  has  surely  now  come  when  the  strong 
hand  of  the  law  should  be  invoked  to  protect 
the  public  from  such  chicanery  and  fraud. 

Spiritual  Revelations. 

"  By  their  fruits  ye  shall  know  them  "  is  an 
adage  as  to  which  experience  is  entirely  in  ac- 
cord with  authority.  And  I  shall  close  this  sur- 
vey of  the  present  aspect  of  spiritualism  by  a 
brief  notice  of  its  teachings. 

The  highest  form  of  these,  we  are  assured  by 
Mr.  Wallace,1  is  to  be  found  in  the  spoken  ad- 
dresses of  one  of  the  most  gifted  "  tiance-medi- 
ums,"  Mrs.  Emma  Hardinge,  of  which  he  gives 
selected  samples.  The  idea  which  runs  through 
the  whole  is  that  the  future  life  is  one  of  prog- 

1  See  his  "Miracles  and  Modern  Spiritualism," 
p.  110. 


126 


TEE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


ress ;  and  that,  according  to  the  elevation  we  at- 
tain in  this  life  by  the  right  use  of  the  powers 
intrusted  to  us — "  not  one  jot  of  what  we  learn, 
or  think,  or  strive  for  here,  being  lost " — will  be 
the  height  of  the  platform  (so  to  speak)  from 
which  we  shall  commence  our  ascent  from  the 
lower  to  the  higher  spheres  of  the  next. 

Now,  surely  "it  needs  no  ghost  to  tell  us 
that."  "  To  understand  that  we  are  spirits,  and 
that  we  live  for  immortality,  to  know  and  insure 
its  issues,"  though  to  spiritualists  the  last  and 
noblest  "  bright  page  which  God  has  revealed  to 
us,"  is  surely  a  fundamental  doctrine  of  every 
form  of  Christianity  ;  and  the  particular  idea  of 
continuity  and  progress  has  been  the  teaching  of 
the  religious  community  (that  of  dunning  and 
Martineau)  in  which  I  was  myself  brought  up,  as 
far  back  as  I  can  remember. 

Mrs.  Hardinge's  new  Ten  Commandments, 
a^ain,  if  an  improvement  on  the  old,  are  only  so 
in  as  far  as  they  engraft  Christian  morality  upon 
the  Judaic  code.  And,  looking  to  the  exhibi- 
tions of  "  envy,  hatred,  malice,  and  all  unchari- 
tableness  "  which  are  to  be  found  in  the  quarrels 
of  "mediums,"  even  "advanced"  spiritualists 
would  seem  not  to  be  at  all  more  free  from  these 
faults  than  ordinary  Christians. 

For  the  following  samples  of  the  lower  forms 
of  Spiritualistic  communications  made  by  "  spir- 
its" who  must  be  still  in  Mrs.  Hardinge's 
"  Hades,"  I  am  indebted  to  Mr.  Home.  (Op.  cit., 
p.  304.) 

An  American  "  circle1'  has  been  informed  by 
John  Wilkes  Booth,  the  assassin  of  President 
Lincoln,  that  "  I  and  Lincoln  often  have  a  cozy 
chat  up  here.  We  agree  that  it  was  just  as  well 
I  shot  him.  You  see  it  was  set  down  in  the 
order  of  things  for  me  to  do  it ;  and  I  don't  see 
why  I  should  be  blamed  for  accomplishing  my 
destiny.     The  world  was  all  the  better  for  it." 

The  inspirational  source  of  this  philosophy  is 
obviously  that  doctrine  of  human  automatism 
of  which  it  seems  to  me  to  be  the  legitimate  out- 
come. Although  Mr.  Home  elsewhere  classes 
me  with  the  "  materialists "  because  I  do  not 
accept  I/is  form  of  "  spiritualism,"  I  am  entirely 
at  one  with  him  in  the  conviction  that,  were  such 
doctrines  as  the  foregoing  generally  accepted 
among  spiritualists,  "  spiritualism  would  be  the 
greatest  curse  which  could  befall  mankind  ; "  the 
negation  of  those  moral  instincts  which  lie  deep- 
est in  our  nature  being  (as  I  have  elsewhere  l 

i  Preface  to  the  fourth  edition  of  "Principles  of 
Mental  Physiology." 


endeavored  to  show)  the  most  convincing  proof 
of  their  really  unscientific  nature. 

The  following  is  a  specimen  of  those  elevated 
teachings  which  are  brought  to  us  by  the  "  spir- 
its "  from  "  another  and  a  better  world,"  inhab- 
ited by  purer  and  higher  natures  than  are  left  in- 
this  :  "  Wisdom  is  what  is  wise.  Wisdom  is  not 
folly,  and  folly  is  not  wisdom.  Wisdom  is  not 
selfishness,  and  selfishness  is  not  wisdom.  Wis- 
dom is  not  evil,  and  evil  is  not  wisdom.  All  is 
not  wisdom,  all  is  not  folly."  I  have  heard  of  a 
little  boy  to  whom  Sundays  were  made  to  be 
days  of  gloom  and  weariness ;  and  who,  when 
told  that  heaven  would  be  "  all  Sundays,"  replied 
that  if  that  were  the  case  he  should  not  wish  to 
go  there.  ,1  quite  agree  with  those  who  prefer 
annihilation,  if  the  twaddle  just  quoted  is  a  true 
sample  of  the  conversation  of  the  blest. 

As  Prof.  Huxley  said,  when  invited  to  take 
part  in  the  investigations  of  the  Dialectical  Soci- 
ety :  "  The  only  good  that  I  can  see  in  a  demon- 
stration of  the  truth  of  spiritualism  is  to  furnish 
an  additional  argument  against  suicide.  Better 
live  a  crossing-sweeper  than  die  and  be  made  to 
talk  twaddle  by  a  '  medium '  hired  at  a  guinea 
a  seance." 

Although  the  spiritualistic  genuineness  of  the 
foregoing  communications  is  utterly  discredited 
by  Mr.  Home,  they  will  probably  be  regarded  by 
Mr.  Wallace,  who  has  a  much  larger  receptivity, 
as  proceeding  from  "  spirits  "  who  have  made 
very  little  progress  since  they  left  the  earth.  The 
following,  however,  cited  by  Mr.  Home  from  Le 
Flambeau  du  Spiritisme,  will,  I  should  hope,  be 
too  strong  even  for  my  quondam  friend: 

"'The  spirit-authors'  are  represented  as  be. 
ing  no  less  personages  than  the  twelve  apostles 
of  Christianity.  We  are  gravely  assured  that  at 
various  periods  they  dictated  this  incomparable 
production  to  the  person  who  has  caused  a  few 
copies  to  be  published.  The  subject  is  the  Life 
of  Christ.  The  mixture  of  ribaldry,  insanity,  and 
absurdity,  is  almost  incredible.  One  of  the  apos- 
tles favors  us  with  particulars  regarding  the  every- 
day doings  of  the  twelve.  '  We  always  took  a 
small  boy  with  us  to  clean  our  shoes.  The  Mas- 
ter liked  us  all  to  look  well,  and  he  was  very  par- 
ticular that  our  shoes  should  be  nicely  blacked.' 
The  ordinary  attire  of  Christ  consisted  of  a  flow* 
in"-  robe  and  '  bright  blue  boots.'  On  one  occasion 
he  was  reviled  as  an  impostor.  The  incident  is 
thus  described  :  '  How  can  you  call  me  an  impos- 
tor ? '  said  the  Master,  turning  round.  '  Don't 
you  see  my  yellow  curly  hair  and  my  nice  blue 
boots  ?  Would  I  have  such  things,  do  you  think, 
if  I  were  an  impostor  ? '     An  apostle  gives  vari- 


PSYCHOLOGICAL   CURIOSITIES  OF  SPIRITUALISM. 


127 


ous  facts  respecting  a  journey  to  Jerusalem  :  '  We 
Were  very  poor,  and  we  sold  little  pamphlets  of  the 
life  and  doings  of  Jesus,  to  bring  us  in  money. 
We  made  great  haste  to  get  to  Jerusalem,  for 
fear  that  the  newspapers  should  get  hold  of  our 
coming,  and  announce  it.'  "    (Oj).  cit.,  p.  309.) 

This,  I  should  think,  will  be  quite  enough ; 
but  any  one  who  wishes  for  more  of  a  yet  worse 
kind  (such  as  "  the  Master,  after  a  supper,  joius 
in  a  round  dance  with  his  apostles  aud  Mary 
Magdalene  ")  will  find  some  of  it  in  Mr.  Home's 
Tolume,  and  plenty  more  in  the  three  hundred 
pages  of  "  the  nauseous  stuff" — parts  of  which 
(says  Mr.  Home)  "  it  is  simply  impossible  to 
quote  " — which  constitutes  Le  Flambeau  du  Sju- 
ritisme. 

The  celebrated  "  John  King  "  finds  little  fa- 
vor with  Mr.  Home.  For,  though  this  spirit  of 
"  an  evil  and  famous  man  "  has  announced  that 
"  it  is  at  once  his  duty  and  his  pleasure  to  do 
good  to  his  fellow-men,  he  is  the  reprover  of  the 
sinful  and  the  comforter  of  the  sad ;  his  is  a  di- 
vine mission,  and  in  it  he  finds  his  glory,  the 
glory  of  an  angel;"  yet  he  is  terribly  carnal  in 
some  of  his  proceedings — throwing  a  sofa-cush- 
iou  at  the  head  of  a  skeptic ;  rubbing  a  paper 
tube  over  an  inquirer's  cranium,  and  remarking, 
"  This  is  hair-brushing  by  machinery ;  "  pouring 
tea  out  of  a  teapot  "  in  the  usual  way "  for  a 
party  of  enthusiastic  old  women;  and  expressing 
his  own  preference  for  "  regular  baths  and  a 
bottle  of  Guinness's  stout  after  dinner.  .  .  .  Such 
is  the  fashion,"  says  Mr.  Home,  "  in  which  John 
King  makes  his  progress  to  higher  states  of  pu- 
rity."    {Op.  cit.,  p.  312.) 

Xow,  it  must  be  evident  to  every  reader  of 
Mr.  Home's  "  Lights  and  Shadows  of  Spiritual- 
ism," that  he  agrees  with  me  in  the  fundamental 
principle  of  deciding  upon  the  genuineness  of  a 
large  number  of  the  asserted  "spiritualistic" 
revelations,  by  what  seems  to  him  their  inherent 
probability;  trusting  rather  to  the  evidence  of 
his  "  sense  "  than  to  that  of  his  "  senses."  And 
I  would  commend  to  Mr.  Wallace's  attentive  study 
the  "  Modern  Spiritualism  "  of  Mr.  Home,  as  a 
far  more  complete  defense  of  that  position  than 
anything  I  could  myself  have  made — my  knowl- 
edge of  the  wilder  vagaries  of  the  system  being 
extremely  limited. 

"  It  is  not,"  says  Mr.  Home,  "  to  drink  tea  and 
play  on  the  fiddle,  to  give  blasphemously-ludicrous 
communications  regarding  Christ  and  his  apostles, 
to  strut  about  in  skull-caps  and  yellow  boots,  to 
beat  people  over  the  head  with  paper  tubes,  to 
throw  cushions  at  skeptics,  to  hold  up  murderers 


'  as  respectable  objects,  to  tell  people  by  what  om- 
nibuses to  travel,  or  to  describe  the  next  world  as 
a  place  where  humanity  deteriorates,  that  departed 
spirits  return  to  earth.  Their  mission  is  great — 
their  opportunities  are  limited.  What  time  have 
they  to  waste  in  idiotisms  of  which  a  schoolboy 
would  be  ashamed  ?  Let  us  refer  such  to  their 
proper  sources ;  some  to  insanity,  some  to  knavery 
— many  to  this  world,  few  to  the  next.  Let  us 
recognize  the  height  and  the  holiness  of  phenom- 
ena which  show  how 

'The  belover],  the  true-hearted, 
Kevisit  earth  once  more.1 

Let  us  put  from  our  path  all  which  savors  of  folly 
and  fraud,  and  press  steadily  and  undeviatingly 
toward  the  truth.  It  is  full  time  the  errors  I  have 
been  treating  of  should  '  die  among  their  worship- 
ers.'"   {Op.  cit.,  p.  323.) 

I  feel  that  the  cause  of  common-sense  has 
been  so  greatly  served  by  Mr.  Home's  fearless 
exposure  of  the  knavery  of  "  mediums  "  and  the 
credulous  folly  of  their  votaries,  that  I  would  not 
here  call  in  question  his  own  belief  in  the  phe- 
nomena whose  "  height "  and  "  holiness  "  he  re- 
gards as  demonstrating  the  return  of  departed 
spirits  to  earth.  But  to  me  there  seems  nothing 
either  morally  or  spiritually  elevating  in  the 
"elongation"  of  Mr.  Home's  already  tall  body; 
or  in  his  moonlight  sail  out  of  one  window  and 
in  at  another,  even  at  a  height  of  sixty  feet  from 
the  ground.  Nor  can  I  see  anything  peculiarly 
"  holy  "  in  Mr.  Home's  putting  hot  coals  on  his 
own  hand,  or  in  his  heaping  them  on  the  head  of 
a  bald  gentleman.  I  should  myself  have  thought 
such  performances  no  less  a  waste  of  the  limited 
time  and  opportunities  of  the  departed  spirits 
who  revisit  earth,  than  those  which  Mr.  Home 
"pillories"  so  cruelly.  And  I  merely  claim  to 
exercise,  in  regard  to  the  validity  of  Mr.  Home's 
own  pretensions,  the  independent  judgment  as  to 
what  is  inherently  probable,  which  he  himself  so 
freely  passes  upon  the  pretensions  of  others. 

Writing  upon  this  subject  six  years  ago,1  I 
remarked  upon  "  the  unhealthy  craving  which  now 
prevails  for  some  'sign'  that  shall  testify  to  the 
reality  of  the  existence  of  disembodied  spirits, 
while  the  legitimate  influence  of  the  noble  lives 
and  pregnant  sayings  of  the  great  and  good  who 
have  gone  before  us  is  proportionately  ignored." 
And  I  referred  to  the  two  great  men  in  whose 
obsequies  I  had  been  not  long  before  called  upon 
to  take  part — Sir  John  F.  W.  Ilersehel  and  George 
Grote — as  having  left  behind  them  an  influence 
far  more  elevating,  more  wide-spread,  as  well  as 

1  Quarterly  Bevieic,  October,  1871. 


128 


THE  POPELAE  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


more  enduring,  than  any  that  their  "  spirits " 
could  exert  by  playing  tunes  on  accordions  or 
rapping  out  passages  from  their  works.  May  I 
not  now  say  the  same — though  I  hare  the  honor 
to  be  her  brother — of  the  noble-hearted  woman 
whose  recent  loss  has  been  mourned,  not  alone 
by  her  family  and  personal  friends,  but  by  a 
world-embracing  circle  that  ranges  through  all 
grades  of  society,  from  the  very  highest  to  the 
very  lowest '?  The  life  devoted  by  Mary  Carpen- 
ter to  the  rescue  of  the  "  dangerous  and  perish- 
ing classes  "  from  brutal  ignorance  and  degrading 
vice  was  "controlled"  in  the  first  instance  by 
the  "spirit"  of  the  Great  Teacher  of  that  faith  in 
the  fatherhood  of  God  and  the  brotherhood  of 
man  which  "  possessed  "  her  whole  nature  ;  next, 
by  that  of  the  earthly  father  who  had  trained 
her,  alike  by  precept  and  example,  to  a  life  of 
service  to  mankind  ;  and  then  by  those  of  Joseph 
Tuckerman — the  Oberlin  of  Boston,  Massachusetts 
— and  of  Rammohun  Roy,  the  great  Hindoo  re- 
former. It  was  under  these  influences  that  she 
did,  in  the  second  half  of  a  life  of  seventy  years, 
a  work  for  which  the  first  half  was  the  training; 
and  which,  I  venture  to  affirm,  has  not  been  sur- 
passed in  its  power,  its  range,  or  its  productive- 
ness, by  that  of  any  other  single  philanthropist, 
male  or  female.  And  when  the  history  of  that 
life,  the  details  of  that  work,  shall  have  been 
fully  given  to  the  world,  I  cannot  doubt  that  the 


"  spirit "  of  Mary  Carpenter  will  animate  the  zeal 
and  direct  the  activity  of  those  who  follow  in  her 
footsteps  far  more  effectively  than  if  her  "  mate- 
rialized "  image  were  to  appear  among  the  in- 
mates of  her  reformatory,  or  her  "raps"  or  her 
"slate-writing"  were  to  signify  her  instructions, 
to  the  women  of  India. 

Those  who,  while  living,  have  been  "  epistles 
known  and  read  of  all  men  " — who  have  achieved 
the  truest  greatness  by  laboring  in  the  service  of 
others  ("whosoever  will  be  great  among  you,  let 
him  be  your  minister") — leave  behind  them  an 
influence  which,  no  less  than  that  of  the  great  in 
intellectual  power  and  in  moral  worth,  diffuses 
and  deepens  in  each  succeeding  generation.  I 
feel  sure  that  any  one  who  has  tried  to  shape  his 
(or  her)  life  under  the  "spirit-control"  of  John 
F.  W.  Herschel,  of  George  Grote,  or  of  Mary  Car- 
penter, would  far  rather  that  anything  he  may 
have  well  done  should  help  to  transmit  that  in- 
fluence to  those  who  come  after,  than  that,  if 
permitted  to  "  revisit  the  glimpses  of  the  moon," 
he  should-be  placed  at  the  disposal  of  the  profes- 
sional "  mediums  "  who  trade  in  "  spiritual  com- 
munications," and  should  be  made  to  pander  to 
the  vulgar  curiosity  of  those  who  will  delight  to 
be  assured  that  he  is  "pretty  jolly  up  there,"  or 
"  very  miserable  down  below,"  according  to  their 
respective  conceptions  of  his  deserts. — Fraser's 
Magazine. 


SUN-SPOTS  AND  FAMINES. 


By  J.  NORMAN  LOCKYER  and  Pnop.  W.  W.  HUNTER. 


THE  Madras  famine  gives  emphasis  to  a  series 
of  researches  made  by  isolated  observers 
during  the  last  twenty  years.  The  common  re- 
sult to  which  these  researches  point  is  a  more 
direct  connection  between  solar  activity  and  the 
atmospheric  conditions  of  the  earth  than  was 
previously  suspected.  This  conclusion  has  been 
arrived  at  independently  of  a  priori  considera- 
tions. Indeed,  one  of  the  most  remarkable  feat- 
ures of  the  gradual  building  up  of  the  connec- 
tion has  been,  the  aversion  on  the  part  of  each 
investigator  to  draw  general  inferences  from  the 
special  result  at  which  he  had  arrived. 

We  think  that  the  time  has  now  come  to  ex- 
amine the  common  direction  to  which  these  iso- 
lated observations  point,  and  to  inquire  how  far 


the  common  result  is  in  accord  with  the  conclu- 
sions which  might  have  been  anticipated  a  priori 
from  recent  solar  work. 

Exactly  a  century  ago  scientific  men  were  dis- 
cussing the  startling  announcements  made  by  De 
la  Lande  concerning  the  constitution  of  the  sun. 
Dr.  Wilson,  of  Glasgow,  had  discovered,  as  he 
thought,  that  the  solar  spots  which  for  upward 
of  two  centuries  had  proved  a  stumbling-block 
for  astronomers,  were  simply  great,  yawning 
chasms  in  the  outer  atmosphere  of  that  luminary. 
De  la  Lande  had  fallen  upon  this  conclusion  with 
his  accustomed  vigor,  and  declared  that  they 
were  nothing  but  the  higher  and  more  irreducible 
parts — the  mountains,  in  fact — of  a  solid  sun  ex- 
posed from  time  to  time  by  the  ebb  and  flow  of 


sun-spots  and  famines. 


129 


a  sea  liquid,  fiery,  and  so  transparent  that  round 
the  bases  of  these  solar  hills  the  shallower  por- 
tions of  the  molten  ocean  might  be  detected. 

This  announcement  gave  a  tone  to  subsequent 
work.  To  Sir  William  Herschel,  who  outstripped 
even  De  la  Lande-in  imaginative  power,  the  spots 
were  parts  of  a  cool,  habitable  globe.  We  are 
told  of  mountainous  countries  with  peaks  six 
hundred  miles  high,  and  the  outer  shining  enve- 
lope, according  to  him,  was  so  constituted  that, 
while  it  gave  light  and  heat  to  all  the  members 
of  the  solar  family,  its  brilliance  was  tempered 
in  such  a  manner  to  the  inhabitants  of  the  cool 
solid  sun  beneath  as  to  render  life  possible. 

The  science  of  the  nineteenth  century  has 
swept  away  these  beautiful  dreams.  In  such  in- 
quiries the  telescope  has  given  place  to  the  spec- 
troscope, and  no  fact  is  now  more  certain  than 
that  the  sun  is  a  huge  incandescent  globe,  the 
very  coolest  visible  portion  of  which  is  glowing 
with  a  heat  which  transcends  all  our  earthly  fires. 

This  is  no  vague  statement  put  forth  without 
evidence,  or  in  the  absence  of  ascertained  facts. 
The  chemical  composition  of  the  exterior  of  this 
vast  furnace  is  now  to  a  great  extent  known,  and 
the  physical  astronomer  can  easily  detect  when 
a  fresh  supply  of  the  vapor,  now  of  iron,  or  now 
of  magnesium,  is  shot  up  from  below  to  recruit 
the  glow  of  the  exterior. 

We  have  called  the  sun  a  furnace,  but  this 
word  must  be  used  with  a  qualification.  The 
heat  of  the  sun  is  due,  not  to  combustion  as  in 
I  our  ordinary  fires,  but  to  the  vivid  incandescence 
of  each  particle  brought  about  by  the  original 
contraction  of  the  vaporous  globe,  or  by  causes 
I  even  more  remote  and  unknown.  But  this  we 
know,  that  the  energies  at  work  on  the  sun  are 
not  always  constant.  At  times,  there  are  spots 
on  its  surface  of  such  enormous  magnitude  that 
they  are  visible  to  the  naked  eye ;  at  others,  it  is 
apparently  as  spotless  as  the  most  eager  of  Gal- 
ileo's adversaries,  who  had  the  dictum  of  Aris- 
totle to  defend,  could  have  desired.  At  times, 
again,  glowing  vapors  rush  up  from  its  bowels 
with  such  persistence  that  the  careful  observer 
is  sure  to  catch  a  sight  of  their  eruptions  when- 
ever he  looks  for  them.  At  other  times  they 
are  invisible  for  months  together. 

Strange  forms  are  also  seen,  exquisite  in  color, 
fantastic  beyond  description  in  outline,  and  of 
stupendous  magnitude.  These  are  the  solar 
prominences  or  red  flames,  the  existence  of  which 
was  formerly  revealed  to  us  in  eclipses  only. 
Like  the  spots,  and  like  the  eruptions,  they  wax 
and  wane.  At  one  time  a  dozen  may  be  visible 
45 


round  the  edge  of  the  sun,  some  of  them  a  hun- 
dred thousand  miles  high ;  at  other  times  there 
is  scarcely  the  most  feeble  indication  of  this  form 
of  solar  activity.  The  sun,  then,  may  not  only 
be  likened  to  a  furnace  the  heat  of  which  is  be- 
yond expression ;  but  it  may  be  likened  to  a  fur- 
nace the  intensity  of  which  is  apparently  variable. 

The  next  point  is  that  the  apparent  variation 
in  activity  is  not  irregular  and  therefore  unpre- 
dictable, but  that  it  is  regular  and  predictable, 
at  all  events  within  certain  limits.  The  variation 
is  in  fact  periodic,  and  the  solar  phenomena  to 
which  we  have  referred  vary  together ;  that  is, 
when  we  have  the  greatest  number  of  uprushes 
of  heated  matter  from  below,  we  have  the  great- 
est number  of  spots  and  the  greatest  number  of 
prominences. 

All  these  phenomena  ebb  and  flow  once  in 
eleven  years.  So  that  every  eleven  years  we  have 
the  greatest  activity  in  the  production  of  up- 
rushes, spots,  and  prominences ;  and  between  the 
periods  of  maximum  we  have  a  period  of  mini- 
mum, when  such  manifestations  are  almost  en- 
tirely wanting.  In  fact,  the  spots  may  be  taken 
as  a  rough  index  of  solar  energy,  just  as  the  rain- 
fall may  be  taken  as  a  convenient  indication  of 
terrestrial  climate.  They  are  an  index,  but  not 
a  measure  of  solar  activity;  and  their  absence 
indicates  a  reduction,  not  the  cessation,  of  the 
sun's  energy.  Whether  this  reduction  means  one 
in  a  hundred  or  one  in  a  thousand,  we  do  not  know. 

If  we  now  pass  from  the  sun,  the  great  reser- 
voir of  energy  in  our  planetary  system,  to  our  own 
earth,  we  find  a  very  different  order  of  things. 
The  incandescence  of  our  planet  is  a  thing  of  the 
past ;  and  the  loss  by  radiation  of  its  internal 
heat  is  now  so  small  and  varies  so  slightly  in  a 
long  period  of  time  that,  as  compared  with  a 
period  of  eleven  years,  we  may  regard  this  heat 
as  a  constant  quantity. 

It  was,  perhaps,  scarcely  necessary  thus  to 
clear  the  ground  for  the  general  statement,  now 
an  accepted  fact  of  science,  that,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  tide-work,  all  our  terrestrial  energies  come 
from  the  sun.  In  the  great  modern  principle  of 
the  conservation  of  energy,  we  have  not  only 
proof  that  the  actual  energy  stored  up  in  our 
planet  is  constant,  but  that  the  solar  energy  is 
the  great  prime  mover  of  all  the  changeable  phe- 
nomena with  which  we  are  here  familiar,  espe- 
cially in  the  inorganic  world. 

That  energy  gives  us  our  meteorology  by  fall- 
ing at  different  times  on  different  points  of  the 
aerial  and  aqueous  envelopes  of  our  planet,  there- 
by producing  ocean  and  air  currents,  while,  by 


130 


TEE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTELY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


acting  upon  the  various  forms  of  water  which  ex- 
ist in  those  envelopes,  it  is  the  fruitful  parent  of 
rain,  and  cloud,  and  mist.  Nor  does  it  stop  here. 
It  affects,  in  a  more  mysterious  way,  the  electri- 
city in  the  atmosphere,  and  the  magnetism  of  the 
globe  itself. 

If  the  energy  radiated  from  the  sun  were  con- 
stant, we  should  expect  that  the  terrestrial  con- 
ditions which  depend  on  the  amount  of  solar 
energy  received  at  any  one  place  would  be  con- 
stant too.  The  daily  change  due  to  the  earth's 
rotation,  the  yearly  change  brought  about  by  the 
earth's  revolution,  would  be  there ;  but  there 
change  would  stop.  The  fire,  as  well  as  the  air, 
earth,  and  water,  would  be  constant  quantities. 
But,  suppose  the  fire  to  be  variable ;  in  other 
words,  suppose  the  solar  energy  to  change  in 
amount  from  year  to  year.  To  the  daily  and  annual 
changes  of  our  terrestrial  phenomena  would  then 
be  added  another  change — a  change  absolutely  ir- 
regular and  unpredictable  if  the  variation  in  the 
amount  of  the  solar  energy  were  subject  to  no 
law ;  but  a  change  as  regular  as  the  daily  and  the 
yearly  one,  if  the  variation  in  the  amount  of  so- 
lar energy  were  subject  to  a  law.  The  period  of 
the  additional  terrestrial  change  would  agree  with 
the  period  of  the  solar' change,  whatever  that 
might  be ;  and  to  the  daily  and  yearly  response 
of  the  earth  to  the  solar  energy,  there  would  be 
superadded  an  additional  change,  depending  upon 
and  coincident  in  the  main  with  the  period  of  the 
solar  change.  We  have  said  coincident  in  the 
main,  because  it  is  easy  to  imagine,  in  the  case  of 
meteorological  phenomena  dependent  upon  a  long 
train  of  intermediate  influences  between  the  im- 
pact of  the  solar  energy  and  the  final  result,  that 
time  would  be  taken  for  their  development.  In 
this  case,  although  the  dependence  would  be 
there,  an  exact  coincidence  would  not.  There 
would  be  a  lagging  behind,  and  this  lagging  be- 
hind would  possibly  not  be  the  same  at  different 
latitudes. 

We  come  now  to  the  facts,  accepting  sun-spot 
frequency  as  the  index  of  solar  activity.  With- 
out dwelling  upon  previous  work,  the  actual  enu- 
meration of  sun-spots  wss  undertaken  in  1826  by 
Hofrath  Schwabe,  of  Dessau,  and  patiently  car- 
ried out  by  means  of  a  daily  scrutiny  of  the  sun's 
surface,  nis  eye-observations  have  been  im- 
proved upon  by  accurate  measurements  of  the 
solar-spotted  area,  by  the  late  Mr.  R.  C.  Carring- 
ton  at  Redhill,  and  by  the  solar  work  at  the  Kew 
Observatory,  conducted  by  Dr.  W.  De  la  Rue  and 
Prof.  Balfour  Stewart.  Similar  observations  are 
now  in  progress,  and  photographs  of  the  sun-spots 


are  being  taken  in  France,  Germany,  Russia,  Italy? 
and  Greenwich.  Dr.  Rudolf  Wolf  has  reduced 
the  materials  thus  obtained  to  a  uniform  stand- 
ard, and  published  a  list  of  the  relative  number 
of  sun-spots  for  each  year  since  1*750;  the  data 
for  the  earlier  years  being,  however,  of  less  value 
than  for  the  later  period,  during  which  daily  de- 
lineations of  the  sun's  surface  have  been  going 
on.  Dr.  Wolf's  list  exhibits  eleven  complete 
cycles  of  sun-spots,  from  1750  to  1870,  giving  an 
average  of,  as  nearly  as  possible,  eleven  years  to 
each  cycle.  The  individual  cycles  vary  within 
certain  limits,  but  the  largest  variations  appear 
in  the  last  century  and  early  in  the  present  one, 
before  the  commencement  of  Hofrath  Schwabe's 
continuous  observations  in  1826. 

.Are  these  cycles  of  solar  activity  coincident 
with  any  well-marked  cycles  in  the  atmospheric 
or  other  conditions  of  the  earth  ?  The  inquiries 
into  such  a  coincidence  have  been  directed  to 
four  classes  of  terrestrial  phenomena.  They  are  : 
1.  Periodical  variations  in  terrestrial  magnetism 
and  electrical  activity  ;  2.  Periodical  variations 
in  temperature ;  3.  The  periodicity  of  wind-dis- 
turbances, hurricanes,  and  cyclones  ;  4.  Perio- 
dicity in  the  rainfall.  It  is  with  the  last  class  of 
phenomena  that  we  have  specifically  to  deal  in 
this  article.  But  it  may  be  well  to  summarize  the 
results  arrived  at  with  respect  to  the  first  three. 

First,  then,  with  regard  to  terrestrial  magne- 
tism and  electrical  activity.  A  freely-suspended 
magnet,  although  it  points  in  one  direction,  is, 
nevertheless,  within  small  limits,  always  in  mo- 
tion. Certain  of  these  motions  depend,  as  is 
well  known,  upon  the  hour  of  the  day,  but  the 
magnet  is  also  liable  to  irregular,  abrupt  fluctu- 
tions,  which  cannot  be  connected  with  the  diur- 
nal oscillations.  While  Hofrath  Schwabe  was  en- 
gaged in  delineating  the  sun-spots,  Sir  Edward 
Sabine  was  conducting  a  series  of  observations 
with  regard  to  these  spasmodic  affections  of  the 
needle.  He  found  that  such  fluctuations  are  most 
frequent  in  years  of  high  sun-spot  activity..  Van 
Swindell  had  suggested,  but  only  suggested,  a 
periodicity  in  the  irregular  movements,  as  far 
back  as  1785.  Gauss  had  made  further  discov- 
eries between  1834  and  1837.  Arago's  obser- 
vations from  1820  to  1830  were  reduced  and  pub- 
lished in  1854,  in  such  a  form  as  to  prove  that  I 
a  minimum  period  of  magnetic  variations  had 
occurred  in  1823-'24,  a  year  of  minimum  sun- 
spots  ;  and  that  a  maximum  period  of  such  vari- 
ations had  occurred  in  1829,  a  year  of  maximum  | 
sun-spots.     In  1S51  Dr.  Lamont,  of  Munich,  pub- 


SUN-SPOTS  AND  FAMINES. 


131 


ilshed  his  long-continued  researches,  indicating 
the  existence  of  a  cycle  in  magnetic  variations, 
occupying  on  an  average  ten  and  a  third  years. 
Sir  Edward  Sabine,  in  1S52,  carried  forward  the 
work  by  a  paper  in  the  "Transactions  of  the 
Royal  Society."  He  subsequently  communicated 
the  results  of  a  series  of  records  between  1859 
nnd  1864,  of  the  horizontal  and  vertical  force 
magnetometers  at  the  Kew  Observatory,  with  a 
note  showing  their  connection  with  the  sun- 
spots  and  giving  interesting  historical  details. 
He  observed,  too,  that  the  fluctuations  of  the 
magnet  were  almost  invariably  accompanied  by 
displays  of  the  aurora  borealis,  and  came  to  the 
conclusion  that  auroral  displays  occur  most  fre- 
quently in  years  of  maximum  sun-spots.  Dr. 
Wolf,  now  of  Zurich,  and  M.  Gautier,  of  Geneva, 
had  independently  remarked,  in  1852,  the  coin- 
cidence of  Lamont's  decennial  magnetic  period 
with  Schwabe's  period  of  sun-spots.  In  1865 
Prof.  Loomis,  of  Yale  College,  supplied  further 
evidence  on  the  range  of  magnetic  declination 
and  auroras,  in  their  relation  to  sun-spots.  He 
concluded  that  the  auroras  observed  in  Europe 
and  America  exhibit  a  true  periodicity,  closely 
following  the  magnetic  periods,  but  not  perfectly 
identical  with  them.  He  believed  that  a  sun- 
spot  is  the  result  of  a  disturbance  of  the  sun's 
surface,  with  some  emanation  from  the  sun  which 
is  felt  almost  instantly  upon  the  earth.  Signor 
Schiaparelli,  in  1875,  brought  out  with  great 
clearness  the  relations  between  the  sun-spot  pe- 
riods and  the  variations  in  the  declination  of  the 
magnetic  needle.  In  the  same  year,  also,  Sophus 
Tromholdt  contributed  to  the  Zeitschrift  der  os- 
ierreichixchen,  Gesellschaftfiar  Meteorohgie  a  note 
on  the  connection  of  auroras  with  the  sun-spot  peri- 
ods. In  1876  Dr.  J.  A.  Broun  presented  the  re- 
sults derived  from  observations  of  magnetic  dec- 
lination made  during  nearly  a  quarter  of  a  cen- 
tury at  Trevandrum.  He  gave  the  mean  duration 
of  the  magnetic  cycle  at  10.45  years,  and  sup- 
plied a  very  valuable  chart  showing  the  decen- 
nial period  of  the  diurnal  range  of  magnetic  dec- 
lination and  sun-spot  area  from  1784  to  1876. 
The  curves  of  this  elaborate  and  most  interesting 
chart  place  the  general  coincidence  of  the  mag- 
netic and  sun-spot  cycles  in  a  clear  light.  Dr. 
Broun  came  to  the  conclusion  that  while  the 
II  sun-spot  activity  is  not  an  exact  measure  of  mag- 
netic action,  "  each  is  a  distinct  result  due  to  the 
same  cause.'1  The  whole  question  has,  during 
the  present  summer  (May,  1877),  been  reviewed 
by  Prof.  Balfour  Stewart,  a  distinguished  work- 
er in  the  same  field.     He  has  exhibited  the  solar 


spots,  magnetic  declination,  and  aurora  displays, 
from  1776  to  1872,  in  curves  which  follow  each 
other  with  an  indisputable  coincidence.  He  fur- 
ther examines  the  connection  of  these  three  co- 
incident cycles  with  planetary  configurations :  a 
question  discussed  by  Mr.  Fritz  in  the  "  Proceed- 
ings of  the  Royal  Society"  in  1871,  and  previ- 
ously studied  with  much  care  by  Dr.  De  la  Rue 
and  Prof.  Balfour  Stewart,  at  Kew  (1854-'66).  To 
sum  up :  magnetic  observers  now  hold  that  not 
only  do  the  spasmodical  affections  of  the  needle 
follow  curves  closely  coincident  with  the  solar 
spots,  "but  its  diurnal  oscillations  are  not  less 
dependent  on  the  state  of  the  sun's  surface." 

Such  magnetic  disturbances  have  very  prac- 
tical results.  Telegraphy  and  telegraphic  lines 
form  one  of  the  most  conspicuous  of  the  new 
commercial  undertakings  of  our  day.  During 
periods  of  maximum  magnetic  disturbance,  tele- 
graphic communication  between  points  so  close 
as  London  and  Dover  is  sometimes  interrupted. 
Mr.  Charles  V.  Walker,  superintendent  of  tele- 
graphs, presented  an  important  paper  in  1861  to 
the  Royal  Society,  on  magnetic  storms  and  earth- 
currents.  He  described  the  remarkable  disturb- 
ances in  communication  which  took  place  in  1848, 
a  year  of  maximum  sun-spots,  and  in  the  autumn 
of  1859,  just  before  the  next  year  of  maximum 
sun-spots  (1860).  The  first  period  of  disturbance 
appeared  to  his  staff  to  be  an  altogether  "  ab- 
normal "  one.  "  We  did  not  then  know,"  writes  Mr. 
Walker,  "as  we  now  do,  that  these  disturbances 
have  a  cycle  of  about  eleven  years  from  the 
maximum  period  of  activity  to  the  next  maxi- 
mum." An  idea  of -the  violence  of  such  mag- 
netic storms  may  be  derived  from  the  Dover 
clerk's  entry  on  September  2,  1859 :  "  This 
morning,  on  opening  the  office,  I  found  the  nee- 
dles of  both  instruments  firmly  blocked  over  to 
the  left,  and,  although  the  handles  were  firmly 
held  over  to  the  right  to  counteract  the  power, 
to  my  surprise  I  found  that  our  battery-power 
had  not  the  slightest  effect.  ...  I  am  sorry  to 
say  that  there  is  not  the  slightest  possibility  of 
our  working  the  instrument ;  needles  continuing 
firmly  fixed  over,  and  this  has  continued  for  up- 
ward of  half  an  hour."  This  disturbance  was 
of  such  magnitude  and  of  so  long  duration  that 
the  operators  were  unable  to  supply  an  adequate 
narrative  of  it,  as  "  they  were  at  their  wits'  end 
to  clear  off  the  telegrams  which  accumulated 
in  their  hands,  by  other  less  affected  but  less 
direct  routes."  Mr.  Walker  has  retained  no 
record  of  the  earth-currents  during  the  last  pe- 
riod of  maximum  sun-spots  (1S70),  but  the  dis- 


132 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


turbances  on  the  lines  were  not  of  so  marked 
a  character.  He  holds  as  an  established  fact 
that  "earth-currents,  disturbed  magnetometers, 
and  aurorae,  are  parts  of  the  same  phenomenon," 
and,  in  a  recent  letter  to  one  of  the  writers  of 
this  article,  he  reaffirms  his  conviction  regard- 
ing the  relationship  between  earth-currents,  tele- 
graphic disturbances,  and  sun-spots. 

The  second  class  of  phenomena,  in  which  a 
periodicity  coinciding  with  the  sun-spot  cycle  is 
believed  to  have  been  discovered,  has  reference 
to  solar  radiation  and  thermometric  variations. 
For  reasons  which  would  require  too  much  space 
to  detail,  various  difficulties  complicate  this  line 
of  research,  and  we  should  state,  at  the  outset, 
that  the  evidence  is  less  complete  and  satisfactory 
than  that  which  connects  magnetic  disturbances 
and  rainfall  with  sun-spots.  A  moment's  consid- 
eration will  show  the  kind  of  complication  to  which 
we  refer.  If  the  earth  had  no  atmosphere,  all  the 
solar  energy  would  be  incident  and  operative  on 
the  earth's  surface,  where  perforce  our  measuring 
instruments  are  placed.  But  the  earth  has  an 
atmosphere,  which  is  the  vast  scene  of  the  play 
of  the  solar  energies ;  and  the  work  done  there 
is  of  such  a  nature  that  the  more  energy  there  is 
in  operation,  the  more  effectively  is  the  direct 
energy  of  the  sun  screened  from  the  surface. 
Further,  there  is  not  wanting  evidence  to  show 
that  the  vapor  of  water,  like  the  vapors  of  the 
metals,  exists  in  various  molecular  conditions, 
some  of  which  are  transparent  and  others  opaque 
to  those  rays  which  affect  our  thermometers.1 
The  thermometric  inquiry  divides  itself  into  sev- 
eral distinct  branches,  such  as  the  direct  solar 
radiation  or  calorific  intensity  of  the  sun's  light, 
the  daily  temperature  range,  and  the  mean  an- 
nual temperature.  We  shall  very  briefly  state 
the  conclusions  at  which  observers  have  arrived 
during  the  last  ten  years,  without  criticism  or 
any  expression  of  opinion. 

In  1867  Mr.  Joseph  Baxendell  communicated 
the  results  of  a  scrutiny  of  the  Solar  Radiation 
Registers,  kept  at  the  Radcliffe  Observatory,  Ox- 
ford, from  1856  to  1864.  He  came  to  the  fol- 
lowing conclusions,  among  others :  1.  That  the 
calorific  intensity  of  the  sun's  light  is  subject 
to  periodical  changes,  the  maxima  and  minima 
of  which  correspond  respectively  with  those  of 
sun-spot  frequency.  2.  That  it  seems  probable 
that  the  heating  rays  of  the  sun  consist  of  two 

1  There  is  evidence  to  suggest  that  the  aqueous  va- 
por prod  need  at  the  period  of  minimum  sun-spots 
would  be  more  transparent  to  the  heat-rays  than  that 
produced  at  other  times.— J.  N.  L. 


kinds,  differing  in  intensity,  and  subject  to  pe- 
riodical changes ;  the  times  of  maxima  of  one 
kind,  and  those  of  minima  of  the  other,  corre- 
sponding respectively  to  the  times  of  maximum 
frequency  of  solar  spots.  Mr.  Baxendell  also 
pointed  out  a  connection  between  the  mean 
monthly  variation  of  solar  radiation  on  cloudless 
days  and  the  mean  monthly  daily  range  of  the 
magnetometer.  In  1871  he  published  his  further 
researches  on  the  changes  in  the  distribution  of 
barometric  pressure,  temperaturej  and  rainfall, 
under  different  winds,  during  a  period  of  solar- 
spot  frequency.  He  found  that  changes  had 
taken  place  in  the  three  elements  under  discus- 
sion, which  corresponded  very  closely  in  the 
times  of  their  maxima  and  minima  with  those  of 
sun-spot  frequency.  In  1S75  Mr.  H.  T.  Blandford, 
Meteorological  Reporter  at  Calcutta,  stated,  from 
experiments  conducted  in  Bengal :  "  The  result  is 
to  me  very  striking,  and,  if  not  absolutely  con- 
clusive as  to  the  direct  variation  of  the  sun's  heat 
with  the  number  of  spots  and  prominences,  cer- 
tainly, as  far  as  it  goes,  strongly  confirms  Mr. 
Baxendell's  conclusions." '  In  the  same  year 
Professors  Balfour  Stewart  and  Roscoe,  from  an 
investigation  of  the  heating  effects  of  the  sun, 
came  to  the  conclusion  that  there  is  more  sun- 
shine at  London  in  years  of  maximum  than  in 
years  of  minimum  solar  disturbance.  Next  year, 
1876,  Prof.  Balfour  Stewart  found  that  the  win- 
ter temperature  range  at  Kew  apparently  de- 
pends on  the  sun-spot  period,  being  greatest  at 
times  of  maximum  sun-spots,  and  least  at  times 
of  minimum  sun-spots.  This  year,  1877,  he  has 
raised,  and  produced  evidence  upon,  the  interest- 
ing question  whether  the  mean  daily  range  does 
not  depend,  among  other  influences,  on  the  state 
of  the  sun's  surface  with  regard  to  spots. 

Meanwhile,  another  series  of  observations  had 
been  going  on,  not  with  black-bulb  thermometers 
fdr  solar  radiation,  but  with  reference  to  the  mean 
annual  temperature.  In  1870  Prof.  Piazzi  Smyth, 
the  Astronomer  Royal  for  Scotland,  published 
the  result  of  observations  made  from  1837  to 
1869,  with  thermometers  sunk  in  the  rock  at  the 
Royal  Observatory,  Edinburgh.  He  came  to  the 
conclusion  that  a  great  heat-wave  occurs  every 
eleven  years  and  a  fraction,  its  maximum  slightly  j 
lagging  behind  the  minimum  of  the  sun-spot  cy- 
cle. Next  year,  1871,  Mr.  E.  J.  Stone,  the  As- 
tronomer Royal  at  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope,  ex- 

1  We  should  add,  however,  that  a  communication 
has  just  appeared  {Nature,  October  11, 1877),  from  Mr. 
Hill,  in  Northern  India,  differing  from  Mr.Blandfcud's  j 
conclusions. 


SUN-SPOTS  AND  FAMINES. 


133 


am'med  the  temperature-observations  recorded 
during  thirty  years  at  the  Cape  under  his  prede- 
cessor, Sir  T.  Maclear.  He  stated  that  the  tem- 
perature and  sun-spot  curves  presented  an  agree- 
ment so  close  as  to  compel  him  to  believe  that 
tire  same  cause  which  leads  to  an  access  of  mean 
annual  temperature  leads  equally  to  a  dissipation 
of  solar  spots.  Here,  also,  we  find  the  maximum 
heat  slightly  lagging  behind  the  minimum  spots. 
In  1S73  Signor  Celoria,  from  a  comparison  of  the 
sun-spot  periods  with  the  rainfall  at  Milan  from 
1763  to  1S72,  came  to  the  result  that  the  coinci- 
dence was  marked,  but  not  very  decidedly.  Dr. 
W.  Koppen's  papers  in  the  Ztitschrift  dcr  oster- 
reichischen  Gesellschaft  fur  Meteorohgie  for  Au- 
gust and  September,  1873,  form  the  most  im- 
portant contribution  upon  the  question.  He  en- 
deavored, with  an  elaboration  and  completeness 
not  previously  attempted,  to  present  the  earth's 
temperature  in  connection  with  sun-spots  for  the 
hundred  years  preceding  1S70.  He  divided  the 
thermometric  returns  into  two  great  classes — 
those  taken  within  the  tropics,  and  those  be- 
longing to  the  extra-tropical  zones.  The  barest 
summary  of  his  researches  would  occupy  several 
pages.  In  a  carefully-prepared  chart  he  exhibited 
the  rainfall  and  sun-spot  curves  from  1768.  Dur- 
ing the  earlier  part  of  this  period  he  had  thermo- 
metric returns  only  from  the  northern  temperate 
zone.  The  curves  do  not  show  a  coincidence ; 
whether  from  the  local  character  of  the  tempera- 
ture returns,  or  from  the  uncertain  value  of  the 
sun-spot  curve,  we  need  not  here  inquire.  After 
the  year  1826,  when  the  sun-spot  data  become  more 
trustworthy,  the  case  is  entirely  different.  The 
curves  follow  each  other  in  a  most  striking  man- 
ner; and,  indeed,  he  states  that,  from  1816  to  1S54, 
the  coincidence  of  temperature-changes  with  the 
sun-spots  does  not  merely  extend  over  the  aver- 
age length  of  the  cycles,  but  reflects  all  the  lead- 
ing disturbances  and  peculiarities  of  the  sun-spot 
periods.  Dr.  Koppen  further  points  out  that,  as 
the  period  of  increase  from  the  minimum  to  the 
maximum  year  in  ihe  sun-spot  cycle  is  almost  al- 
ways shorter  than  the  period  of  decrease  from 
the  maximum  to  the  minimum,  so,  on  the  whole, 
is  that  feature  reflected  in  the  temperature- 
changes.  The  parallelism  in  this  series  of  re- 
turns, he  says,  with  reference  to  his  table  dealing 
with  the  period  from  1820  to  1854,  is  so  great, 
that  there  can  be  no  question  of  accidental  coin- 
cidence of  variations  independent  of  each  other. 
On  the  other  hand,  his  figures  disclose  many 
anomalies.  Thus,  in  the  tropics,  the  maximum 
of  warmth  occurs  a  full  year  before  the  year  of 


minimum  sun-spots ;  while  in  the  zones  beyond 
the  tropics  it  falls  two  years  after  the  minimum. 
The  regularity  and  magnitude  of  the  undulation 
of  the  temperature-curve  are  most  strongly  marked 
in  the  tropics,  and  decrease  toward  the  poles. 

With  regard  to  the  third  class  of  phenomena, 
wind-disturbances,  the  evidence,  although  less 
abundant,  is  more  uniform.  The  frequency  of 
such  disturbances  at  times  of  maxima  sun-spots 
has  been  observed  independently  by  two  me- 
teorologists on  the  opposite  sides  of  the  globe. 
In  both  cases  their  observations  were  made  in 
the  tropics,  where  wind-disturbances  have  so  vio- 
lent and  so  well-marked  a  character  as  to  admit 
of  more  easy  enumeration  than  in  the  extra-trop- 
ical zones.  To  our  countryman  Dr.  Meldrum, 
government-astronomer  at  Mauritius,  belongs  the 
honor  of  originating,  with  the  chief  credit  of 
prosecuting,  this  research.  By  a  series  of  care- 
ful observations  he  had,  more  than  five  years  ago, 
established  the  existence  of  a  coincidence  be- 
tween the  frequency  of  cyclones  and  sun-spots. 
In  1872  one  of  the  writers  of  this  article  thus 
summarized  the  results  :  "  Mr.  Meldrum  teHs  us 
that  the  whole  question  of  cyclones  is  a  question 
of  solar  activity,  and  that,  if  we  write  down  in 
one  column  the  number  of  cyclones  in  any  given 
year,  there  will  be  a  strict  relation  between  them 
— many  sun-spots,  many  hurricanes ;  few  sun- 
spots,  few  hurricanes.  Mr.  Meldrum  points  out 
that,  in  those  years  in  which  we  have  been  quietly 
mapping  out  the  sun-spot  maxima,  the  harbors 
were  filled  with  wrecks  and  vessels  coming  in 
disabled  from  tvery  part  of  the  great  Indian 
Ocean."  Next  year,  1873,  M.  Poey,  who  had 
conducted  a  similar  research  into  the  hurricanes 
of  the  West  Indies,  communicated  his  results  to 
the  Aeademie  des  Sciences  at  Paris.  He  enu- 
merated 357  hurricanes  between  1750  and  1873, 
and  stated  that,  out  of  twelve  maxima,  ten  agreed. 
A  careful  reexamination  of  his  materials  discloses 
striking  coincidences,  but  at  the  same  time,  we 
ought  to  add,  very  serious  discrepancies.  The 
discrepancies,  however,  chiefly  belong  to  the  last 
century  and  the  earlier  part  of  the  present  one. 
Since  the  commencement  of  Schwabe's  continu- 
ous sun-spot  observations  in  1826,  the  common 
periodicity  is  more  strongly  marked,  as  Table 
III.,  on  page  139,  will  show. 

During  the  present  summer,  1877,  an  effort 
has  been  made  to  ascertain  whether  the  periodici- 
ty thus  observed  in  the  wind-disturbances  of  the 
tropics  produces  any  well-marked  results  upon 
the  shipping  of  the  world.     Mr.   Henry  Jeula, 


13-1 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


secretary  to  the  late  Statistical  Committee  of 
Lloyd's,  obtained  the  returns  of  marine  casual- 
ties posted  on  Lloyd's  loss-book,  from  1855  to 
1870.  Conjointly  with  one  of  the  writers  of  this 
article,  he  worked  out  and  tabulated  the  informa- 
tion thus  derived  with  regard  to  the  two  periods 
of  eleven  years  from  1S55  to  1876.  It  was  found 
that  the  marine  casualties  disclosed  a  cycle  closely 
corresponding  with  the  sun-spot  period.  The  per- 
centage of  casualties  on  the  registered  vessels  of 
the  United  Kingdom  was  seventeen  and  a  half 
per  cent,  greater  during  the  maximum  two  years 
in  the  common  cycle  than  during  the  minimum 
two  years.  The  percentage  of  losses  on  the  to- 
tal, posted  on  Lloyd's  loss-book  during  the  eleven 
years,  was  fifteen  per  cent,  greater  during  the 
two  maximum  years  of  the  common  cycle  than 
during  the  two  minimum  ones.  This  cycle  of 
marine  casualties  coincides  with  that  of  the  trop- 
ical rainfall,  and  it  will  be  exhibited  side  by  side 
with  the  tabulated  periods  of  the  rainfall  at 
Madras.  It  should  be  remembered,  however,  that 
the  two  periods  of  eleven  years  for  which  the  re- 
turns of  marine  casualties  are  available  form  a 
very  narrow  basis  for  a  statistical  induction. 

We  now  come  to  the  fourth  and  last  branch 
of  the  inquiry.  We  have  already  seen  that  Mr. 
Joseph  Baxendell,in  1871,  found  that  changes  had 
taken  place  in  the  rainfall  as  well  as  in  the  tem- 
perature and  barometric  pressure,  which  corre- 
sponded very  closely  in  their  maxima  and  minima 
periods  with  those  of  the  sun-spots.  Dr.  Meldrum, 
from  a  comparison  of  the  rain-return  at  Mauritius, 
Adelaide,  and  Brisbane,  came  to  the  conclusion 
that  the  evidence  of  a  connection  between  its  max- 
ima and  minima  periods,  and  the  corresponding 
sun-spot  periods,  although  not  absolute,  was  very 
striking,  and  demanded  further  inquiry.  In  1872 
one  of  the  writers  of  this  article  published  a  paper 
entitled  "  The  Meteorology  of  the  Future,"  in 
which  was  developed  the  idea  of  a  connection  be- 
tween sun-spots  and  rainfall,  and  further  evidence 
was  produced.  In  1872-'73  frequent  contributions 
appeared  on  the  subject,  but  at  first  with  con- 
flicting results.  In  opposition  to  individual  coin- 
cidences, Sir  R.  Rawson  rejoined  that,  "  assuming 
that  sun-spots  affect  all  parts  of  the  globe  equal- 
ly, and  that  periodicity  prevails  in  all  alike,  the 
experience  of  Barbadoes  is  opposed  to  the  the- 
ory." Dr.  Carl  Jelinek,  of  Vienna,  from  an 
examination  of  fourteen  stations  between  1833 
and  1869,  showed  that,  while  a  coincidence  held 
good  in  fifty-two  cases,  it  failed  in  forty-two.  In 
1873  the  inquiry  branched  out  in  a  new  direc- 


tion. Gustav  Wex  made  an  examination  into 
the  depths  of  water  recorded  in  the  Elbe,  Rhine, 
Oder,  Danube,  and  Vistula,  for  the  six  sun-spot 
periods  from  1S00  to  1867.  He  came  to  the  re- 
sult that  the  years  in  which  the  maximum  amount 
of  water  appeared  in  the  rivers  were  years  of 
maximum  sun-spots  ;  while  the  minimum  amount 
of  water  occurred  during  the  years  of  minimum 
sun-spots.  Mr.  G.  M.  Dawson,  geologist  to  the 
B.  N.  A.  Boundary  Commission,  made  a  similar 
inquiry  in  America.  In  1874  he  stated  that  the 
correspondence  between  the  periods  of  maxima 
and  minima  in  the  solar-spot  cycles,  and  in  the 
fluctuations  of  the  Great  Lakes,  though  by  no 
means  absolute,  was  sufficiently  close  to  open  a 
new  field  of  inquiry.  In  the  same  year,  Mr.  J. 
H.  Hennessey,  from  an  examination  of  the  rain- 
fall at  Masuri  in  India,  arrived  at  a  similar  con- 
clusion. In  1874  also  Dr.  J.  A.  Broun,  in  an 
analysis  of  the  returns  from  ten  stations,  con- 
sidered it  probable  that  a  difference  of  about  two 
inches  in  the  rainfall  might  be  expected  between 
the  years  of  greatest  and  the  years  of  least  sun- 
spot  area.  Prof.  John  Brocklesby,  in  the  Ameri- 
can Journal  of  Science,  stated  that  the  results  of 
his  examination  pointed  to  a  connection  between 
variations  in  the  sun-spot  area  and  the  annual 
rainfall ;  the  rainfall  rising  above  the  mean  when 
the  sun-spot  area  is  in  excess,  and  falling  below 
the  mean  in  periods  of  small  sun-spots. 

At  the  close  of  1876  it  was  the  duty  of  one 
of  the  writers  of  this  article  to  examine  the  Ma- 
dras rainfall  in  connection  with  the  anticipated 
famine.  It  soon  became  apparent  to  him  that 
inquiries  which  deal  with  the  rain-supply  of 
India  as  a  yearly  unit  must  be  essentially  inade- 
quate. Native  usage  and  speech  strongly  mark 
the  existence  of  two  distinct  factors  in  the  annu- 
al rainfall ;  and  the  local  system  of  agriculture 
is  merely  a  practical  recognition  of  this  meteor- 
ological fact.  The  summer  monsoon,  with  its 
stately  and  ever-shifting  procession  of  rain- 
clouds,  marching  over  India  in  aerial  battalions 
from  the  southern  ocean  to  their  resting-place  in 
the  Himalayas,  formed  a  theme  dear  to  the  San- 
skrit poet.  It  seemed  as  if  the  continent  "  be- 
loved of  Indra  "  had  only  to  sit  still  and  receive 
in  her  lap  the  treasures  which  the  winds  gathered 
from  distant  tropical  seas.  Indra,  the  personi- 
fication of  the  watery  atmosphere,  won  his  way 
to  the  supreme  godhead  of  the  Sanskrit  pantheon 
by  the  all-powerful  influence  which  he  exercised, 
for  weal  or  for  woe,  on  a  population  of  husband- 
men.   Himself  gracious  and  beneficent,  ever  seek- 


SUX-SPOTS  AND  FAMINES. 


135 


ing  to  shower  his  treasures  on  the  thirsty  earth, 
he  was  nevertheless  restrained,  and  from  time  to 
time  prevented,  by  the  evil  spirit,  Vrita.  Next 
to  Indra  came  Yayu,  the  Wind,  representing  in 
his  single  personality  the  combined  Maruts  or 
storm-gods.  The  same  Indra  and  Yayu,  the 
watery  atmosphere  and  the  wind,  whom  the  San- 
skrit race  adored  centuries  before  the  commence- 
ment of  our  era,  still  decide  each  autumn  the 
fate  of  the  Indian  people. 

The  meteorological  year  at  Madras  divides 
itself  into  three  parts.  The  first  of  them  extends 
from  January  to  the  end  of  April,  with  a  nominal 
rainfall  of  but  half  an  inch  per  mensem.  The 
second  commences  toward  the  end  of  May  or 
early  in  June,  and  lasts  till  the  end  of  September, 
or  beginning  of  October.  It  is  popularly  known 
as  the  southwest  monsoon,  and  if  we  include  in 
it  the  month  of  May,  it  supplies  17  inches  of 
the  yearly  rainfall  of  48£;  if  we  exclude  the 
month  of  May,  it  yields  15  inches.  In  October 
the  northerly  wind  sets  in,  and'  the  last  three 
months  of  the  year  derive  from  its  influence  a 
rainfall  of  close  on  29  inches.  In  an  inquiry 
such  as  the  present,  the  first  four  months  of  the 
year,  with  their  sporadic  rainfall  of  half  an  inch 
per  mensem,  may  be  dismissed.  The  two  over- 
ruling factors  in  the  rainfall  are  the  southwest 
monsoon  from  May  to  September,  and  the  north- 
east monsoon  from  October  to  December.  If 
either  of  these  monsoons  fails  to  bring  its  sup- 
ply of  rain,  or  if  they  both  fail  partially,  the  re- 
sult is  famine.  Of  the  five  Madras  famines  since 
the  institution  of  rain-gauges,  three  have  been 
caused  by  the  failure  of  the  winter  monsoon,  one 
by  the  failure  of  the  summer  monsoon,  and  one 
by  the  partial  failure  of  both. 

The  Madras  rainfall,  therefore,  furnishes  three 
distinctly-marked  elements  for  comparison  with 
the  cycle  of  sun-spots.  There  is  first  the  north- 
east monsoon  during  the  last  three  months  of  the 
year,  bringing  its  average  rainfall  of  nearly  29 
inches ;  second,  the  southwest  monsoon  from 
May  to  September,  supplying  over  17  inches,  or 
15,  if  we  take  it  as  commencing  from  June ;  and 
third,  the  total  yearly  rainfall  of  48£  inches. 
Does  sun-spot  activity  exercise  any  influence  upon 
the  supply  which  the  two  great  water-carriers 
collect  from  the  ocean-tract  stretching  from  the 
southern  pole  to  India,  and  then  shower  upon 
that  country? 

As  regards  the  principal  factor,  the  northeast 
monsoon,  which  brings  29  inches  out  of  the 
whole  yearly  rainfall  of  4SJ  inches,  the  statistics 
are  these:   Of  the  six  years  of  minimum  sun- 


spots,  including  1876  as  one,  since  rain-gauges 
were  kept  at  Madras,  the  northeast  mo.nsoon  has 
in  five  had  a  distinctly  deficient  rainfall.  The  av- 
erage rainfall  of  the  northeast  monsoon  during 
these  six  years  of  minimum  sun-spots  has  been 
only  16.94  inches,  against  the  average  of  28.90 
inches  which  the  northeastern  monsoon  annually 
brought  during  the  last  sixty-four  years.  The 
northeast  monsoon  in  years  of  minimum  sun- 
spots  brings  therefore  41.39  per  cent,  less  rain 
than  in  ordinary  years ;  or,  put  differently,  it 
brings  70  per  cent,  more  rain  on  the  average  of 
sixty-four  years  than  in  the  years  of  minimum 
sun-spots.  Nor  is  this  deficiency  confined  to 
the  exact  year  of  minimum  sun  spots.  Taking 
the  years  of  minimum  sun-spots  together  with  the 
preceding  years,  the  northeastern  monsoon  yield- 
ed 25f  per  cent,  less  rainfall,  during  the  twelve 
yoars  thus  made  up,  than  its  average  yield  during 
the  sixty-four  years  for  wrhich  returns  exist.  Or, 
put  in  other  words,  the  average  water-supply 
brought  to  Madras  in  ordinary  years  by  the  north- 
eastern monsoon  is  34|  per  cent,  greater  than  that 
which  it  brings  during  the  years  of  minimum 
sun-spots  and  the  years  immediately  preceding 
them. 

The  southwest  monsoon  yields  little  more  than 
one-half  the  rainfall  which  the  northeastern  one 
supplies  to  Madras.  Its  deficiency  during  years 
of  low  solar  spot  activity  is,  however,  well-marked. 
If  we  take  the  southwest  monsoon  as  commencing 
in  June,  it  yielded  in  each  of  the  six  years  of  min- 
imum sun-spots  less  rain  than  in  ordinary  years. 
Its  water-supply  during  the  six  years  of  minimum 
sun-spots  averaged  only  12.12  inches  or  20  per 
cent,  less  than  its  normal  rainfall  of  15.13  inches 
in  ordinary  years.  If  we  include  the  rainfall  for 
May  in  the  southwest  monsoon,  it  yielded  less 
than  its  normal  average  in  five  out  of  the  six 
years  of  minimum  sun-spots.  In  only  one  year 
of  minimum^  sun-spots  did  the  southwest  monsoon 
(including  the  May  rainfall)  yield  more  than  its 
average  supply,  taken  over  the  sixty-four  years. 
It  is  very  doubtful  whether  the  exceptional  year, 
1843,  was  really  an  exception.  A  great  rain- 
storm took  place  in  May,  before  the  monsoon  had 
established  itself,  and  of  a  character  different 
from  the  regular  monsoon  rains.  This  storm 
poured  down  a  sudden  deluge  of  over  14  inches 
on  Madras,  and  completely  disguised  the  average 
for  the  monsoon  months,  the  ordinary  rainfall  in 
May  being  just  two  inches.  Deducting  this  rain- 
storm in  1843,  the  southern  monsoon  has  proved 
deficient  at  Madras,  whether  we  take  it  to  com- 
mence in  May  or  June,  during  every  year  of  mini- 


136 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


mum  sun-spots  since  the  returns  began  in  1813. 
This  deficiency  is  well-marked,  not  only  in  the 
years  of  minimum  sun-spots,  but  in  the  years 
preceding  and  following  them.  Thus,  even  in- 
eluding  the  month  of  May  and  the  exceptional 
rain-storm  of  May,  1843,  the  southern  monsoon 
during  the  six  years  of  minimum  sun-spots,  and 
the  years  immediately  preceding  them,  yielded, 
during  the  twelve  years  thus  made  up,  20£  per 
cent,  less  rain  than  its  average  yield  in  the  sixty- 
four  years.  Or,  expressed  in  another  form,  the 
water-supply  brought  to  Madras  by  the  southern 
monsoon  is  2GL  per  cent,  greater  in  ordinary 
years  than  in  the  years  of  minimum  sun-spots  and 
those  immediately  preceding  them. 

The  two  monsoons  are  the  great  factors  of  the 
rain-supply  at  Madras,  and  their  fluctuations  are 
distinctly  marked  in  the  third  element  of  com- 
parison, the  total  rainfall  for  the  year.  In  five 
out  of  the  six  years  of  minimum  sun-spots  the 
annual  rainfall  fell  short  for  the  average  supply, 
calculated  over  the  sixty-four  years.  The  excep- 
tional year  was  1843,  and  its  exceptional  charac- 
ter was  due  to  the  sporadic  rain-storm  in  May,  al- 
ready mentioned.  Even  including  that  rain-storm, 
however,  the  six  years  of  minimum  sun-spots  had 
an  average  rainfall  of  less  than  34£  inches,  against 


the  ordinary  annual  rainfall  of  4S£  calculated  over 
the  sixty-four  years.  The  minimum  years  of  sun- 
spots,  therefore,  brought  29  per  cent,  less  rain- 
fall than  ordinary  years:  or,  put  into  another 
form,  the  average  annual  rainfall  supply  at  Ma- 
dras is  40£  per  cent,  greater  than  in  years  of 
minimum  sun-spots. 

In  each  of  the  three  elements  of  comparison, 
the  deficient  rainfall  is  not  confined  to  the  mini- 
mum year  of  sun-spots,  but  includes  the  preced- 
ing year  as  well.  But  it  should  be  clearly  stated 
that  no  numerical  proportion  exists  between  the 
actual  number  of  sun-spots  and  the  number  of 
inches.  There  is  a  rain-cycle  of  eleven  years  at 
Madias,  which  coincides  with  the  cycle  of  sun- 
spots.  The  periods  of  maxima  and  minima  in 
these  two  cycles  disclose  a  striking  coincidence. 
That  coincidence  is  common  to  all  the  three 
elements  of  comparison :  namely,  the  rainfall  of 
the  year,  of  the  great  northern  monsoon,  and  of 
the  southwestern  monsoon.  The  following  table 
will  show  this.  •  The  cycle  of  eleven  years  starts 
from  1876,  and  runs  back  to  1813,  at  which  year 
the  rain-returns  commence.  The  eleventh,  first, 
and  second  series  in  the  cycle  include  all  the 
years  of  minimum  sun-spots  since  1810,  and  form 
the  minimum  group  of  rainfall: 


TABLE  I. 

Eleven  Years'  Cycle  of  Sun-Spots  and  Rainfall  at  Madras. 


SERIES  OF  YEARS  IN  THE  CYCLE 
OF  ELEVEN  YEARS. 

Average  Annual 

Relative    Number 

of  Sun-Spots 

(Wolf's   List, 

1877),   lSlC-'7.r>. 

Total  Average 

Annuai  Rainfall 

at     Madras, 

1813-'76. 

Northeast     Mon- 
BOon,  Madras, 

Oct. -Dec    Aver- 
age Rainfall, 
1813-'76. 

Southwest      Mon- 
soon, Madras, 

May-Sept.  Aver- 
age Rainfall, 
1813-'76. 

Minimum  j  Eleventh  '  series 

inches. 

Inches. 

Inches. 

Inches. 

£t}l2.6av. 

48.6 
88.3 
65.3 
38.5 
16.3 

87.03  I  „„     .r.  QQ 

42.07  fa 
49.12 
54.64 
52.86 

49.02 
87.03 

H2[aT.M«H 

32.87 
81.48 
80.64 
27.67 
18.76 

14.u4ST-14-65 
14.89 
19.68 
18.98 
18.53 
15.78 

group      )  First 2  and  second  3  series 
Third  4  and  fourth  6  series 

Fifth  "and  sixth  7  series 

Seventh  h  and  eighth  a  series 

Ninth  10  and  tenth  ll  series 

Eleventh  12  series 

1  Namelv,  1876,- 1865, 1854, 
a  "  *   1866,1855,1844, 

3  "  1867,1856,1845, 

4  "  1868,  1857.  1S46, 

5  "  1869, 1858, 1847, 

6  "  1870, 1859,  IMS 

7  "  1871,  1860, 1S49, 

8  "  1872,1861,1850, 

9  "  1873, 1862, 1851, 
0  "  1874,1868,1852, 
>  '•  1875,1864,1858, 

2  "  1S76, 18G5, 1854, 


1S43, 1832, 1821,  [1810.  sun-spots  only]. 
1833,  1822,  [1811,  sun-spots  onlv"|. 
1884, 1828.  [1812,  sun-spots  only]. 
1885,  1S24.  1813. 
1636,  1825, 1814. 
I-:1,?.  1826.1815. 

1838. 1827. 1816. 

1839. 1828. 1817. 

1840. 1829. 1818. 

1841. 1830. 1819. 
1842,1831,  1820. 

1843, 1832, 1S21,  [1810,  sun-spots  only]. 


The  cyclic  coincidence  may  be  tested  in  an- 
other way.  If  there  is  a  true  coincidence  it  should 
disclose  a  well-marked  minimum  group  at  the  ex- 
tremities of  the  cycle  (in  the  eleventh,  first,  and 


second  years),  and  a  well-marked  maximum  group 
in  the  middle  of  the  cycle  (the  fifth  and  following 
years).  The  years  on  both  sides  of  the  central  maxi- 
mum group  should  yield  intermediate  results,  and 


SUN-SPOTS  AND  FAMINES. 


137 


when  taken  together  should  form  a  well-marked  I  so  far  as  the  number  admits,  into  three  equal 
intermediate  group.  Dividing  the  cycle,  therefore,  I  groups  of  four  years,  we  get  the  following  results : 

TABLE   II. 
Eleven  Years'  Cycle  of  Scn-Spots  and  Rainfall  in  Madras. 


YEARS. 

Average    Relative 

Number  of  Sun- 

Spots  (Wolfs 

List,  1877), 

1810-'75. 

Total  Average 

Annual  Rainfall 

at     Madras, 

1813-'76. 

Northeast  Mon- 
soon, Madras, 
Oct.— Dec.     Aver- 
age Annual  Rain- 
fall, 1813-'76. 

Southwest     Mon- 
soon, Madras, 
May-Sept.    Aver- 
age Aunual  Rain- 
fall, lS13-'76. 

Minimum  Group. 
Eleventh,  first,  and   second  years  of 

12.6 
43.5 
76.8 

Inches. 

Inches. 

Inches. 

40.39 
49.0T 
53.50 

23.02 
30.27 
31.06 

14.65 
16.71 

19.31 

Intermediate  Group. 
Third,  fourth,  ninth,  and  tenth  years 

Maximum  Group. 

Fifth,  sixth,  seventh,  and  eighth  years 
of  the  cycle  of  eleven  years 



Has  this  recurring  period  of  deficient  sun-spot 
and  rainfall  any  practical  result  on  the  food-sup- 
ply of  the  people  ?  It  is  well  known  that  at  the 
end  of  the  last  century,  and  during  the  earlier 
years  of  the  present  one,  Southern  India  suffered 
an  almost  perpetual  distress.  But  for  these  years 
we  have  no  rain-register;  and  the  desolation 
spread  by  native  misrule,  together  with  the  drain 
of  food  for  great  armies  in  the  field,  sufficed  to 
intensify  every  local  scarcity  to  the  starvation- 
point.  A  march  of  Tippoo  Sultan  left  a  worse 
blight  on  a  district  than  a  dozen  inches  of  defi- 
ciency in  the  rainfall ;  and  Mahratta  raids  were 
a  more  direct  and  frequent  factor  of  famine  than 
the  sun-spots.  We  are  destitute  of  the  first  con- 
ditions for  a  scientific  study  of  the  food-supply, 
until  we  reach  the  period  of  settled  British  rule 
and  rain-gauges. 

It  would  be  fruitless,  therefore,  to  extend  the 
inquiry  beyond  the  year  1810,  the  earliest  year  in 
the  sun-spot  cycles  with  which  we  deal.  The 
years  of  famine  at  Madras  since  that  date  have 
been  1811,  1824,  1S33,  1S54,  1866,  and  1877. 
These  famines  were  caused  by  deficient  rainfall  in 
the  preceding  years,  namely,  in  1810,  1823,  1832, 
1853,  1865,  and  1876.  Now,  five  out  of  these  six 
years  of  drought  fell  within  the  three  years'  group 
of  minimum  rainfall  and  sun-spots  shown  in  the 
foregoing  tables;  the  remaining  drought  (1853- 
'55)  extended  over  a  year  immediately  preceding 
the  minimum  group  and  two  years  within  that 
group ;  the  famine  itself  resulting  within  the  min- 
imum group.  Three  of  the  six  years  of  drought 
fell  exactly  in  years  of  minimum  sun-spots ;  one 
fell  in  the  year  preceding  a  year  of  minimum  sun- 


spots  ;  one  fell  in  the  second  year  preceding  a  year 
of  minimum  sun-spots ;  the  remaining  drought, 
1853-'55,  fell  in  the  first,  second,  and  third  years 
preceding  a  year  of  minimum  sun-spots. 

There  have  been  other  years  of  scarcity  in 
Madras.  But  the  above  six  years  were  selected 
by  Sir  William  Robinson,  sometime  acting  gov- 
ernor, as  the  years  of  true  famine,  without  any 
acquaintance  with  the  writer's  speculations  on 
the  rainfall,  or  of  any  cycle  being  supported  or 
djsproved  by  them.  No  famine  in  Madras  has 
been  recorded  from  1810  to  1877,  caused  by  a 
drought  lying  entirely  outside  the  minimum  group 
of  sun-spots  and  rainfall  (as  shown  in  the  fore- 
going tables).  The  only  drought  which  could  be 
claimed  as  an  exception,  1853-55,  extended  over 
two  years  within  the  group  and  the  year  immedi- 
ately, preceding  them.  It  is  shown  as  an  excep- 
tion in  Table  III. 

The  foregoing  statistics  refer  to  the  single  sta- 
tion of  Madras.  They  are,  however,  of  special 
value  for  testing  the  coincidence  between  sun-spot 
frequency  and  the  rainfall,  which  the  northeast 
monsoon  brings  to  Southern  India.  For  that  mon- 
soon strikes  the  land  with  all  its  first  vigor  at  Ma- 
dras. By  the  time  it  crosses  the  Eastern  Ghauts, 
and  finds  its  way  to  the  central  plateau,  it  has  got 
rid  of  the  aqueous  burden  which  it  has  carried  down 
the  bay  of  Bengal.  To  the  table-land  of  Mysore  it 
brings  only  eight  inches,  while  at  Bellari  and  in 
Hyderabad  it  only  supplies  three.  But  even  at  My- 
sore a  deficiency  of  rainfall  in  years  of  minimum 
sun-spots  is  disclosed.  Of  four  years  of  minimum 
sun-spots  for  which  materials  exist  (1S76  to  1S37), 
not  one  had  quite  the  full  annual  rainfall ;  and  the 


13S 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


average  rain-supply  brought  by  the  forty  years  was 
close  on  sixteen  per  cent,  greater  in  Mysore  than 
the  rainfall  in  the  years  of  minimum  sun-spots. 

To  Bombay  the  northeast  monsoon  brings 
scarcely  any  rain,  and  the  returns  lately  published 
omit  it  as  being  "  immaterial "  in  twenty  out  of 
sixty  years.  The  southwest  monsoon  is  at  Bom- 
bay the  great '  factor  of  rainfall.  According  to 
those  returns,  the  rainfall  at  Bombay  was  more 
or  less  below  the  average  in  every  one  of  the  six 
years  of  minimum  sun-spots  during  the  sixty 
years.  The  average  rain-supply  of  the  sixty  years 
was  eighteen  per  cent,  greater  than  the  average 
rainfall  in  the  six  years  of  minimum  sun-spots.  A 
■well-marked  coincidence  exists  between  the  eleven 
years'  cycle  of  sun-spots  and  the*  rainfall  at  Bom- 
bay.    This  will  be  clearly  shown  in  Table  III. 

Passing  from  these  twTo  points  on  the  great 
Indian  Ocean  lying  north  of  the  equator,  to  an- 
other station  in  the  south,  we  find  similar  results. 
The  periodicity  in  the  rainfall  of  the  Cape  of  Good 
Hope  is  even  more  strongly  disclosed  in  the  fol- 
lowing table  than  that  of  Madras  or  Bombay. 
The  Australian  stations  do  not  lie  upon  the  Indian 
Ocean,  and  are  separated  from  it  by  a  great  con- 
tinent. The  evidence  which  they  yield  on  the  sub- 
ject is  meagre  and  irregular ;  but,  such  as  it  is,  it 
scarcely  bears  on  an  inquiry  which  deals  with  the 
water-supply  collected  by  the  great  periodical 
winds  from  the  Indian  Ocean. 

The  collateral  evidence  with  regard  to  a  com- 
mon periodicity  between  the  sun-spots,  wind-dis- 
turbances, and  rainfall,  may  therefore  be  ranged 
under  ten  heads.  These  are :  first,  magnetic  de- 
clination; second,  electrical  displays  (auroras); 
third,  Dr.  Meldrum's  list  of  cyclones  in  the  Indian 
Ocean ;  fourth,  M.  Poey's  hurricane-lists  for  the 
West  Indies  ;  fifth,  the  marine  casualties  posted 
on  Loyd's  Loss-book ;  sixth,  the  rainfall  at  Ma- 
dras brought  by  the  northeastern,  and  seventh,  by 
the  southwestern  monsoon ;  eighth,  the  annual 
rainfall  at  Madras;  ninth,  the  annual  rainfall  at 
Bombay  (almost  entirely  brought  by  the  south- 
western monsoon) ;  and  tenth,  the  annual  rainfall 
at  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope.  We  have  stated  the 
facts  as  regards  solar  radiation  and  mean  tempera- 
ture ;  but  they  do  not,  in  our  opinion,  supply  a  suf- 
ficiently firm  basis  for  induction.  The  rest  of  the 
evidence  is  exhibited  in  the  table  on  the  next  page. 

The  main  point  of  inquiry  in  that  table  may 
be  thus  stated :  Is  the  variation  in  solar  activity, 
as  indicated  by  the  waxing  and  waning  of  solar 
up-rushes,  spots,  and  prominences,  reflected  in 
terrestrial   phenomena?     Consequently,  does  a 


common  cycle  exist  in  solar  and  terrestrial  phe- 
nomena, in  addition  to  and  independent  of  the 
two  ordinary  cycles,  caused  by  the  diurnal  and  by 
the  annual  revolutions  of  the  earth  ? 

To  answer  this  question  we  have  examined 
the  results  separately  arrived  at  by  students  of 
five  classes  of  phenomena  ;  namely,  the  sun-spots 
as  an  index  of  solar  energy,  terrestrial  magnetism, 
temperature,  wind-disturbances,  and  rainfall.  We 
find  that  as  regards  sun-spots  and  terrestrial  mag. 
netism  a  common  cycle  of  eleven  years  is  now  an 
established  fact;  that  there  are  indications  (al- 
though not  proofs)  of  an  eleven  years'  cycle  in 
solar-radiation  and  mean  temperature ;  that  there 
is  ample  evidence  of  such  a  cycle  in  wind-disturb- 
ances ;  and  absolute  proof  of  a  cycle  of  eleven 
years  in  the  great  factors  of  tropical  rainfall.  We 
further  find  that  the  eleven  years'  cycle  in  the 
separate  classes  of  terrestrial  phenomena  corre- 
spond with  the  eleven  years'  cycle  of  sun-spots; 
and  that,  with  regard  to  the  three  sets  of  terres- 
trial phenomena  on  which  we  possess  fullest  evi- 
dence (magnetism,  wind-disturbances,  and  rain- 
fall), the  correspondence  is  most  clearly  estab- 
lished. At  the  commencement  of  the  paper  we 
saw  that  on  a  priori  grounds,  arrived  at  from  re- 
cent solar  work,  there  was  reason  to  suspect  an 
eleven  years'  cycle  common  to  the  phenomena  of 
the  earth  and  the  sun.  We  have  now  shown,  by 
an  induction  from  widely-separated  but  converg- 
ing series  of  facts,  that  such  a  cycle  exists. 

This  induction  has  a  very  practical  interest. 
We  have  seen  that  the  eleven  years'  cycle  in  ter- 
restrial magnetism  has  a  direct  and  important  in- 
fluence on  telegraphic  enterprise;  that  the  cycle 
of  wind-disturbances  produces  distinct  results 
upon  the  percentage  of  casualties  among  the  ship- 
ping of  the  world ;  and  that  the  cycle  of  tropi- 
cal rainfall  has  a  portentous  coincidence  with  a 
cycle  of  famine.  One  of  the  writers  of  this  ar- 
ticle has  dealt  with  the  subject  purely  as  a  statis- 
tician, whose  duty  it  was  to  collect  and  tabulate 
all  collateral  evidence  bearing  upon  the  discovery 
which  he  had  made  regarding  the  cyclic  charac- 
ter of  the  factors  of  the  Madras  rainfall.  The 
other  writer  has  reexamined  that  evidence  in  its 
bearings  on  solar  physics.  The  conclusions  at 
which  they  have  jointly  arrived  are:  1.  That,  not- 
withstanding many  apparent  anomalies  and  a 
large  area  of  unexplained  facts,  the  evidence  suf- 
fices to  establish  the  existence  of  a  common 
cycle ;  2.  That  the  subject  merits  the  earnest  at- 
tention both  of  men  of  science  and  of  those  who 
have  to  deal  with  the  great  present  problem  of 
Indian  administration. 


SUN-SPOTS  AND  FAMINES. 


139 


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140 


TEE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTELY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


A  study  of  the  rainfall  is  one  of  the  first 
duties  of  a  civilized  government  in  India.  India 
and  Vayu,  the  Watery  Atmosphere  and  the  Wind, 
are  still  the  prime  dispensers  of  weal  or  woe  to 
the  Indian  races. .  Hundreds  of  thousands  of 
lives  lie  every  year  at  the  mercy  of  the  rainfall. 
The  population  is  a  constant  (or  rather  an  increas- 
ing) quantity,  emigration  on  any  adequate  scale 
being  incompatible  with  the  feelings  of  the  peo- 
ple. The  area  of  tillage  is  also  a  constant  quan- 
tity throughout  a  great  part  of  India,  spare  land 
being  no  longer  available.  But  whether  the  yield 
of  the  one  constant  quantity  will  or  will  not  suf- 
fice for  the  necessities  of  the  other,  depends  each 
autumn  on  the  rainfall — a  quantity  which  has 
hitherto  been  regarded  as  altogether  inconstant 
and  beyond  calculation.  We  believe  that  the  sup- 
posed inconstancy  of  the  rainfall  is  simply  the 
measure  not  of  its  freedom  from  law,  but  of  our 
ignorance.  We  do  not  think  it  wise,  from  the 
data  here  collected,  to  prophesy  future  famines  at 
Madras ;  although  five  out  of  the  six  famine- 
causing  droughts  of  this  century,  since  1810,  hap- 
pened at  Madras  within  the  minimum  group  of 
our  cycle,  and  the  sixth  fell  in  that  group  together 
with  the  year  immediately  preceding  it.  The 
time  for  safe  prediction  has  not  yet  come.  But 
we  do  think  that  the  cyclic  character  of  the  Ma- 
dras rainfall  must  henceforth  enter  into  considera- 
tions connected  with  the  food-supply  of  the  peo- 
ple, and  into  arrangements  for  husbanding  and 
distributing  the  water-supply  of  Madras.  The 
problem  is  how  best  to  conserve  and  utilize  the 
rainfall,  not  merely  of  the  year,  but  of  the  cycle. 

Fortunately,  while  the  study  of  the  rainfall 
forms  a  prime  state  duty  in  India,  there  is  per- 
haps no  country  in  the  world  better  suited  than 
India  for  meteorological  research.  If  a  meteo- 
rologist were  to  sit  down  and  construct  a  model 
field  for  his  inquiries,  he  would  make  a  continent 
stretching  from  near  the  equator  up  into  the  tem- 
perate zone.  He  would  cut  off  his  field  by  a 
great  wall  on  the  north,  with  smaller  coast-walls 
running  down  toward  the  southern  extremity,  and 
with  two  distinct,  regular,  and  well-ascertained  sets 
of  winds  playing  from  a  vast  expanse  of  ocean 
upon  each  side.    India  is  precisely  such  a  model. 


If  we  are  ever  to  reach  the  great  laws  which  reg- 
ulate the  weather,  it  will  be  by  combining  mete- 
orological observations  with  statistical  inductions 
in  a  country  like  that,  where  the  general  laws  have 
a  sufficient  space  to  produce  general  results,  and 
where  the  disturbing  influences  are  regular  and 
well  ascertained.  The  first  step  is  to  find  the 
quantitative  value  and  variations  of  the  several 
factors  of  the  Indian  rainfall.  Nothing  will  be 
accomplished  by  jumbling  together  rain-returns 
from  unhomogeneous  stations,  at  which,  from 
their  situation  and  surroundings,  the  same  factors 
act  in  a  totally  dissimilar  manner.  Thus,  if  the 
northeastern  monsoon  produces  a  periodicity  in 
the  rainfall  of  Madras,  where  it  contributes  twenty- 
nine  inches  of  the  total  rainfall,  there  is  no -cause 
for  surprise  in  not  finding  a  similar  periodicity 
at  Bclliiri  or  Hyderabad,  where  it  only  yields 
three.  The  figures  for  which  we  have  found 
space  in  the  foregoing  pages  establish  the  cycle 
of  rainfall  at  only  two  stations  in  India ;  but  they 
are  the  stations  for  which  returns  exist  for  the 
longest  periods ;  and  at  which  the  two  great  fac- 
tors of  the  Indian  rainfall  can  produce  clearly- 
marked  effects.  If,  out  of  each  thousand  pounds 
speut  on  famine-relief  this  year,  ten  shillings 
were  laid  aside  for  an  inquiry  into  the  physical 
laws  of  famine,  we  should  await  the  next  calam- 
ity with  a  very  different  power  of  dealing  with  it. 
The  people  of  England,  both  now  and  beforetime, 
have  displayed  a  noble  liberality  to  their  suffer- 
ing fello\v-subjects  in  the  East.  On  the  present 
occasion,  however,  they  have  not  only  been  lib- 
eral of  their  money;  they  have  disclosed  an  ear- 
nestness to  understand  the  real  meaning  of  an 
Indian  famine,  and  to  find  out  its  causes  and 
its  remedies.  Splendid  as  have  been  their  acts  of 
national  sympathy  and  benevolence,  this  desire 
to  arrive  at  a  truer  understanding  of  the  facts 
will  prove  of  not  less  service  to  the  Indian  races, 
and  of  not  less  help  and  encouragement  to  those 
on  whom  rests  the  anxious  task  of  Indian  admin- 
istration. 

It  may  be  that  we  have  here  another  instance 
of  how  a  patient  study  of  the  abstract  truths  of 
science  is  fruitful  of  practical  benefits  to  man- 
kind.— Nineteenth  Century. 


THE  MORAL  AND  SOCIAL  ASPECTS  OF  HEALTH. 


141 


THE  MORAL  AND   SOCIAL  ASPECTS  OF  HEALTH. 


Bt  J.  II.  BEIDGES. 


TIIE  objects  of  this  society  are,  I  believe, 
of  an  extremely  practical  kind.  It  wishes 
to  give  tbe  English  people  pure  air,  pure  water, 
wholesome  food,  and  habitable  houses.  It  would 
give  us,  if  it  could,  good  drains  to  carry  nox- 
ious refuse  from  the  houses  into  the  street,  and 
it  would  not  empty  that  drain  into  a  river  near 
the  reservoir  of  a  water-company,  but  would 
yield  its  contents  to  the  all-receiving,  purifying 
earth,  where  the  miraculous  agencies  of  vegeta- 
tion are  at  hand  to  turn  death  into  life,  foulness 
into  beauty.  Finally,  it  would  wage  war  against 
the  unseen  demons  of  infectious  poison,  and 
against  the  dull,  heavy  forces  of  ignorance  and 
prejudice  and  indifference  that  help  them  in  their 
death-dealing  work.  It  would  teach  a  laundress 
that  when  her  children  have  scarlet  fever  she 
must  not  kill  other  people's  children  by  sending 
back  infected  linen  to  their  houses.  It  would 
also  teach  some  of  those  other  people  that,  when 
scarlet  fever  is  in  their  houses,  they  must  not 
send  infected  linen  to  the  laundress,  and  expose 
her  to  the  terrible  choice  of  starvation  or  crime. 
It  would  teach  the  milkman  to  rinse  his  cans 
with  pure  water,  so  as  to  avoid  disseminating  ty- 
phoid fever  through  a  hundred  houses.  It  would 
teach  the  country  squire  to  see  that  the  milkman 
and  all  other  tenants  of  his  estate  have  pure 
water  at  their  disposal.  Finally,  it  would  reit- 
erate the  well-worn  lesson  that  to  unvaccinated 
people  small-pox  is  more  terrible  than  cholera  or 
the  plague ;  that  an  anti- vaccination  orator  is  a 
homicide ;  and  that  a  careless  vaccinator,  letting 
fall  from  his  lancet  some  dust  of  disease  or  death, 
and  supplying  fuel  to  the  agitator,  is  a  homicide 
no  less. 

This  being  so,  I  feel  that  some  apology  is 
needful  for  occupying  the  time  of  men  and  women 
intent  on  purposes  of  immediate  practical  utility 
with  talk  which,  as  I  give  fair  warning,  will  seem 
to  many  discursive,  vague,  theoretical,  and  misty. 
But  I  have  to  say,  in  the  first  place,  that  being 
occupied  with  practical  work  myself  of  a  kind 
not  foreign  to  the  objects  of  this  society — hav- 
ing something  to  do,  for  instance,  with  the  busi- 
ness of  providing  hospital  accommodation  for 
the  chronically  sick  among  the  poorest  class  of 

1  Delivered  before  the  National  Health  Society',  June 
20, 1ST7. 


London — my  own  personal  experience  has  not 
convinced  me  that  work  which  is  called  imme- 
diate and  practical  involves  the  shutting  out 
from  one's  thoughts  of  deeper  and  wider  consid- 
erations. It  has,  indeed,  led  me  to  quite  the 
opposite  conclusion.  Almost  every  practical  re- 
form, however  necessary,  however  obvious,  sug- 
gests questions  of  a  startling  kind ;  sometimes 
leading  you  to  doubt  whether  or  not  the  remedy 
may  itself  be  the  source  of  new  evils  in  the  fu- 
ture ;  and  always  inducing  thoughtful  minds  to 
ask  themselves  whether  the  amount  of  attention 
given  to  temporary  palliatives  may  not  be  exces- 
sive, and  may  not  be  distracting  attention  from 
the  deeper  evils.  At  least  there  can  be  no  harm, 
there  can  be  nothing  but  good,  in  now  and  then 
mounting  to  the  point  of  view  from  which,  so  far 
as  our  poor  faculties  admit,  the  problem  before 
us  can  be  looked  upon  as  a  whole. 

A  whole,  I  say.  For  it  is  no  mere  play  of 
words  to  dwell  on  the  primal  meanings  of  the 
word  Health.  Wholeness,  soundness,  entireness. 
Integrity — the  meaning  of  the  Latin  word  being 
Untouched — as  you  would  say  of  a  perfectly  ripe 
fruit  in  which  there  is  no  symptom  of  decay.  The 
essential  thought  inherent  in  the  word  is  that  in 
every  organism,  every  living  thing,  if  one  part 
suffers,  the  others  suffer  also.  This  is  the  dis- 
tinction  between  living  things  and  things  that  are 
not  living.  You  cut  off  a  piece  from  a  lump  of 
gold  or  iron ;  all  that  happens  is  that  you  have 
two  small  lumps  instead  of  one  large  one — noth- 
ing else.  The  weight  of  the  two  lumps  is  equal 
to  that  of  the  one.  But  in  a  living  thing  it  is 
quite  otherwise.  You  prune  the  roots  of  a  tree, 
and  you  alter  the  relations  of  leaf  and  blossom. 
You  irritate  a  point  in  the  skin  of  an  animal,  aud 
the  whole  creature  is  thrown  into  convulsions. 
The  whole  art  of  medicine  is  based  on  the  study 
of  these  correlations  of  functions.  The  first  great 
object  of  the  physician  is  to  find  out  what  is  the 
matter  with  his  patient.  He  does  this  by  observ- 
ing symptoms.  That  is  to  say,  the  observation 
of  a  change  in  some  part  of  the  body  which  he 
can  see,  leads  him  to  infer  a  corresponding  change 
in  some  part  of  the  body  which  he  cannot  see. 
By  the  state  of  the  pulse  he  infers  the  state  of  the 
heart  and  blood-vessels  all  through  the  body  ;  by 
the  state  of  the  tongue,  that  of  a  long  tract  of 


142 


TEE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


mucous  membrane  ;  looking  through  his  ophthal- 
moscope at  a  diseased  retina,  he  infers  in  certain 
cases  diseases  of  the  nervous  system,  diseases 
of  the  vascular  system,  of  the  secreting  system. 
A  glance  at  a  child's  teeth  will  every  now  and 
then  indicate  to  the  practised  eye  a  constitutional 
unsoundness  of  a  very  precise  kind  inherited 
from  his  parents.  And  so  on  through  countless 
instances. 

We  have  here  before  us  the  most  important 
and  fundamental  of  all  the  facts  connected  with 
living  things — the  sympathy,  or,  if  you  like  the 
Latin  word  translated  from  the  Greek,  the  con- 
sensus, or  in  plain  English  the  fellow-feeling,  of 
all  the  parts  of  the  same  organism.  For  the  pur- 
poses of  this  lecture  I  shall  have  to  dwell  much 
on  this  point.  Meanwhile,  I  remark  in  the  first 
place  that  this  sympathy,  though  very  real,  is  by 
no  means  complete  or  perfect.  There  are  parts 
which  are  more  bound  together,  and  parts  which 
are  less  bound.  You  cannot  cut  away  the  prin- 
cipal roots  of  a  tree  without  risking  its  life  ;  but 
you  can  cut  away  leaves,  flowers,  and  even  branch- 
es, without  any  very  marked  effect.  In  man  and 
other  animals,  as  we  know,  hair  can  be  cut,  nails, 
hoofs,  and  cuticle,  may  be  partially  removed,  with- 
out any  consensus,  any  affection  of  the  rest  of  the 
organism.  On  the  other  hand,  there  are  parts 
which  are  vital.  A  bullet  through  the  heart 
means  instant  death.  There  is  a  very  small  and 
well-defined  place  in  the  upper  part  of  the  spinal 
cord,  and  if  that  be  injured,  life  ceases  in  a  mo- 
ment. Thus  there  are  parts  that  are  more  bound 
together,  and  parts  that  are  less  bound. 

And  observe,  in  the  second  place,  that,  as  we 
rise  higher  in  the  scale  of  life,  we  find  two  great 
distinctions  gradually  growing  upon  us,  and  form- 
ing a  slowly-increasing  contrast  between  the  high- 
er forms  of  life  and  the  lower.  We  find,  in  the 
first  place,  a  greater  variety  of  parts ;  in  the 
second  place  we  find  a  greater  oneness,  a  strong- 
er binding  together.  The  slightest  consideration 
will  show  this.  The  huge  ocean  sea-weeds,  hun- 
dreds of  feet  long,  are  formed  of  monotonous  repe- 
titions of  similar  parts ;  there  are  millions  and 
billions  of  cells,  bound  no  doubt  together  by  ma- 
terial contact,  like  bricks  in  a  long  wall,  but  with 
very  little  vital  connection.  No  simultaneous 
thrill,  no  wave  of  excitement,  can  pass  through 
such  an  organism  as  this.  The  parts  are  all 
alike,  and  they  have  very  little  vital  union.  You 
may  vivisect  such  an  organism  as  this  with  per- 
fect impunity.  Pass  upward  to  the  exogamous 
plant — to  any  one,  for  instance,  of  our  common- 
est trees  or  shrubs.     Here  you  have  many  more 


differences — root,  stem,  leaf,  calyx,  corolla,  sta> 
men,  ovary,  seed,  and  so  on.  Moreover,  if  you 
look  at  it  closely,  you  will  find  difference  of  tis- 
sues ;  not  merely  cells,  but  the  coalescence  of 
cells  into  fibres  of  various  textures.  And  here, 
as  we  have  seen,  there  is  complete  unity,  though 
still  very  imperfect.  It  is  still  very  difficult  to 
say  whether  the  plant  is  an  individual  or  whether 
it  is  a  collection  of  individuals.  You  can  cut  off 
a  twig,  and  place  it  in  the  soil  under  suitable  con- 
ditions, and  it  becomes  a  new  tree.  You  can  re- 
peat this  process  any  number  of  times.  Fas3  up- 
ward  from. the  plant  to  the  vertebrate  animal,  and 
you  find  a  vastly  greater  multiplicity  of  parts  or 
organs — brain,  heart,  lungs,  intestines,  etc.,  etc. 
— these  organs  when  analyzed  resolving  them- 
selves into  a  relatively  small  number  of  tissues, 
but  still  far  more  numerous  than  the  tissues  of 
the  highest  plant.  And,  corresponding  to  this 
divergency,  we  find  that  strongly-maiked  consen- 
sus of  which  I  have  already  spoken.  Here,  then, 
we  have  the  meaning  of  that  very  profound  re- 
mark of  Coleridge — though  possibly,  like  so  many 
others,  it  was  not  his  own  thought — "  Life  is  the 
tendency  to  individuation."  That  is  to  say,  the 
higher  forms  of  life  are  more  distinctly  individu- 
als than  the  lower.  To  use  philosophic  language, 
in  the  higher  forms  of  life,  as  compared  with  the 
lower,  there  is  increased  differentiation  coupled 
with  increased  integration.  There  is  at  once 
greater  variety  of  parts  and  greater  unity  of  the 
whole. 

So  much  for  plants  and  animals.  Let  us  now 
ask  ourselves  whether  anything  of  the  same  kind 
can  be  traced  in  the  comparison  of  different  na- 
tions, or  of  nations  in  different  stages?  What, 
in  a  few  words,  is  the  difference  between  the 
savage  state  and  the  civilized  state  ?  Is  it  not 
this :  that  in  the  savage  state  people  have  very 
little  to  do  with  one  another,  and  are  very  like 
one  another;  in  the  civilized  state,  people  have 
very  much  to  do  with  one  another,  and  are  very 
much  unlike  one  another  ?  In  the  one  case  there 
is  independence  without  individuality;  in  .the 
other  case  there  is  dependence  with  individuality. 
This  is  quite  contrary  to  the  common  democratic 
prejudice  that  Rousseau  imported  into  the  world, 
which  is  widely  diffused  in  America.  It  differs 
from  the  opening  statements  in  Mr.  Mill's  "  Essay 
on  Liberty."  But  I  think  it  will  be  found  true. 
I  suppose  Shakespeare  was  a  strongly-marked 
individual.  Well,  try  for  a  moment  to  think  of 
Shakespeare  quite  apart  from  the  whole  history 
of  England  and  of  Europe  before  him.  You 
might  just  as  well  try,  to  think  of  the  blossom  of 


THE  2I0HAL  ASD  SOCIAL  ASPECTS  OF  HEALTH. 


143 


the  aloe  existing  and  growing  apart  from  its  leaf 
and  root.  If  any  one  should  bring  himself  to 
doubt  that  increased  civilization  means  increased 
dependence  of  human  beings  on  one  another,  let 
him  simply  read  the  city  articles  in  the  Times. 
Let  him  see  there  how  an  earthquake  in  Peru 
brings  desolation  into  an  English  parsonage.  Let 
him  think  how  other  widows  than  Bulgarian  and 
Bosnian  have  been  ruined  by  Russian  and  Turk- 
ish wars.  Let  him  remember  how  Lancashire 
starved  because  three  hundred  years  ago  Colum- 
bus took  Africans  across  the  Atlantic.  The  fact 
is,  that  the  whole  science  of  sociology,  by  far  the 
greatest  and  most  momentous  of  the  many  acqui- 
sitions of  science  in  our  century,  consists  in  the 
Study  of  this  consensus — how  it  has  grown,  how 
it  works,  how  it  can  be  modified. 

But  we  are  here  now  to  think  of  its  effect  on 
health.  Let  us,  then,  compare  the  savage  and 
the  civilized  man  in  this  respect.  It  is  quite 
clear  at  the  outset  that  there  is  a  balance  of  ad- 
vantages which  is  not  easy  to  strike.  On  the  side 
of  the  savage  there  is  the  open-air  life ;  the  con- 
stant muscular  exercise ;  there  is  the  ignorance, 
in  most  cases,  of  alcohol  in  all  its  forms  from  gin 
to  sherry;  there  is  the  weeding  out,  either  by 
direct  infanticide  or  by  rigorous  climate,  of  un- 
healthy elements  in  infancy ;  there  is  the  absence 
of  certain  fearful  hereditary  blood-poisonings  ; 
there  is  the  absence  of  harassing  business  and 
harassing  pleasures  ;  the  fever  of  speculation, 
mercantile,  philosophical,  or  religious,  is  not 
there — all  these  well-known  causes  of  disease  are 
absent.  And  you  find,  as  the  result  of  it,  that 
the  minute  processes  of  growth  go  on  differently 
in  the  savage  and  in  the  dwellers  in  cities.  I 
well  remember  Livingstone,  after  his  first  journey 
to  Africa,  telling  me  of  his  surgical  operations, 
removal  of  tumors,  and  so  on.  The  two  edges 
of  the  cut  skin  grew  together,  he  said,  with  ex- 
traordinary rapidity.  If  you  read  Cook's  voyages 
you  will  find  the  same  thing.  We  need  not  travel 
so  far  as  Africa  and  Polynesia  to  see  this.  A 
savage,  of  course,  approaches  the  state  of  a  horse 
or  a  dog.  Wounds  in  horses  or  dogs  heal  with 
the  same  rapidity.  I  do  not  mention  this  as  an 
excuse  for  vivisection  either  in  the  one  case  or  in 
the  other. 

There  are  many  obvious  and  weighty  things, 
no  doubt,  to  be  placed  in  the  opposite  scale  of 
the  balance.  The  want  of  shelter,  the  want  of 
clothing,  the  want  of  warmth,  the  long  intervals 
of  insufficient  food,  the  absence  of  all  those  aids 
and  appliances  of  life  which  depend  on  helpful 
intercourse  of  man  with  man— all  these  wei^h 


heavily  on  the  other  side.  The  brain,  too,  though 
less  easily  goaded  to  dangerous  excitement,  is 
more  easily  stupefied  by  paralyzing  fear  or  de- 
spondency. Perhaps  it  is  from  this  reason  that 
epidemics  are  so  fearfully  fatal.  Perhaps  it  is 
also  from  this  reason  that  at  the  sight  of  civilized 
man,  with  his  magic  instruments  of  death  and  the 
resistless  appliances  of  his  industry,  hope  and 
energy  are  struck  down.  The  wish  to  live,  the 
wish  to  reproduce  their  kind,  ceases ;  the  race 
dies  out.  Wise,  enlightened,  persevering  sym- 
pathy might  possibly  preserve  them,  and  slowly 
render  back  their  strength.  But  that  agency  is 
rarely  at  hand. 

I  have  touched,  in  passing,  on  many  points 
which  it  would  be  interesting  to  examine.  But  as 
we  are  not  proposing  to  go  back,  like  Rousseau, 
to  the  savage  state,  it  interests  us  mainly  from  the 
light  it  throws  on  the  contrasted  state  of  civilized 
man.  And,  out  of  many  aspects  of  the  subject 
that  might  be  dwelt  on,  I  would  draw  attention 
specially  to  the  two  ways  in  which  health  is  af- 
fected by  civilization,  namely,  first,  that  the  body 
is  acted  upon  by  a  more  active,  more  excitable, 
and  more  complicated  brain ;  secondly,  that  there 
is  a  more  complicated  and  more  stimulating  social 
environment.  All  this  comes  to  the  same  thing 
as  saying  that  there  is  more  life  ;  for  life  consists 
in  the  adjustment  of  the  interactions  of  organism 
and  environment.  Where  there  are  more  of  these 
interactions,  there  is  more  life.  Where  the  ad- 
justment of  these  interactions  goes  on  harmoni- 
ously and  without  shock,  there  is  health.  And 
since  a  complicated  system  is  more  difficult  to 
maintain  in  working  than  a  simple  system—since, 
for  instance,  a  watch  or  a  steam-engine  is  more 
difficult  to  keep  in  order  than  a  windlass  or  a 
plough— we  may  infer  that,  though  health  in 
civilization  may  be  more  perfect,  it  most  assured- 
ly is  more  difficult,  than  health  in  savagery. 

Let  us  again  compare  some  simple  social  states 
with  others  that  are  less  simple.  If  we  are  tired 
of  the  savage,  let  us  look  at  a  peasant  proprietor 
in  a  French  village,  or  at  a  wealthy  squatter  far 
away  among  the  gum-trees  in  Australia.  The 
contrast  between  their  life  and  that  of  the  dwell- 
ers in  large  towns  might,  for  many  purposes,  be 
summed  up  in  two  epithets  borrowed  from  geom- 
etry (and  you  know  modem  mathematics  are 
capable  of  explaining  everything).  It  might  be 
spoken  of  as  the  vertical  state  as  opposed  to  the 
horizontal.  Remark  that  to  the  colonist  it  is  of 
comparatively — I  need  not  say  I  lay  great  stress 
on  the  word — little  importance  what  his  neighbor 
or  the  rest  of  the  world  do.     His  food  comes  to  a 


144 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


great  extent  vertically  upward  to  him  from  the 
ground  ;  water  comes  vertically  downward  to  him 
from  the  sky.  His  clothing,  whether  of  wool,  or 
flax,  or  skin,  grows  on  the  spot ;  his  house  is 
built  from  a  quarry  in  his  field,  or  from  logs  in 
his  own  bit  of  forest ;  the  refuse  from  his  house 
and  person  is  buried  in  the  soil,  and  so  on.  Con- 
trast all  this  with  the  horizontality,  so  to  speak, 
of  town  arrangements.  Water  is  brought  from 
reservoirs  twenty  or  fifty  miles  away ;  food  comes 
from  farms  miles  distant,  perhaps  from  the  other 
side  of  the  Atlantic,  or  from  the  other  side  of  the 
Pacific ;  clothing  from  any  part  of  Europe  or 
Asia.  As  for  refuse  substances,  no  vertical  re- 
moval of  them  is  possible ;  complicated  labyrinths 
of  tunnels,  arterial  systems,  pumping-stations, 
sewage  irrigations,  acts  of  Parliament,  and  what 
not,  have  to  be  instituted  to  prevent  us  from 
poisoning  one  another.  Think  again  of  all  the 
horizoutality  implied  in  highways,  railroads,  and 
telegraphs. 

I  would  not  strain  my  geometrical  metaphor 
further  than  it  will  bear.  Dwell  on  one  more  as- 
pect of  the  same  subject.  Think  how  much  his- 
torical phenomena  have  to  do  with  the  matter. 
For  good  or  for  evil,  for  good  infinitely  more  than 
for  evil,  but  yet  for  evil  also,  we  have  to  bear  the 
burden  of  the  past.  The  treasures  are  mixed 
with  dross.  Take  the  single  instance  of  house- 
provision.  A  squatter  in  the  bush  can  build  his 
house  where  he  likes,  he  has  hill  and  vale  to 
choose  from  ;  but  a  house  commonly  lasts  longer 
than  a  man,  and  in  towns  we  have  to  choose  from 
the  houses  provided  by  other  generations.  (  Put 
yourself  in  the  position  of  a  workman  who  must 
live  near  his  work,  say  within  a  mile  of  where  we 
arc  now.  Think  of  the  structure  of  London  be- 
tween Regent  Street  and  the  Tower — I  speak  of 
the  courts,  back  streets,  and  lanes,  which  I  would 
advise  you  to  walk  through  this  evening  or  to- 
morrow, they  are  much  more  interesting  than  the 
lanes  of  Venice — and  then  ask  the  question, 
How  much  of  all  this  is  due  to  the  intolerably 
bad  domestic  government  of  England  from  the 
restoration  of  the  Stuarts  down  to,  let  us  say,  the 
reign  of  Dr.  Chadwick,  thirty  to  forty  years  ago? 
Think  how  it  would  have  been  if  London,  after 
the  Fire,  could  have  been  rebuilt  under  the  eye 
of  Cromwell,  instead  of  the  unholy  brood  who 
for  a  whole  generation  threw  England  to  the  dogs, 
and  whose  mere  names,  were  it  possible,  we  would 
forget!  Then  follow  the  growth  of  London  into 
the  next  century  by  the  light  of  Hogarth's  pict- 
ures— take  the  one  picture  of  Cruelty,  for  in- 
stance— and  think   how  very  little    forethought 


might  have  changed  the  growth  of  St.  Giles's, 
Bloomsbury,  or  St.  Anne's,  Soho.  And  then,  when 
by  reading,  and  also  by  ocular  inspection,  you 
have  become  familiar  with  the  anatomy  and  phys- 
iology of  a  London  court,  including  the  Embryol- 
ogy of  it.  that  is,  the  way  in  which  it  arises,  un- 
der the  motive  power  of  high  rents,  by  the  sim- 
ple process  of  building  rows  of  small  houses  at 
the  end,  and  ultimately  at  the  sides,  of  back  gar- 
dens, the  wind  from  each  one  of  the  four  quar- 
ters of  the  sky  hermetically  shut  out,  and  the 
ignorant  greed  of  the  builder  unintcrfered  with  by 
wisdom  or  by  policemen  of  any  sort  or  kind ; 
then,  I  say,  when  the  lesson  has  been  well 
learned,  go  to  Hackney,  or  to  Stratford,  where 
new  London  is  ravaging  the  green  fields  rapidly, 
and  ask  how  far  is  the  next  generation  to  be  com- 
promised by  what  the  speculative  builders  arc 
doing  there  at  this  moment,  and  compare  the  rate 
of  velocity  of  their  proceedings  with  that  of  Sir 
Sidney  Waterlow's  most  admirable  building  so- 
ciety or  of  the  Peabody  trustees. 

But  since  we  have  thus  ventured  on  histori- 
cal ground,  let  us  follow  on  a  little  farther.  Why 
is  it  that  we  have  been  obliged  to  pay  such  atten- 
tion to  public  health  in  England  ?  We  have 
taken  the  lead,  it  is  admitted,  in  this  matter ;  is 
this  solely  and  entirely  owing  to  our  superior 
wisdom  and  morality,  or  are  there  ether  rea- 
sons ? 

I  suppose  the  facts  calling  for  sanitary  inter- 
ference in  this  country  may  be  condensed  into 
two :  the  fact  that  half  the  nation  is  living  in 
large  towns,  and  the  fact  that  milk  and  pure 
water  are  unattainable  in  country  villages.  I 
cannot  touch  on  this  latter  point ;  but  I  think 
you  will  find  it  connected  with  the  disappearance 
of  the  numerous  freeholds  of  between  twenty  and 
fifty  acres  that  existed  till  a  century  ago.  But  it 
is  worth  while  to  dwell  for  a  moment  on  the  first, 
because,  next  to  the  Norman  conquest  and  the 
Puritan  Revolution,  it  is  certainly  the  most  im- 
portant event,  or  set  of  events,  in  English  his- 
tory. Tou  are  aware,  of  course,  that  it  is  an  en- 
tirely modern  fact.  Till  almost  eighty  years  ago 
the  growth  of  towns  in  England  had  gone  on  with 
steady,  quiet  progress,  from  the  time  of  the  Tu- 
dors  downward.  Then  began  the  most  stupen- 
dous torrent  of  bricks  and  mortar  that  the  world 
has  ever  seen.  In  1801,  London — I  mean  the 
whole  area  of  the  Metropolitan  Board  of  Works — 
had  about  900,000  people.  It  now  has  four  times 
that  number.  Manchester,  Glasgow,  Birming- 
ham, and  Liverpool,  were  all  much  below  100,000. 
They  now  exceed  or  approach  the  half-million. 


THE  MORAL  ASB  SOCIAL  ASPECTS  OF  HEALTH. 


145 


The  rest  of  Lancashire  and  the  West  Riding  of 
Yorkshire  has  increased  in  the  same  way. 

Why  and  how  is  this  ?  Every  one  is  ready 
with  the  answer.  It  is  the  steam-engine  —  the 
steam-engine  and  all  the  other  engines  which  grew 
up  around  it,  some  before  and  some  after :  the 
spinning-jenny,  Arkwright's  rollers,  Crompton's 
mule,  Cartwright's  power  loom,  Brindley's  ca- 
nals, the  iron-puddling  machinery,  dye-works,  tel- 
egraphs, and  all  the  other  countless  applications 
of  mathematics,  physics,  and  chemistry. 

All  this  was  in  the  air,  was  germinating  long 
before ;  the  brains  of  Descartes,  Galileo,  Bacon, 
and  Newton,  the  brains  even  of  Archimedes  and 
the  Greek  geometers,  contained  the  germs  of  it. 
The  thing  itself,  the  couquest  of  Nature  by  man, 
was  normal,  was  predestined,  is  still  in  great  part 
to  come.  But  our  question  still  is,  "  Why  did  it 
come  about  in  England  with  such  terrific  and  ab- 
normal rapidity  ?  "  There  was  science  in  France 
as  well  as  in  England.  There  is  wealth  at  this 
moment  in  France,  after  payment  of  her  milliards, 
as  well  as  in  England.  But  France  is  not  devas- 
tated by  the  hail-storm  of  hideous  towns  that  has 
visited  this  country.  When  you  go  from  Charing 
Cross  to  Paris,  the  two  ends  of  the  journey  are 
not  alike.  I  have  looked  in  Paris  for  a  Stratford 
or  a  Lambeth,  but  I  have  never  found  it.  Misery 
enough ;  but  not  the  same  wide  diffusion  of  un- 
organized meanness,  shabbiness,  and  squalor. 
There  must  be  a  reason  for  this. 

And,  again,  I  go  back  to  the  second  of  my 
three  great  events  of  English  history — I  mean 
the  Puritan  Revolution — and  ask  myself,  "  How 
would  it  have  been  if  that  revolution  had  not 
come  to  so  violent  and  abortive  a  close  ?  "  Put 
prejudice  aside,  and  realize  for  a  moment,  by  the 
aid  of  Milton,  Bunyan,  and  Thomas  Carlyle,  what 
the  government  of  Cromwell  and  his  Ironsides 
meant.  Think  that  England  was  really  for  a 
series  of  years  governed  by  a  set  of  plain,  hard- 
headed  men  of  business,  to  whom  the  Christian 
religion  was  the  most  intense  reality,  a  thing  to 
put  into  every-day  working  practice  in  the  man- 
agement of  life,  public  as  well  as  private.  And 
is  it  not  probable,  or  rather  certain,  that  if  their 
influence  could  have  been  maintained,  in  however 
modified  a  way,  the  industrial  development  of 
England  would  have  been  widely  different ;  that 
while  there  would  have  been  no  Buddhist  or 
monastic  indifference  to  material  progress,  yet 
that  politics  (that  is  to  say  industry,  which  is 
modern  politics)  would  have  been  subordinated 
to  morality,  to  a  degree  of  which  the  French  Con- 
vention alone,  perhaps,  in  subsequent  history  has 

46 


given  the  world  some  imperfect  glimpse  ?  You 
will  say  that  1688  followed  thirty  years  after 
Cromwell's  death,  and  that  the  good  side  of  Pu- 
ritanism was  preserved,  its  extravagances  sifted 
away.  I  reply  that  the  men  were  gone.  England 
had  driven  them  out.  The  torch  of  republican 
progress  was  in  French  hands.  The  most  strenu- 
ous types  of  manhood  since  the  best  days  of  the 
Roman  commonwealth  had  been  chased  beyond 
seas — to  Holland,  to  Geneva,  and  finally  across 
the  Atlantic,  where  they  were  not  heard  of  for  a 
hundred  years,  and  then  were  heard  somewhat 
too  loudly. 

I  am  not  indulging  in  any  spirit  of  paradox, 
nor  in  any  feeling  of  detraction  of  our  own  mod- 
ern time.  I  recognize  the  renewal  in  our  own 
immediate  generation  of  a  nobler  spirit  of  public 
morality,  underneath  all  outward  discouragement. 
Our  political  economy,  for  instance,  imperfect 
though  it  be,  is  widely  different  from  the  base 
doctrines  taught  publicly  thirty  or  forty  years 
ago; -and  many  other  signs  there  are  of  the  same 
kind.  But  the  eighteenth  century  in  England 
seems  to  me  a  time  when,  owing  to  the  banish- 
ment or  suppression  of  her  Doblest  and  bravest 
men,  public  morality  was  dormant  or  dead ;  when 
the  greatest  statesman,  with  the  applause  of  his 
fellow-citizens  (you  may  read  it  on  Chatham's 
pedestal  in  the  Guildhall  now),  deliberately  waged 
war  for  the  sake  of-  commerce ;  when  all  harmo- 
nious proportion  between  the  aspects  of  man's 
many-sided  life  was  lost ;  when  all  the  sentences 
of  the  old  prayer  were  forgotten,  except  that 
which  asks  for  daily  bread ;  when  all  the  scien- 
tific energy  of  the  nation  was  concentrated  in  the 
alchemistic  search  for  gold,  until  at  last  the  un- 
couth Genius  came  at  our  bidding,  streaming 
down,  with  profuse  irony,  his  inky  gifts  of  crowd- 
ed town  and  hideous,  trailing  suburb,  and  black- 
ened fields,  and  devastating  chimneys — has  come 
at  our  bidding,  and  as  yet  refuses  to  go.  Like 
the  Athenians  with  their  nether-gods,  so  we,  eu- 
phemistically trembling,  decorate  him  with  an 
imposing  title.  We  call  him  Beneficent  Law  of 
Supply  and  Demand ;  and  put  up  what  poor 
earthworks  of  defense  we  may  in  the  shape  of 
sanitary  appliances,  drainage-works,  and  pollu- 
tion-of-river  commissions.  But  most  of  us  still 
believe  that  his  dominion  will  endure  forever. 

So  much  for  the  first  of  the  two  modes  in 
which  civilization  affects  health.  It  creates  a 
complicated  set  of  circumstances,  a  complicated 
social  environment  which  may  or  may  not  be  fa- 
vorable .to  health.  This  is  the  political  side  of 
the  subject.     Now  a  few  words — and  they  must 


H6 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


be  but  few — on  the  second  mode.  The  results 
of  civilization,  the  gains  of  human  tradition,  from 
the  savage  of  glacial  epochs  to  Londoners  and 
Parisians  of  the  nineteenth  century,  are  con- 
densed, in  the  shape  of  faculties,  emotions,  de- 
sires, aspirations,  instincts,  activities,  within  a 
storehouse  of  energy  which  we  call  the  Human 
Brain.  This  brain  is  either  at  one  with  itself,  or 
it  is  at  discord  with  itself.  Its  reaction  on  the 
body  will  vary  accordingly.  The  complicated 
social  environment;  the  complicated  brain. 
These  are  the  two  aspects  of  the  matter.  The 
first  is  the  political  side  of  health,  the  second  the 
moral  side. 

There  is  a  great  deal  of  discussion  about  the 
brain  in  our  time,  and  some  of  it  is  curious. 
There  are  people  who  open  the  skulls  of  animals 
(not  yet  of  men,  which  would  be  more  rational 
possibly)  and  thrust  electric  wires  into  the  brain, 
and  then  watch  to  see  what  happens.  They 
think  much  light  will  be  thrown  on  human  nature 
in  this  way.  I  say  nothing  here  of  the  right  or 
wrong  of  this,  but  one  word  as  to  its  sense  or 
uonsense.  To  me  such  people  seem  like  a  man 
who,  instead  of  standing  in  front  of  one  of  Ra- 
phael's pictures  to  look  at  it,  should  go  behind 
the  frame,  pick  out  a  few  fibres  from  the  canvas, 
and,  by  the  help  of  great  botanical  knowledge 
and  a  strong  microscope,  should  decide  what 
species  of  hemp  or  flax  it  was  made  of.  You  re- 
monstrate. "  Oh,"  he  says,  "  your  way  of  stand- 
ing there  looking  at  the  picture  is  mere  superfi- 
cial, empirical  observation  ;  that  is  not  the  scien- 
tific way  of  proceeding.  Let  us  first  decide  the 
species  of  the  flax  and  the  chemical  composition 
of  the  pigments,  then,  perhaps,  a  thousand  years 
hence  we  shall  get  to  know  something  of  the  way 
in  which  they  were  put  together."  So  be  it. 
Let  us  go  our  way,  and  him  his.  Let  us  be  con- 
tent to  follow  far  behind  in  the  track  of  Aristotle 
and  Shakespeare,  and  study  the  brain  as  it  shows 
itself  in  thoughts,  energies,  and  feelings. 

Our  first  question,  then,  is  this  :  Do  thoughts, 
energies,  and  feelings,  act  upon  bodily  health  at 
all? 

In  novels  people  always  die  of  broken  hearts ; 
in  real  life  it  is  said  they  never  do.  Very  shallow 
practical  men  rather  pride  themselves  in  exposing 
the  flimsy  fallacy ;  yet  the  common-sense  of  man- 
kind in  general,  and  the  less  common  sense  of 
poets,  philosophers,  and  experienced  physicians, 
is  not  so  entirely  against  the  novelists  as  might 
be  supposed.     Where  does  the  truth  lie  ? 

I  suppose,  the  truth  is  pretty  well  illustrated 
by  what  occurs  in  Indian  famines.    No  one  in  an 


Indian  famine,  as  we  know,  ever  dies  of  starva- 
tion. This  would  be  contrary  to  official  rule. 
There  are  deaths,  of  course.  Somehow  or  other 
the  death-rate  rises  a  little,  then  it  rises  a  good 
deal,  and  at  last  enormously  above  the  aver- 
age ;  but  these  are  deaths  not  from  famine,  but 
from  liver-disease,  dysentery,  fevers  of  various 
kinds,  and  so  on.  We  are  all  of  us  so  wonder- 
fully willing  to  submit  to  the  dominion  of  words 
that  this  account  of  the  matter  is  very  apt  to  sat- 
isfy us.  Such  a  person  dies  of  bronchitis.  Bron- 
chitis is  a  respectable  medical  entity,  with  a  reg- 
ular set  of  symptoms,  with  a  proper  set  of  drugs 
appropriated  to  it,  with  a  recognized  place  in  the 
records  of  the  registrar-general;  so  that,  when 
we  have  set  it  down  that  a  man  dies  of  bronchi- 
tis, what  more  can  be  wished  for  ?  So  in  India 
— "No  deaths  from  famine  have  occurred  this 
week."  What  energy  on  the  part  of  the  ad- 
ministration ! 

Yet,  without  disparaging  this  energy,  which 
every  candid  man  knows  to  be  very  great,  often 
heroic  and  self-sacrificing,  it  may  be  permitted  to 
go  one  foot  deeper  below  the  surface,  and  to  ask 
what  brought  this  bronchitis  or  this  dysentery 
on  ?  Was  it  that  the  tiny  cells  that  form  the 
outer  coating  of  the  membrane  that  lines  the  air- 
tubes  had  become  more  short-lived,  more  liable 
to  decay,  reproducing  themselves  in  unhealthy 
multitudes  more  rapidly  than  usual,  and  thus 
forming  the  substance  that  we  know  as  purulent 
matter  ?  And  is  this  rapid  growth  of  unhealthy 
cells,  that  ought  to  have  developed  themselves 
into  healthy  fibres  and  membranes,  but  could  Dot, 
a  symptom  or  outcome  of  poor  blood  ill  supplied 
with  fat  or  starch  or  gluten  ?  And,  if  this  be  so, 
is  it  very  important  which  was  the  particular  por- 
tion of  the  mucous  surface,  whether  in  lung  or 
intestine,  which  some  slight  outside  irritant,  or 
some  slight  inherited  weakness,  caused  to  give 
way  first  ?  Death  from  insufficient  food — surely 
that  is  the  right  answer — whether  it  was  in  the 
bronchial  membrane  or  the  intestinal  membrane 
that  the  mischief  first  revealed  itself.  Throw  a 
cricket-ball  along  the  turf,  and  ultimately  some 
one  particular  little  tuft  of  grass  stops  it ;  but  I 
suppose  the  explanation  of  stoppage  lies  in  a 
very  great  number  of  similar  grass-tufts,  insuffi- 
ciently resisted  by  the  hand  that  threw. 

So  it  is  with  the  moral  antecedents  of  disease.  I 
There  are  cases  where  the  sudden  shock  of  un-  I 
foreseen  calamity  is  transmitted  with  such  in- 1 
tense  violence  from  the  brain  to  the  heart  as  to  I 
stop  its  action  there  and  then,  and  the  man  falls 
down  dead.      But   such  things   are  as  rare  as 


THE  MORAL  A2TD  SOCIAL  ASPECTS  OF  HEALTH. 


147 


deaths  from  pure  unmitigated  starvation.  For 
one  such  case  as  this,  how  many  thousands,  how 
many  millions,  where  the  balance  of  functions  un- 
dergoes some  slight,  unperceived,  accumulating 
disturbance !  There  is  an  instinct  within  us  which, 
without  analyzing  it  further  just  now,  we  may 
call  the  self-preserving  instinct.  When  we  stum- 
ble, the  arm  is  thrust  out  violently  to  restore  the 
balance.  When  a  stone  or  insect  flies  too  near 
the  eyes,  the  lids  close  involuntarily.  When  the 
air  in  the  lungs  becomes  too  highly  charged  with 
refuse,  this  instinct  shows  itself  in  the  bcsoin  de 
rcspirer,  and  deep  draughts  of  fresh  air  are  taken 
in.  And  so  with  every  other  function  of  the 
body.  This  instinct  (I  am  not  now  discussing 
whether  it  be  simple  or  complex)  takes  cogni- 
zance, as  it  were,  of  the  uneasy  sensations  that 
indicate  the  need  of  food,  of  drink,  of  exercise, 
and  of  every  other  natural  function. 

Now  see  what  happens  when,  from  any  cause 
whatever,  this  instinct  is  interfered  with.  Take 
simple  instances  to  begin  with.  Watch  animals. 
Vivinspection  is  a  much  more  fruitful  way  of 
reaching  truth  of  this  kind  than  vivisection.  Watch 
a  favorite  dog  that  has  been  waiting  an  hour  or 
two  for  his  dinner,  and  then,  just  as  it  is  brought) 
invite  him  for  a  walk.  The  excitement  of  joy  ut- 
terly overwhelms  hunger,  the  whole  muscular  sys- 
tem is  violently  agitated — non  ha  membro,  che 
ierga  fermo,  as  Dante  would  say ;  and  the  meal  is 
for  the  moment  utterly  forgotten.  I  often  watch 
this  little  spectacle,  and  it  seems  to  me  to  have  a 
great  deal  of  instruction  in  it.  Here  we  have  an 
[  interruption  to  the  self-preserving  instinct,  but  it 
is  a  disturbance  of  a  thoroughly  healthy  kind ; 
the  sense  of  hunger  returns  in  very  good  time  ; 
meantime  there  has  been  a  good  walk,  the  blood 
has  been  purified,  the  digestive  organs  are  readier 
for  their  work.  Such  a  disturbance  as  this  is 
like  the  discords  of  the  musician  which  pave  the 
way  to  higher  harmony.  This  temporary  super- 
seding, and,  so  to  speak,  natural  and  spontane- 
ous discipline,  of  the  lower  instincts  lies  at  the 
very  root  of  the  higher  forms  of  health. 

But  now  take  instances  of  the  opposite  kind. 
Watch  a  dog  that  has  lost  its  master,  or  a  wild 
creature  newly  taken  captive.  See  the  paralysis 
both  of  animal  energy  and  vegetal  energy  that 
results.  Note  the  failure  of  muscular  activity, 
the  failure  of  respiration,  the  failure  of  digestion 
and  appetite.  I  saw  a  parrot  not  long  ago  refuse 
its  food  for  two  days  from  jealousy  of  a  white 
dove  whose  cage  had  been  placed  in  the  same 
room.  I  say  again,  watch  your  animals;  don't 
vivisect  them,  vivimpect  them,  and  see  what  wis- 


dom can  be  got  out  of  them  that  way.  You  see, 
then,  even  among  them,  what  an  element  of  dis- 
turbance or  of  strengthening  the  health  emotion 
may  be.  And  now  follow  out  these  rudimentary 
truths  to  their  legitimate  logical  consequences 
among  savages,  and  then  among  civilized  man. 
See  how  we  tend  more  and  more  to  live  by  the 
brain.  More  than  ever  is  it  evident  now  that 
man  lives  not  by  bread  alone.  "  We  live,"  says 
Wordsworth,  "  by  admiration,  hope,  and  love ; 
and,  even  as  these  are  well  and  wisely  fixed,  in 
dignity  of  being  we  ascend."  And  do  you  sup- 
pose that  it  is  of  no  consequence  to  that  harmo- 
nious vigor  of  bodily  functions  whether  these 
things  are  well  and  wisely  fixed,  or  whether  they 
are  fixed  at  all  ?  Are  you  so  credulous  as  to 
suppose  that  carking  care  and  fretful  discontent 
and  feverish  excitement  and  thwarted  ambition 
and  cankering  remorse  can  do  their  work  for 
years  and  show  no  sign  ?  Eead  what  poet  Blake 
thought  as  he  wandered  about  London  streets, 
looking  at  what  passed  him  like  a  ghost  in  a  city 
of  ghosts : 

"  I  wander  through  each  chartered  street 

Near  where  the  chartered  Thames  does  flow, 
And  mark  in  every  face  I  meet 

Marks  of  weakness,  marks  of  woe. 

'■  In  every  cry  of  every  man, 

In  every  infant's  cry  of  fear, 
In  every  voice,  in  every  ban, 

The  mind-forged  manacles  I  hear. 

"  How  the  chimney-sweeper's  cry 

Every  blackening  church  appalls ! 
And  the  hapless  soldier's  sigh 

Runs  in  blood  down  palace-walls  ! 

"  But  most  through  midnight  streets  I  hear 
How  the  youthful  harlot's  curse 
Blasts  the  new-born  infant's  tear, 

And  blights  with  plagues  the  marriage-hearse." 

There  are  many  types,  both  bad  and  good,  of 
the  opposite  kind.  All  concentrated  unity  of 
moral  purpose,  bad  or  good,  tends  to  harmony  of 
bodily  functions,  to  physical  vigor,  to  health. 
Life-long  avarice,  successful  ambition,  have  this 
result  very  often.  There  is  selfish  unity  of  pur- 
pose, and  there  is  unselfish  unity.  But  remark 
that  the  first  can  only  exist  in  the  few  that  are 
strong  and  successful :  in  the  two  or  three  misers 
that  win  fortunes,  the  two  or  three  slaves  of  am- 
bition that  wade  their  way  through  slaughter  to  a 
throne.  Thwarted  ambition,  thwarted  avarice,  lead 
to  a  very  different  result.  The  only  unity  which  is 
perfect,  the  only  unity  which  is  attainable  by  the 
weak  as  well  as  by  the  strong,  is  that  which  goes 
side  by  side  with  union — at  once  the  source  of  it, 


148 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


and  the  result.  Those  who  have  seen  the  perfect 
type  of  unselfish  old  age,  where  love  is  as  bright 
as  in  the  days  of  childhood,  will  understand  this. 
But  I  must  not  pursue  this  subject  any  further. 

And  now,  after  all  this  expatiating  over  a 
very  wide  extent  of  country,  it  is  time  to  ask  my- 
self, as  you  will  no  doubt  have  asked  me,  the  ques- 
tion :  "  What  does  it  all  come  to  ?  What  is  the 
practical  drift  ?     What  are  we  to  do  ?  " 

Undoubtedly,  this  question  should  have  been 
before  us  from  the  outset.  Disquisitions  on  the 
structure  of  society,  which  are  intended  to  leave 
us  where  they  found  us,  have  always  filled  me 
with  a  sense  of  unutterable  ennui.  Sir  Isaac 
Newton,  as  we  all  know,  compares  scientific  dis- 
coverers to  children  picking  up  shells  on  the  sea- 
shore. Well,  shells  on  the  sea-shore  may  be  pol- 
ished and  put  into  a  cabinet,  or  something  pretty 
may  be  made  of  them ;  but  analysis  of  the  evils 
of  society,  unless  something  is  to  come  of  it,  is 
more  like  a  little  boy  pulling  his  drum  to  pieces 
to  see  what  is  inside.  We  had  so  much  better 
spend  our  time  in  listening  to  Wagner  or  looking 
at  Mr.  Butne  Jones's  pictures.  Yet,  if  I  am  not 
wholly  wrong,  there  is  an  intensely  practical  ob- 
ject in  the  kind  of  thoughts  which  I  have  tried 
to  set  before  you.  And  I  speak  with  the  less 
diffidence,  that  they  are  none  of  my  own  origi- 
nating. The  seeds  of  all  of  them  were  sown  by 
another. 

Let  us  see  to  what  we  have  come.  We  have 
seen  that  for  civilized  man  health  is  an  infinitely 
deeper  and  more  complex  word  than  is  generally 
supposed ;  that  it  implies  the  vigorous  and  har- 
monious working  together  of  all  functions,  not 
physical  only,  but  mental  and  moral ;  not  lungs 
merely  and  heart  and  muscle  and  digestive  organs, 
but  of  nerve  and  brain ;  that  a  very  great  deal 
more  enters  into  the  subject  than  considerations 
of  pure  air,  and  pure  water,  and  unpoisoned  food, 
and  wholesome  houses,  and  disinfection,  and  vacci- 
nation, and  drainage,  and  sewage  irrigation  ;  that 
these  things  are  of  real,  and  urgent,  and  unques- 
tionable moment,  but  that  they  are  not  all  that  is 
wanted,  nor  yet  nearly  so  much  as  half  what  is 
wanted ;  and,  further,  that  so  long  as  they  are 
considered  as  being  all,  so  long  as  exclusive  con- 
sideration is  given  to  them,  precisely  so  long  will 
their  attainment  be  impossible.  We  have  all 
looked  at  Dr.  Richardson's  beautiful  picture  of 
Tlygieia,  the  city  of  health,  and  the  thought 
forces  itself  upon  some  of  us,  Where  will  the 
servants  be  lodged  ?  The  people  who  clean  the 
chimneys  and  brush  the  beautiful  parquet  floor- 
ing— what  wages  will  they  get,  and  where  will 


they  live?     Will  there    be  any  costermongers, 
any  poor  Irish,   any  pauperism,  any  wholesale 
out-relief,  any  ignorant  or  indolent  almsgiving, 
any  sectarian  soup-kitchens;    and,  as  a  conse- 
quence of  all  these  things,  any  poor  people  flock- 
ing from  far  and  wide  toward  this  vision  of  food 
without  work ;  and  then,  when  their  patronesses 
have   run   away  from  Hygieia   for   the  London 
season,  ready  to  do  charing- work  for  eighteen- 
pence  a   day?     Or  is  there  to   be  no  London 
season  for  the  happy  and  contented  dwellers  in 
this   wonderful   city  ?      No    imperious   calls   on 
dress-makers,  and  temptations  to  their  work-wom- 
en to  break  the  factory  act  or  starve  ?    No  sudden 
revolutions  of  fashion  from  silks  to  velvet,  from 
alpaca  to  cashmere,  turning  myriads  of  spinners 
and   weavers   out   of  work    in   Bradford   or  in 
Coventry,  and  overtaxing  the  factories  of  other 
places,   thus    driving  in   country -people   to  the 
towns  before  houses  can  be  built  for  tbem,  de- 
moralizing them  by  sudden  flushes  of  high  wages, 
poisoning   them   in   overcrowded   lodgings,   and 
then,  when  the  tide  of  fashion  changes,  again 
turning  them   adrift?      Or,  again,  will  there  be 
any   house-speculators   in   this  city?      "Will  the 
town-council  be  empowered  to  pass  building  by- 
laws ?  if  so,  will  it  be  elected  by  universal  suf- 
frage, and  in  that  case  is  it  certain  that  there  will 
be  no  vestryman  or  councilman  anxious  for  rents 
and  glad  to  get  the  building-standard  a  little  low- 
ered ?     Or  will  publicans  be  excluded   by  law, 
and  the  alcoholic  question  satisfactorily  solved  ? 
The  luxury  problem — one  man's  labor  for  a  day 
being  consumed  by  another  in  five  minutes  ;  the 
new  machinery  question — involving  sudden  pri- 
vation of  work  to  hundreds,  sudden  accession  of 
unwholesome  work  and  wages,  and  demoralizing 
town-conditions  to  thousands ;   the   capital  and 
labor  question  in  every  one  of  its  aspects — how 
for  a  moment  can  we  dream  of  cities  of  Hygieia 
without  taking  account  of  these  things  ?     And 
even  supposing  it  were  otherwise,  fancy  what  a 
city   of  valetudinarians   it  would  be !     Fancy  a 
life  in   which  the  preservation   of  health   were 
made  the  one  great  object  of  concern.      Think 
of  the  commonplaces  of  every-day  talk.     How 
one  would  yearn  for  the  small-talk  and  scandal  I 
of  the  vulgarest  watering-place,  by  comparison !    j 
We  must  not  forget  that  the  highest  health,  i 
like  the  highest  virtue,  supposes  the  unconscious- 
ness of  its  own  existence.     Struggling,  as  we  in 
England,   and   more   especially   in   London  and  i 
Lancashire,  are  now,   against  social  diseases  of  j 
a  special  and  altogether  exceptional  kind,  pro- 
duced by  revolutionary  confusion  and  by  one-sided 


THE  MORAL  AND  SOCIAL  ASPECTS  OF  HEALTH. 


H9 


industrial  development,  we  have,  like  other  sick 
people,  to  think  a  great  deal  about  our  symptoms, 
and  to  surround  ourselves,  so  to  speak,  with 
medicine-bottles  and  nursing  appliances.  But 
pitiable,  indeed,  were  the  prospect  if  this  state 
were  to  be  the  normal  condition  of  civilized  man. 
One  should  be  tempted  in  that  case  to  try  Pla- 
to's drastic  remedies — banish  all  physicians  from 
the  republic,  let  Death  work  his  will,  and  let  none 
but  the  sound  and  strong  survive. 

Nay,  as  I  said  before,  it  is  one  of  the  condi- 
tions of  cure,  even  in  the  practical  present  that 
surrounds  us,  that  we  do  not  concentrate  too  dis- 
proportionate an  amount  of  attention  on  the 
physical  and  material  side  of  the  malady.  There 
are  many  of  the  evils  and  dangers  which  con- 
front us  which  it  is  best  to  attack  indirectly  rath- 
er than  directly — by  a  flank  movement  as  it 
were,  or  by  the  slow  process  of  undermining  the 
citadel.  The  temperance  problem  is  a  case  in 
point.  People  are  now  beginning  to  see  the  fu- 
tility of  adding  an  eleventh  commandment  to  the 
Decalogue,  Thou  shalt  not  drink  gin ;  or  rather 
they  now  propose  to  alter  it  thus :  Thou  shalt 
forget  the  dull  dreariness  of  thy  daily  burden  in 
bright,  wholesome,  social  pleasures,  a  sufficient 
share  of  which  we  will  provide  for  thee. 

I  have  tried  to  show  that  the  health  prob- 
lem is  but  the  visible  outcropping  of  far  deeper- 
rooted  spiritual  evils ;  one  among  the  many  re- 
sults of  a  disorganization  of  life  visible  and  ex- 
plicable to  those  who  try  to  render  to  themselves 
an  account  of  the  changes  of  faith  and  opinion 
in  later  European  history.  There  is  no  use  in 
disguising  it,  the  root  of  the  matter  lies  here. 
A  very  fundamental  change  in  our  way  of  re- 
garding man  and  his  life  upon  this  earth ;  a 
careful  examination  of  the  laws  of  development 
by  which  we  have  reached  all  that  is  good  in  our 
present  state  of  progress ;  a  reverential  study  of 
the  lives  of  the  great  men  who  in  accordance 
with  these  laws  of  development  have  been  the 
agents  of  this  progress ;  a  submission  to  this 
human  order,  and  the  conviction  of  the  possibil- 
ity of  wisely  modifying  it,  and,  as  the  final  up- 
shot of  all  this,  a  new  ideal  set  before  all  men, 
the  humblest  no  less  than  the  wisest,  toward 
which  they  may  set  their  faces  and  their  foot- 
steps in  steadfast  hope  and  courage:  all  this, 
nothing  less  than  this,  is  in  the  world  now,  is 
surely  and  silently  germinating,  and  when  it  has 
branched  out  a  little,  the  public-health  question, 
like  a  good  many  other  questions,  will  find  their 
natural  and  speedy  solution. 

To  put  it  in  another  way :    it  is  universally 


held  that  for  individual  sick  men,  medicine  with- 
out physiology,  the  art  of  healing  without  a 
knowledge  of  the  laws  of  life  and  growth,  is 
mere  quackery  and  empiricism.  So  it  is  with 
public  health  and  public  diseases.  There  must 
be  a  study  of  the  laws  of  social  life  and  social 
growth  before  there  can  be  any  attempt  to 
cure. 

It  will  be  seen,  then,  that,  like  a  previous  lect- 
urer before  this  society,  I  believe  in  the  effica- 
ciousness of  education.  Only,  are  we  sure  that  we 
all  mean  the  same  thing  by  this  word  ?  We  know 
what  Aristotle  meant  by  it.  He  meant  an  agency 
for  the  implanting  of  sound  and  virtuous  habits. 
Nothing  else  would  satisfy  him  for  a  moment. 
And  what  he  wanted  was  not  realized  till  three 
hundred  years  afterward,  when  St.  Paul  planted 
the  shores  of  the  Mediterranean  with  Catholic 
societies.  And  to  take  lower  ground  for  a  mo- 
ment, I  cannot  but  think  that  we  have  gone  a 
little  backward  and  downward  in  our  notion  of 
education  from  the  time  when,  fifty  years  ago, 
Owen  and  his  band  of  dreamers  included  in  that 
word  all  the  influences  that  surround  life  and 
that  form  character.  I  would  not  disparage  the 
London  School  Board  for  a  moment,  entertaining 
as  I  do  a  great  respect  for  their  operations  ;  but 
it  has  always  seemed  to  me  that  education  was  a 
rather  ambitious  word  to  use  for  the  process  by 
which  many  thousands  of  little  children  are  taught 
by  other  children  nearly  as  little  to  read  and 
write  imperfectly. 

If,  however,  I  were  asked,  What  or  where  is 
my  solution  of  the  public-health  problem,  my 
cure  for  the  degradation  of  civilized  life  which 
makes  it  needful  to  consider  that  problem  ?  I, 
too,  should  say  with  others,  Nowhere  but  in  educa- 
tion can  it  be  found.  But  then  I  should  propose 
to  define  education,  not  the  teaching  the  little 
children  of  the  poor  to  read  and  write  imperfect- 
ly, combined  in  the  case  of  a  few  clever  ones  with 
a  "laborious  inacquaintance "  with  geography 
and  English  grammar ;  nor  even  the  technical 
teaching  now  so  much  in  vogue,  which  is  to  teach 
men  trades,  make  them  better  instruments  of 
production,  and  enable  us  to  hold  our  own  in  the 
European  struggle  for  commercial  existence ;  nor 
even  that  creme  de  la  creme  of  university  culture, 
the  capacity  for  writing  mediocre  verses  in  a  dead 
language.  Of  all  these  things  I  would  speak  with 
the  varying  measure  of  respect  which  belongs  to 
them  ;  but  for  the  purpose  before  us,  namely,  the 
purpose  of  securing  the  healthful  life  of  a  nation, 
I  would  define  education  as  the  effort  to  place  be- 
fore children,  men,  and  women,  whether  rich  or 


150 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


poor,  the  highest  ideal  that  we  cau  frame  to  our- 
selves of  human  life. 

I  believe  that  this  will  be  regarded  as  utterly 
visionary.  I  fear  that  even  Mr.  Ruskin,  himself 
perhaps  a  visionary  in  some  things,  would  demur 
to  it.  But  surely  it  is  only  our  amazing  want  of 
faith  and  settled  conviction  of  any  sort  that  makes 
us  say  so.  Look  at  it  in  this  way.  The  Bible  is 
not  yet  driven  out  of  our  schools,  though  many 
excellent  people,  from  motives  which  I  under- 
stand and  respect,  are  trying  very  hard  to  secure 
this  object.  But  from  a  simply  secular  view, 
what  is  the  Bible  but  the  highest  culture  of  a 
remarkable  people  two  thousand  years  ago  ?  If 
Abraham,  and  Moses,  and  David,  and  Isaiah,  have 
become  familiar  names  to  the  humblest,  where 
lies  the  impossibility  of  enlarging  the  scale  a 
little,  and  instead  of  driving  out  the  Bible  in  or- 
der to  give  more  time  for  the  study  of  adverbs, 
adjectives,  industrial  products,  and  the  like,  add 
to  the  Bible  some  continuous  chain  of  the  great 
poets,  thinkers,  and  statesmen,  that  make  up  the 
tradition  of  humanity.  A  Catholic,  who  has  his 
lives  of  saints  linked  together  through  the  middle 
ages,  might  understand  this  better.  A  Jew,  per- 
haps, or  a  Chinese,  whose  tradition  is  unbroken 
for  three  thousand  years,  might  understand  it 
better  still.  In  a  word,  the  education  needed  for 
healthful  national  life  is  such  as  to  restore  to 
England  the  old  Puritan  energy  and  devotion. 
But,  Puritanism  with  a  larger  Bible. 

Do  you  ask  again,  What  has  all  this  to  do  with 
public  health  ?  I  reply,  It  has  everything  to  do 
with  it.  Public  disease  springs  from  indifference 
to  life,  because  life  has  been  made  worthless.  If 
you  would  have  public  health,  you  must  make 
life  valued,  and  to  that  end  you  must  make  it 
valuable. 

I  need  not  say  that  to  make  these  elemental 
truths  living  and  vital,  to  bind  them  not  merely 
by  rote  upon  the  tongue,  not  merely  by  reason 
upon  the  intellect,  but  to  stamp  them  upon  the 
heart  and  the  character,  something  more  will  be 
needed  than  philosophic  lectures.  Of  deeds,  of 
conduct,  of  life,  of  example,  I  say  nothing  here  ; 
but  for  the  mere  reception  of  the  thought  into  the 
mind  something  more  than  speech  is  needed. 
Speech  is  good,  but  art  is  better ;  and  here  lies 
the  true  future  of  art — a  golden  future  indeed. 
The  five  sisters,  Architecture,  Sculpture,  Painting, 
Poetry,  Music,  each  and  all  must  work  their  magic 
in  our  favor,  kindling  the  dry  fuel  of  philosophic 
force  into  the  flames  of  inspiration  and  energy. 
Bear  with  me  if  I  seem  to  take  refuge  in  Utopia 
for  a  moment,  remembering  only,  what  you  will 


find  borne  out  in  history,  that  the  Utopias  of  one 
generation  are  very  often  the  familiar  dwelling- 
places  of  the  next,  and  that  though  some  are 
marsh-fires  that  lead  astray,  others  are  stars  that 
guide. 

Is  it,  after  all,  so  very  chimerical  to  conceive 
some  rich  man  building  somewhere  east  of  the 
Bank  a  somewhat  stately  room,  not  meaner,  per- 
haps, in  its  proportions  than  the  beautiful  hall  of 
the  Reform  Club — for  this  is  to  be  a  reform  club 
too — and  that  the  walls  and  corridors  should  be 
trusted  to  a  painter  and  a  sculptor  for  handling 
of  the  noblest  subject  that  human  imagination 
will  ever  be  able  to  conceive — the  growth  of 
social  life,  symbolically  treated  as  in  Homer's 
shield  of  Achilles,  and  the  series  of  great  men 
who  best  represent  the  stream  of  the  noblest 
human  progress.  Take,  if  you  can  find  it,  some 
grander  programme  for  this  purpose  than  is  set 
forth  in  the  historical  calendar  of  Auguste  Comte ; 
or  take  that,  if  you  can  find,  as  I  can  find,  none 
better :  there  would  be  a  large  agreement  between 
every  one  on  this  head,  whichever  list  was  chosen. 
Endow  some  reader  to  read  at  intervals  from  the 
great  world  poets ;  some  musical  choir  to  render 
such  passages  from  the  great  musicians  as,  be- 
ing simple  and  grand  and  tender,  shall  take  the 
hearts  of  all  that  hear  them  captive  ;  finally,  from 
time  to  time,  let  some  man  who  knows,  by  a  few 
simple  words,  point  the  moral  of  the  whole,  and 
would  you  not  have  in  some  such  scheme  as  this 
a  civilizing  and,  in  the  truest  sense,  a  health-giv- 
ing agency  ?  "Would  it  not,  I  again  say,  conduce 
to  the  public  health,  in  the  narrowest  and  most 
superficial  as  well  as  in  the  widest  sense  of  that 
word,  that  something  of  the  pomp,  and  stateli- 
ness,  and  dignity,  and  splendor,  of  human  life 
should  be  brought  within  the  reach  of  the  hum- 
blest? Who  that  has  seen  the  grand,  ragged 
Roman  beggars  resting  in  the  warmth  and  mag- 
nificence of  their  vast  churches  but  has  had  some 
glimpse  of  this  ? 

Art  is  far  more  accessible  to  the  ignorant  than 
we  suppose.  People  who  read  and  write,  and 
who  come  of  parents  who  read  and  wrote,  are 
very  apt  to  judge  of  others  by  their  own  incom- 
petence. But  the  sons  of  shoemakers,  carpenters, 
and  blacksmiths,  are  born  with  hands  far  better 
prepared  than  ours.  Let  us  remember  that  there 
were  men  in  the  glacial  epochs,  say  fifty  thousand 
years  ago,  who  carved  bones  and  drew  pictures 
of  animals  very  far  better  than  many  of  us  here 
can  do.  Or,  again,  go  into  the  worst  hovels  of 
Westminster  or  Clerkenwell,  you  will  find,  no 
books,  but  the  walls  lined  with  pictures.    Science, 


THE  MORAL  AXE  SOCIAL  ASPECTS  OF  HEALTH. 


151 


book-learning,  and  so  on,  are  not  natural  to  man, 
but  art  is. 

Then,  side  by  side  with  art,  try  Nature.  Side 
by  side  of  the  worship  of  humanity,  or,  if  you 
please,  reverence  for  humanity,  try  the  worship  of 
the  earth  and  sky.  Remember  Miss  Nightingale's 
story  of  the  dying  man  in  hospital,  where  the 
windows  were  too  high  from  the  ground :  "  He 
didn't  know  anything  about  Natur',  but  he  should 
like  to  have  one  look  out  at  window  before  he 
died."  You  think  the  colonist's  earth-hunger, 
the  passion  of  the  French  peasant  for  his  freehold, 
is  mere  sordid  greed.  It  is  that ;  and  it  is  also 
something  infinitely  larger  and  higher  than  that. 
It  is  the  earth-worship  instinctive  in  the  race.  If 
you  doubt  it,  look  at  the  geranium-pots  in  the 
back  alleys  of  Bethnal  Green. 

This  brings  me  to  the  last  point  I  will  obtrude 
upon  you.  In  the  name  of  public  health,  the 
health  of  London  and  Liverpool,  as  well  as  of 
England  generally,  make  the  most  of  what  of  the 
rural  population  is  still  left  to  us.  Six  out  of 
each  eleven  persons  living  in  London  were  born 
outside  it.  If  you  talk  to  them,  you  will  find  they 
do  not  regret  their  country  villages.  There  is  no 
homesickness.  Why  ?  Because  village  life  is 
dull;  because  in  London,  with  its  vile  lodgings 
and  precarious  struggle  for  existence,  there  is 
excitement,  there  is  life  by  the  brain.  There  is 
a  rich  multiform  drama  every  Saturday  night  in 
the  Whitechapel  Road.  Flaring  gas-lights; 
strong  lights  and  shadows;  carts  of  vegetables 
and  cheap  fruits ;  variety  of  strongly-seasoned 
food ;  toys,  colors,  shop-windows,  street-cries, 
collisions,  medleys  of  all  sorts,  and  stimulating 
social  intercourse — what  is  there  in  country  vil- 
lages to  compare  with  this  ?  The  very  fairs,  in- 
stead of  being  made  decent,  have  been  abolished. 
Then  in  London  there  is  independence.  There  is 
no  farmer  to  turn  one  adrift  at  a  week's  notice, 
or  to  strip  the  ripe  grapes  from  the  pretty  cottage 
walls  or  the  ripe  cider-apples  from  the  trees.  I 
speak  of  things  I  have  myself  seen  and  known. 
And  I  lived  for  years  on  the  estate  of  a  most 
philanthropic  nobleman. 

In  the  interests  of  town  and  country  alike,  is 
there  not  some  reasonable  percentage  among  the 
twelve  thousand   gentlemen  who  possess   two- 


thirds  of  the  soil  of  England,  who  are  ready  to 
become  great  citizens,  who  are  prepared  to  stop 
the  velocity  of  this  exodus  from  villages,  by 
making  village  life  more  bright,  more  free,  more 
strong — in  one  word,  more  healthy  ?  Some  slight 
restoration  of  the  twenty-acre  freeholds  of  past 
times,  some  fixed  ownership  of  house  and  gar- 
den, some  genial  simulating  culture — difficult  of 
attainment  though  all  this  be — is  it  so  chimeri- 
cally  impossible  ?  Must  the  whole  work  of  rural 
progress  be  left  to  Joseph  Arch  and  other  subse- 
quent antagonisms  far  more  fierce  and  far  less 
manly  ?  • 

I  have  done ;  but  in  ending,  as  in  beginning, 
let  me  deprecate  very  earnestly  the  thought  that 
by  any  implication  I  have  disparaged  other  pro- 
jects of  reform,  more  practical  apparently  and 
more  immediate,  in  the  obtrusion  of  my  own. 
And  especially  let  it  be  granted  me  to  say  one 
word  in  thankful  praise  of  the  lecture  and  of  the 
lecturess  who  opened  the  course  this  year  by 
her  plea  for  Open  Spaces.  From  the  precept 
and  example  of  Miss  Octavia  Hill  I  have  always 
thought  it  a  privilege  to  be  a  learner.  Her  close 
contact  with  the  hard,  dry,  minute,  tedious  facts 
of  misery,  whether  in  Barrett  Court  or  in  out- 
relief  committees ;  her  attempts  to  lessen,  not  so 
much  physical  pain,  as  moral  degradation ;  her 
up-hill  struggle  against  the  miserable  indulgence  of 
indolent  or  sectarian  almsgiving;  and  her  last  pa- 
tient and  eloquent  pleading  for  green  breathing- 
spaces  and  resting-places  close  to  the  homes  of  the 
poor,  are  all  precious,  not  merely  for  their  immedi- 
ate beneficence  to  the  needy,  but  still  more  because 
they  seem  to  me  a  sort  of  object-lessons  in  large 
type  for  the  rich  in  elementary  social  ethics — les- 
sons which  can  hardly  fail  to  lead  the  pupils  in 
her  school  to  larger  and  deeper  issues.  More- 
over, they  will  bear,  as  many  other  remedial 
measures  will  not  bear,  the  test  which  should  be 
applied  to  all  palliatives ;  that  is  to  say,  being 
beneficent  for  the  immediate  present,  they  are 
such  as  to  facilitate,  not  such  as  to  prejudice,  the 
future.  They  are  not  impediments,  but  install- 
ments, of  that  guiding  ideal  toward  which  each 
one  of  us,  I  believe,  whatever  his  point  of  depart- 
ure, whatever  the  path  he  may  have  chosen,  pur- 
poses to  strive. — Fortnightly  Review. 


152 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


^ESTHETIC  ANALYSIS   OF  AX   OBELISK. 


By  G.  A. 


I  HAD  climbed  with  a  friend  up  the  steep  down 
which  overhangs  Ventnor,  and  reached  the 
obelisk  at  Appuldurcombe.  From  its  base  the 
eye  ranges  over  the  loveliest  panorama  in  the 
Isle  of  Wight.  The  Solent  gleams  blue  in  the 
sunlight  to  northward,  and  the  Channel,  studded 
with  white  sails,  spreads  below  us  to  the  south  ; 
while  at  the  eastern  and  western  ends  of  the 
island,  the  great  chalk-cliffs  of  the  Culvers  and 
the  Main  Bench  stand  out  in  dazzling  purity 
against  the  purple  waters  of  Sandown  Bay  and 
Freshwater  Gate.  Around  us  on  every  side 
stretches  an  undulating  reach  of  tilled  or  wooded 
country,  all  the  more  grateful,  perhaps,  for  its 
trim  neatness  to  an  eye  wearied  with  the  rank 
luxuriance  of  tropical  hill-sides.  But  what  strikes 
one  most  in  the  prospect  is  the  singular  way  in 
which  every  conspicuous  height  is  crowned  by 
some  kind  of  monument  or  landmark,  giving  to 
each  portion  of  the  scene  an  individuality  and  a 
topographical  distinctness  of  its  own.  Here,  close 
at  hand,  is  the  Appuldurcombe  Obelisk,  built  on 
a  commanding  point  of  view  by  Sir  Richard 
Worsley,  the  former  owner  of  the  great  house 
which  stands  in  solitary  grandeur,  shrouded  by 
the  elms  of  the  park,  at  our  feet.  The  obelisk 
has  been  struck  by  lightning  and  shaken  to  its 
very  base  ;  while  the  topmost  stones  have  fallen 
in  a  long  line  on  the  down,  still  preserving  their 
relative  positions,  and  impressing  the  visitor  with 
a  very  massive  idea  of  ruiu.  Looking  northward, 
we  see  the  monument  on  Bembridge  cliffs  and  the 
sea-mark  on  Ashey  Down  ;  while  on  the  opposite 
side  the  St.  Catherine's  beacon  and  Cook's  Castle 
stand  out  among  a  number  of  minor  pillars.  We 
bad  been  discussing  some  question  of  aesthetics 
on  our  way,  and,  as  we  gazed  round  upon  this 
exquisite  view — a  mere  hackneyed  English  scene, 
it  is  true,  and  perhaps  on  that  account  not  worth 
the  trouble  of  a  description  to  those  who  measure 
Nature  with  a  foot-rule,  but  lovely,  indeed,  to  any 
one  who  worships  beauty  for  its  own  sake,  and 
acknowledges  it  wherever  he  may  find  it  —  my 
friend  inquired  of  me,  "  How  do  you  account,  on 
general  aesthetic  principles,  for  the  pleasure  we 
derive  from  an  obelisk  ?  " 

The  question  was  not  one  to  be  answered  in  a 
moment.  Indeed,  the  actual  analysis  into  simple 
psychological  elements  of  any  aesthetic  object, 
however  slight,  is  a  lengthy  task  ;  for  many  sep- 


arate factors,  intellectual,  emotional,  and  sensu- 
ous, must  be  taken  into  consideration  and  duly 
coordinated.  We  talked  over  the  point  as  we 
returned  to  Ventnor,  and  several  other  observa- 
tions occurred  to  me  in  the  course  of  our  rambles 
afterward ;  so  I  propose  to  set  down  in  this  paper 
the  net  result  of  our  joint  investigations.  The 
starting-point  of  our  exposition  will  seem  at  first 
sight  sufficiently  remote  from  any  question,  either 
of  obelisks  or  of  aesthetics,  but  I  trust  that  as  I 
proceed  its  relevancy  to  the  main  subject  will  be- 
come clearer. 

A  baby  of  my  acquaintance,  aged  seven  months, 
is  very  fond  of  hearing  a  spoon  knocked  against 
a  finger-glass.  One  day  the  spoon  waB  put  into 
her  hands,  and,  after  a  series  of  random  efforts, 
she  at  last  succeeded,  half  by  accident,  in  strik- 
ing the  glass  and  producing  the  musical  note  which 
pleases  her.  This  performance  gave  her  the  most 
intense  delight,  as  was  evidenced  by  her  smiles 
and  chuckles.  She  continued  her  endeavors  with 
varying  success,  and  soon  learned*  how  to  direct 
her  muscles  so  as  to  bring  about  the  desired  ef- 
fect. Every  exercise  of  this  power  gives  her 
acute  pleasure,  and  is  followed  by  a  crow  of  ex- 
citement and  a  glance  around  which  asks  mutely 
for  the  sympathy  or  approbation  of  by-standers. 
Evidently,  even  at  this  early  age,  the  gratification 
of  power,  the  pleasure  of  successful  effort,  is  a 
feeling  within  the  range  of  her  unfolding  intelli- 
gence. 

Another  baby,  half  a  year  older,  is  in  the 
habit  of  pursing  her  lips  and  blowing  upon  her 
papa,  who  thereupon  pretends  to  be  knocked 
down,  and  falls  upon  the  carpet.  In  this  case 
the  gratification  is  even  more  evident,  and  the 
supposed  effect  is  more  conspicuous  and  striking. 
Other  children,  again,  push  down  grownup  peo- 
ple with  their  hands,  and  are  delighted  at  their 
resistless  fall.  The  main  element  in  all  these 
pleasures  is  the  production  of  a  noticeable  ef- 
fect ;  and  it  is  obviously  desirable,  both  for  the 
individual  and  the  race,  that  such  efficient  action 
should  be  followed  by  pleasurable  feeling.  The 
power  to  produce  great  mechanical  results  and 
the  will  to  initiate  them  are  necessary  factors  of 
success  in  the  struggle  for  life  among  the  higher 
animals. 

Boys  a  little  more  advanced  in  nervous  and 
muscular  development  derive  analogous  pleasure 


ESTHETIC  AXALYSIS  OF  AN   OBELISK. 


153 


from  somewhat  similar  exercises.  They  love  to 
roll  huge  stones  close  to  the  edge  of  a  hill,  and 
then  watch  them  tearing  down  its  slopes,  rooting 
up  the  plants  or  shrubs,  and  thundering  into  the 
valley  beneath.  At  other  times,  they  band  to- 
gether to  fling  a  small  bowlder  into  a  lake,  and 
revel  in  the  exhibition  of  power  given  by  its 
splash  and  roar.  And  this  enjoyment  is  proba- 
bly not  confined  to  human  beings  ;  for  our  con- 
geners, the  monkeys,  delight  in  similar  displays; 
and  those  of  them  who  are  trained  in  the  Malay 
peninsula  to  pick  and  fling  down  cocoanuts  from 
the  palms,  chuckle  and  grin  over  each  nut  as  it 
falls,  with  true  boyish  merriment. 

But  the  most  conspicuous  manifestation  of 
these  feelings  is  to  be  seen  when  the  constructive 
faculty  comes  into  play.  The  first  desire  of  chil- 
dren in  their  games  is  to  build  something  biff,  a 
visible  trophy  of  their  architectural  skill.  On 
the  sea-shore  they  pile  up  great  mounds  of  sand, 
or  dig  a  pit  surrounded  by  a  mimic  rampart.  If 
they  can  get  at  a  heap  of  bricks  or  deal  planks, 
they  ^  ill  arrange  them  in  a  pyramid,  and  will 
judge  their  success  by  the  height  which  they  can 
attain.  In  doors,  their  ambition  finds  vent  in 
card-houses,  or  lofty  edifices  of  wooden  blocks. 
In  winter,  the  big  snowball  forms  a  never-failing 
centre  of  attraction;  while  American  and  Cana- 
dian boys  obtain  a  firm  material  in  the  frozen 
snow  for  neatly-built  palaces,  which  sometimes 
outlast  an  entire  week.  But,  above  all,  it  is  im- 
portant in  every  case  to  notice  that  children 
invariably  call  the  attention  of  older  people  to 
these  great  effects  which  their  hands  and  arms 
have  produced.  The  first  element  of  the  sublime 
is  possibly  to  be  sought  in  this  sympathetic  admi- 
ration for  the  big  products  of  childish  effort. 

Among  the  earliest  works  of  human  art 
which  arc  yet  left  to  us  from  the  sacrilegious 
hands  of  landlords  and  pashas,  the  same  love  for 
something  big  is  still  to  be  noticed.  The  chief- 
tain's body  lies  beneath  a  big  tumulus,  or  its 
resting-place  is  marked  by  a  cromlech  of  big  un- 
hewed  stones.  The  Gael  crowns  his  mountain-top 
with  a  monstrous  cairn  ;  the  Cymry  pile  the  long 
avenues  of  Carnac  ;  or  perhaps  a  still  earlier  race 
lift  into  their  places  the  huge  rocks  of  Stone- 
henge.  Italy  and  Greece  still  show  us  the  Cyclo- 
pean masonry  of  Volaterras  and  Tiryns;  while 
farther  east,  the  Pyramids,  the  Sphinx,  the  colos- 
sal Memnon,  the  endless  colonnades  of  Karnak, 
bear  witness  to  the  self-same  delight  in  bigness 
for  its  own  sake,  as  a  monument  of  power,  per- 
sonal or  vicarious. 

So  here,  almost  without  knowing  it,  we  have 


t  traced  back  our  obelisk  to  the  land  of  its  birth, 
and  seen  the  main  reasons  which  gave  it  origin. 
All  phallic  speculations  would  obviously  be  out  of 
place  here  ;  for  even  if  we  grant  that  the  obelisk 
is  in  its  first  conception  a  phallus  (which  is  far 
from  certain),  at  any  rate  our  present  point  will 
be  gained  if  objectors  allow  us  in  return  that  it 
is  a  very  biff  phallus.  Beginning  as  a  rough 
monolith,  in  all  probability,  the  obelisk  assumed 
in  Egypt  the  form  in  which  we  know  it  best,  a 
massive,  tapering,  sharply-pointed  square  column 
of  polished  granite.  A  few  more  words  must  be 
devoted  to  its  historical  growth  before  we  pass 
on  to  its  modern  aesthetic  value. 

Egypt  is  the  land  of  colossi.  The  notion  of 
bigness  seems  to  have  held  a  closer  grip  over  the 
despotic  Egyptian  mind  than  over  any  other 
psychological  specimen  with  which  we  are  ac- 
quainted. It  does  not  need  a  journey  up  the 
Nile  to  show  us  their  fondness  for  the  immense; 
half  an  hour  at  the  British  Museum  is  quite  suffi- 
cient. Now,  why  did  the  Egyptians  so  revel  in 
enormous  works  of  art  ?  This  question  is  usually 
answered  by  saying  that  their  absolute  rulers 
loved  thus  to  show  the  vastness  of  their  power ; 
and  doubtless  the  answer  is  very  true  as  far  as 
it  goes,  and  quite  falls  in  with  our  theory  given 
above.  But  it  does  not  always  happen  that  de- 
spotic monarchs  build  pyramids  or  Memnons ; 
and  the  further  question  suggests  itself,  What 
was  there  in  the  circumstances  of  Egypt  which 
determined  this  special  and  exceptional  display 
of  architectural  extravagance  ?  As  we  cast  about 
for  an  answer,  an  analogy  strikes  us  at  once. 
Taking  the  world  as  a  whole,  I  think  it  will  be 
seen  that  the  greatest  architectural  achievements 
are  to  be  found  in  the  great  plain  countries  ;  and 
that  mountain  districts  are  comparatively  bare  of 
large  edifices.  The  plain  of  Lombardy,  the  plain 
of  the  Low  Countries,  the  plain  of  Chartres,  the 
Lower  Rhine  Valley,  the  eastern  counties — these 
are  the  spots  where  our  great  European  cathe- 
drals are  to  be  found ;  and,  if  we  pass  over  to 
Asia,  we  shall  similarly  discover  the  country  for 
pagodas,  mosques,  and  temples,  in  the  broad 
basins  of  the  Euphrates,  the  Ganges,  the  Indus, 
the  Hoang-ho,  and  the  Yang-tse-kiang.  No 
doubt  castles  and  fortresses  are  to  be  found 
everywhere  on  heights  for  purposes  of  defense ; 
but  purely  ornamental  architecture  is  most  flour- 
ishing in  level  expanses  of  land.  Now,  there  is 
no  level  expanse  in  the  world,  habitable  by  man, 
so  utterly  unbroken  and  continuous  as  the  valley 
of  the  Nile.  Herein,  doubtless,  we  have  a  clew 
to  the  special  Egyptian  love  for  colossal  under- 


154 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


takings  of  every  sort.  Let  us  proceed  to  apply 
it  psychologically. 

Children  at  play  on  the  sands  do  not  pile  up 
their  great  mound  in  the  midst  of  rocks  and 
bowlders.  On  the  contrary,  they  choose  a  level 
space,  where  no  neighboring  object  overpeers 
and  casts  into  the  shade  their  little  colossus — 
not  by  premeditation  and  concert,  of  course,  but 
by  instinctive  feeling  that  a  big  heap  will  look 
bigger  just  here.  So  with  primitive  man :  he 
puts  his  tumulus  not  in  the  midst  of  natural  ele- 
vations which  mock  his  puny  efforts,  but  in  some 
wide  plain  where  its  size  comes  out  by  contrast 
with  the  small  objects  around.  And,  as  civiliza- 
tion advances,  it  will  naturally  follow  that  man 
will  most  indulge  his  love  for  conspicuous  dis- 
plays of  material  power  in  those  places  where 
such  displays  produce  the  greatest  eifect.  In 
mountain-countries,  man's  handiwork  is  apt  to  be 
dwarfed  by  the  proximity  of  Nature's  majestic 
piles,  and  his  amour  propre  is  not  constantly 
stimulated  to  some  greater  and  yet  greater  achiev- 
ment ;  but  in  wide  and  level  valleys  the  effects 
he  can  produce  are  so  relatively  striking,  that 
every  despot  is  urged  on  by  an  overwhelming 
desire  to  outdo  the  triumphs  of  his  predecessors. 
From  Timour's  pyramid  of  skulls  to  the  Arc  de 
l'Etoile  in  Paris  one  sees  the  same  spirit  of  boast- 
fulness,  allied  with  the  same  predatory  instinct, 
running  through  the  long  line  of  columns,  pillars, 
triumphal  arches,  and  Nelson  monuments. 

A  word  must  be  added  to  prevent  misconcep- 
tion. Undoubtedly  some  splendid  architectural 
works  are  to  be  found  in  mountainous  districts  ; 
but  they  are  the  exception,  not  the  rule.  And 
even  so  they  are  apt  to  be  rather  military  than 
ornamental,  owing  their  beauty  more  to  inciden- 
tal circumstances  than  to  deliberate  design.  Be- 
ginning with  the  rude  earthworks  which  cap  most 
heights  in  the  British  Isles,  we  go  on  to  the  Hel- 
lenic Acropolis  and  the  Italian  Arx,  the  ruined 
castles  of  Rhineland,  the  fortress-crowned  heights 
of  Stirling  and  Dumbarton,  the  frowning  battle- 
ments of  Quebec  and  Gibraltar.  When  an  eccle- 
siastical character  has  been  given  to  such  build- 
ings, it  seldom  quite  obscures  their  original  war- 
like purpose.  Most  of  the  churches  dedicated  to 
St.  Michael,  the  militant  archangel  who  delights  in 
airy  pinnacles,  are  connected  with  adjoining  for- 
tresses; the  cathedrals  of  Zion  and  Durham  are 
fronted  by  the  castles  of  the  prince-bishop  ;  and 
the  Parthenon  or  the  Capitol  does  not  make  us 
forget  the  real  nature  of  the  Acropolis  and  the 
Arx.  Such  cases  are  very  different  from  those  of 
Milan  and  Cologne,  of  the  Memnonium  and  the 


Taj-Mahal.  Moreover,  it  is  worth  noticing  that 
in  mountainous  or  hilly  regions  the  buildings 
usually  crown  the  highest  points,  so  that  Nature 
aids  art  instead  of  obscuring  it.  If  a  tumulus 
must  be  placed  in  a  hill-country,  it  is  piled  on  the 
top  of  the  most  conspicuous  elevation :  and  all 
landmarks,  from  cairns  to  Hardy  monuments,  are 
perched  in  similar  situations.  But  this  point  is 
one  which  will  come  in  further  on. 

Egypt,  then,  being  the  flattest  of  all  flat  coun- 
tries, is  the  one  where  we  might  naturally  expect 
the  taste  for  bigness  to  reach  the  most  portentous 
development.  Aided  by  the  existence  of  a  simple 
autocracy  and  an  overwhelming  military  spirit,  it 
produced  all  those  forms  of  colossi  with  which 
we  are  so  familiar ;  and  among  them  our  present 
subject,  the  obelisk.  But  so  far  we  have  only 
considered  its  historical  origin ;  we  have  now  to 
inquire  what  are  the  points  about  it  which  give 
it  aesthetic  beauty  in  our  eyes  at  the  present 
day. 

In  a  formal  analysis  it  would  be  necessary  to 
divide  the  elements  of  our  feeling  into  various 
classes — the  sensuous,  the  emotional,  and  the  in- 
tellectual ;  but  for  our  immediate  purpose  it  will 
perhaps  be  better  if  we  take  the  complex  total  in 
its  ensemble,  and  notice  its  different  factors  in  the 
order  of  their  prominence.  To  do  so  properly, 
let  us  begin  with  the  obelisk  in  itself,  viewed  ab- 
solutely, and  apart  from  all  considerations  of  lo- 
cality, fitness,  and  association. 

As  we  look  up  at  our  present  specimen,  the 
first  point  which  strikes  us  is  its  size.  It  appeals 
to  the  emotion  of  the  sublime  in  its  simplest 
form,  the  admiration  for  the  literally  great  in 
man's  handiwork.  We  think  instinctively :  "  What 
a  hugh  mass  of  stone  this  is  !  How  it  towers  up 
into  the  air !  How  many  men  it  must  have  taken 
to  raise  it  to  that  heisrht ! "  In  short,  one's  earli- 
est  feeling  is  summed  up  in  a  note  of  admiration. 
The  Appuldurcombe  Obelisk  is  formed  of  sepa> 
rate  stones,  each  of  immense  size,  and  we  see 
immediately  how  impossible  it  would  be  for  our 
unaided  efforts  to  roll  over  even  a  single  one  of 
them.  But  most  other  obelisks  are  monolithic, 
and  in  that  case  our  direct  affection  of  the  sub- 
blime  is  far  more  vivid.  We  picture  to  ourselves 
the  difficulty  of  hewing  that  immense,  unbroken 
mass  from  the  solid  rock  of  its  parent-quarry ; 
the  care  that  must  have  been  taken  to  insure  it 
against  fracture  or  chipping ;  the  mechanical 
power  involved  in  raising  it  successfully  to  its 
final  site,  and  planting  it  firmly  on  its  pedestal. 
The  most  conspicuous  element  in  our  aesthetic 
pleasure  on  viewing  an  obelisk  is  clearly  the  sym- 


^ESTHETIC  ANALYSIS  OF  AN  OBELISK 


155 


pathetic  reflex  of  that  primitive  Egyptian  delight 
in  something  big. 

The  next  clement  in  order  of  conspicuousness 
is  its  form.  This  it  is  which  on  the  one  hand  marks 
off  the  obelisk,  as  such,  from  any  other  massive 
monument,  and  s>\\  the  other  hand  adds  a  further 
element  of  beauty  when  massiveness  is  wanting. 
Any  obelisk,  great  or  small,  pleases  us  (irrespec- 
tive of  its  surroundings)  by  its  graceful,  tapering 
shape.  It  is  not  like  the  pyramid,  a  squat  heap 
of  stones,  placed  in  the  position  where  the  least 
possible  mass  is  supported  by  the  greatest  possi- 
ble base.  On  the  contrary,  while  the  stability  of 
the  shaft  is  sufficiently  insured,  its  slender  di- 
mensions yield  the  notion  of  comparative  slight- 
ness.  Nor  is  it  like  the  column,  whose  natural 
purpose  is  that  of  a  support  to  some  other  body, 
and  which  always  looks  ridiculous  when  sur- 
mounted by  a  figure ;  an  absurdity  conspicuous 
enough  in  Trafalgar  Square  and  the  Place  Ven- 
dome,  but  reaching  a  culminating  point  in  the 
meaningless  colonnades  of  the  Taylorian  Institute 
at  Oxford.  The  column  has  no  natural  termina- 
tion, and  so,  when  it  is  wrested  from  its  original 
intention,  it  always  disappoints  us  by  its  useless 
capital,  which  obviously  implies  a  superincumbent 
mass;  but  the  obelisk  has  no  other  object  to 
serve  save  that  of  beauty,  and  its  summit  is 
planed^off  into  the  most  graceful  and  appropriate 
form.  Again,  the  simplicity  of  its  outline  pleases 
us.  If  the  angles  were  cut  down  so  as  to  make 
an  octagoiial  plinth,  we  should  feel  that  additional 
trouble  had  been  taken  with  no  additional  effect. 
But,  as  it  now  stands,  we  see  in  its  plain  sides  and 
rectangular  corners  a  native  grandeur  which 
would  be  lost  by  more  ambitious  decoration. 
Carve  its  contour,  ornament  its  simple  summit, 
bevel  its  straight  edges,  and  all  its  impressiveness 
is  gone  at  once. 

From  these  complex  considerations  of  form, 
mainly  composed  of  intellectual  factors,  we  may 
pass  on  to  those  more  elementary  ones,  the  effect 
of  which  is  rather  directly  sensuous.  The  obelisk 
is  bounded  by  straight  lines  whose  length  is  not 
excessive,  and  whose  direction  can  be  followed 
by  the  eye  with  ease  and  gratification.  Its  up- 
ward tapering  form  adapts  itself  admirably  to  the 
natural  convergence  of  the  lines  of  vision.  Its 
four  sides  can  be  grasped  at  once  without  con- 
fusion, and  its  pointed  top,  leveled  all  round, 
gives  an  obvious  and  pleasing  termination  to  the 
muscular  sweep.  Then,  too,  it  is  throughout 
symmetrical,  and  that  in  a  manner  which  requires 
no  effort  for  its  comprehension.  If  one  side 
bulged  a  little,  if  one  angle  were  untrue,  if  one 


line  of  slope  at  the  summit  did  not  "come 
square"  with  its  neighbor,  if  anywhere  there 
were  a  breach  of  symmetry,  an  indication  of  un- 
workmanlike carelessness,  all  our  pleasure  would 
be  gone.  But  when  we  see  that  the  artisan  has 
exactly  carried  out  his  ideal,  simple  as  that  ideal 
is,  we  are  pleased  by  the  evidence  of  skill  and 
care,  and  sensuously  gratified  by  the  simplifica- 
tion of  our  visual  act  in  apprehending  the  form 
produced. 

Closely  allied  to  these  sources  of  pleasure  are 
those  which  depend  upon  the  polish  of  a  granite 
obelisk.  Sensuously  we  derive  two  kinds  of 
gratification  from  this  property :  the  visual  gloss 
gives  an  agreeable  stimulus  to  the  eye,  while  the 
tactual  smoothness  affords  pleasure  to  the  ner- 
vous terminals  of  the  hand.  Further,  it  is  intel- 
lectually gratifying  as  another  symbol  of  the  care 
bestowed  by  the  workman  upon  his  work.  And 
when  in  certain  cases  we  add  to  the  last-named 
idea  the  historical  conception  of  the  inadequate 
tools  with  which  our  Egyptian  artist  must  have 
wrought  this  exquisite  sheen,  we  raise  our  feeling 
at  once  to  a  far  higher  emotional  leveL 

But  we  have  not  yet  exhausted  the  elements 
of  beauty  and  interest  given  by  an  obelisk,  even 
apart  from  special  circumstances  of  site  and  sur- 
roundings. Its  surface  may  be  deeply  scored 
with  hieroglyphics,  and  this,  though  in  one  sense 
a  detriment  to  the  general  effect,  yet  gives  a  cer- 
tain detailed  interest  of  its  own.  We  can  notice, 
too,  how  this  carving  of  the  plane  surfaces,  which 
nowhere  interferes  with  the  typical  outline,  does 
not  disfigure  our  obelisk  in  at  all  the  same  way  as 
ornamentation  of  its  edges  or  summit  would  dis- 
figure it.  The  hieroglyphics  leave  it  still  essen- 
tially the  same  as  ever ;  while  a  little  floral  dec- 
oration, a  few  scrolls  or  acanthus-leaves  at  its  criti- 
cal points,  would  make  it  something  totally  differ- 
ent and  vastly  inferior.  Again,  the  mere  color  and 
texture  of  the  stone  may  form  partial  elements  in 
the  total  result.  Red  granite,  closely  dappled 
with  points  of  crystalline  transparency,  or  blue 
and  gray  limestone,  shining  with  a  dull  and  sub- 
dued glossiness,  are  in  themselves  striking  com- 
ponents of  the  beauty  which  we  notice  in  particu- 
lar instances. 

When  we  pass  on  from  these  immediate  and 
general  impressions  to  those  more  special  ones 
which  are  given  by  historical  and  geographical 
association,  a  whole  flood  of  feelings  crowds  upon 
our  mind.  Let  us  try  to  disentangle  a  few  of  the 
most  prominent  strands,  again  in  the  order  of 
their  conspicuousness. 

Part  of  our  pleasure  in  viewing  such  an  erec- 


150 


TEE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


tion  is  undoubtedly  due  to  the  recognition,  "  This 
is  an  obelisk."  Every  cognition,  as  Mr.  Herbert 
Spencer  tells  us,  is  a  recognition  ;  and  every  rec- 
ognition is  in  itself,  apart  from  specialties,  pleas- 
urable. And,  when  an  educated  man  recognizes 
an  obelisk  as  such,  he  greets  it  as  an  old  acquaint- 
ance, around  which  cling  many  interesting  associa- 
tions of  time  and  place.  In  its  origin  it  is,  for  our 
present  purpose  at  least,  Egyptian  ;  and  we  see  in 
it  always  a  certain  Egyptian  massiveness,  solidity, 
simplicity,  grandeur.  While  to  the  merest  child 
or  boor  it  is  beautiful  for  its  form,  its  height,  its 
size,  its  gloss,  its  texture  ;  to  the  cultivated  mind 
it  is  further  beautiful  for  its  suggestions  of  a  dim 
past,  a  great  empire,  a  forgotten  language,  a  mighty 
race,  now  gone  forever,  but  once  the  teachers  and 
pioneers  of  humanity  on  its  upward  struggle  to 
light.  We  cannot  divorce  from  our  recognition 
of  its  shape  and  name  some  dim  recollection  of 
its  history  and  its  birthplace.  When  we  meet  it 
in  the  cemeteries  of  Western  America,  or  on  the 
hill-sides  of  sub-tropical  Australia,  it  carries  us 
back,  perhaps  unconsciously,  but  none  the  less 
effectively,  over  a  thousand  miles  and  ten  thou- 
sand years  to  the  temple-courts  of  Me  roe  or  the 
mitred  presence  of  Amenuph. 

If  we  feel  thus  in  the  case  of  any  obelisk,  still 
more  do  we  feel  so  in  the  case  of  an  actual  Egyp- 
tian obelisk.  It  makes  a  great  difference  in  the 
impressiveness  of  each  particular  block  of  stone 
whether  it  was  hewed  a  myriad  of  years  ago  in  the 
quarries  of  Syene,  or  last  year  in  the  quarries  of 
Aberdeen.  The  sublime  in  its  most  developed 
forms  comes  in  to  complicate  our  simple  sense 
of  beauty  when  we  have  to  deal  with  long-past 
time  and  the  relics  of  ancient  empire.  There  is  a 
great  gulf  between  the  child's  admiration  for  that 
big  pillar  of  polished  rock  and  the  cultivated 
man's  half  awe-struck  gaze  upon  that  sculptured 
monument  of  the  earliest  great  civilization  whose 
memory  has  come  down  to  us  across  the  abyss 
of  ages. 

More  or  less  remotely  present  in  some  few 
minds  will  be  the  still  earlier  history  of  that 
smooth  needle  of  serpentine.  The  fancy  will  run 
back  to  those  primaeval  days  when  the  action  of 
seething  subterranean  waves  melted  together  and 
fixed  into  solid  crystal  the  intricate  veins  of  green 
and  russet  whose  mazes  traverse  its  surface.  But 
the  eyes  that  so  turn  backward  instinctively  to 
the  first  beginnings  of  mundane  things  are  as  yet 
but  very  few,  and  we  need  hardly  follow  out  their 
speculations  further,  rather  satisfying  ourselves 
with  the  passing  observation  that  each  such  pro- 
longation of  our  field  of  vision  lays  open  before 


us  wider  and  yet  wider  expanses  for  the  exercise 
of  our  aesthetic  faculties  in  the  regions  of  the 
highest  and  truest  sublime. 

Thus  we  have  unraveled  a  few  among  the 
many  tangled  threads  of  semi-automatic  con- 
sciousness which  go  to  make  .up  our  idea  of 
beauty  in  the  case  of  an  obelisk  in  itself,  regard- 
ed without  any  reference  to  place  or  time.  Let 
us  now  turn  our  attention  awhile  to  the  question 
of  surrounding  circumstances,  and  inquire  how 
far  the  beauty  of  every  particular  obelisk  de- 
pends upon  its  harmony  with  neighboring  ob- 
jects. 

There  is  a  Dissenting  chapel  in  Oxford,  the 
four  corners  of  whose  roof  are  decorated — as  I 
suppose  the  architect  fondly  hoped — with  four 
obelisks  of  painted  stucco.  I  have  often  noticed 
in  passing  this  chapel  that  each  separate  obelisk, 
regarded  apart  from  its  incongruous  position,  is 
capable  of  yielding  considerable  pleasure  on  the 
score  of  form  alone,  even  in  spite  of  the  poor 
and  flimsy  material  of  which  it  is  composed. 
Some  faint  odor  of  Egyptian  solidity,  some  eva- 
nescent tinge  of  architectural  grace,  still  clings 
individually  about  every  one  of  these  brick-and- 
plaster  monstrosities.  Shoddy  though  they  are, 
they  nevertheless  suggest  the  notion  of  massive 
stone,  which  custom  has  associated  with  the  shape 
in  which  they  are  cast.  But  when  the  eye  turns 
from  each  isolated  pillar  to  the  whole  of  which 
they  form  a  part,  the  utter  incongruity  of  their 
position  overwhelms  one  with  its  absurdity. 
Wherever  else  an  obelisk  ought  to  be  set,  it  is 
clear  that  it  should  not  be  set  at  every  angle  of  a 
roof. 

On  the  other  hand,  as  we  look  away  from 
Appuldurcombe  over  to  the  monuments  which 
mark  and  individualize  every  ridge  in  the  dis- 
tance, we  see  that  an  obelisk,  placed  on  a  com- 
manding natural  height,  in  a  solitary  conspicu- 
ous position,  adds  to  the  beauty  of  certain  scenes 
instead  of  detracting  from  it.  Certain  scenes,  I 
am  careful  to  say ;  for  there  are  some  wild,  rocky 
districts  where  such  puny  decorations  only  reveal 
a  miserable  cockney  conceit.  But  in  typical 
English  undulating  country — such  a  country  as 
that  which  swells  on  every  side  of  Appuldur- 
combe— with  its  gentle  alternation  of  hill  and 
dale,  dotted  with  church-towers  and  stately  man- 
sions, a  monument  on  every  greater  ridge  is  an 
unmitigated  boon.  It  gives  the  eye  a  salient  ob- 
ject on  which  to  rest  as  it  sweeps  the  horizon. 
It  makes  up  in  part  for  the  want  of  jutting  peaks 
or  glacier-worn  bosses.  Above  all,  it  harmo- 
nizes with  the  "general  evidences  of  cultivation 


JESTUETIC  ANALYSIS  OF  AN  OBELISK. 


157 


and  painstaking  human  endeavor.  In  a  High- 
land glen  we  look  for  unmixed  Nature — purple 
heather,  brown  and  naked  roek,  brawling  stream, 
rugged  hill-side,  and  lonely  fir-trees  beaten  and 
distorted  by  the  wind.  But,  in  a  graceful  Eng- 
lish scene  like  this,  we  are  gratified  by  the  tri- 
umph of  man's  art — level  lawns,  green  or  golden 
cornfields,  lofty  steeples,  smooth  parks  shaded 
with  majestic  and  evenly-grown  oaks.  So,  in  the 
first  case,  we  are  displeased  by  any  obtrusion  of 
would-be  artistic  handicraft,  such  as  the  eigh- 
teenth century  officiously  foisted  upon  the  scenery 
it  admired ;  while  in  the  second  case  we  find  in 
these  purely  ornamental  structures  the  final  touch 
which  finishes  off  an  artificial  landscape.  In 
such  circumstances  the  obelisk  is  a  symbol  of 
loving  care,  giving  to  the  complex  picture  the 
one  element  which  it  lacks. 

Whatever  may  have  been  the  original  pur- 
pose of  the  obelisk — and  we  can  hardly  doubt 
that  it  had  once  a  religious  signification — its 
modern  use  is  the  one  thus  indicated,  as  a  mark 
or  salient  point  to  fix  the  eye  upon  a  critical  site, 
either  in  a  close  area  or  an  extended  prospect. 
When  we  employ  it  to  decorate  a  town,  we  place 
it  in  some  open  and  conspicuous  situation,  either 
in  the  centre  of  a  square,  or  where  roads  diverge, 
or  at  the  apex  of  a  triangular  green,  or  at  the 
point  of  bisection  in  one  side  of  a  bilaterally 
symmetrical  oblong.  When  we  use  it  for  rural 
decoration,  we  perch  it  on  the  summit  of  a 
rounded  and  sloping  hill.  It  does  not  look  well 
on  an  elevation  which  already  possesses  a  natu- 
ral peak  or  well-marked  crest ;  but  it  serves 
admirably  to  fasten  the  eye  on  the  otherwise 
doubtful  crown  of  a  long  and  sweeping  ridge. 
Again,  such  a  pillar  wquld  be  absurd  half-way 
up  a  hill,  where  it  would  hardly  come  out  against 
the  neighboring  background  of  green;  but  it 
stands  up  with  a  pleasing  boldness  against  the 
cold  gray  and  somewhat  monotonous  sky-line 
of  an  English  down.  In  short,  an  obelisk, 
viewed  apart  from  its  own  individuality,  and  with 
reference  to  the  whole  scene  in  which  it  fills  a 
place,  is  essentially  a  mark  to  call  attention  to 
the  site  on  which  it  stands.  Of  course,  a  column 
often  serves  the  same  purpose  ;  but,  then,  a  col- 
umn serves  it  badly,  and  an  obelisk  serves  it 
well.  It  is  just  because  it  does  so  that  it  has 
survived  to  the  present  day. 

If  we  look  at  a  few  such  individual  cases  we 
shall  find  yet  other  elements  in  the  complex  feel- 
ing of  beauty  and  fitness.  There  is  the  Luxor 
Obelisk  in  the  Place  de  la  Concorde.  Here  we  have 
all  the  usual  points  which  belong  to  the  form  as 


such,  to  the  massive  and  monolithic  character, 
to  the  high  polish  and  sombre  coloring,  to  the 
quaint  and  suggestive  hieroglyphics  with  which 
it  is  deeply  scored ;  and  we  have  also  the  addi- 
tional points  given  by  its  central  and  symmetri- 
cal position  in  a  noble  square,  marking,  as  it 
were,  a  node  in  the  long  vista  which  reaches  to 
the  Louvre  on  the  one  side  and  the  Arc  de  Tri- 
omphe  on  the  other;  but.  over  and  above  all 
these  factors  in  our  complex  emotional  state, 
there  is  a  strange  sense  of  irony  in  the  colloca- 
tion of  that  mute  memorial  of  a  solid  and  patient 
primeval  race  beside  the  gilded  dome  of  the  In- 
valides,  the  brand-new  architectural  elegancies  of 
the  Haussmann  order,  and  the  frivolous  modern 
throng  which  pours  ceaselessly  past  it  up  the 
Champs  Elysees.  I  have  seen  that  relic  of  the 
Pharaohs  illuminated  with  gas-jets  and  colored 
lanterns  in  honor  of  the  Fete  Napoleon.  And  yet 
few  will  be  disposed  to  deny  that  there  is,  by 
reason  of  this  very  contrast,  a  sort  of  odd  fitness 
in  the  present  position  of  the  Luxor  Obelisk. 

Now,  let  us  turn  to  a  very  different  instance, 
the  Speke  memorial  in  Kensington  Gardens. 
Here  we  have  to  deal  with  a  perfectly  modern 
specimen,  lacking  all  the  historical  interest  of  the 
Colonne  de  Luxor.  But  we  have  still  the  grace- 
ful form,  the  hard  and  solid  material,  the  glis- 
tening surface,  the  suggestion  of  antique  work- 
manship. And  here  the  obelisk  stands  at  the 
end  of  a  green  vista ;  it  is  approached  by  a  close- 
cut  sward,  and  it  forms  a  pleasant  termination  to 
a  pretty,  if  strictly  artificial,  scene.  Moreover, 
there  is  a  solemn  appropriateness  in  the  choice 
of  an  old  Egyptian  form  for  the  commemoration 
of  a  fearless  and  ill-fated  Nile  explorer ;  while 
the  brevity  and  simplicity  of  the  legend — the 
single  word  "  Speke  "  engraved  on  its  base — is 
in  admirable  keeping  with  the  general  character- 
istics of  the  obelisk.  On  the  whole,  it  is  proba- 
bly the  best-chosen  and  best-situated  monument 
in  London. 

Another  similar  structure  with  which  many 
of  us  are  familiar  may  supply  a  passing  illustra- 
tion. It  is  a  column  this  time,  not  an  obelisk, 
but  it  will  serve  equally  well  to  point  the  moral 
in  hand.  On  the  heights  which  bound  the  val- 
ley of  the  Niagara  and  overlook  the  sleepy  waters 
of  Lake  Ontario  stands  a  Corinthian  column,  sur- 
mounted by  a  statue,  and  known  as  Brock's  monu- 
ment. As  one  passes  down  the  river,  leaving 
behind  the  great  cataract  itself,  and  the  pine-clad 
ravine  through  which  the  wdiirlpool  rapids  surge 
with  ceaseless  foam,  a  turn  of  the  stream  brings 
one  suddenly  in  view  of  a  level  reach  which  forms 


158 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


part  of  the  monotonous  Ontario  basin.  Brock's 
monument  stands  at  the  very  edge  of  the  higher 
lands  before  they  dip  into  this  low-lying  plain. 
If  it  stood  in  Waterloo  Place,  the  visitor  would 
pass  it  by  with  the  same  carelessly  contemptuous 
glance  which  ho  vouchsafes  in  passing  to  the 
Duke  of  York's  Column.  But  on  the  banks  of 
a  groat  American  stream  the  righteous  indigna- 
tion which  man  naturally  feels  toward  a  sup- 
porter with  nothing  to  support  is  waived  in  favor 
of  other  associations.  In  the  midst  of  a  wide, 
half-tilled  expanse,  still  dotted  with  stumps  of 
trees  and  interspersed  with  shabby  wooden  vil- 
lages, that  tall  shaft  of  sculptured  stone,  in  mem- 
ory  of  a  British  soldier,  has  an  air  of  European 
solidity  and  ancient  civilization  that  contrasts 
well  with  the  shuffling  modern  appearance  of 
everything  else  in  the  prospect.  All  other  hu- 
man additions  to  the  neighborhood  of  Niagara — 
the  big  wooden  hotels  with  their  sham  cupolas, 
the  line  of  bazaars  with  their  sham  Indians,  the 
paper-mills  of  Luna  Island,  with  their  intense- 
ly realistic  appurtenances — are  simply  hideous. 
But  that  one  touch  of  familiar  European  art, 
spurious  as  it  is  in  itself,  can  hardly  fail  to  raise 
a  thrill  of  pleasurable  surprise  and  grateful  rec- 
ognition in  every  visitor  from  the  older  lands 
across  the  Atlantic. 

Perhaps  it  is  this  very  consciousness  of  con- 
trast which  fills  Greenwood  and  Mount  Auburn 
with  Ionic  temples  or  Koman  mausoleums.  Bad 
as  is  generally  the  taste  displayed  in  such  struct- 
ures and  the  choice  of  their  position,  an  occasion- 
al success  half  redeems  the  many  failures.  A 
monument  which  struck  me  much  in  this  respect 
is  situated  in  the  graveyard  of  a  church  in  the 
mountain  district  of  Jamaica.  As  you  ride  down 
from  the  Newcastle  cantonment  you  pass  through 
a  narrow  horse-path,  almost  choked  with  tropical 
ferns,  wild  brushwood,  and  spreading  aloe-plants. 
But  when  you  reach  this  little  churchyard,  neatly 
kept  and  planted  with  English-looking  flowers, 
you  see  a  plain  obelisk  of  polished  Aberdonian 
granite,  whose  simple  gracefulness  could  not  of- 
fend the  most  fastidious  eye,  while  the  evidence 
of  care  and  comparative  culture  strikes  the  mind 
at  once  with  a  pleasant  relief. 

There  are  many  other  cases  nearer  home  of 
similar  erections  which  might  be  examined,  did 
space  permit,  such  as  the  Baxter  monument  near 
Kidderminster,  the  various  London  and  Paris 
columns,  the  Colonne  de  la  Grande  Armee  at  Bou- 
logne, and  so  forth.  But  the  instances  already 
given  will  suffice  to  mark  the  complexity  which 
is   introduced   by  consideration   of  surrounding 


circumstances.  It  would  be  interesting,  too,  to 
compare  them  as  regards  their  origin  and  purpose, 
their  harmonies  and  contrasts,  with  the  Highland 
cairn  and  the  Welsh  maen-ltir,  the  white  horses 
of  Calne  and  Wantage,  the  arches  of  Titus  and 
Severus,  the  pillars  of  Byzantium,  the  minarets 
of  Delhi,  the  pagodas  of  Kew  and  Peking,  the 
campanili  of  Italy,  the  steeples  of  our  own  village 
churches,  and  the  Albert,  Scott,  Stewart,  and 
Martyrs'  memorials.  But  such  a  treatment  of 
the  subject  would  probably  prove  too  exhaustive 
for  even  the  most  minutely  conscientious  student, 
and  perhaps  their  relations  are  sufficiently  hinted 
even  in  the  brief  list  we  have  just  strung  togeth- 
er. Let  us  pass  on  to  see  the  net  results  of  our 
previous  inquiry. 

At  first  sight  few  esthetic  objects  could  seem 
simpler  of  explanation  than  an  obelisk.  Com- 
pared with  an  historical  painting,  or  a  lyric  poem, 
or  an  operatic  aria,  or  even  a  landscape,  it  is  but 
a  single  element  by  the  side  of  the  many  which 
go  to  compose  those  complex  wholes.  But  when 
we  proceeded  to  analyze  this  seemingly  element- 
ary factor  in  the  whole  scene  which  lay  before 
us  from  Appuldurcombe,  we  saw  that  it  is  really 
itself  made  up  of  a  thousand  different  threads 
of  feeling,  sensuous,  intellectual,  and  emotional. 
While  most  theorists  are  ready  to  account  for 
every  manifestation  of  beauty  by  a  single  uniform 
principle,  actual  analysis  revealed  to  us  the  fact 
that  even  the  most  apparently  uncompounded  per- 
ception depended  for  its  pleasurable  effect  upon 
a  whole  mass  of  complicated  causes.  Some  of 
these  factors  are  immediate  and  universal,  appeal- 
ing to  the  senses  of  child  and  savage  and  culti- 
vated man  alike;  others  are  mediate  and  special, 
being  entirely  relative  to  the  knowledge  and  emo- 
tional constitution  of  the  individual  percipient. 
We  will  sum  them  up  briefly  under  the  different 
categories  into  which  they  would  fall  in  a  sys- 
tematic scheme  of  our  aesthetic  nature. 

Sensuously,  the  obelisk  has  tactual  smoothness 
and  visual  gloss ;  a  simple,  graceful,  and  easily- 
apprehended  form,  and  sometimes  delicate  or 
variegated  coloring,  as  well  as  crystalline  texture. 
Ill  special  cases  it  may  also  afford  harmonious  re- 
lief from  neighboring  tints,  and  may  stand  out 
with  pleasing  boldness  against  a  monotonous  ho- 
rizon. 

Emotionally,  the  obelisk  appeals  to  the  affec- 
tion of  the  sublime,  both  directly,  by  its  massive 
size  and  weight,  and  indirectly,  by  its  suggestion 
of  remote  antiquity  and  despotic  power.  It 
arouses  the  sympathetic  admiration  of  skill  and 
honest  workmanship,  and  in  special  cases  it  re- 


BOOKS  AND   CRITICS. 


159 


calls  historical  or  geographical  associations,  and 
brings  back  to  the  spectator  familiar  scenes  in 
the  midst  of  unfamiliar  surroundings,  besides 
yielding  grateful  evidence  of  human  care  and  in- 
dustry. 

Intellectually,  the  obelisk  accords  with  the 
natural  love  of  symmetry,  both  in  itself,  owing  to 
the  even  arrangement  of  its  sides  and  angles,  and 
with  reference  to  its  surroundings,  in  those  cases 
where  it  occupies  the  central  or  nodal  position  in 
a  regular  inclosure.  In  a  landscape,  it  yields  us 
the  pleasurable  feeling  of  individuality  and  recog- 
nizability,  aiding  us  in  the  determination  of  dis- 
tant topographical  details.  In  a  city,  it  decorates 
and  defines  the  noticeable  sites.  And  in  all  cases 
alike  it  produces  either  the  intellectual  pleasure 
resulting  from  a  sense  of  harmony  with  neighbor- 
ing conditions,  or  the  intellectual  discomfort  due 
to  a  consciousness  of  discord  and  incongruity. 

Now,  if  ano  belisk,  with  all  its  apparent  sim- 
plicity, really  involves  so  immense  a  number  of 


feelings  for  its  proper  perception,  we  may  per- 
haps form  some  dim  idea  of  the  infinite  plexus 
of  feelings  which  are  concerned  in  the  proper 
perception  of  a  great  work  of  art.  We  may  thus 
be  led,  by  an  easy  example,  to  hesitate  before  we 
accept  those  current  aesthetic  dogmas  which  at- 
tribute the  sense  of  beauty  to  any  one  faculty, 
intellectual  or  emotional.  And  we  may  conclude 
that  every  separate  thrill  of  that  developed  emo- 
tion which  we  call  the  consciousness  of  beauty  is 
ultimately  analyzable  into  an  immense  number  of 
factors,  the  main  and  original  members  of  which 
are  purely  sensuous,  while  its  minor  and  deriva- 
tive members  are  more  or  less  distinctly  ideal. 
To  the  child  and  the  savage  a  beautiful  object  is 
chiefly  one  which  gives  immediate  and  pleasura- 
ble stimulation  to  the  eye  or  the  ear  :  to  the  culti- 
vated man,  a  beautiful  object  is  still  the  same  in 
essence,  with  the  superadded  gratifications  of  the 
highly-evolved  intelligence  and  moral  nature. — 
Cornhill  Magazine. 


BOOKS  AXD  CRITICS.1 

Br  MAKE  PATTISON. 


BEFORE  advancing  any  statements  which  may 
appear  to  you  doubtful,  I  will  bespeak 
your  favorable  attention  by  saying  something 
which  cannot  be  contradicted. 

A  man  should  not  talk  about  what  he  does 
not  know.  That  is  a  proposition  which  must  be 
granted  me.  I  will  go  on  to  say  further — it  is 
not  the  same  thing — a  man  should  speak  of  what 
he  knows.  When  it  was  proposed  to  me  to  say 
something  to  you  this  evening,  I  wished  that  what 
I  said  should  be  about  something  I  knew. 

I  think  I  do  know  something  about  the  use  of 
books.  Not  the  contents  of  books,  but  the  value 
and  use  of  them.  All  men  have  read  some  books. 
Many  have  read  much.  There  are  many  men 
who  have  read  more  books  than  I  have.  Few  in 
this  busy,  energetic  island  in  which  we  live  can 
say,  what  I  have  to  confess  of  myself,  that  my 
whole  life  has  been  passed  in  handling  books. 

The  books  of  which  we  are  going  to  speak  to- 
night are  the  books  of  our  day — modern  litera- 
ture, or  what  are  commonly  called  "  new  books." 

So  various  are  the  contents  of  the  many-col- 
ored volumes  which  solicit  our  attention  month 
after  month  for  at  least  nine  months  of  the  year 

1 A  lecture  delivered  October  29,  1877. 


that  it  may  seem  an  impossible  thing  to  render 
any  account  of  so  many-sided  a  phenomenon  in 
the  short  space  of  one  lecture.  But  I  am  not 
proposing  to  pass  in  review  book  by  book,  or 
writer  by  writer — that  would  be  endless.  I  am 
not  proposing  to  you  to  speak  of  individuals  at 
all ;  I  want  you  to  take  a  comprehensive  point 
of  view,  to  consider  our  books  en  masse,  as  a  col- 
lective phenomenon — say  from  such  a  point  of 
view  as  is  indicated  by  the  questions,  "  Who 
write  them  ?  Who  read  them  ?  Why  do  they 
write  or  read  them  ?  What  is  the  educational  or 
social  value  of  the  labor  so  expended  in  reading 
or  writing  ?  " 

Literature  is  a  commodity,  and  as  such  it  is 
subject  to  economic  law.  Books,  like  any  other 
commodity,  can  only  be  produced  by  the  com- 
bination of  labor  and  capital — the  labor  of  the 
author,  the  capital  of  the  publisher.  They  would 
not  be  written  unless  the  author  labored  to  write 
them.  They  could  not.  be  printed  unless  there 
was  somebody  ready  to  advance  money  for  the 
paper  and  the  work  of  the  printing-press.  The 
publisher,  the  capitalist,  risks  his  money  on  a 
book  because  he  expects  to  turn  it  over  with  a 
trade-profit — say  twelve  per  cent. — on  it.    On 


1G0 


THE  POPULAR  SCIEXCE  M0XTHLY.-SUPPLE2IEXT. 


the  capitalist  side  the  production  is  purely  a  com- 
mercial transaction  ;  but,  on  the  labor  side — i.  e., 
on  the  part  of  the  author — it  is  not  equally  easy 
to  state  the  case  as  one  of  labor  motived  by 
wages.  Certainly  authorship  is  a  profession. 
There  are  authors  who  are  authors  and  nothing 
more — men  who  live  by  their  pen,  as  a  counsel 
lives  by  giving  opinions,  or  a  physician  by  pre- 
scribing for  patients.  But  this  is  only  partially 
the  case  with  our  literature.  A  large  part  of  it 
is  not  paid  for ;  the  author's  labor  is  not  set  in 
motion  by  wages.  Many  other  motives  come  in, 
inducing  men  to  address  the  public  in  print  be- 
sides the  motive  of  wages.  Disinterested  enthu- 
siasm ;  youthful  ardor  of  conviction  ;  egotism  in 
some  one  of  its  many  forms  of  ambition  ;  vanity, 
the  desire  to  teach,  to  preach,  to  be  listened  to ; 
mere  restlessness  of  temperament ;  even  the  hav- 
ing nothing  else  to  do — these  things  will  make  a 
man  write  a  book  quite  irrespective  of  being  paid 
for  doing  so.  Did  you  ever  hear  of  Catherinot  ? 
No !  Well,  Catherinot  was  a  French  antiquary 
of  the  seventeenth  century — a  very  learned  one, 
if  learning  means  to  have  read  many  hpoks  with- 
out understanding.  Catherinot  printed,  whether 
at  his  own  cost  or  another's  I  cannot  say,  a  vast 
number  of  dissertations  on  matters  of  antiquity. 
David  Clement,  the  curious  bibliographer,  has 
collected  the  titles  of  one  hundred  antl  eighty- 
two  of  those  dissertations,  and  adds  there  were 
more  of  them  which  he  had  not  been  able  to 
find.  Nobody  wanted  these  dissertations  of  Ca- 
therinot. He  wrote  them  and  printed  them  for 
his  own  gratification.  As  the  public  would  not 
take  his  paperasses,  as  Yalesius  called  them,  he 
had  recourse  to  a  device  to  force  a  circulation  for 
them.  There  was  then  no  penny-post,  so  he 
could  not,  like  Herman  Heinfetter,  post  his  lucu- 
brations to  all  likely  addresses,  but  he  used  to  go 
round  the  quais  in  Paris,  where  the  old  book- 
stalls are,  and,  while  pretending  to  be  looking 
over  the  books,  slip  some  of  his  dissertations  be- 
tween the  volumes  of  the  boutiqiiicr.  In  this  way 
the  one  hundred  and  eighty-two  or  more  have 
come  down  to  us.  Catherinot  is  a  by-word,  the 
typical  case  of  scribbleomania — of  the  insanabile 
seribendi  cacoethes — but  the  malady  is  not  un- 
known to  our  time,  and  accounts  for  some  of  our 
many  reams  of  print.  And,  even  if  pure  scrib- 
bleomania  is  not  a  common  complaint,  there  are 
very  many  other  motives  to  writing  besides  the 
avowed  and  legitimate  motive  of  earning  an  in- 
come by  the  pen.  Why  do  men  make  speeches 
to  public  meetings,  or  give  lectures  in  public  in- 
stitutions?    It  is  a  great  deal  of  trouble  to  do 


so.  The  motives  of  the  labor  are  very  various. 
Whatever  they  are,  the  same  variety  of  motives 
urges  men  to  write  books. 

Notwithstanding  these  exceptions,  the  number 
and  importance  of  which  must  not  be  lost  sight  of 
in  our  inquiry,  the  general  rule  will  still  hold  that 
books,  being  a  commodity,  are  subject  to  the 
same  economic  laws  as  all  commodities.  That 
one  which  is  of  importance  for  us  is  the  law  of 
demand  and  supply ;  the  law  which  says  that 
demand  creates  supply,  and  prescribes  its  quan- 
tity and  quality.  You  see  at  once  how  vital  to 
literature  must  be  the  establishment  of  this  com- 
mercial principle  as  its  regulator,  and  how  radical 
must  have  been  the  revolution  in  the  relation  be- 
tween writer  and  reader  which  was  brought  about 
when  it  was  established.  In  the  times  when  the 
writer  was  the  exponent  of  universally-received 
first  principles,  what  he  said  might  be  true  or 
might  be  false,  might  be  ill  or  well  received,  but 
at  all  events  he  delivered  his  message ;  he  spoke 
as  one  having  authority,  and  did  not  shape  his 
thoughts  so  as  to  offer  what  should  be  accept- 
able to  his  auditory.  Authorship  was  not  a 
trade ;  books  were  not  a  commodity ;  demand  did 
not  dictate  the  quality  of  the  article  supplied.  In 
England,  at  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, the  transformation  of  the  writer  from  the 
prophet  into  the  trading  author  was  pretty  well 
complete.  As  we  trace  back  our  civilization  to 
the  cave-man,  so  it  is  worth  while  casting  a  glance 
at  the  ancestral  authorape  from  whom  is  de- 
scended the  accomplished  and  highly-paid  leader- 
writer  of  1877,  who  sits  for  a  county,  and  the 
"  honor  of  whose  company  "  dukes  solicit.  The 
professional  author  of  Queen  Anne's  time  has 
been  delineated  to  us,  by  the  master-hand  of 
Pope,  as  a  disreputable  being,  starving  in  a  gar- 
ret "  high  in  Drury  Lane,"  on  an  occasional  five 
guineas  thrown  to  him  by  the  grudging  charity 
of  one  of  the  wealthy  publishers,  Tonson  or  Lin- 
tot,  or  more  likely  Curll,  "  turning  a  Persian  tale 
for  half  a  crown,"  that  he  might  not  go  to  bed 
supperless  and  swearing.  He  was  a  brainless 
dunce  without  education,  a  sneaking  scoundrel 
without  a  conscience.  But  you  will  notice  that 
in  this  his  mean  estate,  now  become  a  hireling 
scribbler,  he  continued  for  long  to  keep  up  the 
fiction  that  the  author  was  a  gentleman  who 
wrote  because  it  pleased  him  so  to  do.  When  he 
had  finished  his  pamphlet  in  defense  of  the  pres- 
ent administration,  a  pamphlet  for  which  he  was 
to  get  Sir  Robert's  shabby  pay,  he  pretended,  in 
his  preface,  that  he  had  taken  up  his  pen  for  the 
amusement  of  his  leisure  hours.     When  he  had 


BOOKS  AFD   CRITICS. 


161 


lurned  into  rhyme  Ovid's  "  De  Arte  Amandi " 
"  for  Curll's  chaste  press,"  he  said  he  was  going 
to  oblige  the  town  with  a  poetical  trifle.  You  all 
remember  Tope's  couplet — 

'•Rhymes  ere  he  wakes,  and  prints  before  term  ends, 
Obliged  by  hunger  and  request  of  friends." 

The  second  line  ought  to  be  read  thus  : 

"  Obliged  by  hunger  and— request  of  friends," 

hunger  being  the  real  cause  of  the  hurried  pub- 
lication ;  "request  of  friends"  the  cause  as- 
signed, suppose  on  the  title-page.  The  transfor- 
mation of  the  teacher  into  the  paid  author  was 
complete ;  but  the  professional  author,  though 
compelled  to  supply  the  article  which  was  in  de- 
mand, still  gave  himself  the  airs  of  an  indepen- 
dent gentleman,  and  affected  to  be  controlling 
taste  instead  of  ministering  to  it. 

In  our  own  day,  notwithstanding  the  excep- 
tions to  which  I  have  alluded,  it  is  now  the  rule 
that  the  character  of  general  literature  is  deter- 
mined by  the  taste  of  the  reading  public.  It  is 
true  that  any  man  may  write  what  he  likes,  and 
may  print  it.  But  if  he  cannot  get  the  public  to 
buy  it,  his  book  can  hardly  be  said  to  be  pub- 
lished. At  any  rate,  books  that  are*  not  read 
count  for  nothing  in  that  literature  of  the  day 
which  is  the  subject  before  us. 

Let  us  first  inquire  what  literature  is  as  to  its 
mass,  before  we  look  into  its  composition.  And 
here  it  will  simplify  our  subject  if  we  divide 
books  into  two  classes — literature  strictly  so 
called,  and  the  books  which  are  not  literature. 

Literature  does  not  mean  all  printed  matter. 
Blue-books  and  acts  of  Parliament,  Mrs.  Beeton's 
"  Household  Management,"  Timbs's  "  Year-book 
of  Facts,"  Fresenius's  "  Chemical  Analysis,"  these 
are  not  literature.     The  word  is  not  applicable  to 
all  the  books  in  our  libraries.     Most  books  are 
didactic — i.  e.,  they  are  intended  to  convey  in- 
formation on  special  subjects.    Treatises  on  agri- 
culture, astronomy,  a  dictionary  of  commerce, 
are  not  literary  works.     They  are  books — useful, 
!  necessary  for  those  who  are  studying  agriculture, 
astronomy,  commerce — but   they  do  not   come 
S  under  the  head  of  literature.     There  are  books 
I  which  the  publishers  are  pleased  to  advertise  as 
I  "gift-books,"  the  object  of  whose  existence  is 
I  that  they  may  be  "given" — no  doubt  they  an- 
|    swer  their  purpose,  they  are  "given" — and  there 
\  is  an  end  of  them.     I  have  seen  an  American 
advertising  column  headed  "  swift-selling  books," 
the  object  of  which  books,  I  presume,  was  that 
they  might  be  "  sold,"  like  Peter  Pindar's  razors. 
When  we  have  excluded  all  books  which  teach 

47 


special  subjects,  all  gift-books,  all  swift-selling 
books,  all  religious  books,  history  and  politics, 
those  which  remain  are  "  literature." 

I  am  unable  to  give  a  definition  of  literature. 
I  have  not  met  with  a  satisfactory  one.  Mr.  Stop- 
ford  Brooke,  in  a  little  book  which  I  can  cordially 
recommend  to  beginners — it  is  called  "  A  Primer 
of  English  Literature" — has  felt  this  difficulty  at 
the  outset.  He  says  in  his  first  page,  "  By  litera- 
ture we  mean  the  written  thoughts  and  feelings 
of  intelligent  men  and  women  arranged  in  a  way 
which  will  give  pleasure  to  the  reader."  It  would 
be  easy  to  show  the  defects  of  this  definition ; 
but,  till  I  am  prepared  to  propose  a  better,  we 
may  let  this  pass.  Of  what  books  the  class  litera- 
ture consists  may  be  better  understood  by  set- 
ting the  class  in  opposition  to  special  books  than 
by  a  description.  Catalogues  of  classified  libra- 
ries use  the  term  "  belles-lettres  "  for  this  class 
of  book. 

When  we  have  thus  reduced  the  comprehen- 
sion of  the  term  "  literature  "  to  its  narrowest 
limits,  the  mass  of  reading  soliciting  our  notice  is 
still  enormous — overwhelming.  First  come  the 
periodicals,  and  of  periodicals  first  the  dailies. 
The  daily  newspaper  is  political  or  commercial, 
mainly ;  but  even  the  daily  paper  now,  which  pre- 
tends to  any  standing,  must  have  its  column  of 
literature.  The  weekly  papers  are  literary  in  a 
large  proportion  of  their  bulk.  Our  old  friend 
the  Saturday  Review  is  literary  as  to  a  full  half 
of  its  contents,  and,  having  worked  off  the  froth 
and  frivolity  of  its  froward  youth,  offers  you  for 
sixpence  a  cooperative  store  of  literary  opinion 
of  a  highly  -  instructive  character,  and  always 
worth  attention.  There  are  the  exclusively  liter- 
ary weeklies — the  Academy,  the  Athenaeum,  the 
Literary  World — all  necessary  to  be  looked  at 
as  being  integral  parts  of  current  opinion.  We 
come  to  the  monthlies.  It  is  characteristic  of 
the  eager  haste  of  our  modern  Athenians  to  hear 
"  some  new  thing,"  that  we  cannot  now  wait  for 
quarter-day.  Those  venerable  old  wooden  three- 
deckers,  the  Edinburgh  Review  and  the  Quarterly 
Review,  still  put  out  to  sea  under  the  command, 
I  believe,  of  the  Ancient  Mariner,  but  the  active 
warfare  of  opinion  is  conducted  by  the  three  new 
iron  monitors,  the  Fortnightly,  the  Contemporary, 
and  the  Nineteenth  Century.  In  these  monthlies 
the  best  writers  of  the  day  vie  with  each  other 
in  soliciting  our  jaded  appetites  on  every  con- 
ceivable subject.  Indeed,  the  monthly  periodical 
seems  destined  to  supersede  books  altogether. 
Books  now  are  largely  made  up  of  republished 
review  articles.     Even  when  this  is  not  the  case, 


162 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


the  substance  of  the  ideas  expanded  in  the  oc- 
tavo volume  will  generally  be  found  to  have  been 
first  put  out  in  the  magazine  article  of  thirty 
pages.  Hence  the  monthlies  cannot  be  disposed 
of  by  slightly  looking  into  them ;  they  form  at 
this  moment  the  most  characteristic  and  pithy 
part  of  our  literary  produce.  It  has  been  calcu- 
lated that  the  insect-life  upon  our  globe,  if  piled 
in  one  mass,  would  exceed  in  magnitude  the  heap 
which  would  be  made  by  bringing  together  all  the 
beasts  and  birds.  For  though  each  insect  be 
iudividually  minute,  their  collective  number  is 
enormous.  So  a  single  number  of  a  periodical 
seems  little  compared  with  a  book  ;  but  then 
there  are  so  many  of  them,  and  they  are  repro- 
duced so  fast !  A  newspaper  seems  less  than  it 
is  on  account  of  the  spread  of  the  sheet.  One 
uumber  of  the  Times,  a  double  sheet  containing 
16  pages,  or  96  columns,  contains  a  quantity  of 
printing  equal  to  384  pages  8vo,  or  an  average- 
sized  8vo  volume.  Even  a  hard  reader  might 
find  it  difficult  within  thirty  days  to  overtake  the 
periodical  output  of  the  month  ;  and  then  on  the 
first  he  would  have  to  begin  all  over  again. 

So  much  for  periodicals  ;  we  come  now  to  the 
books. 

The  total  number  of  new  books,  not  includ- 
ing new  editions  and  reprints,  published  in  Great 
Britain  in  18*76,  was  2,920.  In  accordance  with 
the  construction  I  have  put  on  the  term  litera- 
ture, we  must  subtract  from  this  total  all  re- 
ligious, political,  legal,  commercial,  medical,  ju- 
venile books,  aud  all  pamphlets.  There  will 
remain  somewhere  about  1,620  books  of  litera- 
ture, taking  the  word  in  its  widest  extent.  I  may 
say,  by-the-way,  that  these  figures  can  only  be 
regarded  as  approximative.  Cataloguing  in  this 
country  is  disgracefully  careless.  Many  books 
published  are  every  year  omitted  from  the  Lon- 
don catalogue.  For  example,  out  of  267  works 
published  in  the  two  counties  of  Lancashire  and 
Cheshire,  only  31  are  found  entered  in  the  last 
London  catalogue.  But  I  will  take  no  account 
of  omissions.  I  will  even  strike  off  the  odd  120 
from  my  total  of  1,620,  and  say  that  English  lit- 
erature grows  only  at  the  rate  of  1,500  works 
per  annum.  At  this  rate  in  ten  years  our  liter- 
ary product  amounts  to  15,000  books.  Put  the 
duration  of  man's  reading  life  at  forty  years.  If 
he  had  to  read  everything  that  came  out,  to  keep 
pace  with  the  teeming  press,  he  would  have  had 
in  his  forty  years  60,000  works  of  contemporary 
literature  to  wade  through.  This  in  books  only, 
over  and  above  his  periodical  work,  which  we 
calculated  would  require  pretty  well  all  his  time. 


But  as  yet  we  have  got  only  Great  Britain. 
But  England  is  not  all  the  world,  as  Mr.  Matthew 
Arnold  reminds  us  ("  Essays,"  p.  43).  By  the  very 
nature  of  things,  much  of  the  best  that  is  known 
and  thought  in  the  world  cannot  be  of  English 
growth,  must  be  foreign ;  in  a  survey  of  litera- 
ture we  cannot  afford  to  ignore  what  is  being 
said  and  written  in  the  countries  near  us,  any 
more  than  in  politics  we  can  afford  to  ignore 
what  is  being  done  by  them.  At  present  Ger- 
many and  France  are  the  two  countries  with 
whom  we  are  most  closely  connected,  and  whose 
sayings  are  the  most  influential  sayings  in  the 
world. 

Germany  is  the  country  of  books,  and  its  out- 
put of  books  is  enormous.  The  average  annual 
number  of  books  printed  in  that  language  is 
about  12,000.  However,  only  a  fraction  of  this 
total  of  German  books  deserves  to  rank  as  liter- 
ature. Mere  book-making  is  carried  in  Germany 
to  a  frightful  pitch.  The  bad  tobacco  and  the 
falsified  wines  of  Mayence  and  Hamburg  find 
their  counterpart  in  the  book-wares  of  Leip- 
sic.  The  German  language  is  one  of  the  most 
powerful  instruments  for  the  expression  of  thought 
and  feeling  to  which  human  invention  has  ever 
given  birth.  The  average  German  literary  style 
of  the  present  day  is  a  barbarous  jargon,  wrap- 
ping up  an  attenuated  and  cloudy  sense  in  bales 
of  high-sounding  words.  The  fatigue  which  this 
style  of  utterance  inflicts  upon  the  mind  is  as 
great  as  that  which  their  Gothic  letter,  a  relic  of 
the  fifteenth  century,  inflicts  upon  the  eye,  black- 
ening and  smearing  all  the  page.  An  examina- 
tion of  the  boys  in  the  Johanneum  of  Hamburg 
elicited  the  fact  that  sixty-one  per  cent,  of  the 
upper  class  were  short-sighted.  A  large  part  of 
German  books  is  not  significant  of  anything — 
mere  sound  without  meaning. 

Putting  aside,  however,  the  meaningless,  there 
remains  not  a  little  in  German  publication  which 
requires  the  attention  of  one  who  makes  it 
his  business  to  know  the  thoughts  of  his  age. 
The  residuum  of  these  12,000  annual  vol- 
umes has  to  be  sifted  out  of  the  lumber  of  the 
book-shops,  for  it  embodies  the  thoughts  and  the 
moral  ideal  of  a  great  country  and  a  great  peo- 
ple. Poor  as  Germany  is  in  literature,  it  is  rich 
in  learning.  As  compilers  of  dictionaries,  as  ac- 
cumulators of  facts,  the  German  book-maker  is 
unrivaled.  The  Germans  are  the  hewers  of 
wood  and  drawers  of  water  for  a  literature  which 
they  have  not  got.  All  the  rest  of  the  European 
nations  put  together  do  not  do  so  much  for  the 
illustration  of  the  Greek  and  Latin  classics  as 


BOOKS  AND   CRITICS. 


163 


the  Germans  alone  do — classics  by  whose  form 
and  spirit  they  have  profited  so  little.  It  is  one 
of  the  paradoxes  of  literary  history  that  in  this 
very  country— Germany — which  is  the  world's 
schoolmaster  in  learning  the  Greek  and  Latin 
languages — so  little  of  the  style  and  beauty  of 
those  immortal  models  passes  into  its  daily  liter- 
ature. 

If  style  and  form  alone  were  what  gave  value 
to  literature,  the  first  literature  now  produced  in 
the  world  would  be  the  French.  All  that  the 
Germans  have  not  the  French  have.  Form, 
method,  measure,  proportion,  classical  elegance, 
refinement,  the  cultivated  taste,  the  stamp  of 
good  society — these  traits  belong  not  only  to  the 
first  class  of  French  books,  but  even  to  their 
second  and  third  rate  books.  No  writer  in 
France  of  whatever  calibre  can  hope  for  accept- 
ance who  violates  good  taste  or  is  ignorant  of 
polite  address.  German  literature  is  not  written 
by  gentlemen — mind,  I  speak  of  literature,  not 
of  works  of  erudition — but  by  a  tousle-headed, 
unkempt,  unwashed  professional  bookmaker,  ig- 
norant alike  of  manners  and  the  world.  In 
France  a  writer  cannot  gain  a  hearing  unless  he 
stands  upon  the  platform  of  the  man  of  the 
world,  who  lives  in  society,  and  accepts  its  pre- 
scription before  he  undertakes  to  instruct  it. 
French  books  are  written  by  men  of  the  world 
for  the  world.  This  is  the  merit  of  the  French. 
The  weak  point  of  French  books  is  their  defi- 
ciency of  fact,  their  emptiness  of  information. 
The  self-complacent  ignorance  of  the  French 
writer  is  astonishing.  Their  books  are  too  often 
style  and  nothing  more.  The  French  language 
has  been  wrought  up  to  be  the  perfect  vehicle  of 
wit  and  wisdom — the  wisdom  of  the  serpent — 
the  incisive  medium  of  the  practical  intelligence. 
But  the  French  mind  has  polished  the  French 
language  to  this  perfection  at  a  great  cost — at 
the  cost  of  total  ignorance  of  all  that  is  not 
written  in  French.  Few  educated  Frenchmen 
know  any  language  but  their  own.  They  travel 
little,  and,  when  they  do  travel,  their  ignorance 
of  the  speech  of  the  country  cuts  them  off  from 
getting  to  know  what  the  people  are  like.  We 
must  credit  the  French  with  knowing  their  own 
affairs;  of  the  affairs  even  of  their  nearest 
neighbors  in  Europe  they  are  as  ignorant  as  a 
Chinese.  Their  newspapers  are  dependent  for 
their  foreign  intelligence  on  the  telegrams  of  the 
Times.  Hence  their  foreign  policy  has  been  a 
series  of  blunders.  Had  the  merits  of  the  case 
been  known  to  it,  could  republican  France,  in 
1849,  have  sent  out  an  expedition  to  Eome  to  set 


up  again  the  miserable  ecclesiastical  government 
which  the  Komans  had  thrown  off?  I  was  read- 
ing in  the  Figaro  not  long  ago  a  paragraph  giv- 
ing an  account  of  the  visit  of  a  French  gentle- 
man in  England.  On  some  occasion  he  had  to 
make  a  speech  ;  and  he  made  it  in  English,  ac- 
quitting himself  very  creditably.  "  M.  Blanc," 
says  the  Figaro,  "being  a  Breton,  spoke  Eng- 
lish like  a  native  Englishman,  on  account  of  the 
close  affinity  between  the  two  languages,  Breton 
and  English."  The  Figaro  is  one  of  the  most 
widely-circulated  newspapers  in  France.  Eng- 
land is  a  country  with  which  the  French  are  in 
close  and  constant  communication,  and  yet  they 
have  not  discovered  that  the  English  tongue  does 
not  belong  to  the  Keltic  family  of  languages. 
That  Germany  is  as  little  known  to  them  as  Eng- 
land I  might  instance  in  the  most  popular  tour- 
ist's book  of  the  day.  Victor  Tissot's  "  Voyage 
au  Pays  des  Milliards "  has  reached  something 
approaching  to  fifty  editions.  It  is  nothing  but 
a  tissue  of  epigrams  and  witty  exaggerations,  a 
farce  disguised  as  fact,  and  taken  by  the  French 
nation  as  a  serious  description  of  German  life. 

It  is  an  error  to  say,  as  is  sometimes  said, 
that  French  literature  is  a  mere  literature  of 
style.  This  finished  expression  embalms  much 
worldly  wisdom,  the  life-experience  of  the  most 
social  of  modern  men  and  women ;  but  it  is  an 
experience  whose  horizon  is  limited  by  the  limits 
of  France.  It  is  a  strictly  national  literature. 
It  is,  in  this  respect,  the  counterpart  of  the  liter- 
ature of  ancient  Athens.  We,  all  the  rest  of  us, 
are  to  the  Frenchman  barbarians  in  our  speech 
and  manners.  He  will  not  trouble  himself  about 
us.  By  this  exclusiveness  he  gains  something 
and  loses  much.  He  preserves  the  purity  of  his 
style.  The  clearness  of  his  vision  and  the  pre- 
cision of  his  judgment,  from  his  national  point 
of  view,  are  unimpaired.  He  loses  the  cosmo- 
politan breadth  —  the  comparative  standpoint. 
But  the  comparative  standpoint  is  the  great 
conquest  of  our  century,  which  has  revolutionized 
history  and  created  social  science  and  the  sci- 
ence of  language. 

He  who  aims  at  comprehending  modern  liter- 
ature must  keep  himself  well  acquainted  with 
the  contemporary  course  of  French  and  German 
books,  as  well  as  of  his  own  language ;  and  these 
two  are  enough.  A  Spanish  literature  of  to-day 
can  hardly  be  said  to  exist,  and  the  Italians  are 
too  much  occupied  at  present  in  reproduction 
and  imitation  to  have  much  that  is  original  to 
contribute  to  the  general  stock  of  Europe. 

English,  French,  German :  the  periodical  and 


164 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


the  volume  publication  in  these  three  languages, 
year  by  year:  you  will  say  the  quantity  is  pro- 
digious— overwhelming,  if  it  were  to  be  supposed 
that  any  reader  must  read  it  all.  But  this  is  not 
the  case :  what  the  publisher's  table  offers  is  a 
choice — something  for  all  tastes :  one  reads  one 
book,  another  another.  As  I  divided  books  into 
two  classes,  books  of  special  information  and 
books  of  general  literature,  so  readers  must  now 
be  divided  into  two  classes — the  general  public 
and  the  professional  literary  man  :  the  author,  or 
critic,  let  us  call  him.  I  am  not  proposing  that 
the  general  public  should  read,  or  look  at,  all  this 
mass  of  current  literature.  It  would  be  prepos- 
terous to  think  of  it.  You  must  read  by  selec- 
tion ;  but  for  your  selection  you  will  be  guided — 
you  are  so  in  fact — by  the  opinion  of  those  whom 
I  must  now  speak  of  as  a  class,  by  the  name  of 
critics. 

Criticism  is  a  profession,  and,  as  you  will  have 
gathered  from  what  has  been  said,  an  arduous 
profession ;  the  responsibility  great,  the  labor 
heavy.  Literature  is  not  your  profession — I 
speak  to  you  as  the  general  public — it  is  at  most 
a  solace  of  your  leisure  hours ;  but  the  critic,  he 
who  sits  on  the  judgment-seat  of  letters,  and  has 
to  acquit  or  condemn,  to  examine  how  each  writer 
has  executed  his  task,  to  guide  the  reading  com- 
munity by  distinguishing  the  good  and  censuring 
the  bad — he  really  holds  an  educational  office 
which  is  above  that  of  any  professor  or  doctor, 
inasmuch  as  the  doctor  of  laws  or  of  divinity  is 
authorized  to  speak  to  his  own  faculty,  whereas 
the  critic  speaks  to  the  whole  republic  of  letters. 
What  is  recreation  to  you  is  business  to  the  critic, 
and  his  business  is  to  keep  himself  acquainted 
with  the  course  of  publication  in  at  least  these 
three  languages.  Looking,  then,  at  the  mass  and 
volume  of  printed  matter  to  be  thus  daily  and 
hourly  sifted,  you  cannot  think  that  the  profession 
of  critic  is  a  sinecure. 

And  before  he  can  be  qualified  to  take  his  seat 
on  the  bench  and  dispense  the  law,  consider 
what  a  lengthened  course  of  professional  training 
must  have  been  gone  through  by  our  critic  or  ju- 
dicial reader.  When  he  has  once  entered  upon 
his  functions,  his  whole  time  will  be  consumed, 
and  his  powers  of  attention  strained  to  the  ut- 
most, in  the  effort  to  keep  abreast  of  that  contem- 
porary literature  which  he  is  to  watch  and  report 
upon.  But  no  one  can  have  any  pretension  to 
judge  of  the  literature  of  the  day  who  has  not 
had  a  thorough  training  in  the  literature  of  the 
past.  The  critic  must  have  been  apprenticed  to 
his  profession. 


It  has  been  calculated  that  in  a  very  advanced 
and  ramified  science,  e.  g.,  chemistry,  fourteen 
years  are  required  by  the  student  to  overtake 
knowledge  as  it  now  stands.  That  is  to  say,  that 
to  learn  what  is  known,  before  you  can  proceed 
to  institute  new  experiments,  fourteen  years  are 
necessary — twice  the  time  which  the  old  law  ex- 
acted of  an  apprentice  bound  to  any  trade.  The 
fifth  of  Elizabeth,  which  used  to  be  known  as 
the  statute  of  apprenticeship,  enacted  that  no 
person  should  for  the  future  exercise  any  trade, 
craft,  or  mystery,  unless  he  had  previously  served 
to  it  an  apprenticeship  of  seven  years  at  least. 
This  enactment  of  1563  was  but  the  legislative 
sanction  of  what  had  been  for  centuries  the  by- 
law of  the  trade-guilds.  This  by-law  had  ruled, 
not  in  England  only,  but  over  all  the  civilized 
countries  of  Europe.  It  was  a  by-law  that  had 
not  been  confined  to  trades.  It  "had  extended 
over  the  arts  and  over  the  liberal  professions. 
University  degrees  are  nothing  more  than  the  ap- 
plication of  this  by-law  to  the  learned  profes- 
sions. It  required  study  for  twenty-eight  academ- 
ical terms,  i.  e.,  seven  years,  to  qualify  for  the 
degree  of  M.  A.  in  the  universities.  Bather,  I 
would  say,  that  the  line  was  not  then  drawn  be- 
tween the  mechanical  and  the  liberal  branches 
of  human  endeavor  ;  both  were  alike  designated 
"  Arts ; "  and  the  term  "  universities,"  now  re- 
stricted to  the  bodies  which  profess  theoretical 
science,  was  then  the  common  appellation  of  all 
corporations  and  trade-guilds,  as  well  as  the  so- 
called  Universities  of  Paris  and  Bologna. 

Begarding  literature  as  a  separate  art,  we 
might  ask,  "  How  long  would  it  require  to  go 
through  the  whole  of  it  to  become  a  master  of 
this  art  ? "  Even  taking  the  narrowest  definition 
of  literature,  it  seems  a  vast  surface  to  travel 
over,  from  Homer  down  to  our  own  day  !  I  say 
the  surface,  because  no  one  supposes  it  necessary 
to  read  every  line  of  every  book  which  can  call 
itself  literature.  Bemember  that,  in  studying  the 
literature  of  the  past,  other  countries  than  France 
and  Germany  come  in.  I  have  dispensed  our 
critic  from  occupying  himself  with  the  Italian 
and  Spanish  books  of  to-day.  But  with  the  books 
of  the  past  it  is  different.  Italy,  in  the  fifteenth 
and  sixteenth  centuries,  was  the  most  civilized 
and  literary  country  in  Europe.  And  Spain  has 
its  classical  writers.  Their  mere  mass  is  pro- 
digious. Life  in  Italy  was  rich  and  varied,  and 
consequently  so  were  the  materials  for  that  true 
narrative  which  is  stranger  than  fiction.  Villari 
has  computed  that  the  Italian  republics  of  the 
middle  ages  enjoyed  a  total  of  7,200  revolutions, 


BOOKS  AXD   CRITICS. 


165 


and  recreated  themselves  with  TOO  grand  massa- 
cres. The  longest  single  poem,  I  believe,  extant, 
is  an  Italian  poem,  the  "  Adone  "  of  Marini,  who 
lived  in  the  time  of  our  James  I.  It  contains  45,000 
lines.  As  for  Spain,  one  single  author  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  Lope  de  Vega,  wrote  1,800 
plays ;  his  works  altogether  fill  forty-seven  quarto 
volumes.  Alonso  Tostado,  a  Spanish  bishop  of 
the  fifteenth  century,  wrote  nearly  forty  folios, 
having  covered  with  print  three  times  as  many 
leaves  as  he  had  lived  days.  To  come  to  Eng- 
land. Our  William  Prynne  wrote  200  different 
works.  Chalmers's  collected  edition  of  the  Eng- 
lish poets  only  comes  down  to  Cowper,  who  died 
in  1800,  and  it  fills  twenty-one  volumes  royal 
8vo,  double  columns,  small  type.  The  volumes 
average  700  pages.  This  gives  a  total  of  14,- 
700  pages,  or  29,400  columns.  Now  it  takes — 
I  have  made  the  experiment — four  minutes  to 
read  a  column  with  fair  attention.  Here  is  a 
good  year's  work  in  reading  over,  only  once, 
a  selection  from  the  English  poets.  The  amount 
of  reading  which  a  student  can  get  through  in 
a  given  time  hardly  admits  of  being  measured  by 
the  ell.  The  rate  of  reading  varies  with  the  sub- 
ject, the  rapid  glance  with  which  we  skim  the 
columns  of  a  newspaper  being  at  one  end  of  the 
scale,  and  the  slow  sap  which  is  required  for  a 
page  of,  say,  Kant's  "Critique  of  Pure  Reason  "  be- 
ing at  the  other.  Still,  just  to  get  something  to  go 
upon,  make  a  calculation  in  this  way :  Suppose  a 
man  to  be  able  to  read  eight  hours  a  day.  No 
one  can  really  sustain  receptive  or  critical  atten- 
tion to  written  matter  for  eight  hours.  But  take 
eight  hours  as  the  outside  possibility.  Thirty 
pages  8vo  is  an  average  hour's  read,  taking  one 
book  with  another.  This  would  make  240  pages 
per  day,  1,680  per  week,  and  87,360  pages  in  the 
year.  Taking  the  average  thickness  of  an  8vo 
volume  as  400  pages  only,  the  quantity  of  reading 
which  a  diligent  student  can  get  over  in  a  year  is 
no  more  than  an  amount  equal  to  about  220  vol- 
umes Svo.  Of  course,  this  is  a  merely  mechani- 
cal computation,  by  which  we  cannot  pretend  to 
gauge  mental  processes.  But  it  may  be  worth 
while  knowing  that  the  merely  mechanical  limit 
of  study  is  some  220  volumes  8vo  per  annum. 

It  would  be  clearly  impossible  even  for  an 
industrious  reader  to  read,  even  once,  every  line 
of  the  world's  stock  of  poetry,  much  less  every 
line  of  all  that  can  be  called  literature.  In  no 
branch  of  study  is  mere  mechanical  application 
of  much  avail.  In  the  study  of  literature,  as  in 
art,  mechanical  attention,  the  mere  perusal  of  the 
printed  page,  is  wholly  useless.     The   student, 


therefore,  has  to  overcome  the  brute  mass  of  the 
material  on  which  he  works  by  artificial  expedi- 
ents. Of  these  expedients  the  most  helpful  is  that 
of  selection.  As  he  cannot  look  into  every  book, 
he  must  select  the  best.  And  selection  must  not 
be  arbitrary.  In  the  literary  creations  of  the 
ideal  world,  as  in  the  living  organisms  of  the 
material  world,  natural  selection  has  saved  us  the 
difficulty  of  choice.  The  best  books  are  already 
found  and  determined  for  us  by  the  verdict  of 
time.  Life  of  books  is  as  life  of  nations.  In  the 
battle  for  existence  the  best  survive,  the  weaker 
sink  below  the  surface,  and  are  heard  of  no  more. 
In  each  generation  since  the  invention  of  printing 
many  thousand  works  have  issued  from  the  press. 
Out  of  all  this  mass  of  print  a  few  hundred  are 
read  by  the  generation  which  succeeds ;  at  the 
end  of  the  century  a  score  or  so  may  be  still 
in  vogue.  Every  language  has  its  classics,  and 
it  is  by  this  process  of  natural  selection  that 
the  classics  of  any  given  country  are  distin- 
guished from  the  weltering  mass  of  abandoned 
books. 

It  is  a  great  assistance  to  the  student  that  the 
classics  of  each  language  are  already  found  for 
him  by  the  hand  of  time.  But  our  accomplished 
critic  cannot  confine  his  reading  to  the  classics 
in  each  language ;  his  education  is  not  complete 
till  he  has  in  his  mind  a  conception  of  the  succes- 
sive phases  of  thought  and  feeling  from  the  be- 
ginning of  letters.  Though  he  need  not  read 
every  book,  he  must  have  surveyed  literature  in 
its  totality.  Partial  knowledge  of  literature  is 
no  knowledge.  It  is  only  by  the  comparative 
method  that  a  founded  judgment  can  be  reached. 
And  the  comparative  method  implies  a  complete 
survey  of  the  phenomena.  It  is  recorded  of  Au- 
guste  Comte  that,  after  he  had  acquired  what  he 
considered  a  sufficient  stock  of  material,  he  ab- 
stained scrupulously  from  all  reading,  except  two 
or  three  poets  (of  whom  one  was  Dante)  and  the 
"  Imitatio  Christi "  of  Thomas  a  Kempis.  This  ab- 
stinence from  reading  Comte  called  his  hygiene 
cerebrale,"  healthy  treatment  of  his  brain.  The 
citizens  of  his  Utopia  are  to  be  prohibited  from 
reading  any  books  but  those  which  had  happened 
to  fall  in  Comte's  way  before  he  gave  up  reading. 
It  is,  I  think,  the  case  that  our  student  has  now 
to  read  more  than  is  compatible  with  perfect 
equilibrium  of  faculty.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
consequences  of  cutting  off  contact  with  the 
thoughts  of  others,  as  Comte  resolutely  did,  may 
be  seen  in  the  unhealthy  egotism  and  puerile  self- 
complacency  which  deform  his  writings,  his  per- 
petual "  mistake  as  to  the  relative  value  of  his 


166 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


own  things  and  the  things  of  others."  (Arnold's 
"Essays.") 

We  require  of  our  thoroughly  furnished  critic 
that  he  should  have  prepared  himself  for  his  pro- 
fession by  a  comprehensive  study  of  all  that 
human  thought,  experience,  and  imagination,  have 
stored  up  for  us.  When  we  have  used  all  the 
short  cuts  to  this  goal  which  art  and  Nature  have 
provided,  how  many  years  will  such  an  appren- 
ticeship require?  The  data  are  wanting  ou 
which  to  found  a  calculation.  Can  the  work  be 
got  through  in  seven  years,  in  twice  seven,  or  in 
three  times  seven  ?  I  do  not  know.  Archbishop 
Usher  at  twenty  began  to  read  the  Fathers,  Greek 
and  Latin,  with  the  resolution  of  reading  them 
through.  The  task  was  achieved  in  nineteen 
years.  Hammond,  at  Oxford,  read  thirteen  hours 
a  day  (Life  of  Usher.  Life  of  Hammond,  by  Fell). 
Milton's  "industrious  and  select  reading,"  in 
preparation  for  the  great  work  to  which  he  dedi- 
cated a  whole  life,  long  choosing,  and  late  begin- 
ning, are  as  well  known  as  the  thirty  years  spent 
by  Edward  Gibbon  in  preparing  for  and  in  com- 
posing his  history. 

Of  course  in  this,  as  in  other  trades,  a  man 
learns  while  he  practises.  Buffon  told  a  friend 
that,  after  passing  fifty  years  at  his  desk,  he  was 
every  day  learning  to  write.  The  critic's  judgment 
matures  by  many  failures.  Without  these  three 
elements — time,  industry,  arduous  endeavor — no 
man  can  attain  to  be  a  supreme  judge  of  literary 
worth.  Perhaps  you  have  been  accustomed  to  set 
before  yourselves  quite  another  ideal  of  the  literary 
life.  You  have  thought  the  business  of  reviewing 
a  lazy  profession,  the  resource  of  men  who  wanted 
industry  or  talent,  who  were,  in  short,  fit  for  noth- 
ing better,  a  profession  largely  adopted  by  brief- 
less barristers,  by  incompetent  clerks,  by  green 
youths  fresh  from  college  examinations,  and  gen- 
erally by  men  who  shirk  hard  work — in  fact,  an 
easy-chair  and  slipper  business.  You  have,  per- 
haps, supposed  that  anybody  can  write  a  review, 
that  essay-writing  is  as  easy  as  talking,  that  it  is 
only  a  matter  of  cheek  and  fluency.  You  have 
imagined  that  a  quarterly  or  a  weekly  reviewer 
merely  gets  his  knowledge  of  the  subject  in  hand 
out  of  the  book  he  has  under  review ;  that  he, 
thereupon,  dishonestly  assumes  to  have  known 
all  about  it,  and  with  voluble  impertinence  goes 
on  to  retail  this  newly-acquired  information  as  if 
it  were  his  own,  seasoning  it  with  sneers  and  sar- 
casms at  the  author  from  whom  he  is  stealing. 
I  know  these  things  are  said.  I  have  heard  even 
respectable  reviews  and  magazines  accused  of 
paying  for  this  sort  of  thing  by  the  column,  i.  e., 


'  giving  a  pecuuiary  inducement  to  fill  out  paper 
j  with  words — to  make  copy,  or  padding,  as  it  is 
called.     I  don't  know  if  these  things  are  done  in 
j  practice.     If  they  are,  they  are  fraudulent,  and 
!  must,  I  should  think,  come  within  the  act  against 
adulteration.     What  I  have  set  before  you  in  the 
above  outline  is  the  honest  critic  who  gives  to 
his  calling  the  devotion  of  a  life,  prepares  him- 
self by  antecedent  study,  and  continues  through 
the  whole  of  his  career  to  make  daily  new  acqui- 
sitions and  to  cultivate  his  susceptibility  to  new 
impressions. 

Such  are  the  qualifications  of  the  teacher,  of 
the  writer  of  books.  I  turn  now  from  the  author 
to  the  reader,  from  the  producer  to  the  consumer. 
You  to  whom  I  now  speak  are  a  portion  of  the 
public  ;  you  represent  the  consumer.  And  first, 
what  is  the  mechanism  by  which  the  consumer  is 
provided  with  his  article  ?  The  English  are  not 
a  book-storing  people.  Each  family  has  not,  as 
a  rule,  its  own  library.  In  great  country-houses, 
it  is  true,  there  is  always  the  library.  Many 
treasures  are  in  these  old  repositories — the  accu- 
mulated store  of  half  a  dozen  generations.  They 
often  go  back  to  Queen  Anne,  the  great  book- 
diffusing 'period  of  our  annals;  sometimes,  but 
more  rarely,  to  the  seventeenth  century.  The 
family  history  may  be  read  in  the  successive 
strata,  superimposed,  like  geological  strata,  one 
on  the  other.  The  learned  literature  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  largely  composed  in  Latin, 
its  Elzevirs,  and  its  Variorum  classics,  will  often 
be  found  relegated  to  a  garret.  These  books 
have  come  to  be  regarded  as  lumber.  They  are 
only  not  cleared  out  and  dispatched  to  Sotheby's, 
because  the  cost  of  removal  would  exceed  their 
produce  at  the  auction.  This,  though  hoisted  up 
to  the  garret  by  an  upheaval,  is  in  point  of  time 
the  earliest  stratum.  Upon  this  will  be  found  a 
bed  of  theological  pamphlets  mostly  in  small 
quarto,  in  which  lurk  the  ashes  of  passion,  once 
fired  by  the  Revolution  of  16S8,  the  non-juring 
pamphlets,  the  Dr.  Sacheverell  pamphlets,  the 
Bangorian  controversy.  In  the  great  library  on 
the  ground-floor  we  shall  find  the  earliest  stratum 
to  consist  of  the  splendid  quartos,  on  thick  paper 
with  wide  margin,  of  Queen  Anne's  time.  The 
Spectator,  the  Tatler,  Pope's  Homer,  a  subscrip- 
tion copy;  the  folios  of  Carte  and  Echard,  and 
so  down  the  century  over  Junius  and  Chester- 
field's "  Letters  "  to  the  first  editions  of  Sir  Walter 
Scott's  poems.  The  mere  titles  of  such  a  collec- 
tion, or  accretion,  form  a  history  of  literature. 
:  But  it  is  only  in  our  old  country-houses  that  such 


BOOKS  AND   CRITICS. 


167 


a  treat  is  to  be  enjoyed,  and  the  number  of  these 
diminishes  in  each  generation.  Cultivation  and 
intellectual  tastes  seem  to  be  dying  out  among 
the  English  aristocracy.  It  has  been  said  ("  New 
Republic  ")  the  fop  of  Charles  II.'s  time  at  least 
affected  to  be  a  wit  and  a  scholar,  the  fop  of  our 
times  aims  at  being  a  fool  and  a  dunce. 

In  the  house  of  a  middle-class  family  you  will 
also  find  a  few  books — chiefly  religious  books  or 
specialty  books — little  literature,  and  that  casu- 
al, showing  no  selection,  no  acquaintance  with 
the  movement  of  letters.  There  will  be  nothing 
that  can  be  called  a  library.  The  intellectual 
barrenness  of  these  middle-class  homes  is  appall- 
ing. The  dearth  of  books  is  only  the  outward 
and  visible  sign  of  the  mental  torpor  which  reigns 
in  those  destitute  regions.  Even  in  priest-ridden 
France,  where  the  confessor  has  all  the  women 
and  half  the  men  under  his  thumb,  there  is  more 
of  that  cultivation  which  desiderates  the  posses- 
sion of  books.  In  many  a  French  family  of  no 
great  means  is  a  bookcase  of  some  five  hundred 
volumes,  not  presents,  but  chosen,  and  in  which 
the  chef$-d\euvre  of  French  literature  will  be  in- 
cluded. They  will  be  in  half  morocco,  with  gilt 
edges ;  binding  not  sumptuous,  but  elegant,  and 
perfectly  clean,  neither  thumbed  nor  grease- 
stained,  nor  gas-shriveled — a  sign,  you  will  say, 
that  they  are  not  much  used.  Not  so.  A  French- 
man cannot  endure  a  dirty  book.  It  is  an  error 
to  suppose  that  the  dirt  on  the  cover  and  pages 
of  a  book  is  a  sign  of  its  studious  employment. 
Those  who  use  books  to  most  purpose  handle 
them  with  loving  care.  The  dirt  on  English 
books  is  a  sign  of  neglect,  not  of  work.  It  is 
disrespectful  and  ignorant  handling.  If  you  have 
a  select  cabinet  of  books,  with  which  you  live 
habitually  as  friends  and  companions,  you  would 
not  choose  to  have  them  repulsive  in  dress  and 
outward  appearance. 

How  insignificant  an  item  of  household  expen- 
diture is  the  bookseller's  bill  in  a  middle-class 
family!  A  man  who  is  making  £1,000  a  year 
will  not  think  of  spending  one  pound  a  week  on 
books.  If  you  descend  to  a  lower  grade  of  in- 
come, the  purchase  of  a  book  at  all  is  an  exception- 
al occurrence,  and  then  it  will  rarely  be  a  book 
of  pure  literature.  The  total  population  of  the 
United  Kingdom  is  more  than  33,000,000.  The 
aggregate  wealth  of  this  population  is  manifold 
more  than  it  was  one  hundred  and  fifty  years 
ago,  but  the  circle  of  book-buyers,  of  the  lovers 
of  literature,  is  certainly  not  larger,  if  it  be  not 
absolutely  smaller. 

One  reason  which  maybe  assigned  for  the  book 


dearth  among  families  of  small  means  is  want  of 
space.  Room  in  this  country  is  now  become  very 
costly.  A  family  of  £1,000  a  year  in  a  town  prob- 
ably pays  out  £100  a  year  as  rent.  A  heavy 
tax  !  And  what  do  you  get  for  it  ?  A  hutch  in 
which  you  can  scarcely  put  up  your  family  or 
breathe  yourself.  You  have  literally  no  room  for 
books.  This,  I  grant,  is  a  too  true  description  of 
the  town  dwelling.  But  it  is  not  altogether  an 
account  of  why  you  are  without  a  library.  A  set 
of  shelves,  thirteen  feet  by  ten  feet,  and  six  inches 
deep,  placed  against  a  wall,  will  accommodate 
nearly  one  thousand  volumes  8vo.  Cheap  as 
books  now  are,  a  well-selected  library  of  English 
classics  could  be  compressed  into  less  room  than 
this,  was  the  companionship  of  books  felt  by  you 
to  be  among  the  necessaries  of  life. 

If  narrow  income  and  cramped  premises  will 
not  let  us  have  a  private .  library,  we  may  meet 
our  wants  in  some  measure  by  public  libraries. 
The  cooperative  store,  as  applied  to  groceries,  is 
a  discovery  of  our  generation.  But  the  principle 
of  cooperation  was  applied  to  libraries  long  be- 
fore. The  book-club  is  an  old  institution  which 
flourished  in  the  last  century,  but  is  nearly  ex- 
tinct now.  There  were  some  twelve  hundred  of 
these  clubs  scattered  over  England,  and  their  dis- 
appearance has  had  a  marked  effect  on  the  char- 
acter of  our  book-market.  Each  country  club 
naturally  fell  under  the  control  of  the  one  or  two 
best-informed  men  of  the  neighborhood.  The 
books  ordered  were  thus  of  a  superior  class,  and 
publishers  could  venture  upon  publishing  such 
books,  because  they  knew  they  could  look  to  the 
country  clubs  to  absorb  one  edition.  Now,  the 
supply  of  new  books  has  passed  away  from  the 
local  clubs,  and  into  the  hands  of  two  great 
central  houses.  Smith  and  Mudie,  of  course, 
look  only  to  what  is  most  asked  for.  And,  as 
even  among  readers  the  ignorant,  the  indolent, 
and  the  vulgar,  are  in  a  large  majority,  it  is  the 
ignorant,  the  indolent,  and  the  vulgar,  who  now 
create  that  demand  which  the  publisher  Iras  to 
meet.  Universal  suffrage  in  the  choice  of  books 
has  taken  the  place  of  a  number  of  independent 
centres  which  the  aristocracy  of  intellect  could 
influence. 

It  may  prove  some  compensation  for  the  de- 
struction of  the  country  book-clubs,  that  the  great 
towns  are  beginning  to  bestir  themselves  to  look 
after  their  book-supply.  The  earliest  common 
libraries  were,  as  we  should  expect,  in  universi- 
ties and  colleges,  often  remote  from  populous 
centres,  such  as  the  Sharp  Library  in  Bamburgh 
Castle.     It  is  only  quite  recently  that  the  trading 


168 


TUB  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


and  manufacturing  towns  have  begun  to  feel  the 
want  of  books.  And  the  desire  is  still  feeble, 
and  has  spread  but  a  little  way.  Some  eighty  or 
ninety  cities  and  towns,  I  believe,  in  all  Great 
Britain,  have  adopted,  in  whole  or  in  part,  Mr. 
Ewart's  act.  There  is  still  a  very  large  number 
of  towns  with  a  population  over  three  thousand 
who  have  not  yet  felt  the  want  of  a  public  library. 
Your  city,  always  forward  where  enterprise  can 
go,  and  where  educational  matters  are  in  ques- 
tion, stands  first,  or  only  second  to  Manchester, 
in  apprehending  the  public  importance  of  a  com- 
plete outfit  of  books. 

So  much  on  the  book-supply.  I  go  on  to  the 
question,  What  is  the  stimulus  which  makes  men 
ask  for  books  ?  Why  do  English  men  and  women 
of  the  present  day  read  ? 

There  are  people,  I  believe,  who  read  books 
that  they  may  be  able  to  talk  about  them.  Read- 
ing from  any  motive  is  better  than  satisfied  ig- 
norance ;  but,  surely  this  motive  is  both  morally 
and  intellectuals  unsound.  Morally,  it  is  an  os- 
tentation, an  affectation  of  an  interest  you  do  not 
feel.  Intellectually,  it  is  on  a  par  with  cram  ;  it 
is  no  more  knowledge  than  what  is  got  up  for  the 
purpose  of  an  examination  is  knowledge.  What 
is  read  for  the  sake  of  reproducing  in  talk  has 
neither  gone  to  the  head  nor  the  heart.  When 
any  one  says  to  me  in  company,  "  Have  you  read 
so-and-so  ?  "  I  always  feel  an  inclination  to  an- 
swer, "  No,  I  never  read  anything,"  for  I  know 
the  next  question  will  be,  "  Did  you  like  it  ?  " 
and  there  an  end.  Those  who  most  read  books 
don't  want  to  talk  about  them.  The  conversa- 
tion of  the  man  who  reads  to  any  purpose  will 
be  flavored  by  his  reading ;  but  it  will  not  be 
about  his  reading.  The  people  who  read  in  order 
to  talk  about  it,  are  people  who  read  the  books 
of  the  season  because  they  are  the  fashion — books 
which  come  in  with  the  season  and  go  out  with 
it.  "  When  a  new  book  comes  out  I  read  an  old 
one,"  said  the  poet  Rogers.  And  Lord  Dudley — 
the  great  Lord  Dudley,  not  the  present  possessor 
of  the  title — writes  to  the  Bishop  of  Llandaff :  "  I 
read  new  publications  unwillingly.  In  literature 
I  am  fond  of  confining  myself  to  the  best  com- 
pany, which  consists  chiefly  of  my  old  acquaint- 
ance with  whom  I  am  desirous  of  becoming  more 
intimate.  I  suspect  that  nine  times  out  of  ten  it 
is  more  profitable,  if  not  more  agreeable,  to  read 
an  old  book  over  again  than  to  read  a  new  one 
for  the  first  time.  .  .  .  Is  it  not  better  to  try  to 
elevate  .and  endow  one's  mind  by  the  constant 
study  and  contemplation  of  the  great  models,  than 
merely  to  know  of  one's  own  knowledge  that  such 


a  book  a'nt  worth  reading  ?  " — ("  Lord  Dudley's 
Letters.")  We  wear  clothes  of  a  particular  cut 
because  other  people  are  wearing  them.  That  is 
so.  For  to  differ  markedly  in  dress  and  behavior 
from  other  people  is  a  sign  of  a  desire  to  attract 
attention  to  yourself,  and  is  bad  taste.  Dress  is 
social,  but  intellect  is  individual :  it  has  special 
wants  at  special  moments.  The  tendency  of  edu- 
cation through  books  is  to  sharpen  individuality, 
and  to  cultivate  independence  of  mind,  to  make 
a  man  cease  to  be  "  the  contented  servant  of  the 
things  that  perish." 

Dr.  Halley  used  to  recommend  reading  on 
medical  grounds.  He  said  close  study  prolonged 
life  by  keeping  a  man  out  of  harm's  way.  But 
I  never  met  with  any  one  who  acted  upon  Dr. 
Halley's  advice,  and  chose  to  read  hard  that  he 
might  live  long.  And  is  there  not  truth  in  the 
opposite  doctrine,  which  Mortimer  Collins  ("  Se- 
cret of  Long  Life,"  page  136)  inculcates,  that 
"the  laziest  men  live  longest  ?  " 

I  have  not,  remember,  raised  the  question, 
Why  should  we  read  ?  This  is  the  most  im- 
portant question  of  all  those  which  can  be  raised 
about  books.  But  I  am  not  to-night  presuming 
to  advise  you  as  to  what  you  should  do.  I  am 
only  observing  our  ways  with  books — recording 
facts,  not  exhorting  to  repentance.  Why  do  men 
read  ?  What  is  the  motive  power  which  causes 
the  flow  of  that  constant  supply  of  new  books 
which  flows  over  at  those  literary  drinking-foun- 
tains,  Smith's  book-stalls  ? 

Making  exception  of  the  specialty  books — 
those  which  we  get  in  order  to  learn  some  special 
subject — there  is  one,  and  one  only,  motive  of  all 
this  reading — the  desire  of  entertainment.  Books 
are  in  our  day  the  resource  of  our  leisure ;  we 
turn  to  them  in  default  of  better  amusement.  Of 
course,  you  will  think  immediately  of  the  many 
exceptions  which  there  are  to  this  general  state- 
ment. But,  as  I  said  before,  the  character  of 
the  books  offered  in  the  book-market  is  deter- 
mined by  the  nature  of  the  general  demand.  And 
it  is  the  character  of  the  general  literature  of  the 
day  which  fixes  our  attention  at  this  moment. 

In  taking  the  Smith  and  Mudie  counter  as 
the  standard  of  the  literature  consumed  by  the 
English  public,  I  do  so  because  the  class  of  book 
they  supply  is  the  best  average  class  of  book 
going — of  "new  book."  I  do  not  forget  how 
small  a  fraction,  after  all,  of  the  34,000,000 
Britons  the  consumers  of  books  of  this  class 
are.  Wre  sometimes  speak  of  the  readers  of  this 
class  of  book  as  "the  reading  public."  But  I 
do  not  forget  that  there  exists  a  wider  "  reading 


BOOKS  AND   CEITICS. 


169 


public,"  which  is  below  the  Smith  and  Mudie 
level.  Enter  a  book-shop  in  a  small  town  in  a 
remote  province,  and  you  will  find  on  its  counter 
and  shelves  a  class  of  literature  of  a  grade  so 
mean  that  a  Smith's  book-stall  instantly  rises 
fifty  per  cent,  in  your  imagination.  Ask  for 
Thackeray's  "  Vanity  Fair."  The  well-dressed 
young  person  who  attends  to  the  shop  never 
heard  of  Thackeray.  The  few  books  she  can 
offer  are  mostly  children's  books — grown  people 
don't  seem  to  read  in  country  places — or  they 
are  books  of  a  denominational  cast,  books  which 
perhaps  are  called  religious,  but  which  are,  strictly 
speaking,  about  nothing  at  all,  and  made  up  of 
strings  of  conventional  phraseology.  Some  of 
these  books,  unknown  as  they  are  to  the  reviews, 
have  a  circulation  which  far  surpasses  anything 
ever  reached  by  one  of  our  "new  books"  which 
has  been  ushered  into  the  world  by  compliment- 
ary notices  in  all  the  papers.  In  estimating  the 
intellectual  pabulum  most  relished  by  my  coun- 
trymen, I  do  not  forget  that  "  Zadkiel's  Almanac  " 
had  a  circulation  of  200,000.  Commander  Mor- 
rison, R.  N.,  who  only  died  as  lately  as  1874,  was 
perhaps  the  most  successful  author  of  the  day, 
and  a  great  authority  on  astrology.  He  wrote, 
among  other  books,  one  entitled  "  The  Solar  Sys- 
tem as  it  is,  and  not  as  it  is  represented  by  the 
Newtonians."  He  brought  an  action  against  Sir 
Edward  Belcher,  who  had  called  him  in  print  an 
impostor.  It  was  tried  before  Chief  -  Justice 
Cockburn,  and  Commander  Morrison,  who  re- 
tained Sergeant  Ballantine,  obtained  damages. 
The  Court  of  Queen's  Bench  decided  that  Zad- 
kiel  was  not  an  impostor.  The  tastes  of  this 
widest  circle  of  readers — the  200,000  abonnes  of 
Zadkiel — are  not  now  under  our  consideration. 
We  are  speaking  of  the  "  reading  public  "  in  the 
narrower  sense,  and  of  what  are  called  new  books. 
And  I  was  saying  that  this  public  reads  for  amuse- 
ment, and  that  this  fact  decides  the  character  of 
the  books  which  are  written  for  us. 

As  amusement  I  do  not  think  reading  can 
rank  very  high.  When  the  brain  has  been 
strained  by  some  hours'  attention  to  business 
some  form  of  open-air  recreation  is  what  would 
be  hygienically  best  for  it.  An  interesting  game 
which  can  be  played  in  the  fresh  air  is  the  health- 
iest restorative  of  the  jaded  senses.  It  is  a  na- 
tional misfortune  that  as  our  great  towns  have 
grown  up  in  England  there  has  been  no  reserve 
of  ground  in  the  public  interest.  The  rich  have 
their  fox-hunting  and  their  shooting,  their  deer- 
forests  and  their  salmon-rivers.  But  these  are 
only  for  the  wealthy.     Besides,  they  are  pastimes 


turned  into  pursuits.  "What  is  wanted,  in  the  in- 
terest of  the  humbler  classes,  is  public  places  of 
considerable  extent,  easily  accessible,  where  rec- 
reation for  an  hour  or  two  can  be  always  at 
hand.  After  manual  labor  rest  and  a  book,  after 
desk-work  active  exercise  and  a  game,  are  what 
Nature  and  reason  prescribe.  As  every  village 
should  have  its  village  green,  so  every  town  should 
have  its  one  or  more  recreation-grounds,  where 
cricket,  fives,  tennis,  croquet,  bowls,  can  be  got 
at  a  moment's  notice  in  a  wholesome  atmosphere, 
not  impregnated  by  gas,  not  poisoned  by  chemical 
fumes.  Our  towns  are  sadly  behind  in  the  sup- 
ply of  pleasant  places  of  public  resort.  The  co- 
operative principle  has  yet  to  be  applied  to  open- 
air  amusements.  It  is  surely  bad  economy  of 
life  that  in  one  of  our  wealth-producing  centres  a 
game  of  fives  should  be  almost  as  difficult  to  get 
as  a  salmon-river. 

Still,  even  if  these  things  were  to  be  had,  in- 
stead of  being  as  they  are  unprocurable,  in  the 
long  winter  of  our  northern  climate  there  are 
many  months  in  the  year  during  which  our  amuse- 
ment must  be  sought  in-doors.  Here  come  in  the 
social  amusements  —  theatres,  concerts,  dances, 
dinners,  and  the  varied  forms  of  social  gathering. 

It  is  when  all  these  fail  us,  and  because  they 
do  so  often  fail  us,  that  we  have  recourse  to  the 
final  resource  of  all — reading.  Of  in-door  enter- 
tainment the  truest  and  most  human  is  that  of 
conversation.  But  this  social  amusement  is  not, 
in  all  circumstances,  to  be  got,  and  when  it  is  to 
be  had  we  are  not  always  fit  for  it.  The  art  of 
conversation  is  so  little  cultivated  among  us,  the 
tongue  is  so  little  refined,  the  play  of  wit  and  the 
flow  of  fancy  so  little  encouraged  or  esteemed, 
that  our  social  gatherings  are  terribly  stupid  and 
wearisome.  Count  Pozzo  di  Borgo,  miserable 
amid  the  luxurious  appliances  of  an  English  coun- 
try-house— it  is  Lord  Houghton  tells  the  story 
("Monographs,"  page  212) — "drew  some  newly- 
arrived  foreigner  into  a  corner  with  the  eager 
request,  '  Vicns  done  causer,  je  n'ai  pas  cause 
pour  quinze  jours."1  Neither  our  language  nor 
our  temperament  favors  that  sympathetic  inter- 
course, where  the  feature  and  the  gesture  are  as 
active  as  the  voice,  and  in  which  the  pleasure 
does  not  so  much  consist  in  the  thing  communi- 
cated as  in  the  act  of  communication,  and  still 
less  are  we  inclined  to  cultivate  that  true  art  of 
conversation,  that  rapid  counterplay  and  vivid 
exercise  of  combined  intelligences,  which  presup- 
poses long  and  due  preparation  of  the  imagina- 
tion and  the  intellect." 

Instead  of  stimulating,  we  bore  each  other  to 


170 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


the  death.  It  is  that  we  may  escape  from  the 
terrihle  ennui  of  society  that  we  have  recourse  to 
a  book.  We  go  to  read  not  from  craving  for  ex- 
citement, but  as  a  refuge  from  the  tcediurn  vitce, 
the  irksomeness  of  herding  with  uninteresting 
fellow-mortals.  The  man  who  is  engaged  all  the 
morning,  and  has  his  faculties  stimulated,  his  in- 
tellect edged  to  keenness  by  the  details  of  busi- 
ness, cannot,  on  his  return  to  his  fireside,  subside 
into  vacuity.  He  must  have  something  to  whittle 
at.  He  reads  his  newspaper  as  long  as  he  can, 
and,  when  the  newspaper  at  last  gives  out,  he 
falls  back  upon  a  book.  The  native  of  a  southern 
climate  who  has  no  business,  and  whose  mind  is 
never  roused  to  exertion,  has  no  such  craving. 
The  Italian  noble  does  without  books.  He  passes 
his  day  in  listless  indolence,  content  without  ideas. 
There  is  no  vacuity,  and  therefore  no  supply  of 
books  to  fill  it. 

Here  is  the  key  to  the  character  of  the  litera- 
ture of  our  age.  Books  are  a  response  to  a  de- 
maud.  And  the  demand  is  a  demand  for  recrea- 
tion by  minds  roused  to  intelligence  but  not  to 
intellectual  activity.  The  mind  of  the  English 
reader  is  not,  as  in  the  southern  man,  torpid, 
non-existent ;  it  is  alive  and  restless.  But  it  is 
not  animated  by  a  curiosity  to  inquire,  it  is  not 
awake  to  the  charm  of  ideas,  it  is  only  passively- 
recipient  of  images.  An  idea  is  an  excitant, 
comes  from  mind,  and  calls  forth  mind.  An 
image  is  a  sedative. 

The  books,  then,  which  are  produced  have  to 
meet  this  mental  condition  of  the  reader.  They 
have  to  occupy  his  attention  without  making  any 
call  upon  his  vigilance.  There  must  be  no  reflex 
mental  action.  Meditation  is  pain.  Fresh  images 
must  flow  as  a  continuous  douche  of  tepid  water 
over  the  mind  of  the  reader,  which  must  remain 
pleased  but  passive.  Books  must  be  so  contrived 
as  to  produce  and  sustain  this  beatific  self-forget- 
fulness.  That  is  called  by  publishers  a  success- 
ful book  which  just  hits  this  mental  level.  To 
express  all  I  have  tried  to  say  in  one  epithets — a 
book  must  be  readable.  If  a  book  has  this  qual- 
ity, it  does  not  much  matter  what  it  is  about. 
Any  subject  will  answer  the  purpose  if  the  treat- 
ment be  agreeable.  The  book  must  be  so  written 
that  it  can  be  read  without  any  force  being  put 
upon  the  attention.  It  must  not  require  thought 
or  memory.  Nor  must  there  be  any  learned  rub- 
bish about.  A  Latin  quotation  may  be  ventured 
only  by  an  established  favorite.  Ouida  did  once 
hazard  "  facilis  descensus  Avernus,"  but  it  was 
ill-taken  by  the  critics. 

Under  these  conditions  of  the  public  demand, 


it  is  not  surprising  that  the  species  of  composition 
which  is  most  in  favor  should  be  prose  fiction. 
In  every  other  style  of  literary  art,  prose  or  poeti- 
cal, our  age  looks  back  to  by-gone  ages  for  models 
which  it  is  ever  endeavoring  to  approach,  but  dare 
not  hope  to  surpass.  In  the  novel,  our  age,  but 
especially  our  own  country,  may  justly  boast  to 
have  attained  a  development  of  inventive  power 
unequaled  in  the  annals  of  all  literature.  It  is 
not  only  that  this  is  the  most  prolific  species  of 
book,  more  than  one  novel  per  working-day  being 
given  to  the  world  every  year,  but  it  is  that  the 
most  accomplished  talent  which  is  at  work  for 
the  book-market  is  devoted  to  this  class  of  pro- 
duction. If,  as  I  laid  down  at  the  commence- 
ment of  this  lecture,  supply  is  governed  by  de- 
mand, it  is  clear  that  this  result  must  be  so.  En- 
tertainment without  mental  effort  being  our  re- 
quirement, we  must  have  our  politics,  our  history, 
our  travels,  presented  in  an  entertaining  way. 
But  fiction,  if  taken  from  every-day  life,  and  not 
calling  upon  us  for  that  effort  of  imagination 
which  is  necessary  to  enable  us  to  realize  a  past 
age,  is  entertainment  pure,  without  admixture  of 
mental  strain  or  hitch  of  any  kind. 

For  our  modern  reader  it  is  as  necessary  that 
the  book  should  be  new  as  that  it  should  be 
bound  in  colored  cloth.  Your  confirmed  novel- 
reader  has  a  holy  horror  of  second  perusals,  and 
would  rather  read  any  trash  for  the  first  time 
than  "  Pendennis  "  or  "  Pride  and  Prejudice  "  for 
the  second.  The  book  must  be  written  in  the 
dialect  and  grammar  of  to-day.  No  word,  no 
construction,  no  phrase,  which  is  not  current  in 
the  newspaper,  must  be  used.  A  racy  and  idio- 
matic style,  fed  by  the  habitual  reading  of  our 
old  English  literature,  would  choke  the  young 
man  who  does  the  literature  for  the  Daily  Tele- 
graph, and  he  would  issue  in  "  the  largest  circu- 
lation in  the  world  "  a  complaint  that  Mr. 

seems  to  write  strange  English  !  Our  modern 
reader  requires  his  author's  book,  as  he  does  his 
newspaper  leader  or  his  clergyman's  sermon,  to 
be  the  echo  of  his  own  sentiments.  If  Lady 
Flora  were  to  ask  me  to  recommend  her  a  book 
to  read,  and  I  were  to  suggest  Johnson's  "  Lives 
of  the  Poets,"  do  you  think  she  would  ever  ask 
my  advice  again  ?  Or,  if  I  were  to  mention  Tre- 
velyan's  "Life  of  Lord  Macaulay,"  the  best  biog- 
raphy written  since  Lockhart's  "  Life  of  Scott," 
she  would  say,  "  We  had  that  long  ago  "  (it  came 
out  in  1876) ;  "  I  mean  a  new  book." 

To  a  veteran  like  myself,  who  have  watched 
the  books  of  forty  seasons,  there  is  nothing  so 
old  as  a  new  book.     An  astonishing  sameness 


A  MIGHTY  SEA-  WA  YE. 


171 


and  want  of  individuality  pervades  modern  books. 
You  would  think  they  were  all  written  by  the 
same  man.  The  ideas  they  contain  do  not  seem 
to  have  passed  through  the  mind  of  the  writer. 
They  have  not  even  that  originality — the  ODly 
originality  which  John  Mill  in  his  modesty  would 
claim  for  himself — "  which  every  thoughtful  mind 
gives  to  its  own  mode  of  conceiving  and  express- 
ing truths  which  are  common  property  " — ("  Au- 
tobiography," p.  110).  When  you  are  in  London 
step  into  the  reading-room  of  the  British  Museum. 
There  is  the  great  manufactory  out  of  which  we 
turn  the  books  of  the  season.  We  are  all  there 
at  work  for  Smith  and  Mudie.  It  was  so  before 
there  was  any  British  Museum.  It  was  so  in 
Chaucer's  time : 

"  For  out  of  the  olde  fleldes,  as  men  saythe, 
Cometh  all  this  newe  corn  fro  yere  to  yere, 
And  out  of  olde  bookes  in  good  faithe 
Cometh  all  this  newe  science  that  men  lere." 

It  continued  to  be  so  in  Cervantes's  day.  "  There 
are,"  says  Cervantes  in  "  Don  Quixote  "  (32),  "  men 
who  will  make  you  books  and  turn  them  loose  in 


the  world  with  as  much  dispatch  as  they  would 
do  a  dish  of  fritters." 

It  is  not,  then,  any  wonder  that  De  Quincey 
should  account  it  ("  Life  of  De  Quincey,"  i.,  385) 
"  one  of  the  misfortunes  of  life  that  one  must  read 
thousands  of  books  only  to  discover  that  one 
need  not  have  read  them,"  or  that  Mrs.  Brown- 
ing should  say :  "  The  ne  phis  ultra  of  intellectual 
indolence  is  this  reading  of  books.  It  comes  next 
to  what  the  Americans  call  whittling."  And  I 
cannot  doubt  that  Bishop  Butler  had  observed 
the  same  phenomenon  which  has  been  my  subject 
to-night  when  he  wrote,  in  1729,  a  century  and  a 
half  ago  ("  Preface  to  Sermons,"  p.  4) :  "  The 
great  number  of  books  of  amusement  which  daily 
come  in  one's  way,  have  in  part  occasioned  this 
idle  way  of  considering  things.  By  this  means 
time,  even  in  solitude,  is  happily  got  rid  of  with- 
out the  pain  of  attention  ;  neither  is  any  part  of 
it  more  put  to  the  account  of  idleness,  one  can 
scarce  forbear  saying  is  spent  with  less  thought, 
than  great  part  of  that  which  is  spent  in  read- 
ing."— Fortnightly  Review. 


A  MIGHTY  SEA-WAYE. 


ON  May  10th  last  a  tremendous  wave  swept 
the  Pacific  Ocean  from  Peru  northward, 
westward,  and  southward,  traveling  at  a  rate 
many  times  greater  than  that  of  the  swiftest 
express  -  train.  For  reasons  best  known  to 
themselves,  writers  in  the  newspapers  have  by 
almost  common  consent  called  this  phenomenon 
a  tidal  wave.  But  the  tides  have  had  nothing  to 
do  with  it.  Unquestionably  the  wave  resulted 
from  the  upheaval  of  the  bed  of  the  ocean  in 
some  part  of  that  angle  of  the  Pacific  Ocean 
which  is  bounded  by  the  shores  of  Peru  and  Chili. 
This  region  has  long  been  celebrated  for  tremen- 
dous submarine  and  subterranean  upheavals. 
The  opinions  of  geologists  and  geographers  have 
been  divided  as  to  the  real  origin  of  the  dis- 
turbances by  which  at  one  time  the  land,  at  an- 
other time  the  sea,  and  at  yet  other  times  (often- 
er  in  fact  than  either  of  the  others)  both  land  and 
sea,  have  been  shaken  as  by  some  migbty  im- 
prisoned giant,  struggling,  like  Prometheus,  to 
cast  from  his  limbs  the  mountain-masses  which 
hold  them  down.  Some  consider  that  the  seat  of 
the  Tulcanian  forces  lies  deep  below  that  part  of 
the  chain  of  the  Andes  which  lies  at  the  apex  of 


the  angle  just  mentioned,  and  that  the  direction 
of  their  action  varies  according  to  the  varying 
conditions  under  which  the  imprisoned  gases  find 
vent.  Others  consider  that  there  are  two  if  not 
several  seats  of  subterranean  activity.  Yet  oth- 
ers suppose  that  the  real  seat  of  disturbance  lies 
beneath  the  ocean  itself,  a  view  which  seems  to 
find  support  in  several  phenomena  of  recent  Pe- 
ruvian earthquakes. 

Although  we  have  not  as  yet  full  information 
concerning  the  great  wave  which  in  May  last 
swept  across  the  Pacific,  and  northward  and 
southward  along  the  shores  of  the  two  Americas, 
it  may  be  interesting  to  consider  some  of  the 
more  striking  features  of  this  great  disturbance 
of  the  so-called  peaceful  ocean,  and  to  compare 
them  with  those  which  have  characterized  former 
disturbances  of  a  similar  kind.  We  may  thus, 
perhaps,  find  some  evidence  by  which  an  opinion 
may  be  formed  as  to  the  real  seat  of  subterra- 
nean activity  in  this  region. 

It  may  seem  strange,  in  dealing  with  the  case 
of  a  wave  which  apparently  had  its  origin  in  or 
near  Peru  on  May  9th,  to  consider  the  behavior 
of  a  volcano,  distant  5,000  miles  from  this  region, 


172 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


a  week  before  the  disturbance  took  place.  But, 
although  the  coincidence  may  possibly  have  been 
accidental,  yet,  in  endeavoring  to  ascertain  the 
true  seat  of  disturbance,  we  must  overlook  no 
evidence,  however  seemingly  remote,  which  may 
throw  light  on  that  point ;  and  as  the  sea-wave 
generated  by  the  disturbance  reached  very  quick- 
ly the  distant  region  referred  to,  it  is  by  no  means 
unlikely  that  the  subterranean  excitement  which 
the  disturbance  relieved  may  have  manifested  its 
effects  beforehand  at  the  same  remote  volcanic 
region.  Be  this  as  it  may,  it  is  certain  that  on 
May  1st  the  great  crater  of  Kilauea,  in  the  island 
of  Hawaii,  became  active,  and  on  the  4th  severe 
shocks  of  earthquake  were  felt  at  the  Volcano 
House.  At  three  in  the  afternoon  a  jet  of  lava 
was  thrown  up  to  a  height  of  about  100  feet, 
and  afterward  some  fifty  jets  came  into  action. 
Subsequently  jets  of  steam  issued  along  the  line 
formed  by  a  fissure  four  miles  in  length  down 
the  mountain-side.  The  disturbance  lessened 
considerably  on  the  5th,  and  an  observing-party 
examined  the  crater.  They  found  that  a  rounded 
hill,  700  feet  in  height,  and  1,400  feet  in  diameter, 
had  been  thrown  up  on  the  plain  which  forms 
the  floor  of  the  crater.  Fire  and  scoria  were 
spouted  up  in  various  places. 

Before  rejecting  utterly  the  belief  that  the  ac- 
tivity thus  exhibited  in  the  Hawaii  volcano  had 
its  origin  in  the  same  subterrene  or  submarine 
region  as  the  Peruvian  earthquake,  we  should  re- 
member that  other  regions  scarcely  less  remote 
have  been  regarded  as  forming  part  of  this  great 
Vuleanian  district.  The  violent  earthquakes  which 
occurred  at  New  Madrid,  in  Missouri,  in  1812, 
took  place  at  the  same  time  as  the  earthquake  of 
Caraccas,  the  West  Indian  volcanoes  being  si- 
multaneously active ;  and  earthquakes  had  been 
felt  in  South  Carolina  for  several  months  before 
the  destruction  of  Caraccas  and  La  Guayra.  Now 
we  have  abundant  evidence  to  show  that  the 
West  Indian  volcanoes  are  connected  with  the 
Peruvian  and  Chilian  regions  of  Vuleanian  ener- 
gy, and  the  Chilian  region  is  about  as  far  from 
New  Madrid  as  Arica  in  Peru  from  the  Sand- 
wich Isle. 

It  was  not,  however,  until  about  half-past 
eight  on  the  evening  of  May  9th  that  the  Peru- 
vian earthquake  began.  A  severe  shock,  lasting 
from  four  to  five  minutes,  was  felt  along  the  en- 
tire southern  coast,  even  reaching  Autofagasta. 
The  shock  was  so  severe  that  it  was  impossible, 
in  many  places,  to  stand  upright.  It  was  suc- 
ceeded by  several  others  of  less  intensity. 

While  the  land  was  thus  disturbed,  the  sea 


was  observed  to  be  gradually  receding,  a  move- 
ment which  former  experiences  have  taught 
the  Peruvians  to  regard  with  even  more  terror 
than  the  disturbance  of  the  earth  itself.  The 
waters  which  had  thus  withdrawn,  as  if  concen- 
trating their  energies  to  leap  more  fiercely  on 
their  prey,  presently  returned  in  a  mighty  wave, 
which  swept  past  Callao,  traveling  southward 
with  fearful  velocity,  while  in  its  train  followed 
wave  after  wave,  until  no  less  than  eight  had 
taken  their  part  in  the  work  of  destruction.  At 
Mollendo  the  railway  was  torn  up  by  the  sea  for 
a  distance  of  300  feet.  A  violent  hurricane 
which  set  in  afterward  from  the  south  pre- 
vented all  vessels  from  approaching,  and  un- 
roofed most  of  the  houses  in  the  town.  At  Ari- 
ca the  people  were  busily  engaged  in  prepar- 
ing temporary  fortifications  to  repel  a  threat- 
ened assault  of  the  rebel  ram  Huiscar,  at  the 
moment  when  the  roar  of  the  earthquake  was 
heard.  The  shocks  here  were  very  numerous, 
and  caused  immense  damage  in  the  town,  the 
people  flying  to  the  Morro  for  safety.  The  sea 
was  suddenly  perceived  to  recede  from  the  beach, 
and  a  wave  from  ten  feet  to  fifteen  feet  in  height 
rolled  in  upon  the  shore,  carrying  before  it  all 
that  it  met.  Eight  times  was  this  assault  of  the 
ocean  repeated.  The  earthquake  had  leveled  to 
the  ground  a  portion  of  the  custom-house,  the 
railway-station,  the  submarine-cable  office,  the 
hotel,  the  British  consulate,  the  steamship-agen- 
cy, and  many  private  dwellings.  Owing  to  the 
early  hour  of  the  evening,  and  the  excitement 
attendant  on  the  proposed  attack  of  the  Huiscar, 
every  one  was  out  and  stirring ;  but  the  only  loss 
of  life  which  was  reported  is  that  of  three  little 
children  who  were  overtaken  by  the  water.  The 
progress  of  the  wave  was  only  stopped  at  the  foot 
of  the  hill  on  which  the  church  stands,  which 
point  is  farther  inland  than  that  reached  in  Au- 
gust, 1868.  Four  miles  of  the  embankment  of 
the  railway  were  swept  away  like  sand  before  the 
wind.  Locomotives,  cars,  and  rails,  were  hurled 
about  by  the  sea  like  so  many  playthings,  and  left 
in  a  tumbled  mass  of  rubbish. 

The  account  proceeds  to  say  that  the  United 
States  steamer  Waters,  stranded  by  the  bore  of 
1868,  was  lifted  up  bodily  by  the  wave  at  Arica, 
and  floated  two  miles  north  of  her  former  posi- 
tion. The  reference  is,  no  doubt,  to  the  double- 
ender  Wateree,  not  stranded  by  a  bore  (a  term 
utterly  inapplicable  to  any  kind  of  sea-wave  at 
Arica,  where  there  is  no  large  river),  but  carried 
in  by  the  great  wave  which  followed  the  earth- 
quake of  August  13th.     The  description  of  the 


A  MIGHTY  SEA-WAVE. 


173 


wave  at  Arica  on  that  occasion  should  be  com- 
pared with  that  of  the  wave  last  May.  About 
twenty  minutes  after  the  first  earth-shock  the  sea 
was  seen  to  retire,  as  if  about  to  leave  the  shores 
wholly  dry ;  but  presently  its  waters  returned 
with  tremendous  force.  A  mighty  wave,  whose 
leugth  seemed  immeasurable,  was  seen  advancing 
like  a  dark  wall  upon  the  unfortunate  town,  a 
large  part  of  which  was  overwhelmed  by  it.  Two 
ships,  the  Peruvian  corvette  America,  and  the 
American  double-ender  Wateree,  were  carried 
nearly  half  a  mile  to  the  north  of  Arica,  beyond 
the  railroad  which  runs  to  Tacna,  and  there  left 
stranded  high  and  dry.  As  the  English  vice-con- 
sul at  Arica  estimated  the  height  of  this  enormous 
wave  at  fully  fifty  feet,  it  would  not  seem  that 
the  account  of  the  wave  of  last  May  has  been  ex- 
aggerated, for  a  much  less  height  is,  as  we  have 
seen,  attributed  to  it,  though,  as  it  carried  the 
Wateree  still  farther  inland,  it  must  have  been 
higher.  The  small  loss  of  life  can  be  easily  un- 
derstood, when  we  consider  that  the  earthquake 
was  not  followed  instantly  by  the  sea-wave. 
Warned  by  the  experience  of  the  earthquake  of 
1868,  which  most  of  them  must  have  remembered, 
the  inhabitants  sought  safety  on  the  higher 
grounds  until  the  great  wave  and  its  successors 
had  flowed  in.  We  read  that  the  damage  done 
was  greater  than  that  caused  by  the  previous  ca- 
lamity, the  new  buildings  erected  since  1868  being 
of  a  more  costly  and  substantial  class.  Merchan- 
dise from  the  custom-house  and  stores  was  car- 
ried by  the  water  to  a  point  on  the  beach  five 
miles  distant. 

At  Iquique,  in  1868,  the  great  wave  was  esti- 
mated at  fifty  feet  in  height.  We  are  told  that  it 
was  black  with  the  mud  and  slime  of  the  sea-bot- 
tom. "  Those  who  witnessed  its  progress  from 
the  upper  balconies  of  their  houses,  and  present- 
ly saw  its  black  mass  rushing  close  beneath  their 
feet,  looked  on  their  safety  as  a  miracle.  Many 
buildings  were,  indeed,  washed  away,  and  in  the 
low-lying  parts  of  the  town  there  was  a  terrible 
loss  of  life."  Last  May  the  greatest  mischief  at 
Iquique  would  seem  to  have  been  caused  by  the 
earthquake,  not  by  the  sea-wave,  though  this, 
also,  was  destructive  in  its  own  way.  "  Iquique," 
we  are  told,  "  is  in  ruins.  The  movement  was  ex- 
perienced there  at  the  same  time  and  with  the 
same  force  "  (as  at  Arica).  "  Its  duration  was  ex- 
actly four  minutes  and  a  third.  It  proceeded 
from  the  southeast,  exactly  from  the  direction  of 
Ilaga."  The  houses  built  of  wood  and  cane  tum- 
bled down  at  the  first  attack,  lamps  were  broken, 
and  the  burning  oil  spread  over  and  set  fire  to 


the  ruins.  Three  companies  of  firemen,  German, 
Italian,  and  Peruvian,  were  instantly  at  their 
posts,  although  it  was  difficult  to  maintain  an  up- 
right position,  shock  following  shock  with  dread- 
ful rapidity.  Nearly  400,000  quintals  of  nitrate 
in  the  stores  at  Iquique  and  the  adjacent  ports 
of  Molle  and  Pisagua  were  destroyed.  The  Brit- 
ish bark  Caprera  and  a  German  bark  sank,  and 
all  the  coasting-craft  and  small  boats  in  the  har- 
bor were  broken  to  pieces,  and  drifted  about  in 
every  direction. 

At  Chanavaya,  a  small  town  at  the  guano- 
loading  deposit  known  as  Pabellon  de  Pica,  only 
two  houses  were  left  standing  out  of  four  hun- 
dred. Here  the  earthquake-shock  was  specially 
severe.  In  some  places  the  earth  opened  in  crev- 
ices seventeen  yards  deep,  and  the  whole  surface 
of  the  ground  was  changed.  The  shipping  along 
the  Peruvian  and  Bolivian  coast  suffered  terribly. 
The  list  of  vessels  lost  or  badly  injured  at  Pabellon 
de  Pica  alone  reads  like  the  list  of  a  fleet. 

We  have  been  particular  in  thus  describing 
the  effects  produced  by  the  earthquake  and  sea- 
wave  on  the  shores  of  South  America,  in  order 
that  the  reader  may  recognize  in  the  disturbance 
produced  there  the  real  origin  of  the  great  wave 
which  a  few  hours  later  reached  the  Sandwich 
Isles,  5,000  miles  away.  Doubt  has  been  enter- 
tained respecting  the  possibility  of  a  wave,  other 
than  the  tidal  wave,  being  transmitted  right 
across  the  Pacific.  Although  in  August,  1868, 
the  course  of  the  great  wave  which  swept  from 
some  region  near  Peru,  not  only  to  the  Sandwich 
Isles,  but  in  all  directions  over  the  entire  ocean, 
could  be  clearly  traced,  there  were  some  who 
considered  the  connection  between  the  oceanic 
phenomena  and  the  Peruvian  earthquake  a  mere 
coincidence.  It  is  on  this  account,  perhaps, 
chiefly,  that  the  evidence  obtained  last  May  is 
most  important.  It  is  interesting,  indeed,  as 
showing  how  tremendous  was  the  disturbance 
which  the  earth's  frame  must  then  have  under- 
gone. It  would  have  been  possible,  however,  had 
we  no  other  evidence,  for  some  to  have  maintained 
that  the  wave  which  came  in  upon  the  shores  of 
the  Sandwich  Isles  a  few  hours  after  the  earth- 
quake and  sea-disturbance  in  South  America 
was,  in  reality,  an  entirely  independent  phenome- 
non. But  when  we  compare  the  events  which 
happened  last  May  with  those  of  August,  1868, 
and  perceive  their  exact  similarity,  we  can  no 
longer  reasonably  entertain  any  doubt  of  the 
really  stupendous  fact  that  the  throes  of  the  earth 
in  and  near  Peru  are  of  svfficie?it  energy  to  send 
an  oceanic  wave  right  across  the  Pacific,  and  of 


174 


TEE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


such  enormous  height  at  starting,  that,  after 
traveling  with  necessarily  diminishing  height  the 
whole  way  to  Hawaii,  it  still  rises  and  falls  through 
thirty-six  feet.  The  real  significance  of  this  amaz- 
ing oceanic  disturbance  is  exemplified  by  the 
wave-circles  which  spread  around  the  spot  where 
a  stone  has  fallen  into  a  smooth  lake.  We  know 
how,  as  the  circle  widens,  the  height  of  the  wave 
grows  less  and  less,  until,  at  no  great  distance 
from  the  centre  of  disturbance,  the  wave  can  no 
longer  be  discerned,  so  slight  is  the  slope  of  its 
advancing  and  following  faces.  How  tremen- 
dous, then,  must  have  been  the  upheaval  of  the 
bed  of  ocean  by  which  wave-circles  were  sent 
across  the  Pacific,  retaining,  after  traveling  5,000 
miles  from  the  centre  of  disturbance,  the  height 
of  a  two-storied  house!  In  1868,  indeed,  we 
know  (now  even  more  certainly  than  then)  that 
the  wave  traveled  very  much  farther,  reaching 
the  shores  of  Japan,  of  New  Zealand,  and  of 
Australia,  even  if  it  did  not  make  its  way  through 
the  East  Indian  Archipelago  to  the  Indian  Ocean, 
as  some  .observations  seem  to  show.  Doubtless 
we  shall  hear,  in  the  course  of  the  next  few 
months,  of  the  corresponding  effects  of  the  spread 
of  last  May's  mighty  wave  athwart  the  Pacific, 
though  the  dimensions  of  the  wave  of  last  May, 
when  it  reached  the  Sandwich  Isles,  fell  far  short 
of  those  of  the  great  wave  of  August  13-14,  1868. 

It  will  be  well  to  make  a  direct  comparison 
between  the  waves  of  May  last  and  August,  1868, 
in  this  respect,  as  also  with  regard  to  the  rate  at 
which  they  would  seem  to  have  traversed  the  dis- 
tance between  Peru  and  Hawaii.  On  this  last 
point,  however,  it  must  be  noted  that  we  cannot 
form  an  exact  opinion  until  we  have  ascertained 
the  real  region  of  Vulcanian  disturbance  on  each 
occasion.  It  is  possible  that  a  careful  examina- 
tion of  times,  and  of  the  direction  in  which  the 
wave-front  advanced  upon  different  shores,  might 
serve  to  show  where  this  region  lay.  We  should 
not  be  greatly  surprised  to  learn  that  it  was  far 
from  the  continent  of  South  America. 

The  great  wave  reached  the  Sandwich  Isles 
between  four  and  five  on  the  morning  of  May 
10th,  corresponding  to  about  five  hours  later  of 
Peruvian  time.  An  oscillation  only  was  first  ob- 
served at  Hilo,  on  the  east  coast  of  the  great 
southern  island  of  Hawaii,  the  wave  itself  not 
reaching  the  village  till  about  a  quarter  before 
five.  The  greatest  difference  between  the  crest 
and  trough  of  the  wave  was  found  to  be  thirty- 
six  feet  here ;  but  at  the  opposite  side  of  the 
island,  in  Kealakeakua  Bay  (where  Captain  Cook 
died),  amounted   only  to  thirty  feet.     In  other 


places  the  difference  was  much  less,  being  in 
some  only  three  feet,  a  circumstance  doubtless 
due  to  interference,  waves  which  had  reached  the 
same  spot,  along  different  courses,  chancing  so  to 
arrive  that  the  crest  of  one  corresponded  with 
the  trough  of  the  other,  so  that  the  resulting 
wave  was  only  the  difference  of  the  two.  We 
must  explain,  however,  in  the  same  way,  the 
highest  waves  of  thirty-six  to  forty  feet,  which 
were  doubtless  due  to  similar  interference,  crest 
agreeing  with  crest,  and  trough  with  trough,  so 
that  the  resulting  wave  was  the  sum  of  the  two 
which  had  been  divided,  and  had  reached  the 
same  spot  along  different  courses.  It  would  fol- 
low that  the  higher  of  the  two  waves  was  about 
twenty-one  feet  high,  the  lower  about  eighteen 
feet  high ;  but  as  some  height  would  be  lost  in 
the  encounter  with  the  shore-line,  wherever  it 
lay,  on  which  the  waves  divided,  we  may  fairly 
assume  that  in  the  open  ocean,  before  reaching 
the  Sandwich  group,  the  wave  had  a  height  of 
nearly  thirty  feet  from  trough  to  crest.  We  read, 
in  accordance  with  this  explanation,  that  "  the 
regurgitations  of  the  sea  were  violent  and  com- 
plex, and  continued  through  the  day." 

The  wave,  regarded  as  a  whole,  seems  to  have 
reached  all  the  islands  at  the  same  time.  If  this 
is  confirmed  by  later  accounts,  we  shall  be  com- 
pelled to  conclude  that  the  wave  reached  the 
group  w-ith  its  front  parallel  to  the  length  of  the 
group,  so  that  it  must  have  come  (arriving  as  it 
did  from  the  side  toward  which  Hilo  lies)  from 
the  northeast.  It  was  then  not  the  direct  wave 
from  Peru,  but  the  wave  reflected  from  the  shores 
of  California,  which  produced  the  most  marked 
effects.  We  can  understand  well,  this  being  so, 
that  the  regurgitations  of  the  sea  were  complex. 
Any  one  who  has  watched  the  inflow  of  waves  on 
a  beach  so  lying  within  an  angle  of  the  shore, 
that  while  one  set  of  waves  comes  straight  in 
from  the  sea,  another  thwart  set  comes  from  the 
shore  forming  the  other  side  of  the  angle,  will 
understand  how  such  waves  differ  from  a  set  of 
ordinary  rollers.  The  crests  of  the  two  sets  form 
a  sort  of  network,  ever  changing  as  each  set  rolls 
on ;  and  considering  any  one  of  the  four-cornered 
meshes  of  this  wave-net,  the  observer  will  notice 
that,  while  the  middle  of  the  raised  sides  rises 
little  above  the  surrounding  level,  because  here 
the  crests  of  one  set  cross  the  troughs  of  the 
other,  the  corners  of  each  quadrangle  are  higher 
than  they  would  be  in  either  set  taken  separately, 
while  the  middle  of  the  four-cornered  space  is 
correspondingly  depressed.  The  reason  is,  that 
at  the  corners  of  the  wave-net  crests  join  with 


A  MIGHTY  SEA-WAVE. 


175 


crests  to  raise  the  water-surface,  while  in  the 
middle  of  the  net  (not  the  middle  of  the  sides, 
but  the  middle  of  the  space  inclosed  by  the  four 
sides)  trough  joins  with  trough  to  depress  the 
water-surface.1 

We  must  take  into  account  the  circumstance 
that  the  wave  which  reached  Hawaii  last  May 
was  probably  reflected  from  the  California  coast, 
when  we  endeavor  to  determine  the  rate  at  which 
the  sea-disturbance  was  propagated  across  the 
Atlantic.  The  direct  wave  would  have  come 
sooner,  and  may  have  escaped  notice  because 
arriving  in  the  night-time,  as  it  would  necessarily 
have  done  if  a  wave  which  traveled  to  California, 
and  thence,  after  reflection,  to  the  Sandwich 
group,  arrived  there  at  a  quarter  before  five  in 
the  morning  following  the  Peruvian  earthquake. 
We  shall  be  better  able  to  form  an  opinion  on 
this  point  after  considering  what  happened  in 
August,  1868. 

The  earth-throe  on  that  occasion  was  felt  in 
Peru  about  five  minutes  past  five  on  the  evening 
of  August  13th.  Twelve  hours  later,  or  shortly 
before  midnight,  August  13th,  Sandwich  Island 
time  (corresponding  to  5  A.  M.,  August  14th,  Pe- 
ruvian time),  the  sea  round  the  group  of  the  Sand- 
wich Isles  rose  in  a  surprising  manner,  "  inso- 
much that  many  thought  the  islands  were  sink- 
ing, and  would  shortly  subside  altogether  beneath 
the  waves.  Some  of  the  smaller  islands  were  for 
a  time  completely  submerged.  Before  long,  how- 
ever, the  sea  fell  again,  and  as  it  did  so  the  ob- 
servers found  it  impossible  to  resist  the  impres- 
sion that  the  islands  were  rising  bodily  out  of 
the  water.  For  no  less  than  three  days  this 
strange  oscillation  of  the  sea  continued  to  be  ex- 
perienced, the  most  remarkable  ebbs  and  floods 
being  noticed  at  Honolulu,  on  the  island  of  Oa- 
hu." 

The  distance  between  Honolulu  and  Arica  is 
about  6,300  statute  miles ;  so  that,  if  the  wave 
traveled  directly  from  the  shores  of  Peru  to  the 
Sandwich  Isles,  it  must  have  advanced  at  an  av- 
erage rate  of  about  525  miles  an  hour  (about  450 
knots  an  hour).  This  is  nearly  half  the  rate  at 
which  the  earth's  surface  near  the  equator  is  car- 

1  The  phenomena  here  described  are  well  worth  ob- 
serving on  their  own  account  as  affording  a  very  in- 
structive and,  at  the  same  time,  very  beautiful  illustra- 
tion of  wave-motions.  They  can  be  well  seen  at  many 
of  our  watering-places.  The  Fame  laws  of  wave-mo- 
tion can  be  readily  illustrated,  also,  by  throwing  two 
stones  into  a  large,  smooth  pool  at  points  a  few  yards 
apart.  The  crossing  of  the  two  sets  of  circular  waves 
produces  a  wave-net,  the  meshes  of  which  vary  in 
shape  according  to  their  position. 


ried  round  by  the  earth's  rotation,  or  is  about  the 
rate  at  which  parts  in  latitudes  62°  or  63°  north 
are  carried  round  by  rotation ;  so  that  the  mo- 
tion of  the  great  wave  in  1868  was  fairly  com- 
parable with  one  of  the  movements  which  we  are 
accustomed  to  regard  as  cosmical.  We  shall 
presently  have  something  more  to  say  on  this 
point. 

Now,  last  May,  as  we  have  seen,  the  wave 
reached  Hawaii  at  about  a  quarter  to  five  in  the 
morning,  corresponding  to  about  ten,  Peruvian 
time.  Since,  then,  the  earthquake  was  felt  in 
Peru  at  half-past  eight  on  the  previous  evening, 
it  follows  that  the  wave,  if  it  traveled  directly 
from  Peru,  must  have  taken  about  thirteen  and  a 
half  hours,  or  an  hour  and  a  half  longer,  in  trav- 
eling from  Peru  to  the  Sandwich  Isles,  than  it 
took  in  August,  1868.  This  is  unlikely,  because 
ocean-waves  travel  nearly  at  the  same  rate  in  the 
same  parts  of  the  ocean,  whatever  their  dimen- 
sions, so  only  that  they  are  large.  We  have, 
then,  in  the  difference  of  time  occupied  by  the 
wave  in  May  last  and  in  August,  1868,, in  reach- 
ing Hawaii,  some  corroboration  of  the  result  to 
which  we  were  led  by  the  arrival  of  the  wave 
simultaneously  at  all  the  islands  of  the  Sandwich 
group — the  inference,  namely,  that  the  observed 
wave  had  reached  these  islands  after  reflection 
from  the  California  shore-line.  As  the  hour  when 
the  direct  wave  probably  reached  Hawaii  was 
about  a  quarter-past  three  in  the  morning,  when 
not  only  was  it  night-time,  but  also  a  time  when 
few  would  be  awake  to  notice  the  rise  and  fall  of 
the  sea,  it  seems  not  at  all  improbable  that  the 
direct  wave  escaped  notice,  and  that  the  wave 
actually  observed  was  the  reflected  wave  from 
California.  The  direction,  also,  in  which  the  os- 
cillation was  first  observed  corresponds  well  with 
this  explanation. 

It  is  clear  that  the  wave  which  traversed  the 
Pacific  last  May  was  somewhat  inferior  in  size  to 
that  of  August,  1868,  which,  therefore,  still  de- 
serves to  be  called  (as  then  by  the  present  writer) 
the  greatest  sea-wave  ever  known.  The  earth- 
quake, indeed,  which  preceded  the  oceanic  dis- 
turbance of  1868  was  far  more  destructive  than 
that  of  May  last,  and  the  waves  which  came  in 
upon  the  Peruvian  and  Bolivian  shores  were 
larger.  Nevertheless,  the  wave  of  last  May  was  not 
so  far  inferior  to  that  of  August,  1868,  but  that 
we  may  expect  to  hear  of  its  course  being  traced 
athwart  the  entire  extent  of  the  Pacific  Ocean. 

When  we  consider  the  characteristic  features 
of  the  Peruvian  and  Chilian  earthquakes,  and 
especially  when  we  note  how  wide  is  the  extent 


176 


TUE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTELY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


of  the  region  over  which  their  action  is  felt  in  one 
way  or  another,  it  can  scarcely  be  doubted  that 
the  earth's  Vulcanian  energies  are  at  present 
more  actively  at  work  throughout  that  region  than 
in  any  other.  There  is  nothing  so  remarkable, 
one  may  even  say  so  stupendous,  in  the  history 
of  subterranean  disturbance  as  the  alternation  of 
mighty  earth-throes,  by  which,  at  one  time,  the 
whole  of  the  Chilian  Andes  seem  disturbed,  and 
anon  the  whole  of  the  Peruvian  Andes.  In  Chili 
scarcely  a  year  ever  passes  without  earthquakes, 
and  the  same  may  be  said  of  Peru ;  but,  so  far 
as  great  earthquakes  are  concerned,  the  activity 
of  the  Peruvian  region  seems  to  synchronize  with 
the  comparative  quiescence  of  the  Chilian  region, 
and  vice  versa.  Thus,  in  1797,  the  terrible  earth- 
quake occurred  known  as  the  earthquake  of 
Riobamba,  which  affected  the  entire  Peruvian 
earthquake  region.  Thirty  years  later  a  series 
of  tremendous  throes  shook  the  whole  of  Chili, 
permanently  elevating  the  whole  line  of  coast  to 
the  height  of  several  feet.  During  the  last  ten 
years  the  Peruvian  region  has  in  turn  been  dis- 
turbed by  great  earthquakes.  It  should  be  added 
that  between  Chili  and  Peru  there  is  a  region 
about  500  miles  in  length  in  which  scarcely  any 
volcanic  action  has  been  observed.  And,  singu- 
larly enough,  "this  very  portion  of  the  Andes,  to 
which  one  would  imagine  that  the  Peruvians  and 
Chilians  would  fly  as  to  a  region  of  safety,  is  the 
part  most  thinly  inhabited — insomuch  that,  as 
Von  Buch  observes,  it  is  in  some  places  entirely 
deserted." 

One  can  readily  understand  that  this  enor- 
mous double  region  of  earthquakes,  whose  oscil- 
lations on  either  side  of  the  central  region  of 
comparative  rest  may  be  compared  to  the  sway- 
ing of  a  mighty  seesaw  on  either  side  of  its 
point  of  support,  should  be  capable  of  giving 
birth  to  throes  propelling  sea-waves  across  the 
Pacific  Ocean.  The  throe  actually  experienced 
at  any  given  place  is  relatively  but  an  insignifi- 
cant phenomenon  ;  it  is  the  disturbance  of  the 
entire  region  over  which  the  throe  is  felt  which 
must  be  considered  in  attempting  to  estimate  the 
energy  of  the  disturbing  cause.  The  region 
shaken  by  the  earthquake  of  1868,  for  instance, 
was  equal  to  at  least  a  fourth  of  Europe, 
and  probably  to  fully  one-half.  From  Quito 
southward  as  far  as  Iquique — or  along  a  full 
third  part  of  the  length  of  the  South  American 
Andes — the  shock  produced  destructive  effects. 
It  was  also  distinctly  felt  far  to  the  north  of 
Quito,  far  to  the  south  of  Iquique,  and  inland  to 
enormous  distances.     The  disturbing  force  which 


thus  shook  1,000,000  square  miles  of  the  earth's 
surface  must  have  been  one  of  almost  inconceiv- 
able energy.  If  directed  entirely  to  the  upheaval 
of  a  land-region  no  larger  than  England,  those 
forces  would  have  sufficed  to  have  destroyed  ut- 
terly every  city,  town,  and  village,  within  such  a 
region  ;  if  directed  entirely  to  the  upheaval  of  an 
oceanic  region,  they  would  have  been  capable  of 
raising  a  wave  which  would  have  been  felt  on  ev- 
ery shore-line  of  the  whole  earth.  Divided  even 
between  the  ocean  on  the  one  side  and  a  land-re- 
gion larger  than  Russia  in  Europe  on  the  other, 
those  Vulcanian  forces  shook  the  whole  of  the 
land-region,  and  sent  athwart  the  largest  of  our 
earth's  oceans  a  wave  which  ran  in  upon  shores 
10,000  miles  from  the  centre  of  disturbance  with 
a  crest  thirty  feet  high.  Forces  such  as  these 
may  fairly  be  regarded  as  cosmical ;  they  show 
unmistakably  that  the  earth  has  by  no  means  set- 
tled down  into  that  condition  of  repose  in  which 
some  geologists  still  believe.  We  may  ask  with 
the  late  Sir  Charles  Lyell  whether,  after  contem- 
plating the  tremendous  energy  thus  displayed  by 
the  earth,  any  geologist  will  continue  to  assert 
that  the  changes  of  relative  level  of  land  and  sea, 
so  common  in  former  ages  of  the  world,  have 
now  ceased  ?  and  agree  with  him  that  if,  in  the 
face  of  such  evidence,  a  geologist  persists  in 
maintaining  this  favorite  dogma,  it  would  be  vain 
to  hope,  by  accumulating  proofs  of  similar  con- 
vulsions during  a  series  of  ages,  to  shake  the 
tenacity  of  his  conviction — 

"  Si  fractuB  illabatur  orbis, 
Impavidum  ferient  ruins." 

But  there  is  one  aspect  iu  which  such  mighty 
sea-waves  as  in  1868,  and  again  last  May,  have 
swept  over  the  surface  of  our  terrestrial  oceans, 
remains  yet  to  be  considered. 

The  oceans  and  continents  of  our  earth  must 
be  clearly  discernible  from  her  nearer  neighbors 
among  the  planets — from  Venus  and  Mercury  on 
the  inner  side  of  her  path  around  the  sun,  and 
from  Mars  (though  under  less  favorable  condi- 
tions) from  the  outer  side.  When  we  consider, 
indeed,  that  the  lands  and  seas  of  Mars  can  be 
clearly  discerned  with  telescopic  aid  from  our 
earth  at  a  distance  of  40,000,000  miles,  we  per- 
ceive that  our  earth,  seen  from  Venus  at  little 
more  than  half  this  distance,  must  present  a  very 
interesting  appearance.  Enlarged,  owing  to  great- 
er proximity,  nearly  fourfold,  having  a  diameter 
nearly  twice  as  great  as  that  of  Mars,  so  that  at 
the  same  distance  her  disk  would  seem  more  than 
three  times  as  large,  more  brightly  illuminated 
by  the  sun  in  the  proportion  of  about  five  to  tw 


A  MIGHTY  SEA- WAVE. 


177 


she  would  shine  with  a  lustre  exceeding  that  of 
Mars  when  in  full  brightness  in  the  midnight  sky 
about  thirty  times,  and  all  her  features  would,  of 
course,  be  seen  with  correspondingly-increased 
distinctness.  Moreover,  the  oceans  of  our  earth 
are  so  much  larger  in  relative  extent  than  those 
of  Mars,  covering  nearly  three-fourths  instead  of 
barely  one-half  of  the  surface  of  the  world  they 
belong  to,  that  they  would  appear  as  far  more 
marked  and  characteristic  features  than  the  seas 
and  lakes  of  Mars.  When  the  Pacific  Ocean,  in- 
deed, occupies  centrally  the  disk  of  the  earth 
which  at  the  moment  is  turned  toward  any  planet, 
nearly  the  whole  of  that  disk  must  appear  to  be 
covered  by  the  ocean.  Under  such  circumstances 
the  passage  of  a  wide-spreading  series  of  waves 
over  the  Pacific,  at  the  rate  of  about  500  miles 
an  hour,  is  a  phenomenon  which  could  scarcely 
fail  to  be  discernible  from  Venus  or  Mercury,  if 
either  planet  chanced  to  be  favorably  placed  for 
the  observation  of  the  earth — always  supposing 
there  were  observers  in  Mercury  or  Venus,  and 
that  these  observers  were  provided  with  powerful 
telescopes.      • 

It  must  be  remembered  that  the  waves  which 
spread  over  the  Pacific  on  August  13-14,  1868, 
and  again  on  May  9th-10th  last,  were  not  only 
of  enormous  range  in  length  (measured  along 
crest  or  trough),  but  also  of  enormous  breadth 
(measured  from  crest  to  crest,  or  from  trough  to 
trough).  Were  it  otherwise,  indeed,  the  progress 
of  a  wave  forty  or  fifty  feet  high  (at  starting,  and 
thirty-five  feet  high  after  traveling  6,000  miles), 
at  the  rate  of  500  miles  per  hour,  must  have 
proved  destructive  to  ships  in  the  open  ocean  as 
well  as  along  the  shore-line.  Suppose,  for  in- 
stance, the  breadth  of  the  wave  from  crest  to 
crest  one  mile,  then,  in  passing  under  a  ship  at 
the  rate  of  500  miles  per  hour,  the  wave  would 
raise  the  ship  from  trough  to  crest — that  is, 
through  a  height  of  forty  feet — in  one-thousandth 
part  of  an  hour  (for  the  distance  from  trough  to 
crest  is  but  half  the  breadth  of  the  wave),  or  in 
less  than  four  seconds,  lowering  it  again  in  the 
same  short  interval  of  time,  lifting  and  lowering 
it  at  the  same  rate  several  successive  times.  The 
velocity  with  which  the  ship  would  travel  up- 
ward and  downward  would  be  greatest  when  she 
was  midway  in  her  ascent  and  descent,  and  would 
then  be  equal  to  about  the  velocity  with  which  a 
body  strikes  the  ground  after  falling  from  a 
height  of  four  yards.  It  is  hardly  necessary  to 
say  that  small  vessels  subjected  to  such  tossing 
as  this  would  inevitably  be  swamped.  On  even 
the  largest  ships  the  effect  of  such  motion  would 
48 


be  most  unpleasantly  obvious.  Now,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  the  passage  of  the  great  sea-wave  in 
1868  was  not  noticed  at  all  on  board  ships  in 
open  sea.  Even  within  sight  of  the  shore  of 
Peru,  where  the  oscillation  of  the  sea  was  most 
marked,  the  motion  was  such  that  its  effects  were 
referred  to  the  shore.  We  are  told  that  observers 
on  the  deck  of  a  United  States  war-steamer  dis- 
tinctly saw  the  "  peaks  of  the  mountains  in  the 
chain  of  the  Cordilleras  wave  to  and'fro  like  reeds 
in  a  storm ;"  the  fact  really  being  that  the  deck 
on  which  they  stood  was  swayed  to  and  fro.  This, 
too,  was  in  a  part  of  the  sea  where  the  gieat 
wave  had  not  attained  its  open-sea  form,  but  was 
a  rolling  wave,  because  of  the  shallowness  of  the 
water.  In  the  open  sea,  we  read  that  the  pas- 
sage of  the  great  sea-wave  was  no  more  noticed 
than  is  the  passage  of  the  tidal  wave  itself. 
"Among  the  hnndreds  of  ships  which  were  sail- 
ing upon  the  Pacific  when  its  length  and  breadth 
were  traversed  by  the  great  sea-wave,  there  was 
not  one  in  which  any  unusual  motion  was  per- 
ceived." The  inference  is  clear  that  the  slope 
of  the  advancing  and  following  faces  of  the  great 
wave  was  very  much  less  than  in  the  case  above 
imagined ;  in  other  words,  that  the  breadth  of 
the  wave  greatly  exceeded  one  mile — amounting, 
in  fact,  to  many  miles. 

Where  the  interval  between  the  passage  of 
successive  wave-crests  was  noted,  we  can  tell  the 
actual  breadth  of  the  wave.  Thus,  at  the  Samo- 
an  Isles,  in  1868,  the  crests  succeeded  each  other 
at  intervals  of  sixteen  minutes,  corresponding  to 
eight  minutes  between  crest  and  trough.  As  we 
have  seen  that,  if  the  waves  were  one  mile  in 
breadth,  the  corresponding  interval  would  be  only 
four  seconds,  or  only  120th  part  of  eight  minutes, 
it  would  follow  that  the  breadth  of  the  great 
wave,  where  it  reached  the  Samoan  Isles  in  1868, 
was  about  120  miles. 

Now,  a  wave  extending  right  athwart  the  Pa- 
cific Ocean,  and  having  a  cross-breadth  of  more 
than  100  miles,  would  be  discernible  as  a  marked 
feature  of  the  disk  of  our  earth,  seen,  under  the 
conditions  described  above,  either  from  Mercury 
or  Venus.  It  is  true  that  the  slope  of  the  wave's 
advancing  and  following  surfaces  would  be  but 
slight,  yet  the  difference  of  illumination  under 
the  sun's  rays  would  be  recognizable.  Then,  also, 
it  is  to  be  remembered  that  there  was  not  merely 
a  single  wave,  but  a  succession  of  many  waves. 
These  traveled  also  with  enormous  velocity ;  and 
though  at  the  distance  of  even  the  nearest  planet 
the  apparent  motion  of  the  great  wave,  swift 
though  it  was  in  reality,  would  be  so  far  reduced 


17S 


TEE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTELY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


that  it  would  have  to  be  estimated  rather  than 
actually  seen,  yet  there  would  be  no  difficulty  in 
thus  perceiving  it  with  the  mind's  eye.  The  rate 
of  motion,  indeed,  would  almost  be  exactly  the 
same  as  that  of  the  equatorial  part  of  the  surface 
of  Mars,  in  consequence  of  the  planet's  rotation ; 
and  this  (as  is  well  known  to  telescopists),  though 
not  discernible,  directly  produces,  even  in  a  few 
minutes,  changes  which  a  good  eye  can  clearly 
recognize.  We  can  scarcely  doubt,  then,  that  if 
our  earth  were  so  situated  at  any  time  when  one 
of  the  great  waves  generated  by  Peruvian  earth- 
quakes is  traversing  the  Pacific  that  the  hemi- 
sphere containing  this  ocean  were  turned  fully 
illuminated  toward  Venus  (favorably  placed  for 
observing  her),  the  disturbance  of  the  Pacific 
could  be  observed  and  measured  by  telescopists 
on  that  planet. 

Unfortunately,  there  is  little  chance  that  ter- 
restrial observers  will  ever  be  able  to  watch  the 
progress  of  great  waves  athwart  the  oceans  of 
Mars,  and  still  less  that  any  disturbance  of  the 
frame  of  Venus  should  become  discernible  to  us 
by  its  effects.  We  can  scarcely  even  be  assured 
that  there  are  lands  and  seas  on  Venus,  so  far  as 
direct  observation  is  concerned,  so  unfavorably  is 
she  always  placed  for  observation ;  and  though 
we  see  Mars  under  much  more  favorable  condi- 
tions, his  seas  are  too  small  and  would  seem  to 
be  too  shallow  (compared  with  our  own)  for  great 
waves  to  traverse  them  such  as  could  be  dis- 
cerned from  the  earth. 

Yet  it  may  be  well  to  remember  the  possibil- 
ity that  changes  may  at  times  take  place  in  the 
nearer  planets — thet  errestrial  planets,  as  they  are 
commonly  called,  Mars,  Venus,  and  Mercury — 
such  as  telescopic  observation  under  favorable 
conditions  might  detect.  Telescopists  have,  in- 
deed, described  apparent  changes,  lasting  only  for 
a  short  time,  in  the  appearance  of  one  of  these 
planets,  Mars,  which  may  fairly  be  attributed  to 
disturbances  affecting  its  surface  in  no  greater 
degree  than  the  great  Peruvian  earthquakes  have 
affected  for  a  time  the  surface  of  our  earth.    For 


instance,  the  American  astronomer  Mitchel  says 
that,  on  the  night  of  July  12, 1845,  the  bright  po- 
lar snows  of  Mars  exhibited  an  appearance  never 
noticed  at  any  preceding  or  succeeding  observa- 
tion. In  the  very  centre  of  the  white  surface  ap- 
peared a  dark  spot,  which  retained  its  position  . 
during  several  hours.  On  the  following  evening 
not  a  trace  of  the  spot  could  be  seen.  Again, 
the  same  observer  says  that,  on  the  evening  of 
August  30,  1845,  he  observed  for  the  first  time  a 
small  bright  spot,  nearly  or  quite  round,  project- 
ing out  of  the  lower  side  of  the  polar  spot.  "  In 
the  early  part  of  the  evening,"  he  says,  "the 
small  bright  spot  seemed  to  be  partly  buried  in 
the  large  one.  After  the  lapse  of  an  hour  or  more 
my  attention  was  again  directed  to  the  planet, 
when  I  was  astonished  to  find  a  manifest  change 
in  the  position  of  the  small  bright  spot.  It  had 
apparently  separated  from  the  large  spot,  and 
the  edges  alone  of  the  two  were  now  in  contact, 
whereas  when  first  seen  they  overlapped  by  an 
amount  quite  equal  to  one-third  of  the  diameter 
of  the  small  one.  This,  however,  was  merely  an 
optical  phenomenon,  for  on  the  next  evening  the 
spots  went  through  the  same  apparent  changes, 
as  the  planet  went  through  the  corresponding 
part  of  its  rotation.  But  it  showed  the  spots  to 
be  real  ice-masses.  The  strange  part  of  the  story 
is,  that  in  the  course  of  a  few  days  the  smaller 
spot,  which  must  have  been  a  mass  of  snow  and 
ice  as  large  as  Nova  Zembla,  gradually  disap- 
peared." Probably  some  great  shock  had  sepa- 
rated an  enormous  field  of  ice  from  the  polar 
snows,  and  it  had  eventually  been  broken  up  and 
its  fragments  carried  away  from  the  arctic  regions 
by  currents  in  the  Martian  oceans.  It  appears 
to  us  that  the  study  of  our  own  earth,  and  of  the 
changes  and  occasional  convulsions  which  affect 
its  surface,  gives  to  the  observation  of  such  phe- 
nomena as  we  have  just  described  a  new  interest. 
Or  rather,  perhaps,  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that 
telescopic  observations  of  the  planets  derive  their 
only  real  interest  from  such  considerations. — 
Comhill  Magazine. 


THEOLOGY  AND  SCIENCE  TWO  HUNDRED    YEARS  AGO. 


1T9 


THEOLOGY  AND  SCIENCE  TWO  HUNDKED  YEAKS  AGO.1 

By  CARCS  STEENE. 


IT  is  interesting  to  observe  the  scientific  treat- 
ment two  or  three  hundred  years  ago  of  such 
questions  as  the  origin  of  species  and  the  migra- 
tion of  the  human  race.  I  do  not  mean  the  pure- 
ly theological  treatment  of  these  subjects,  for  be- 
lief in  the  letter  has  ever  been  ready  with  its  so- 
lutions of  such  difficult  problems,  but  I  mean  the 
honest  striving  and  mental  effort  of  candid  men 
to  establish  a  harmony  between  Eevelation,  Rea- 
son, and  Discovery.  In  this  respect,  it  appears 
to  me  that  a  book  by  Abraham  Milius,  on  the 
"  Origin  of  Animals  and  the  Migration  of  Peo- 
ples," 2  published  in  the  third  quarter  of  the  sev- 
enteenth century,  at  Salzburg,  under  the  high  ap- 
probation of  the  archbishop  of  that  see,  is  wor- 
thy of  a  pretty  thorough  examination.  This  work 
shows,  better  than  any  other  I  know  of,  what  a 
botch  is  made  of  our  theories  of  the  universe 
when  Reason  and  Revelation  exchange  compli- 
ments and  make  compromises  with  each  other. 
It  also  shows  what  a  powerful  influence  the  dis- 
covery of  America  and  Australia,  with  their 
wealth  of  unknown  animals  and  plants,  exercised 
upon  the  traditional  theories  of  the  universe — 
theories  that  were  undisturbed  even  by  the  dis- 
coveries of  Copernicus  and  Kepler. 

I  would  remark  that  this  work,  originally 
written  in  Latin,  was  accessible  to  me  only  in 
the  German  translation  of  the  Austrian  Kreisphy- 
sikus,  Christoph  Bitterkraut,3  a  work  of  400 
pages ;  and,  in  view  of  the  free  and  even  arbi- 
trary dealing  of  the  translator  with  the  original, 
it  may  be  that  for  many  a  contradiction  in  the 
text  the  translator  alone  is  answerable.  Of  the 
life  and  rank  of  the  author,  or  the  date  of  publica- 
tion of  the  original,  unfortunately,  I  have  no  in- 
formation. It  is  an  agreeable  surprise  to  find  in 
a  work  published  in  the  seventeenth  century  by 
permission  of  the  church  authorities  a  far  freer 
exposition  of  the  Scriptures  than  would  be  likely 
to  be  permitted  in  the  same  circles  nowadays. 
The  author  promisingly  sets  out  with  a  eulogy  on 
human  reason,  which,  as  he  says,  can  neither  be 
driven  nor  tied,  but  which  unerringly  pursues  its 

1  Translated  from  the  German  by  J.  Fitzgerald, 
A.M. 

2  "  De  Origine  Animalium  et  Migratione  Populo- 
rum." 

3  "  Merkwiirdiger  Diskursz  von  dem  Ursprung  der 
Thier  und  Aufzug  der  VSlcker,"  1670. 


object  of  "  bringing  to  light  what  is  hidden,  .and 
exploring  the  unknown."  Of  those  persons  who 
make  no  use  of  "  this  so  precious  prerogative 
above  other  animals  bestowed  upon  them,  and 
indeed,  as  it  were,  inherited  by  them,"  it  is  said 
that  they  "  voluntarily  confine  themselves  within 
the  narrowness  of  the  imbecility  and  ignorance 
of  irrational  brute  beasts,  from  which  they  differ 
little  if  at  all."  Among  the  subjects  the  investi- 
gation of  which  suggests  itself  to  man's  reason, 
one  of  the  most  important  is  declared  to  be  this  : 
"  How  did  not  only  man  but  all  other  animals 
also  originally  come  into  existence,  and  then  how 
did  they  spread  over  the  whole  world  and  all  its 
parts,  there  to  dwell  and  to  take  up  their  abode  ?  " 
"Be  it,"  says  the  author  in  another  place,  "  that 
such  questions  are  rather  over-curious,  still  they 
appear  to  be  not  altogether  without  reason."  In 
the  words  above  quoted  it  strikes  us  as  some- 
thing unusual,  in  the  author's  day,  that  he  speaks 
of  "man  and  other  animals,"  thus  reckoning  man 
among  animals,  for  a  sharp  line  of  demarkation 
was  made  between  the  two,  in  view  of  the  ques- 
tion of  creation. 

We  readily  incline  to  the  supposition  that  the 
view  held  by  a  Linne,  a  Cuvier,  an  Agassiz,  ac- 
cording to  -which  the  Creator  with  his  own  hands 
fashioned  every  living  thing,  whether  plant,  or 
animal,  or  man,  was  the  original  doctrine  of  the 
Church.  But  this  is  entirely  erroneous.  The 
Christian  Church  has,  ever  since  the  origin  of 
dogmatic  theology,  reserved  exclusively  to  man 
the  privilege  of  having  sprung  directly  from  the 
hands  of  the  Creator,  and  has  characterized  as 
false  and  contradictory  of  the  Scriptures  the  sup- 
position that  plants  and  animals  had  a  like  ori- 
gin. St.  Ambrose  and  St.  Basil,  in  their  obser- 
vations on  the  "work  of  the  six  days"  (hexaem- 
eron),  held  that  the  words  "  Let  the  earth  bring 
forth  grass,  the  herb,"  etc.,  and  "  Let  the  waters 
bring  forth  abundantly  the  moving  creature  that 
hath  life,"  are  to  be  so  understood  that  water 
and  land  have  been  endowed  with  the  property 
of  bearing  all  sorts  of  animals  and  plants  and 
that  this  power  remains,  so  that  new  plants,  and 
animals  may  still  come  into  existence  without 
any  parents.  In  fact  it  was  even  held  that  the 
work  of  the  sixth  day  is  as  yet  by  no  means  com- 
pleted, and  that  in  particular  insects   and   all 


180 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


smaller  animals  produced  from  "  sweat,  transpi- 
ration, and  putrefaction,"  only  came  into  being  at 
a  far  later  period.  Cornelius  a  Lapide  reckoned 
even  the  mouse  among  these  epigoni  of  the  crea- 
tion. 

With  such  outward  agreement  as  this  between 
Christian  and  heathen  philosophy,  we  are  not  to 
be  surprised  if  in  the  work  named  above  we  find 
arguments  in  favor  of  this  continued  creation. 
We  are  informed  how  from  a  sod  moistened  with 
May-dew  one  may  produce  eels  to  stock  his  pond, 
and  how  from  crabs'  claws  one  may  produce  scor- 
pions, to  say  nothing  of  the  swarms  of  insects 
which  spring  from  bodies  in  the  state  of  decom- 
position. The  Church  was  in  full  accord  with 
this  doctrine  ;  indeed,  such  was  her  position  with 
regard  to  the  hypothesis  of  spontaneous  genera- 
tion that  when,  in  1743,  the  English  priest  John 
Turberville  Needham  observed  the  development 
of  the  "  wheat-eels"  so  called,  she  raised  no  ob- 
jection to  his  quoting  the  Bible  in  favor  of  his 
doctrine.  According  to  Needham,  Adam  was  pro- 
duced in  the  same  way  from  the  creative  earth, 
and  Eve  sprung  from  Adam's  body  like  the  bud 
of  a  polyp.  Nay,  when  about  the  year  1674,  in 
Florence,  Francisco  Redi  expressed  doubts  as  to 
the  spontaneous  generation  of  maggots  in  decom- 
posing flesh,  having  observed  that  they  entered 
it  in  the  form  of  eggs,  the  clergy  raised  the  cry  of 
"  Heresy  !  "  because  in  the  book  of  Judges  there 
is  mention  of  a  swarm  of  bees  springing  from  the 
carcass  of  a  lion.  Thus  do  men  change  their 
positions ! 

Our  author  appears  to  have  agreed  fully 
with  St.  Basil  in  the  doctrine  that  plants  and 
animals  not  only  were  produced  in  the  first  in- 
stance by  the  power  implanted  in  the  earth,  but 
that  "  even  at  the  present  day,  and  in  the  same 
manner,  they  do  still  take  their  rise  from  the 
earth."  He  believed  that  he  must  apply  his  rea- 
son even  to  propositions  of  faith,  and  he  was 
deeply  concerned  as  to  how  this  orthodox  doc- 
trine of  the  spontaneous  generation  of  animals 
was  to  be  harmonized  with  the  story  of  Noah's 
deluge.  "If  wild  animals  and  tame  animals  also 
are  produced  by  the  innate  and  implanted  force 
of  the  earth,  the  Almighty  God  would  never  have 
ordered  Noah  to  take  the  animals  with  him  into 
the  ark."  There  the  well-founded  scruples  of  our 
author's  conscience  found  expression. 

It  is  highly  instructive  to  observe  the  distinc- 
tion drawn  between  literal  belief  and  reason,  in 
the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century,  by  a 
stanch  Christian  believer,  who  thinks  it  worth 
while  to  enter  on  a  profound  investigation  of  the 


question  in  what  season  of  the  year  the  world  t 
was  created,  and  who  adjudges  this  privilege  to 
the  spring-time.  He  unconsciously  rejects  faith 
and  clings  to  reason.  One  cannot  believe,  he 
says,  in  substance,  that  Noah  and  his  family  con- 
cerned themselves  about  all  manner  of  vermin  to 
save  them  from  the  flood,  so  that  they  might  still 
plague  himself  and  all  other  men.  Nor  must  we 
omit  to  consider  how,  during  the  long  continu- 
ance of  the  deluge,  he  contrived  to  feed  the  rapa- 
cious animals  and  to  restrain  them  from  rend- 
ing the  tame  and  the  useful  animals.  True, 
Origen  came  to  the  conclusion  that  the  wild 
beasts  were  nicely  separated  ;  and  St.  Augustine 
said  that  their  wildness  was  during  this  time  in 
abeyance ;  but,  as  the  author  thinks,  this  could 
not  have  come  to  pass  without  a  further  miracle, 
for  wild  animals  must  have  sustenance..  "  This 
is  very  questionable.  If  the  case  were  so,  there 
would  not  have  been  pair  and  pair  of  the  unclean, 
and  seven  and  seven  of  the  clean  animals,  as  the 
sacred  text  says,  taken  into  the  ark,  but  a  great 
multitude  ; "  so,  therefore,  he  adds  in  substance, 
to  quiet  consciences,  we  will  suppose  that  they 
learned  by  a  miracle  to  do  without  food.  His 
own  opinion  he  expresses  more  than  once,  that 
"the  devout  Noah  took  with  him  into  the  ark 
only  his  domestic,  tame  animals,"  so  that  the 
pains  of  domestication  might  not  be  lost,  and  the 
damage  from  the  flood  made  greater ;  "  but  the 
noxious  and  rapacious  animals  were  produced 
anew  from  the  earth." 

That  animals  can  be  created  anew,  the  author 
concludes  from  the  fact  that  there  are  many  ani- 
mals that,  of  a  certainty,  never  were  created  by 
God,  and  nevertheless  possess  a  special  form  and 
life,  namely,  hybrids,  as  the  mule,  the  lynx,  and 
the  leopard.  But  these  animals,  because  they 
were  not  created  by  God,  cannot  fulfill  the  divine 
command,  "Be  fruitful  and  increase!"  As  is 
known,  the  lynx  was  at  that  time  held  to  be  a 
hybrid  between  the  wild-cat  and  the  wolf,  and  the 
leopard  a  hybrid  between  the  lion  and  the  pan- 
ther. The  author  looks  on  the  phenomenon  of 
hybrids  as  so  strong  a  proof  that  creation  cannot 
have  taken  place  immediate,  that  he  investigates 
the  question  as  to  who  first  raised  a  mule,  coming 
to  the  conclusion  that  it  was  Ana,  son  of  Sibon, 
an  Idumsean,  who  lived  in  the  days  of  Jacob  and 
Esau. 

The  chief  objection  of  our  independent  Bible 
expounder  against  the  story  of  Noah  arose  out  of 
the  impossibility  of  Noah  "  bringing  all  animals 
from  the  uttermost  bounds  and  places  of  Ameri- 
ca, and  taking  them  into  the  ark,  seeing  that 


THEOLOGY  AND  SCIENCE  TWO  HUNDRED   YEARS  AGO.        181 


their  species  and  genera  were  in  former  times 
never  to  be  seen  either  in  Asia  or  Armenia  or 
other  conterminous  countries."  This  considera- 
tion further  leads  our  worshiper  of  reason  to 
entertain  doubts  as  to  the  myth  which  locates 
paradise  in  the  centre  of  creation,  and  which  rep- 
resents Adam  as  there  bestowing  upon  all  ani- 
mals the  names  they  were  thenceforth  to  bear. 
A  multitude  of  strange  plants  and  animals  had 
then  been  introduced  from  America,  awakening 
serious  doubts  in  the  minds  of  believers  in  the 
Bible.  Every  one  could  not  be  so  complaisant 
as  the  painters,  who  straightway  introduced  the 
turkey  and  the  sunflower  into  Adam's  garden  of 
paradise,  as  though  they  had  been  there  from  the 
first.  The  deep  impression  made  by  this  enrich- 
ing of  the  "  Garden  of  Paradise  "  (the  name  then 
given  to  zoological  and  botanic  gardens)  can  be 
judged  from  the  following  passage :  "  My  God, 
with  what  wonder  do  we  view  these  strange  ani- 
mals from  so  remote  countries  !  How  intently  we 
consider  all  their  lineaments,  their  forms,  their 
colors,  their  whole  bodies  !  Have  they  fallen  down 
from  heaven  ?  What  else  are  we  to  think  when 
we  see  so  many  diversified  plants,  trees,  roots,  and 
seeds  ? " 

Strong  believers  took  the  matter  easy,  as  usu- 
al. Without  more  ado  they  declared  the  Cana- 
dian arbor-vitae  to  be  the  long-sought  tree  of  life 
of  paradise ;  and  in  the  guaiacum-tree  of  Brazil 
was  found  the  tree  from  whose  sacred  wood  was 
fashioned  the  cross  of  Christ.  The  passion-flow- 
er, which  is  limited  to  South  America,  originally 
bloomed  on  Golgotha,  and  so  on.  Of  fishes  and 
birds,  as  also  of  the  seeds  of  plants,  it  was  said 
that  they  had  been  carried  by  the  winds  or  by 
the  waves  from  the  Old  World  to  the  New.  "  But 
gently,  gently,"  cries  the  cautious  critic  to  these 
orthodox  Hotspurs  ;  "  consider  the  matter  a  little 
more,  and  do  not  be  over-hasty.  Are  there  not 
to  be  found,  beloved,  among  birds,  many  whose 
feathers  are  coarse,  thick,  hard,  and  heavy,  and 
many  that  are  very  slow  and  tardy  in  flight? 
Nay,  are  there  not  many  that  dread  water,  so 
that  they  will  not  venture  to  fly  across  a  brook 
twelve  paces  wide,  or  at  all  events  across  a  stream 
that  is  even  a  short  quarter  of  a  mile  in  width  ? 
I  say  nothing  at  present  of  those  which  cannot 
fly  at  all,  as  ostriches,  bustards,  and  the  like. 
How,  then,  could  such  birds  cross  seas,  streams, 
and  rivers  ?  " 

The  author  admits  that  marine  fishes  might 
wander  to  a  great  distance,  but  here  he  notes 
another  difficulty :  "  Fishes,  like  all  other  animals, 
do  not  willingly  quit  their  own  place  or  their  • 


usual  waters  where  they  have  their  abode,  and 
being,  and  sustenance.  Each  species  likes  best 
to  remain  in  its  own  waters,  in  its  own  brook. 
And  as  commonly  each  stream,  nay,  every  little 
brooklet,  has  its  own  peculiar  fishes,  and  as  the 
latter  thrive  best  therein,  so,  on  the  contrary,  do 
they  soon  perish  when  transferred.  Then,"  he 
adds,  "  there  are  many  animals  on  the  earth  that 
will  not  venture  to  swim  at  all.  Perhaps  some 
one  will  object,  and  say  that  such  quadruped  ani- 
mals might  have  been  carried  in  ships  from  our 
countries  to  the  West  Indies  ;  but  this  is  absurd, 
and  hard  to  believe,  for  who  could  ever  be  so 
reckless,  nay,  so  crazy,  as  to  tolerate  the  company 
of  lions,  bears,  tigers,  panthers,  and  other  such 
ferocious  beasts — to  trust  their  cruel  nature,  and 
to  take  such  animals  on  board  ship  ?  This,  in 
truth,  would  be  the  same  thing  as  taking  to  one's 
bosom  venomous  snakes  and  vipers." 

This  circumspect  critic,  who  clearly  descried 
the  outliues  of  animal  and  plant  geography,  then 
tells  us  that  this  experiment,  were  it  to  be  made, 
would  probably  end  in  failure.  He  calls  attention 
to  the  negative  results  following  the  attempt  to 
carry  "  over  sea  to  New  France,  otherwise  called 
Canada,  different  species  of  domesticated  ani- 
mals." Of  these  animals,  some  were  unable  to 
endure  the  sea-voyage,  while  others  could  not  ac- 
commodate themselves  to  the  strange  climate ; 
and  thus  the  experiment  failed  even  with  domes- 
tic animals,  though  these  are  far  more  cosmopoli- 
tan than  wild  animals. 

"  But,"  continues  the  author,  "  let  us  dismiss 
these  vain  ideas,  and  simply  put  this  question  to 
the  learned :  Are  there  not  to  be  found  in  these 
Western  Indies  many  and  varied  species,  not  only 
of  wild  and  ferocious,  but  also  of  tame  animals, 
that  have  never  been  seen  or  described  either  in 
Asia,  in  Europe,  or  in  Africa,  whereof  it  is  said 
'  Africa  semper  aliquid  novi ' — '  Africa  is  ever 
presenting  something  new  ? ' "  And  the  same  is 
true  of  the  birds,  fishes,  and  plants,  of  those  coun- 
tries :  "  Besides,  there  also  exist  in  America,  Mex- 
ico, Peru,  and  Magellanica,  species  of  birds  that 
were  never  seen  either  in  Asia  or  in  Europe  until 
they  were  brought  hither  in  ships. 

"  But  here,  again,  some  one  might  ask  and  say : 
'  If,  then,  from  Asia,  as  the  first  nurse,  no  less  of 
mankind  than  of  all  the  other  animals  and  plants, 
nothing  was  carried  into  the  other  portions  of  the 
world,  as  Africa,  Europe,  and  America,  why  then 
do  those  regions  possess  so  great  an  abundance 
of  all  these  things  ? '  My  reply,  which  perhaps 
will  to  some  appear  singular,  is  that  even  He  who 
created  all  animals  and  vegetation,  of  every  kind, 


1S2 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


and  planted  the  region  round  about  Eden,  in  Asia, 
did  the  same  in  America ;  and  there,  by  the  self- 
same power,  created  all  kinds  of  vegetables,  flow- 
ers, trees,  seeds,  roots,  and  animals,  endowing 
them  with  the  same  blessing,  and  bidding  them 
to  increase  and  multiply." 

Thus  does  our  independent  expounder  of  the 
Mosaic  tradition  declare  in  favor  of  many  central 
points  of  creation.  Nor  does  the  express  state- 
ment of  the  Bible  that  all  the  animals  were 
brought  to  Adam,  so  that  he  might  name  each, 
shake  his  conviction  that  the  animals  of  America 
are  native  to  American  soil,  and  that  the  inhabi- 
tants of  the  oceanic  islands  are  at  home  on  those 
"  large  and  small  isles  of  the  sea."  This  convic- 
tion, he  exclaims,  in  the  language  of  Virgil,  is  as 
immovable — 

"  Quam  si  dura  silex  aut  stet  Marpesia  cautes." 

• 

From  all  this  we  see  how  deep  was  the  impres- 
sion made  by  the  inexhaustible  variety  of  the,  plant 
and  animal  kingdoms  of  the  New  World.  The 
error  of  the  earlier  zoologists  and  botanists  in 
supposing  plants  and  animals  to  be  the  same  the 
world  over,  so  that  they  sought  on  the  Rhine 
and  in  Belgium  for  the  plants  described  by  Theo- 
phrastus  and  Dioscorides,  was  at  last  exploded, 
after  it  had  given  rise  to  a  voluminous  literature, 
and  to  no  end  of  confusion  in  nomenclature. 

As  for  the  human  inhabitants  of  America, 
Milius — just  as  science  does  in  the  present  day — 
makes  them  an  exception.  He  does  not  believe 
that  they  are,  "  as  the  ancient  Egyptians  and 
Athenians  boasted  themselves  to  be,  autochthones 
and  aborigines,  sprung  like  mushroms  and  grass- 
hoppers from  mud  and  ordure."  Unfortunately, 
we  cannot  affirm  that  this  keen-sighted  mau 
reached  this  conclusion  by  way  of  ethnological 
and  anatomical  argument.  He  rather  bases  his 
doctrine  on  curious  theological  premises,  which 
quiet  his  scruples  of  conscience,  and  enable  him 
to  consider  man  as  something  apart  "  from  all 
other  animals."  Like  most  scholars  of  his  day, 
Milius  could  not  imagine  that  to  Moses  and  the 
other  prophets  of  the  Old  and  New  Testament 
the  existence  of  one-half  of  the  world  was  all  un- 
known. Accordingly,  they  sought  in  the  Bible 
for  passages  that  might  have  reference  to  the  New 
World,  and  they  found  them  in  abundance,  as  is 
ever  the  case  under  like  circumstances.  But 
none  of  these  references  is  anterior  to  the  flood ; 
and,  therefore,  it  was  supposed  that,  prior  to  that 
event,  the  Old  World  was  not  so  over-populated  as 
to  necessitate  a  migration  to  the  New.  But  now, 
since  before  the  flood   there   were  no    human 


beings  in  America  and  the  islands  of  the  sea,  it 
of  course  follows  that  there  were  no  sinners 
there.  "  Hence  we  must  firmly  hold  that  the 
deluge  did  not  extend  to  all  places  on  the  globe  ; 
and,  in  particular,  that  it  did  not  extend  to 
America,  Magellanica,  and  certain  other  islands." 
This  conclusion  is  also  reached  from  the  consid- 
eration that  the  fauna  and  flora  of  those  coun- 
tries, differing  as  they  do  essentially  from  the 
fauna  and  flora  of  the  Old  World,  could,  in  case 
the  deluge  extended  thither,  never  have  been  re- 
newed, inasmuch  as  the  Creator  has  rested  ever 
since  the  end  of  the  sixth  day.  This  argument 
is  so  contradictory  of  the  views  previously  ex- 
pressed by  Milius  regarding  the  origin  of  plants 
and  animals,  that  we  are  inclined  to  think  that 
here  we  have  an  interpolation  by  the  translator. 

It  is  not  uninteresting  to  notice  that  even  in 
those  times  men  thought  of  the  route  to  America 
via  Japan — a  route  that  must  still  be  esteemed 
the  most  probable  one,  though  ever  since  1728 
it  has  been  known,  thanks  to  Behring's  discovery, 
that  Asia  and  America  are  separated  by  a  pretty 
wide  strait,  whereas  earlier  it  was  supposed  that 
they  were  united.  Even  Joseph  a  Costa,  one  of 
the  earliest  historians  of  America,  gave  free  play 
to  his  imagination  in  tracking  the  migration  by 
this  route.  According  to  this  writer,  the  first 
human  inhabitants  of  America  emigrated  from  the 
Indus  and  the  Ganges,  passing  by  way  of  China 
and  Japan,  and  so  reaching  the  shores  of  the 
Western  Continent.  On  reaching  land  they  trav- 
eled southward  as  far  as  the  Andes,  and  there 
first  rested  from  their  weary  journeyings.  "  Mon- 
tanus,"  says  Milius,  "affirms  that  there  still  ex- 
ists in  Peru,  near  the  mountains  called  by  the 
Spaniards  the  Andes,  a  very  ancient  city,  Juck- 
tam,  so  called  after  Jucktam  or  Jecktam,  third 
son  of  Eber,  whose  descendants  settled  in  Peru, 
and  there  built  the  first  city." 

Of  Eber,  great-grandson  of  Noah,  we  read  in 
the  Bible  (Genesis  x.  25-30) :  "  Unto  Eber  were 
born  two  sons ;  the  name  of  one  was  Peleg ;  for 
in  his  days  was  the  earth  divided ;  and  his 
brother's  name  was  Joktan.  .  .  .  And  their  "  (the 
sons  of  Joktan's)  "  dwelling  was  from  Mesha,  as 
thou  goest  unto  Sephar,  a  mount  of  the  east." 
Further  geographical  determination  being  disre- 
garded, it  was  concluded  that  by  the  "  mount 
of  the  east "  the  Andes  alone  could  be  under- 
stood, for  that  range  alone,  on  account  of  its 
height  and  extent,  is  worthy  of  being  called  par 
excellence  the  "  mount  of  the  east."  And  the 
inhabitants  of  Babylon,  from  which  the  migra- 
tion set  out,  might  well  call  America  the  Land 


THEOLOGY  AND  SCIENCE  TWO  HUNDRED    YEARS  AGO.        183 


of  the  East.  This  sagacious  hypothesis  of  ITon- 
tanus'a  is  adopted  not  only  by  Joseph  a  Costa 
and  George  Horn,  author  of  a  work  published  in 
1652,  on  "The  Origin  of  the  Americans"  (De 
Originibus  Americanis),  but  by  all  those  who 
were  concerned  about  reconciling  with  the  Bible 
the  discovery  of  America.  Indeed,  the  problem 
was  worthy  of  the  assiduous  study  of  the  theo- 
logians. As  we  know,  the  Bible  makes  Shem, 
Ham,  and  Japhet,  the  ancestors  of  the  Asiatics, 
the  Africans,  and  the  Europeans — America  was 
overlooked ;  but  now  we  have  in  Joktan  an  an- 
cestor for  the  people  of  that  continent. 

The  discovery  of  America  must  have  been 
highly  unpleasant  news  to  the  orthodox  Church. 
St.  Augustine,  that  Christian  sophist  and  rhetori- 
cian who  has  always  been  over-estimated,  says 
of  the  disputed  point  of  the  existence  of  antip- 
odes :  "  It  is  impossible  that  the  opposite  side 
of  the  earth  should  have  inhabitants,  for,  among 
the  descendants  of  Adam,  Holy  Scripture  men- 
tions no  such  progeny."  Words  fail  Lactantius 
to  characterize  properly  the  foolishness  of  the 
mathematicians  and  astronomers  of  his  time  (third 
century),  who  regarded  the  existence  of  antipodes 
as  an  open  question,  and  a  possibility,  nay,  even 
as  a  probability.  "  Is  it  possible,"  he  exclaims, 
"  for  men  to  be  so  silly  as  to  believe  that  on  the 
other  side  of  the  earth  the  trees  are  turned  down- 
ward, and  that  the  feet  of  the  inhabitants  are 
higher  than  their  heads?  If  we  ask  for  the 
proofs  of  the  monstrous  opinion  that  objects  on 
the  other  side  do  not  fall  downward,  we  get  the 
reply  that  it  is  a  physical  property  that  heavy 
bodies,  like  the  spokes  of  a  wheel,  tend  toward 
the  centre;  while  light  bodies,  as,  for  instance, 
clouds,  smoke,  fire,  tend  from  the  centre  toward 
the  heavenly  spaces.  Truly,  I  know  not  how  I 
shall  express  myself  about  men  who,  walking  in 
the  wrong  path,  still  obstinately  pursue  it,  and 
labor  to  strengthen  one  foolish  assumption  with 
another  still  more  foolish." 

Nothing  shows  more  plainly  how  severe  was 
the  blow  suffered  by  the  mystical  view  of  creation, 
in  the  discovery  of  America,  than  does  the  stu- 
dious diligence  with  which  men  strove  to  find 
America  in  the  Bible.  As  formerly  it  used  to 
be  shown  from  the  Scripture  that  the  Western 
Hemisphere  could  not  be  inhabited,  so  men  strove 
now  to  prove  that  this  quarter  of  the  world  had 
been  well  known  to  the  Jews ;  nay,  that  the  Jews 
had  from  immemorial  time  been  in  commercial 
relations  with  the  people  of  America.     The  name 


of  the  country  from  which  Solomon  derived  his 
treasures  of  gold,  the  Ophir  of  the  ancients,  was 
simply  an  anagram  of  Peru,  the  land  of  gold : 
Phiro  =  Peru,  a  very  simple  matter.  Suddenly  a 
light  broke  upon  Mercurius,  Postellus,  Goropius, 
Becanus,  Montanus,  and  other  scholars  of  the 
sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries,  and  they 
vied  with  one  another  in  belittling  the  services 
of  Columbus,  who  had  played  them  so  scurvy  a 
trick.  They  said  that  Solomon  and  all  the  peo- 
ples of  antiquity  had  sent  their  ships  to  Ophir — 
the  present  Peru — and  there  was  no  new  discov- 
ery at  all. 

The  worthy  Milius  even  sympathizes  with 
these  depreciations  of  Columbus's  services,  ex- 
pressing himself  as  follows  about  the  American 
Ophir :  "  We  may  conjecture,  nay,  even  with 
certainty  conclude,  that  the  golden  land  of  Ophir, 
from  which,  besides  the  best  and  finest  gold, 
Solomon  also  derived  a*  great  quantity  of  valua- 
ble wood,  ivory,  apes,  peacocks,  and  parrots,  is 
this  very  Peruvian  province.  At  the  present 
time  we,  too,  derive  from  this  same  country  a 
multitude  of  the  same  wonderful  animals,  precious 
woods  of  every  kind,  as  ebony,  paradise-wood, 
red,  yellow,  and  white  Brazil-wood;  also  the 
holy  wood  called  guaiacum,  sassafras,  and  many 
others.  From  the  Red  Sea,  whence  Solomon, 
that  wisest  of  kings,  used  to  fit  out  and  dispatch 
his  fleets,  it  has  been  found  that  the  voyage  can 
be  conveniently  made  to  America.  From  all  this 
it  very  clearly  appears  that  Solomon's  Ophir  is 
the- American  country,  Peru.  This  conclusion  is 
further  confirmed  by  the  Bible  text  which  says 
that  the  voyage  to  and  fro  took  three  years, 
whence  it  appears  that  the  land  of  Ophir  must 
have  been  very  distant.  But  who  could  suppose 
that  the  voyage  from  the  Arabian  coast  to  the 
islands  of  Japan  and  Malacca,  or  to  any  other 
part  of  the  East  Indies,  would  take  three  years  ?  " 
The  author  regards  it  as  very  probable  that  the 
voyage,  then  as  yet  unattempted,  "  from  the  Red 
Sea  and  its  world-renowned  port  of  Thir  to 
Peru  "  and  back  again,  would  have  taken  three 
years,  and  thence  draws  the  gratifying  conclusion 
that  the  wise  Solomon  must  have  enjoyed  no 
contracted  geographical  outlook. 

Surely,  free  research  was  almost  nipped  in 
the  bud  by  the  necessity  imposed  upon  the  stu- 
dent of  taking  account  of  traditional  beliefs. 
Only  after  long  struggling  has  it  been  able  to 
reach  that  atmosphere  of  liberty  in  which  alone 
it  can  live  and  thrive. — Kosmos. 


ISi 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


ANIMAL  DEPRAYITY. 


"  TT  is  of  no  use  to  talk  about  reason,"  said  a 
-L  friend  with  whom  we  had  been  discussing  the 
subject.  "  If  you  wish  to  establish  man's  kin- 
ship with  brutes,  you  must  prove  that  they,  too, 
are  capable  of  vice,  his  imagined  prerogative." 
We  could  not  deny  that  this  was  sound  counsel. 
In  sermons  and  platform  orations,  and  in  leading 
articles,  man  declaims,  indeed,  in  favor  of  "  vir- 
tue." But  listen  to  him  in  his  more  confidential 
moments,  when  he  flings  aside  his  disguises.  You 
will  find  that  he  then  pronounces  such  of  his  own 
species  as  make  some  apparent  approach  to  this 
official  standard  "nincompoops  or  hypocrites." 
The  faint  praise  with  which  he  damns  goodness 
but  half  hides  the  underlying  sneer.  Scarcely 
can  you,  in  the  German  language,  speak  of  a  man 
in  terms  which  convey  a  lower  estimate  of  his 
abilities  or  his  energies  than  when  you  call  him 
"  eine  gute  Haut,"  or  "  eine  gute  Seele."  On  the 
contrary,  "  ein  bciser  Kerl  "  is  always  understood 
to  be  clever  and  plucky.  Even  the  virtuous 
English,  senior  wranglers  in  the  school  of  hy- 
pocrisy, have  similar  idioms.  "A  good  boy," 
"  a  moral  young  man,"  "  a  very  good  sort  of 
fellow,".  "  a  man  with  no  harm  in  him,"  are 
terms  used  by  no  means  in  a  complimentary 
sense.  Of  all  the  literary  diseases  of  the  day 
"goody-goodyism  "  is  the  one  most  despised  by 
cultivated  men  of  the  world.  On  the  other  hand, 
when  a  woman  is  particularly  well  pleased  with 
her  lover  does  she  not  always  call  him  a  "  naugh- 
ty man  ?  "  Do  all  these  phrases  spring  from  a 
secret  conviction  that  human  vices  are  restrained 
less  by  conscience  and  high  principle  than  by 
weakness  or  cowardice?  Does  the  world  sus- 
pect that  the  good  man  has  often  merely  "  noth- 
ing in  him  ?  " 

But  when  we  attempt  to  treat  of  the  morals 
of  brutes  in  order  to  find  whether  in  that  region 
lies  the  much-talked-of  but  evanescent  boundary- 
line — when  we  seek  to  show  that  vice  is,  after  all, 
not  man's  exclusive  attribute,  we  are  met  at  once 
with  the  objection — "Animals  have,  and  can 
have,  no  moral  life,  as  has  man.  They  have  no 
perception  of  right  and  wrong,  but  simply  follow 
their  propensities,  and  obey  the  laws  of  their 
being,  from  which,  indeed,  they  have  no  power 
to  depart.1      This  is,  I  think,  a   tolerably  fair 

1  "Animals,  as  a  rule,  do  no  more  than  follow  their 
natural  instincts."— (Rev.  G.  Henslow,  "  Theory  of 
Evolution  of  Living  Beings.") 


specimen  of  the  language  which  demi-savants 
habitually  use  when  treating  of  the  lower  ani- 
mals. "  The  kingdoms  of  freedom  and  of  Na- 
ture "  is  an  antithesis  common  in  their  mouths — 
the  "  kingdom  of  freedom,"  forsooth,  signifying 
mankind !  It  is,  of  course,  exceedingly  con- 
venient to  have  some  imaginary  a  priori  reason 
which  renders  any  appeal  to  facts  superfluous, 
or  rather  altogether  impertinent.  Being  neither 
lunatics,  metaphysicians,  Calvinists,  nor  fallen 
angels,1  we  shall  not  enlarge  upon  "freedom;" 
we  will  merely  declare  that  if  men's  vaunted  free- 
dom relates  to  action  it  is  shared  by  the  gorilla. 
He  is  perfectly  free  to  rise  up  or  sit  down,  to 
come  or  go,  to  crack  a  nut,  or  to  crush  the  skull 
of  a  "  man  and  a  brother,"  just  as  he  may  think 
proper.  That  he  is  "  free  "  to  love  or  to  hate,2 
to  fear  or  hope,  to  believe  or  disbelieve,  or  in 
short  to  experience  any  emotion,  passion,  feeling, 
sentiment,  or  frame  of  mind,  we  deny,  just  as  we 
deny  it  of  man.  Now  to  the  more  immediate 
question. 

In  the  first  place  we  must  judge  every  animal 
from  what  may  be  called  its  own  point  of  view, 
not  with  reference  to  man  and  his  notions  of  ad- 
vantage or  convenience.  He  calls  the  wolf  and 
the  tiger  cruel,  the  viper  malignant,  and  the  spi- 
der treacherous.  This  is  idle  talk.  The  wolf 
can  only  subsist  upon  animal  food,  and  is  no 
more  to  be  censured  for  devouring  the  lamb — for 
which  he  may  further  plead  man's  conduct  in 
precedent — than  is  the  lamb  for  devouring  grass. 
Why,  moreover,  should  the  vegetarian — brute  or 
human — presume  to  denounce  the  flesh-eater  as 
cruel  ?  Have  plants  no  rights  ?  Are  we  sure 
that,  if  they  could  be  consulted,  they  would  con- 
sent to  be  plucked  and  eaten  ?  They  have,  it  is 
true,  no  demonstrable  nervous  system.  But  in 
view  of  the  manifold  ways  by  which  in  creation 
we  see  one  and  the  same  end  accomplished — in 
view,  too,  of  the  facts  on  vegetal  sensitiveness 
now  ascertained — can  we  accept  this  as  conclu- 
sive evidence  ?  A  Society  for  the  Emancipation 
of  Vegetables  should  be  formed  at  once,  and  be- 
gin soliciting  subscriptions.  Such  a  movement 
would  not  be  more  unreasonable  than  certain 
other  phases  of  modern  British  humanitarianism. 

1  Milton  most  happily  represents  his  devils  dis- 
cussing on  free-will. 

2  "  It  lies  not  in  our  power  to  love  or  hate."— (Mar- 
lowe.) 


AKIMAL  DEPRA  VITY. 


185 


It  is  a  great  mistake  to  suppose  that  herbiv- 
orous animals  are  necessarily  milder  than  the 
carnivora.  The  contrary  is  often  the  case.  The 
flesh-eater  attacks  and  kills  for  food.  The  grass- 
eater,  e.  g.,  the  Cape  buffalo,  and  even  the  do- 
mestic bull,  indulges  in  wanton  outrages  aud 
"  unprovoked  assaults."  His  tendency  to  these 
peculiarly  English  offenses  is,  perhaps,  the  reason 
why  he  has  been,  under  the  name  of  John  Bull, 
chosen  as  the  type  of  the  nation. 

The  true  question  is,  Does  a  brute,  like  man, 
ever  violate  "the  laws  of  its  own  nature?" 
If  it  is  found  incapable  of  departing,  whether  to 
the  right  hand  or  the  left,  from  one  fixed  line, 
we  must  then  pronounce  it,  according  to  the 
commonly-received  notion,  alike  incapable  of  vice 
and  of  virtue,  void  indeed  of  moral  life,  in  as  far 
as  this  is  deemed  to  be  dependent  upon  choice.1 
But  if  it  can  deviate  more  or  less  from  the  norm 
of  its  existence,  and  especially  if  by  such  trans- 
gression it  entails  suffering  upon  itself  and  oth- 
ers, we  are  then,  we  submit,  warranted  in  regard- 
ing its  actions  as  morally  good  or  evil — good  in 
as  far  as  it  conforms  to  the  laws  of  its  being ; 
evil  when  it  goes  astray. 

We  may  then  judge  it,  just  as  man  judges  his 
own  actions  and  those  of  his  fellows ;  the  full 
likeness  of  the  cases  justifying  us  in  drawing  like 
conclusions.  It  will  be  admitted  that  "  brutes  " 
have  wills  of  their  own  which  vary  in  intensity 
among  individuals  of  any  given  species  in  the 
same  manner  as  in  man,  if  not  to  the  same  ex- 
tent. Among  domestic  animals  there  are  some 
which,  in  spite  of  kicks  and  cuffs,  and  general 
maltreatment,  persevere  in  their  own  way.  Such 
creatures  man,  taking  as  usual,  himself  for  the 
law  of  the  universe,  pronounces  "  vicious." 
There  are  others,  again,  which,  under  all  circum- 
stances, unhesitatingly  submit  their  will  to  his, 
and  these  he  praises. 

The  same  method  of  judging,  by-the-way,  is 
applied  to  dependents  and  children.  A  child 
deficient  in  vital  power  implicitly  obeys  his  par- 
ents and  "  betters  "  from  want  of  energy  to  dispute 
their  commands.  He  is,  accordingly,  held  up 
to  general  admiration ;  his  early  death  is  pro- 
nounced a  "  mysterious  dispensation  of  Provi- 
dence," and  his  virtues  and  precocity  are  duly 
chronicled  in  a  tract.  On  the  contrary,  the 
healthy  and  vigorous  child,  full  of  life  and  ac- 
tion, is  apt  to  rebel  against  authority.  It  is, 
therefore,  set  down  as  a  tiny  incarnation  of  evil, 

1  If  there  were  no  evil,  would  there  he  also  no  good  ? 
If  all  matter  were  absolutely  transparent  aud  incapa- 
ble of  throwing  a  shadow,  would  light  cease  to  exist  ? 


and  if  it  finds  its  way  at  all  into  a  pretty  story- 
book, is  made  to  serve  as  an  awful  warning  for 
the  rising  generation.  There  is  wonderful  virtue 
in  listlessness,  and  in  impotence  lies  an  incon- 
ceivable amount  of  purity.  Perhaps  if  we  take 
the  latter  term  in  its  modern  cant  sense  the  two 
may  be  regarded  as  practically  synonymous. 

The  existence  of  a  will,  capable  of  acting  at 
times  in  defiance  of  circumstances,  is  as  clearly 
manifest  in  the  horse,  the  ass,  and  the  pig,  as  in 
man  himself,  though  in  the  three  former  it  is 
little  appreciated.  Strange  that  what  in  animals 
is  branded  as  stupidity  should  in  man  be  deemed 
almost  divine. 

Were  brutes  devoid  of  freedom,  unable  to 
choose  between  two  lines  of  conduct,  we  should 
find  them  in  all  cases  simply  obedient  to  their 
propensities,  and  intent  only  upon  immediate 
gratification  without  any  regard  to  ulterior  conse- 
quences. Were  such  the  case,  for  man  to  train 
them  would  be  an  impossibility.  Yet  we  know 
that  dogs,  cats,  hawks,  etc.,  are  trained  to  con- 
duct quite  different  from  their  natural  inclina- 
tions. A  cat,  though  one  of  the  most  self-willed 
of  animals,  can  be  taught  to  abstain  from  molest- 
ing chickens,  pigeons,  and  cage-birds,  or  from 
stealing,  scratching  furniture,  etc.  A  dog  can  be 
brought  to  point  to  a  covey  of  partridges  instead 
of  obeying  his  natural  impulse  to  rush  forward 
and  endeavor  to  seize  them.  The  following  case 
is  very  significant :  "  A  fine  terrier  in  the  pos- 
session of  a  surgeon  at  Whitehaven  about  three 
weeks  ago  exhibited  its  sagacity  in  a  rather  amus- 
ing manner.  It  came  into  the  kitchen  and  began 
plucking  the  servant  by  the  gown,  and  in  spite 
of  repeated  rebuffs,  it  perseveringly  continued  in 
its  purpose.  The  mistress  of  the  house,  hearing 
the  noise,  came  down  to  inquire  the  cause,  when 
the  animal  treated  her  in  a  similar  manner. 
Being  struck  with  the  concern  evinced  by  the 
creature,  she  quietly  followed  it  up-stairs  into  a 
bedroom  whither  it  led  her ;  there  it  commenced 
barking,  looking  under  the  bed  and  then  up  in 
her  face.  Upon  examination  a  cat  was  discov- 
ered there  quietly  demolishing  a  beefsteak,  which 
it  had  feloniously  obtained.  The  most  curiou3 
feature  is  that  the  cat  had  been  introduced  into 
the  house  only  a  short  time  before,  and  that  bit- 
ter enmity  prevailed  between  her  and  her  canine 
companion."  ] 

This  is  a  capital  case.  "  Instinct  "  might  un- 
deniably have  led  the  terrier  to  attack  the  cat 
and  attempt  to  deprive  her  of  her  booty.  But 
we  find  this  natural  impulse  here  completely  re- 
1  Zoologist,  p.  2131. 


186 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT 


strained  for  the  attainment  of  a  definite  end. 
The  terrier  must  have  drawn  the  conclusion  that 
his  enemy,  if  detected  in  theft,  would  probably 
suffer  severe  punishment — perhaps  even  death — 
and  he  therefore  laid  an  information  against  her, 
calculating  thus  to  get  rid  of  her  without  com- 
promising himself.  This  incident  plainly  proves 
that  brutes  are  capable  of  self-control — that  they 
do  not  always  blindly  and  necessarily  follow  their 
physical  appetites,  but  can,  like  man,  forego  a 
present  indulgence  for  what  appears  to  them  a 
greater  good  in  prospect.  It  is  as  clear  a  case  of 
self-determination — of  appetite  and  passion  gov- 
erned by  the  will — as  any  which  human  biogra- 
phy can  show. 

It  will  possibly  be  objected  that  we  give  no 
instance  of  self-control  except  in  species  which 
have  been  brought  under  human  influence.  The 
reply  is  obvious :  if  a  free-will  or  a  power  of  self- 
determination  has  been  created  in  such  animals 
by  man's  intervention,  its  presence  or  absence  is 
obviously  a  matter  of  small  moment  and  quite  in- 
adequate to  establish  a  "great  gulf"  between 
man  and  "  brute."  But  if  the  will  has  not  been 
thus  created,  it  is  probable,  or  rather  certain, 
that  were  man  better  acquainted  with  the  habits 
of  wild  animals  he  would  find  in  their  conduct 
also  cases  of  self-control. 

It  will  further  be  objected  that  in  the  vast 
majority  of  eases  animals  merely  act  in  accord- 
ance with  the  dictates  of  their  ruling  propen- 
sities. We  grant  this,  and  we  ask  whether  this 
does  ndt  hold  good  to  an  almost  equal  extent 
with  man?  Analyze  the  actions  of  N'Kyg- 
ntzgm,  the  blue-nosed  baboon,  and  you  will  ad- 
mittedly find  little  save  the  manifestations  of 
ruling  propensity.  Sift  in  like  manner  the  con- 
duct of  John  Nokes,  collier,  of  Hanley,  and  you 
will  come  to  the  same  result.  Surely,  then,  we 
can  regard  it  as  proved  that  in  the  matter  of  self- 
determination,  in  the  supremacy  of  will  over  pro- 
pensity, there  is  no  difference  of  kind  between 
man  and  brute. 

Were  animals  really  what  vulgar  human  opin- 
ion supposes — did  they  simply  and  in  all  cases 
follow  their  propensities  in  the  machine-like  man- 
ner so  commonly  attributed  to  them — it  is  difficult 
to  see  how  any  individuality  of  character  could 
exist.  All  the  members  of  one  species  would 
have  the  same  mental  abilities  and  the  same  dis- 
positions. But  this  is  precisely  what  is  not  the 
case.  Among  a  dozen  animals  of  the  same  spe- 
cies and  even  of  the  same  breed  differences  of 
character  are  found  as  decided  as  occur  among  a 
similar  number  of  men.     Any  breeder  or  trainer 


of  horses,  cattle,  dogs,  or  poultry,  would  greet 
with  laughter — loud,  if  not  Olympian — the  theo- 
rist who  should  assert  that  these  animals  display 
anything  like  identity  of  disposition.  There  are 
the  obstinate  and  the  docile,  the  timid  and  bold, 
the  open  and  the  treacherous,  the  placable  and 
the  revengeful.  In  fact,  to  find  two  horses  or 
two  dogs  precisely  alike  in  every  point  of  charac- 
ter that  man  can  distinguish  would  be  as  difficult 
as  to  find  two  human  beings  similarly  identical. 
How  much  greater,  then,  would  be  the  range  of 
character  visible  if  we  could  see  them  with  the 
eyes  of  their  own  species  ! 

Perhaps  the  usual  evasion  may  be  attempted 
that  such  various  development  of  temper  and 
disposition  is  to  be  found  among  tame  animals 
alone.  The  objection  is  baseless.  Capture  a 
number  of  wild  elephants,  hawks,  ravens,  parrots, 
and  try  to  tame  them.  You  will  find  still  the 
same  variety  as  you  would  among  animals  born 
in  a  state  of  tameness.  The  differences  are  found 
by  man,  not  created. 

We  will  next  endeavor  to  show — what,  indeed, 
follows  as  a  corollary  from  the  foregoing  consid- 
erations— that  animals  are  capable  of  vice,  hop- 
ing'that  this  circumstance  may  lead  man  to  rec- 
ognize them  as  brothers. 

To  eat  more  than  hunger  demands  merely  for 
the  sake  of  the  sensuous  enjoyment  thus  obtain- 
able, has  been  always,  in  man,  branded  as  a 
serious  vice,  and  has  indeed  been  classed  among 
the  "  seven  deadly  sins  "  of  mediaeval  tradition.1 
This  transgression  has  been  found  to  impair  hu- 
man health,  and  to  blunt  mental  action.  How  is 
it  in  this  respect  with  brutes  ?  Do  they  never 
eat  more  than  they  can  digest  and  assimilate  ? 
Do  they  never  suffer  consequently  in  their  health  ? 
Most  assuredly.  Cows  have  been  known  to  gorge 
themselves  with  clover  till  they  have  died  'from 
repletion.  Ducks  often  suffer  from  their  own 
greediness.  Similar  cases  of  gluttony  are,  of 
course,  more  rare  among  wild  animals,  who 
neither  find  food  in  such  abundance  nor  are  so 
undisturbed  in  its  enjoyment.  Yet  even  they,  in 
homely  phrase,  at  times  eat  more  than  does  them 
good.  Here,  then,  we  see  that  brutes  have  a 
certain  liberty  of  action.  They  can  be  either  tem- 
perate or  gluttonous.     In  the  former  case  they 

i  It  is  a  remarkable  fact  that  the  discharge  of  any 
voluntary  physical  function  to  which  no  pleasure  is  at- 
tached was  never  pronounced  a  vice,  even  if  exercised 
in  excess.  But  those  whose  importance  the  Creator 
has  indicated  by  rendering  them  pleasant  were  brand- 
ed as  sinful  not  merely  when  discharged  in  excess, 
bnt  even  when  kept  within  the  bounds  of  moderation 
—and  this  in  the  exact  ratio  of  their  pleasurableness. 


AXIMAL  DEPRAVITY. 


187 


preserve  their  health;  in  the  latter  case  they 
bring  upon  themselves  disease  or  perhaps  death. 
If  the  gluttonous  animal  gives  unchecked  play  to 
its  propensities,  does  not  the  temperate  animal, 
like  the  temperate  man,  resist  temptation,  and 
exercise  a  certain  amount  of  self-restraint  ?  Is  it 
not,  for  so  doing,  equally  entitled  to  credit  ? 

The  Rev.  G.  Henslow,  in  his  able  and  inter- 
esting work  on  the  "  Theory  of  Evolution  of  Liv- 
ing Beings,"  makes  some  remarks  which  must 
here  be  taken  into  consideration  if  only  for  their 
cool  naivete  of  assumption.  Says  this  author: 
"  In  obeying  those  laws  of  self-preservation  and 
propagation  which  have  been  impressed  upon  it, 
it  is  extremely  probable  that  wild  animals  eat 
and  drink  not  for  the  purpose  of  eating  and  drink- 
ing, but  to  maintain  bodily  life  only.  The  laws 
of  propagation  are  obeyed,  but  union  is  probably 
not  resorted  to  for  mere  union's  sake.  Animals 
show  no  signs  of  distinguishing  the  object  from 
the  means.  Man  alone  can  see  that  eating  is 
pleasant,  and  so  often  eats  for  the  mere  sake  of 
eating,  and  similarly  of  other  pleasures." 

If  animals  eat  only  to  maintain  life  it  is  some- 
what strange  that  they  are  so  extremely  nice  in  the 
quality  of  their  food.  Birds  and  wasps,  in  their 
visits  to  our  gardens,  select  fruit  with  a  care  sur- 
passing that  of  any  human  epicure.  They  attack 
only  the  finest  pears,  peaches,  etc.,  and  of  these 
they  eat  only  the  sunny  side.  Mr.  Henslow  con- 
founds the  result  of  an  action  with  the  motive. 
Man,  at  least  in  his  adult  state,  and  possibly  the 
higher  animals,  know  that  the  result  of  eating  is 
,  the  prolongation  of  life,  and  that  abstinence  would 
be  ultimately  fatal.  But  neither  man  nor  animal, 
as  a  rule,  eats  from  any  other  motive  than  to 
avoid  the  pains  of  hunger  and  to  secure  the  pleas- 
ures of  eating.  We  will  even  venture  to  say  that 
the  less  ultimate  results  are  held  in  view  in  the 
gratification  of  any  physical  appetite  the  more 
perfectly  those  very  results  are  obtained.  As  re- 
gards the  "laws  of  propagation,"  we  can  bring 
forward  facts  proving  that  among  animals  union 
is  resorted  to  for  mere  union's  sake.  Into  what 
absurdities  men  are  led  by  their  notions  of  what 
is  "  extremely  probable  !" 

It  may  be  urged  that  the  moderation  of  an 
animal  may  spring,  not  from  its  greater  power  of 
self-control,  but  from  its  feebler  appetites.  We 
cannot  deny  that  this  is  a  possible  explanation. 
But  it  may,  with  equal  right,  be  extended  to  man 
also.  Who  knows  that  the  temptation  which  the 
saint  resists  is  really  as  strong  as  that  to  which 
the  sinner  succumbs  ?  Are  we  not,  in  cases  of 
reformation  of  character,  frequently  left  in  pain- 


ful doubt  whether  the  "  convertite  "  is  forsaking 
his  vices  or  his  vices  forsaking  him  ? 

Alcoholic  excitement  is  not  one  of  the  pre- 
vailing vices  of  brutes,  from  the  satisfactory  rea- 
son that  they  are  under  the  operation  of  a  natu- 
ral Maine  law.1  Two  cases  of  drunkenness,  in 
a  cow  and  a  sow  respectively,  are  on  record. 
Both  these  occurred  in  Scotland.  It  is  only  fair 
to  surmise  that  the  offending  animals,  like  some 
of  their  two-legged  compatriots,  thought  fit,  in 
the  words  of  Hudibras,  to — 

'•  Compound  for  sins  they  were  inclined  to, 
By  damning  those  they  had  no  mind  to." 

A  later  instance  of  undeniably  "  beastly " 
drunkenness  is  given  in  the  Greenock  Advertiser. 
Two  rats  got  "that  fou"  in  the  shop  of  a  spirit- 
merchant  in  the  town  by  dint  of  consuming  the 
dribblings  from  a  barrel  of  strong  ale,  and  were 
killed  before  they  could  stagger  off  to  their  holes. 

It  is  generally  known  that  most  of  the  quad- 
rumana,  when  thrown  among  human  society, 
learn  very  readily  to  like  a  glass  of  strong  liquor 
— a  fact  which  should  go  far  to  establish  their 
title  to  a  place  on  the  right  side  of  the  "gulf." 
It  is  no  less  certain  that  some  of  the  less  reputa- 
ble monkeys  are  captured  by  leaving  near  their 
haunts  vessels  filled  with  a  kind  of  beer.  They 
come,  drink  and  become  drunken,  and  in  that 
state  commit  the  very  venial  error  of  mistaking 
the  negro,  who  comes  to  lead  them  into  captivity, 
for  one  of  their  own  species. 

From  alcoholism  we  are  naturally  led  to  the 
love  of  the  narcotics,  as  tobacco,  opium,  Indian- 
hemp,  coca,  and  the  like.  That  man  has  a  widely- 
spread  craving  for  these  so-called  "  keys  of  par- 
adise," has  been  sufficiently  shown.  But  apes, 
also,  in  captivity  have  been  known  to  indulge  in 
the  "  weed  "  with  evident  relish.  Imitation,  say 
you?  Probably  enough;  but  has  imitation  no 
part  in  the  spread  of  these  minor  vices  among 
mankind  ?  Nine  smokers  out  of  ten  first  take  to 
the  pipe  or  the  cigar  from  the  tendency — common 
alike  to  man  and  brute — of  doing  what  others 
do.  A  love  for  tobacco  in  the  solid  form,  also,  is 
not  peculiar  to  man.  At  a  tavern  in  Bradford 
there  flourished  some  years  ago  a  goat,  whose  ex- 
ploits in  tobacco-chewing  were  not  unknown  to 
fame  throughout  the  "  land  of  woolen."  A  fre- 
quenter of  the  house  occasionally  won  money 
from  strangers,  by  betting  that  "himself  and 
another"  would  eat  a  pound  of  tobacco  in  ten 
minutes.     If  the  wager  was  accepted  be  would 

'  1  This  is  not  literally  true.  Alcohol,  in  small  doses, 
is  being  detected  in  natural  productions,  in  which  man 
has  had  no  part. 


183 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


order  in  a  pound  of  ordinary  sbag  tobacco,  put  a 
modest  pinch  in  his  own  mouth,  and  call  in  the 
goat,  who  soon  disposed  of  the  remainder.  It  is 
not  on  record  that  Billy  suffered  in  his  health  or 
displayed  any  marks  of  penitence  after  these  per- 
formances. 

Turn  we  next  to  dishonesty  in  the  widest 
sense  of  the  word — the  vice  most  in  favor  in  this 
virtuous  age.  The  lower  animals  labor  under  the 
disadvantage  of  having  no  stock-exchange  and 
of  not  using  bills-of-exchange.  But  they  indulge 
to  the  best  of  their  means  and  opportunities  in 
deceit,  affectation,  and  hypocrisy. 

The  Rev.  J.  G.  Wood,  in  his  recent  interest- 
ing work,  "  Man  and  Beast,"  gives  an  instance  of 
a  terrier  who,  finding  that  a  companion  had  anti- 
cipated him  in  getting  possession  of  a  snug  seat, 
suddenly  pricked  up  his  ears,  dashed  into  a  cor- 
ner of  the  room,  and  began  scratching  and  bark- 
ing furiously.  The  other  dog,  believing  that  this 
commotion  indicated  the  presence  of  a  rat,  hast- 
ened to  the  spot,  when  the  terrier  at  once  ran 
back  and  secured  the  coveted  cushion.  Mr. 
Wood  —  we  quote  from  memory  —  very  justly 
brings  forward  this  incident  as  a  proof  of  intel- 
ligence in  dogs.  But  it  is  equally  a  proof  of  dis- 
honesty. It  is  a  clear  case  of  obtaining  some- 
thing desirable  on  false  pretenses. 

Hypocrisy  is  almost  as  prominent  among  the 
Felidce  as  among  men.  If  a  delicate  morsel  is 
thrown  to  a  cat,  she  will,  except  very  hungry, 
assume  an  air  of  utter  unconcern.  But  all  the 
while  she  knows  its  position  to  a  hair's-breadth, 
and,  when  no  one  appears  to  be  looking,  it  will 
be  at  once  seized  and  swallowed.  Or,  if  a  bowl 
of  cream  is  standing  in  an  accessible  position, 
pussy  appears  lost  in  the  brownest  of  studies. 
Her  eyes  are  closed,  or,  if  open,  are  directed  any- 
where save  toward  the  tempting  object ;  yet  all 
the  time  she  is  watching  her  opportunity.  Wheth- 
er in  cats  or  in  man  this  failing  is  invariably  the 
"homage  which  vice  pays  to  virtue,1'  we  leave  an 
open  question. 

The  following  instance  of  deceit  and  hypoc- 
risy in  a  terrier  is  given  by  Mr.  G.  J.  Romanes, 
in  Nature  (May  27,  1875,  page  GG) : 

"  He  used  to  be  very  fond  of  catching  flies  upon 
the  window-panes,  and  if  ridiculed  when  unsuc- 
cessful, was  very  much  annoyed.  On  one  occa- 
sion, in  order  to  see  what  he  would  do,  I  purposely 
laughed  immoderately  every  time  he  failed.  It  so 
happened  that  he  did  so  several  times  in  succes- 
sion —  partly,  I  believe,  in  consequence  of  my 
laughing— and  eventually  he  became  so  distressed 
that  he  positively  pretended  to  catch  the  fly,  going 
through  all  the  appropriate  actions  with  his  lips 


and  tongue,  and  afterward  rubbing  the  ground 
with  his  neck,  as  if  to  kill  the  victim ;  he  then 
looked  up  at  me  with  a  triumphant  air  of  success. 
So  well  was  the  whole  process  simulated,  that  I 
should  have  been  quite  deceived  had  I  not  seen 
that  the  fly  was  still  upon  the  window.  Accord- 
ingly, I  drew  his  attention  to  this  fact,  as  well  as 
to  the  absence  of  anything  upon  the  floor,  and, 
when  he  saw  that  his  hypocrisy  had  been  de- 
tected, he  slunk  away  under  some  furniture,  evi- 
dently much  ashamed  of  himself." 

This  last  point  is  most  significant,  fully  over- 
turning the  vulgar  notion  of  the  absence  of  moral 
life  in  brutes,  and  of  their  total  want  of  con- 
science. 

That  animals  steal  is  a  familiar  expression. 
But  we  must  here  distinguish  two  different  cases : 
we   speak    of  hares  stealing   our  corn,  and   of 
blackbirds  plundering  our  cherries;  but  in  neither 
case  have  we  any  reason  to  conclude  that  the 
offenders  can  distinguish  between  the  crops  in 
cultivated  lands  and  the  spontaneous  produce  of 
woods  and  wastes.     But  not  a  few  species,  both 
of  birds,  quadrupeds,  and  insects,  evidently  rec- 
ognize the  idea  of  property.     This  is  proved  by 
the  fact  that  they  display  far  greater  courage  and 
pertinacity  in  defense  of  their  nests,  their  haunts, 
and  their  accumulations,  than  under  other  circum- 
stances.   A  dog  that,  when  trespassing,  is  put  to 
flight  by  a  gesture  or  a  shout,  becomes  a  formi- 
dable opponent  in  his  own  yard.     If,  then,  such 
animals  know  what  property  is,  and  yet  at  times 
make  free  with  it,  we  may  justly  pronounce  them 
conscious  thieves.  Rooks  are  apt  to  purloin  sticks 
from  each  other's  nests ;  but,  if  the  offender  is, 
detected  and  cuffed  by  the  rightful  owner,  con- 
science makes  a  coward  of  him,  and  he  merely 
defends  himself  by  flight.    More  than  this,  rooks 
have  some  rudiments  of  criminal  law.    Inveterate 
thieves  are  sometimes  banished  from  the  rookery, 
severely  beaten,  or  even  killed  outright.1      But 
law  presupposes  the  notions  of  right  and  wrong, 
and  could  never,  therefore,  have  arisen  among 
beings  incapable  of  making  this  distinction. 

As  another  vice,  we  may  take  quarrelsomeness 
—a  terra  which  we  need  surely  not  define.  This 
attribute  is  highly  conspicuous  in  the  human 
species,  nowhere  perhaps  more  strikingly  than  in 
that  part  of  the  English  nation  who  inhabit  the 
borders  of  Yorkshire  and  Lancashire.  But  cer- 
tain dogs  show  the  very  same  disposition,  and, 
without  the  smallest  provocation,  take  every  op- 

i  A  most  interesting  account  of  the  habits  of  rooks 
was  given  by  Mr.  Ashley,  of  Sheffield,  in  a  lecture 
delivered  before  the  Mechanics'  Institute  of  that  town 
about  twenty  years  ago. 


ANIMAL  DEPRAVITY. 


ISO 


portunity  of  attacking  horses,  cows,  sheep,  and 
human  beings.  There  is  a  well-authenticated  in- 
stance of  a  terrier  who,  in  picking  a  quarrel, 
contrived,  as  skillfully  as  if  trained  in  the  Kanz- 
lei  of  Prince  Bismarck,  to  place  himself  techni- 
cally in  the  right.  He  would  time  his  movements 
so  that  some  passenger  should  stumble  over  him, 
and  would  then  fasten  on  the  calf  of  his  leg. 
With  a  most  statesmanlike  aptitude,  he  selected 
the  aged,  the  infirm,  and  the  ill-dressed,  as  the 
objects  of  his  cunningly-planned  attacks.  Lord 
Lytton  tells  us  that  the  dog  is  a  gentlemanly  ani- 
mal ! 

Closely  connected  with  quarrelsomeness  is  the 
most  fiendish  of  all  man's  failings — overlooked, 
as  it  is,  by  world-betterers  and  vice-suppressers 
— his  disposition  to  give  pain,  bodily  or  mental, 
for  mere  amusement.  There  are  few  human  be- 
ings, of  the  male  sex  at  least,  who  do  not  delight 
in  tormenting  other  creatures,  whether  of  their 
own  or  of  some  different  species.1  Yet  even  this 
kind  of  malignity  is  not  unshared  by  man's  poor 
relations.  Fall  among  wolves,  and  they  will  kill 
you  for  the  straightforward  purpose  of  eating  you. 
Fall  among  blue-nosed  baboons,  and  they  will  tor- 
ment you  to  death  "just  for  the  fun  of  the  thing." 
Could  a  red  Indian,  or  even  a  normal  English 
schoolboy,  greatly  improve  upon  this  ? 

With  the  exception  of  a  few  genuine — not 
professional — philanthropists,  man  is  remarkable 
for  persecuting  such  of  his  own  species  as  are 
unfortunate.  This  diabolical  propensity  shows 
itself  in  a  variety  of  forms.  "  Hit  him  again,  he 
has  no  friends,"  is  scarcely  a  parody  on  the 
•avowed  opinions  of  the  less  hypocritical  of  the 
species.  Those  who  lay  claim  to  higher  culture 
express  their  sorrow  far  the  calamities  of  a  neigh- 
bor by  eschewing  his  society,  or  perhaps  even  by 
asking  him  whether  he  does  not  recognize  in  his 
sufferings  a  well-merited  divine  chastisement  ? 

Odious  as  is  this  trait  of  human  character, 
man  has  no  monopoly  thereof.  The  wounded 
wolf  is  at  once  devoured  by  his  comrades. 

Cattle,  both  wild  and  tame,  have  been  observed 
to  gore  and  trample  to  death  a  sick  or  lame  mem- 
ber of  the  herd.  A  rook,  accidentally  entangled 
in  the  twigs  of  a  tree,  is  pecked  and  buffeted  by 
its  fellow-citizens.  This,  of  course,  has  been  pro- 
nounced "  instinctive."  Animals,  we  are  gravely 
told,  put  an  end  to  sufferings  which  they  are 
powerless  to  alleviate.  They  do  not  wish  that 
the  herd  should  be  incumbered  with  a  sickly  or 

1  When  an  Englishman  talks  about  amusement,  it 
may  be  inferred  as  a  general  rule  that  he  means  kill- 
ing something. 


wounded  member.  Taking  these  explanations 
for  what  they  are  worth,  we  still  ask  whether 
man's  ill-treatment  of  his  unfortunate  fellows  is 
not  the  ultimate  transformation  of  the  very  same 
instinct. 

But,  further,  the  alleged  instinct  is  not  com- 
mon to  all  gregarious  animals.  Monkeys  and 
baboons  cherish  and  defend  the  young,  the  help- 
less, and  the  wounded,  of  their  own  species. 
Ants  will  take  great  pains  to  rescue  a  member  of 
their  community  who  is  in  distress. 

Looking  in  a  different  direction,  we  must  ac- 
knowledge that  among  viviparous  animals  and 
birds,  the  females  are,  as  a  general  rule,  no  less 
careful  of  their  young  than  are  human  mothers. 
In  thus  acting  they  are  undoubtedly  obeying  one 
of  the  "  laws  "  of  their  nature.  But  they  can 
also  transgress  such  law,  just  as  we  occasionally 
find  a  woman  who  will  neglect,  ill-treat,  or  even  kill 
her  child.  So  is  it  with  female  brutes.  Some- 
times, though  rarely,  they  will  abandon  or  de- 
stroy their  young.  This  is  a  fact  well  known  to 
the  breeders  of  tame  animals.  The  seller  of  a 
mare,  a  cow,  or  a  sow,  is  often  asked  by  an  intend- 
ing purchaser,  "  Is  she  a  good  mother  ? "  It 
must  be  remarked  that  neglect  of  family  is  by  no 
means  the  invariable  result  of  want  of  food,  or 
of  danger  and  annoyance.  Birds  will,  as  is  well 
known,  sometimes  forsake  their  nests  from  fear. 
But  a  hen  has  been  known  to  leave  her  chickens  to 
the  mercy  of  accidents  without  any  conceivable 
motive  save  caprice,  or  the  want  of  ordinary  nat- 
ural affection.  Cats,  though  ordinarily  very  affec- 
tionate mothers,  and  sows,  sometimes  devour 
their  young.  Here,  therefore,  we  find,  again,  that 
the  lower  animals  are  not  bound  down  by  abso- 
lute necessity  to  one  unvarying  line  of  conduct. 
Like  man,  they  have  the  power  to  deviate  from 
what  is  for  them  natural,  normal,  or  right.  Oc- 
casionally they  make  use  of  such  power.  What 
may  be  the  causes  of,  or  the  motives  for,  such 
transgression,  is  not  here  the  question.  Enough 
for  us  that  it  exists. 

We  now  come  to  a  part  of  the  subject  which, 
though  essential  to  our  argument,  we  cannot  en- 
ter into  at  any  length.  Do  brutes  invariably  obey 
the  "  law  of  their  being  "  as  regards  the  mutual 
relations  of  the  sexes  ?  Far  from  it.  The  nearer 
brutes  approach  to  man,  the  more  they  are  in- 
clined to  sin  against  what,  in  modern  cantology, 
is  exclusively  styled  "  morality."  "With  animals 
which  pair  conjugal  fidelity  is,  indeed,  more  gen- 
eral than  with  mankind.  A  petty  negro  chief 
laughed  at  the  notion  of  keeping  to  one  wife, 
"  like  the  monkeys."     Still  it  is  far  from  being 


190 


TEE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


universal,  and  nowhere  are  exceptions  more  fre- 
quently found  than  among  pigeons,  which,  with  a 
rare  depth  of  wicked  satire,  have  been  selected 
as  types  of  matrimonial  faith. 

The  existence  of  hybrids  shows  a  departure 
from  what  Nature  should  enjoin.  Such  beings 
have  been  produced  respectively,  not  alone  be- 
tween the  horse  and  the  ass,  but  between  the 
horse  and  the  quagga,  the  horse  and  the  zebra, 
the  ass  and  the  zebra,  the  lion  and  the  tiger,  the 
hare  and  the  rabbit  (leporides),  and  between  a 
great  variety  of  birds,  of  the  poultry,  pheasant, 
grouse,  duck,  and  finch  groups.  To  the  dismay 
and  indignation  of  certain  theorists,  some  of  these 
hybrids  are  capable  of  reproduction. 

It  has  been  objected  that  these  instances  oc- 
cur only  through  human  intervention.  This  is 
by  no  means  the  fact.  Hybrids  between  distinct 
species  of  grouse  have  been  met  with  in  a  wild 
state. 

Instances  of  hybridism  are  likewise  said  to 
have  occurred  between  animals  much  more  widely 
remote  in  their  respective  natures.  Such  cases 
are  doubtful,  and  are  certainly  not  essential  to 
our  argument.  But  intercourse  not  unfrequently 
takes  place  between  animals  of  different  species 
where  no  offspring  has  been  positively  proved  to 
result. 

Many  more  instances  of  brute  frailty  might  be 
given  were  it  needful  or  desirable. 

It  has  been  asserted  that  "mere  brutes  "  never 
commit  suicide.  This  is  a  wanton,  it  might  be 
said  an  impudent,  assumption.  If  a  negro,  sold 
into  slavery,  refuses  food  and  starves  himself  to 
death,  as  sometimes  happened  in  the  palmy  days 
of  the  "  black  ivory  trade,"  men  say  that  he  has 
committed  suicide  rather  than  live  in  bondage ; 
but  if  an  animal,  bird,  or  reptile,  taken  away  from 
its  native  haunts  and  shut  up  in  a  cage,  persist- 
ently refuses  food  and  dies  in  consequence,  why 
should  not  the  same  name  be  applied  to  conduct 
precisely  similar?  Yet  cases  of  this  kind,  in 
which  the  love  of  liberty  and  independence  as- 
serts itself  in  flat  defiance  of  the  strongest  of  all 
instincts,  are  by  no  means  rare.  There  is  great 
difficulty  in  inducing  some  animals  to  eat  in 
captivity,  even  if  supplied  with  the  very  kind  of 
food  which  they  select  when  at  large.  As  an 
example,  we  may  mention  the  common  viper, 
which  generally  starves  itself  to  death  in  captiv- 
ity, regardless  of  the  offer  of  the  choicest  mice. 
But  there  are  many  instances  among  domestic 
animals,  proving  that  life-weariness  and  the  deter- 
mination  to  end  miseries  in  a  sudden  manner  are 
not  confined  to  the  human  race. 


"  Suicide  by  a  Dog. — A  day  or  two  since  a  fine 
dog,  belonging  to  Mr.  George  Hone,  of  Frinds- 
bury,  near  Rochester,  committed  a  deliberate  act 
of  suicide  by  drowning  in  the  Medway,  at  Upnor, 
Chatham.  The  dog  had  been  suspected  of  having 
given  indications  of  approaching  hydrophobia, 
and  was  accordingly  shunned  and  kept  as  much 
as  possible  from  the  house.  This  treatment' ap- 
peared to  cause  him  much  annoyance,  and  for 
some  days  he  was  observed  to  be  moody  and 
morose.  On  Thursday  morning  he  proceeded  to 
an  intimate  acquaintance  of  his  master's  at  Upnor, 
on  reaching  the  residence  of  whom,  he  set  up  a 
piteous  cry  on  finding  that  he  could  not  obtain 
admittance.  After  waiting  at  the  house  some 
little  time,  he  was  seen  to  go  toward  the  river 
close  by,  when  he  deliberately  walked  down  the 
bank,  and  after  turning  round  and  giving  a  kind 
of  farewell  howl,  walked  into  the  stream,  where 
he  kept  his  head  under  water,  and  in  a  minute  or 
two  rolled  over  dead.  This  extraordinary  act  of 
suicide  was  witnessed  by  several  persons.  The 
manner  of  the  death  proved  pretty  clearly  that 
the  animal  was  not  suffering  from  hydropho- 
bia."— -(Daily  Ncics.) 

"Suicide  of  a  Horse. — A  correspondent  writes : 
'  A  few  nights  ago  a  poor  creature,  worn  to  skin 
and  bone,  put  an  end  to  his  existence  in  a  very 
extraordinary  manner.  His  pedigree  is  unknown, 
as  he  was  quite  a  stranger.  A.  very  worthy 
gentleman  here  met  him  in  a  public  market,  and 
thinking  that  he  could  find  an  employment  for 
him,  put  him  to  work,  but  it  was  soon  discovered 
that  work  was  not  his  forte ;  in  fact,  be  would 
do  anything  save  work  and  go  errands.  His 
great  delight  was  to  roam  about  the  fields  and 
do  mischief.  People  passing  him  used  to  ejacu- 
late, "  Ugh,  you  ugly  brute  "  when  they  saw  the 
scowl  which  was  continually  on  his  face.  His 
master  tried  to  win  him  by  kindness.  The  kind- 
ness was  lost  upon  him.  He  next  tried  the  whip, 
then  the  cudgel,  but  all  in  vain.  Work  he  would 
not.  And  as  a  last  resort  the  punishment  of 
Nebuchadnezzar  of  old  was  tried.  He  was  turned 
out,  "  but  house  or  hauld,"  to  cat  grass  with  the 
oxen.  With  hungry' belly  and  broken  heart  he 
wended  his  lonely  way  down  by  the  Moor's  Shore 
passed  Luckyscaup,  turned  the  Moor's  Point,  and 
still  held  on  his  lonely  way,  regardless  of  the 
wondering  gaze  of  the  Pool  fishermen.  At 
length  he  arrived  at  a  point  opposite  the  wreck 
of  the  Dalhousie,  where  he  stood  still ;  and  while 
the  curiosity  of  the  fishermen  was  wound  to  the 
highest  pitch  as  to  what  was  to  follow,  he,  neigh- 
ing loudly  and  tossing  his  old  tail,  rushed  madly 


BRIEF  X0TE3. 


191 


into  the  briny  deep,  got  beyond  his  depth,  held 
his  head  under  the  water,  and  soon  ceased  to  be. 
The  fishermen  conveyed  the  true,  although  strange 
and  startling,  tidings  to  the  respected  owner, 
that  his  horse  had  committed  suicide.'  " — {Dundee 
Advertiser.) 

There  are  several  other  authenticated  cases 
on  record  where  dogs  have  committed  suicide  by 
drowning.  It  is  important,  as  showing  inten- 
tion, that  dogs  are  perfectly  aware  of  the  results 
of  prolonged  immersion  in  water,  as  evinced  by 
their  so  frequently  rescuing  children  when  in 
danger  of  drowning.  Were  dead  brutes  hon- 
ored with  a  searching  investigation,  we  might 
perhaps  find  such  instances  far  more  frequent 
than  we  suspect.  They  have,  however,  scantier 
facilities  for  self-murder  than  man,  and  possibly 
slighter  temptations,  as  being,  doubtless,  upon 
the  whole,  less  miserable. 

The  various  actions  above  mentioned  are  all 
departures  from  the  normal  or  natural  conduct 
of  the  species  concerned,  and  of  course  lead  us 
again  to  the  conclusion  that  brutes  can  do  wrong, 
and  if  wrong,  that  they  are  consequently  able 
also  to  do  right. 

Perhaps  it  may  be  argued  by  the  captious 
that  though  gluttony,  neglect  of  offspring,  sui- 
cide, and  the  like,  are  wrong  in  themselves,  and 
are  hurtful  to  the  offending  animal  and  its  spe- 
cies, yet  that  brutes  have  no  conscience,  and 
neither  feel  any  satisfaction  in  "obeying  the 
laws "  of  their  nature,  nor  any  remorse  upon 
transgression.  To  this  we  may  in  the  first  place 
reply  with  a  tu  quoque — a  retort  for  once  satis- 
factory, as  it  withdraws  the  pretended  distinc- 


tion. Man  does  not  appear  to  have  any  inborn 
and  infallible  knowledge  of  right  and  wrong. 
His  vaunted  conscience,  when  it  is  more  than  a 
mere  figure  of  speech,  is  a  creature  of  conven- 
tions and  traditions.  There  is  no  vice,  no  crime 
even,  how  horrible  soever,  which  at  some  time  or 
in  some  part  of  the  world  man  has  not  practised 
without  a  shadow  of  self-reproach.  He  has  suf- 
fered, indeed,  from  his  errors,  but  no  more  than 
the  brutes  does  he,  generally  speaking,  trace  his 
sufferings  to  their  true  causes.  Sir  J.  Lubbock 
states  in  his  "  Origin  of  Civilization"  that,  after 
inspecting  nearly  all  existing  records  of  savage 
life,  he  was  unable  to  find  any  case  of  a  savage 
having  evinced  remorse  after  the  commission  of 
any  crime. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  does  man  really  knoio 
that  brutes  are  void  of  all  trace  of  conscience — 
that  they  feel  no  joy  when  they  have  acted 
aright,  and  no  sorrow  when  they  have  done 
amiss  ?  He  has  no  proof — merely  wanton  as- 
sumption. Facts  prove  that  certain  animals  do 
feel  shame,  sorrow,  or  remorse,  when  they  have 
departed  from  what  to  them  is  the  standard  of 
right ;  and  what  more  can  reasonably  or  fairly  be 
demanded  ? 

We  have  thus,  we  submit,  established  that 
the  lower  animals  have  a  moral  life,  that  they 
can  do  right  or  do  wrong,  and  that,  like  man, 
they  avail  themselves  of  their  power  to  do  the 
latter.  Surely  henceforth  a  fellow-feeling  ought 
to  make  him  wondrous  kind  to  them  all.  Com- 
munity in  vice,  or  even  in  peccadillos,  has  always 
been  a  wonderful  leveler  of  distinctions. — Quar- 
terly Journal  of  Science. 


BEIEF    NOTES. 


Funeral  Ceremonies  at  the  Nicobar  Islands. — 
We  take  from  the  Geographical  Magazine  the 
following  interesting  extract  from  a  letter  by  F. 
E.  Tusou :  "  Last  night  I  went  over  to  Malacca,  and 
found  that  one  of  the  old  men  had  died  suddenly, 
and  been  buried  just  before  I  got  there.  A  raft 
of  long  trunks  of  trees,  with  a  house  on  it  made 
of  cocoanut-leaves,  and  with  one  large  leaf  placed 
upright  to  act  as  a  sail,  was  lying  opposite  the 
dead  man's  hut,  to  convey  away  his  'iwi,'  or 
spirit,  when  the  maulooennas,  or  medicine-men, 
had  caught  it.  They  are  awfully  afraid  of  these 
'  iwis ; '  and  all  the  inhabitants  were  sitting  in 
their  houses,  afraid  to  move  out.     They  attribute 


all  fever,  and  sickness,  and  calamity,  to  their 
'  iwis.'  I  found  the  maulooennas  placing  all  the 
property  of  the  deceased  round  about  his  tomb, 
and  hanging  up  his  hats,  clothes,  etc.,  on  a  post 
placed  at  his  head.  Everything  a  man  or  woman 
possesses  is  placed  on  his  or  her  tomb,  and  never 
used  again ;  the  poultry  and  pigs  are  killed.  The 
widow  was  in  a  house  near,  which  was  full  of  all 
the  women  in  the  place.  She  has  to  sit  three 
days  in  a  dark  corner,  with  a  cloth  over  her,  and 
to  see  and  speak  to  no  one  during  that  time.  The 
'  iwi,'  it  seemed,  would  not  come  till  night-time, 
when  everything  was  quiet,  so  I  was  unable  to 
see  the  operation  of  catching  it,  but  I  found  out 


192 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


the  mode  of  procedure.  The  first  thing  was  to- 
eat  up  all  the  food  in  the  village,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  a  little  rice  and  bread-fruit,  etc.  The  lat- 
ter was  placed  in  little  pottles,  like  those  used  at 
home  for  strawberries,  of  a  conical  shape,  about 
two  feet  long  and  eight  inches  in  diameter.  These 
were  hung  about  the  dead  man's  hut  and  tomb. 
At  night  the  '  iwi '  was  supposed  to  come  and 
enter  one  of  the  pottles,  to  eat  the  food  in  it. 
The  maulooennas  would  then  steal  up,  and  close 
the  mouth  suddenly  and  tie  it  up.  It  is  then  car- 
ried with  great  care  to  the  raft,  which  is  towed 
out  to  sea  and  let  go.  I  saw  the  pottles  all  ready, 
neatly  made  of  cocoanut-leaves  plaited  together. 
I  was  told  that  the  '  iwi '  was  invisible  to  all  but 
the  maulooennas,  an  idea  started,  of  course,  by  the 
latter.  The  natives  all  seem  to  believe  in  their 
powers ;  but  whether  they  do  so  themselves,  I  do 
not  know.  It  does  not  seem  necessary  to  pack 
the  '  iwi '  off  the  same  day  the  man  dies ;  for  the 
other  day  the  sister  of  '  London,'  the  head-man 
of  Malacca,  died,  and  her  '  iwi '  was  not  sent  to 
sea  till  three  months  afterward.  The  maulooennas 
appoint  the  day.  Three  months  hence  they  will 
have  a  great  feast,  paint  their  faces  red,  and  all 
get  drunk  and  dance  for  two  or  three  days.  At 
the  end  of  a  year  the  body  is  dug  up,  and  the 
skull  thoroughly  cleaned  and  reburied.  I  have 
not  ascertained  the  reason  for  this  last  ceremony. 
These  people  arc  a  most  interesting  race,  and  very 
little  is  known  about  them." 

The  Iguana. — Mr.  P.  L.  Simmonds,  in  a  re- 
cently-published work  on  "Animal  Products," 
says  of  the  Iguana  delicatissima,  the  large  tree- 
lizard  of  Central  and  South  America,  that,  while 
certainly  not  attractive  in  appearance,  yet  by 
most  persons  in  tropical  countries  its  flesh  is 
highly  esteemed.  The  eggs  of  the  iguana,  which 
are  somewhat  smaller  than  those  of  the  domestic 
pigeon,  are  pronounced  by  Sir  Robert  Schomburgh 
and  others  to  be  delicious.  One  of  the  lizards 
will  sometimes  contain  as  many  as  eighty  eggs, 
which,  when  boiled,  are  like  marrow.  The  inces- 
sant destruction  of  the  iguanas  for  the  sake  of 
their  flesh  has  made  them  very  scarce,  if  not 
altogether  extinct,  in  localities  where  they  were 
once  abundant.  They  were  formerly  so  common 
at  the  Bahamas  as  to  furnish  a  great  part  of  the 
subsistence  of  the  inhabitants.  In  Costa  Rica 
the  large  iguanas  attain  the  size  of  small  croco- 
diles. The  usual  native  mode  of  cooking  is  to 
boil  them,  taking  out  the  fat,  which  is  melted  and 
clarified  and  put  into  a  dish,  into  which  they  clip 
the  flesh  of  the  iguana  as  they  eat  it.     It  was 


long  before  the  Spaniards  in  America  could  con- 
quer their  repugnance  to  iguana-flesh,  but,  hav- 
ing once  tasted  of  it,  they  pronounced  it  to  be 
the  most  exquisite  of  all  delicacies.  Peter  Mar- 
tyr is  made  to  say,  in  the  old  English  translation 
of  his  work,  "De  Rebus  Oceanicis  et  Orbe  Novo: " 
"  These  serpentes  are  lyke  unto  crocodiles,  saving 
in  bygness  ;  the  call  them  guanas.  Unto  that 
day  none  of  owre  men  durst  adventure  to  taste 
them,  by  reason  of  theyre  horrible  deformitie  and 
lothsomnes.  Yet  the  Adelantado,  being  entysed 
by  the  pleasantnes  of  the  King's  sister,  Anacaona, 
determined  to  taste  the  serpentes.  But,  then,  he 
felte  the  flesh  thereof  to  be  so  delycate  to  his 
tongue,  and  to  amayze  without  al  feare.  The 
which  theyre  companions  perceiving,  were  not 
behynde  hym  in  greedynesse  ;  insomuche  that 
they  had  now  none  other  talke  than  of  the  sweet- 
nesse  of  these  serpentes,  which  they  affirm  to  be 
of  more  pleasant  taste  than  eyther  our  phesantes 
or  partriches." 

In  a  series  of  experiments  lately  made  in  Eng- 
land to  determine  the  comparative  strength  of 
iron  and  steel  plates,  the  metal  was  subjected  in 
each  case  to  the  percussive  force  of  .a  charge  of 
1^  pound  of  gun-cotton.  The  steel  plates  meas- 
ured f  of  an  inch  thick  and  the  iron  -pg-  thick, 
and  the  quality  ranged  from  ordinary  boiler-iron 
to  the  best  classes  of  steel.  The  plates,  thirty  in 
number,  were  one  by  one  placed  on  a  concave 
anvil  and  the  charge  was  fixed  about  nine  inches 
above.  The  ordinary  boiler-iron  was  indented  to 
the  fullest  extent  of  the  cavity  of  the  anvil  and 
fractured.  The  indentation  on  a  plate  of  mild  Bes- 
semer steel  tempered  in  oil  was  only  If  inch,  and 
there  was  no  fracture.  A  plate  of  mild  steel 
(Siemens's),  not  tempered  in  oil,  was  indented  1  j£ 
inch,  and  another,  tempered,  If  inch.  The  re- 
sults appear  to  show  that  steel  is  incomparably 
superior  to  iron  for  boilers,  locomotive-tires,  rails, 
and  similar  purposes. 

A  highly-ingenious  instrument  for  taking 
soundings  at  sea  while  the  ship  is  in  motion  has 
been  invented  by  Sir  William  Thomson.  This 
instrument  consists  of  a  copper  tube  attached  to 
the  lower  end  of  the  sounding-wire,  and  inclos- 
ing a  slender  glass  tube  and  a  small  quantity  of 
sulphate  of  iron.  As  the  tube  descends  the  press- 
ure of  the  water  forces  the  sulphate  into  the 
glass  tube.  It  leaves  a  stain  on  the  glass,  and 
according  to  the  height  of  the  stain  is  the  depth 
of  the  sea  at  that  point.  The  instrument  has 
been  tested  with  entirely  satisfactory  results. 


THE  NINETY  YEARS'  AGONY  OF  FRANCE. 


193 


THE  NINETY  YEAKS'   AGONY  OF  FKANCE. 

By  Pkof.   GOLDWIN  SMITH. 


inOR  ninety  years,  since  the  time  when  Calonne 


F 


called  together  his  Assembly  of  Notables, 


and  when  the  voice  of  the  Revolution  was  first 
heard  announcing  a  reign  of  hope,  love,  freedom, 
and  universal  peace — for  ninety  years  has  France 
struggled  to  attain  a  settled  form  of  constitu- 
tional government ;  and  apparently  she  is  farther 
from  it  now  than  she  was  in  1787 — apparently, 
but  not,  we  will  hope,  in  reality.  In  this  last 
crisis  the  mass  of  her  people  have  exhibited  not 
only  a  steadiness  of  purpose  for  which  we  were 
little  prepared,  but  a  self-control  which  is  full  of 
the  highest  promise.  In  spite  of  everything  that 
the  conspirators  who  had  seized  the  government 
could  do  to  provoke  the  nation  to  violence  which 
might  have  afforded  a  pretext  for  using  the  pub- 
lic force  against  the  public  liberties,  the  nation 
has  conquered  by  calmness.  Conspiracy  and 
illegality  have  passed  from  the  side  of  the  people 
to  that  of  the  reactionary  government.  This 
shows  that  considerable  way  has  been  made  since 
the  days  of  the  Faubourg  St.-Antoine. 

Real  progress  is  to  be  measured,  not  by 
change  of  institutions,  but  by  change  of  char- 
acter. The  Revolution  made  a  vast  change  in 
French  institutions  :  it  could  not  change  French 
character,  which  remained  as  servile  under  the 
despotism  of  Robespierre  as  it  had  been  under 
that  of  Louis  XIV.  Character  seems  now,  after 
ninety  years  of  desperate  effort  and  terrible  ex- 
perience, to  be  coming  up  to  the  level  of  institu- 
tions. Perhaps  France  has  reason  to  be  grateful 
to  De  Broglie  and  his  Marshal  for  giving  her 
assurance  of  that  fact,  though  their  names  will 
be  infamous  forever. 

The  reasons  of  the  political  failure  of  1789 
are  manifest  enough  ;  we  need  not  seek  them  in 
any  mysterious  incapacity  of  the  Celtic  race  in 
general,  or  of  the  French  branch  of  it  in  particu- 
lar, for  constitutional  government.  These  mys- 
terious capabilities  and  incapabilities  of  races  in 
truth  are  questionable  things,  and  generally  tend, 
upon  closer  inspection,  to  resolve  themselves  into 
the  influence  of  circumstance  perpetuated  and  ac- 
cumulated through  many  generations.  England, 
guarded  by  the  sea,  has  had  comparatively  little 
need  of  standing  armies,  and  she  has  thus  escaped 
military  despotism,  since  fleets  cannot  interfere 
with  politics  ;    yet  even  she  might  have  fallen 

49 


under  a  military  despotism,  and  foreign  critics 
might  now  be  moralizing  on  the  inherent  inca- 
pacity of  her  people  for  any  government  but  that 
of  force,  if,  when  the  army  of  James  II.  was  en- 
camped on  Hounslow  Heath,  there  had  not  been 
a  William  of  Orange  to  come  over  to  our  rescue. 
France  has  had  frontiers  ;  therefore  she  has  had 
standing  armies,  and  her  rulers  have  been  mas- 
ters of  legions.  She  was  exposed  to  foreign  in- 
vasion for  a  whole  century,  from  the  time  of  Ed- 
ward III.  to  that  of  Henry  VI. ;  and  again,  at  the 
crisis  of  her  destiny  in  1791,  she  was  assailed  by 
the  arms  of  the  coalesced  powers  of  Reaction. 
On  each  occasion  her  people,  to  secure  national 
independence,  were  compelled  to  renounce  liber- 
ty, and  the  Government  was  inevitably  invested 
with  a  military  dictatorship  of  defense,  which, 
once  acquired,  was  perpetuated  in  political  des- 
potism. It  would  be  difficult  to  prove  that, 
under  more  auspicious  circumstances,  the  States- 
General,  which,  at  one  period  in  the  fourteenth 
century,  entered  on  a  course  of  reform  as  bold 
and  comprehensive  as  anything  done  by  the 
framers  of  the  Great  Charter  or  the  Parliaments 
of  Henry  III.,  might  not  have  developed  into  a 
British  House  of  Commons. 

The  political  crisis  of  1789  was  in  itself  one 
of  the  most  tremendous  kind ;  it  was  nothing 
less  than  the  collapse,  amid  bankruptcy  and  gen- 
eral ruin,  of  the  hereditary  principle  of  govern- 
ment, the  only  principle  which  France  or  the 
greater  part  of  Europe  up  to  that  time  had 
known.  But  it  was  desperately  complicated  by 
its  connection  with  a  social  and  a  religious  crisis 
equally  tremendous.  It  came  upon  a  people 
totally  untrained  to  political  action,  without  po- 
litical instruction,  without  a  political  press,  with- 
out even  the  common  information  which  a  news- 
paper gives  about  passing  events ;  without  the 
means  of  judiciously  choosing  its  political  lead- 
ers, or  even  political  leaders  among  whom  a  judi- 
cious choice  could  be  made ;  without  any  good 
political  writers,  except  Montesquieu,  whose  au- 
thority, as  we  shall  presently  see,  was  practically 
misleading.  At  the  same  time  this  people  had, 
in  common  with  all  intellectual  Europe,  been  ex- 
cited by  visions  of  boundless  and  universal  hap- 
piness, of  new  heavens  and  a  new  earth,  to  be 
attained  by  a  change  of  the  social  system  and  of 


194: 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


the  form  of  government.  Amid  such  disadvan- 
tages, and  in  face  of  a  reaction  at  once  political, 
social,  and  religious,  the  desperate  reaction  of 
privilege,  both  social  and  ecclesiastical,  fighting 
for  its  existence,  and  not  scrupling,  in  its  trans- 
ports of  rage  and  terror  at  the  appearance  of 
liberty  and  equality,  to  combine  with  Robespierre 
in  order  to  defeat  Lafayette,  success  would  have 
been  almost  a  miracJe.  But  then,  to  extinguish 
the  last  hope,  came  the  coalition  of  the  kings, 
hounded  on  by  the  too  eloquent  ravings  of  Burke, 
whose  total  failure  to  understand  the  difficulties 
under  which  the  French  reformers  labored  was 
discreditable  to  him  as  a  political  philosopher, 
while  his  frantic  invocations  of  war,  and,  in  his 
own  hideous  phrase,  of  "  a  long  war,"  were  dis- 
graceful to  him  not  only  as  a  political  philosopher 
but  as  a  man. 

The  Republican  Constitution  formed  after  the 
overthrow  of  the  Terrorists  was  not  a  good  one. 
The  institution  of  two  Chambers  was  a  mistake, 
arising  from  an  illusion  of  which  we  shall  pres- 
ently have  to  speak  ;  a  sufficient  control  over 
the  Executive  Directory  was  not  secured  to  the 
representatives  of  the  nation  ;  the  judiciary  was 
not  placed  on  a  proper  footing.  Still  it  is  prob- 
able that  the  Constitution  would  in  time  have 
worked  and  given  to  France  law  and  order  under 
a  Republic,  had  it  been  administered  by  tolerably 
honest  hands,  and  had  it  not  been  exposed  to 
military  violence.  But  a  revolution,  especially 
an  abortive  revolution,  leaves  behind  it  a  fearful 
legacy,  not  only  of  disappointment,  lassitude,  mis- 
trust among  the  people,  but  of  depravity  among 
the  chiefs.  It  gives  birth  to  a  race  of  intriguers, 
utterly  selfish,  utterly  unprincipled,  trained  to 
political  infidelity  iu  the  school  of  fortunate 
apostasy,  steeped  in  perfidy  by  the  violation  of 
unnumbered  oaths,  and  at  the  same  time  familiar 
with  the  revolutionary  use  of  violence.  Such 
was  the  offspring  of  the  revolutionary  periods  of 
ancient  history  both  in  Greece  and  Rome.  Thu- 
cydides  saw  and  painted  them;  they  impressed 
their  character  on  Roman  politics  after  the  civil 
wars  of  Marius  and  Sylla.  Such  again  was  the 
offspring  of  the  English  Revolution  ;  the  Lauder- 
dales  and  Shaftesburys,  the  scoundrels  who  formed 
the  governments  and  led  the  factions  of  the  Res- 
toration, who  carried  on  religious  persecutions 
while  themselves  were  infidels,  shut  up  the  ex- 
chequer, made  the  treaty  of  Dover,  got  up  the 
Popish  Plot,  seized  the  municipal  charters,  judi- 
cially murdered  Russell  and  Sydney.  But  never 
was  there  such  a  generation  of  these  men  as  that 
which  emerged  from  the  wreck  of  the  dreams  of 


Rousseau,  and  from  the  deadly  struggle  of  fac- 
tions which  ended  with  the  fall  of  Robespierre — 
Tallien,  Freron,  Barere,  Barras,  Rewbell,  Talley- 
rand, Merlin,  Fouche,  and  their  crew.  Political 
corruption  was  aggravated  by  the  corruption  of 
morals,  caused  by  the  outburst  of  sensualism 
which  naturally  ensued  after  the  dreadful  repres- 
sion and  the  savage  Spartanism  of  the  Terror. 
To  this  general  depravity  was  added  the  volcanic 
fury,  still  unabated,  of  party  passions  raging  in 
the  breasts  of  factions  which  but  yesterday  had 
been  alternately  reveling  in  the  blood  of  each 
other.  It  was  by  military  violence,  however,  that 
the  Constitution  was  at  last  overthrown,  and  its 
fall  was  the  beginning  of  that  supremacy  of  the 
army  which  unhappily  has  been  from  that  hour, 
and  still  is,  the  fundamental  fact  of  French  poli- 
tics. The  hand  which,  at  the  bidding  of  traitors 
in  the  Directory,  dealt  the  first  blow,  was  that  of 
Augereau,  but  the  hand  which  planned  it  and 
dealt  the  final  blow  was  that  of  Bonaparte.  In 
estimating  the  result  of  the  first  experiment  in 
Republican  government,  this  must  always  be 
borne  in  mind. 

The  appearance  of  Bonaparte  upon  the  scene 
with  his  character  and  his  abilities  may  be  truly 
called  the  most  calamitous  accident  in  history. 
An  accident  it  was,  for  Bonaparte  was  not  a 
Frenchman ;  he  was  made  a  French  soldier  by 
the  chance  which  had  annexed  his  country  to 
France,  without  which  he  would  have  been  a 
Corsican  brigand,  instead  of  being  the  scourge  of 
the  world.  Little  did  Choiseul  think  that  the 
rapacity  which  added  to  France  Corsica  would 
be  the  cause  a  century  afterward  of  her  losing 
Alsace-Lorraine.  As  to  the  greatness  of  the 
calamity,  few  doubt  it,  except  the  train  of  mer- 
cenary adventurers  whose  existence  in  France, 
as  a  standing  and  most  dangerous  conspiracy 
against  her  liberties,  is  itself  the  fatal  proof  of 
the  fact  which  they  would  deny.  What  may 
have  been  the  extent  of  Napoleon's  genius,  politi- 
cal or  military,  is  a  question  still  under  debate, 
and  one  of  a  kind  which  it  is  difficult  to  settle, 
because,  to  take  the  measure  of  a  force,  whether 
mechanical  or  intellectual,  we  must  know  the 
strength  of  the  resistance  overcome.  The  Revo- 
lution had  swept  the  ground  clear  for  his  ambi- 
tion, and  had  left  him  in  his  career  of  aggrandize- 
ment almost  as  free  from  the  usual  obstacles 
without  as  he  was  from  any  restraints  of  con- 
science or  humanity  within.  Death  removed  the 
only  three  men  who  were  likely  to  make  a  stand, 
Hoche,  Marceau,  and  Kleber,  from  his  path.  He 
disposed  absolutely  of  an  army  full  of  burning 


THE  NINETY   YEARS'  AGONY  OF  FRANCE. 


195 


enthusiasm,  and  which,  before  he  took  the  com- 
mand, though  it  had  recently  met  with  some 
reverses,  had  already  hurled  back  the  hosts  of 
the  Coalition.  In  Europe,  when  he  set  out  on 
his  career,  there  was  nothing  to  oppose  him  but 
governments  estranged  from  their  nations,  and 
armies  without  national  spirit,  mere  military  ma- 
chines, rusty  for  the  most  part,  and  commanded 
by  privileged  incompetence.  England  was  the 
only  exception,  and  by  England  he  was  always 
beaten.  The  national  resistance  which  his  tyranny 
ultimately  provoked,  and  by  which,  when  he  had 
provoked  it,  he  was  everywhere  defeated,  in  Rus- 
sia, in  Germany,  even  in  decrepit  Spain,  was 
called  into  existence  by  his  own  folly.  He  ended, 
not  like  Louis  XIV.,  merely  in  reverses  and  hu- 
miliations, but  in  utter  and  redoubled  ruin,  which 
he  and  his  country  owed  to  his  want  of  good 
sense  and  of  self-control,  and  to  this  alone,  for 
he  was  blindly  served,  and  fortune  can  never  be 
said  to  have  betrayed  him,  unless  he  had  a  right 
to  reckon  upon  finding  no  winter  in  Russia.  Be- 
fore he  led  his  army  to  destruction,  he  had  de- 
stroyed its  enthusiastic  spirit  by  a  process  visible 
enough  to  common  eyes,  though  invisible  to  his. 
in  or  was  he  more  successful  as  a  founder  of  politi- 
cal institutions.  He,  in  fact,  founded  nothing  but 
a  government  of  the  sword,  which  lasted  just  so 
long  as  he  was  victorious  and  present.  The  in- 
st^ility  of  his  political  structure  was  shown  in  a 
lurid  light  by  the  conspiracy  of  Malet.  Of  its 
effect  on  political  character  it  is  needless  to 
speak ;  a  baser  brood  of  sycophants  was  never 
gathered  round  any  Eastern  throne.  At  the 
touch  of  military  disaster,  the  first  Empire,  like 
the  second,  sank  down  in  ignominious  ruin,  leav- 
ing behind  it  not  a  single  great  public  man,  noth- 
ing above  the  level  of  Talleyrand.  The  Code  sur- 
vived ;  but  the  Code  was  the  work  of  the  jurists 
of  the  Revolution.  With  no  great  legal  princi- 
ple was  Bonaparte  personally  identified,  except 
the  truly  Corsican  principle  of  confiscation,  to 
which  he  always  clung.  The  genius  of  the  moral 
reformer  is  to  be  measured  by  the  moral  effect 
which  he  produces,  though  his  own  end  may  be 
the  cup  of  hemlock.  The  genius  of  the  adven- 
turer must  be  measured  by  his  success  ;  and  his 
success  is  questionable  when  his  career,  however 
meteoric,  ends  in  total  disaster.  This  is  not  the 
less  manifest  to  reflecting  minds  because  the  per- 
nicious brightness  of  the  meteor  still  dazzles  and 
misleads  the  crowd.  But  the  greater  Napoleon's 
genius  was,  the  worse  was  it  for  France  and  man- 
kind. All  his  powers  were  employed  in  the  ser- 
vice of  the  most  utterly  selfish  and  evil  ambition 


that  ever  dwelt  in  human  breast.  It  has  been 
justly  remarked  that  his  freedom  from  every 
sort  of  moral  restraint  and  compunction  lent  a 
unity  to  his  aims  and  actions  which  gave  him  a 
great  advantage  over  less  perfectly  wicked  men. 
As  to  religion,  he  was  atheist  enough  to  use  it 
without  scruple  as  a  political  engine,  and  to  regret 
that  the  time  was  past  when  he  might,  like  Alex- 
ander, have  given  himself  out  as  the  son  of  a  god. 
His  selfishness  is  to  be  measured  not  merely  by 
the  unparalleled  sacrifices  of  human  blood  and 
suffering  which  he  offered  to  it ;  not  merely  by 
the  unutterable  scenes  of  horror  which  he  wit- 
nessed without  emotion,  and  repeated  without 
a  pang ;  but  by  the  strength  of  the  appeal 
which  was  made  to  his  better  nature,  had  he 
possessed  one,  and  the  splendor  of  the  reward 
which  was  held  out  to  him,  if  he  would  have  kept 
his  allegiance  to  the  interests  of  his  country  and 
of  humanity.  What  happiness  and  what  glory 
would  have  been  his  if,  after  Marengo,  he  had 
given  the  world  a  lasting  peace,  and  with  it  the 
fulfillment,  so  far  as  fulfillment  was  possible,  of 
the  social  and  political  aspirations  for  which  such 
immense  and  heroic  efforts,  such  vast  sacrifices, 
had  been  made !  Never,  in  all  history,  has  such 
a  part  been  offered  to  man.  Instead  of  accepting 
this  part,  Napoleon  gave  the  reins  to  an  ambition 
most  vulgar  as  well  as  most  noxious  in  its  objects, 
and  to  the  savage  lust  of  war,  which  seems  after 
all  to  have  been  the  predominating  element  in 
this  Corsican's  character,  and  which  gleamed  in 
his  evil  eye  when  the  cord  was  touched  by  those 
who  visited  him  at  Elba.  The  results  were  the 
devastation  of  Europe,  the  portentous  develop- 
ment of  the  military  system  under  which  the 
world  now  groans,  the  proportionate  depression 
of  industry  and  of  all  pacific  interests,  the  resur- 
rection in  a  worse  form  of  the  despotisms  around 
which  the  nations  were  fain  to  rally  for  protec- 
tion against  a  foreign  oppressor,  and  the  new 
era  of  convulsions  and  revolutions  which  the  res- 
urrection of  the  despotisms  inevitably  entailed. 

Of  all  the  effects  of  Napoleon's  career,  the 
worst  perhaps  was  the  revelation  of  the  weakness 
and  meanness  of  human  nature.  What  hope  is 
there  for  a  race  which  will  grovel  at  the  feet  of 
sheer  wickedness  because  the  crime  is  on  an 
enormous  scale,  and  the  criminal  is  the  scourge, 
not  only  of  one  nation,  but  of  his  kind  ?  Next  in 
the  order  of  evil  were  the  ascendency  given  to 
the  military  spirit  and  the  example  of  military 
usurpation.  The  military  spirit  it  was  that,  ex- 
cited by  the  flagitious  writings  of  Thiers,  and  weak- 
ly flattered  by  the  house  of  Orleans,  overturned 


196 


TEE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTELY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


constitutional  government  in  1832.  The  exam- 
ple of  military  usurpation  was  followed  by  Napo- 
leon's reputed  nephew,  who  in  his  turn  was  driven 
by  the  discontent  of  the  army,  combined  with 
the  influence  of  his  priest-ridden  wife,  into  the 
war  which  overthrew  his  Empire,  at  the  same 
time  bringing  the  invader  for  the  third  time  into 
Paris.  The  blow  which  military  passion  and  the 
spirit  of  aggrandizement  received  in  that  defeat 
was  to  France  a  blessing  in  disguise.  To  it  she 
owes  the  recovery,  however  precarious,  of  free 
institutions,  of  which  there  would  otherwise 
scarcely  have  been  a  hope.  But,  even  now, 
France,  after  all  her  efforts  and  revolutions,  is  to 
a  fearful  extent  at  the  mercy  of  a  stupid  and 
self-willed  soldier,  a  third-rate  master  even  of  his 
own  trade,  totally  devoid  of  political  knowledge 
and  of  sympathy  with  political  aspirations,  but 
at  the  head  of  the  army,  and,  as  his  language  to 
the  soldiery  on  the  eve  of  the  elections  proved, 
sufficiently  wanting  in  the  true  sense  of  honor  to 
admit  into  his  mind  the  thought  of  using  the 
public  force  with  which  he  is  intrusted  for  the 
overthrow  of  public  liberty.  No  institutions, 
however  sound  and  stable  in  themselves,  can 
afford  to  a  nation  security  for  legal  order  while 
there  is  a  constant  danger  of  military  usurpation. 
Nor  is  it  easy  to  see  how  the  danger  can  be  re- 
moved, so  long  as  an  army  strong  enough  to 
overpower  all  national  resistance,  and  blindly 
obedient  to  command,  is  at  the  disposal  of  the 
executive  for  the  time  being. 

Two  years  hence,  if  not  before,  there  will  be 
another  crisis  ;  and  it  is  idle  to  conceal  the  un- 
happy and  ignominious  fact,  that  the  decision 
will  rest  ultimately  with  the  army  and  with  those 
whom  the  army  obeys. 

Whether,  under  the  new  system  of  universal 
military  service,  with  such  influences  as  that  of 
the  Erckmann-Chatrian  novels,  the  soldier  has 
become  more  of  a  citizen  and  the  army  less  of  a 
knife,  ready,  in  any  hand  by  which  it  may  for  the 
moment  be  grasped,  to  cut  the  throat  of  public 
liberty,  the  event  will  show.  The  French  peas- 
ant, if  left  to  himself,  is  not  fond  of  war ;  he 
hates  the  conscription,  and  has  done  so  from  the 
time  of  Caesar ;  the  fatal  ascendency  of  the  mil- 
itary spirit  is  due,  not  to  him,  but  to  a  series  of 
ambitious  rulers.  This  is  true,  but  it  does  not 
save  France  from  being,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  to 
a  lamentable  extent  a  stratocracy.  How  the 
army  can  be  placed  in  safe  hands  is  a  problem 
of  which  it  is  almost  impossible  to  suggest 
a  complete  and  permanent  solution.  The  re- 
duction of  its  numbers  by  the  definite  adoption 


of  a  pacific  policy  is  the  only  real  security  for 
the  continuance  of  political  liberty.  In  France 
the  peril  is  greatest,  and  its  manifestations  have 
been  most  calamitous,  but  it  extends  more  or  less 
to  all  the  European  nations.  Everywhere  in  Eu- 
rope public  liberty  and  human  progress  are  to  a 
fearful  extent  at  the  mercy  of  the  vast  standing 
armies  which  are  maintained  by  the  mutual  jeal- 
ousies of  nations,  assiduously  stimulated  by  courts 
and  aristocracies  in  the  interest  of  moral  and  po- 
litical reaction.  He  who  said  that  science  could 
not  be  better  employed  than  in  devising  means  of 
destroying  praetorians  gave  utterance,  in  a  cyni- 
cal form,  to  a  melancholy  truth.  It  would  be  a 
happier  way  of  escape  from  the  danger  if  sol- 
diers could  possibly  be  made  to  understand  their 
real  duty  to  their  country. 

By  the  Restoration  of  the  Stuarts,  and  the 
temporary  recovery  of  its  ascendency  by  a  de- 
feated and  vindictive  party,  England  was  thrown 
back  into  political  discord,  violence,  and  inter- 
mittent civil  law  for  three-quarters  of  a  century. 
The  same  calamity  befell  France,  though  in  her 
case  the  restoration  was  the  work  of  foreign 
hands ;  and  the  same  or  even  greater  allowance 
for  the  disturbing  influence  must  be  made.  As 
no  institutions  can  be  proof  against  military 
treason,  so  none  can  be  proof  against  passions 
which  go  beyond  political  antagonism,  beyond 
even  the  utmost  violence  of  party,  and  are,  in 
fact,  the  passions  of  civil  war.  The  factions 
which  encountered  each  other  in  the  legislative 
assemblies  of  the  Restoration  were  the  same 
which  not  long  before  had  encountered  each 
other  on  the  battle-fields  of  La  Vendee.  Their 
hostility,  scarcely  diminished  since  they  met  in 
arms,  was  incompatible  with  that  common  alle- 
giance to  the  Constitution  and  its  objects,  in  spite 
of  divergences  on  special  questions,  which  is  the 
first  condition  of  constitutional  government.  Both 
extremes  in  the  assemblies  of  Louis  XVIII.  and 
Charles  X.  were  striving,  not  to  give  effect  to 
their  respective  policies  by  constitutional  means, 
but  to  overthrow  the  Constitution  itself,  one  ex- 
treme in  the  interest  of  absolutism,  the  other  in 
that  of  democracy.  It  was  then  as  it  is  now, 
when  the  monarchical  and  aristocratic  party  is 
manifestly  using  the  Marshalate  and  the  Senate, 
not  to  modify  legislation  in  a  conservative  sense, 
but  to  overthrow  the  Republic,  as,  if  it  had  been 
successful  in  controlling  the  elections,  it  would 
unquestionably  have  done.  In  such  a  case  insti- 
tutions can  do  no  more  than  prolong  for  them- 
selves a  precarious  existence  by  being  so  ordered 
as  to  prevent  rather  than  facilitate  a  pitched  bat- 


THE  NINETY  YEARS'  AGONY  OF  FRANCE. 


197 


tie  between  parties  which,  when  it  once  occurs, 
causes  an  outbreak  of  violence,  and  leads  back 
to  civil  war. 

Napoleon,  besides  restoring  superstition  for 
his  political  ends,  restored  aristocracy,  though 
the  fear  of  limiting  his  despotism  made  him  dis- 
like creating  an  hereditary  House  of  Peers.  This 
also  has  been  a  hostile  and  disturbing  force, 
against  which  the  Republic,  founded  on  equality, 
has  always  had  and  still  has  to  contend.  The 
set  of  upstarts  whom  Bonaparte  bedizened  with 
tinsel  dukedoms  of  course  gave  themselves  great- 
er airs  than  the  old  nobility  of  France.  Such  a 
fellow  as  Cambaceres  was  very  particular  about 
being  called  Monseigneur  ;  but  a  certain  union 
of  interest,  if  not  a  social  union,  has  by  this  time 
been  brought  about  between  old  privilege  and 
new ;  and  the  attack  on  the  Republic  under  De 
Broglie  has  been  at  least  as  much  an  aristocrat- 
ic conspiracy  as  anything  else.  So  manifest  is 
this  as  to  found  a  hope  that  the  army,  which  is 
tolerably  loyal  to  equality,  if  not  to  liberty,  might 
recoil  from  supporting  what  it  must  see  to  be  an 
aristocratic  reaction.  An  aristocracy,  while  it 
exists,  will  never  cease  to  intrigue  against  institu- 
tions based  upon  equality  ;  and  the  total  prohibi- 
tion of  hereditary  titles  was  justly  felt  by  the  fra- 
mers  of  the  American  Constitution  to  be  essential 
to  the  security  of  their  Republic. 

Another  adverse  force  against  which  free  in- 
stitutions have  to  contend  in  France,  too  often 
noted  to  need  more  than  recognition  in  its  place, 
is  the  tendency,  derived  from  the  old  regime,  but 
handed  on  in  an  intensified  form  by  the  Bona- 
partes,  to  administrative  centralization,  which, 
notwithstanding  the  improvement  of  local  insti- 
tutions, still  decidedly  preponderates  over  local 
self-government.  The  influence  exercised  by  De 
Broglie  and  his  accomplices  over  the  elections, 
through  prefects  of  their  appointment,  is  a  fatal 
proof  of  the  fact.  From  the  same  inveterate  spirit 
of  encroachment  on  one  side,  and  submission  on 
the  other,  arises  the  want  of  independence  in  the 
judiciary  which  has  been  so  disgracefully  dis- 
played in  the  late  political  trials.  The  resistance 
made  by  the  constituencies  to  the  prefects  shows 
that  improvement  is  going  on  ;  but  a  century  of 
effort  is  not  too  much  to  throw  off  maladies  so 
deeply  seated  as  these. 

The  special  influence,  however,  to  which  we 
wish  here  to  point  as  having  interfered  with  the 
success  of  elective  government,  and  as  still  im- 
periling its  existence  in  European  countries  gen- 
erally, but  notably  in  France,  is  the  ignorant  and 
fallacious  imitation  of  the  British  Constitution. 


We  wish  we  could  hope  that  the  few  words  we 
have  to  say  on  this  point  would  meet  the  eye  of 
any  French  statesman,  and  direct  his  attention  to 
the  subject. 

Burke  denounced  the  political  architects  of 
1789  for  constructing  their  edifice  according  to 
theoretic  principles  instead  of  building  it  on  old 
foundations,  and  he  contrasted  their  folly  with 
the  wisdom  of  the  old  Whigs.  Considering  that 
the  old  Whigs  were  aristocrats  who  had  inherited 
the  territorial  plunder  of  the  courtiers  of  Henry 
VIII.,  and  who  desired  to  preserve  that  inheri- 
tance, and,  with  it,  the  power  of  an  aristocracy, 
their  economy  in  innovation  was  as  natural  as  it 
was  wise.  But  it  would  have  tasked  the  sagacity 
of  Burke  to  discover  what  old  foundations  for  con- 
stitutional government  there  were  in  the  France 
of  1789.  France  had  then  been,  for  at  least  a 
century  and  a  half,  a  despotism  with  a  strictly 
centralized  administration.  The  semblance  of 
provincial  government  survived,  but  it  masked 
without  really  tempering  the  action  of  the  satraps 
of  the  monarchy  ;  and  feudalism,  crushed  since 
Richelieu,  had  left  behind  no  genuine  remnant  of 
local  liberty,  but  only  the  antiquated  machinery 
of  social  oppression,  which  Richelieu  had  done 
almost  nothing  to  reform.  Yet  the  political  ar- 
chitects of  1789  did  build  on  old  foundations, 
the  only  old  foundations  which  anywhere  pre- 
sented themselves — the  foundations  of  the  Eng- 
lish Constitution.  And  it  may  confidently  be 
said  that,  compared  with  that  renowned,  time- 
honored,  and  much-lauded  model,  the  newest  cre- 
ation of  the  brain  of  Sieyes  would  have  been  a 
safe  and  practical  guide.  The  clock-work  consti- 
tutions of  Sieyes  displayed  a  fatal  ignorance  of 
the  real  forces ;  but  at  all  events  they  involved 
no  incurable  self-contradiction.  It  was  not  abso- 
lutely impossible  to  make  them  work.  But  it 
was  absolutely  impossible,  and  had  been  actually 
proved  to  be  so  by  English  experience,  to  make 
the  British  Constitution  work,  as  the  British  Con- 
stitution was  understood  by  Frenchmen  and  by 
Englishmen  themselves. 

The  received  version  of  the  British  Constitu- 
tion was  that  given  by  Montesquieu,  in  perfect 
accordance  with  the  forms  of  British  constitu- 
tional law.  Montesquieu,  a  great  genius  in  his 
day,  while  he  explained  the  forms  with  philosophic 
eloquence,  failed  to  pierce  through  them  to  the 
real  political  forces.  In  this  respect  he  is  like 
De  Tocqueville,  whose  work,  admirable  in  many 
respects,  is  still  an  account  of  the  forms,  not  of 
the  real  forces,  and,  consequently,  is  of  little 
value  as  a  practical  guide  to  American  politics, 


198 


TEE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTELY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


and  is  seldom  quoted  by  American  politicians. 
The  legislative  power  is  the  sovereign  power. 
But  Montesquieu  believed  that  the  sovereign 
power,  in  the  case  of  the  British  Constitution, 
was  really  divided  among  king,  Lords,  and  Com- 
mons. He  also  believed  that  the  legislative,  ex- 
ecutive, and  judiciary  powers  were  not  only  dis- 
tinct, but  independent  of  each  other,  and  that 
the  mutual  independence  of  those  powers  was  the 
palladium  of  constitutional  government. 

The  British  Constitution  is  a  single  elective 
assembly,  in  which  the  whole  of  the  legislative, 
and  therefore  the  whole  of  the  sovereign  power 
is  really  vested.  This  assembly  virtually  ap- 
points the  members  of  the  executive,  who  are  the 
leaders  of  its  majority,  and  through  the  execu- 
tive the  ministers  of  justice.  Round  it  still  cling, 
as  it  were,  the  wrecks  of  an  old  feudal  monarchy 
and  of  an  old  feudal  House  of  Peers,  but  from 
both  of  them  the  power  has  long  passed  away,  to 
centre  in  the  Commons,  though,  strange  to  say, 
not  only  foreign  observers,  but  English  statesmen, 
long  remained  unconscious  of  the  fact. 

Whether  the  sovereign  power,  which  could 
not  be  divided,  should  be  vested  in  the  crown  or 
in  the  representatives  of  the  people,  was  the  ques- 
tion which,  after  vain  attempts  to  settle  it  by  de- 
bate, was  fought  out  with  arms  between  the  Par- 
liament and  the  Stuarts.  It  was  decided,  after  a 
century  of  conflict  and  several  vicissitudes  of  for- 
tune, in  favor  of  the  representatives  of  the  peo- 
ple, who  finally  triumphed  in  1688.  From  that 
time  the  monarchy  has  been  faineant,  interfering 
with  the  government  only  by  means  of  back-stairs 
influence,  or  by  forming  for  itself,  underhand,  a 
party  in  the  House  of  Commons,  as  it  did  during 
part  of  the  reign  of  George  III.  William  III., 
being  the  head  and  the  general  of  a  European 
coalition,  kept  for  his  life  the  Foreign  Office  and 
the  War-Office  in  his  own  hands ;  but  after  a 
slight  resistance,  ending  with  his  attempt  to  veto 
the  Triennial  Act,  he  was  obliged  to  relinquish 
every  other  kind  of  power  ;  and,  in  the  reign  of 
his  successor,  the  transfer  of  the  sovereignty  to 
Parliament  was  complete.  As  to  the  House  of 
Lords,  it  has  no  power  left  in  itself  but  that  of 
obstruction  on  minor  questions ;  on  great  ques- 
tions it  merely  registers  the  vote  of  the  majority 
of  the  House  of  Commons.  This  was  settled  in 
1832,  in  the  case  of  the  Reform  Bill,  and  again  in 
1846,  in  the  case  of  the  Corn  Laws.  On  both 
those  occasions  the  measures  would  notoriously 
have  been  rejected  by  an  overwhelming  majority, 
had  the  House  of  Lords  been  an  independent  as- 
sembly.    The  result  showed  that  it  was  nothing 


of  the  kind.  King,  Lords,  and  Commons  work 
together  harmoniously  in  England,  not  because 
each  of  them  exercises  its  share  of  the  sovereign 
power  temperately,  and  with  due  respect  for  the 
rights  of  the  others,  which  is  the  common  and 
the  orthodox  belief,  but  because  two  of  them  are 
politically  non-existent.  Restore  real  sovereignty 
to  the  crown,  and  you  will  have  the  Stuarts  and 
the  Long  Parliament  over  again. 

Following,  however,  as  they  thought,  the  suc- 
cessful example  of  England,  the  framers  of  the 
French  Constitution  of  1789  attempted  to  divide 
the  sovereign  power,  leaving  a  portion  of  it  in  the 
king,  and  vesting  the  remainder  in  the  represen- 
tatives of  the  people.  The  result,  the  inevitable 
result,  was  collision,  and  soon  a  conflict  which, 
though  neither  party  knew  it,  was  essentially  in- 
ternecine. The  weaker,  that  is  to  say,  the  mon- 
archy, fell ;  but,  in  the  desperate  efforts  necessary 
to  get  rid  of  the  opposing  force  and  to  vindicate 
the  sovereignty  to  itself,  foreign  intervention  add- 
ing to  the  fury  of  the  conflict  and  to  the  general 
difficulties  of  the  crisis,  the  nation  fell  into  con- 
vulsions, into  the  reign  of  violence,  into  the  Ter- 
ror, and  after  the  Terror  into  military  dictator- 
ship and  despotism.  The  same  fatal  situation 
was  reproduced  under  the  restored  monarchy; 
again  an  attempt  was  made  to  divide  the  sover- 
eign power  between  the  king  and  the  Assembly 
which  represented  the  nation.  In  which  of  the  two 
that  power  should  rest,  was  the  issue  once  more 
really  debated  through  all  those  fierce  sessions 
of  the  Restoration  Legislature,  while  the  ground 
heaved  with  conspiracy,  and  ever  and  anon  the 
mutterings  of  civil  war  were  heard  in  the  streets. 
At  last  Charles  X.  made  a  desperate  effort  to  cut 
the  knot  and  render  himself  sovereign ;  by  his 
failure  and  fall  the  question  of  sovereignty  was 
decided  for  the  time  in  favor  of  the  representa- 
tives of  the  people.  What  power  Louis  Philippe 
retained  was  retained  not  of  right  (for  he  sub- 
scribed to  the  doctrine  that  he  was  to  be  guided 
by  constitutional  advisers  assigned  him  by  the 
majority  in  the  Chambers),  but  by  personal  in- 
fluence and  corruption.  It  was  in  corruption,  in 
fact,  that  monarchical  power  made  clandestinely 
its  last  stand.  Louis  Philippe's  fall,  as  we  have 
already  said,  was  due  not  so  much  to  political 
causes,  in  the  proper  sense  of  the  term,  as  to 
Chauvinism  conspiring  against  a  bourgeois  king, 
whose  policy  was  peace,  though  he  yielded  too 
much  to  the  fancied  necessity  of  sacrificing,  by 
military  display  and  menace,  to  the  idol  of  war. 
At  the  same  time  the  fresh  impulse  given  to  the 
revolutionary  movement  in  Europe  by  the  strug- 


THE  NINETY   YEARS'  AGONY  OF  FRANCE. 


199 


gles  of  oppressed  nationalities  caused  an  insur- 
rection in  France  against  the  surviving  forms  of 
monarchy  and  the  influences  by  which  they  were 
upheld.  Chauvinism  and  the  fear  of  anarchy  to- 
gether gave  birth  to  the  second  Empire,  under 
which  the  sovereign  power  reverted  from  the  rep- 
resentatives of  the  nation  to  the  monarch,  who 
was  in  all  but  form  a  despot,  as  before  the  Legis- 
lature had  been,  m  all  but  form  and  saving  il- 
licit influence,  the  king.  The  second  Empire 
went  to  the  grave  of  the  first  by  the  same  road, 
the  military  aggressiveness  which  was  the  condi- 
tion of  its  existence  leading  it  on  at  last  to  ruin- 
ous defeat.  Now,  again,  comes  a  nominal  repub- 
lic ;  but,  unfortunately,  there  is  still  a  king,  and 
the  hopeless  problem  of  carrying  on  government 
with  a  divided  sovereignty  presents  itself  afresh. 
The  marshal,  having  the  command  of  the  army, 
and  being  supported  by  those  who  desire  a  re- 
turn to  monarchy,  struggles  for  the  sovereign 
power  ;  and  the  question  at  the  late  election  was, 
whether  that  power  should  belong  to  him  and 
the  ministers  of  his  personal  choice,  or  to  the 
nation.  From  1798  onward  there  has  been  a 
chronic  though  intermittent  struggle  for  the  sov- 
ereign power  several  times;  that  power  has  been 
transferred  and  retransferred ;  there  have  been 
periods  in  which  it  was  doubtful  where  it  re- 
sided ;  but  it  has  never  been  divided,  nor  is  a  di- 
vision possible  in  the  nature  of  things.  The  at- 
tempt can  only  lead  to  a  conflict  which  will  prob- 
ably end,  as  it  did  in  England,  in  civil  war. 

Those  who  found  an  elective  government 
must  not  fancy  that  they  can  at  the  same  time 
preserve  monarchy.  They  must  be  logical,  be- 
cause they  will  find  that  in  this  case  not  to  be 
logical  is  to  plunge  into  practical  confusion.  They 
must  vest  the  sovereignty  absolutely  and  beyond 
question  in  the  nation.  Their  first  care  must  be 
to  establish  on  an  immovable  foundation  the 
principles  that  the  nation  alone  makes  and  alone 
can  alter  the  constitution ;  that  to  the  nation 
alone  all  allegiance  is  due,  and  against  it  alone 
can  treason  be  committed  ;  that  all  other  author- 
ity, however  high,  is  merely  derivative,  responsi- 
ble, and  bounded  by  the  written  law ;  that  the 
sovereignty  of  the  nation  is  exercised  through  its 
representatives  duly  elected;  and  that  to  these 
representatives  the  obedience  of  all  executive 
officers  must  be  paid.  This  done,  they  may  af- 
ford to  make  any  conservative  regulations  with 
regard  to  the  election  of  the  National  Assembly 
and  the  mode  of  its  proceeding  that  they  please ; 
and,  where  freedom  is  young,  they  will  find  care- 
ful regulations  of  this  kind  needful.     It  is  the 


game  of  the  Bonapartists,  first  to  assert  the  sov- 
ereignty of  the  nation,  and  then  to  make  the  na- 
tion permanently  divest  itself  of  its  sovereignty 
by  a  plebiscite  in  favor  of  the  Bonaparte  family 
and  the  brood  of  adventurers  whose  instruments 
the  Bonapartes  are.  Of  course,  no  legislation 
can  prevent  a  national  suicide  ;  but  clear  declara- 
tions of  principle  are  not  barren  because  they 
are  not  endowed  with  force  to  defend  themselves 
against  treachery  or  violence ;  and  it  would  be 
important  to  declare  that  the  national  sovereignty 
is  inherent  as  well  as  entire,  and  that  no  single 
generation  can  by  its  act  divest  future  genera- 
tions of  their  right. 

So  long  as  there  is  a  single  head  to  the  state 
there  will  always  be  some  danger  of  a  revival  of 
monarchical  pretensions,  and  of  a  dispute  as  to 
the  seat  of  the  sovereign  power — at  least  in  any 
country  where  monarchy  has  long  existed  and 
monarchical  ideas  have  taken  root.  America  is 
republican  soil,  on  which  hardly  any  but  demo- 
cratic ideas  can  grow ;  the  sovereignty  of  the  na- 
tion is  firmly  established,  not  only  in  documents, 
but  in  the  minds  of  the  people  ;  the  President  is 
elected  for  a  short  term,  his  powers  are  clearly 
bounded  by  the  written  law,  he  has  hardly  any 
military  force  at  his  command  ;  yet  Jackson 
showed  a  tendency  to  encroachment,  and  the 
jobbers  who  plundered  the  community  under 
Grant  betrayed  their  desire  not  only  of  increas- 
ing but  of  perpetuating  his  power.  A  single 
head  of  the  state  is  a  fancied  necessity;  the 
Swiss  Constitution,  which,  instead  of  a  single 
man,  has  a  council  with  a  president  whose  func- 
tion is  only  to  preside,  presents  great  advantages 
m  this  respect,  and  is  the  safest  model  for  adop- 
tion. It,  moreover,  gets  rid  of  that  which  is  the 
scourge  even  of  America,  but  far  more  of  any 
country  where  the  questions  that  divide  parties 
are  so  fundamental  and  party  hostility  is  so  dead- 
ly as  in  France — a  presidential  election,  which 
periodically  stirs  up  from  their  depths  all  the 
most  violent  passions,  excites  the  most  turbulent 
ambitions,  and  brings  all  questions  to  a  danger- 
ous head.  The  framers  of  the  American  Consti- 
tution were  in  some  degree  misled,  like  the  fram- 
ers of  the  French  Constitution,  by  their  British 
model,  which  they  reproduced  in  a  republican 
form;  they  imagined  that  it  was  necessary  to 
have  something  in  place  of  the  king,  and  the 
elective  presidency  with  all  its  evils  is  the  re- 
sult. 

Another  signal  and   calamitous  instance   of 

mistaken    imitation   of  the  British   Constitution 

!  is  the  power  of  dissolution,   which   the   other 


200 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


day,  in  the  hands  of  a  disloyal  President  and  Sen- 
ate, was  so  nearly  the  means  of  overturning  the 
Republic.  In  the  days  in  which  the  power  of 
legislation,  with  the  other  attributes  of  sovereign- 
ty, resided  in  the  crown,  and  Parliaments  were 
merely  consultative,  or  at  most  instruments  for 
supplying  by  the  grant  of  subsidies  the  occasional 
necessities  of  the  crown,  it  was  a  matter  of  course 
that  they  should  be  summoned  only  when  the 
crown  needed  their  presence,  and  dismissed  as 
soon  as  their  advice  had  been  given  and  they  had 
voted  their  supplies.  Our  modern  power  of  dis- 
solution is  a  survival  of  this  original  state  of 
things.  But  with  us  it  is  no  longer  practically  in 
the  hands  of  the  king,  or  of  any  authority  outside 
Parliament ;  it  has  passed,  with  the  other  at- 
tributes of  the  sovereign  power,  to  the  Parliament 
itself.  It  is  exercised  by  a  parliamentary  minis- 
ter, by  whose  advice  the  crown  is  bound  on  this 
as  on  all  other  questions  to  be  guided,  for  the 
purpose  of  testing  the  relative  position  of  parties 
in  the  country  ;  and  its  exercise  is  limited  to  that 
object  by  restrictions  which,  though  tacit  and  to 
be  found  in  no  book  on  constitutional  law,  are 
perfectly  understood  and  observed  by  both  par- 
ties as  the  rules  of  the  game.  It  is  in  fact  the 
mode  by  which  the  House  of  Commons  adjusts 
itself  to  the  public  opinion  which  is  the  basis  of 
its  power.  This  has  not  been  seen  by  those  who, 
thinking  to  reproduce  the  British  Constitution, 
have  vested  in  an  authority  really  external  to  the 
Parliament,  such  as  the  French  Marshalate,  a 
power  of  dissolution,  which  is  in  fact  a  power 
of  extinguishing  for  the  time,  and  may  in  dis- 
loyal hands  be  used  as  a  power  of  extinguish- 
ing forever,  the  organ  of  the  national  sov- 
ereignty, and  the.  national  sovereignty  itself. 
We  know  well  that,  in  the  case  of  France,  the 
fault  does  not  lie  with  the  friends  of  the  Repub- 
lic; but  it  is  not  in  France  alone  that  the  error 
respecting  the  power  of  dissolution  has  pre- 
vailed. 

Dissolutions  and  general  elections  are  alike 
obsolete  bequests  of  old  feudal  polities ;  and, 
though  by  the  practical  temperament  and  the  po- 
litical experience  of  the  English  they  have  been 
tacitly  accommodated,  like  other  parts  of  the 
historic  system,  to  the  requirements  of  the  pres- 
ent day,  they  are  alike  in  themselves  evil  as  well 
as  obsolete.  The  existence  of  the  Assembly,  which 
is  the  organ  of  the  national  sovereignty,  and 
without  which  the  nation  is  practically  powerless, 
ought  never  to  be  suspended  for  an  hour  ;  from  its 
supension  in  any  country  in  which  elective  institu- 
tions   have  still  a  disputed  title,  and  arc  threat- 


ened by  hostile  machinations,  the  most  serious 
dangers  may  arise.  General  elections  are  evil,  be- 
cause they  bring  on  those  violent  conflicts  of  opin- 
ion, and  pitched  battles  between  parties,  which, 
when  the  differences  of  sentiment  are  so  extreme 
as  they  are  between  the  Ultramontanists  and  the 
Liberals,  the  Legitimists  and  the  Radicals,  in 
France,  are  in  the  highest  degree  perilous,  and, 
as  the  recent  crisis  has  plainly  indicated,  might, 
in  a  very  inflamed  state  of  feeling,  lead  at  once 
to  an  outbreak  of  violence  and  civil  war.  To 
avert  such  conflicts,  to  avoid  pitched  battles  of 
opinion,  to  make  the  stream  of  political  progress 
glide  within  its  banks,  and  with  as  few  cataracts 
as  possible,  ought  to  be  the  aim  of  all  framers  of 
elective  constitutions.  An  elective  assembly  re- 
newed, not  all  at  once,  but  by  installments,  and 
at  regular  periods  fixed  by  law,  independent  of 
the  will  of  any  functionary,  will  fulfill  the  con- 
dition of  uninterrupted  life,  without  which  usurp- 
ing governments,  like  that  of  De  Broglie,  may 
always  be  tempted  to  suspend  its  existence  or  get 
rid  of  it  altogether ;  and  it  will  conform  steadily, 
yet  promptly  enough,  to  the  changes  of  public 
opinion,  without  those  violent  revolutions  which 
general  elections  are  apt  to  produce,  and  without 
giving  the  excessive  predominance  which  they 
are  apt  to  give  to  the  question  or  the  cry  of  the 
day.  The  necessity  under  which  party  leaders 
find  themselves  of  providing  a  question  and  a  cry 
for  a  general  election  has  had  a  bad  effect  even 
on  English  legislation. 

Another  illusion  which  has  led  to  strange  con- 
sequences in  France,  and  in  all  other  countries 
where  the  building  of  constitutions  has  been  go- 
ing on,  including  the  British  colonies,  is  the  no- 
tion that  the  House  of  Lords  is  a  Senate  moderat- 
ing by  its  mature  wisdom  the  action  of  the  more 
popular  House.  As  we  have  had  occasion  to  say 
elsewhere,  the  House  of  Lords  is  not  a  Senate ; 
it  is  an  old  feudal  estate  of  the  realm :  its  action 
has  been,  not  that  of  ripe  wisdom  moderating 
popular  impulse,  but  simply  that  of  privilege 
combating,  so  far  as  it  dared,  all  change,  in  the 
interest  of  the  privileged  order.  Whether  its  in- 
fluence is  really  conservative  may  be  doubted : 
in  the  first  place,  because  its  resistance  to  change, 
being  unreasoning  and  anti-national,  is  very  apt, 
as  the  history  of  the  first  Reform  Bill  shows,  to  pro- 
voke the  revolutionary  spirit  rather  than  to  allay 
it ;  and,  in  the  second  place,  because  it  operates 
as  a  practical  ostracism  of  the  great  land-owners, 
who,  under  the  circumstances  of  English  society, 
would  otherwise  certainly  find  seats  in  the  House 
of  Commons.     The   real  stronghold  of  English 


THE  NINETY  YEARS'  AGONY  OF  FRANCE. 


201 


conservatism  is  the  preponderance  of  the  aristo- 
cratic, or  rather  plutocratic,  element  in  the  House 
of  Commons.  But  at  all  events  the  House  of 
Lords  furnishes  no  model  to  any  country  which 
has  not  an  hereditary  and  territorial  aristocracy, 
or  a  privileged  order  of  some  kind,  having  its 
base,  and  presenting  a  fulcrum  of  resistance,  out- 
side the  body  of  the  nation.  If  both  assemblies 
emanate  from  the  nation,  whatever  diversities 
there  may  be  in  the  mode  of  their  election,  and 
even  if  the  Senate  be  not  directly  elected,  but 
nominated  by  a  government  itself  the  offspring 
of  election,  the  attempt  to  make  the  national 
sovereignty  check  and  restrain  itself  by  acting 
through  two  organs  instead  of  one,  and  confront- 
ing its  own  impulses  with  its  own  cooler  wisdom, 
must  ultimately  fail.  So  long  as  the  same  party 
has  a  majority  in  both  assemblies,  the  double 
machinery  will  work  smoothly,  but  at  the  same 
time  it  will  be  ineffective.  But  when  the  party 
which  is  in  a  majority  in  the  popular  assembly 
is  in  a  minority  in  the  Senate,  as  soon  as  an 
important  question  arises  there  will  be  a  collision 
between  the  two  Houses,  and  the  result  will  be  a 
dead-lock,  which  will  last  till  the  nation  compels 
one  of  the  two  assemblies  to  give  way,  declaring 
thereby  in  effect  that  the  national  sovereignty  is 
delegated  to  the  other.  Nor  is  there  any  real  ad- 
vantage in  the  delay  which  the  dead-lock  causes, 
sufficient  to  compensate  for  the  violence  of  the 
struggle,  and  the  dangerous  excitation  of  turbu- 
lent and  revolutionary  passions.  Such  is  the  ex- 
perience of  the  British  colonies  in  Australia,  while 
in  Canada  the  Senate  is  a  cipher,  and  its  debates 
are  not  even  reported.  .  In  Italy  the  same  party 
was  at  first  in  the  majority  in  both  Chambers ; 
but  the  other  day  a  change  took  place  in  the  pop- 
ular Chamber,  and  at  once  there  were  symptoms 
of  collision.  In  France,  the  Senate  at  each  great 
crisis  of  the  constitution  has  proved  impotent  or 
useless,  as  the  historian  of  parliamentary  govern- 
ment in  France  admits  ;  but  it  is  now  showing  a 
tendency,  as  might  have  been  expected,  to  become 
the  citadel  of  a  party,  or  rather  a  group  of  par- 
ties, bent  on  overturning  the  Republic  in  the  in- 
terest of  some  form  of  government  more  favora- 
ble to  aristocracy ;  and  in  this  way  it  threatens 
to  prove  not  a  nullity,  but  a  danger  of  the  first 
magnitude,  and  an  instrument  of  attempts,  such 
as  the  attempt  of  De  Broglie,  which  may  plunge 
the  country  again  into  civil  war.  If  the  example 
of  the  American  Senate  is  cited  in  favor  of  a 
second  Chamber,  it  must  be  remembered  that  the 
American  Senate  represents  the  Federal  principle 
as  opposed  to  the  principle  of  population,  and 


that  its  authority  and  usefulness,  whatever  they 
may  be,  thus  depend  on  its  connection  with  a 
Federation. 

Besides,  of  what  special  elements  do  you  wish 
your  Senate  to  consist  ?  What  is  to  be  the  spe- 
cial character  of  its  members  compared  with  those 
who  sit  in  the  Lower  House  ?  Till  this  is  dis- 
tinctly settled,  all  devices  for  particular  modes  of 
election  or  appointment  are  devices  without  an 
object;  they  are  machines  for  producing  some- 
thing which  itself  is  not  determined.  Do  you 
wish  your  Senate  to  consist  of  old  men,  in  ac- 
cordance with  the  literal  meaning  of  the  name, 
and  with  the  habit  of  primitive  nations  ?  It  will 
represent  the  infirmities  of  old  age.  Do  you  wish 
it  to  consist  of  the  rich  ?  It  will  be  the  organ  of 
a  class  interest,  odious  and  the  object  of  sus- 
picion to  all  the  rest  of  the  nation.  Or  do  you 
wish  it  to  consist  of  the  best  and  most  trust- 
worthy of  your  public  men  ?  If  you  succeed  in 
putting  these  men  into  the  Senate,  you  will  de- 
prive the  popular  Chamber  of  its  guides  and  of 
those  most  able  to  control  its  impulses  and  pas- 
sions, and  in  a  manner  ostracize  your  legislative 
wisdom.  Something  like  this  happened  to  Crom- 
well when  he  thought  to  temper  the  fractiousness 
of  the  House  of  Commons  by  restoring  the  Upper 
House :  to  supply  materials  for  his  Upper  House 
he  had  to  take  his  best  men  from  the  Lower ;  the 
lead  in  the  Commons  was  broken  up ;  the  two 
Houses  fell  foul  of  each  other;  and  the  Parlia- 
ment was  dissolved  in  a  storm. 

Instead  of  attempting  to  divide  the  sovereign- 
ty, which  is  really  indivisible,  and  to  make  the 
nation  perform  the  chimerical  operation  of  pro- 
ducing by  election  a  check  upon  itself,  attention 
should,  we  venture  to  think,  be  directed,  more 
carefully  and  systematically  than  it  has  ever  yet 
been,  to  the  constitution  of  the  representative 
assembly,  to  the  mode  and  rate  of  its  renewal,  to 
the  securities  for  its  deliberate  action  and  for  the 
exclusion  from  it  of  mere  passion  and  impulse, 
to  such  questions  as  that  between  direct  election 
and  election  through  local  councils  or  other  in- 
termediate bodies,  to  the  qualifications  for  the 
franchise  in  the  way  of  property,  age,  education, 
or  performance  of  national  duties.  It  is  singular, 
for  instance,  that,  amid  all  the  discussions  about 
vetoes,  absolute  or  suspensive,  to  be  reposed  in 
kings  or  presidents,  no  one  has  thought  of  requir- 
ing an  absolute  majority  of  the  whole  House  for 
the  passage  of  an  opposed  measure,  or  of  giving 
to  a  minority,  if  it  amounts  to  a  certain  propor- 
tion of  the  House,  a  limited  power  of  delay. 

But,  of  all  the  things  borrowed  by  France  and 


202 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


other  nations  from  the  British  Constitution,  the 
most  palpably  absurd  and  calamitous,  in  its  gen- 
eral application,  is  the  system  of  party,  which 
sets  up  the  great  offices  of  state  as  the  prizes  of 
a  perpetual  conflict  between  two  organized  par- 
ties, and  relies  upon  the  perpetual  existence  of 
these  two  parties  and  the  ceaseless  continuance 
of  their  conflict  as  the  only  available  means  of 
carrying  on  constitutional  government.  It  is 
strange  that  any  one  should  have  fallen  into  such 
a  trap  who  had  studied  the  parliamentary  history 
of  England.  In  this  country  there  have  through- 
out been  two  parliamentary  parties,  and  two  only ; 
while  the  objects  sought  by  both  have  been  so 
definite  and  of  such  importance  as  at  once  to  in- 
sure cohesion,  and  to  justify,  in  some  degree  at 
least,  allegiance  to  the  party  standard.  The  con- 
flict of  parties  has,  in  fact,  been  the  means  of 
carrying  on  and  regulating  a  series  of  organic 
changes  and  reforms  in  a  democratic,  or  at  least 
in  a  popular,  direction.  The  adherents  of  each 
party  have  been  able  to  say,  with  truth,  that  they 
were  contending  for  the  ascendency  of  certain 
definite  principles  in  government  and  legislation. 
At  the  same  time  there  have  been  certain  princi- 
ples common  to  both  parties,  which,  with  the  re- 
markable aptitude  of  the  nation,  and  the  reten- 
tion of  the  leadership  on  both  sides  by  a  section 
of  the  aristocracy,  have  always,  in  modern  times, 
kept  the  contest  within  bounds.  Even  so,  party 
has  often  shown  that  it  is  but  a  fine  name  for 
faction ;  and  in  the  pauses  of  progress,  when 
there  was  no  great  question  before  the  country, 
the  generous  emulation  of  party  leaders  has  sunk 
into  a  personal  struggle  for  place  with  all  its  ran- 
cor and  all  its  meanness.  Such,  however,  as 
it  is,  the  ground  for  the  existence  of  the  party 
system  is  peculiar  to  England,  and  has  its  ex- 
planation in  her  political  history :  the  attempt 
to  reproduce  the  system  in  other  countries,  with- 
out the  ground  for  its  existence,  will  be  not 
only  senseless,  but  noxious  in  the  highest  de- 
gree. To  divide  a  nation  forever  into  two  fac- 
tions, and  to  set  these  factions  to  wage  a  per- 
petual war,  such  a  war  as  that  of  factions  al- 
ways is,  and  with  the  usual  weapons  of  intrigue, 
mutual  calumny,  and  corruption,  is  surely  the 
strangest  plan  ever  deliberately  adopted  by  a 
political  architect ;  and,  if  we  could  be  convinced 
that  this  was  the  only  possible  mode  of  carrying 
on  constitutional  government,  we  should  regard 
the  case  of  constitutional  government  as  hopeless. 
How  can  our  political  salvation  be  found  in  a 
system  of  which  it  is  the  inherent  tendency,  one 
might  almost  say  the  avowed  object,  to  stir  up 


discord,  to  excite  unpatriotic  passions,  to  stimu- 
late selfish  ambitions,  to  deprave  political  charac- 
ter, to  destroy  that  reasonable  loyalty  to  the  na- 
tional government  on  which  the  very  existence 
of  a  free  community  depends  ?  If  the  absurdity 
of  such  a  theory  is  not  manifest  enough  in  itself, 
let  inquiry  be  made  into  the  working  of  the  sys- 
tem of  party  in  the  British  colonies,  where  it  has 
been  retained  for  the  personal  benefit  of  groups 
of  politicians,  when,  all  organic  questions  having 
been  settled,  the  public  grounds  for  such  com- 
binations and  for  allegiance  to  party  have  ceased 
to  exist ;  it  will  soon  become  manifest  what  are 
its  effects  upon  the  efficiency,  purity,  and  stabili- 
ty of  government,  on  the  morality  of  public  life, 
on  the  political  character  of  the  people.  In  the 
United  States  there  was  ground  enough,  and  more 
than  enough,  for  the  existence  of  party  while  the 
nation  was  divided  on  the  question  of  slavery; 
and  it  is  not  surprising  the  party  spirit  should 
have  prevailed  over  allegiance  to  the  nation,  or 
that  there  should  have  been  a  party  conflict  of 
the  utmost  bitterness,  which,  being  brought  to  a 
head  by  an  election  to  the  presidency,  ended  in  a 
civil  war.  But  the  old  materials  for  party  having 
been  thus  exhausted,  and  new  materials  not  pre- 
senting themselves,  the  combinations  are  break- 
ing up,  the  lines  are  becoming  confused,  and  the 
present  Government,  in  undertaking  the  work  of 
administrative  reform,  hardly  relies  more  on  the 
support  of  its  own  party,  the  regular  managers 
of  which  are  all  against  it,  than  on  that  of  the 
best  section  of  the  other  party,  and  less  on  either 
than  on  that  of  the  nation  at  large. 

The  historian  of  parliamentary  government 
in  France,  M.  Duvergier  de  Hauranne,  who  tacit- 
ly assumes  throughout  his  work  the  necessity  of 
the  party  system,  states  its  theory  thus:  "In 
free  countries,  where  liberty  is  not  of  yesterday, 
there  always  exist,  in  the  bosom  of  society,  two 
principal  tendencies,  one  toward  liberty,  the  other 
toward  authority,  which  manifest  themselves  in 
all  legal  ways,  above  all  in  the  way  of  elections, 
and  which  usually  produce  two  parties,  having 
each  its  principles,  its  opinions,  its  flag.  Of 
these 'parties  one  has  the  majority,  and  governs, 
not  directly  but  indirectly,  by  the  influence  which 
it  exercises,  the  choices  which  it  indicates,  the 
measures  which  it  defends  or  combats.  The  other 
becomes  the  Opposition,  and  watches  the  Govern- 
ment, controls  it,  keeps  it  up  to  the  mark,  till 
such  time  as  faults  or  a  movement  of  public 
opinion  change  the  relative  position  of  the  par- 
ties, and  give  it  in  its  turn  the  right  and  the 
power  of  governing."    Two  tendencies,  according 


THE  NINETY  YEARS'   AGONY  OF  FRANCE. 


203 


to  this  eminent  writer,  there  must  always  be  in 
the  nation,  one  toward  authority,  the  other  toward 
liberty ;  and  these  tendencies  are  the  foundations 
of  the  two  parties,  by  the  perpetual  conflict  of 
which  government  i3  to  be  carried  on.  But,  sup- 
pose a  man  to  have  an  equal  and  well-balanced 
regard  both  for  authority  and  for  liberty,  to 
which  party  is  he  to  belong  ?  Or  is  he  to  remain 
in  a  state  of  suspension,  and  to  be  eliminated 
from  politics,  because  he  thinks  rightly  and  is 
free  from  undue  bias  ?  Suppose  the  nation  itself 
to  have  arrived  at  a  reasonable  frame  of  mind,  to 
be  practically  convinced  that,  while  the  preserva- 
tion of  ordered  liberty  is  the  object  for  which 
authority  exists,  rational  allegiance  to  authority 
was  essential  to  the  preservation  of  liberty — what 
then  ?  Because  the  nation  was  all  of  one  opinion, 
and  that  opinion  evidently  the  right  one,  would 
the  possibility  of  good  government  be  at  an  end  ? 
Then,  again,  do  not  those  who  hold  the  view  of 
M.  Duvergier  de  Hauranne  perceive  that,  while  it 
is  essential  to  their  theory  that  there  should  be 
only  two  parties,  that  of  authority  and  that  of 
liberty,  that  of  the  Government  and  that  of  the 
Opposition,  the  fact  is  that  in  France  there  are  a 
dozen,  that  the  same  is  the  case  in  other  coun- 
tries, and  that  even  in  England,  though  the  Con- 
servative party,  which  is  a  party  of  interest,  re- 
tains its  unity,  the  Liberal  party,  which  is  a  party 
of  opinion,  is  splitting  into  sections,  which  are 
becoming  every  day  less  amenable  to  party  dis- 
cipline, and  therefore  weaker  as  a  whole  ?  It  is 
evident  that,  as  intellectual  activity  and  inde- 
pendence of  mind  increase,  sectional  differences 
of  opinion  will  multiply,  and  party  organization 
will  become  more  impracticable  every  day.  Noth- 
ing will  be  left  us  but  hollow,  treacherous,  and 
ephemeral  combinations  of  cliques  which  have  no 
real  principle  of  union,  and  which  will  be  torn 
asunder  again  by  mutual  jealousies  almost  as 
soon  as  they  are  combined.  Intrigue  and  cabal 
will  continually  gain  force ;  the  hope  of  a  stable 
government  will  grow  more  faint;  until  at  last 
the  people,  in  sheer  weariness  and  despair,  will 
fling  themselves  at  the  feet  of  any  one  who 
promises  to  give  them  stability  and  security  with 
the  strong  hand. 

An  executive  council,  regularly  elected  by  the 
legislature,  in  which  the  supreme  power  resides, 
and  renewed  by  a  proper  rotation  and  at  proper 
intervals,  so  as  to  preserve  the  harmony  between 
the  legislature  and  the  executive,  without  a  min- 
isterial crisis  or  a  vote  of  censure,  is  the  natural 
and  obvious  crown  of  an  elective  polity ;  and  to 
something  of  this  sort,  we  venture  to  think,  all 


free  communities  will  be  ultimately  compelled  to 
have  recourse,  by  the  manifest  failure  of  the  par- 
ty system.  If  further  security  for  the  responsi- 
bility of  the  executive  to  the  legislative,  and  for 
the  maintenance  of  harmony  between  the  two, 
were  deemed  needful,  it  might  be  provided  that, 
besides  the  limitation  of  office  to  a  certain  term, 
each  member  of  the  council  should  be  liable  to 
removal  at  any  time  for  special  cause,  by  the 
vote  of  a  certain  proportion  of  the  assembly. 
Such  a  provision  would  have  enabled  the  French 
Legislature  to  get  rid  of  Barras  and  his  two  ac- 
complices in  the  Executive  Directory  as  soon  as 
it  became  manifest  that  they  were  conspiring 
against  the  Constitution. 

A  national  assembly,  elected  under  such  con- 
ditions as  may  appear  to  be  most  favorable  to 
the  ascendency  of  intelligence  and  public  spirit, 
representing  the  undivided  sovereignty  of  the 
nation,  always  in  existence,  renewed  by  such  in- 
stallments as  may  preserve  its  popular  character 
without  rendering  it  the  sport  of  temporary  pas- 
sion, legislating  under  rules  the  best  that  can  be 
devised  for  securing  deliberate  action,  and  in  its 
turn  electing  the  members  of  a  responsible  execu- 
tive—  such,  once  more,  seems  the  natural  or- 
ganization of  a  community  which,  in  the  course 
of  human  progress,  has  discarded  the  hereditary 
principle,  and  adopted  the  elective  principle  in  its 
stead.  No  constitution  can  protect  itself  against 
the  external  violence  of  a  great  army,  if  the 
army  is  willing,  at  the  bidding  of  a  military 
usurper,  to  cut  the  throat  of  public  liberty.  No 
constitution  can  change  the  political  character 
of  a  nation,  or  cure,  as  by  magic,  the  weakness 
and  servility  contracted  by  centuries  of  submis- 
sion to  a  centralized  and  arbitrary  administra- 
tion. No  constitution  can  neutralize  the  bad  ef- 
fects produced  on  public  spirit  and  on  mutual 
confidence  by  the  decay  of  religious  belief  in 
the  minds  of  a  great  part  of  the  nation,  and 
the  absence  or  imperfect  development  of  any 
new  faith.  No  constitution  can  eliminate  the 
general  vices  of  human  nature,  or  the  special 
vices  of  the  particular  nation.  But  such  a  con- 
stitution as  we  have  indicated  would  at  least 
not  contain  in  itself  the  certain  seeds  of  its 
own  destruction ;  it  would  not  be  liable  to  legal 
dissolution  by  any  external  power ;  it  would 
continue  to  exist,  to  do  its  work  better  or  worse, 
to  renew  itself  by  an  operation  as  regular  as  the 
seasons,  and  which  there  could  never  be  a  special 
temptation  to  "interrupt ;  without  inducing  tor- 
por, it  would  avoid  anything  like  a  violent  crisis, 
such  as  is  brought  on  by  a  general  election,  es- 


204 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


becially  after  a  penal  dissolution  ;  it  would  keep 
the  way  always  open  to  the  reform  of  what  is 
bad,  by  means  of  improved  elections,  and  with- 
out a  revolution ;  it  would  give  full  play  to  any 
increase  of  virtue  and  Intelligence  which  there 
might  be  among  the  people ;  its  course  would 
no  doubt  be  at  first  somewhat  halting  and  un- 
satisfactory among  a  people  whose  training  has 
been  so  unfortunate,  but  it  could  hardly  fail  to 
the  ground,  or  fail  to  answer  in  a  tolerable  way 
the  ordinary  ends  of  government. 

Of  the  present  constitution,  unfortunately, 
the  contrary  is  true.  It  does  contain  in  itself 
the  almost  certain  seeds  of  its  own  destruction. 
The  quasi-monarchical  power,  presidency,  mar- 
shalate,  or  whatever  it  is  to  be  called,  and  the 
Senate,  which  is  sure  to  have  an  aristocratic 
character,  will  probably  remain,  as  they  are  now, 
the  double  basis  of  a  perpetual  reaction  in  fa- 
vor of  the  hereditary  principle,  to  which  privi- 
lege, with  good  reason,  clings  ;  and  recent  expe- 
rience renders  it  highly  probable  that  the  two, 
if  firmly  united,  would  be  able  by  successive  dis- 
solutions, combined  with  the  exercise  of  govern- 
ment influence  in  the  elections,  to  place  in  the 
utmost  peril,  and  practically  to  annihilate,  the 
organ  of  the  national  sovereignty,  and  the 
national  sovereignty  itself.  The  constitution 
of  "  three  powers "  is  a  constitution  of  civil 
war. 

In  discussing  constitutions,  however,  and  the 
revision  of  constitutions,  we  are  haunted  by  the 
unwelcome  apprehension  that  something  of  a 
sterner  kind  may  yet  be  in  store  for  France. 
We  do  not  greatly  fear  that  a  soldier,  whose 
name  is  associated  with  nothing  extraordinary 
or  great  except  defeat,  will  conceive  the  design 
of  founding  a  military  empire  in  his  own  inter- 
est. We  do  not  greatly  fear  the  clericals,  since 
the  catastrophe  of  Eugenie  and  her  priests,  and 
when  Ultramontanism,   in  spite   of   its    recent 


spasm  of  aggressive  energy,  is  manifestly  losing 
ground  throughout  educated  Europe.  We  do  not 
even  greatly  fear  Bonapartism  in  itself,  simply  as 
a  movement  in  favor  of  the  restoration  of  a 
military  despotism  for  the  benefit  of  a  discred- 
ited dynasty.  What  we  fear  is  the  implacable 
hostility  of  aristocracy  to  a  republic  based  upon 
equality.  In  France  the  three  aristocracies,  Le- 
gitimist, Orleanist,  and  Bonapartist,  are  now  col- 
lectively strong ;  their  wealth  has  greatly  in- 
creased ;  they  begin  to  feel  a  common  interest, 
social  and  political,  though  they  are  at  present 
ranged  under  the  banners  of  different  pretend- 
ers, and  have  hitherto,  by  their  disunion,  saved 
the  Republic.  One  and  all,  they  instinctively 
hate  equality,  and  those  hate  it  most  bitterly 
whose  nobility  is  of  yesterday.  You  may  de- 
monstrate as  clearly  as  you  please  that  aristoc- 
racy has  had  its  hour,  that  humanity  is  passing 
into  another  phase,  that  the  best  and  most  glori- 
ous part  which  a  man  who  inherits  the  influ- 
ence of  aristocracy  can  play  is  to  smooth  the 
transition  into  a  new  era :  some  of  the  finer 
minds,  and  of  those  who  can  hope  to  maintain 
their  position  by  their  own  character  and  intel- 
lect, will  perhaps  listen  to  you;  the  mass  will 
obey  the  bias  of  class,  cling  to  privilege,  and 
constantly  conspire  against  equality  and  any  in- 
stitutions by  which  equality  is  upheld.  Their 
feelings  toward  the  democratic  masses  are  not 
those  of  mere  political  difference,  but  of  hatred 
more  bitter  than  that  which  is  felt  by  a  foreign 
enemy,  and  aggravated  by  contempt.  The  aris- 
tocratic conspiracy,  for  such  at  bottom  it  was,  of 
De  Broglie  and  Fourtou  has  for  the  moment 
failed ;  but  the  attempt  will  be  perpetually  re- 
newed :  and  it  will  be  fortunate,  indeed,  if  the 
question  between  the  republic  and  the  aristocracy 
is  finally  decided  without  adding  another  convul- 
sion to  the  ninety  years'  agony  of  France. —  Con- 
temporary Review. 


RUSSIAN  AGGRESSION: 


205 


RUSSIAN  AGGRESSION, 

AS  SPECIALLY  AFFECTING  AUSTRIA-HUNGARY  AND   TURKEY. 

Br  LOUIS  KOSSUTH. 


IT  will  not  be  amis3  to  ventilate  a  little  the 
Eastern  question.  Not  as  if  I  could  say 
anything  new,  but  because  purified  notions  may 
consolidate  instinctive  aspirations  into  convic- 
tions, and  longings  into  purposes. 

The  Eastern  question  is  a  European  question. 
There  is  no  power  in  Europe  that  would  not  feel 
that  the  phases  of  that  question  are  connected 
more  or  less,  mediately  or  immediately,  with  its 
own  interests. 

Whence  comes  the  importance  of  this  question  ? 

How  and  when  did  the  Eastern  question  be- 
come a  European  question  ? 

By  the  increase  of  the  Russian  power,  and 
since  the  time  when  Russia — by  the  diminution  of 
the  Turkish  Empire  and  the  dismemberment  of 
Poland — increased  to  formidable  proportions,  and 
thus  became  dangerous  to  the  freedom  of  Europe. 

I  feel  thankfully  indebted  to  the  Porte ;  and 
I  do  not,  like  many  people,  consider  gratitude  to 
be  a  burden,  but  to  be  a  dear  obligation.  I 
learned  to  esteem  highly  the  noble  qualities  of 
the  Turkish  national  character ;  and  I  learned  it 
the  more  from  the  admirable  phenomenon  that 
this  people  of  tenacious  morals  could  not  be  cor- 
rupted in  their  rich  social  virtues  even  by  the 
pestiferous  air  which  has  floated  over  them  from 
Constantinople  through  a  period  of  several  cen- 
turies, during  which  this  capital  has  been  con- 
verted into  a  witch-kettle  of  European  intrigues, 
fighting  for  the  maintenance  of  the  equilibrium. 
This  corrupt  influence  has  found  among  the 
higher  circles  around  that  kettle  individuals  ac- 
cessible to  bribery;  but  the  country  people  re- 
main attached  to  the  moral  feelings  and  to  the 
holy  relics  of  social  virtues,  in  the  same  way  as 
in  Hungary  the  eternal  holy  flame  of  nationality 
has  been  kept  burning  around  the  hearths  of  our 
people,  while  it  has  been  extinguished  in  the 
palaces.  It  is  true  that  the  Turkish  people  re- 
main still  far  behind  in  what  we  call  civilization. 
This  is  not  the  fault  of  their  susceptibilities,  nor 
of  their  willingness;  but  it  is  quite  certain  that 
only  national  morality  can  supply  a  good  soil  for 
the  roots  of  liberal  institutions,  and  that  they 
decay  or  become  false  without  it.  Quite  as  cer- 
tain is  it  that  the  world  would  admiringly  con- 


template how  easily  the  most  liberal  institutions 
would  take  root,  how  naturally  they  would  be- 
come acclimatized  among  the  Turkish  people,  if 
Europe  would  but  prevent  the  hereditary  foe  of 
the  Turkish  Empire  from  interfering  with  the 
spread  of  endeavors  inspired  by  the  warnings  of 
time. 

But  these  are  my  personal  views,  my  indi- 
vidual sympathies.  Sympathies,  however,  are  no 
centre  of  attraction  for  the  politics  of  the  world, 
but  self-interest  is  ;  and,  though  for  a  long  time 
the  conservation  of  the  Turkish  Empire  was  a 
dogma  of  the  politics  of  the  European  equilib- 
rium, and  is  still  so  in  foro  conscientia?,  it  does 
not  follow  that  Europe  is  in  love  with  the  Turks, 
but  only  that  it  abhors  the  increase  of  Russian 
preponderance.     And  rightly  so. 

The  Eastern  question  is  a  question  of  Russian 
power.  "  Hinc  omne  principium,  hue  refer  ex- 
itum."  This  is  the  summary  of  European  in- 
terests, considered  from  the  European  point  of 
view.  Every  policy  is  either  a  cheat  or  a  fallacy 
which  does  not  take  this  fact  as  a  starting-point. 

The  Eastern  question  is  a  question  of  Russian 
power.  If  this  line  be  struck  out,  the  Eastern 
question  ceases,  ipso  facto,  to  be  a  European 
question.  It  descends  at  once  to  the  level  of  in- 
ternal questions,  whose  changing  phases  may  be 
followed  sympathetically  or  antipathetically,  ac- 
cording to  the  inspiration  of  political  principles 
or  instinctive  feelings ;  but  they  will  never  dis- 
turb the  sleep  of  any  European  power.  The 
Turkish  Porte  may  succeed  (and  I  wish  from  my 
innermost  soul  that  she  may  succeed)  in  concil- 
iating all  her  nationalities  of  diverse  races  and 
creeds,  either  on  the  ground  of  equality  of  rights, 
surrounded  by  constitutional  institutions,  or  by 
personal  union,  or  on  the  ground  of  a  strict  fed- 
erative system ;  or,  if  she  does  not  succeed,  and 
on  the  ruins  of  her  fallen  power  the  nationalities 
of  her  empire  should  rise  to  autonomy,  assert- 
ing their  national  individuality,  all  this  will  not 
threaten  the  peace  or  the  liberty  of  Europe — all 
this  will  never  be  converted  by  anybody  into  a 
European  question. 

On  the  contrary,  the  Eastern  question  lies  in 
the  actual  situation.    Every  aggression,  either  on 


206 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


the  integrity  of  the  Turkish  Empire  or  on  her 
sovereignity,  will  always  threaten  the  peace  of 
Europe,  because  every  direct  or  indirect  increase 
of  Russian  preponderance  in  Europe  will  be  a 
step  to  the  fulfillment  of  that  prophecy  of  Na- 
poleon, that  "  Europe  will  become  Cossack." 

They  speak  of  humanity.  Good  God !  where 
is  the  Christian  power  in  Europe  that  has  not 
unscrupulously  disowned  human  feelings,  not  only 
when  its  own  interests  were  concerned,  but  very 
often  from  mere  revenge  ?  What  bitter  feelings 
and  remembrances  crowd  into  my  brains  with  fe- 
verish heat  when  I  think  that  I  am  a  Hungarian  ! 
and  how  many  other  terrible  examples  could  I 
quote,  through  the  long  line  of  historical  atroci- 
ties, down  to  the  insane  brutality  of  the  French 
Commune,  and  to  the  subsequent  reprisals  of 
loosened  fury !  And  I  ask,  Where  and  when  has 
the  trampling  down  of  humanity,  the  traces  of 
which  are  visible  all  over  the  world,  been  made 
a  European  question  ? 

But  it  is  impossible  not  to  feel  indignation  in 
our  human  bosoms  when  we  see  that  the  very 
same  power  which  rose  by  trampling  down  the 
freedom  of  its  people,  from  the  Vistula  to  the 
Behring  Strait,  from  the  Euxine  to  the  glacial 
sea,  covers  its  dangerous  schemes  with  the  veil 
of  humanity,  and  increases  continually  the  giant 
stature  of  its  power  by  such  systematic  consist- 
ency and  pitiless  cruelty  as  stand  unequaled  in 
history. 

There  is  no  question  of  humanity  here,  but 
simply  of  the  increase  of  Russian  preponderance 
The  one  is  only  dust  thrown  into  the  eyes  of  man- 
kind that  they  may  not  see  the  other. 

And  they  speak  of  freedom,  of  self-govern- 
ment! But  the  thing  stands  thus,  that  while 
Russian  power  presses  upon  the  southeastern 
part  of  Europe,  the  Christian  nationalities  of  the 
Turkish  Empire  will  never  be  reconciled  to  the 
suzerainty  of  the  Porte,  nor  can  they  become  free 
and  independent.  They  can  only  be  instruments 
of  Russian  policy — sometimes  by  force,  sometimes 
willingly,  but  always  serviceable  instruments. 

Look  at  Servia.  As  far  as  the  Porte  is  con- 
cerned Servia  was  a  free  country,  quite  as  much 
so  as  any  other  European  nation,  and  she  wanted 
nothing  but  the  mere  title  to  be  entirely  indepen- 
dent. She  was  more  independent  than  Hungary 
is  at  present  with  respect  to  her  political,  finan- 
cial, and  economical  administration,  in  every 
point  of  view,  even  as  regards  the  tribute  payable 
to  the  Porte.  But  she  was  not  free,  she  was  not 
independent,  with  respect  to  Russia ;  she  could 
not  be  so.     Whoever  has  a  protector  has  a  mas- 


ter too.  Not  that  the  Servians  would  not  prefer 
to  be  free  Servians,  rather  than  vassals  under 
Russian  rule ;  but  because  they  are  unable  to  re- 
sist Russian  pressure.  This  is  the  fatal  necessity 
of  the  situation.  The  dust  of  verbal  assurances 
was  thrown  into  the  eyes  of  Europe  from  St. 
Petersburg.  It  was  said  that  the  czar  kept  back 
Prince  Milan  from  waging  war.  But  Russian 
agents  stirred  up  the  fire  of  war;  the  easily  in- 
flammable passions  of  the  Servian  people  were 
fanned  by  the  prospect  of  securing  Bosnia,  and 
by  the  phantasmagoria  of  a  "  great  Servia."  Rus- 
sian money  overflowed  Servia,  a  Russian  general 
was  placed  at  the  head  of  the  Servian  army ;  Rus- 
sian officers,  and  even  such  as  were  in  active 
military  service,  were  sent  expressly  on  furlough  ; 
and  thousands  of  Russian  soldiers  crowded  to 
Servia.  And  thus  under  the  Servian  mask  it  was 
that  Russia  began  war  against  the  Turks,  in 
order  to  get  a  pretext  to  continue  the  war  un- 
masked. The  Servians  were  intoxicated  with  the 
war-cry  of  Slavonian  liberty  (which  liberty  blooms 
of  course  in  Russia  very  nicely !)  without  perceiv. 
ing  that  they  fought,  bled,  and  died  not  for  free- 
dom, but  in  the  interests  of  Russian  preponder- 
ance. And  what  has  become  of  "  free  "  Servia  ? 
There  she  hangs  on  Russia's  pleasure.  She  is  at 
present  a  vassal  of  Russia.  Russian  military 
patrols  keep  the  Servians  "in  order"  at  Belgrade. 
These  are  very  edifying  things,  and  very  instruc- 
tive too. 

Or,  let  us  look  at  Roumania.  I  have  here  no 
room  to  draw  up  an  epitome  of  history,  but  it 
would  be  very  advisable  if  the  diplomatists  would 
do  so  and  study  it  a  little.  They  would  learn 
therefrom  what  is  meant  when  Russia  guarantees 
"self-governmental  reforms"  by  "occupation  of 
territory."  I  wish  only  to  recall  to  mind  that, 
since  the  time  of  the  capitulation  between  Mircea 
and  the  Sultan  Bajazet  on  the  part  of  Wallachia, 
and  between  Bogdan  II.  and  Selim  I.  on  the  part 
of  Moldavia,  the  Porte  has  always  respected  the 
liberty  and  self-government  of  Roumania.  She 
has  respected  them  in  such  an  unheard-of  liberal 
way  that  the  mighty  Porte,  the  sovereign  power, 
conceded  to  her  vassals  the  most  unbounded  re- 
ligious liberty,  excluding  even  from  these  vassal 
provinces  ber  own  creed,  and  did  not  grant  to 
her  own  Mohammedan  subjects  even  the  right  of 
possessing  there  any  landed  property.  The  Turks 
have  never  violated  that  treaty.  Never/  Rou- 
mania was  free ;  she  is  indebted  for  all  her  trou- 
bles and  misfortunes  (and,  alas,  how  much  has 
she  suffered !)  to  the  meddling  of  Russia.  And 
every  Roumanian  patriot  feels  that,  if  Russian 


i?  CSSIA2T  A  G  GRESSION. 


207 


power  surrounds  Rouraania — this  island  in  the 
midst  of  a  Slavonian  sea — his  fatherland  will  be 
broken  to  pieces  by  the  folds  of  the  boa-constric- 
tor. Every  Roumanian  dog  knows  it !  And  it 
was  Europe  that  guaranteed  the  freedom  and 
neutrality  of  Roumania ! 

And  still  Roumania  is  the  high-road  by  which 
Russia  marches  to  wage  war  against  Turkey. 
Roumania  is  still  the  basis  of  the  Russian  war- 
operations  against  the  Porte,  as  it  was  in  the  year 
1849  of  those  against  the  Hungarians.  The  Rou- 
manian Government  prayed,  with  clasped  hands, 
to  the  guaranteeing  powers  that  they  would  pro- 
tect her  neutrality.  But  the  Russians  are  very 
clever  politicians ;  they  chose  the  right  moment 
in  which  to  stir  up  anew  the  Eastern  question. 

England  is  powerful.  She  can  defend  Con- 
stantinople and  sweep  the  Russian  flag  from  the 
seas.  But  she  is  not  a  Continental  power.  She 
alone  cannot  send  an  army  of  some  hundred  thou- 
sand men  to  Roumania. 

France  is  still  maimed ;  she  begins  to  recover, 
but  she  suffers  from  her  past  losses.  If  she  were 
not  maimed,  Russia  would  not  dare  what  she 
dares  now. 

The  German  Imperial  Government  has  polite 
words  for  every  one,  but  it  is  its  policy  not  to  al- 
low an  alliance  of  any  European  power  with  Tur- 
key against  Russia,  in  order  to  localize  the  war. 
If  this  succeeds,  it  will  be  of  the  greatest  service 
to  Russia,  as  she  will  thus  have  an  opportunity 
of  preparing  for  the  occupation  of  additional  ter- 
ritory by  raising  internal  convulsions  in  the  Turk- 
ish provinces.  And  she  will  do  it  at  the  given 
time  as  well  in  Hungary  as  in  Austria.  And  what 
is  the  key  to  this  policy  of  Prince  Bismarck  ? 
Nothing  else  but  that  he  is  afraid  to  offend  Rus- 
sia, as  she  might  think  of  giving  to  France  an 
aiding  hand  to  procure  revenge. 

Lucky  Italy,  who  deserves  her  luck  for  her 
constancy  centuries  ago,  and  who  wins  provinces 
by  losing  battles,  is  on  the  lookout  to  see  whether 
there  is  visible  on  the  horizon  a  completing  ray 
of  light  for  the  "  Stella  d'ltalia." 

In  the  councils  of  Austria  the  traditional  de- 
mon of  "  rapine"  goes  about,  and,  where  he  does 
not  appear,  the  paralysis  of  irresolution  "  hums 
and  haws  "  from  one  day  to  the  other. 

Hungary  is  a  province,  and  not  a  state ;  she 
cannot  follow  an  independent  policy.  She  has 
given  up  herself.     She  is  treatied  to  death. 

They  counted  on  all  this  at  St.  Petersburg, 
ere  the  "  pacific"  Czar  Alexander  became  such  a 
resolute  "  champion." 

For  Roumania  the  end  will  be  that  the  free 


Roumania  whose  neutrality  has  been  guaranteed 
by  the  powers  will  be  held  in  dependence  by 
Russia,  as  she  has  been  so  many  times  before. 
The  Roumanian-Russian  alliance  is  an  accom- 
plished fact,  and  by  it  Roumania  has  become  the 
auxiliary  of  Russia.  What  could  the  Roumanians 
have  done  ?  Could  they,  left  alone  to  themselves, 
have  resisted  the  Russian  pressure  ?  Could  they, 
wolf-like,  have  shown  their  teeth  to  her  whom 
the  European  powers  regarded  with  lamb-like 
patience  ?     The  situation  coerced  them. 

This  is  the  philosophy  of  the  Eastern  ques- 
tion. As  long  as  Russia  is  conscious  of  her  over- 
whelming power,  and  knows  that  she  may  press 
with  all  her  might  upon  the  Turkish  Empire, 
nobody  can  there  become  free  or  independent. 
They  may  change  masters,  get  a  new  patron,  but 
the  new  patron's  vital  power  consists  in  an  autoc- 
racy in  whose  outspread  arms  Freedom  dies,  and 
only  the  weeds  of  the  Nihilismus  pullulate  secret- 
ly. Such  a  "  patron"  they  may  get,  but  nobody 
can  become  free  under  "  Russian  protectorship." 

And  it  is  right  that  I  should  mention  here 
what  misconceptions  there  are  as  to  the  meaning 
of  the  tide  of  feelings  and  apprehensions  that 
shakes  the  nerves  of  the  Hungarian  nation.  They 
say  the  Hungarians  are  afraid  of  the  freedom  of 
their  neighbors,  the  Slavonians.  This  is  not  true. 
It  is  only  intrigue  that  can  say  so,  only  blindness 
or  silliness  that  can  believe  it. 

Hungary  and  the  Hungarians'  love  of  liberty 
are  "  twins  born  the  same  day."  They  have  lived 
together  a  thousand  years.  The  Hungarians  no- 
where and  never  feared,  and  do  not  fear  liberty. 
And  they  were  never  exclusive  in  their  love  of 
liberty ;  they  never  accommodated  even  their 
privileges  to  certain  races.  And  we  are  the  less 
afraid  of  the  liberty  of  our  Eastern  neighbors, 
since  I  feel  thoroughly  convinced  that  if  these 
nations  were  to  become  free — really  free,  not 
Russian  serfs — then  Hungary  (if  she  may  still 
keep  the  mastership  of  her  own  destiny)  would 
be  quite  ready  to  inaugurate  with  them  such  de- 
fensive combinations  as,  though  in  the  interest  of 
the  European  equilibrium,  would  also  uphold  and 
secure  their  individual  national  independence. 

And  I  am  convinced  also  that  such  a  combi- 
nation, in  which  the  Turkish  nation  may  very 
naturally  join,  is  one  of  the  chief  necessities  of 
the  logic  of  history.  Only  in  this  order  of  ideas 
can  be  found  security  for  the  independence  of 
minor  nations  against  the  pressure  of  the  greater 
aggrandizing  powers. 

We  are  not  afraid  of  liberty,  but  of  the  in- 
crease of  Russian  power.     That  is  what  we  Hun- 


208 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


garians  are  afraid  of.  We  fear  that,  if  the  Turk- 
ish Empire  should  be  dismembered,  if  its  sover- 
eignty should  be  undermined  previous  to  the  re- 
moval of  this  danger,  and  if  this  dismemberment 
and  undermining  should  be  provoked  by  Russia, 
and  turned  to  her  profit,  the  result  would  not  be 
that  free  nations  would  rise  out  of  the  ruins  of 
the  Turkish  Empire  ;  but  rather  the  result  would 
be  Russian  occupation,  or  else  (which  is  the  same 
thing,  though  more  dangerous)  Russian  servitude, 
accompanied,  as  a  compensation,  by  the  "  grand 
idea  "  of  affinity  of  race  as  a  honeyed  cake  ;  and 
the  Slavonian  nations  would  be  fettered  to  the 
Russian  yoke.  This  would,  in  some  inevitable 
way,  have  a  tendency  to  enslave  Hungary  as  well, 
and  we  should  finally,  after  many  and  great 
struggles,  be  brought  to  perdition,  as  Poland  was 
a  century  ago. 

And  I  must  observe  that  the  danger  that 
threatens  us  threatens  still  more  the  Austrian 
Empire.  There  is  between  us  such  a  community 
of  interests  as  gives  the  power  to  secure  the  re- 
moval of  this  danger ;  and  the  Government  can 
thus  count  on  the  whole  nation,  which  would  rise 
as  if  her  millions  were  only  one  man,  not  merely 
in  blind  obedience,  but  with  all  the  power  which 
a  nation  can  exert  when  it  defends  its  existence, 
its  very  life. 

This  is  the  danger  that  shakes  the  heart- 
strings of  the  Hungarian  nation.  This  makes  it 
ready  for  every  exertion,  for  every  sacrifice,  in 
order  that  the  integrity  of  the  Turkish  Empire 
and  the  sovereignty  of  the  Porte  may  not  become 
a  prey  to  Russian  tyranny  and  aggrandizement. 

Remove  this  danger,  and  we  shall  always  ap- 
prove the  regeneration al  endeavors  of  the  Turkish 
nationalities,  and  shall  feel  great  pleasure  if  this 
regeneration  succeed  without  destruction  of  races, 
language,  or  creed — the  old  internal  hatreds  being 
superseded  by  equal  laws  and  equal  freedom. 
We  Hungarians  shall  thus  acquire  in  the  Turkish 
Empire  such  friends  as  could  not  be  found  else- 
where on  the  surface  of  the  whole  earth.  But  if 
Fate,  whose  skein  is  composed  of  the  thread  of 
the  immutable  past,  should  decide  that  all  these 
endeavors  shall  be  fruitless,  owing  to  so  many 
impediments  being  thrown  in  the  way  of  their 
fulfillment  by  foreign  intrigues,  egotism,  meddling, 
and  passion,  then  we  are  very  much  afraid  of  the 
liberty  of  our  neighbors.  If  the  contrary  happen, 
however,  we  will  welcome  them  at  the  round  table 
of  free  and  independent  nations ;  we  will  offer 
them  our  hands,  and  aid  them  so  that  their  liberty 
and  independence  may  be  secured  against  every 
external  aggression. 


Far  from  my  fatherland  I  live  in  solitary  se- 
clusion, and  shall  die  there.  But  if  I  am  forced 
to  forget  much,  there  is  something  I  can  never 
forget ;  it  is  that  I  know  the  Hungarian  heart,  on 
whose  throbbing  my  hand  has  so  often  rested. 

I  shall  now  state  why  I  think  that  Hungarian 
public  opinion  should  occupy  a  determinate  posi- 
tion on  this  Eastern  question. 

It  was  diplomatically  acknowledged,  during 
the  crisis  of  1854,  how  dangerous  Russian  power 
had  become  to  the  liberty  of  Europe,  and  it  was 
then  seen  that  the  future  could  only  be  secured 
against  the  renewal  of  this  question  by  that 
power  being  reduced  to  lesser  proportions,  such 
as  would  not  endanger  Europe. 

This  was  what  England  aimed  at  in  the  Cri- 
mean war  of  1854.  But  her  programme  could 
not  be  carried  out  then  in  consequence  of  the 
attitude  of  Austria,  as  may  be  seen  from  some  of 
the  articles  in  the  French  Moniteur,  containing 
those  official  revelations  with  which  Napoleon 
III.  tried  to  soothe  English  public  opinion,  the 
fluctuations  of  which  I  then  strove  to  direct,  and 
which  strongly  demanded  the  restoration  of  Po- 
land. 

And  the  programme  not  being  carried  out  is 
the  reason  why  this  question  now  shows  itself  in 
a  still  more  dangerous  form  than  it  has  ever  done 
since  that  time. 

In  a  more  dangerous  form,  I  say,  because  the 
Russian  preponderance  of  power  has  assumed 
such  a  character  as  against  the  liberties  of  Eu- 
rope generally,  and  against  those  of  our  country 
particularly,  as  shows  her  aim  to  be  new  territo- 
rial annexations. 

The  Emperor  of  Russia  has  written  upon  his 
banner  "  The  Slavonic  Cause."  This  was  the 
phrase  used  by  him  on  the  occasion  of  his  war- 
like speech  at  Moscow.  This  phrase  had  hith- 
erto been  paraded  only  in  the  Slavonian  diction- 
aries for  private  use ;  it  had  not  before  appeared 
in  the  plan  of  the  confessed  policy  of  the  Rus- 
sian Government.  It  now  appears  from  beneath 
the  ground,  where  it  had  before  worked  mole- 
like— rising,  on  the  arms  of  the  absolute  auto- 
crat of  82,000,000  serfs,  to  the  daylight  as  an 
active  power.  The  czar  now  occupies  the  posi- 
tion of  the  declared  champion  of  Panslavism. 

And  what  is  this  Panslavism  ?  This  is  no 
merely  national  matter,  no  affair  of  national  free- 
dom. It  absorbs  the  different  Slavonic  nations 
into  one  single  race.  It  substitutes  race  for  na- 
tionality; power  of  race  for  liberty. 

The  signification  of  "  The  Slavonic  Cause  ' 


RUSSIAN  AGGRESSION. 


209 


as  a  Russian  war-cry  is  this  :  that  the  cabinet  of 
St.  Petersburg  seeks,  wherever  there  are  Slavo- 
nians, instruments  wherewith  to  paralyze  the 
policy  of  some  other  power,  to  cripple  its  force, 
and  to  find  in  the  Panslavists  wedges  with  which 
it  may  split  states  asunder,  if  they  stand  in  the 
way  of  Russia's  extension  of  power ;  and  to  cre- 
ate new  combinations,  either  as  her  tools  or  her 
objects,  for  the  sake  of  her  aggrandizement. 

At  present  it  is  the  Turkish  Empire  that  is 
the  anvil  upon  which  Russia  strikes  with  her 
Panslavistic  hammer.  Her  first  object  is  the 
country  which  forms  an  angle  betwixt  the  vital 
artery  of  our  fatherland  and  Austria — the  Dan- 
ube, and  her  estuary  on  the  coast  of  the  Euxinc. 

That  after  the  Turks  we  and  Austria  would 
next  be  struck  upon  is  quite  clear.  Not  to  sec 
this  is  blindness.  To  see  and  not  to  prevent  it 
is  suicide. 

This  is  no  mere  question  of  sympathy  or  an- 
tipathy. It  is  a  matter  of  vital  importance  for 
Hungary  that  the  integrity  and  sovereignty  of  the 
Turkish  Empire  should  be  secured,  and  that  Rus- 
sia, who  is  the  enemy  of  the  liberties  of  Europe, 
should  have  her  poison-fangs  torn  out  before  she 
can  consolidate  and  increase  her  annexations  for 
her  own  advantage. 

This  is  the  philosophy  of  the  situation. 

It  is  a  fact  that,  with  respect  to  this  danger, 
the  workings  of  diplomatists  afford  to  us  Hunga- 
rians no  comfort.  They  dissimulate ;  they  will 
not  even  show  that  they  are  aware  of  the  real 
danger. 

The  traditions  of  the  past  are  very  disquiet- 
ing. It  is  an  historical  fact  that  there  is  not  a 
single  example  of  Austria  having  taken  the 
part  of  Turkey  against  Russia.  She  has  al- 
ways been  biased  in  favor  of  Russia.  She 
has  always,  indeed,  declared  openly  for  her. 
There  have  been  cases  when  she  acted  as  media- 
tor, as  at  Nimierow ;  and,  as  soon  as  she  heard 
of  the  capture  of  Cracow  by  the  Russians,  and 
their  invasion  of  the  Crimea,  she  attacked  with 
armed  force  the  oppressed  Turks.  She  made  a 
treaty  with  the  Russians  for  the  dismemberment 
of  Turkey.  She  had  a  share  in  the  prey.  She 
accepted  the  half  of  Moldavia  (Bukovina)  as  a 
compensation  for  Poland,  of  which  she  got  only 
a  small  part.  So  it  was  planned  by  Kaunitz  and 
Gallitzin. 

These  are  the  traditions  of  Viennese  policy 
on  the  Eastern  question. 

That  a  continuation  of  this  traditionary  pol- 
icy would  be  dangerous  in  the  highest  degree  to  j 
our  fatherland  and  to  the  monarchy  is  clear.     To 


permit  Russia  to  become  either  the  direct  lord 
or  the  dictator  of  the  southern  Slavonians,  to  be 
the  steel  hoop  which  compresses  them,  is  equiva- 
lent to  multiplying  the  splitting  wedges. 

I  cannot  believe  that  these  dangerous  traditions 
can  be  continued  within  the  circles  of  a  constitu- 
tional government.  But  there  are  very  influential 
circles,  apart  from  constitutional  bodies,  that  stick 
to  this  traditional  policy.  They  are  fond  of  those 
siren  songs  which  are  always  heard  when  Austria 
has  lost  something,  and  whose  burden  is,  "  Go  for 
compensation  to  the  East." 

These  are  very  disquieting  things.  And  it  is 
a  fact  that  the  Hungarian  Government  has  till 
now  done  little  to  soothe  or  to  appease  the  mind 
of  the  nation.  Its  reservedness  has  transgressed 
the  farthest  limits.  Though  reservedness  may  be 
safe  in  some  cases,  when  it  overreaches  itself  it  is 
a  fault,  a  blunder. 

Now,  as  the  situation  is  full  of  danger,  as  di- 
plomacy gives  no  comfort,  as  the  traditions  of 
the  past  are  disquieting,  and  as  the  Government 
does  nothing  to  appease  the  people,  it  is  not  only 
a  natural  consequence,  but  it  is  also  a  postulate 
of  self-preservation,  that  the  nation  should  now 
occupy  such  a  position  on  the  Eastern  question 
as  should  make  the  whole  world  aware  what  is 
the  political  tendency  most  conformable  or  most 
contrary  to  our  national  interests. 

The  interruption  of  the  manifestations  of  pub- 
lic opinion,  caused  by  the  very  sinister  proroga- 
tion of  the  Hungarian  Diet,  was  explained,  if  not 
as  a  change  of  mind,  at  least  as  a  loss  of  interest, 
and  gave  rise  to  the  apprehension  that  in  the 
councils  of  the  Viennese  cabinet  certain  influ- 
ences, whose  existence  is  an  open  secret,  might 
gain  the  preponderance. 

This  apprehension  was  very  well  founded. 
The  "  taking  up "  of  a  position  preparatory  to 
becoming  a  sharer  in  the  booty  was  nearly  ac- 
complished when,  fortunately,  the  Turkish  vic- 
tories stopped  these  dangerous  preparations,  and 
Hungarian  patriotism  watchfully  called  out,  "Be 
on  thy  guard,  Hungarian !  who  will  keep  watch 
for  thee,  if  thou  thyself  doest  it  not  for  thy  father- 
land ?  "  And  it  spread  all  over  the  country,  loud- 
ly proclaiming  to  friends  and  foes  that  the  Hun- 
garian nation  wakefully  watched. 

When  I  speak  of  the  Hungarian  nation,  I  do 
not  mean  the  Magyar  race,  but  every  faithful  son 
of  the  fatherland,  without  distinction  of  race, 
tongue,  or  creed,  who  sticks  patriotically  to  that 
type  of  government  which  has  belonged  to  Hun- 
gary for  a  thousand  years,  and  who  wishes  to  see 
also  Hungary  remain  as  Hungary  in  the  future, 


210 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


with  her  unity  and  indivisibility  forever  se- 
cured. 

This  it  is  that  serves  as  a  criterion  of  the 
public  opinion  of  the  Hungarian  nation.  This, 
and  not  an  inflamed  sentimentality,  sympathetic 
or  antipathetic,  is  the  starting-point  of  the  con- 
viction, that  dikes  should  be  raised  against  the 
Russian  extension  ;  for,  if  we  do  it  not,  we  expose 
our  fatherland  and  the  monarchy,  whose  interests 
in  this  respect  are  identical,  to  the  necessary  con- 
sequence that  the  Russian  power,  increased  al- 
ready by  the  dismemberment  of  Poland  to  formid- 
able proportions,  would  attack,  after  this  new  aug- 
mentation of  force,  the  Austro-Hungarian  mon- 
archy as  a  boa-constrictor  that  compresses  her 
giant  folds  around  the  body  of  her  prey,  or  as  a 
hundred-armed  polypus  that  screws  itself  into  the 
flesh. 

That  this  would  be  the  unavoidable  conse- 
quence of  Russian  extension  cannot  be  doubted, 
considering  the  geographical  position  and  ethno- 
graphical situation  of  the  Austro-Hungarian  mon- 
archy. 

Then  it  will  no  more  be  a  question  of  the 
Hungarian  race  —  reduced  by  the  Russophiles 
only  to  four  millions  of  inhabitants ;  it  will  be  a 
question  whether  Hungary  shall  remain  Hungary. 

And  now  it  is  necessary  to  point  out  a  dan- 
gerous network  which  already  hangs  around  us. 
This  network  is  knitted  out  of  that  erroneous 
conception  that  the  power  of  Russia  can  only  be- 
come dangerous  to  us  by  territorial  occupation. 

They  say :  "  The  czar  has  given  his  word  that 
he  will  not  occupy ;  and  the  czar  is  an  honest 
man  "  (Brutus  is  an  honorable  man) ;  "  let  him 
then  manage  "  (I  very  nearly  wrote  mismanage) 
"  in  the  East.  The  present  vocation  of  the  Aus- 
tro-Hungarian monarchy  is  to  remain  in  readi- 
ness" (and,  of  course,  only  in  the  south,  where 
we  can  do  mischief  to  the  Turks,  but  in  no  ima- 
ginable case  to  the  Russians),  "  and  only  to  step 
into  action  if  the  czar  should  break  his  word,  and 
want  to  occupy  while  the  peace  negotiations  last. 
Oh !  then  we  shall  draw  out  the  sword  from  the 
scabbard,  and  then  we  shall  do — this  and  that." 

The  nation  should  be  on  its  guard  against  this 
network.     It  is  a  very  dangerous  network. 

1.  I  say,  if  the  czar  should  come  out  victo- 
riously from  this  war,  then  the  Vienna  cabinet 
will  not  draw  the  sword  to  impede  the  czar  in 
his  occupation,  but  only  that  it  may  participate 
in  the  booty.  God  save  our  poor  country  from 
this  suicidal  tingling  of  swords,  where  infamy 
would  cover  the  suicide !     But  let  us  keep  also 


in  mind  that  God  protects  only  those  who  defend 
themselves. 

2.  I  say,  even  if  the  Viennese  cabinet  would 
impede  at  such  a  time  the  Russian  occupation,  it 
would  not  find  a  single  ally  to  assist  it  to  over- 
throw an  accomplished  fact,  such  as  it  could  se- 
cure at  present  if  it  wished  it,  for  the  far  easier 
task  of  preventing  Russian  occupation  from  be- 
coming an  accomplished  fact.  Frussia  would  not 
help  her  out  of  this  difficulty  with  Russia ;  France 
would  not  help  her ;  Italy  would  not  help  her. 
The  Vienna  cabinet  would  then  have,  not  an  ally 
more,  but  a  mighty  ally  less,  one  who  under  given 
circumstances  would  prove  better  than  any  other, 
and  this  is  the  Turk.  We  should  lose  him  by  yon 
network  policy ;  we  should  lose  him  without  re- 
placing him  by  any  other.  We  should  lose  him, 
whether  the  czar  occupied  territory  or  not.  In 
the  case  of  his  raising  army  after  army  against 
the  forsaken  Turks,  and  finally  conquering  them 
— then,  of  course,  a  Turkish  alliance  would  be 
out  of  the  question.  Or  if  the  Turk,  losing  pa- 
tience at  the  foul  play  of  Europe,  and  above  all 
of  the  Vienna  cabinet,  should  say,  "  Well,  if  Eu- 
rope, and  especially  the  Vienna  cabinet,  does  not 
care  for  me,  I  do  not  care  for  them  either,"  and 
should  sign  a  separate  peace  with  Russia — then 
the  Vienna  cabinet  might  stare  at  yon  wooden 
idol,  chiseled  by  its  own  political  wisdom,  and 
write  protocols,  which  would  be  "  set  aside  "  by 
the  "world's  judge,"  History,  as  has  always  hap- 
pened. 

Thus  this  policy  of  looking  out  for  the  keep- 
ing or  not  keeping  of  the  czar's  word  is  either 
bad  calculation  or  criminal  calculation  ;  either 
crime  or  folly.     Take  your  choice. 

But  there  is  a  still  more  decisive  view  for  us. 
This  is,  that  the  menacing  danger  for  the  Austro- 
Hungarian  Empire  would  not  be  removed  even  if 
the  czar  kept  his  word  and  did  not  occupy  ;  for, 
even  if  he  did  not  occupy,  but  terminated  the 
war  victoriously,  the  fact  that  he  had  conquered 
would  secure  for  him  the  power  of  leadership — 
that  dictatorial  influence  which  is  his  designed 
aim,  and  is  written  on  his  banner  as  "The  Sla- 
vonic Cause."  And  for  the  Austro-Hungarian 
monarchy  the  danger  is  not  greater  from  the  czar 
extending  his  power  by  occupation  than  it  would 
be  if  he  showed  by  victory  that  he  can  be  a 
mighty  stronghold  of  "  The  Slavonic  Cause,"  and 
thus  extend  his  influence  over  the  Eastern  Slavo- 
nians and  over  those  that  are  with  them  in  the  . 
same  camp— viz.,  our  neighbors  on  the  left  hand, 
as  well  as  those  on  the  right  hand,  and  also  in 
our  own  country.     These  he  could  dispose  of  as 


RUSSIAN  AGGRESSION. 


211 


their  leader,  their  lord,  their  protector.  The 
Muscovite  papers  do  not  conceal  that,  as  the  ban- 
ner of  "  The  Slavonic  Cause"  is  unfurled,  so,  after 
the  Turkish  "  Slavonic  Cause,"  the  "  Slavonic- 
Cause  "  of  the  Austro-Hungarian  monarchy  will 
follow.  And  this  is  no  idle  boast ;  it  is  logic. 
This  latter  kind  of  Russian  extension  is  really 
more  dangerous  for  us  and  for  Austria  than  any 
occupation  of  territory — a  mode  of  extension 
which  does  not  win  over,  but  alienates,  those 
whose  country  is  occupied.  It  is  not  a  desirable 
fate  to  be  a  Russian  subject,  and  an  occupation 
is,  at  the  worst,  but  a  boa-constrictor,  against 
which  it  is  still  possible  to  struggle ;  but  the  oth- 
er one  is  the  polypus :  if  he  pierces  into  our 
flesh,  there  is  no  possibility  of  extrication  left 
for  us. 

The  danger  which  arises  from  the  Russian 
movement  cannot  be  averted  effectually  from  the 
Austro-Hungarian  Empire  by  watching  the  czar's 
promise  ;  for  in  either  case  he  will  occupy  a  con- 
spicuous place  on  the  page  of  history  as  the  vic- 
torious leader  of  Panslavism.  The  Slavonian 
aspirations  toward  a  universal  monarchy  will 
gather  around  czarism  ;  this  will  be  the  star  that 
will  lead  the  way,  the  Messiah  to  whose  call  they 
will  listen,  the  idol  they  will  adore,  the  lord  who 
will  command  them,  and  whose  obedient  serfs 
they  will  be ;  and  thus  Panslavism  will  develop  into 
Panslavo-czarism. 

But,  if  we  send  the  czar  who  unfurled  the  Pan- 
slavonic  banner  back  as  a  loser,  then  the  wings 
of  his  Genghis-Khanic  flight  will  be  clipped,  the 
charm  broken,  and  the  Panslavic  aspirations 
will  lose  their  force.  The  Slavonians  will  per- 
ceive that  it  is  not  safe  to  carve  for  themselves 
an  idol  in  order  to  adore  him  as  the  god  of  lib- 
erty. The  prop  will  be  found  broken,  and  the 
support  will  fall  asunder  like  loosened  sheaves. 
The  different  Slavonic  nations  will  not  seek  sal- 
vation in  the  worshiping  of  the  czarism  that  leads 
to  Russification,  and  therewith  to  the  fetters  of 
slavery,  to  drunken  misery,  and  dreams  of  bru- 
tality ;  but,  in  the  conservation  of  their  individ- 
ual nationality,  in  the  elevation  and  maintenance 
of  the  vestal-fire  of  their  self-esteem,  they  will 
find  the  road  that  leads  to  freedom.  And  we 
Hungarians  will  welcome  them  heartily  on  this 
road,  accompany  them  with  warm  sympathy,  as 
we  accompanied  them  in  past  times,  and,  as  far 
as  we  are  able,  aid  every  pulsation  of  the  vital 
power  of  yon  miraculous  Slavonic  "  living  statue," 
whose  national  consciousness  has  never  been  bro- 
ken, either  by  seduction  or  by  the  storm  of  long- 
sufferings. 


Really,  if  there  be  any  situation  that  is  clear, 
the  present  one  is. 

The  Turk  has  understood  the  signs  of  the 
time.  He  gave  a  constitution  to  the  communities 
of  his  empire,  without  distinction  of  race,  tongue, 
or  creed,  on  the  basis  of  equality  before  the  law. 
His  enlightened  statesmen  provided  that  all  the 
excrescences  of  exclusiveness,  which  had  been 
successively  added  to  the  morally  pure  civilization 
of  Mohammedanism,  should  be  buried  in  the 
grave  of  the  past.  The  Czar  of  all  the  Russias 
threw  his  army  into  the  midst  of  this  peaceable 
undertaking  to  prevent  the  Turks  from  realizing 
this  liberty.  He  was  afraid  that,  when  even  the 
half-moon  should  reflect  the  glare  of  the  sun  of 
liberty,  this  glare  might  penetrate  into  the  dark- 
ness of  his  servile  empire,  as  the  beams  of  the 
Hungarian  peasant-emancipation  had  penetrated 
the  night  of  Russian  slavery. 

The  Austro-Hungarian  Government  must  reck- 
on with  itself  as  to  what  can  be  claimed  legally 
and  fairly  from  the  Turkish  Government  in  the 
interests  of  its  Christian  subjects,  without  under- 
mining thereby  the  existence  of  the  Ottoman  Em- 
pire. Let  them  come  to  a  mutual  understanding 
with  each  other.  It  will  not  be  so  difficult,  since 
the  Porte  has  intelligence  and  good-will  as  well. 
They  should  conclude  a  treaty  of  alliance  on  the 
basis  of  this  understanding,  for  the  repulse  of  the 
Russian  attack  which  threatens  our  fatherland 
and  the  Austrian  monarchy  very  dangerously. 
With  this  alliance  consummated,  let  Austria-Hun- 
gary say  to  Russia:  "Well,  the  Turks  have  ad- 
ministered justice  to  their  subjects,  and  thou 
wouldst  still  continue  the  war.  This  can  have 
no  other  meaning  than  that  thou  strivest  to  extend 
thy  power.  This  we  cannot  permit  in  the  inter- 
ests of  our  monarchy,  and  we  are  firmly  re- 
solved not  to  allow  it.  Then  let  the  bloodshed 
cease." 

And  it  would  cease.  The  Russian  would  not 
expose  himself  to  the  chance  that,  while  the 
Turkish  lion  stood  in  front  of  him,  the  Austro- 
Hungarian  military  force  should  take  up  a  posi- 
tion behind  his  back  and  cut  off  his  retreat.  The 
fatherland  and  the  monarchy  would  be  saved 
without  striking  a  single  blow,  or  at  a  proportion- 
ately small  sacrifice ;  which  sacrifice  might  be 
reduced  to  the  concentration  of  a  conspicuous 
army-corps.  This  demonstration  should  of  course 
be  made  on  the  Danube  and  in  Transylvania,  but 
not  in  Dalmatia,  nor  on  the  Croatian  military 
frontier,  which  would  be  very  ridiculous  if  it  were 
not  at  the  same  time  very  suspicious.  And  with 
the  safety  of  the  fatherland  and  of  the  monarchy 


212 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


the  demands  of  humanity  would  be  considered 
also,  for  it  is  indeed  very  shocking  that  there 
should  be  a  war  in  the  nineteenth  century,  which, 
in  its  honors,  exceeds  the  Mongol  invasion  in  the 
thirteenth  century.  And  the  protection  of  the 
Eastern  Christians  would  also  be  vouchsafed, 
without  crippling  the  integrity  and  independence 
of  the  Turkish  Empire  or  the  dignity  of  the  state. 
These  results,  which  can  be  attained  thus,  but 
only  thus,  would  secure  the  weight,  the  authority, 
the  splendor,  and  the  fame  of  our  monarchy  in  the 
highest  degree. 

I  have  only  tried  to  show  the  political  bear- 
ings, not  to  lay  down  precise  schemes  of  action. 
I  feel  convinced  that  the  looming  danger  can 
only  be  averted  from  our  country  and  from  the 
monarchy  by  a  policy  having  the  above-named 
tendency. 

And  it  is  certain  that,  with  such  a  tendency, 
the  Government  could  securely  count  on  the  self- 
sacrificing  readiness  of  the  entire  Hungarian 
people  without  exception  of  party. 

And  why  does  not  the  Government  attempt 
it  ?  Such  a  chance  is  very  rare.  Why  not  use 
it  ?  These  circumstances  open  up  to  Count  Julius 
Andrassy  the  opportunity  of  covering  himself 
with  great  and  lasting  glory.  He  can  become  the 
savior  of  his  fatherland,  of  the  monarchy,  of  the 
reigning  dynasty,  if  he  will  understand  the  work 
of  the  hour.  He  will  be  their  grave-digger  if  he 
does  not  do  it,  or  if  he  dares  not  do  it. 

What  hinders  him  from  doing  it  ? 

I  hear  Prussia  mentioned.  Yes,  ten  years 
ago  the  nation  was  frightened  into  the  delegations 
by  the  Russian  hobgoblin,  and  now  she  is  like  to 
be  driven  into  the  arms  of  Russia  by  the  terror 
of  Prussia. 

I  will  not  deny  the  Russian  inclinations  of  the 
Berlin  cabinet.  The  personal  leanings  of  the 
Emperor  William  have  a  share  in  this,  possessing 
undoubtedly  great  weight  in  the  decision  of  the 
Berlin  policy.  And  the  false  position  of  Germany 
has  also  a  share  therein,  into  which  false  position 
she  has  been  thrown  by  the  conquest  of  Alsace 
and  Lorraine,  which  seems  even  to  push  into  the 
background  a  consideration  which  should  never 
be  lost  sight  of  by  Germany,  at  present  the  first 
power  of  Europe.  This  consideration  is  that 
every  increase  of  the  Russian  power  must  neces- 
sarily compromise  the  primatial  position  of  the 
German  Empire  in  Europe  ;  and  that,  in  the  last 
analysis  —  against  which  personal  inclinations 
struggle  in  vain — it  may  lead  to  a  collision  be- 
tween the  German  and  Slavonian  races,  the  like 
of  which  has  not  yet  been  witnessed  by  the  world. 


Rome  and  Carthage  cannot  exist  side  by  side 
for  long. 

But,  however  strong  the  present  inclinations 
of  the  Berlin  cabinet  may  be,  they  cannot  go  so 
far  as  to  compel  Prussia  to  take  Russia  for  her 
patron,  and  become  the  client  of  the  latter.  And, 
in  the  last  resort,  the  German  Imperial  policy  has 
to  reckon  with  the  other  German  princes  and 
with  the  German  nation  ;  and  among  the  former, 
as  well  as  in  the  ranks  of  the  latter,  there  are 
those  who  recollect  Russian  patronage  and  the 
significance  of  clientship  for  Germany  under  Rus- 
sian rule.  And  those  who  recollect  this  would 
soon  warn  the  Berlin  cabinet  that  German  blood 
belongs  to  Germany,  and  not  to  the  Russians. 

The  knowledge  of  the  logic  of  history,  which 
I  have  acquired  by  long  study  and  painstaking 
(and  the  cares  that  whitened  my  hair  have  their 
own  tale  to  tell),  and,  at  last,  experience,  have 
taught  me  that  the  German  Emperor  might  give 
advice  in  the  shape  of  Russian  inspirations,  but 
that,  whatever  be  the  policy  of  the  Vienna  cabi- 
net in  the  Eastern  question,  it  is  certain  that,  to 
favor  Russia,  the  German  Empire  will  never  de- 
clare war  against  the  Austro-Hungarian  mon- 
archy. 

I  take  all  that  they  say  about  Prussian  threats 
for  mere  claptrap,  originating  from  yonder  cam- 
arilla, that  strives — and,  alas  !  strives  with  great 
effect  —  that  the  Vienna  cabinet  should  do  the 
same  things  in  aid  of  the  aggressive  Russian  policy 
against  Turkey  that  it  did  against  Roland,  when 
Russia  undertook  to  annihilate  the  independence  of 
that  unhappy  country,  and  for  the  same  end — viz., 
that  she  should  become  a  sharer  in  the  robbery,  in- 
stead of  allying  herself  with  Turkey,  as  she  ought 
to  have  done  with  the  Poles,  to  frustrate  the  rob- 
bery. 

This  is  the  danger  which  I  see,  like  a  death- 
prophesying  bird,  with  outstretched  wings,  flut- 
tering over  my  country  ;  and  my  patriotism  stim- 
ulates me  to  call  to  mind  other  things  in  connec- 
tion with  certain  premonitory  reflections  on  the 
rising  manifestations  of  public  opinion. 

I  repeat  that  the  important  point  for  the 
Hungarian  nation  in  this  question  is  this :  that 
by  the  war  which  rages  in  our  neighborhood  the 
vital  interests  of  our  fatherland,  as  well  as  those 
of  Austria,  are  jeopardized. 

I  place  weight  on  the  fact  that  at  present  the 
vital  interests  of  Austria  are  in  harmony  with 
our  vital  interests. 

My  views  on  the  subject  of  the  connection  be- 
tween Austria  and  Hungary  are  known.     These 


RUSSIAN  AGGRESSION. 


213 


interests  are  in  such  opposition  with  reference  to 
reciprocal  state-life  and  mutual  state-economy, 
that  it  is  utterly  impossible  even  to  fancy  any 
form  of  connection  that  would  be  satisfactory  to 
both  countries.  It  is  for  this  that  I  remain  in 
exile — a  living  protest  against  this  connection. 

I  do  not,  therefore,  consider  it  to  be  my  duty 
to  feel  sad  forebodings  for  the  special  interests 
of  Austria  when  its  danger  does  not  at  the  same 
time  threaten  the  interests  of  our  fatherland. 
But,  when  the  danger  of  the  one  walks  arm  in  arm 
with  that  of  the  other,  I  put  great  weight  there- 
upon, in  order  that  Austria  should  feel  the  danger 
in  unison  with  Hungary. 

We  stand  in  the  face  of  a  war  that  threatens 
our  country  and  Austria  with  mortal  dangers  if 
we  do  not  aid  the  Turks  in  impeding  the  exten- 
sion of  Russian  power.  This  war  has  found  Aus- 
tria in  a  state-connection  with  Hungary.  I  do 
not  think  that  Russia  would  listen  to  us  if  we 
should  tell  her  she  should  delay  the  war  till  this 
connection  be  dissolved.  She  would  surely  not 
delay.  Then  things  stand  thus :  that  the  same 
King  of  Hungary  whom  our  nation  asks  to  frus- 
trate the  Russian  aggressive  policy  is  also  Em- 
peror of  Austria.  This  Austrian  emperor  stands 
very  often  in  opposition  to  the  King  of  Hungary. 
This  time  he  is  not  so.  And  I  think  that  the 
wishes  of  our  nation  can  only  gain  in  weight 
when  she  asks  her  sovereign  to  fulfill  his  duty  as 
savior  of  the  country,  by  acting  as  he  ought  to 
do  as  King  of  Hungary ;  also,  in  the  mean  time, 
pointing  out  that  this  is  his  interest  as  Emperor 
of  Austria  as  well.  It  is  for  this  reason — namely, 
that  I  like  to  appeal  also  to  Austrian  vital  inter- 
ests— that  I  repeat  emphatically  that  the  vital 
interests  of  Hungary  and  of  Austria  are  identical. 

This  view  is  perfectly  justified  by  the  political 
significance  and  far-reaching  importance  of  the 
Eastern  question  as  it  stands  with  reference 
to  us. 

If  the  Turkish  Empire  were  to  be  under  no 
pressure  from  the  power  that  threatens  the  lib- 
erty of  Europe — a  colossus  increased  to  formida- 
ble proportions  by  the  dismemberment  of  Poland 
— then  the  Eastern  question  would  be  nothing 
else  than  a  home  question  between  the  Turks 
and  the  other  peoples  of  different  races  in  the 
Turkish  Empire. 

And  if  this  question  stood  thus,  neither  the 
integrity  nor  the  dismemberment  of  the  Turkish 
Empire,  nor  the  reforms  conceded  or  denied  to 
the  nations  of  that  empire,  would  affect  in  the 
least,  not  the  more  distant  countries  of  Europe, 
but  not  even  us  or  Austria,  who  are  her  neigh- 


bors, except  from  a  humanitarian,  sympathetica!, 
or  antipathetical,  point  of  view. 

We  have  learned  to  appreciate  justly  the  fun- 
damental features  of  the  Turkish  character.  We 
are  aware,  as  I  have  said,  that  we  possess  in  the 
Ottoman  nation  such  reliable  friends  as  we  could 
not  find  anywhere  else  in  the  world,  because  our 
interests  are  so  identical  that  there  is  not  only  no 
opposition,  but  not  even  a  difference  between  us. 
We  recollect  gratefully  the  generosity  shown  to 
us  by  the  Turks  in  the  days  of  our  sorrow ;  and 
it  is  honorable  on  our  part  to  remember  this 
warmly  just  now  in  the  days  of  their  sorrow. 
And  so  it  is  certain  that  we  Hungarians  should 
follow  all  regenerational  endeavors  of  the  Turks 
with  heartfelt  sympathy  and  blessing.  We  should 
feel  gratified  if  they  succeed  in  removing  the  ob- 
stacles in  their  way  to  liberty.  On  the  other 
hand,  if  in  consequence  of  Russian  pressure  the 
dismemberment  of  the  Ottoman  Empire  should 
be  identical  with  the  aggrandizement  of  Russia, 
there  would  not  be  a  single  Hungarian  who  would 
not  consider  the  territorial  integrity  of  Turkey, 
and  the  upholding  of  its  sovereignty,  as  a  conditio 
sine  qua  non  of  the  maintenance  of  our  own  in- 
tegrity and  independence.  No  one  would  think 
of  shedding  his  blood  nor  offering  aid  to  the 
Turks  if  it  were  not  for  the  threatening  attitude 
of  Russia  ;  but  for  that  we  should  not  look  with 
anxiety  on  the  aspirations  of  the  Slavonic  na- 
tions. 

Though  all  the  provinces  of  Turkey  should 
gain  such  an  "  autonomy "  (!)  as  that  which  is 
prepared  for  the  Bulgarians  by  Prince  Cherkaski 
after  the  Russian  pattern  and  in  the  Russian  lan- 
guage, still  the  Eastern  question  would  not  be 
solved,  but  would  then  be  revived  in  the  face  of 
Europe,  and  especially  in  that  of  Hungary  and 
Austria,  in  such  tremendous  proportions  as  it  has 
not  yet  reached. 

Yes,  because  the  Eastern  question,  I  repeat 
again,  is  a  question  of  Russian  power ;  clearly, 
distinctly,  a  question  of  Russian  aggrandizement. 

And  it  will  remain  so  until  Europe,  after  a 
tardy  repentance,  shall  at  last  determine  the  res- 
toration of  Poland,  and  thus  avert  the  curse  from 
herself  which  she  has  incurred  by  the  crime  of 
that  partition. 

Only  by  the  restoration  of  Poland  can  Russia 
be  pushed  back  upon  her  ancient  boundaries, 
where  she  could  in  her  still  vast  empire  let  her 
subjects  become  free  men,  and  thus  occupy  a  still 
glorious  and  prominent  place  at  the  round  table 
of  civilized  nations,  but  a  place  whence  she  could 
no  more  threaten  us,  and  Austria,  and  Europe, 


2U 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


with  her  Panslavo-czaristical  and  universal-mo- 
narchical ambitions.  Only  when  it  shall  be  made 
sure  on  the  banks  of  the  "Vistula  that  she  can 
never  more  suffocate  Turkey — only  then  will  the 
Eastern  question  step  down  to  an  internal  and, 
if  you  like  it,  to  a  humanitarian  level,  and  be 
solved  in  such  a  way  as  not  to  be  dangerous  to 
Europe. 

But  so  long  as  this  does  not  happen,  the  East- 
ern question  will  always  remain  a  Russian  ques- 
tion of  power.  If  the  Turkish  Empire  should  be 
dismembered  in  consequence  of  Russian  pressure, 
or  even  if  it  should  be  crippled,  I  repeat  that 
every  inch  lost  by  the  Turks  would  only  increase 
Russian  power.  The  diminution  of  Turkish  sov- 
ereign independence  would  increase  Russian  in- 
fluence, which  would  act  as  a  dissolving  poison 
on  us  and  on  Austria  ;  and  the  unavoidable  con- 
sequence would  be  that  the  nations  which  had 
been  severed  from  the  Turkish  rule  would  not 
become  free,  but  Russian  serfs — forming  the  tail 
of  that  boa-constrictor  which  presses  us  closely, 
the  arms  of  that  polypus  which  clings  to  our  flesh. 

These  are  the  conditions  which  induce  the 
Hungarians  to  adopt  the  view  that  their  very  ex- 
istence is  endangered  by  the  war  in  their  neigh- 
borhood. 

And  these  considerations  are  so  momentous 
that,  if  we  Hungarians  should  continue  to  look 
on  in  cowardly  inactivity  at  the  dismemberment 
of  the  Turkish  Empire,  or,  which  is  identical,  at 
the  aggrandizement  of  Russian  power — if  we 
should  look  on  in  cowardly  inactivity  while  the 
boa-constrictor  gathers  material  to  form  a  new 
tail  from  the  southern  Slavonians,  while  the  poly- 
pus makes  out  of  them  new  trunks — it  would  be 
such  suicidal  insanity  that  I  cannot  find  a  word 
to  designate  it.  We  should  be  worse  than  the 
worms  creeping  upon  the  ground  if  we  did  not 
protect  ourselves  against  it. 

These  are  sad  times.  After  so  much  blood 
has  been  spilt  that  the  nations  might  become  in- 
dependent, we  are  still  in  the  position  that  the 
fancy  and  the  will  of  two  or  three  purple-clad 
mortals  are  decisive,  and  not  the  will  of  the  peo- 
ple. But  the  Hungarian  people  will  live — they 
will  not  go  so  far  in  their  resignation  as  to  com- 
mit suicide  for  the  sake  of  any  moptal  man  what- 
ever. We  must  raise  a  dike  against  the  extension 
of  Russian  power.  And,  to  do  that,  we  must  con- 
serve and  uphold  the  unity  and  the  independence  of 
the  2'urkish  Empire  ;  for  at  present  that  is  the 
practical  way  to  construct  a  dike.  This  view  is 
firmly  upheld  by  the  Hungarian  nation,  whatever 
form  of  expression  they  may  use  to  state  their 


will ;  and  in  this  respect  all  the  Hungarians  are 
of  the  same  opinion  without  difference  of  party. 
They  are  of  the  same  opinion,  for  they  are  con- 
vinced that  this  is  a  vital  interest  of  our  father- 
land.  And  justly,  therefore,  Hungary  feels  indig- 
nation, and  disavows — the  whole  Hungarian  nation 
does  it — that  immoral  and  impolitic  idea,  that  the 
Austro-Hungarian  monarchy  should  become  an  ac- 
complice in  the  occupation  of  any  part  of  Turkey 
for  the  sake  of  the  enemy  of  our  country'' s  vital  in- 
terests. 

Governments  should  never  be  in  opposition  to 
the  popular  wishes  when  governments  wear  the 
constitutional  toga.  It  is  the  worse  policy  if 
they  are.  On  the  present  occasion  the  wishes  of 
the  nation  show  themselves  so  unmistakably  plain, 
that  it  would  be  a  dangerously  daring  feat  if  the 
Government  should  try  to  elude  them  by  some 
parliamentary  trick.  It  is  a  question  of  exist- 
ence. The  nation  knows  this  well.  And  ours  is 
a  loyal  nation.  Therefore,  I  say  to  those  in  au- 
thority: Comply  with  her  wishes.  Don't  force 
her  to  take  in  her  own  hands  the  insurance  of 
her  life.  She  will  do  it  if  she  is  forced  to  it,  be- 
cause she  will  not  die.  The  Hungarian  nation 
will  not  be  a  worm  to  be  trampled  upon  by  the 
heel  of  the  trampler.  She  will  not  suffer  that 
the  bowing  diplomatists  of  czars  and  Caesars 
should  convert  Hungary  into  a  powder-barrel  to 
be  exploded  by  Russian  intrigues  with  a  Pansla- 
vonic  match. 

They  told  thee,  Hungary :  "  Be  reconciled 
with  Austria  that  thou  mayest  be  safe  from  the 
Russian."  Thou  hast  been  reconciled :  let  us 
see  the  conciliator,  where  is  he? 

Almighty  Father !  if  the  Hungarians  were  but 
independent ! 

"De  profundis  ad  te,  Domine,  clamavi." 

I  know  that  what  I  have  been  saying  is  noth- 
ing new.  But  still  I  thought  it  right  to  speak 
my  mind,  as  the  Prime-Minister  of  Hungary  has 
made  a  very  startling  declaration. 

When  it  was  resolved  in  a  public  meeting  of 
citizens  that  the  integrity  of  the  Turkish  Empire 
should  be  upheld  even  by  armed  force,  the  Prime- 
Minister  of  Hungary  gave  the  following  answer  : 
"  That  it  is  not  allowable  to  shed  Hungarian  blood 
for  the  interests  of  any  other  power,  and  that  the 
Government  will  never  give  its  consent  that  the  he- 
roic sacrifice  of  the  Hungarian  nation  shoidd  be 
made  for  others." 

So  the  Hungarian  prime-minister  still  consid- 
ers the  upholding  of  the  Turkish  Empire  against 
the  Panslavonic  standard  -  bearer,  the  Russian 
czar,  as  being  for  the  interests  of  "  others." 


R  USSIAN  A  0  GRESSION. 


215 


Every  inhabitant  of  Hungary,  who  wishes  the 
conservation  of  our  country,  and  those,  also,  who 
speculate  on  her  overthrow,  know  that  our  coun- 
try's existence  is  at  stake.  The  prime-minister  is, 
perhaps,  the  only  man  in  Hungary  who  does  not 
see  this. 

But,  since  the  crippling  of  the  integrity  of  the 
Turkish  Empire  is  identical  with  the  aggrandize- 
ment of  Russian  power,  nobody  in  the  world  has 
the  right  to  say  that  Hungarians  are  sacrificing 
Hungarian  blood  for  the  sake  of  others,  when 
they  offer  to  shed  it  for  the  upholding  of  the  in- 
tegrity of  the  Turkish  Empire.  The  prime-min- 
ister ought  to  know  that  this  willingness  is  a 
flower  that  has  grown  in  the  soil  of  self-preser- 
vation, and  opened  its  cup  under  the  shining  of 
the  purest  patriotic  sunbeams. 

The  Hungarian  prime-minister  has  spoken  a 
startling  word.  If  this  is  to  be  the  standpoint  of 
the  Government,  I  declare  most  emphatically  that 
the  interests  of  Hungary  are  in  dangerous  hands. 

Whoever,  in  this  war,  considers  the  uphold- 
ing of  the  Turkish  Empire  to  be  a  foreign  cause, 
will  not  raise  a  dike  to  the  extension  of  the  Riissian 
power :  for  he  is  not  far  from  the  thought  of  shar- 
ing with  the  Russians  in  the  Turkish  booty. 

But  I  should  like  to  believe  that  this  most 
unlucky  expression  was  only  an  unconsidered 
pistol-shot,  which  went  farther  than  it  was  in- 
tended. I  do  not  say  that  the  Hungarian  Gov- 
ernment has  deliberately  thrown  itself  into  the 
arms  of  those  who  are  undoubtedly  stirring  dan- 
gerous questions  in  the  regions  of  diplomatic 
circles.  I  can  doubt,  I  can  foresee,  but  I  cannot 
assert,  for  I  don't  know  it.  But  alas !  I  know 
that  neither  in  the  declarations  of  the  Hungarian 
Government,  nor  in  the  actions  of  the  leader  of 
the  foreign  policy,  can  a  Hungarian  patriot  find 
comfort. 

It  will  not  be  amiss  to  call  to  mind  now, 
when  the  representatives  of  the  country  are  as- 
sembled again,  that  the  nation,  without  difference 
of  parties,  expects  that  they  will  rise  above  party 
spirit  and  secure  the  fulfillment  of  the  nation's 
will. 

The  most  weighty  declaration  of  the  Hunga- 
rian prime-minister  has  been  that  in  which  (I 
quote  it  word  by  word)  he  assured  the  House  of 
Representatives  that  there  is  not  a  single  person 
among  the  leaders  who  thinks  it  ought  to  be  the  aim 
of  our  foreign  policy  that  the  power  and  sover- 
eignty of  Turkey  should  be  changed. 

This  declaration  has  been  greatly  applauded, 
because  (as  I  know  positively)  on  both  sides  of 
the  House  many  persons  who  were  present  at 


the  first  hearing  interpreted  the  speech,  full  of 
diplomatically  -  clever  phraseology,  as  assuring 
them  that  the  directors  of  the  foreign  policy  of 
the  monarchy  would  hold  it  to  be  their  task  to 
see  that  the  power  and  sovereignty  of  Turkey 
should  remain  unchanged. 

Alas !  the  Hungarian  prime-minister  did  not 
only  not  say  this,  not  only  did  he  not  want  to 
say  it,  but,  on  the  contrary,  when  some  days 
later  two  of  the  representatives  ascribed  this 
sense  to  the  declaration  of  the  prime-minister, 
the  latter  contradicted  that  explanation  of  his 
words. 

"  Quassivi  lucem,  ingemui  que  reperta." 

The  far-famed  ministerial  declaration  comes 
to  nothing  else  but  this :  "  The  house  of  our 
neighbor  is  so  situated  with  reference  to  our 
house,  that  if  his  catches  fire  ours  will  catch  fire 
too.  The  house  of  our  neighbor  has  been  at- 
tacked by  robbers  and  incendiaries  with  torches. 
Our  household  takes  fright  for  our  dwelling,  and 
the  responsible  watcher  of  the  Hungarian  house- 
hold says,  '  Don't  be  anxious  ;  I  give  you  the  as- 
surance that  among  us,  your  watchmen,  there  is 
none  who  would  hold  that  it  is  his  task  to  burn 
down  our  neighbor's  house  ! '  " 

The  other  declaration  of  the  prime-minister 
has  been,  that  "  the  Government  has  not  given  to 
any  one,  in  any  sense  whatever;  a  promise  what  it 
will  do  ;  nor  have  they  assumed  any  obligation, 
but  they  possess  their  full  freedom  of  self-decision.'''' 

From  this  declaration  we  learn  two  things, 
but  neither  of  them  is  comforting.  We  learn 
that  the  Government  does  not  know  yet  what  it 
will  do.  It  has  no  fixed  aim.  Its  policy  has  no 
certain  tendency.  It  sails  about  without  a  com- 
pass. It  expects  good  luck  wherever  the  wind 
shall  blow.  If  this  be  policy,  it  is  a  very  im- 
provident one. 

"  The  hour  brings  its  own  counsel  "  (Kommi 
Zeit,  kommt  Rath).  This  is  the  summary.  Such 
determination  according  to  the  occasion  may  be 
a  very  good  thing  in  itself,  it  is  well  to  know  how 
we  shall  reach  the  aim  we  have  in  view ;  but  I 
don't  think,  in  the  present  international  im- 
broglio of  affairs,  which  endangers  the'vital  in- 
terests of  the  country,  that  to  relegate  the  ten- 
dency of  policy  (not  the  how,  but  the  what  !)  to 
the  chance  of  future  decision,  can  be  advisable 
or  even  permissible. 

And  I  am  very  fearful  that  the  prime-minis- 
ter has  told  the  truth.  I  see  that  the  Minister 
of  Foreign  Affairs,  by  the  consent  of  the  leaders 
of  both  parties,  has  constructed  for  himself  a 
scheme  wherein  he  can  indeed  place  many  things, 


216 


TEE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


but  what  are  these  things  ?  This  he  leaves  to 
the  future.  "  Kommt  Zcit,  kommt  Rath.'1''  The 
signification  of  the  plan  is  the  following :  "  Let 
the  Russians  do  whatever  they  like.  Our  posi- 
tion toward  them  is  a  friendly  neutrality."  Neu- 
trality, and  friendly:  a  steel  hoop,  made  of 
wood  !  Contradictio  in  adjeclo.  But,  alas  !  still 
true.  Friendly  toward  Russia  ;  hostile  toward 
Turkey  ;  but  no  neutrality.  When  a  country  is 
affected  in  her  vital  interests  by  a  war,  as  our 
country  is  now,  neutrality  is  an  absolute  impossi- 
bility. Inaction  is  no  neutrality.  That  this  hith- 
erto observed  inaction  has  been  of  great  service 
to  the  Russians  is  a  fact  crying  to  heaven  and 
earth.  But  I  will  now  continue  the  scheme.  "  If 
the  Turks  shall  be  victorious,  everything  will  re- 
main as  it  has  been ;  and  we  shall  mediate  dur- 
ing the  final  negotiations,  in  order  that  the  Turk 
may  not  press  too  hardly  on  the  Russians,  with 
whom  we  shall  keep  on  '  friendly  terms.'  If,  on 
the  contrary,  the  Russians  advance  victoriously, 
'  we  shall  take  up  a  position '  in  behalf  of  the 
conquered  Turks  ;  we  shall  strive  to  moderate 
the  Russian  exactions  at  the  final  negotiations ; 
but,  in  any  case,  if  the  Russians  rob,  we  will  rob 
too,  if  possible  down  to  Salonica  !  And  then  we 
will  say  to  Hungary  and  to  Austria :  '  Well,  we 
have  secured  the  interests  of  the  monarchy  in  the 
face  of  the  Russian  extension-policy.  The  Rus- 
sians have  annexed,  but  we  have  annexed  also  ; 
the  equilibrium  which  was  upset  by  robbery  has 
been  restored  by  robbery.'" 

Such  is  the  "  scheme  "  of  the  policy  of  "free- 
dom of  self -decision,'1'1  of  which  the  prime-minister 
has  been  boasting.  I  shall  be  very  glad  if  the 
patriotism  of  the  national  representatives  should 
give  such  a  guarantee  for  the  fulfillment  of  the 
people's  wishes  as  may  refute  my  suspicion — I 
had  nearly  written  my  "  certainty." 

The  second  thing  we  learn  from  the  quoted 
declaration  is  this,  that  our  Government  has  no 
ally.  I  think  that,  under  such  circumstances, 
there  are  two  .things  which  are  the  chief  duties 
of  a  government.  The  one  is  that  it  shall  see 
its  way  clearly  with  reference  to  the  tendency  of 
its  policy — of  this  I  have  spoken  already;  the 
other  is  that,  in  order  to  secure  this  policy,  it 
should  think  of  getting  allies.  It  is  a  bad  case 
that  the  Government  has  no  allies.  I  could  even 
call  this  also  neglect  of  duty,  because  they  could 
have  had  allies  if  they  had  had  a  good  policy. 

But  it  is  still  worse  that  the  untrammelcd  at- 
titude, of  which  the  prime-minister  has  boasted, 
favors  the  Russians.  Since  the  beginning  of  the 
complications  we  have  heard  of  nothing  so  em- 


phatically as  the  confederacy  of  the  three  em- 
perors, which  was  formerly  styled  "  a  friendly 
understanding."  One  of  these  three  confederates 
is  the  czar.  My  dear  fatherland !  thou  art  in- 
deed in  great  danger  from  that  untrammeled  atti- 
tude which  operates  in  friendly  relations  with 
Russia.  Hitherto  it  has  acted  in  that  way.  I 
could  cite  many  testimonies  ;  I  will  quote  only  a 
single  one. 

The  Government  says  it  has  no  obligations. 
What !  Has  it  not  entered  into  an  engagement 
to  let  Roumania  be  occupied  by  Russia  who  un- 
furled the  banners  of  "  The  Slavonic  Cause,"  and 
so  to  convert  this  province  into  a  place  for  her 
military  operations,  notwithstanding  that  the  neu- 
trality of  that  country  has  been  guaranteed  by 
the  European  powers,  under  whose  protectorate 
it  has  been  placed?  Yes,  they  have  engaged 
themselves,  and  by  a  formal  bargain,  because 
they  have  expressly  stipulated,  as  a  reward,  that 
the  czar  shall  not  force  Servia  into  war. 

This  fatal  obligation  is  the  source  of  all  the 
evils  which  have  happened  hitherto  and  which 
will  happen  hereafter,  and  of  all  the  dangers  that 
threaten  our  country. 

But  the  thing  does  not  end  here.  The  world 
is  filled  with  anxiety  lest  even  this  stipulation 
should  be  omitted,  and  lest  the  Viennese  cabinet 
should  not  try  to  prevent  the  czar  from  taking 
Servia  into  action.  Lo !  because  the  Turkish 
lion  has  struck  the  czar  over  the  fingers,  the 
great  czar  is  in  want  of  the  perjury  of  little 
Servia,  to  whom  Turkey  the  other  day  granted 
forgiveness.  Thus  the  untrammeled  attitude 
leans  again  toward  Russia. 

The  representatives  of  Huugary  will,  no  doubt, 
without  party  difference,  feel  the  danger  that 
menaces  them  through  this  new  aggravation  of 
circumstances. 

I  must  now  advert  to  a  third  governmental 
declaration,  and  I  find  it  very  weighty. 

When  an  interpellation  was  directed  to  the 
Government  with  reference  to  its  policy,  instead 
of  confessing  its  leanings,  it  avoided  the  ques- 
tion by  declaring  that  the  interests  of  the  Austro- 
Hungarian  monarch]/  have  led  and  will  lead  their 
policy,  and  that  the  interests  of  the  monarchy  un- 
der every  circumstance  will  be  considered. 

The  Government,  in  fact,  always  serves  up 
the  same  dish,  nobody  knowing  whether  it  is  fish 
or  flesh,  not  even  the  butler  who  serves  it.  This 
is  the  question,  in  what  direction  (not  by  tvhai 
means,  but  in  what  direction)  the  minister  seeks 
his  policy  ?  and  whether  he  seeks  it  in  a  direction 
conformable  to  the  interests  of  the  monarchy  ? 


R  USSIA2T  A  GGRESSIOX. 


217 


If  they  should  again  serve  a  dish,  which  is 
neither  "fish  nor  flesh,"  in  the  House  of  Repre- 
sentatives, and  if  the  Ilouse  should  be  contented 
with  this  assurance  (as  we  heard  out-of-doors), 
that  "  the  Government  keep  before  their  eyes  the 
U'ish  of  the  nation  that  the  interests  of  the  mon- 
archy— in  opposition  to  the  Russian  policy  of  ex- 
tension— should  be  secured"  the  ambiguity  of  the 
situation  would  not  be  at  all  changed,  and  the 
door  would  still  be  left  open  ;  so  that,  if  events 
took  another  turn,  the  water  would  be  turned  to 
grind  the  mill  for  those  "  influences  that  wish  to 
get  a  share,"  and  our  nation  would  some  morn- 
ing awake  to  find  that,  under  the  pretense  of  se- 
curing the  interests  of  the  monarchy,  things  had 
happened  which  the  nation  abhors  as  it  does 
damnation. 

I  do  not  speak  so  because  I  have  forebod- 
ings ;  it  is  not  my  object  to  enter  into  questions 
of  principles.  I  don't  want  to  quote  the  sad 
pages  of  our  own  history,  nor  the  examples  of 
Polignac  or  MacMahon,  to  show  that  it  has  al- 
ways been  so;  and  that  there  has  never  been 
any  impiety  without  the  reigning  power  invoking 
interests  of  state  when  committing  it.  But,  as 
we  stand  in  view  of  the  danger  of  Russian  exten- 
sion, I  pray  my  countrymen  to  look  for  that  page 
of  history  where  they  will  see  it  written  how  the 
Viennese  cabinet  understands  the  securing  of  the 
interests  of  the  monarchy  when  face  to  face  with 
Russian  aggressive  policy !  This  has  such  an 
actuality  of  interest  that  I  nearly  shudder  when 
I  think  of  it. 

Whoever  looks  at  those  pages  must  feel  con- 
vinced that  the  Viennese  cabinet  never  did  under- 
stand the  securing  of  the  interests  of  the  monarchy 
so  that  the  Russian  extension  should  not  be  per- 
mitted ;  but  it  so  understood  them  as  that,  whenever 
the  Russians  commit  robbery,  Austria  must  rob 
as  well — that,  when  Russia  extends  herself ',  Austria 
ought  to  do  the  same. 

So,  I  repeat  for  the  third  time,  it  understood 
them  at  the  division  of  Poland,  and  so  it  has  un- 
derstood them  ever  since,  without  exception,  when 
face  to  face  with  the  Russian  policy  of  extension. 

This  is  an  awful  remembrance. 

And  this  they  call  the  policy  of  restoring  the 
equilibrium ! 

And  what  has  history  said  of  that  awful  pol- 
icy? I  do  not  speak  even  of  morals,  of  honesty 
which  is  always  the  best  policy  in  the  end,  though 
it  was  a  long  time  ago  struck  out  of  the  vocabu- 
lary of  diplomacy.     I  point  to  facts. 

By  this  policy  the  Russian  power  has  been 
swollen  to  giant  -  like   proportions,   which   now 


menace  the  whole  world.  The  consequence  of 
this  policy  is  the  war  of  to-day,  and  Russia  now 
smooths  her  way,  through  the  Turkish  "  Slavonic 
cause,"  to  the  Hungarian  and  Austrian  "Slavonic 
cause." 

On  the  other  hand,  this  policy  of  sharing  has 
not  saved  the  Austrian  dynasty  from  withering. 
Russia  has  grown  up  ;  Austria  has  dwindled. 

And  what  will  be  the  result  if  the  Vienna 
cabinet  should  again  follow  this  damnable  policy 
of  expediency  ? 

In  the  past  it  has  put  a  razor  in  the  hand  of 
Russia ;  now  it  would  put  this  razor  to  the  throat 
of  Hungary,  and  also  of  Austria. 

"  Duo  cum  faciunt  idem,  non  est  idem." 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  what  the  Rus- 
sians would  rob  from  the  Turks,  what  their  influ- 
ence would  win  on  both  shores  of  the  Lower 
Danube  and  on  the  Balkan  peninsula,  would  form 
a  real  increase  of  their  power,  an  augmentation 
of  their  strength ;  and  the  influence  thus  ac- 
quired would  act  upon  the  Slavonians  of  the 
Austrian  Empire,  and  upon  those  of  the  Hunga- 
rian crown,  like  the  loadstone  on  iron.  Those 
Slavonians  that  would  be  caught  by  Russia,  she 
would  take  with  her. 

On  the  contrary,  what  the  Viennese  cabinet 
would  pilfer,  under  the  shadow  of  the  Russian 
highwayman,  from  the  Turkish  Empire,  would  only 
weaken  us,  and  become  eventually  our  death  ;  be- 
cause it  would  eternally  multiply  and  put  into 
further  fermentation  all  the  already  fermenting 
and  dissolving  elements.  The  Slavonians  who 
would  be  caught  by  the  Viennese  cabinet  would 
take  the  latter  with  them. 

And  what  would  be  the  infallible  final  result  ? 
The  punishment  of  talio.  If  St.  Petersburg  and 
Vienna  should  divide  the  rags  of  the  torn  Turk- 
ish Empire,  twenty-five  years  would  not  elapse  be- 
fore the  Russians,  the  Prussians,  and  the  Italians, 
would  divide  Austria  and  Hungary  among  them- 
selves, perhaps  leaving  something  of  the  booty 
to  Wallachia,  as  the  reward  of  subserviency  to 
Russia.     This  is  as  true  as  that  there  is  a  God.    ■ 

Well,  I  feel  no  call  to  be  anxious  about  the 
dismemberment  of  Austria,  if  free  nations  might 
step  into  her  place  ;  but  I  do  feel  it  my  duty 
to  be  anxious  about  a  dissolution  by  which  Rus- 
sian power  and  Russian  influence  would  be  in- 
creased. I  feel  it  so  much  my  duty  that,  if 
our  fatherland  were  connected  with  Austria  only 
by  the  ties  of  good  neighborly  friendship,  and 
if  Austria  were  threatened  by  the  Russians,  I 
would  most  determinedly  say  to  my  countrymen, 
"  Defend  thy  Austrian  neighbor  to  the  last  drop 


218 


TEE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


of  thy  blood  against  Russia,"  just  as  I  say  now, 
"Defend  thy  Turkish  neighbor  to  the  last  drop 
of  thy  blood  against  Russia." 

The  reigning  dynasty  of  Austria  must  reckon 
with  the  logic  of  history.  A  time  may  come — 
it  must  come — when  her  German  provinces — 
will  go  home.  Well,  well,  I  say  :  the  royal 
throne  of  the  palace  at  Buda  is  a  very  glorious 
seat.  It  will  be  good  to  think  about  how,  after 
its  thousand  years'  history,  it  may  not  be  men- 
aced by  the  Russian  monster — neither  in  the 
form  of  a  boa-constrictor,  nor  in  that  of  a  hun- 
dred-armed polypus.  The  time  is  come  to  think 
of  it,  now  that  the  Turkish  lion  is  fighting  his 
life  or  death  struggle  so  gloriously.  Let  us  not 
lose  the  opportunity.  "  Sero  medicina  paratur." 
"  Mene  !  Mene  !  Tekel !  Upharsin  !  " 

I  do  not  say  that  the  Hungarian  Government 
has  given  itself  up  to  the  impulses  of  robbery; 
I  say  only  that  this  is  not  excluded  from  the 
"  scheme."  This  vampire  sits  on  its  bed,  on  its 
chest,  on  its  arms.  Shake  off  the  vampire,  I  say. 
Free  your  arms,  and  step  at  the  head  of  the  na- 
tion. It  is  a  glorious  place.  In  such  a  great 
crisis  it  is  a  very  small  ambition  to  aim,  by  the 
cleverly-construed  phrase  of  "  taking  notice,"  at 
getting  a  vote  of  confidence  from  your  party. 
You  should  act  so  that  the  confidence  of  the 
whole  nation  should  surround  you.  You  can  do 
it.  You  should  adopt  the  policy  that  has  been 
pointed  at  by  the  whole  nation.      You  should 


not  contradict  yourselves,  for  you  said  that 
your  hands  were  free. 

To  the  representatives  of  the  nation  I  would 
like  to  cry  out  from  my  remote  solitary  place : 
"  The  fatherland  is  in  danger — in  such  danger 
as  it  has  never  been  in  before,  viewing  the  ir- 
revocability of  the  consequences.  Then  let  the 
fatherland  not  be  made  a  party  question  among 
yourselves,  my  countrymen !  Let  the  genius  of 
reconciliation  hover  over  you  when  you  stand 
arm-in-arm  around  the  altar  of  our  fatherland. 
I  do  not  ask  you  to  upset  the  Government,  but 
I  beg  of  you  to  place  it  in  such  a  situation  that 
its  stability  would  be  guaranteed  by  the  fulfill- 
ment of  the  nation's  wishes.  The  action  of  Ser- 
via  has  supplied  you  with  «n  opportunity  which 
answers  even  diplomatical  considerations.  Don't 
let  this  occasion  escape  you." 

The  fulfillment  of  the  nation's  will  is  the 
purest  loyalty.  I  say  so — I,  who  never  yield.  It 
is  true,  I  do  not  like  the  Austrian  eagle  in  our 
fatherland.  But  I  wish  not  that  this  eagle  should 
be  consumed  in  flame  by  the  Russian ;  and  I 
shudder  at  the  thought  that  Hungary  may  be 
the  funeral  stake. 

I  am  a  very  old  man.  I  long  ago  over- 
stepped the  line  assigned  by  Scripture  as  the 
limit  to  human  life.  Who  knows  whether  this 
be  not  my  last  word  ?  May  it  not  be  the  voice 
of  one  who  cries  in  the  desert ! — Contemporary 
Review. 


HYDROPHOBIA  AND    BABIES. 


By  Sir  THOMAS  WATSON. 


IN  the  May  number  of  this  Review  I  con- 
tended, successfully  I  think,  that  the  group 
of  diseases  rightly  included  among  those  called 
zymotic  may,  by  means  of  wise  legislation,  and 
the  equipment  of  suitable  machinery,  be  eventu- 
ally banished  from  this  island.  The  favorable 
reception  of  my  paper  by  many  competent  judges 
of  its  subject-matter  encourages  me  to  speak  of 
another  disease,  also  very  destructive  of  human 
life,  though  numerically  not  so  destructive  as 
these,  but  even  more  dreadful  and  alarming  to 
the  mind  than  any  of  them.  This  plague,  also,  I 
hold  to  be  one  of  which  we  might  get  perma- 
nently rid.  The  disease,  or  rather  the  pair  of 
diseases,  to  which  I  advert   consists   of  hydro- 


phobia in  the  human  species  and  rabies  in  the 
canine.  It  is  well  to  keep  in  mind  the  distinc- 
tion between  these  two.  There  would  be  no 
hydrophobia  were  there  no  rabies ;  there  can  be 
no  rabies  unless  it  be  communicated  by  a  rabid 
animal ;  but  they  are  not  identical  diseases.  To 
use  the  concrete  form  of  speech,  rabies  in  the 
dog  is  quite  different  and  distinct  from  hydro- 
phobia in  the  man.  The  term  hydrophobia  is 
often  erroneously  applied  to  both  diseases,  but 
the  rabid  dog  is  never  hydrophobic. 

There  has  been  an  astonishing  increase  of  hy- 
drophobia in  this  country  within  the  last  half- 
century.  Mr.  Cresar  Hawkins,  writing  in  1844, 
says  that  only  two  cases  of  the  disease  had  been 


HYDROPHOBIA  AND  RABIES. 


219 


admitted  into  St.  George's  Hospital  since  he  first 
knew  it  twenty-five  years  earlier.  Now,  mention 
of  such  cases  is  constantly  being  made  in  the 
newspapers.  Since  the  beginning  of  the  present 
year,  no  less  than  thirteen  deaths  from  hydro- 
phobia have  been  recorded  within  the  limits  of 
the  London  Registration. 

So  many  erroneous  notions  are  afloat  on  this 
subject,  that  it  may  be  neither  uninteresting  nor 
useless  to  the  general  reader  to  have  a  plain,  un- 
technical  history  of  the  two  diseases,  which  are 
inseparably  connected  by  reciprocal  relationship, 
the  one  being  the  parent  of  the  other.  In  the 
canine  race  rabies  can  propagate  rabies ;  but  hy- 
drophobia does  not  (as  I  believe)  ever  reproduce 
itself. 

The  first  thing  to  be  noticed  about  hydro- 
phobia is,  that,  frequent  as  it  has  become,  many 
medical  men  pass  through  life  without  witnessing 
the  disease  at  all.  Hence  there  has,  strangely 
enough,  sprung  up  in  some  minds  a  fancy  that 
no  such  disease  has  ever  happened.  Sir  Isaac 
Pennington,  who  was  in  my  time  the  Regius 
Professor  of  Physic  at  Cambridge,  and  who  had 
never  seen  a  case  of  hydrophobia,  could  not  be 
persuaded  that  any  one  else  had  seen  anything 
more  than  a  nervous  disorder,  produced  by  the 
alarmed  imagination  of  persons  who,  having  been 
bitten  by  a  dog  reputed  to  be  mad,  and  having 
the  fear  of  feather-beds  before  their  eyes,  have 
been  frightened  into  a  belief  that  they  were  la- 
boring under  hydrophobia,  and  ultimately  scared 
out  of  their  very  existence.  It  was  at  that  time 
currently  believed,  at  least  by  the  vulgar,  that 
any  one  afflicted  with  this  terrible  disorder  was 
dangerous  to  those  about  him ;  and  it  was  cus- 
tomary for  his  neighbors,  or  associates,  to  put  an 
end  at  once  to  his  woes  and  to  their  own  cowardly 
dread  of  him  by  smothering  him  between  two 
feather-beds. 

But  a  far  more  eminent  man  than  the  Cam- 
bridge professor,  even  Sir  George  Cornewall 
Lewis,  was  possessed  with  a  similar  incredulity 
on  this  subjeet,  until  convinced  of  his  error  by 
Mr.  Hawkins,  who  had  then  seen  eleven  or  twelve 
cases  of  hydrophobia — a  larger  number  than  per- 
haps any  man  in  this  country  ever  saw  before  or 
since.  One  reason  for  this  was  that  he  had  re- 
ceived from  Sir  Robert  Ker  Porter,  our  minister  in 
South  America,  specimens  of  a  substance  called 
guaco,  a  supposed  preventive  and  cure  of  hydro- 
phobia and  of  snake-bites,  and  had  on  that  ac- 
count been  summoned  to  cases  of  hydrophobia 
by  various  other  practitioners. 

I  have  myself  seen  four  cases  of  that  fear- 


ful malady,  and  I  feel  sure  that  no  one  who  has 
even  once  watched  its  actual  symptoms  could 
fail  to  recognize  it  again,  or  could  mistake 
any  other  malady  for  it,  or  wish  to  witness  it 
thereafter.  What  these  truly  remarkable  symp- 
toms are  I  shall  explain  presently.  It  would, 
a  priori,  seem  incredible  that  so  many  persons 
who  have  been  bitten  by  mad  dogs  should  have 
suffered  so  precisely  the  same  train  of  symp- 
toms, and  have  at  last  died,  from  the  mere  force 
of  a  morbid  imagination.  But  a  single  fact  con- 
clusive against  such  a  belief  is  that  the  disease 
has  befallen  infants  and  idiots,  who  had  never 
heard  or  understood  a  word  about  mad  dogs  or 
hydrophobia,  and  in  whom  the  imagination  could 
have  had  no  share  in  producing  their  fatal  dis- 
temper. 

The  steady  increase  in  the  population  of  this 
kingdom  implies  a  corresponding,  though  per- 
haps not  proportional,  increase  in  the  number  of 
its  dogs.  In  this  way  the  area  is  ever  growing 
larger  of  a  field  ready  for  the  reception  of  the 
poisonous  germ  of  rabies,  and  for  the  production 
in  due  time  of  a  more  or  less  copious  crop  of 
hydrophobia.  The  report  for  this  year  of  the 
Postmaster-General  contains  the  strange  state- 
ment made  by  the  local  postmaster  of  a  large 
town  in  the  north  of  England,  that  in  the  year 
1876  twenty  per  cent,  of  his  men — one  in  every 
five — were  bitten  by  dogs.  A  parliamentary  re- 
turn of  last  session  tells  us  that  in  the  year  end- 
ing with  last  May,  973  sheep  and  lambs  were 
killed  by  dogs  in  ten  of  the  counties  of  Scotland, 
and  in  most  cases  the  owners  of  the  dogs  could 
not  be  discovered.  There  is  in  London  a  Home 
for  stray  and  lost  dogs.  It  has  been  affirmed  in 
print  by  the  well-known  Secretary  to  the  Society 
for  Preventing  Cruelty  to  Animals,  that  upward  of 
1,500  dogs  are  taken  to  this  Home  every  month. 
It  is  notorious  that  the  tax  on  dogs  is  evaded  to 
an  enormous  extent.  All  this  serves  to  disclose 
the  presence  among  us  of  a  national  nuisance,  and 
a  growing  source  of  national  dishonesty  and  of 
serious  national  peril.  It  is  grievous  to  me  to 
have  to  write  in  a  strain  so  depreciatory  of  a  race 
of  animals  that  I  love  so  well.  But  corruptio 
optimi  pessima.  It  is  an  illustrative  fact  that,  ac- 
cording to  the  Reports  of  the  Registrar-General, 
no  less  than  334  persons  died  in  England  of 
hydrophobia  in  the  decade  of  years  ending  with 
1875. 

Like  other  specific  contagious  diseases,  hy- 
drophobia has  its  period  of  incubation;  and  it  is 
a  somewhat  variable  period,  lying  for  the  most 
part  between  six  weeks  and  three  months.   From 


220 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


a  tabular  account  of  130  cases  of  the  disease 
referred  to  by  Mr.  Hawkins,  it  appears  that  five- 
sixths  of  the  whole  number  occurred  between 
eighteen  days  and  three  months.  Mr.  George 
Rigden,  of  Canterbury,  has  lately  stated  in  the 
Lancet  the  following  remarkable  fact :  He  saw 
many  years  ago  in  one  of  the  hospitals  in  London 
two  patients  who  had  been  bitten  at  the  same 
time  by  a  cat  which  had  been  bitten  by  a  rabid 
dog.  Although  the  two  patients  had  severally 
received  their  bites  within  a  few  minutes  of  each 
other,  the  respective  outbreaks  of  hydrophobia 
were  separated  by  an  imterval  of  two  weeks.  A 
like  uncertainty  of  the  access  of  the  disease  has 
been  noticed  among  infected  dogs.  On  the  night 
of  June  8,  1791,  the  man  in  charge  of  Lord  Fitz- 
william's  kennel  was  much  disturbed  by  fightings 
among  the  hounds,  and  got  up  several  times  to 
quiet  them.  On  each  occasion  he  found  the  same 
dog  quarreling ;  at  last,  therefore,  he  shut  that 
dog  up  by  himself,  and  then  there  was  no  further 
disturbance.  On  the  third  day  afterward  the 
quarrelsome  hound  was  found  to  be  unequivo- 
cally rabid,  and  on  the  fifth  day  he  died.  The 
whole  pack  were  thereupon  separately  confined, 
and  watched.  Six  of  the  dogs  became  subse- 
quently mad,  and  at  the  following  widely  differ- 
ent intervals  from  the  8th  of  June,  namely,  23 
days,  56,  67,  81,  155,  and  183  days. 

Much  longer  periods,  however,  than  any  that 
I  have  hitherto  mentioned  are  on  record.  In  one 
instance,  which  was  treated  in  Guy's  Hospital, 
and  the  particulars  of  which  were  carefully  inves- 
tigated by  Doctor  (now  Sir  William)  Gull,  the 
disorder  broke  out  more  than  five  years  after  the 
patient  had  been  bitten  by  a  pointer-bitch  below 
his  left  knee.  There  a  scar  was  visible,  and  the 
hydrophobic  outbreak  was  preceded  by  pain  in 
that  spot.  In  the  first  volume  of  the  Lancet  the 
case  is  narrated  by  Mr.  Hale  Thompson  of  a  lad 
who  died  hydrophobic  seven  years  after  a  bite  by 
a  dog  on  his  right  hip,  where  there  remained  a 
cicatrix.  For  twenty-five  months  before  his  death 
this  patient  had  been  in  close  confinement  in  pris- 
on, and  out  of  the  way  of  dogs  altogether. 

Long  periods  of  this  kind  cannot  reasonably 
be  regarded  as  periods  of  genuine  or  normal  in- 
cubation. In  explanation  of  them  I  some  forty 
years  ago  published  certain  views  of  my  own,  but 
I  do  not  know  that  they  have  been  (to  use  a  bar- 
barous modern  term)  indorsed  by  any  of  my  pro- 
fessional brethren.  I  imagine  that  the  virus  im- 
planted by  the  rabid  animal  may  remain  lodged 
in  the  bitten  spot,  shut  up  perhaps  in  a  nodule 
of  lymph,  or  detained  somehow  in  temporary  and 


precarious  union  with  some  one  of  the  animal 
tissues,  without  entering  the  blood  itself  for  a 
longer  or  shorter  time — in  some  cases,  perhaps, 
never.1  Some  curious  facts,  fortifying  this  hypoth- 
esis of  mine,  have  been  noticed  respecting  an- 
other animal  poison — the  vaccine  virus.  The  fol- 
lowing statement  is  quoted  by  Mr.  Grove,  in  the 
Monthly  Journal  of  Medical  Science  for  Novem- 
ber, 1853  : 

"A  girl,  aged  fourteen  years,  was  seized  with 
influenza.  She  complained  of  pain  in  each  arm  at 
the  spots  where,  when  an  infant,  she  bad  been 
vaccinated ;  and,  in  fact,  in  these  places  vaccine 
vesicles  now  became  perfectly  developed.  An 
elder  sister  was  re  vaccinated  with  lymph  thence 
obtained ;  beautiful  vesicles  formed,  and  ran  a 
natural  course." 

At  the  Obstetrical  Society  of  London  in  1860,  Dr. 
Hodges  stated  that — 

"  In  May,  1854,  he  vaccinated  a  little  boy  three 
years  of  age,  but  the  arm  did  not '  rise'  within  the 
usual  period.  In  the  following  May,  however,  a 
vesicle  spontaneously  formed,  with  an  areola  on 
the  seventh  and  eighth  days,  gradually  declining 
on  the  eleventh  and  twelfth ;  a  permanent  cicatrix, 
marked  by  pits,  remaining  and  giving  evidence  of 
the  genuine  vaccine  disease." 

If  my  hypothesis  be  well  founded,  it  may  account 
for  some  of  the  cases  in  which  persons  bitten  by 
a  rabid  dog  escape  hydrophobia  altogether. 

The  well-known  fact  that  the  bitten  spot, 
wound,  or  scar,  very  often  becomes  the  seat  of 
some  fresh  morbid  phenomena  (variously  spoken 
of  as  pain,  redness,  swelling,  coldness,  stiffness, 
numbness,  tingling,  itching),  which  spread  tow- 
ard the  trunk  of  the  body  just  before  the  par- 
oxysmal symptoms  of  hydrophobia  show  them- 
selves, is  strongly  in  favor  of  the  belief  that  the 
poison  may  lie  inert  in  the  place  of  the  original 
hurt  for  some  time,  and  then,  in  some  obscure 
way,  get  liberated  and  set  afloat  in  the  circulat- 
ing blood. 

Pain,  sensations  of  pricking,  and  other  pe- 

1  I  find  that  Dr.  Anthony  Todd  Thomson,  in  the 
thirteenth  volume  of  the  "Medico-Chirurgical  Trans- 
actions,"  1826,  has  been  tiresome  enough  to  forestall 
me  in  this  suggestion.  He  is  commenting  upon  a 
case  of  hydrophobia  caused  by  the  bite  of  a  cat,  and 
he  conjectures  "  that  the  virus  remains  dormant  in 
the  part  where  it  is  deposited  by  the  tooth  of  the 
rabid  animal,  until  a  certain  state  of  habit  renders 
the  nerves  in  its  vicinity  susceptible  of  its  influence, 
and  this  being  communicated,  a  morbid  action  is  be- 
gun in  these  nerves,  and  extended  to  the  respiratory 
nerves,  which  induce  the  whole  train  of  symptoms 
constituting  the  disease." 


HYDROPHOBIA  AND  RABIES. 


221 


culiar  feeling?,  preceded  the  manifestation  of  the 
hydrophobic  condition  in  three  of  the  four  cases 
seen  by  myself ;  in  the  fourth  case  no  inquiries 
appear  to  have  been  made  on  that  point.  In 
another  instance  which  Mr.  Herbert  Mayo  wit- 
nessed and  examined  after  death,  he  found  the 
inner  part  of  the  cicatrix  blood-shotten,  and  a 
gland  in  the  armpit  had  swelled  at  the  coming 
on  of  hydrophobic  symptoms  ;  and  I  find  among 
my  notes  of  Mr.  Abernethy's  lectures  another 
striking  case  still  more  to  the  purpose.  A  very 
intelligent  boy  had  been  bitten  in  the  finger  by  a 
dog.  He  was  taken  into  St.  Bartholomew's  Hos- 
pital. Caustic  had  been  freely  used,  affecting 
the  sinewy  parts,  and  producing  a  terrible  sore  ; 
yet  the  boy  was  recovering  himself,  and  the  sore 
was  healing.  One  day,  as  Mr.  Abernethy  was 
going  round  the  hospital,  he  saw  and  spoke  to 
the  boy,  who  said  he  thought  he  was  getting 
well,  but  that  he  had  on  that  day  an  odd  sen- 
sation in  his  finger,  stretching  upward  into  his 
hand  and  arm.  Going  up  the  arm  were  two  red 
lines  like  inflamed  absorbents.  Doubtless  they 
were  such.  Mr.  Abernethy  made  light  of  the 
matter,  ordered  a  poultice  and  some  medicine. 
Early  the  next  morning  he  again  visited  the  ward, 
pretending  that  he  bad  some  other  patient  there 
whom  he  wished  particularly  to  see ;  and  when 
going  out  again  he  asked  the  boy,  in  a  careless 
tone,  how  he  was.  The  boy  said  he  had  lost  the 
pain,  but  felt  very  unwell,  and  had  not  slept  all 
night.  Mr.  Abernethy  felt  his  pulse,  told  him  he 
was  rather  feverish,  as  might  be  expected,  and 
asked  him  if  he  was  not  thirsty,  and  would  like 
some  toast  and  water.  The  boy  said  he  was 
thirsty,  and  that  he  should  like  some  drink. 
When,  however,  the  cup  was  brought  he  pushed 
it  from  him  ;  he  could  not  drink.  In  forty-eight 
hours  he  was  dead. 

The  symptoms  of  hydrophobia,  stated  in 
broad  outline,  are  these  :  excessive  nervous  irri- 
tability and  terror,  spasmodic  contractions  of  the 
muscles  of  the  throat,  excited  by  various  exter- 
nal influences,  and  especially  by  the  sight  or 
sound  of  liquids,  and  by  attempts  to  swallow 
them,  and  sometimes  absolute  impossibility  of 
swallowing  them,  earnest  attempts  to  do  so  not- 
withstanding. 

When  fluids  are  offered  to  and  pressed  upon 
the  patient,  he  will  take  the  vessel  containing 
them  into  his  hand,  but  draws  back  his  head  to 
a  distance  from  it  with  a  repelling  and  apparently 
involuntary  gesture  ;  meanwhile  he  makes  a  suc- 
cession of  hurried  gasping  sighs  and  sobs,  pre- 
cisely resembling  those  which  occur  when  one 


wades  gradually  and  deeply  into  cold  water.  The 
sound  of  water  poured  from  one  vessel  into  an- 
other, gusts  of  air  passing  over  his  face,  the  sud- 
den access  of  light,  the  waving  of  a  mirror  before 
his  eyes,  the  crawling  of  an  insect  over  his  skin — 
these  are  things  which  in  an  hydrophobic  patient 
suffice  to  excite  great  agitation,  and  the  peculiar 
strangling  sensation  about  the  fauces.  He  goes 
on  rapidly  from  bad  to  worse ;  in  most  cases 
more  or  less  of  mania  or  delirium  is  mixed  up 
with  the  irritability.  Illusions  of  the  senses  of 
sight  and  of  hearing  are  not  uncommon.  The 
sufferer  is  very  garrulous  and  excited.  In  some 
cases,  but  not  in  all,  there  is  incontinence  of  urine. 
Foam  and  sticky  mucus  gather  in  his  throat  and 
mouth,  and  he  makes  great  efforts  by  pulling  it 
with  his  fingers,  and  by  spitting,  blowing,  and 
hawking,  to  get  rid  of  it ;  and  the  sounds  he 
thus  makes  have  been  exaggerated  by  ignorance 
and  credulity  into  the  foaming  and  barking  of  a 
dog.  In  the  same  spirit  the  palsy  of  his  lower 
limbs,  which  sometimes  takes  place,  rendering 
him  unable  to  stand  upright,  has  been  miscon- 
strued into  a  desire  on  his  part  to  go  on  all-fours 
like  a  dog.  Vomiting  is  a  frequent  symptom. 
The  pulse  in  a  short  time  becomes  frequent  and 
feeble,  and  the  general  strength  declines  with 
great  rapidity.  Death  occasionally  ensues  within 
twenty-four  hours  after  the  beginning  of  the  spe- 
cific symptoms.  Most  commonly  of  all,  it  hap- 
pens on  the  second  or  third  day ;  now  and  then 
it  is  postponed  to  the  fifth  day ;  and  in  still  rarer 
instances  it  may  not  occur  till  the  seventh,  eighth, 
or  ninth  day. 

Usually,  the  paroxysms,  becoming  more  vio- 
lent and  frequent,  exhaust  the  patient ;  but  occa- 
sionally the  symptoms  undergo  a  marked  alter- 
ation before  death.  The  paroxysms  cease,  the 
nervous  irritability  disappears,  the  patient  is 
able  to  eat  and  drink  and  converse  with  ease, 
those  sights  and  sounds  which  so  annoyed  and 
distressed  him  before  no  longer  cause  him  any 
disquiet.  The  late  Dr.  Latham  had  an  hydropho- 
bic patient  under  his  care  in  the  Middlesex  Hos- 
pital. On  going  one  day  to  the  ward  he  fully 
expected  to  hear  that  the  patient  was  dead,  but 
he  found  him  sitting  up  in  his  bed  quite  calm  and 
free  from  spasm.  He  had  just  drunk  a  large  jug 
of  porter.  "  Lawk,  sir  !  "  said  a  nurse  that  stood 
by,  "  what  a  wonderful  cure  !  "  The  man  him- 
self seemed  surprised  at  the  change  ;  but  he  had 
no  pulse;  his  skin  was  as  cold  as  marble.  In 
half  an  hour  he  sank  back  and  expired. 

It  has  been  alleged  that  tetanus  may  be  mis- 
taken for  hydrophobia,  but  the  differences  be- 


222 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


tween  the  two  are  very  clearly  marked.  It  is 
true  that  slight  touches  of  the  body  will  excite 
the  tetanic  spasm,  but  it  is  the  rigid  or  abiding 
form  of  spasm,  which  relaxes  gradually  and 
slowly  ;  whereas  in  hydrophobia  the  spasms  are 
sudden  and  frequent,  such  as  are  popularly  called 
convulsions.  In  tetanus  there  is  no  thirst,  sel- 
dom any  vomiting,  no  accumulation  of  tough  and 
stringy  mucus  in  the  mouth  and  throat.  The 
mental  faculties  are  clear,  and  the  patient  is  se- 
rene, and  what  is  called  heart-whole,  to  the 
last. 

The  symptoms  of  rabies,  as  witnessed  in  the 
dog,  have  been  well  described  by  Mr.  Youatt. 
The  earliest  is  a  marked  change  in  the  animal's 
habits.  Of  course  this  will  be  more  perceptible 
by  those  acquainted  with  the  dog,  and  cognizant 
of  his  habits.  The  dog  becomes  sullen,  restless, 
his  eyes  glisten,  there  is  often  slight  squinting, 
and  some  twitching  of  the  face,  with  a  continual 
shifting  of  posture,  a  steadfast  gaze  expressive 
of  suspicion,  an  earnest  licking  of  some  part  on 
which  a  scar  may  generally  be  found.  If  the  ear 
be  the  affected  part,  the  dog  is  incessantly  and 
violently  scratching  it;  if  the  foot,  he  gnaws  it 
till  the  skin  is  broken.  Occasional  vomiting  and 
a  depraved  appetite  are  also  early  noticeable. 
The  dog  will  pick  up  and  swallow  bits  of  thread 
or  silk  from  the  carpet,  hair,  straw,  and  even 
clung.  Then  the  animal  becomes  irascible,  flies 
fiercely  at  strangers,  is  impatient  of  correction, 
which  he  receives  in  sullen  silence,  seizes  the 
whip  or  stick,  quarrels  with  his  own  companions, 
eagerly  hunts  and  worries  the  cats,  demolishes 
his  bed,  and  if  chained  up  makes  violent  efforts 
to  escape,  tearing  his  kennel  to  pieces  with  his 
teeth.  If  at  large  he  usually  attacks  such  dogs 
as  come  in  his  way,  but  if  he  be  naturally  fero- 
cious he  will  diligently  and  perseveringly  seek 
his  enemy.  About  the  second  day  a  considera- 
ble flow  of  saliva  begins,  but  this  does  not  long 
continue,  and  it  is  succeeded  by  insatiable  thirst. 
He  appears  to  be  annoyed  by  some  viscid  matter 
in  his  throat,  and  in  the  most  eager  and  extraor- 
dinary manner  he  works  with  his  paws  at  the 
corners  of  his  mouth  to  remove  it,  and  while  thus 
employed  frequently  loses  his  balance  and  rolls 
over.  A  loss  of  power  over  the  voluntary  mus- 
cles is  next  observed.  It  begins  with  the  lower 
jaw,  which  hangs  down,  and  the  mouth  is  par- 
tially open ;  the  tongue  is  less  affected  ;  the  dog 
is  able  to  use  it  in  the  act  of  lapping,  but  the 
mouth  is  not  sufficiently  closed  to  retain  the 
water;  therefore,  while  he  hangs  over  the  vessel 


eagerly  lapping  for  several  minutes,  its  contents 
are  very  little,  or  not  at  all,  diminished.  The 
palsy  often  affects  the  loins  and  extremities  also ; 
the  animal  staggers  about,  and  frequently  falls. 
Previously  to  this  he  is  in  almost  incessant  mo- 
tion. Mr.  Youatt  fancies  the  dog  is  subject  to 
what  we  call  spectral  illusions.  He  starts  up  and 
gazes  earnestly  at  some  real  or  imaginary  object. 
He  appears  to  be  tracing  the  path  of  something 
floating  around  him,  or  he  fixes  his  eyes  intently 
on  some  spot  on  the  wall,  and  suddenly  plunges 
at  it ;  then  his  eyes  close,  and  his  head  droops. 

Frequently,  with  his  head  erect,  the  dog  ut- 
ters a  short  and  very  peculiar  howl ;  or  if  he 
barks  it  is  in  a  hoarse,  inward  sound,  totally  un- 
like his  usual  tone,  terminating  generally  with 
this  characteristic  howl.  The  respiration  is  al- 
ways affected  ;  often  the  breathing  is  very  labori- 
ous ;  and  the  inspiration  is  attended  with  a  sin- 
gular grating,  choking  noise.  On  the  fourth, 
fifth,  or  sixth  day  of  the  disease,  he  dies,  occa- 
sionally in  slight  convulsions,  but  oftener  without 
a  struggle. 

It  is  a  common  and  misleading  mistake  to 
think  that  the  rabid  dog,  like  the  hydrophobic 
man,  will  shun  water,  and  that  if  he  takes  to  a 
river  it  may  safely  he  concluded  that  he  is  not 
mad.  On  the  contrary,  as  I  have  already  hinted, 
there  is  no  dread  of  water,  but  unquenchable 
thirst ;  the  animal  rushes  eagerly  to  water, 
plunges  his  muzzle  into  it,  and  tries  to  drink, 
but  often  is  unable  to  swallow  from  paralysis  of 
his  lower  jaw,  which  prevents  him  from  shutting 
his  mouth. 

Another  opinion  not  at  all  uncommon  is,  that 
healthy  dogs  recognize  one  that  is  mad,  and  fear 
him,  and  run  away  from  his  presence,  in  obedi- 
ence to  some  mysterious  and  wonderful  instinct, 
warning  them  of  their  danger.  According  to  Mr. 
Youatt,  this  is  quite  unfounded.  Equally  mis- 
taken is  the  notion  that  the  mad  dog  exhales  a 
peculiar  and  offensive  smell. 

I  do  not  know  whether  the  period  of  incuba- 
tion in  a  dog  which  has  been  infected  with  rabies 
by  the  bite  of  another  rabid  dog  has  been  accu- 
rately ascertained ;  but  that  the  disease  may  be 
imparted  by  a  dog  so  infected  before  the  symp- 
toms of  rabies  become  manifest  is  clear  from  the 
following  instance,  with  which  I  have  been  favored 
by  Mr.  Wrench,  of  Baslow,  in  Derbyshire : 

"A  small  terrier"  (he  writes)  "belonging  to 
myself  was  bitten  by  an  undoubtedly  rabid  dog,  and 
was  consequently  destroyed  about  a  fortnight  after- 
ward, and  before  it  had  shown  any  symptoms  of 
disease.   In  the  mean  time  it  had  licked  the  cropped 


HYDROPHOBIA  AND  RABIES. 


223 


ears  of  a  bull-dog  puppy  which  had  not  been  near 
the  first-named  rabid  dog,  and  this  puppy  went 
mad  about  eight  weeks  after  his  ears  were  licked." 

From  what  animals  may  the  infection  be  re- 
ceived ?  We  are  sure  that  the  disease,  by  the 
inoculution  of  which  hydrophobia  may  be  caused 
in  man,  is  common  in  the  dog ;  and  that  it  has 
often  been  communicated  to  the  human  animal 
by  the  fox  also,  the  wolf,  the  jackal,  and  the  cat. 
The  death  from  hydrophobia  of  a  boy  after  being 
bitten  by  a  raccoon  is  recorded  by  Dr.  Russell, 
of  Lincoln,  Massachusetts,  in  the  "  Transactions 
of  the  American  Medical  Association"  for  1856. 
Mr.  Youatt  declares  that  the  saliva  of  the  badger, 
the  horse,  the  human  being,  has  undoubtedly  pro- 
duced hydrophobia ;  and  some  affirm  that  it  has 
been  propagated  even  by  the  turkey  and  the  hen. 
The  same  author  mentions  a  case  in  which  a 
groom  became  affected  with  hydrophobia  through 
a  scratch  which  he  received  from  the  tooth  of  a 
rabid  horse.  This  would  seem  to  settle  the  ques- 
tion as  respects  that  animal ;  but  as  horses,  cows, 
and  fowls,  do  not  usually  bite,  we  have  not  many 
opportunities  of  furnishing  a  positive  answer  to 
the  general  question. 

The  grandfather  of  the  present  Duke  of  Rich- 
mond died,  in  Canada,  of  hydrophobia,  communi- 
cated, it  was  then  thought,  by  a  fox.  But  I  was 
told  in  1862,  on  the  authority  of  a  person  who 
was  living  at  Montreal  at  the  time  of  the  duke's 
death,  and  was  acquainted  with  his  family,  that 
his  disease  was  caused  by  the  bite  of  a  dog  ;  and 
I  was  afterward  informed  by  Mr.  Lawrence  Peel, 
the  duke's  son-in-law,  that  it  was  uncertain 
whether  the  bite  was  made  by  a  fox  or  by  a  dog. 
The  duke  was  interfering  in  a  fray  between  a 
tame  fox  and  a  pet  dog — the  fox  retreating  into 
his  kennel.  It  is  not  certainly  known  which  of 
the  animals  had  rabies. 

The  disease  is  said  to  have  been  caused  by 
the  scratch  of  a  cat.  Now,  we  know  that  cats,  as 
well  as  dogs,  frequently  apply  their  paws  to  their 
:nouths,  especially  when  the  latter  part  is  uneasy, 
as  it  clearly  is  in  mad  dogs.  The  fad,  therefore, 
of  the  production  of  the  disease  by  a  scratch  from 
the  claws  of  a  cat,  if  thoroughly  made  out,  would 
afford  no  proof,  nor  scarcely  even  a  presumption, 
that  the  disease  can  be  introduced  into  the  ani- 
mal system  in  any  other  way  than  by  means  of 
the  saliva. 

Several  important  questions  at  once  present 
themselves  respecting  these  two  diseases  : 

First,  is  a  man  who  has  been  bitten  by  a  mad 
dog,  and  in  whose  case  no  preventive  measures 


have  been  taken,  a  doomed  man  ?  I  have  an- 
swered this  question  in  the  negative  already. 
Few,  upon  the  whole,  who  are  so  bitten  become 
affected  with  hydrophobia.  John  Hunter  states 
that  he  knew  an  instance  in  which,  of  21  persons 
bitten,  one  only  fell  a  victim  to  the  disease.  Dr. 
Hamilton  estimated  the  proportion  to  be  1  in  25. 
But  I  fear  these  computations  are  much  too  low. 
In  1780  a  mad  dog  in  the  neighborhood  of  Senlis 
took  his  course  within  a  small  circle,  and  bit  15 
persons  before  he  was  killed  ;  three  of  these  died 
of  hydrophobia.  The  saliva  of  a  rabid  wolf 
would  seem  to  be  highly  virulent  and  effective. 
These  beasts  fly  always,  I  believe,  at  a  naked 
part.  Hence,  probably,  the  fatality  of  their  bites. 
The  following  statement  relates  exclusively  to  the 
wolf:  In  December,  1*7*74,  20  persons  were  bitten 
in  the  neighborhood  of  Troyes  ;  9  of  them  died. 
Of  17  persons  similarly  bitten  in  1784  near  Brive, 

10  died  of  hydrophobia.  In  May,  1817,  23  per- 
sons were  bitten,  and  14  perished.     Four  died  of 

11  that  were  bitten  near  Dijon;  and  18  of  24 
bitten  near  Rochelle.  At  Bar-sur-Ornain  19 
were  bitten,  of  whom  12  died  within  two  months. 
Here  we  have  114  persons  bitten  by  rabid  wolves, 
and  among  them  no  fewer  than  67  victims  to 
hydrophobia ;  considerably  more  than  one-half. 
There  is  no  doubt,  however,  that  the  majority  of 
persons  who  are  bitten  by  a  mad  dog  escape  the 
disease.  This  may  be  partly  owing  to  an  inher- 
ent inaptitude  for  accepting  it.  There  are  some 
upon  whom  the  contagion  of  small-pox  has  no 
influence.  This  peculiarity  exists  apparently 
even  among  dogs.  There  was  one  dog,  at  Cha- 
renton,  that  did  not  become  rabid  after  being 
bitten  by  a  rabid  dog  ;  and  it  was  so  managed 
that  at  different  times  he  was  bitten  by  thirty 
mad  dogs,  but  he  outlived  it  all.  Much  will  de- 
pend also  upon  the  circumstances  of  the  bite, 
and  the  way  in  which  it  is  inflicted.  If  it  be 
made  through  clothes,  and  especially  through 
thick  woolen  garments,  or  through  leather,  the 
saliva  may  be  wiped  clean  away  from  the  tooth 
before  it  reaches  the  flesh.  In  the  fifth  volume 
of  the  Edinburgh  Medical  and  Surgical  Journal 
there  is  a  case  described  by  Mr.  Oldknow,  of 
Nottingham,  in  which  a  man  was  bitten  in  three 
different  places  by  the  same  mad  dog,  namely,  in 
the  groin,  the  thigh,  and  the  left  hand  ;  the  bite 
on  the  hand  was  the  last.  Now,  it  seems  that 
but  for  this  last  bite,  on  a  naked  part,  he  might 
have  escaped.  It  is  noteworthy  that  the  local 
sensations  preliminary  to  the  fatal  outbreak  of 
hydrophobia  occurred  only  in  the  hand  and  arm. 
The   attacking   dog  probably   shuts   his   mouth 


22-i 


TEE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


after  each  bite,  and  thus  recharges  his  fangs  with 
the  poisonous  material.  In  a  report  from  Amer- 
ica, it  is  stated  that,  of  *75  cases,  the  injury  was 
received  on  the  hand  in  40  instances,  on  the  face 
in  15,  on  the  leg  in  11,  on  the  arm  in  9. 

It  is  this  frequent  immunity  from  the  disease 
in  persons  who  have  been  bitten  that  has  tended 
to  confer  reputation  upon  so  many  vaunted  meth- 
ods of  prevention.  Ignorant  men  and  knavish 
men  have  not  failed  to  take  advantage  of  this. 
They  announce  that  they  are  in  possession  of 
some  secret  remedy  which  will  prevent  the  virus 
from  operating ;  they  persuade  the  friends  of 
those  who  die  that  the  remedy  was  not  rightly 
employed,  or  not  resorted  to  sufficiently  early  ; 
and  they  persuade  those  who  escape  that  they 
escaped  by  virtue  of  the  preventive  remedy.  If 
the  plunder  they  reap  from  the  foolish  and  the 
frightened  were  all,  this  would  be  of  less  conse- 
quence ;  but,  unfortunately,  the  hope  of  security 
without  their  undergoing  a  painful  operation 
leads  many  to  neglect  the  only  trustworthy  mode 
of  obtaining  safety. 

A  still  more  anxious  inquiry  next  arises. 
Whoever  has  been  bitten  by  a  rabid  or  by  a  sus- 
pected animal  must  be  considered,  and  will  gen- 
erally consider  himself,  as  being  in  more  or  less 
danger  of  hydrophobia.  This  dread  is  not  en- 
tirely removed  even  by  the  adoption  of  the  best 
means  of  prevention.  Now,  how  long  does  this 
state  of  hazard  continue  ?  When  is  the  peril 
fairly  over  ?  After  what  lapse  of  time  may  the 
person  who  has  sustained  the  injury  lay  aside  all 
apprehension  of  the  disease  ?  To  this  inquiry  no 
satisfactory  reply  can  be  given.  In  a  vast  ma- 
jority of  instances,  indeed,  the  disorder  has 
broken  out  within  two  months  from  the  infliction 
of  the  bite.  But  the  exceptions  to  this  rule  are 
too  numerous  to  permit  us  to  put  firm  trust  in 
the  immunity  foreshadowed  by  that  interval. 
Cases  are  recorded  in  which  five,  six,  eleven, 
nineteen  months  have  intervened  between  the 
insertion  of  the  poison  and  the  eruption  of  the 
consequent  malady.  Nay,  there  are  well-authen- 
ticated instances,  as  I  have  already  said,  of  the 
lapse  of  twenty-five  months,  of  more  than  five 
years,  or  even  of  seven  years.  In  these  cases  it 
is  most  probable  that  some  unsuspected  reinocu- 
lation,  some  fresh  application  of  the  peculiar 
virus,  has  taken  place.  If  not,  then  we  must 
conclude  that  the  poison  really  lies  imprisoned 
in  the  bitten  part,  and  only  becomes  destructive 
when,  under  certain  obscure  conditions,  and  at 
indefinite  periods,  it  gets  into  the  circulation. 

I  say  nothing  about  the  morbid  appearances 


found  in  persons  dead  of  hydrophobia,  for  I  am 
not  addressing  professional  readers.  But,  as  a 
help  toward  determining  whether  a  dog  which 
may  have  been  destroyed  under  equivocal  cir- 
cumstances was  indeed  rabid,  it  may  be  useful  to 
state  that  in  the  stomach  of  a  really  mad  dog 
there  are  always  to  be  found  very  unnatural  con- 
tents—  straw,  hay,  coal,  sticks,  horse -dung, 
earth — as  well  as  a  quantity  of  a  dark  fluid,  like 
thin  treacle,  altered  blood  in  fact. 

And  here  it  may  be  well  to  deprecate  and  de- 
nounce a  practice  much  too  common  with  us, 
that,  namely,  of  at  once  destroying  a  suspected 
dog,  by  which  some  one  has  been  bitten,  but 
about  the  true  condition  of  which  there  exists  no 
absolute  certainty.  The  dog  should  be  securely 
isolated  and  watched ;  a  day  or  two  will  be  suffi- 
cient for  solving  the  anxious  question.  If  he 
should  prove  really  mad,  he  should  then  of 
course  be  put  to  death,  as  mercifully  as  may  be. 
If,  on  the  other  hand,  he  remains  well,  not  only 
will  the  life  of  a  possibly  useful  and  favorite 
animal  be  saved,  but,  what  is  of  incomparably 
greater  importance,  the  mind  of  the  bitten  per- 
son will  be  freed  from  a  harassing  sense  of  dread, 
with  which  it  might  otherwise  be  haunted  for 
years  to  come. 

The  most  important  question  of  all  in  rela- 
tion to  my  present  purpose,  is  whether  rabies  can 
be  excited  by  any  other  cause  than  inoculation 
of  the  specific  virus ;  in  other  words,  whether  it 
has  any  other  source  than  contagion. 

Many  persons  believe  that  the  disease  may, 
and  does  often,  arise  de  novo  ;  and  causes  have 
been  assigned  which  certainly  are  not  true  causes. 
Thus  it  has  been  ascribed  to  extreme  heat  of  the 
weather.  It  is  thought  by  many  to  be  especially 
likely  to  occur  during  the  dog-days ;  and  to  be  in 
itself  a  sort  of  dog-lunacy,  having  the  same  rela- 
tionship to  Sirius  that  human  insanity  has  to  the 
moon — which  in  one  sense  is  probable  enough. 
But  abundant  statistical  evidence  has  been  col- 
lected in  this  and  in  other  countries,  that  the 
disease  occurs  at  all  seasons  of  the  year  indiffer- 
ently. The  cautions,  therefore,  which  are  annu- 
ally put  forth  in  hot  weather,  as  to  muzzling  dogs, 
etc.,  whatever  may  be  their  value,  would  be  as 
opportune  at  any  other  time.  The  disorder  has 
been  attributed  to  want  of  water  in  hot  weather, 
and  sometimes  to  want  of  food,  but  MM.  Dupuy- 
tren,  Breschet,  and  Magendie,  in  France,  caused 
both  dogs  and  cats  to  die  of  hunger  and  thirst, 
without  producing  the  smallest  approach  to  a 
state  of  rabies.  At  the  Veterinary  School  at 
Alfort  three  dogs  were  subjected  to  some  very 


HYDROPHOBIA  AND  RABIES. 


225 


cruel  but  decisive  experiments.  It  was  during 
the  heat  of  summer,  and  they  were  all  chained  in 
the  full  blaze  of  the  sun.  To  one  salted  meat 
was  given,  to  the  second  water  only,  and  to  the 
third  neither  food  nor  drink.  They  all  died,  but 
none  of  them  became  rabid.  Nor  does  the  sus- 
picion that  the  disorder  may  have  some  connec- 
tion with  the  rutting  period  in  these  animals  ap- 
pear to  rest  on  any  better  foundation. 

Some  very  interesting  points  still  remain  to 
be  considered  as  to  the  communication  of  these 
diseases  from  one  person  or  animal  to  another. 

Mr.  Youatt,  whose  experience  on  this  sub- 
ject was  very  large,  did  not  think  that  the  saliva 
of  a  rabid  animal  could  communicate  the  disor- 
der through  the  unbroken  cuticle.  He  believed 
that  there  must  be  some  abrasion  or  breach  of 
surface.  He  held,  however,  that  it  might  be 
communicated  by  the  mere  contact  of  the  saliva 
with  the  mucous  membranes.  Of  its  harmless- 
ness  on  the  sound  skin  he  offered  this  presump- 
tive evidence — that  his  own  hands  had  many 
times  been  covered  with  the  saliva  of  the  mad 
dog  with  perfect  impunity.  He  has  recorded 
some  singular  instances  in  which  hydrophobia 
and  rabies  were  caused  by  contact  of  the  mor- 
bid saliva  with  the  mucous  membranes.  A  man 
endeavored  to  untie  by  the  help  of  his  teeth  a 
knot  that  had  been  firmly  drawn  in  a  cord. 
Eight  weeks  afterward  he  died  undeniably  hy- 
drophobic. It  was  then  recollected  that  with 
this  cord  a  mad  dog  had  been  tied  up.  A  wom- 
an was  attacked  by  a  rabid  dog,  and  escaped 
with  some  rents  in  her  gown.  In  the  act  of 
mending  it  sfae  thoughtlessly  pressed  down  the 
seam  with  her  teeth.  She  also  died.  Horses  are 
said  to  have  died  mad  after  eating  straw  upon 
which  rabid  pigs  had  died.  Portal  was  assured 
that  two  dogs  which  had  licked  the  mouth  of 
another  dog  that  was  rabid  were  attacked  with 
rabies  seven  or  eight  days  afterward.  Mr.  Gil- 
man,  of  Highgate,  in  a  little  pamphlet  on  Hydro- 
phobia, quotes  an  instance  from  Dr.  Perceval,  in 
which  a  mad  dog  licked  the  face  of  a  sleeping 
man,  near  his  mouth,  and  the  man  died  of  hydro- 
phobia, although  the  strictest  search  failed  to 
discover  the  smallest  scratch  or  abrasion  on  any 
part  of  his  skin.  These  facts,  if  authentic,  settle 
the  question ;  unless,  indeed,  the  lips  of  those 
who  perished  happened  to  have  been  chapped  or 
abraded. 

It  is  a  fearful  question  whether  the  saliva  of 
a  human  being  afflicted  with  hydrophobia  is  ca- 
pable of  inoculating  another  human  being  with 
the  same  disease.     Mr.  Youatt  says  it  is,  that 

51 


the  disease  has  undoubtedly  been  so  produced. 
If  this  be  so,  the  fact  should  teach  us — not  to 
desert  or  neglect  these  unhappy  patients,  still 
less  to  murder  them  by  smothering,  or  by  bleed- 
ing them  to  death — but  to  minister  to  their 
wants  with  certain  precautions  ;  so  as  not  to 
suffer  their  saliva  to  come  in  contact  with  any 
sore  or  abraded  surface,  nor,  if  it  can  be  avoided, 
with  any  mucous  surface.  On  the  other  hand, 
all  carefulness  of  that  kind  will  be  superfluous  if 
the  disease  cannot  be  propagated  by  the  human 
saliva.  Certainly  many  experimenters  have  tried 
in  vain  to  inoculate  dogs  with  the  spittle  of  an  hy- 
drophobic man  ;  but  there  is  one  authentic  experi- 
ment on  record  which  makes  it  too  probable  that 
the  disease,  though  seldom  or  with  difficulty  com- 
municated, may  yet  be  commumcable.  The  experi- 
ment is  said  to  have  been  made  by  MM.  Magendie 
and  Breschet,  at  the  Hotel  Dieu,  in  Paris,  and  to 
have  been  witnessed  by  a  great  number  of  medi- 
cal men  and  students.  Two  healthy  dogs  were 
inoculated  on  June  19,  1813,  with  the  saliva  of  a 
patient  named  Surlu,  who  died  the  same  day  in 
the  hospital.  One  of  these  dogs  became  mad  on 
the  27th  of  the  following  month.  They  caused 
this  dog  to  bite  others,  which  in  their  turn  be- 
came rabid  also  ;  and  in  this  way  the  malady  was 
propagated  among  dogs  during  the  whole  sum- 
mer. Now  this,  though  a  very  striking  statement, 
ought  not  to  be  considered  conclusive,  for  it  is  pos- 
sible that  the  disease  in  the  first  dog  might  have 
had  some  unknown  and  unsuspected  origin.  We 
have  enough,  however,  in  this  one  experiment  to 
make  us  observe  all  requisite  caution  when  en- 
gaged in  attending  upon  an  hydrophobic  pa- 
tient. 

In  an  elaborate  and  valuable  treatise  on 
"  Rabies  and  Hydrophobia,"  Mr.  George  Fleming 
adduces  conflicting  evidence  as  to  the  safety  or 
danger  of  drinking  the  milk  of  a  rabid  animal, 
and  he  wisely  advises  the  avoidance  of  such 
milk.  Pertinent  to  this  question  I  have  received 
from  Mr.  Wrench,  of  Baslow,  even  while  this  pa- 
per is  passing  through  the  press,  the  following 
history,  which  shows  that  the  disease  is  trans- 
missible from  the  mother  to  her  offspring  through 
the  medium  of  her  milk  : 

"  In  the  middle  of  May,  1876,  on  Mr.  Twigg's 
farm,  Harewood  Grange,  near  Chatsworth,  a  mad 
dog  bit  eighteen  sheep  out  of  a  flock  of  twentty- 
one,  which  were  at  the  time  suckling  thirty  lambs. 
The  sheep  were  all  bitten  about  the  /ace,  and  had 
evidently  been  defending  their  lambs  during  the 
greater  part  of  the  night  in  which  the  attack  was 
made.      Mr.   Twigg    examined   both    sheep  and 


226 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


lambs,  and  could  not  find  a  single  wound  on  any 
of  the  latter.  In  about  a  month  both  sheep  and 
lambs  began  to  die  at  the  rate  of  two  or  three  a 
day.  The  sheep  ran  wildly  about,  sometimes 
carrying  stones  in  then-  mouths,  and  the  lambs  ran 
away.  Of  the  eighteen  sheep  that  had  been  bitten 
sixteen  died ;  and  of  the  thirty  lambs,  not  one  of 
of  which  was  believed  to  have  been  bitten,  four- 
teen died.  On  the  next  farm  the  same  thing  hap- 
pened to  a  smaller  extent." 

What  can  be  said  of  the  treatment  of  hydro- 
phobia or  of  rabies  ?  There  is  no  authentic  case 
on  record  that  I  am  aware  of  in  which  an  hydro- 
phobic person  has  recovered.  As  it  has  been  so 
it  is  still.  'Iarpta  larai  davaros — the  Physician 
that  cures  is  Death.  It  would  be  idle  to  discuss 
any  curative  measures  after  the  peculiar  symp- 
toms of  the  disease  have  once  set  in. 

Not  so,  however,  with  respect  to  prevention ; 
that  is  the  most  important  object  of  our  practice 
— that  and  the  euthanasia. 

The  early  and  complete  excision  of  the  bitten 
part  is  the  only  means  of  prevention  in  which 
much  confidence  can  be  placed  ;  and  even  that  is 
open  to  a  source  of  fallacy.  In  the  majority  of 
cases  no  hydrophobia  would  ensue,  though  noth- 
ing at  all  were  done  to  the  wound.  No  doubt 
many  persons  undergo  the  operation  needlessly. 
But  in  no  given  case  can  we  be  sure  of  this.  If 
excision  should  for  any  reason  be  impossible,  the 
wound  should  be  cauterized.  Of  the  efficacy  of 
the  latter  plan  we  have  this  evidence  :  Mr.  You- 
att,  who  trusted  to  it,  and  who  had  himself  been 
bitten  seven  times,  tells  us  that  he  had  operated 
with  the  lunar  caustic — nitrate  of  silver — on 
more  than  four  hundred  persons,  all  bitten  by 
dogs  unquestionably  rabid,  and  that  he  had  not 
lost  a  case.  One  man  died  of  fright,  but  not 
one  of  hydrophobia.  Moreover,  a  surgeon  of  St. 
George's  Hospital  told  him  that  ten  times  that 
number  had  undergone  the  operation  of  excision 
there  after  being  bitten  by  dogs  (all  of  which 
might  not,  however,  have  been  rabid),  and  it  was 
not  known  that  there  had  been  a  single  fatal  is- 
sue. Excision,  in  my  judgment,  must,  when  prac- 
ticable, be  the  most  trustworthy  and  eligible  pro- 
cedure. Trousseau  recommends,  as  a  ready  and 
quick  preventive,  the  actual  cautery — that  is,  the 
destruction  of  the  poison  and  the  tissues  of  the 
bitten  part  by  searing  them  with  a  red-hot  iron. 
They  might  be  as  readily  and  thoroughly  de- 
stroyed by  brushing  the  interior  of  the  wound, 
by  means  of  a  glass  brush,  with  nitric  acid. 

But  if  the  wound  be  of  such  a  size  and  in 
such  a  place  that  it  can  be  excised,  what  is  the 


best  method  for  its  excision  ?     This  is  the  advice 
of  my  old  master,  Abernethy  : 

"  The  cell "  (he  says)  "  into  which  a  penetrat- 
ing tooth  has  gone  must  be  cut  out.  Let  a  wooden 
skewer  be  shaped  as  nearly  as  may  be  into  the 
form  of  the  tooth,  and  then  be  placed  into  the 
cavity  made  by  the  tooth,  and  next  let  the  skewer 
and  the  whole  cell  containing  it  be  removed  to- 
gether by  an  elliptical  incision.  "We  may  examine 
the  removed  cell  to  see  if  every  portion  with  which 
the  tooth  might  have  had  contact  has  been  taken 
away  :  the  cell  may  even  be  filled  with  quicksil- 
ver to  see  if  a  globule  will  escape.  The  efficient 
performance  of  the  excision  does  not  depend  upon 
the  extent,  but  upon  the  accuracy,  of  the  opera- 
tion." 

Early  ezcinon,  then,  is  almost  a  sure  preven- 
tive ;  but  in  all  suspicious  cases,  if  the  operation 
have  been  omitted  in  the  first  instance,  it  will  be 
advisable  to  cut  out  the  wound  or  its  scar  within 
the  first  two  months,  or  at  any  time  before  pre- 
liminary feelings  in  the  spot  foreshow  the  coming 
outbreak.  Later  would  be  too  late.  Dr.  Rich- 
ard Bright  has  recorded  a  case  in  which  the  arm 
was  amputated  upon  the  supervention  of  tingling 
and  other  symptoms  in  the  hand  on  which  the 
patient  had  been  bitten  some  time  before ;  but 
the  amputation  did  not  save  him. 

The  new  power  which  we  have  happily  ob- 
tained of  suspending  sensation  generally  by  the 
inspiration  of  certain  vopors,  or  locally  by  the 
ether-spray,  will  contribute  at  least  to  the  pre- 
vention of  hydrophobia  by  divesting  the  process 
of  excision  or  cauterization  of  its  pain,  and  there- 
fore of  its  terrors.  « 

For  my  own  part,  if  I  had  received  a  bite 
from  a  decidedly  rabid  animal  upon  my  arm  or 
leg,  and  the  bite  was  such  that  the  whole  wound 
could  not  be  cut  out  or  thoroughly  cauterized, 
my  reason  would  teach  me  to  desire,  and  I  hope 
I  should  have  fortitude  enough  to  endure,  ampu- 
tation of  the  limb  above  the  place  of  the  injury. 

As  to  the  euthanasia,  it  may  best  be  promoted 
by  some  narcotic  drug;  and  I  know  of  none  more 
eligible  than  the  chloral  hydrate,  administered  in 
such  doses  and  at  such  intervals  as  may  suffice, 
without  shortening  life,  to  quiet  the  restless  agi- 
tation, and  to  mitigate  the  sufferings,  of  its  in- 
evitable close.  Should  the  patient  be  unable  to 
swallow  that  remedy,  recourse  may  be  had,  under 
similar  limitation,  to  its  subcutaneous  injection, 
or  to  some  anaesthetic  vapor. 

What,  it  may  be  asked,  should  be  done  by  or 
for  a  man  who  has  been  bitten  by  a  rabid  animal, 


HYDROPHOBIA  AND  RABIES. 


227 


and  has  no  access  to  immediate  medical  help  ? 
Should  he,  the  wound  being  within  reach  of  his 
lips,  or  should  another  person  for  him,  try  to 
suck  out  the  inserted  venom  ?  That  would  prob- 
ably be  his  first  instinctive  thought.  But  when 
I  call  to  mind  what  Mr.  Youatt  has  said  of  the 
danger  attending  the  contact  of  the  poisonous 
saliva  with  even  sound  mucous  membranes — and, 
further,  the  risk  that  the  sucker's  lips  might, 
whether  he  knew  it  or  not,  be  chapped  or  abraded 
— I  dare  not  counsel  the  expedient  of  suction. 
By  adopting  it  the  sufferer  might  be  rushing,  or 
bringing  his  helping  neighbor,  into  the  very  peril 
he  was  anxious  to  avert. 

A  cupping-glass  would  be  a  safer  application 
of  the  same  principle,  provided  that  the  place 
and  size  of  the  wound  would  admit  of  its  being 
covered  by  the  glass.  But,  at  best,  a  cupping- 
glass  extemporized  and  clumsily  used  under  ur- 
gent and  agitating  circumstances  can  scarcely  be 
advisable. 

What  I  should  most  strongly  recommend,  and 
fortunately  it  is  very  easy  of  performance,  is 
this :  First,  that  a  bandage  tight  enough  to  re- 
strain the  venous  circulation  should  be  applied 
just  above  the  wound,  between  it  and  the  heart ; 
and  next,  that  without  any  delay  a  continuous 
stream  of  tepid  or  cold  water  should  be  poured 
from  a  height,  and  therefore  with  a  certain  degree 
of  force,  upon  and  into  the  wound.  This  might 
be  done  from  the  spout  of  a  tea-kettle,  or  better 
from  a  water-tap,  and  it  should  be  persevered 
with  even  for  an  hour  or  two,  or  until  the  arrival 
of  medical  aid.  In  this  way  the  implanted  poison 
would,  in  all  likelihood,  be  thoroughly  washed 
away,  and  the  safety  of  the  sufferer  secured. 
Nevertheless  this  process  need  not  exclude  sub- 
sequent excision  or  cauterization,  should  one  or 
the  other  be  feasible  or  thought  desirable,  "  to 
make  assurance  doubly  sure." 

The  opinion  which,  as  my  readers  must  have 
anticipated,  I  entertain,  that  rabies  has  at  present 
no  other  source  than  contagion,  has  been  com- 
bated with  the  same  arguments  as  have  been  used 
in  the  analogous  case  of  small-pox ;  such  as  that 
the  disease  must  at  some  time  have  had  a  begin- 
ning, and  therefore  why  not  now  ?  that  it  often 
springs  up  where  no  contagion  can  be  traced, 
and  sometimes  where  contagion  seems  to  be  im- 
possible. These  arguments  were  discussed  in  my 
former  paper,  and  their  futility  fully  demonstrated. 
I  refrain,  therefore,  from  reconsidering  them  here. 
But  as  I  then  related  two  striking  instances  in 
which  contagion  had  been  deemed  impossible,  but 
in  which  its  operation  was  at  length  detected  by 


some  very  singular  evidence,  so  I  will  here  give  a 
condensed  account  of  a  like  result  under  similar 
circumstances  in  respect  of  rabies. 

Mr.  Blaine,  Mr.  Youatt's  partner,  was  con- 
sulted about  a  gentleman's  dog,  and  pronounced 
it  undoubtedly  rabid.  But  the  dog,  it  was  al- 
leged, had  never  for  many  months  been  out-of- 
doors,  nor,  indeed,  out  of  the  sight  of  its  master, 
or,  in  the  master's  absence,  of  his  valet,  who  had 
especial  charge  of  the  dog.  Concurring  with  Mr. 
Youatt  in  opinion,  and  anxious  to  learn  the  truth 
in  a  matter  so  important,  Mr.  Blaine  examined 
the  servants  very  closely ;  and  it  was  at  length 
remembered  by  the  footman  that  he  had  had  to 
answer  his  master's  bell  one  morning  when  the 
valet,  whose  business  it  was  to  take  the  dog  from 
the  bedroom,  was  accidentally  absent ;  and  he 
also  distinctly  recollected  that  the  dog  accom- 
panied him  to  the  street-door  while  he  was  re- 
ceiving a  message,  went  into  the  street,  and  was 
there  suddenly  attacked  by  another  dog  that  was 
passing,  seemingly  without  an  owner.  The  wan- 
dering dog  was,  no  doubt,  rabid. 

Again,  a  Newfoundland  dog,  which  was  chained 
constantly  to  his  kennel  during  the  day,  and  suf- 
fered to  be  at  large  during  the  night  within  an 
inclosed  yard,  became  rabid ;  and  as  no  dog  was 
known  to  have  had  access  to  the  yard,  the  owner 
felt  sure  that  the  disease  must  have  arisen  spon- 
taneously. Mr.  Blaine,  however,  elicited  the  facts 
that  the  gardener  to  the  family  remembered  to 
have  heard  when  in  b'ed  one  night  an  unusual 
noise,  as  if  the  Newfoundland  dog  was  quarreling 
with  another.  He  recollected,  also,  that  about 
the  same  time  he  saw  marks  of  a  dog's  feet  in 
his  garden,  which  lay  on  the  other  side  of  the 
yard,  and  the  remains  of  hair  were  noticed  on 
the  top  of  the  wall.  About  the  same  time  the 
neighborhood  had  been  alarmed  by  the  absence 
of  a  large  dog  belonging  to  one  of  the  inhabitants, 
which  had  escaped  from  confinement  during  the 
night  under  evident  symptoms  of  disease.  Here 
also  was  a  ready  solution  of  the  previous  mys- 
tery. 

I  can  pretend  to  no  originality  on  this  sub- 
ject. Mr.  Youatt  believed  that  rabies  in  the  dog, 
and  in  all  creatures,  results  always  from  the  in- 
troduction of  a  specific  virus  into  the  system. 
He  maintained  that  a  well-enforced  quarantine 
—every  dog  in  the  kingdom  being  confined  sep- 
arately— for  seven  months  would  extirpate  the 
disease.  And  the  late  Sir  James  Bardsley  pro- 
posed a  plan  which  he  thought  would  prove  effi- 
cacious for  getting  rid  of  the  pestilence. 


22S 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


"  It  consists  "  (he  wrote)  "  merely  in  establish- 
ing a  universal  quarantine  for  dogs  within  the  king- 
dom, and  a  total  prohibition  of  the  importation  of 
those  animals  during  the  existence  of  this  quaran- 
tine. The  efficacy  of  this  preventive  scheme  rests 
upon  the  validity  of  the  following  propositions : 
First,  that  the  disease  always  originates  in  the  ca- 
nine species  ;  secondly,  that  it  never  arises  in  them 
spontaneously  ;  thirdly,  that  the  contagion,  when 
received  by  them,  never  remains  latent  more  than 
a  few  months.  If  these  propositions  have  been 
established,  it  clearly  follows  that  by  destroying 
every  dog  in  which  the  disease  should  break  out 
during  strict  quarantine,  not  only  would  the  propa- 
gation of  the  malady  be  prevented,  but  the  absolute 
source  of  the  poison  would  be  entirely  suppressed." 

It  is  much  to  be  wondered  at  that  these  wise 
suggestions  should  have  remained  so  long  neglect- 
ed by  our  sanitary  authorities. 

No  reference  has  been  made  either  by  Mr. 
Youatt  or  by  Sir  James  Bardsley  to  the  possi- 
ble perpetuation  of  the  disease  by  rabid  cats. 
Mad  cats,  however,  are  far  less  common  than 
mad  dogs.  A  cat  is  not  an  aggressively  fight- 
ing animal.  At  any  time,  it  would  rather  fly 
from  than  resist  an  attacking  dog  ;  and,  if  there 
were  no  dogs  to  receive  and  to  impart  the  dis- 
ease, rabies  would  soon,  so  far  as  the  cat  is  con- 
cerned, die  out  of  its  own  accord. 

I  have  now  set  forth  to  the  best  of  my  abili- 
ty— and,  perhaps,  too  much  in  detail — the  amount 
of  our  knowledge  upon  a  subject  which  is  at 
present  painfully  engrossing  the  attention  of  the 
public.  I  have  shown  that  we  possess  no  valid 
evidence  of  the  spontaneous  origin,  nowadays, 
of  rabies  in  the  dog  or  in  any  other  animal ; 
and  that  hydrophobia  owes  its  parentage  exclu- 
sively to  the  poison  furnished  in  the  first  instance 
by  the  rabid  dog,  or  by  rabid  animals  of  the  same 
species  with  the  dog. 

I  propose  next  to  fortify  my  position  by 
pointing  out  that  large  portions  of  the  habitable 
world,  abounding  in  dogs,  are  now,  and  have 
always  been,  entirely  free  from  those  dreadful 
twin  pests,  rabies  and  hydrophobia. 

It  is  my  good  fortune  to  have  found  among 
my  own  friends  and  acquaintances  several  per- 
sons able  to  give  me  authentic  and  valuable  in- 
formation on  this  subject. 

Thus  the  Bishop  of  Lichfield,  who  lived  more 
than  twenty-five  years  in  New  Zealand,  tells  me 
that  he  never  heard  of  a  mad  dog  in  those  isl- 
ands, and  that  Bishop  Abraham's  experience, 
who  was  for  seventeen  years  resident  there, 
agrees  with  his  own. 


Bishop  Macdougall  writes  me  word  that  there 
is  in  Borneo  a  native  dog,  like  a  small  jackal, 
but  with  a  curly  rather  than  a  bushy  tail,  kept 
in  numbers  by  the  Dyaks  for  hunting  deer  and 
pigs.  These  dogs  never  bark,  but  when  on  the 
scent  for  game  howl  with  a  very  musical  note. 
The  Chinese  settlers  also  have  brought  in  a  dog, 
resembling  the  Pomeranian  breed.  These  bark 
abundantly,  and  among  the  settlers,  who  eat  the 
puppies  as  a  delicacy,  they  are  so  numerous  as 
to  have  become  a  general  nuisance ;  yet,  during 
the  twenty  years  in  which  the  bishop  resided  at 
Sarawak,  he  never  heard  of  a  single  instance  of 
rabies. 

I  was  told  a  few  years  since,  by  Sir  Henry 
Young,  that  in  Tasmania,  of  which  he  was  for 
seven  years  the  governor,  although  there  were 
plenty  of  dogs,  there  had  been  no  mad  dogs,  and 
therefore  no  hydrophobia.  Evidence  to  precisely 
the  same  effect  has  been  furnished  to  a  friend 
of  mine  by  Sir  Valentine  Fleming,  who  left  Tas- 
mania in  1874,  after  a  residence  there  of  about 
thirty-two  years.  He  testifies  to  the  great  num- 
ber of  dogs  in  that  colony,  and  to  the  total  ab- 
sence of  hydrophobia.  Again,  I  have  it  under 
the  hand  of  Sir  George  Macleay,  who,  with  Cap- 
tain Sturt,  diligently  explored,  for  other  pur- 
poses, all  the  settlements  of  what  has  been  well 
called  the  "  insular  continent "  of  Australia,  that 
the  dogs  there  are  troublesomely  plentiful,  that 
hydrophobia  is  utterly  unknown,  and  that  rabies 
has  never  been  witnessed  in  the  dingo,  or  wild- 
dog  of  those  parts. 

It  had  been  stated  by  Dr.  Heineken  that  curs 
of  the  most  wretched  condition  abound  in  Madei- 
ra ;  that  they  are  afflicted  with  almost  every  dis- 
ease, tormented  with  flies  and  heat,  and  thirst 
and  famine,  yet  no  rabid  dog  was  ever  seen  there  ; 
and  I  have  quite  recently  been  assured  by  Dr. 
Grabham,  whose  personal  knowledge  of  Madeira 
covers  sixteen  years,  and  who  states  that  he  is 
well  acquainted  with  the  local  traditions,  and 
the  writings  of  medical  men  there,  that  rabies 
and  hydrophobia  are,  and  always  have  been,  un- 
known in  that  island. 

Mr.  Thomas  Bigg-Wither  spent  three  or  four 
years  in  South  Brazil,  within  the  tropics.  He 
and  his  party  hunted  there  the  wild-dog  and  the 
jaguar  (a  species  of  tiger)  with  a  pack  of  fifty 
smooth-haired  dogs  of  various  breeds,  which  gave 
tongue  during  their  hunting.  Mr.  Bigg-Wither 
has  assured  me  that  hydrophobia  and  rabies  are 
quite  unheard  of  in  that  part  of  the  world. 

We  have  seen  that  conditions  of  temperature 
have  nothing  to  do  with  the  prevalence  of  these 


HYDROPHOBIA  AND  RABIES. 


229 


diseases.  It  is  interesting,  however,  to  compare 
this  tropical  experience  with  what  has  been  ob- 
served in  the  opposite  climate  of  the  arctic  regions. 

Dr.  John  Rae,  who  has  been  good  enough  to 
write  to  me  on  these  subjects,  was  for  twenty 
years  in  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company's  Territory, 
ten  of  which  years  were  spent  at  Moose  Factory, 
on  the.  shore  of  Hudson's  Bay,  and  a  year  or  two 
each  at  various  other  stations  as  far  north  as  the 
arctic  circle,  at  all  of  which  dogs  in  greater  or 
less  number  are  kept  for  sledging  purposes,  yet 
he  cannot  remember  to  have  seen  or  heard  of  a 
single  case  of  the  diseases  in  question,  either  in 
dog  or  in  man.  "  My  knowledge,"  Dr.  Rae  says, 
"of  the  Esquimaux  is  much  more  limited,  for,  al- 
though I  have  seen  these  interesting  people  at 
various  parts  of  the  arctic  coast,  I  have  win- 
tered only  twice  among  them,  on  both  occasions 
at  Repulse  Bay.  But  I  never  saw  or  heard  of 
any  disease  resembling  hydrophobia." 

My  distinguished  friend,  Admiral  Sir  George 
Back,  who  is  cognizant  of  Dr.  Rae's  testimony 
in  this  matter,  fully  confirms  it  by  his  own  expe- 
rience gathered  in  five  expeditions  of  discovery 
to  the  arctic  regions  during  a  period  of  eleven 
years'  service. 

A  portion  of  Dr.  Rae's  information,  although 
it  has  no  direct  bearing  upon  my  main  purpose, 
may  prove  as  interesting  to  my  readers  as  it  has 
been  to  myself: 

"  The  food  of  the  dogs  in  Hudson's  Bay  consists 
wholly  of  meat  or  fish,  or  of  a  mixture  of  both ; 
meat  being  the  chief  diet  in  the  prairies,  while  fish 
are  almost  universally  given  (except  when  on  a 
journey)  in  other  parts  of  the  country.  In  the 
summer,  when  not  required  for  sledging,  the  dogs 
are  sent  in  charge  of  a  man  or  two  to  a  fishery, 
where  they  can  be  well  and  cheaply  fed.  The 
usual  ration  is  a  fish  weighing  three  or  four  pounds, 
eaten  raw.  The  best  and  lightest  food  for  the  dogs 
when  at  work  is  dry  buffalo  or  deer  meat,  about 
two  or  two  and  a  half  pounds  of  which  is  a  day's 
allowance."  l 

Colonel  Home,  C.  B.,  an  engineer  officer  living 
last  year  for  some  months  at  Constantinople,  in- 
forms a  friend  of  mine  that,  having  a  horror  of 
hydrophobia,  he  made  repeated  and  special  in- 
quiries there,  and  was  assured  that  no  instance 
of  the  disease  was  ever  known  in  that  city.  He 
describes  the  scavenger-dog  "  as  being  in  temper 

1  All  those  who  have  heen  personally  conversant 
with  the  arctic  sledge-dogs  agree  in  stating  that  they 
are  subject  to  a  fatal  kind  of  insanity  quite  distinct 
from  true  rabies,  and  accordingly  not  productive  of 
hydrophobia. 


and  feeling  a  dog,  but  his  appearance  is  that  of 
a  wolf — a  dog  in  wolf's  clothes.  He  has  short 
pricked  ears,  and  a  bushy  tail  which  looks  as  if  it 
had  lost  a  couple  of  joints.  Usually  he  is  of  a 
foxy  hue,  but  occasionally  dark  and  almost  black 
on  the  back,  where  a  sore  is  often  to  be  seen. 
His  fur  is  very  thick  and  shaggy,  and  he  is  of  the 
same  size  as  a  wolf."  There  are  in  the  Zoologi- 
cal Gardens  two  Syrian  wolves  which  present  an 
exact  fac-simile  of  the  Constantinople  scavenger- 
dog.  These  dogs,  as  is  well  known,  form  an  im- 
portant institution  in  Constantinople,  clearing  the 
streets  and  eating  all  the  offal  there  to  be  found. 
Colonel  Home  speaks  of  them  as  friendly  and  fa- 
miliar, and  in  no  way  a  nuisance,  unless  some 
tribe  of  "  civilized "  dogs  quarrel  and  fight  at 
night  with  them  or  with  each  other,  when  the 
noise  they  make  is  fearful.  These  civilized  dogs 
— country  or  shepherds'  dogs — seem  to  be  badly 
named,  for  they  are  fierce  and  dangerous,  and 
Colonel  Home  had  to  shoot  one  of  two  which  had 
pursued  and  attacked  him. 

In  the  Times  newspaper  for  the  23d  of  Octo- 
ber, Mr.  Ch.  Kroll  Laporte,  of  Birkdale  Place, 
Southport,  writes  that  he  never  heard  of  a  single 
case  of  hydrophobia  in  Africa  during  travels 
there  extending  over  two  years. 

With  more  time  and  opportunity  at  my  dis- 
posal I  might  doubtless  find  further  examples  of 
the  entire  absence  of  rabies,  and  therefore  of  hy- 
drophobia, from  certain  places ;  but  of  this  I  have 
surely  said  enough ;  and  should  it  be  alleged  tha.t 
in  other  places,  where  these  diseases  had  pre- 
viously been  unknown,  they  have  at  length  ap- 
peared, my  argument  will  be  only  strengthened  if 
I  can  account  for  this  by  special  circumstances. 
To  take  a  single  instance  by  way  of  sample :  I 
have  been  assured  upon  unquestionable  authority 
that  Demerara  had  not  within  the  memory  of 
man  been  afflicted  by  the  presence  of  hydropho- 
bia till  the  year  1872,  when  rabies  was  imported 
by  the  influx  of  a  large  number  of  dogs  from  Bar- 
badoes,  in  avoidance  of  a  tax  which  had  there 
been  imposed  upon  those  animals. 

If  it  be  admitted  that  hydrophobia  never  oc- 
curs except  from  the  reception  of  the  specific 
poison  from  a  rabid  animal,  it  follows  that,  rabies 
being  expunged,  hydrophobia  would  necessarily 
disappear.  For  this  end  it  would  seem  to  be  re- 
quired that  all  dogs  in  the  kingdom  should  be  sub- 
jected to  a  rigid  quarantine  of  several  months, 
as  recommended  by  Mr.Youatt  and  by  Sir  James 
Bardsley.  In  order  to  the  effectual  enforcement 
of  such  quarantine,  some  legislative  measures, 
and  the  planning  and  strict  observance  of  certain 


230 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


regulations  on  the  part  respectively  of  our  sani- 
tary authorities  and  our  police-officers,  are  pre- 
sumably prerequisites.  These  are  matters  with 
which  I  am  neither  called  upon  nor  competent  to 
deal.  There  will  be  difficulties  in  the  way,  but  I 
am  persuaded  that,  if  resolutely  grappled  with, 
they  will  not  prove  invincible. 

Here,  then,  my  share  toward  the  accomplish- 
ment of  the  great  object  of  this  paper  comes  nat- 
urally to  a  close.  Meanwhile,  until  the  needful 
steps  for  the  extirpation  of  rabies  can  be  fully 
organized  and  brought  into  operation,  great  vigi- 


lance will  be  necessary  to  keep  in  check  the  ex- 
isting evil.  The  superfluity  of  dogs  in  the  king- 
dom must  be  abated  by  the  unshrinking  destruc- 
tion of  many ;  and  all  dogs  should  be  narrowly 
watched,  most  especially  dogs  known  to  have 
been  bitten  or  to  have  been  quarreling,  sick  dogs, 
wandering  and  ownerless  dogs,  and  such  as  are 
the  playthings  of  dog-fanciers  and  others ;  and 
all  such  other  measures  as  may  be  legal  should 
be  taken  for  lessening  the  peril  and  the  panic 
which  is  at  present  said  to  be  "  frighting  the  isle 
from  her  propriety." — Nineteenth  Century. 


PSYCHOLOGICAL  CUEIOSITIES   OF  SKEPTICISM. 


A  REPLY  TO  DR.  CARPENTER. 


By  ALFEED  E.  WALLACE,  F.  E.  S. 


IN  the  last  number  of  this  periodical  Dr.  Car- 
penter has  treated  his  readers  to  a  collection 
of  what  he  terms  "  Psychological  Curiosities  of 
Spiritualism."  Throughout  his  article  he  takes 
Mr.  Crookes  and  myself  as  typical  examples  of 
men  suffering  under  "  an  epidemic  delusion  com- 
parable to  the  witchcraft  epidemic  of  the  seven- 
teenth century,"  and  he  holds  up  our  names  to 
wonder  and  scorn  because,  after  many  years  of 
inquiry,  observation,  and  experiment,,  and  after 
duly  weighing  all  the  doubts  suggested  and  ex- 
planations proposed  by  Dr.  Carpenter  and  oth- 
ers, we  persist  in  accepting  the  uniform  and  con- 
sistent testimony  of  our  senses.  Are  we,  indeed, 
"  psychological  curiosities  "  because  we  rely  upon 
what  philosophers  assure  us  is  our  sole  and  ulti- 
mate test  of  truth — perception  and  reason  ?  And 
should  we  be  less  rare  and  "  curious  "  phenomena 
if,  rejecting  as  worthless  all  our  personally  ac- 
quired knowledge,  we  should  blindly  accept  Dr. 
Carpenter's  suggestions  of  what  he  thinks  must 
have  happened  in  place  of  what  we  know  did 
happen  ?  If  such  is  the  judgment  of  the  world, 
we  must  for  a  time  submit  to  the  scorn  and  ridi- 
cule which  usually  fall  to  the  lot  of  unpopular 
minoritios,  but  we  look  forward  with  confidence 
to  the  advent  of  a  higher  class  of  critics  than 
our  present  antagonist,  critics  who  will  not  con- 
descend to  a  style  of  controversy  so  devoid  of 
good  taste  and  impartiality  as  that  adopted  by 
Dr.  Carpenter. 

It  is  with  great  reluctance  that  I  continue  a 


discussion  so  purely  personal  as  this  has  become, 
but  I  have  really  no  choice.  If  Dr.  Carpenter 
had  contented  himself  with  impugning  my  sanity 
or  my  sense  on  general  grounds,  I  should  not 
think  it  worth  while  to  write  a  word  in  reply. 
But,  when  I  find  my  facts  distorted  and  my  words 
perverted,  I  feel  bound  to  defend  myself,  not  for 
the  sake  of  my  personal  character,  but  in  order 
to  put  a  stop  to  a  mode  of  discussion  which  ren- 
ders all  evidence  unavailing,  and  sets  up  un- 
founded and  depreciatory  assertions  in  the  place 
of  fair  argument. 

I  now  ask  my  readers  to  allow  me  to  put  be- 
fore them  the  other  side  of  this  question ;  and  I 
assure  them  that,  if  they  will  read  through  this 
article,  they  will  acknowledge  that  the  strong 
language  I  have  used  is  fully  justified  by  the  facts 
which  I  shall  adduce. 

Those  who  believe  in  the  reality  of  the  ab- 
normal phenomena  whose  existence  is  denied  by 
Dr.  Carpenter  and  his  followers  have,  for  the 
most  part,  been  convinced  by  what  they  have 
seen  in  private  houses  and  among  friends  on 
whose  character  they  can  rely.  They  constitute 
a  not  uninfluential  body  of  literary  and  scientific 
men,  including  several  Fellows  of  the  Eoyal  So- 
ciety. The  cases  of  public  imposture  (real  or 
imaginary)  so  persistently  adduced  by  Dr.  Car- 
penter do  not  affect  their  belief,  which  is  alto- 
gether independent  of  public  exhibitions  ;  and 
they  probably,  with  myself,  look  upon  the  learned 
doctor,  who  tilts  against  facts  as  Don  Quixote 


PSYCHOLOGICAL   CURIOSITIES  OF  SKEPTICISM. 


231 


did  against  windmills,  and  with  equally  preju-  j 
dicial  results  to  himself,  as  a  curious  example 
of  fossilized  skepticism.  Thus  Sergeant  Cox, 
who  often  quotes  Dr.  Carpenter,  and  is  now 
quoted  by  him  with  approval,  speaks  of  the 
learned  doctor,  in  his  recent  address  to  the  Psy- 
chological Society,  as  being  "  enslaved  and  blind- 
ed "  by  "  prepossession,"  adding : 

"  There  is  not  a  more  notable  instance  of  this 
than  Dr.  Carpenter  himself,  whose  emphatic  warn- 
ings to  beware  of  it  are  doubtless  the  result  of  self- 
consciousness.  An  apter  illustration  of  this  human 
weakness  there  could  not  be.  The  characteristic 
feature  of  his  mind  is  prepossession.  This  weak- 
ness is  apparent  in  all  his  works.  It  matters  not 
what  the  subject,  if  once  he  has  formed  an  opinion 
upon  it,  that  opinion  so  prepossesses  his  whole 
mind  that  nothing  adverse  to  it  can  find  admission 
there.  It  affects  alike  his  senses  and  his  judgment." 

I  propose,  therefore,  as  a  companion  picture 
to  that  of  Messrs.  Crookes  and  "Wallace,  the  vic- 
tims of  an  epidemic  delusion,  to  exhibit  Dr.  Car- 
penter as  an  example  of  what  prepossession  and 
blind  skepticism  can  do  for  a  man.  I  shall  show 
how  it  makes  a  scientific  man  unscientific,  a  wise 
man  foolish,  an  honest  man  unjust.  To  refuse 
belief  to  unsupported  rumors  of  improbable 
events,  is  enlightened  skepticism ;  to  reject  all 
second-hand  or  anonymous  tales  to  the  injury  or 
depreciation  of  any  one,  is  charitable  skepticism  ; 
to  doubt  your  own  prepossessions  when  opposed 
to  facts  observed  and  reobserved  by  honest  and 
capable  men,  is  a  noble  skepticism.  But  the 
skepticism  of  Dr.  Carpenter  is  none  of  these.  It 
is  a  blind,  unreasoning,  arrogant  disbelief,  that 
marches  on  from  youth  to  age  with  its  eyes  shut 
to  all  that  opposes  its  own  pet  theories ;  that 
believes  its  own  judgment  to  be  infallible ;  that 
never  acknowledges  its  errors.  It  is  a  skepticism 
that  clings  to  its  refuted  theories,  and  refuses  to 
accept  new  truths. 

Near  the  commencement  of  his  article  Dr. 
Carpenter  tells  us  that  he  recurs  to  this  subject 
as  a  duty  to  the  public  and  to  assist  in  curing  a 
dangerous  mental  disease ;  and  that  he  would 
gladly  lay  it  aside  for  the  scientific  investigations 
which  afford  him  the  purest  enjoyment.  But  he 
also  tells  us  that  he  honestly  believes  that  he 
possesses  "  unusual  power  of  dealing  with  this 
subject ; "  and  as  Dr.  Carpenter  is  not  one  to  hide 
the  light  of  his  "  unusual  powers  "  under  a  bushel, 
we  may  infer  that  it  is  not  pure  duty  which  has 
caused  him,  in  addition  to  writing  long  letters  to 
Nature  and  announcing  a  "  full  answer  "  to  my- 
self and  Mr.  Crookes  in  the  forthcoming  new  edi- 


tion of  his  "  Lectures,"  to  expend  his  valuable 
time  and  energy  on  an  article  of  forty-eight  col- 
umns, founded  mainly  on  such  a  very  shaky  and 
wn-scientific  foundation  as  American  newspaper 
extracts  and  the  unsupported  statements  of  Mr. 
Home,  the  medium ; '  while  it  is  full  of  personal 
animosity  and  the  most  unmeaning  ridicule.  With 
extreme  bad  taste  he  compares  a  gentleman,  who, 
as  a  scholar,  a  thinker,  and  a  writer,  is  Dr.  Car- 

1  Mr.  Home  has  always  been  treated  by  Dr.  Carpen- 
ter as  an  impostor:  yet  now  he  quotes  him  as  an 
authority,  although  Mr.  Home's  accusations  against 
other  mediums  are  never  authenticated  in  any  way, 
and  appear  to  be  in  many  cases  pure  imagination. 
Dr.  Carpenter  will  no  doubt  now  disclaim  any  imputa- 
tion against  Mr.  Home,  and  pretend  to  consider  him 
only  as  the  victim  of  delusion.  But  this  is  absurd. 
For  does  he  not  maintain  that  Mr.  Home  was  never 
"  levitated,"  although  in  several  cases  the  fact  was 
proved  by  his  name  being  found  written  in  pencil  on 
the  ceiling,  where  it  remained  ?  This  must  have  been 
imposture  if  the  levitation  were  not,  as  claimed,  a 
reality.  Do  not  the  hands,  other  than  those  of  any 
persons  present,  which  have  often  appeared  at  Mr. 
Home's  seances  and  have  been  visible  and  even  tangi- 
ble to  all  present,  prove  (in  Dr.  Carpenter's  opinion) 
imposture?  Do  not  the  red-hot  coals  carried  about 
the  room  in  his  hands  prove  chemical  preparation,  and 
therefore  imposture  ?  Is  not  the  increase  or  decrease 
of  the  weight  of  a  table,  as  ascertained  by  a  spring- 
balance,  which  I  have  myself  witnessed  in  Mr.  Home's 
presence,  a  trick,  according  to  Dr.  Carpenter  ?  Is  not 
the  playing  of  the  accordion  in  one  hand,  or  when 
both  Mr.  Home's  hands  are  on  the  table,  a  clever  im- 
posture in  Dr.  Carpenter's  opinion?  But  if  any  one 
of  these  things  ia  admitted  to  be,  not  an  imposture, 
but  a  reality,  then  the  whole  foundation  of  the  learned 
but  most  illogical  doctor's  skepticism  is  undermined, 
and  he  practically  admits  himself  a  convert  to  the/acts 
of  modern  spiritualism.  But  he  does  not  admit  this  ; 
and  as  Mr.  Home  has  carried  on  these  alleged  impost- 
ures during  his  whole  life,  and  has  imbued  thousands 
of  persons  with  a  belief  in  their  genuineness,  Dr.  Car- 
penter must  inevitably  believe  Mr.  Home  to  be  the 
vilest  of  impostors  and  utterly  untrustworthy.  Yet 
he  quotes  him  as  an  authority,  accepts  as  true  all  the 
malicious  stories  retailed  by  this  alleged  impostor 
against  rival  impostors,  and  believes  every  vague  and 
entirely  unsupported  statement  to  a  like  effect  in  Mr. 
Home's  last  book  !  This  from  an  ex-professor  of  medi- 
cal jurisprudence,  who  ought  to  have  some  rudiment- 
ary notions  of  the  value  of  evidence,  is  truly  surprising. 
It  may  be  said  that,  although  Dr.  Carpenter  thinks 
Home  an  impostor,  xoe  believe  in  him,  and  therefore 
ought  to  accept  his  evidence  against  other  mediums. 
But  this  is  a  fallacy.  We  believe  that  he  is  a  medium, 
that  is,  a  machine  or  organization  through  whom  cer- 
tain abnormal  and  marvelous  phenomena  occur ;  but 
this  implies  no  belief  in  his  integrity  or  in  his  judg- 
ment, any  more  than  the  extraordinary  phenomenon 
of  double  individuality  exhibited  in  the  case  of  the 
French  sergeant  (which  formed  the  subject  of  such  an 
interesting  article  by  Prof.  Huxley  some  time  ago)  im- 
plies that  the  sergeant  was  a  man  of  high  moral  char- 
acter and  superior  judgment. 


232 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


penter's  equal,  to  Moses  &  Son's  kept  poet ;  while 
with  a  pitiable  inappropriateness  he  parodies  the 
fine  though  hackneyed  saying,  "  See  how  these 
Christians  love  one  another,"  in  order  to  apply  it 
satirically  to  the  case  of  a  rather  severe,  but  not 
unfair,  review  of  Mr.  Home's  book  in  a  spiritual 
periodical. 

I  will  now  proceed  to  show,  not  only  that  my 
accusations  in  the  Quarterly  Journal  of  Science 
for  July  last — which  in  Dr.  Carpenter's  opinion 
amount  to  a  charge  of  "  willful  and  repeated  sup- 
pressio  veri " — are  proved,  but  that  a  blind  reli- 
ance on  Mr.  Home  and  on  "  excerpts  from  Ameri- 
can newspapers  "  has  led  him  to  make  deliberate 
statements  which  are  totally  unfounded. 

I  will  first  take  a  case  which  will  illustrate 
Dr.  Carpenter's  wonderful  power  of  misstatement 
as  regards  myself : 

1.  In  a  letter  to  the  Daily  News,  written  im- 
mediately after  the  delivery  of  Dr.  Carpenter's 
first  "  Lecture  on  Mesmerism  "  at  the  London  In- 
stitution a  year  ago,  I  adduced  a  case  of  mesmer- 
ism at  a  distance,  recorded  by  the  late  Prof. 
Gregory.  The  lady  mesmerized  was  a  relation  of 
the  professor,  and  was  staying  in  his  own  house. 
The  mesmerizer  was  a  Mr.  Lewis.  The  sole  au- 
thority for  the  facts  referred  to  by  me  was  Prof. 
Gregory  himself. 

2.  While  criticising  this  Mr.  Lewis  in  his 
"  Lectures"  (p.  24),  Dr.  Carpenter  says,  referring 
to  my  Daily  News  letter :  "  His  (Mr.  Lewis's)  utter 
failure  to  produce  either  result,  however,  under 
the  scrutiny  of  skeptical  inquirers,  obviously  dis- 
credits all  his  previous  statements  ;  except  to  such 
as  (like  Mr.  A.  R.  Wallace,  who  has  recently  ex- 
pressed his  full  faith  in  Mr.  Lewises  self-asserted 
powers)  are  ready  to  accept  without  question  the 
slenderest  evidence  of  the  greatest  marvels.*' 
(The  italics  are  my  own.) 

3.  In  my  "  Review  "  of  Dr.  Carpenter's  book 
(Quarterly  Journal  of  Science,  July,  1877,  p.  394) 
I  use  strong  (but,  I  submit,  appropriate)  language 
as  to  this  injurious  and  unfounded  statement. 
For  Dr.  Carpenter's  readers  must  have  understood, 
and  must  have  been  intended  to  understand,  that, 
in  sole  reliance  on  this  Mr.  Lewis's  own  statements, 
I  placed  full  faith  in  them  without  any  corrobora- 
tion, and  had  also  publicly  announced  this  faith  ; 
in  which  case  his  readers  would  have  been  justi- 
fied in  thinking  me  a  credulous  fool  not  worth 
listening  to. 

4.  Writing  again  on  this  subject  (in  last 
month's  issue  of  this  Magazine,  p.  545),  Dr.  Car- 
penter does  not  apologize  for  the  gross  and  inju- 
rious misrepresentation  of  what  I   really  said, 


neither  does  he  justify  it  by  reference  to  anything 
else  I  may  have  written ;  but  he  covers  his  re- 
treat with  a  fresh  svggestio  falsi,  and  ridicules  me 
for  using  such  strong  language  (which  he  quotes) 
merely  (he  says)  because  he  had  reflected  on  my 
"  too  ready  acceptance  of  the  slenderest  evidence 
of  the  greatest  marvels" — a  phrase  of  Dr.  Car- 
penter's which  I  never  objected  to  at  all  because 
it  was  a  mere  expression  of  opinion,  while  what 
I  did  object  to  was  a  misstatement  of  a  matter 
of  fact.  This  is  Dr.  Carpenter's  idea  of  the  way 
to  carry  on  that  "calm  discussion  with  other  men 
of  science  "  to  the  absence  of  which  he  imputes 
all  my  errors.     (Note  A,  p.  705.) 

Dr.  Carpenter  is  so  prepossessed  with  the 
dominant  idea  of  putting  down  spiritualism,  that 
it  seems  impossible  for  him  to  state  the  simplest 
fact  in  regard  to  it  without  introducing  some 
purely  imaginary  fact  of  his  own  to  make  it  fit 
his  theory.  Thus,  in  his  article  on  "  The  Falla- 
cies of  Testimony"  (Contemporary  Review,  1876, 
p.  286)  he  says:  "A  whole  party  of  believers  will 
affirm  that  they  saw  Mr.  Home  float  out  of  one 
window  and  in  at  another,  while  a  single  honest 
skeptic  declares  that  Mr.  Home  was  sitting  in  his 
chair  all  the  time."  Now,  there  is  only  one  case 
on  record  of  Mr.  Home  having  "floated  out  of 
one  window  and  in  at  another."  Two  of  the 
persons  present  on  the  occasion — Lord  Adare  and 
Lord  Lindsay — have  made  public  their  account 
of  it,  and  the  third  has  never  declared  that  Mr. 
Home  was  "sitting  in  his  chair  all  the  time,"  but 
has  privately  confirmed,  to  the  extent  his  position 
enabled  him  to  do  so,  the  testimony  of  the  other 
two.  Is  this  another  case  of  Dr.  Carpenter  "  cere- 
brating "  his  facts  to  suit  his  theory,  or  will  he  say 
it  is  a  purely  hypothetical  case?  Yet  this  can 
hardly  be,  for  he  goes  on  to  argue  from  it:  "And 
in  this  last  case  we  have  an  example  of  a,  fact,  of 
which,"  etc.,  etc.  I  ask  Dr.  Carpenter  to  name 
the  "honest  skeptic"  of  this  quotation,  and  to 
give  us  his  precise  statement;  or,  failing  this,  to 
acknowledge  that  he  has  imagined  a  piece  of  evi- 
dence to  suit  his  hypothesis.     (Note  B,  p.  706.) 

It  is  only  fair  that  he  should  do  this  because, 
in  another  of  his  numerous  raids  upon  the  poor 
deluded  spiritualists,  he  has  made  a  direct  and, 
as  it  seems  to  me,  completely  unsupported  charge 
against  Lord  Lindsay.  In  his  article  on  "  Spirit- 
ualism and  its  Recent  Converts  "  (Quarterly  Re- 
view, 1871,  pp.  335,  336)  Dr.  Carpenter  quotes 
Lord  Lindsay's  account  of  an  experiment  with 
Mr.  Home,  in  which  Lord  Lindsay  placed  a  power- 
ful magnet  in  one  corner  of  a  totally  dark  room, 
and  then  brought  in  the  medium,  who  after  a  few 


PSYCHOLOGICAL   CURIOSITIES  OF  SKEPTICISM. 


233 


moments  said  he  saw  a  sort  of  light  on  the  floor ; 
and  to  prove  it  led  Lord  Lindsay  straight  to  the 
spot,  and  placed  his  hand  upon  the  magnet.  The 
experiment  was  not  very  remarkable,  but  still,  so 
far  as  it  went,  it  confirmed  the  observations  of 
Reichenbach  and  others.  This  Dr.  Carpenter 
cannot  bear;  so  he  not  only  proceeds  to  point 
out  Lord  Lindsay's  complete  ignorance  of  the 
whole  subject,  but  makes  him  morally  culpable 
for  not  having  used  Dr.  Carpenter's  pet  test  of  an 
electro-magnet ;  and  he  concludes  thus :  "  If,  then, 
Lord  Lindsay  cannot  be  trusted  as  a  '  faithful ' 
witness  in  '  that  which  is  least,'  how  can  we  feel 
assured  that  he  is  '  faithful  also  in  much  ?  '  "  By 
what  mental  jugglery  Dr.  Carpenter  can  have 
convinced  himself  that  he  had  shown  that  Lord 
Lindsay  "  cannot  be  trusted  as  a  faithful  witness," 
I  am  at  a  loss  to  understand.  But  the  animus 
against  the  friend  of  and  believer  in  Mr.  Home  is 
palpable.  Now  that  Lord  Lindsay  has  achieved 
a  scientific  reputation,  we  presume  there  must  be 
two  Lord  Lindsays  as  well  as  two  Mr.  Crookeses : 
one  the  enthusiastic  astronomer  and  careful  ob- 
server, the  other  the  deluded  spiritualist  and 
"  psychological  curiosity."  As  these  double  peo- 
ple increase  it  will  become  rather  puzzling,  and 
we  shall  have  to  adopt  Mr.  Crookes's  prefixes  of 
"Ortlio"  and  "Pseudo,"  to  know  which  we  are 
talking  about.1  It  will  be  well,  also,  to  note  the 
Scriptural  language  employed  by  Dr.  Carpenter 
in  making  this  solemn  and  ridiculously  unfounded 
charge.  It  reminds  one  of  the  "  I  speak  advised- 
ly" (in  the  celebrated  Quarterly  Review  article 
now  acknowledged  by  Dr.  Carpenter)  which  Mr. 
Crookes  has  shown  to  be  in  every  case  the  prefix 
of  a  wholly  incorrect  statement.2 

Dr.  Carpenter  heads  a  section  of  his  article  in 
last  month's  issue  of  this  periodical,  "  What  Mr. 
Wallace  means  by  Demonstration ;  "  and  endeav- 
ors to  show  that  I  have  misapplied  the  term 
when  I  stated  that  in  certain  cases  flowers  had 
appeared  at  seances,  "  demonstrably  not  brought 
by  the  medium."  His  long  quotations  from  Mr. 
Home,  giving  purely  imaginary  and  burlesque 
accounts  of  such  seances,  totally  unauthenticated 
by  names  or  dates,  may  be  set  aside,  as  not  only 
irrelevant,  but  as  insulting  to  the  readers  who 
are  asked  to  accept  them  as  evidence.  Dr.  Car- 
penter begins  by  confounding  the  proof  of  a  fact 
and  that  of  a  proposition,  and,  against  the  view 
of  the  best  modern  philosophers,  maintains  that 
the  latter  alone  can  be  truly  said  to  be  "  demon- 

1  See  Nature,  November  1, 1877,  p.  8. 
8  Quarterly  Journal  of  Science,  January,  1872:  "A 
Reply  to  the  Quarterly  Review." 


strated."  But  this  is  a  complete  fallacy.  The 
direct  testimony  of  the  educated  senses,  guided 
by  reason,  is  of  higher  validity  than  any  complex 
result  of  reason  alone.  If  I  am  sitting  with  two 
friends,  and  a  servant  brings  me  a  letter,  I  am 
justified  in  saying  that  that  letter  was  "  demon- 
strably not  brought  by  one  of  my  friends."  Or 
if  a  bullet  comes  through  the  window  and  strikes 
the  wall  behind  me,  I  am  justified  in  saying  that 
one  of  my  two  "friends,  sitting  at  the  table,  "de- 
monstrably did  not  fire  the  pistol " — always  sup- 
posing that  I  am  proved  to  be  in  the  full  posses- 
sion of  my  ordinary  senses  by  the  general  agree- 
ment of  my  friends  with  me  as  to  what  happened. 
Of  course,  if  I  am  in  a  state  of  delusion  or  insani- 
ty, and  my  senses  and  reasoning  powers  do  not 
record  events  in  agreement  with  others  who  wit- 
ness them,  neither  shall  I  be  able  to  perceive  the 
force  of  a  mathematical  demonstration.  If  my 
senses  play  me  false,  squares  may  seem  to  me 
triangles  and  circles  ellipses,  and  no  geometrical 
reasoning  will  be  possible.  Dr.  Carpenter  next 
asserts  that  I  "complain"  of  his  "not  accepting 
the  flowers  and  fruits  produced  in  my  own  draw- 
ing-room, and  those  which  made  their  appearance 
in  the  house  of  Mr.  T.  A.  Trollope,  at  Florence." 
This  is  simply  not  the  case.  I  never  asked  him 
to  accept  them,  or  complained  of  his  not  accept- 
ing them ;  but  I  pointed  out  that  he  did  accept 
the  evidence  of  a  prejudiced  witness  to  support  a 
theory  of  imposture  which  was  entirely  negatived 
in  the  two  cases  I  referred  to.1  I  implied  that  he 
should  either  leave  the  subject  alone,  or  deal  with 
the  best  evidence  of  the  alleged  facts.  To  do 
otherwise  was  not  "scientific,"  and  to  put  anony- 
mous and  unsupported  evidence  before  the  public 
as  conclusive  of  the  whole  question  was  both  un- 
scientific and  disingenuous.  Now  that  he  does 
attempt  to  deal  with  these  cases,  he  makes  them 
explicable  on  his  own  theory  of  imposture  only 
by  leaving  out  the  most  essential  facts. 

He  first  says  that  "  in  Mr.  Wallace's  own  case 
no  precautions  whatever  had  been  employed  !  " 
and  he  introduces  this  with  the  remark,  "  Now  it 
will  scarcely  be  believed,"  to  which  I  will  add 
that  it  must  not  be  believed,  because  it  is  untrue. 
I  have  never  published  a  detailed  account  of  this 
seance,  but  I  have  stated  the  main  facts  with  suf- 
ficient care 5  to  show  that  the  phenomenon  itself 
was  a  test  surpassing  anything  that  could  have 
been  prearranged.  The  general  precautions  used 
by  me  were  as  follows  :  five  personal  friends  were 

1  See  Quarterly  Journal  of  Science,  July,  1877,  pp. 
41IM12. 

s  "  Miracles  and  Modern  Spiritualism,"  p.  164. 


234 


TEE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTELY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


present  besides  myself  and  the  medium,  among 
them  a  medical  man,  a  barrister,  and  an  acute 
colonial  man  of  business.  The  sitting  was  in  my 
own  back  drawing-room.  No  cloth  was  on  the 
table.  The  adjoining  room  and  passage  were 
fully  lighted.  We  sat  an  hour  in  the  darkened 
room  before  the  flowers  appeared,  but  there  was 
always  light  enough  to  see  the  outlines  of  those 
present.  We  sat  a  little  away  from  the  table, 
the  medium  sitting  by  me.  The  flowers  appeared 
on  the  polished  table  dimly  visible  as  a  something, 
before  we  lighted  the  gas.  When  we  did  so  the 
whole  surface  of  the  four-feet  circular  table  was 
covered  with  fresh  flowers  and  ferns,  a  sight  so 
beautiful  and  marvelous  that,  in  the  course  of  a 
not  uneventful  life,  I  can  hardly  recall  anything 
that  has  more  strongly  impressed  me.  I  begged 
that  nothing  might  be  touched  till  we  had  care- 
fully examined  them.  The  first  thing  that  struck 
us  all  was  their  extreme  freshness  and  beauty. 
The  next,  that  they  were  all  covered,  especially 
the  ferns,  with  a  delicate  dew — not  with  coarse 
drops  of  water  as  I  have  since  seen  when  the 
phenomenon  was  less  perfect,  but  with  a  veritable, 
fine  dew,  covering  the  whole  surface  of  the  ferns 
especially.  Counting  the  separate  sprigs,  we 
found  them  to  be  forty-eight  in  number,  consist- 
ing of  four  yellow  and  red  tulips,  eight  large  anem- 
ones of  various  colors,  six  large  flowers  of  Pri- 
mula japonica,  eighteen  chrysanthemums,  mostly 
yellow  and  white,  six  fronds  of  Lomaria  a  foot 
long,  and  two  of  a  Nephrodium,  about  a  foot 
long  and  six  inches  wide.  Not  a  pinnule  of  these 
ferns  was  rumpled,  but  they  lay  on  the  table  as 
perfect  as  if  freshly  brought  from  a  conserva- 
tory. The  anemones,  primroses,  and  tulips,  had 
none  of  them  lost  a  petal.  They  were  found 
spread  over  the  whole  surface  of  the  table,  while 
we  had  been  for  some  time  intently  gazing  on  the 
sheen  of  its  surface,  and  could  have  instantly 
detected  a  hand  and  arm  moving  over  it.  But 
that  is  not  so  important  as  the  condition  of  these 
flowers  and  their  dewiness  ;  and — Dr.  Carpenter 
notwithstanding — I  still  maintain  they  were  (to 
us)  "  demonstrably  not  brought  by  the  medium." 
I  have  preserved  the  flowers  and  have  them  now 
before  me,  with  the  attestation  of  all  present  as 
to  their  appearance  and  condition ;  and  I  have 
also  my  original  notes  made  at  the  time.  How 
simple  is  Dr.  Carpenter's  notion  that  I  tell  this 
story,  after  ten  years,  from  memory !  How  in- 
genious is  his  suggestion  of  the  lining  of  a  cloak 
as  their  place  of  concealment  for  four  hours — a 
suggestion  taken  from  a  second-hand  story  by 
Mr.  Home  about  a  paid  medium,  and  therefore 


not  the  lady  whose  powers  are  now  under  discus- 
sion !  How  utterly  beside  the  question  his  sub- 
sequent remarks  about  conjurers,  and  hats,  and 
the  mango-trees,  produced  by  Indian  jugglers  ! 

In  the  case  certified  by  Mr.  T.  A.  Trollope, 
the  medium's  person  (not  her  dress  only,  as  Dr. 
Carpenter  says)  was  carefully  searched  before 
sitting  down  ;  but  now  it  is  objected  that  "  an 
experienced  female  searcher  "  would  have  been 
more  satisfactory,  and  the  fact  is  ignored  that 
phenomena  occurred  which  precluded  the  neces- 
sity of  any  search.  For,  while  the  medium's 
hands  were  both  held,  a  large  quantity  of  jon- 
quils fell  on  the  table,  "  filling  the  whole  room 
with  their  odor."  If  Dr.  Carpenter  can  get  over 
the  "  sudden  falling  on  the  table  "  of  the  flowers 
while  the  medium's  hands  were  held,  how  does  he 
explain  the  withholding  of  the  powerful  odor 
"  filling  the  whole  room  "  till  the  moment  of  their 
appearance  ?  Mr.  Trollope  says  that  this  is,  "  on 
any  common  theory  of  physics,  unaccountable," 
and  I  say  that  this  large  quantity  of  powerfully- 
smelling  jonquils  was  "  demonstrably  not  brought 
by  the  medium."  I  have  notes  of  other  cases 
equally  well  attested.  In  one  of  these  at  a  friend's 
house,  to  which  I  myself  took  Miss  Nicholl, 
eighty  separate  stalks  of  flowers  and  ferns  fell  on 
the  table  while  the  medium's  hands  were  both 
held.  All  were  perfectly  fresh  and  damp,  and 
some  large  sprays  of  maiden-hair  fern  were  quite 
perfect.  On  another  occasion,  I  was  present 
when  twenty  different  kinds  of  fruits  were  asked 
for,  and  every  person  had  his  chosen  kind 
placed  before  him  on  the  table  or  put  at  once 
into  his  hands  by  some  invisible  agency.  These 
cases  might  be  multiplied  indefinitely,  and  many 
are  recorded  which  are  still  more  completely  be- 
yond the  power  of  imposture  to  explain.  But 
all  such  are  passed  over  by  Dr.  Carpenter  in 
silence.  He  asks  for  better  evidence  of  certain 
facts,  and,  when  we  adduce  it,  he  says  we  are  the 
victims  of  a  "  diluted  insanity."  *  In  the  sup- 
posed Belfast  exposure  by  means  of  potassium 
ferrocyanide,  I  objected  that  the  only  evidence 
was  that  of  a  prejudiced  witness,  with  a  strong 
animus  against  the  medium.  Dr.  Carpenter  now 
prints  this  young  man's  letter  (of  which  he  had 
in  his  lecture  given  the  substance),  and  thinks 
that  he  has  transformed  his  one  witness  into  two 
by  means  of  an  anonymous  "  friend  "  therein  men- 
tioned. He  talks  of  the  "  immediate  detection  of 
the  salt  by  one  witness  and  the  subsequent  con- 
firmatory testimony  of  the  other" — this  "other" 

1  Dr.  Carpenter's  "  Mental  Physiology,"  second 
edition,  p.  302. 


PSYCHOLOGICAL    CURIOSITIES  OF  SKEPTICISM. 


235 


being  the  anonymous  friend  of  the  "  one  witness  " 
letter  !  Unfortunately,  this  "  friend "  wrote  a 
letter  to  the  papers  in  which  he  brought  an  ad- 
ditional accusation,  which  I  have  proved,  by  the 
testimony  of  an  unimpeachable  witness,  to  be 
utterly  unfounded.  (See  Quarterly  Journal  of 
Science,  July,  1877,  page  411.)  We  may,  there- 
fore, dismiss  the  "  exposure  "  as,  to  say  the  least, 
not  proven. 

Dr.  Carpenter  heads  one  of  his  sections, 
u  What  Messrs.  Wallace  and  Crookes  regard  as 
'  Trustworthy  Testimony  ; '  "  and,  before  I  re- 
mark on  its  contents,  I  wish  to  point  out  the 
literary  impropriety  of  which  Dr.  Carpenter  is 
guilty,  in  thus  making  Mr.  Crookes  responsible 
for  the  whole  contents  of  my  article  in  the  Quar- 
terly Journal  of  Science  because  he  happens  to 
be  the  editor  of  that  periodical.  I  might  with 
equal  justice  charge  upon  the  editor  of  Eraser 
all  the  misstatements  and  injurious  personal  im- 
putations which  Dr.  Carpenter  has  introduced 
into  an  article,  accepted,  doubtless,  without  ques- 
tion on  the  strength  of  his  high  scientific  stand- 

inS- 

Under  the  above  heading,  Dr.  Carpenter  at- 
tempts to  show  that  Colonel  Olcott  (whose  inves- 
tigation into  the  character  of  Mrs.  White  and  her 
false  declaration  that  she  had,  on  certain  occa- 
sions, personated  "  Katie  King,"  I  quoted  in  my 
review)  is  an  untrustworthy  witness  ;  and  his  sole 
proof  consists  in  a  quotation  from  a  published 
letter  of  the  colonel's  about  bringing  an  "  Afri- 
can sorcerer  "  to  America.  This  letter  may  or 
may  not  be  injudicious  or  foolish — that  is  matter 
of  opinion.  But  how  it  in  any  way  "blackens  " 
Colonel  Olcott's  character  or  proves  him  to  be 
"untrustworthy"  as  a  witness  to  matters  of 
fact,  it  must  puzzle  every  one  but  a  Carpenter  or 
a  Home  to  understand. 

The  next  example  I  shall  give  of  Dr.  Carpen- 
ter's "  unusual  power  of  dealing  with  this  sub- 
ject "  is,  a  most  injurious  misstatement  referring 
to  my  friend  Mr.  Crookes.  Dr.  Carpenter  heads 
a  section  of  more  than  eight  columns,  "  Mr. 
Crookes  and  his  Scientific  Tests,"  and  devotes  it 
to  an  account  of  Eva  Fay's  performances,  of  Mr. 
Crookes's  "  inconsiderate  indorsement  of  one  of 
the  grossest  impostures  ever  practised,"  and  of 
the  alleged  exposure  of  the  fraud  by  Mr.  W.  Irvine 
Bishop.  The  following  quotation  contains  the 
essence  of  the  charge,  and  I  invite  particular  at- 
tention to  its  wording : 

" .  .  .  .  her  London  audiences  diminishing 
away,  Eva  Fay  returned  to  the  United  States,  car- 
rying with  her  a  letter  from  Mr.  Crookes,  which 


set  forth  that  since  doubts  had  been  thrown  on  the 
spiritualistic  nature  of  her  '  manifestations,'  and 
since  he,  in  common  with  other  Fellows  of  the 
Koyal  Society,  had  satisfied  themselves  of  their 
genuineness  by  '  scientific  tests,'  he  willingly  gave 
her  the  benefit  of  his  attestation.  This  letter  was 
published  mfac-simile  iu  American  newspapers." 

I  can  scarcely  expect  my  readers  at  once  to 
credit  what  I  now  have  to  state ;  that,  notwith- 
standing the  above  precise  setting  forth  of  its 
contents,  by  a  man  who  professes  to  write  under 
a  sense  of  duty,  and  as  one  called  upon  to  re- 
habilitate the  injured  dignity  of  British  science, 
such  a  letter  as  that  above  minutely  described 
never  existed  at  all !  A  private  letter  from  Mr. 
Crookes  has  indeed,  without  his  consent,  been 
published  in  facsimile  in  American  newspapers  ; 
but  this  letter  was  never  in  the  possession  of  Eva 
Fay  ;  it  was  not  written  till  months  after  she  had 
left  England,  and  then  not  to  her,  but  in  answer 
to  inquiries  by  a  perfect  stranger  ;  moreover,  it 
contains  not  a  word  in  any  way  resembling  the 
passages  above  given !  Sad  to  say,  Dr.  Carpen- 
ter's kind  Boston  friends  do  not  appear  to  have 
sent  him  a  copy  of  the  paper  containing  the  fac- 
simile letter,  or  he  would  have  seen  that  Mr. 
Crookes  says  nothing  of  "  the  spiritualistic  nature 
of  her  manifestations ;  "  he  does  not  mention 
"  other  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society  ;  "  he  does 
not  say  he  was  "  satisfied  of  the  genuineness  of 
the  scientific  tests,"  but  especially  guards  himself 
by  saying  that  the  published  account  of  the  ex- 
periments made  at  his  own  house  are  the  best 
evidence  of  his  belief  in  her  powers.  He  does 
not  "  give  her  the  benefit  of  his  attestation,"  but 
simply  says  that  no  one  has  any  authority  to  use 
his  name  to  injure  her. 

The  number  of  the  New  York  Daily  Graphic 
for  April  12,  1876,  containing  the  letter  in  fac- 
simile, is  now  before  me.  An  exact  copy  of  it  is 
given  below,  and  I  ask  my  readers  to  peruse  it 
carefully,  to  compare  it  with  Dr.  Carpenter's  pre- 
cise summary  given  as  if  from  actual  inspection, 
and  then  decide  by  whose  instrumentality  the 
honored  distinction  of  F.  R.  S.  is  being  "  trailed 
through  the  dirt,"  and  who  best  upholds  his  own 
reputation  and  that  of  British  science.  Is  it  the 
man  who  writes  a  straightforward  letter  in  order 
to  prevent  his  name  being  used  to  injure  another, 
and  who  states  only  facts  within  his  own  personal 
knowledge ;  or  is  it  he  who,  for  the  express  pur- 
pose of  depreciating l  the  well-earned  reputation 

1  "  In  the  United  States  more  especially  ....  the 
names  of  the  '  eminent  British  scientists,'  Messrs. 
Crookes  and  Wallace,  are  '  a  tower  of  strength.'    And 


23G 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


of  a  fellow-man  of  science,  publishes  without  a 
word  of  caution  or  hesitation  a  purely  imaginary 
account  of  it  ? 

MR.    CBOOKES'S   "  F AC-SIMILE "    LETTER. 

"Nov.  8,1875. 
"  To  E.  Cooper,  Esq. 

"  c/o  C.  Maynard,  Esq. 

"  223  Washington  Street, 

"Boston,  Mass.,  U.S.  A. 
"  Dear  Sir, 

"  In  reply  to  your  favor  of  Oct.  25,  which  I 
have  received  this  morning,  I  beg  to  state  that  no 
one  has  any  authority  from  me  to  state  that  I  have 
any  doubts  of  Mrs.  Fay's  mediumship.  The  pub- 
lished accounts  of  the  test  seances  which  took  place 
at  my  house  are  the  best  evidence  which  I  can  give 
of  my  belief  in  Mrs.  Eay's  powers.  I  should  be 
sorry  to  find  that  any  such  rumors  as  you  mention 
should  injure  Mrs.  Fay,  whom  I  have  always  found 
most  ready  to  submit  to  any  conditions  I  thought 
fit  to  propose.    Believe  me,  very  truly  yours, 

"  William  Crookes." 

Notwithstanding  this  attack,  all  the  evidence 
Dr.  Carpenter  can  adduce  as  to  the  alleged  ex- 
posure of  Eva  Fay  has  really  no  bearing  whatever 
on  Mr.  Crookes's  position.  Long  and  wordy  let- 
ters are  given  verbatim,  which  only  amount  to 
this  :  that  the  writers  saw  a  clever  conjurer  do 
what  they  thought  was  an  exact  imitation  of  Eva 
Fay's  performances,  and  of  those  of  mediums 
generally.  But  a  most  essential  point  is  omitted. 
Neither  of  the  three  writers  says  he  ever  saw 
Eva  Fay's  performance.  Still  less  do  they  say 
they  ever  saw  her  in  private  and  tested  her  them- 
selves; and  without  this  their  evidence  is  abso- 
lutely worthless.  Mr.  Crookes  has  said  nothing, 
good  or  bad,  about  her  public  performances ;  but 
she  came  alone  to  his  own  house,  and  there,  aided 
by  scientific  friends,  in  his  own  laboratory,  he 
tested  her  by  placing  her  in  an  electrical  circuit 
from  which  she  could  not  possibly  escape  or 
even  attempt  to  escape  without  instant  discovery. 
Yet  when  in  this  position  books  were  taken  from 
the  bookcase  twelve  feet  away  and  handed  out  to 
the  observers.  The  beautiful  arrangements  by 
which  these  tests  were  carried  out  are  detailed 
by  Mr.  Crookes  in  the  Spiritualist  newspaper  of 
March  12,  1875,  and  should  be  read  by  every  one 
who  wishes  to  understand  the  real  difference  be- 
lt consequently  becomes  necessary  for  me  to  under- 
mine that  tower  by  showing  that  in  their  investigation 
of  this  subject  they  have  followed  methods  that  are 
thoroughly  unscientific,  and  have  been  led,  by  their 
'prepossession,'  to  accept  with  implicit  faith  a  num- 
ber of  statements  which  ought  to  be  rejected  ae  com- 
pletely untrustworthy."—  Fraser's  Magazine,  Novem- 
ber, 1877,  p.  543. 


tween  the  methods  of  procedure  of  Mr.  Crookes 
and  Dr.  Carpenter.  Not  one  word  is  said,  either 
by  Dr.  Carpenter's  correspondents  or  by  the 
Daily  Graphic,  as  to  this  test  having  been  ap- 
plied to  Mr.  Bishop  by  an  electrical  engineer  or 
other  expert,  and  till  this  is  done  how  can  Mr. 
Crookes's  position  be  in  any  way  affected  ?  A 
public  performance  in  Boston,  parodying  that  ol 
Miss  Fay,  but  without  one  particle  of  proof  that 
the  conditions  of  the  two  performances  were 
really  identical,1  is  to  Dr.  Carpenter's  logical  and 
skeptical  mind  a  satisfactory  proof  that  one  of 
the  first  experimenters  of  the  day  was  imposed  on 
in  his  own  laboratory,  when  assisted  by  trained 
experts,  and  when  applying  the  most  absolute 
tests  that  science  can  supply."  (Note  C,  p.  239.) 
I  have  now  shown  to  the  readers  of  Fraser 
(as  I  had  previously  shown  in  the  Quarterly 
Journal  of  Science)  that  whatever  Dr.  Carpenter 
writes  on  this  subject,  whether  opinion,  argument, 
quotation,  or  fact,  is  so  distorted  by  prejudice  as 
to  be  untrustworthy.  It  is  therefore  unnecessary 
here  to  reply  in  detail  to  the  mass  of  innuendo 
and  assumption  that  everywhere  pervades  his  ar- 
ticle ;  neither  am  I  called  upon  to  notice  all  the 
alleged  "  exposures  "  which  he  delights  in  placing 
before  his  readers.  To  "  expose  "  malingerers 
and  cases  of  feigned  illness  does  not  disprove  the 
existence  of  disease  ;  and  if,  as  I  believe  has  been 

1  The  account  in  the  New  York  Daily  Graphic  almost 
proves  that  they  were  not.  For  the  clever  woodcuts 
6howingMr.  Bishop  during  his  performances  indicate 
an  amount  of  stretching  of  the  cord  which  certainly 
could  be  at  once  detected  on  after-examination,  es- 
pecially if  the  knots  had  been  sealed  or  bound  with 
court-plaster.  Yet  more :  according  to  these  illustra- 
tions, it  would  be  impossible  for  Mr.  Bishop  to  imitate 
Eva  Fay  in  "  tying  a  strip  of  cloth  round  her  neck  " 
and  "  putting  a  ring  into  her  ear,"  both  of  which  are 
specially  mentioned  as  having  been  done  by  her.  It 
may  well  be  supposed  that  the  audience,  delighted  at 
an  "  exposure,"  would  not  be  quite  so  severely  criti- 
cal as  they  are  to  those  who  claim  to  possess  abnormal 
powers. 

8  As  hardly  any  of  my  readers  will  have  seen  the 
full  account  of  these  tests,  and  as  the  whole  is  too  long 
for  insertion  here,  I  give  a  pretty  full  abstract  of  all 
the  essential  portions  of  it  in  an  Appendix  to  this  pa- 
per. This  is  rendered  necessary  because  Dr.  Carpen- 
ter declares  that  he  is  going  to  give,  in  the  new  edi- 
tion of  his  Lectures,  "the  whole  explanation"  of  the 
"  dodge  "  by  whicli  these  "  scientific  tests  "  could  be 
evaded—"  a  dodge  so  simple  that  Mr.  Crookes's  highly- 
trained  scientific  acumen  could  not  detect  it."  These 
are  Dr.  Carpenters  own  wor^s,  in  his  article  last 
month  (p.  553),  and  it  is  necessary  that  he  should  be 
called  on  to  make  them  good  by  really  explaining  Mr. 
Crookes's  actual  experiments,  and  not  some  other  ex- 
periments which  "  American  newspapers  "  may  sub- 
stitute for  them. 


PSYCHOLOGICAL   CURIOSITIES  OF  SKEPTICISM. 


237 


demonstrated,  the  phenomena  here  discussed  are 
marvelous  realities,  it  is  to  be  expected  that 
there  will  be  impostors  to  imitate  them,  and  no 
lack  of  credulous  persons  to  be  duped  by  those 
impostors.  But  it  is  not  the  part  of  an  honest 
searcher  after  truth  to  put  forward  these  detected 
impostures  while  ignoring  the  actual  phenomena 
which  the  impostors  try  to  imitate.  When  we 
have  Dr.  Carpenter's  final  word  in  the  promised 
new  edition  of  his  Lectures,  I  shall  be  prepared  to 
show  that  tests  far  more  severe  than  such  as 
have  resulted  in  the  detection  of  imposture  have 
been  over  and  over  again  applied  to  the  genuine 
phenomena  with  no  other  result  than  to  confirm 
their  genuineness. 

This  is  not  the  place  to  discuss  the  reality  of 
the  phenomena  which  Dr.  Carpenter  rejects  with 
so  much  misplaced  indignation,  and  endeavors  to 
put  down  by  such  questionable  means.  The  care- 
ful observations  of  such  men  as  Prof.  Barrett, 
of  Dublin,  and  the  elaborate  series  of  test  experi- 
ments carried  out  in  his  own  laboratory  by  Mr. 
Crookes,1  are  sufficient  to  satisfy  any  unpreju- 
diced person  that  the  phenomena  are  genuine ; 
and,  if  so,  whatever  theory  we  may  adopt  con- 
cerning them,  they  must  greatly  influence  all  our 
fundamental  ideas  in  science  and  philosophy. 
The  attempt  to  excite  prejudice  against  all  who 
have  become  convinced  that  these  things  are  real, 
by  vague  accusations,  and  by  quoting  all  the 
trash  that  can  be  picked  out  of  the  literature  of 
the  subject,  is  utterly  unworthy  of  the  men  of 
science  who  adopt  it.  For  nearly  thirty  years 
this  plan  has  been  unsparingly  pursued,  and  its 
failure  has  been  complete.  Belief  in  the  genuine- 
ness of  the  phenomena  has  grown  steadily  year 
by  year ;  and  at  this  day  there  are,  to  my  per- 
sonal knowledge,  a  larger  number  of  well-educated 
and  intelligent,  and  even  of  scientific  men,  who 
profess  their  belief,  than  at  any  former  period. 
There  is  no  greater  mistake  than  to  suppose  that 
this-body  of  inquirers  have  obtained  their  present 
convictions  by  what  they  have  seen  at  public 
seances  only.  In  almost  every  case  those  convic- 
tions are  the  result  of  a  long  series  of  experiments 
in  private  houses ;  and  it  would  amaze  Dr.  Car- 
penter to  learn  the  number  of  families  in  every 
class  of  society  in  which  even  the  more  mar- 
velous and  indisputable  of  these  phenomena  oc- 
cur. The  course  taken  by  Dr.  Carpenter  of  dis- 
crediting evidence,  depreciating  character,  and 
retailing  scandal,  only  confirms  these  people  in 
their  belief  that  men  of  science  are  powerless  in 

1  Quarterly  Journal  of  Science,  October,  1871,  and 
January,  1S74. 


face  of  this  great  subject ;  and  I  feel  sure  that  all 
he  has  written  has  never  converted  a  single  ear- 
nest investigator. 

It  is  well  worthy  of  notice,  as  correlating  this 
inquiry  with  other  branches  of  science,  that  there 
is  no  royal  road  to  acquiring  a  competent  knowl- 
edge of  these  phenomena,  and  this  is  the  reason 
why  so  many  scientific  men  fail  to  obtain  evi- 
dence of  anything  important.  They  think  that  a 
few  hours  should  enable  them  to  decide  the  whole 
thing ;  as  if  a  problem  which  has  been  ever  be- 
fore the  world,  and  which  for  the  last  quarter  of  a 
century  has  attracted  the  attention  of  thousands, 
only  required  their  piercing  glance  to  probe  it  to 
the  bottom.  But  those  who  have  devoted  most 
time  and  study  to  the  subject,  though  they  be- 
come ever  more  convinced  of  the  reality,  the  im- 
portance, and  the  endless  phases  of  the  phenome- 
na, find  themselves  less  able  to  dogmatize  as  to 
their  exact  nature  or  theoretical  interpretation. 
Of  one  thing,  however,  they  feel  convinced  :  that 
all  further  discussion  on  the  inner  nature  of  man 
and  his  relation  to  the  universe  is  a  mere  beating 
of  the  air,  so  long  as  these  marvelous  phenomena, 
opening  up  as  they  do  a  whole  world  of  new  in- 
teractions between  mind  and  matter,  are  disre- 
garded and  ignored. 

APPENDIX. 

Abstract  of  Mr.   Crookes's  Experiments  above  re- 
ferred to. 

The  apparatus  used  consisted  of  an  electrical 
circuit  with  a  reflecting  galvanometer  showing  the 
slightest  variations  in  the  current,  designed  and  ar- 
ranged by  one  of  the  most  eminent  practical  electri  • 
cians.  This  instrument  was  fixed  in  Mr.  Crookes's 
laboratory,  from  which  two  stout  wires  passed 
through  the  wall  into  the  library  adjoining,  and 
there  terminated  in  two  brass  handles  fixed  at  a 
considerable  distance  apart,  and  having  only  an 
inch  or  two  of  play.  These  handles  are  covered 
with  linen  soaked  in  salt  and  water,  and  when  the 
person  to  be  experimented  on  holds  these  handles 
in  the  hands  (also  first  soaked  in  salt  and  water) 
the  current  of  electricity  passes  through  his  or  her 
body,  and  the  exact  "  electrical  resistance  "  can  be 
measured ;  while  the  reflecting  galvanometer  ren- 
ders visible  to  all  the  spectators  the  slightest  vari- 
ation in  the  resistance.  This  instrument  is  so 
delicate  that  the  mere  loosening  of  the  grasp  of  one 
or  both  hands  or  the  lifting  of  a  finger  from  the 
handle  would  be  shown  at  once,  because  by  alter- 
ing the  amount  of  surface  in  contact  the  "  elec- 
trical resistance "  would  be  instantly  changed. 
Two  experienced  physicists,  both  Fellows  of  the 
Koyal  Society,  made  experiments  with  this  instru- 
ment for  more  than  an  hour  before  the  tests  began, 


238 


TEE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTELY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


and  satisfied  themselves  that,  even  with  an  exact 
knowledge  of  what  was  required  and  with  any 
amount  of  preparation,  they  could  not  substitute 
anything  connecting  the  two  handles  and  having 
the  same  exact  resistance  as  the  human  body  with- 
out a  long  course  of  trial  and  failure,  and  without 
a  person  in  the  other  room  to  tell  them  if  more  or 
less  resistance  were  required,  during  which  time 
the  index  spot  of  light  of  the  galvanometer  was 
flying  wildly  about.  Comparative  steadiness  of  the 
index  could  only  be  secured  by  a  steady  and  con- 
tinuous grasp  of  the  two  handles. 

Having  thus  described  the  apparatus,  let  us 
now  consider  how  the  test  was  carried  out.  The 
gentlemen  invited  to  witness  it  were  three  Fellows 
of  the  Koyal  Society,  all  of  special  eminence,  and 
three  other  gentlemen.  They  examined  the  libra- 
ry ;  fastened  up  the  door  to  the  passage  as  well  as 
the  window  with  strips  of  paper  sealed  with  their 
private  seals ;  they  examined  all  the  cupboards 
and  desks ;  they  noted  the  position  of  various 
articles,  and  measured  their  distances  as  well  as 
that  of  the  bookcase  from  the  handles  to  be  held 
by  the  medium.  The  library  was  connected  with 
the  laboratory  by  a  door  close  to  where  the  me- 
dium sat,  and  this  door  was  wide  open,  but  the 
aperture  was  close  d  by  means  of  a  curtain.  Every- 
thing having  been  thus  arranged,  Eva  Fay  was  in- 
vited to  enter  the  library,  having  up  to  this  time 
been  in  the  drawing-room  up-stairs,  and  having 
come  to  the  house  alone.  She  then  seated  herself 
in  a  chair  placed  for  the  purpose,  and,  having 
moistened  her  hands  as  directed,  took  hold  of  the 
two  handles.  The  exact  "  electrical  resistance  " 
of  her  body  was  then  noted,  as  well  as  the  deflec- 
tion shown  by  the  galvanometer :  and,  the  gas  in 
the  library  having  been  turned  down  low,  the  gen- 
tlemen took  their  places  in  the  laboratory,  leaving 
Eva  Fay  alone. 

In  one  minute  a  hand-bell  was  rung  in  the  li- 
brary. In  two  minutes  a  hand  came  out  at  the  side 
of  the  door  farthest  from  the  medium.  During  the 
succeeding  five  minutes  four  separate  books  were 
handed  out  to  their  respective  authors,  a  voice 
from  the  library  calling  them  by  name.  These 
books  had  been  taken  from  the  bookcase  twelve 
feet  from  Eva  Fay :  they  had  been  found  in  the 
dark,  and  one  of  them  had  no  lettering  on  the 
back.  Mr.  Crookes  declares  that  although  he,  of 
course,  knew  the  general  position  of  the  books  in 
his  own  library,  he  could  not  have  found  these 
books  in  the  dark.  Then  a  box  of  cigars  was 
thrown  out  to  a  gentleman  very  fond  of  smoking, 
and  finally  an  ornamental  clock  which  had  been 
standing  on  the  chimney-piece  was  handed  out. 
Then  the  circuit  was  suddenly  broken,  and,  on  in- 
stantly entering  the  library,  Eva  Fay  was  found 
lying  back  in  the  chair  senseless,  a  condition  in 
which  she  remained  for  half  an  hour.  All  the 
above  phenomena  occurred  during  the  space  of 


ten  minutes,  and  the  reflecting  galvanometer  was 
steady  the  whole  time,  showing  only  those  small 
variations  which  would  occur  while  a  person  con- 
tinued to  hold  the  handles. 

On  two  other  occasions  Mr.  Crookes  carried  out 
similar  tests  with  the  same  medium  and  always 
with  the  same  result.  On  one  occasion  several 
musical  instruments  were  played  on  at  the  same 
time,  and  a  musical-box  was  wound  up  while  the 
luminous  index  of  the  galvanometer  continued 
quit|  steady,  and  many  articles  were  handed  or 
thrown  out  into  the  laboratory.  On  the  other  oc- 
casion similar  things  happened,  after  all  possible 
precautions  had  been  taken  ;  and  in  addition  Mr. 
Crookes's  desk,  which  was  carefully  locked  before 
the  seance,  was  found  unlocked  and  open  at  its 
conclusion. 

Every  one  must  look  forward  with  great  in- 
terest to  Dr.  Carpenter's  promised  "  explanation  " 
of  how  all  these  scientific  tests  were  evaded  by  an 
unscientific  impostor. 

Note  A.— Since  this  article  was  in  the  printer's 
hands,  a  proof-sheet  of  the  new  edition  of  Dr.  Carpen- 
ter's Lectures  has  been  forwarded  to  me  at  the  au- 
thor's request,  in  order  that  I  may  see  what  further 
explanations  he  has  to  give  to  the  above  case.  Dr. 
Carpenter  now  attempts  to  justify  his  assertion  that  I 
had  "recently  expressed  my  full  faith  in  Mr.  Lewis's 
self-asserted  powers"  by  a  statement  of  what  Dr.  Simp- 
son told  him  several  years  ago,  a  statement  which 
appears  to  have  been  never  yet  made  public,  and 
which,  therefore,  could  not  possibly  have  been  taken 
into  account  by  me,  even  had  it  any  real  bearing  on 
the  question  at  issue.  It  is  to  the  effect  that  Mr.  Lewis 
might  have  received  information  of  the  exact  hour  at 
which  the  lady  he  had  promised  to  try  to  mesmerize  at 
a  distance  fell  asleep  in  Prof.  Gregory's  house,  and 
that  he  might  have  afterward  given  a  false  statement 
of  the  hour  at  which  he  attempted  to  mesmerize  her. 
Dr.  Carpenter  is  excessively  indignant  when  any 
doubt  is  thrown  by  me  on  the  truthfulness  or  impar- 
tiality of  any  of  his  informants,  but  it  seems  the  most 
natural  thing  in  the  world  for  him  to  charge  false- 
hood or  fraud  against  all  who  testify  to  facts  which  he 
thinks  incredible.  But  even  admitting  that  Dr.  Car- 
penter's memory  of  what  was  told  him  many  years 
ago  is  absolutely  perfect,  and  admitting  that  Mr.  Lew- 
is (against  whose  moral  character  nothing  whatever  is 
adduced)  would  have  told  a  direct  falsehood  in  order 
to  magnify  his  own  powers,  how  does  this  account 
for  the  fact  that  the  lady  was  overcome  by  the  mes- 
meric sleep  at  all,  when  her  mind  and  body  were 
both  actively  engaged  at  the  piano  early  in  the  after- 
noon ?  And  how  does  it  account  for  the  headache 
which  had  troubled  her  the  whole  day  suddenly  ceas- 
ing f  It  is  not  attempted  to  be  shown  that  Mr.  Lew- 
is's statement— that  he  returned  home  at  the  hour 
named,  and  at  once  proceeded  to  try  and  mesmerize 
the  lady— is  not  true  ;  so  that,  except  for  the  sup- 
posed incredibility  of  the  whole  thing  in  Dr.  Carpen- 
ter's opinion,  there  would  be  no  reason  to  doubt  the 
exact  correctness  of  the  statements  made.  But,  even 
if  the  reader  adopts  the  view  that  Mr.  Lewis  was 
really  an  impostor,  that  does  not  make  Dr.  Carpenter's 


PSYCHOLOGICAL    CURIOSITIES  OF  SKEPTICISM. 


239 


original  assertion— that  I  had  "  expressed  "  my  full 
faith  in  his  "  self-asserted  powers  " — one  whit  more 
accurate.  If  Dr.  Carpenter  had  then  in  his  memory 
this  means  of  throwing  doubt  on  the  facts,  why  did  he 
not  mention  it  in  his  Lectures  or  in  his  article,  in- 
stead of  first  charging  me  with  the  "expression"  of 
a  faith  which  I  never  expressed  or  held,  and  then  at- 
tempting to  change  the  issue  by  substituting  other 
words  for  those  which  I  really  complained  of? 

Note  B.— In  the  new  edition  of  Dr.  Carpenter's 
Lectures  (the  proof  of  part  of  which  has  been  sent 
me)  he  supports  his  statement  that  "  there  are  at  the 
present  time  numbers  of  educated  men  and  women 
who  have  so  completely  surrendered  their  '  common- 
sense'  to  a  dominant  prepossession  as  to  maintain 
that  any  such  monstrous  fiction  (as  of  a  person  being 
carried  through  the  air  in  an  hour  from  Edinburgh  to 
London)  ought  to  be  believed,  even  upon  the  evidence 
of  a  single  witness,  if  that  witness  be  one  upon 
whose  testimony  we  should  rely  in  the  ordinary  af- 
fairs of  life"— by  saying  that  "  the  moonlight  sail  of 
Mr.  Home  is  extensively  believed  on  the  testimony  of 
a  single  witness."  Even  if  it  were  the  fact  that  this 
particular  thing  is  believed  by  some  persons  on  the 
testimony  of  a  single  witness,  that  would  not  justify 
Dr.  Carpenter's  statement  that  there  are  numbers  of 
educated  men  and  women  who  maintain  as  a  principle 
that  any  such  thing,  however  monstrous,  ought  to  be 
so  believed.  As,  however,  there  are,  as  above  shown, 
three  witnesses  in  this  case,  and  at  least  ten  in  the 
case  of  Mrs.  Guppy,  also  referred  to,  it  appears  that 
Dr.  Carpenter  first  makes  depreciatory  general  state- 
ments, and,  when  these  are  challenged,  supports  them 
by  a  misstatement  of  facts.  Such  a  course  of  proced- 
ure renders  further  discussion  impossible. 

Note  C. — A  letter  of  Dr.  Carpenter's  has  also,  "  at 
«•  his  own  request,"  been  forwarded  to  me,  in  which 
lie  attempts  to  justify  the  conduct  narrated  above. 
In  Nature,  for  November  15th,  Mr.  Crookes  printed  the 
letter  which  was  given  in  facsimile  in  American 
newspapers,  with  remarks  of  a  somewhat  similar 
character  to  those  I  have  here  made.  Dr.  Carpenter, 
writing  three  days  afterward  (November  18th),  wishes 
it  to  be  stated  in  Fraser,  as  his  "  own  correction," 
that  this  letter  was  not  carried  away  from  England  by 
Eva  Fay;  adding,  "What  was  carried  away  by  Eva 
Fay  was  a  much  stronger  attestation,  publicly  given  in 
full  detail  by  Mr.  Crookes  in  a  communication  to  the 
Spiritualist " — of  which  communication  I  give  an  ab- 
stract in  an  appendix  to  this  article.  This  obliges  me 
to  add  a  few  further  particulars. 

In  Nature,  October  25th,  in  a  note  to  a  letter  about 
the  radiometer,  Dr.  Carpenter  says:  " '  On  the  strength 
of  a  private  letter  from  Mr.  Crookes,  which  has  been 
published  in  facsimile  in  the  American  newspapers,  a 
certain  Mrs.  or  Miss  Eva  Fay  announced  her  "  spirit- 


ualistic" performances  as  indorsed  by  Prof.  Crookes 
and  other  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society.' "  This  sup- 
posed letter  was  "  set  forth  "  in  detail  in  last  month's 
Fraser  as  above  stated. 

In  Nature,  November  8th,  Dr.  Carpenter  says: 
"  And  the  now  notorious  impostor,  Eva  Fay,  has  been 
able  to  appeal  to  the  '  indorsement '  given  to  her  by 
the  '  scientific  tests  '  applied  to  her  by  '  Prof.  Crookes 
and  other  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,'  which  had 
been  published  (I  now  find)  by  Mr.  Crookes  himself 
in  the  Spiritualist  in  March,  1875." 

From  the  above  it  follows,  that  it  was  between 
October  25th  and  November  8th  that  Dr.  Carpenter 
first  became  acquainted  with  Mr.  Crookes's  account 
of  his  experiments  with  Eva  Fay  ;  and,  finding  (from 
Mr.  Crookes's  publication  of  it)  that  his  own  detailed 
account  of  the  contents  of  the  facsimile  letter  was  to- 
tally incorrect,  he  now  makes  a  fresh  assertion— that 
Eva  Fay  "  carried  away  with  her"  a  copy  of  the  Spir- 
itualist containing  Mr.  Crookes's  experiments.  This 
is  highly  probable,  but  we  venture  to  doubt  if  Dr. 
Carpenter  has  any  authority  to  state  it  as  a  fact ;  while, 
even  if  she  did,  that  article  does  not,  any  more  than 
the  facsimile  letter,  justify  Dr.  Carpenter's  allega- 
tions. It  contains  not  one  word  about  the  "  spirit- 
ualistic nature  of  her  manifestations"— it  does  not 
state  that  he  "in  common  with  other  Fellows  of  the 
Royal  Society  had  satisfied  himself  of  their  genuine- 
ness " — it  does  not  say  that  he  "  willingly  gave  her  the 
benefit  of  his  attestation."  It  is  a  detailed  account  of 
a  beautiful  scientific  experiment,  and  nothing  more. 
Yet  Dr.  Carpenter  still  maintains  (in  his  letter  now 
before  me)  that  his  statements  are  correct,  "  except 
on  the  one  point — one  of  form  not  of  substance — that 
of  the  address  of  the  letter  in  which  Mr.  Crookes 
attested  the  genuineness  of  the  medinmship  of  Eva 
Fay  I " 

It  thus  appears  that,  when  he  wrote  the  article  in 
last  month's  Fraser,  and  the  letter  in  Nature  of  Oc- 
tober 25th,  Dr.  Carpenter  had  not  seen  either  the  fac- 
simile letter  or  the  account  in  the  Spiritualist,  and 
there  is  nothing  to  show  that  he  even  knew  of  the 
existence  of  the  latter  article  ;  yet,  on  the  strength 
of  mere  rumor,  newspaper  cuttings,  or  imagination, 
he  gives  the  supposed  contents  of  a  letter  from  Mr. 
Crookes,  emphasizing  snch  obnoxious  words  as  "  spir- 
itualistic" and  "  manifestations,"  which  Mr.  Crookes 
never  once  employed,  and  giving  a  totally  false  im- 
pression of  what  Mr.  Crookes  had  really  done.  So 
enamored  is  he  of  this  accusation,  that  he  drags  it 
into  a  purely  scientific  discussion  on  the  radiometer, 
and  now,  in  his  very  latest  communication,  makes 
no  apology  or  retraction,  but  maintains  all  his  state- 
ments as  correct  "  in  substance"  and  declares  that  he 
"  cannot  see  that  he  has  anywhere  passed  beyond  the 
tone  of  gentlemanly  discussion." 

— Fraser's  Magazine. 


240 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


DK.  PLOSS  ON   "THE  CHILD." 


By  EDWAED  B.   TYLOE. 


DR.  PLOSS'S  monograph  on  "  The  Child"  at 
once  takes  its  place  among  the  handbooks 
of  the  science  of  Culture.  Its  plan  is  to  bring  to- 
gether and  discuss  in  a  systematic  way  the  ideas 
and  habits  of  all  nations  as  to  the  birth  and  early 
treatment  of  their  offspring.  How  have  different 
peoples  come  to  fix  their  various  rules  for  the 
dieting,  clothing,  cradling,  carrying,  doctoring, 
naming,  consecrating,  diverting,  and  teaching  of 
children,  and  which  ways  are  best  for  the  public 
welfare  ?  Here  are  two  sets  of  inquiries,  which 
are  too  generally  carried  on  separately,  as  though 
one  belonged,  so  to  speak,  to  the  Anthropological 
Institute,  and  the  other  to  the  Social  Science  Con- 
gress. Dr.  Ploss's  work  is  to  be  commended  for 
the  way  in  which  the  ethnological  and  practical 
sides  are  worked  together  and  made  to  throw 
light  on  one  another.  He  is,  no  doubt,  right  also 
in  following  the  principle  that  all  such  customs 
had  originally  a  practical  intention,  however  ab- 
surd the  purpose  or  the  way  of  carrying  it  out 
may  seem  from  our  point  of  view.  It  so  happens 
that  the  treatment  of  babies,  being  everywhere  in 
the  conservative  hands  of  grandmothers  and  old 
nurses,  has  to  an  extreme  degree  kept  up  archaic 
ideas,  even  in  modern  Europe.  It  is  the  old  wives 
who,  in  spite  of  the  doctors'  protests,  still  swad- 
dle infants  in  Germany  like  live  mummies,  to  pre- 
vent their  growing  crooked.  It  is  they  who  give 
the  children  medicine  to  prevent  their  being  ill, 
and  keep  up  the  use  of  nostrums  which  curious 
inquirers  may  trace  back  through  the  middle  ages 
to  Hippocrates  and  Galen,  and  wonder  how  old 
they  were  then.  Nations,  dynasties,  faiths,  may 
rise  and  fall,  but  old  wives'  tales  hold  on.  Some- 
times, indeed,  a  new  name  and  adaptation  is  fit- 
ted to  the  old  idea,  as  when  the  Three  Fates  or 
Norns  give  up  to  the  "  Three  Maries  "  the  task 
of  spinning  the  child's  thread  of  life  ;  but  there 
need  not  even  be  this  change — in  Albanian  folk- 
lore the  three  classic  Moirai  (Mire)  still  deal  out 
its  destiny.  Of  all  the  many  relics  of  early  re- 
ligion mentioned  in  the  present  book,  perhaps 
none  carries  us  so  far  back  into  the  region  of 
primitive  animism  as  the  Swiss  peasant  custom 
when  a  mother  dies  in  child-birth,  of  putting  a 
pair  of  shoes  into  her  coffin  that  she  may  come 
back  for  six  weeks  to  tend  the  child,  for  else  she 
may  appear  and  complain  that  she  has  to  walk 


barefoot  through  the  thistles  and  thorns.  If  moth- 
er and  child  both  die,  they  give  her  needle  and 
thread  and  soap,  that  she  may  do  her  sewing  and 
washing  for  it.  North  American  Indians  or  South- 
Sea  Islanders  could  hardly  go  beyond  this,  or  do 
it  with  much  clearer  intent.  If,  then,  ideas  so 
ancient  can  be  kept  up  in  the  midst  of  modern 
cultured  nations,  how  much  further  may  the  nur- 
sery customs  of  the  barbarians  have  carried  on 
unbroken  clews  to  guide  our  minds  back  into  the 
prehistoric  world  ! 

The  plan  of  looking  for  practical  purpose  at 
the  origin  of  every  custom  is  particularly  appli- 
cable to  those  which  may  have  been  at  first  sani- 
tary rules  settled  by  habit  for  the  public  benefit, 
but  which  now  present  themselves  under  the  more 
solemn  aspect  of  sacred  rites,  and  are  even  claimed 
as  enjoined  on  man  by  divine  revelation.  On  these 
customs  our  author,  in  his  double  capacity  of 
physician  and  ethnologist,  gives  an  opinion  of  some 
weight.  Thus,  he  insists  on  the  hygienic  useful- 
ness of  the  widely-distributed  customs  and  ordi- 
nances as  to  the  separation  and  purification  of 
mothers  (chapter  iii.).  North  and  South  Amerr-V 
cans,  Polynesians,  Tartars,  African  negroes,  are 
alike  in  having  as  to  this  matter  severe  rules  se 
verely  enforced,  though  they  often  can  give  no 
further  reason  for  them  than  ancestral  tradition, 
and  fear  that  harm  would  come  if  they  were  set 
aside.  From  the  similarity  of  the  rules  ordained  in 
the  great  Old  World  religions,  such  as  Brahmanism 
and  Parsism  on  the  Aryan  side,  and  Judaism  and 
Mohammedanism  on  the  Semitic  side,  it  can  hard- 
ly be  doubted  that  what  the  law-givers  of  these 
faiths  did  was  to  adopt,  with  more  or  less  modifi- 
cation, an  already  existing  customary  law,  reenact- 
ing  it  under  new  religious  sanction.  It  is  curious 
to  notice  how  nearly  this  particular  group  of  so- 
cial rules  has  disappeared,  at  any  rate  as  express 
ordinances,  from  Christendom,  where  little  is  left 
except  a  few  popular  superstitions  and  the  rite 
of  "  churching,"  which  is  the  scarcely  recogniza- 
ble descendant  of  the  Jewish  purification.  An- 
other wide-lying  custom,  familiar  to  us  from  its 
forming  part  of  the  Levitical  law,  is  circumcision, 
but  the  study  of  its  distribution  over  the  world 
makes  it  probable  that  here  again  we  have  a  case 
of  prehistoric  custom  being  adopted  into  national 
law  (chapter  xiv.).     There  is  no  reason  to  assume 


DR.   FLOSS  ON  "THE  CHILD:' 


241 


its  first  origin  even  in  Egypt,  the  country  where 
its  earliest  traces  appear  in  the  great  Old  World 
district  it  now  occupies.     How  it  reached  Austra- 
lia, Feejee,  perhaps  even  South  America,  before  Eu- 
ropeans visited  these  countries,  or  whether  it  was 
invented  there,  there  is  no  evidence.     But  as  to 
the  reason  of  it,  there  is  a  fair  case  in  favor  of 
those  who  agree  with  Dr.  Ploss  that  it  was  adopt- 
ed from  belief  in  its  being  a  practically  beneficial 
operation.     At  any  rate,  those  who  find  in  it  the 
more  mystic  purpose  of  a  symbol  or  a  sacrifice 
must  find  it  harder  to  explain  why  as  such  it  has 
come  to  prevail  over  so  large  and  distant  regions. 
Among  customs  derived  from  early  stages  of 
culture  in  Europe  one  deserves  especial  notice, 
which  probably  dates  back  far  beyond  the  crom- 
lechs and  dolmens.     Though  the  memory  of  its 
original  purpose  may  be  lost  among  the  peasants 
who  keep  it  up,  it  may  still  be  interpreted  among 
the  tribes  of  the  savage  and  barbaric  world,  to 
whom  it  properly  belongs.     This  is  the  practice 
of  deforming  the  skulls  of  infants  (chapter  xiv.). 
Within  the  last  generation  or  so,  medical  observ- 
ers have  put  on  record  its  extensive  prevalence  in 
France,  the  custom  of  Normandy  being  for  the 
nurses   to  give  the   baby's   skull   the  approved 
sugar-loaf  shape  by  means  of  bandages  and  a 
tight  cap,  while  in  Brittany  the  long  shape  of  the 
new-born  child's  head  is  disapproved  of,  and  press- 
ure is  applied  to  make  it  round.     This  latter  ap- 
pears to  have  been  the  old  Swiss  custom,  to  judge 
from  a  passage  in  the  seventeenth-century  "  He- 
bammenbuchlein "  of  Muralt :  "  As  soon  as  the 
nurse  has  the  child  on  her  lap  she  looks  it  all 
over  to  see  if  it  is  well  shaped,  then  gives  its  lit- 
tle head  the  round  form,  and  puts  on  a  scarlet 
fur  and  cap  to  preserve  it."     It  is  interesting  to 
find  the  nurses  not  only  shaping  the  babies'  skulls, 
but  shaping  them  to  different  types  in  different 
districts.     One  is  reminded  of  the  two  contrasted 
portraits  in  Wilson's  "  Prehistoric  Man,"  repre- 
senting   heads   from   two   tribes    of   Northwest 
America,  one  (the  Newattee)  shaped  into  a  cone, 
the  other  (the  Chinook)  with  the  forehead  flat- 
tened and  broadened,   so   that  the   unfortunate 
child  looks  in  front  like  an  aggravated  case  of 
water  on  the  brain.     So  in  New  Caledonia  some 
tribes  prefer  a  long-head  and  others  a  flat-head 
type,  and  compel  the  infants'  plastic  little  skulls 
to  grow  accordingly.     This  difference  of  opinion 
as  to  the  desirable  form  of  skull  helps  to  explain 
the  origin  of  the  custom,  as  having  arisen  from 
the  type  of  the  dominant  race,  being  artificially 
produced  or  exaggerated.     On  this  supposition 
we  should  expect  to  find,  as  we  actually  do,  flat- 
52 


headed  or  round-headed  conquerors  and  nobles 
set  up  as  models  in  different  districts.  Such  a 
state  of  things  is  well  shown  among  the  Flat- 
head Indians,  who  enslave  the  neighboring  tribes 
with  undistorted  skulls  ;  the  children  of  these 
captives  are  not  allowed  to  have  their  skulls  band- 
aged in  the  cradle,  so  as  to  imitate  the  badge  of 
nobility,  and  even  white  men  are  despised  for 
having  round  heads  like  slaves.  Just  as  natu- 
rally the  nurses  in  Turkey  in  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury, as  the  famous  surgeon  Vesalius  mentions, 
gave  the  children  bullet-heads,  and  among  the 
Asiatic  population  of  Constantinople  it  seems  to 
be  done  still.  The  motive  popularly  assigned  is 
that  a  round  head  suits  best  for  wearing  a  turban, 
but  the  real  reason  probably  lies  much  deeper  in 
the  imitation  of  the  round  skulls  of  the  conquer- 
ing Tartar  race.  The  details,  which  show  how 
large  a  part  of  mankind  have  habitually  prac- 
tised cranial  deformation,  suggest  the  ques- 
tion whether  any  nations  have  been  perceptibly 
injured  by  it.  There  are  remarkable  cases  to  the 
contrary,  such  as  that  of  the  Chinooks,  whose 
monstrous  deformation  is  said  not  to  increase  the 
mortality  of  the  children,  or  even  to  prevent 
their  growing  up  fully  to  the  savage  level  of 
strength,  bravery,  and  cleverness.  On  the  other 
hand,  travelers  have  set  down  some  races  with 
compressed  skulls  as  exceptionally  stupid.  It  is 
more  to  the  purpose  that  in  modern  France  medi- 
cal observers,  such  as  Foville  and  Lunier,  have 
noticed  among  the  insane  an  unusual  proportion 
of  patients  with  artificially  distorted  skulls,  and 
have  also  remarked  a  prevalence  of  mental  dis- 
ease in  those  districts  where  the  nurses  still  most 
persistently  keep  up  the  practice  of  skull-shaping. 
That  the  origin  of  ceremonies  is  to  be  sought 
in  practical  proceedings  is  a  principle  not  only 
accepted  by  Dr.  Ploss,  but  particularly  well  illus- 
trated by  several  of  the  topics  he  deals  with. 
Thus,  in  connection  with  so  practical  a  matter  as 
the  feeding  of  the  child,  there  have  sprung  up 
ceremonial  customs  of  giving  it  the  first  taste  of 
milk  and  honey,  or  butter  and  honey  ;  with  this, 
again,  comes  to  be  associated  a  peculiar  mean- 
ing, that  it  confers  the  right  to  live,  it  being"  a 
well-known  rule  that  the  child,  having  once  tasted 
milk  and  honey,  is  not  to  be  killed  or  exposed 
(chapter  xiii.).  Again,  what  can  be  more  prosa- 
ically practical  than  cutting  a  child's  hair?  Yet 
hair-cutting,  especially  for  the  first  time,  appears 
on  both  sides  of  the  world  as  a  high  ceremonial 
act.  It  was  so  among  rude  American  tribes  such 
as  the  Abipones ;  in  New  Zealand  the  shaving  of 
the  child's  head  with  an  obsidian  knife  was  done 


2±2 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


by  a  grandfather  or  priest,  fasting  and  with  sol- 
emn accompaniment  of  chants ;  among  the  hill- 
people  of  India  hair-cutting  is  a  ceremony  con- 
nected with  the  naming  of  the  child  and  its  re- 
ception into  the  tribe ;  with  the  Chinese  it  is  one 
of  the  principal  formalities  of  the  festival  held 
when  the  mother  brings  out  the  three-months-old 
child  and  the  father  gives  it  a  name.  Not  to 
quote  too  many  cases,  we  need  only  refer  to  the 
ancient  Greek  and  Roman  customs,  recollecting 
that  relics  of  the  classic  rite  may  still  be  seen  in 
Europe  within  the  limits  of  the  Greek  Church, 
where  clipping  and  offering  locks  of  the  child's 
hair  is  associated  with  the  baptismal  ceremony 
(chapter  xiv.).  The  best-known  and  most  per- 
fect example  of  a  practical  dietetic  proceeding 
giving  rise  to  a  religious  ceremony  may  be  seen 
among  the  various  nations  who  have  consecrated 
the  act  of  bathing,  especially  the  bathing  of  the 
child,  into  a  rite  of  lustration  or  baptism.  A 
tolerably  full  collection  of  details  is  given  by  Dr. 
Ploss  (chapter  xiii.). 

This  principle  that  we  must  seek  practical 
purpose  as  the  foundation  of  custom,  even  among 
the  lowest  savages,  must  be  qualified  by  remem- 
bering that  the  means  may  be  such  as  we  know 
to  be  ill  adapted  to  their  ends,  while  these  ends 
themselves  may  be  useless  or  even  very  harmful. 
They  are  none  the  less  to  be  classed  as  practical 
if  they  show  distinct  purposes,  pursued  by  means 
believed  to  be  effective.  Viewed  in  this  light, 
the  repulsive  details  in  Dr.  Ploss's  dissertation 
on  infanticide  (chapters  xxiii.-iv.)  are  mostly  in- 
telligible. The  actual  food-question  among  rude 
and  half-starved  wandering  tribes,  whether  an- 
other child  can  be  kept ;  the  dislike  of  the  par- 
ents to  add  to  the  troubles  of  life ;  the  difficulty 
among  many  tribes  of  disposing  of  female  chil- 
dren in  marriage,  which  leads  to  girls  being  so 
often  killed  or  abandoned,  while  boys  are  brought 
up ;  are  among  the  reasons  operating  in  the  most 
practical  way,  especially  in  the  lower  culture, 
where  the  question  of  infanticide  is  not  one  of 
right  and  wrong  at  all,  but  it  is  for  the  parents  to 
decide  whether  a  child  is  to  live  or  not.  Few 
changes  in  the  moral  code  are  more  remarkable 
than  that  which  separates  the  Australian,  the 
Chinese,  the  ancient  Roman  or  German  in  this 
respect  from  the  nations  of  Christendom.  It  is 
true  that  European  practice  shows  .an  evil  discrep- 
ancy from  principle.  England  is  worse  than 
other  countries  for  the  poisoning  of  children  with 
opium  while  the  mothers  are  away  at  factory- 
work,  while  German  slang  has  the  hideously-sug- 
gestive name  of  "  angel-maker  "  (Engelmacherin) 


for  the  women  in  whose  charge  such  babies  are 
left.  In  studying  the  motives  of  infanticide, 
however,  we  have  to  separate  those  which,  to  our 
judgment,  are  practical — such  as  want,  indolence, 
or  shame — from  other  motives,  happily  incapable 
of  producing  such  results  in  the  civilized  world, 
but  which  at  lower  grades  of  culture  have  a  con- 
siderable effect  in  bringing  about  infanticide. 
These  are  the  sacrifice  of  children  to  propitiate 
deities,  and  the  opinion  that  children  ought  not 
to  live  if  they  show  unlucky  symptoms,  such  as 
cutting  the  upper  front  teeth  first.  Among  the 
most  remarkable  puzzles  of  superstition  in  the 
world  is  the  wide-spread  practice  of  killing 
twins,  one  or  both  (chapter  xxiv.).  Not  suffi- 
ciently accounted  for  by  the  reason  sometimes 
assigned  that  the  mother  cannot  rear  both,  this 
set  of  customs  probably  finds  its  real  explanation 
in  magical  ideas.  Magic  is,  indeed,  among  the 
most  important  factors  in  generating  custom,  as 
the  present  book  would  amply  prove  if  it  proved 
nothing  else. 

To  magic  belongs  the  "  couvade,"  which,  as 
one  of  the  most  remarkable  habits  still  lingering 
within  the  pale  of  civilization,  is  here  elaborately 
treated  in  a  chapter  by  itself  (chapter  v.).  To  a 
modern  European  it  may  at  first  seem  strange 
that  any  intelligible  train  of  ideas  should  have 
made  it  customary  for  a  father,  on  the  birth  of 
his  child,  to  fast  or  otherwise  diet  himself,  ab- 
stain from  violent  exertion,  or  even  lie  up  alto- 
gether. Yet  the  modern  savages  who  do  these 
things  often  have  a  distinct  notion  of  what  they 
mean,  and  Dr.  Ploss  is  inclined  to  accept  their 
main  explanation  as  the  correct  one,  much  as  his 
present  reviewer  did  in  investigating  the  subject 
years  ago  (Tylor,  "Early  History  of  Mankind," 
chapter  x.).  The  native  explanation  in  question 
is  that  the  child  is  sympathetically  affected  by  the 
actions  of  the  father,  who  abstains  accordingly 
from  certain  food  and  work  which  might  not  suit 
the  baby.  From  this  point  of  view  the  couvade 
is  simply  one  case  of  that  system  of  superstitious 
belief  which  may  be  called  sympathetic  magic. 
Savage  parents,  in  fact,  begin  to  take  these 
precautions  against  sympathetically  injuring  the 
child  long  before  it  is  born.  Thus,  we  hear  of 
the  father  fasting  or  abstaining  from  particular 
food,  lest  the  child  should  suffer;  while  some- 
times the  precise  magical  motive  comes  clearly 
into  view,  as  where  a  Dyak  avoids  killing  any 
creature  or  using  a  knife,  lest  he  should  hurt  the 
unborn  child — or  where  a  Carib  will  not  eat  wild- 
hog  lest  his  baby  should  be  born  with  a  snout. 
That  the  couvade  proper  has  the  same  origin 


DR.   PLOSS  ON  "  THE  CHILD:' 


243 


with  these  prenatal  fancies,  of  which  it  is,  in- 
deed, a  continuation,  seems  plain  when  we  ob- 
serve that,  after  the  children  in  question  have 
been  born,  and  the  fathers  have  accordingly  en- 
tered on  due  course  of  couvade,  the  Dyak  diets 
himself  on  rice  and  salt,  lest  other  food  should 
hurt  the  child's  digestion  ;  while  the  Carib  father 
gives  as  his  reason  for  not  eating  sea-cow  that  if 
he  did  the  child  might  grow  up  like  it,  with  little 
round  eyes.  Attempts  have  been  made  by  eth- 
nologists to  account  for  the  couvade  on  other 
grounds,  but  they  break  down  on  wide  compari- 
son of  the  evidence,  while  this  strengthens  the  sym- 
pathetic explanation  given  by  the  couvaders  them- 
selves. The  details  of  the  couvade  are  not,  in- 
deed, all  accounted  for  ;  as,  for  instance,  it  is  not 
clear  how  even  a  Carib  can  think  his  child  to  be 
benefited  by  himself  being,  not  only  half  starved, 
but  profusely  bled,  and  having  cayenne  pepper 
rubbed  into  his  wounds.  But  there  is  abundant 
evidence  to  prove  the  tendency  of  the  pre-scien- 
tific  mind  to  the  main  principle  of  the  couvade, 
that  children  are  sympathetically  affected  by  what 
happens  to  persons  with  whom  they  are  anyhow 
connected.  So  well  does  this  fit  even  with  the 
European  peasant's  state  of  thought,  that  a  whole 
group  of  superstitions  based  on  it  have  estab- 
lished themselves  in  German  folk-lore,  which  Dr. 
Ploss  (vol.  i.,  p.  141)  may  well  consider  analo- 
gous to  those  of  the  couvade-observing  savages, 
who  hold  that  a  baby's  health  may  be  affected  by 
its  father  taking  a  pinch  of  snuff.  These  Ger- 
man superstitions  apply  to  the  godparents,  whose 
close  social  connection  with  the  godchild  has  led 
to  the  popular  superstition  that  it  will  grow  up 
with  their  peculiarities,  and  especially  be  affected 
by  their  conduct  at  the  baptismal  ceremony; 
therefore  the  godfather  must  wash  himself  prop- 
erly, and  the  godmother  put  on  a  clean  shift,  or 
the  child  will  grow  up  dirty  ;  the  godfather  must 
not  look  round  on  his  way  to  church,  or  the  child 
will  be  an  idle  stare-about ;  nor  must  the  god- 
father carry  a  knife  about  him,  lest  the  child 
should  be  a  suicide ;  and  so  on  through  other 
provisions,  to  be  found  in  Dr.  Ploss's  book,  or  in 
the  copious  collection  of  German  folk-lore  whence 
they  are  quoted,  the  enlarged  second  edition  of 
Prof.  Adolf  Wuttke's  "  Deutsche  Volksaber- 
glaube  der  Gegenwart."     In  forming  an  opinion 


as  to  the  history  of  the  couvade,  the  difficulty  lies 
in  deciding  whether  its  appearance  in  districts  of 
Europe,  Asia,  Africa,  and  America,  is  to  be  ac- 
counted for  by  supposing  that  it  sprang  up  inde- 
pendently in  several  regions  ;  or  whether,  having 
been  once  invented  in  some  one  magic-seeking 
tribe,  it  spread  thence  over  the  world.  The  pres- 
ent reviewer  has  been  unfortunate  as  to  this  dis- 
cussion, his  remarks  having  led  first  Sir  John 
Lubbock,  and  now  Dr.  Ploss,  to  think  that  he  ven- 
tured on  the  utterly  rash  inference  that  all  peo- 
ples practising  the  couvade  are  thereby  proved  to 
be  of  one  and  the  same  race.  All  that  he  ever  real- 
ly argued  on  this  line  was  to  make  a  very  modest 
inference,  that  the  existence  of  the  custom  among 
the  old  Corsicans  mentioned  by  Diodorus  Siculus 
tended  to  show  that  they  might  be  a  relic  of  the 
same  population  with  the  Basques.  That  tribes 
in  the  Chinese  hills,  or  in  Asia  Minor,  or  in 
Navarre,  should  practise  a  curious  custom  like 
that  usual  among  the  wild  tribes  of  Brazil,  may 
be  a  reason  for  thinking  that  the  ancestors  of  the 
Old  World  races  were  once  in  a  stage  of  culture 
like  that  of  the  Brazilian  savages,  or  that  there 
had  been  communication  between  them,  but  it  is 
hardly  a  ground  of  speculation  as  to  blood-rela- 
tionship between  such  unlike  varieties  of  our 
race.  At  any  rate,  care  will  be  taken  in  the  next 
'■  edition  of  "  The  Early  History  of  Mankind  "  to 
,  guard  against  this  misapprehension  in  future. 
The  ethnological  argument  respecting  the  Basques 
will  be  upset  if  the  recent  assertion  of  M.  Vin- 
son ("  Basque  Legends,"  p.  232)  proves  true,  that 
Francisque-Michel,  Quatrefages,  and  others,  have 
been  mistaken  in  believing  the  Basques  to  be 
couvaders  at  all,  the  practice  really  belonging 
only  to  Romance  populations  such  as  the  Bear- 
nais. 

Among  corrections  desirable  in  the  next  edi- 
tion of  Dr.  Ploss's  valuable  work  it  may  be  no- 
ticed that  the  printer  has  come  to  grief  conspicu- 
ously in  the  Hebrew  of  vol.  i.,  p.  95,  and  that  it 
might  be  wise  to  drop  altogether  the  mention  a* 
page  21  of  the  idea  that  certain  crescent-shaped 
objects  found  in  the  Swiss  lake-dwellings  are 
proofs  of  moon- worship.  Dr.  Ploss  asks  any 
who  are  disposed  to  help  him  in  his  inquiries 
with  new  information  to  write  to  his  address, 
"  An  der  Pleisse  7,  Leipzig." — Academy. 


244 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


GERMAN  UNIVERSITIES. 


Br  WALTEE  C.  PEEEY. 


THERE  are  now  twenty-one  universities  in 
the  German  Empire,  with  1,250  professors, 
and  some  what  more  than  17,000  students.  Of 
the  German  universities  in  other  countries,  seven 
are  in  Austria,  with  6*76  professors  and  7,700  stu- 
dents ;  four  in  Switzerland,  with  230  professors 
and  1,091  students;  and  one  in  the  Baltic  Prov- 
inces of  Russia,  with  66  professors  and  874 
students. 

The  salaries  of  the  professors  in  ordinary 
range  from  £120  to  £450,  exclusive  of  fees.  In 
the  case  of  very  distinguished  men  they  rise  to 
£500  or  even  £600  per  annum. 

Referring  to  the  amount  expended  on  the 
universities,  Mr.  Gladstone,  in  a  recent  speech  at 
Nottingham,  says  :  "  I  think  about  £70,000  is  the 
sum  expended  by  the  Germans  and  the  Govern- 
ment of  Northern  Germany  in  producing  that 
which  is  absolutely  necessary  in  order  to  give 
efficiency  to  the  higher  education  of  the  coun- 
try." I  do  not  know  what  "  the  Government  of 
Northern  Germany  "  exactly  means,  but  Prussia 
alone  spends  5,343,000  marks  (£267,150)  a  year  on 
her  universities  ;  and  the  extraordinary  expenses 
of  the  present  year  amount  to  3,000,000  marks 
(£150,000),  chiefly  for  new  university  buildings. 
The  total  annual  sum  expended  for  educational 
purposes  in  Prussia  is  38,068,000  marks  (£1,903,- 
400),  and  the  minister  Falk  asks  for  an  additional 
grant  of  12,000,000  marks  (£600,000). 

The  German  university  consists  : 

I.  Of  the  Ordinary  professors,  appointed  by 
royal  patent  and  paid  by  government ;  the  Ex- 
traordinary professors,  named  by  the  king's  min- 
ister, who  are  not  entitled  to  any  salary,  but  often 
receive  a  small  one ;  and  the  Privathn  docentes, 
who  derive  their  Licentia  docendi  from  the  Fac- 
ulty to  which  they  belong,  and  depend  on  fees  alone. 

II.  Of  the  various  directors  and  officers  of 
the  institutions  connected  with  the  university. — 
the  museums,  observatories,  anatomical  theatres, 
laboratories,  etc. 

III.  Of  the  matriculated  students. 

IV.  Of  the  academical  police,  and  the  infe- 
rior officials,  as  secretaries,  quaestors,  bedells,  etc. 

The  professors  and  students  are  divided  into 
the  four  Faculties  of  Theology,  Jurisprudence, 
Medicine,  and  Philosophy  (Arts),  under  which 
last  head  are  included,  not  merely  Mental  and 


Moral  Philosophy,  but  the  Ancient  and  Modern 
Languages,  History,  Archaeology,  Mathematics, 
the  Physical  Sciences,  the  Fine  Arts,  Political 
Philosophy,  Political  Economy,  and  Diplomacy, 
etc.  The  Minister  of  Education  is  represented  at 
some  universities  by  a  resident  "  Curator  and 
Plenipotentiary,"  who  acts  as  a  sort  of  resident 
chancellor,  and  is  the  connecting  link  between 
the  university  and  the  government.  The  imme- 
diate government  of  the  university  is  carried  on 
by  a  Senate,  composed  in  some  cases  of  all  the 
ordinary  professors,  in  others  of  a  certain  num- 
ber chosen  by  and  from  them,  with  an  annually- 
appointed  Rector  at  their  head.  The  Senate  gen- 
erally consists  of  the  Rector,  the  ex-Rector,  the 
four  Deans  of  Faculty,  some,  or  all,  of  the  ordi- 
nary professors,  and  the  University  Judge.  The 
Rector  is  chosen  by  the  ordinary  professors,  and 
is  president  of  the  Senate.  He  still  retains  the 
old  title  of  "  Magnificence,"  and  derives  a  salary 
from  a  percentage  on  fees  for  matriculation,  and 
the  granting  of  testimonials  and  degrees.  The 
University  Judge  is  appointed  by  the  Minister  of 
Education,  and  transacts  the  legal  business  of 
the  university.  He  is  not  a  professor,  but  a  prac- 
tical lawyer,  whose  office  it  is  to  see  that  all  the 
transactions  of  the  Senate  are  in  accordance  with 
the  laws  of  the  land.  He  is  also  the  connecting 
link  between  the  academical  authorities  and  the 
town  police. 

The  courses  of  lectures  (Collegia)  delivered 
by  the  professors  are  of  three  kinds  : 

I.  Publico. — Every  ordinary  or  extraordinary 
professor  is  expected  to  deliver,  gratis,  two 
courses  (of  at  least  two  lectures  a  week),  extend- 
ing through  the  whole  of  each  "  Semester,"  on 
some  material  point  of  the  science  he  professes ; 
and  these  are  the  "  Publica  Collegia^  They  are 
but  thinly  attended  by  the  students. 

II.  Priiala. — The  arrangement  of  which  is 
entirely  left  to  the  different  Faculties.  These 
are  the  principal  lectures,  and  the  professors  re- 
ceive fees  (honoraria)  from  those  who  attend 
them,  varying  according  to  the  number  of  hours 
in  the  week  which  they  occupy,  the  labor  re- 
quired in  their  preparation,  the  cost  of  apparatus, 
etc.  These  lectures  generally  occupy  an  hour  a 
day,  four,  five,  or  six  times  a  week.  The  most 
usual  fee  is  about  eighteen  shillings. 


GERMAN   UNIVERSITIES. 


245 


III.  Fnvatissima. — These  are  delivered  to  a 
select  number,  in  the  private  houses  of  the  pro- 
fessors, on  terms  settled  between  them  and  their 
hearers. 

No  single  thing  has  contributed  more  to  in- 
jure the  reputation  of  the  German  universities  in 
the  eyes  of  our  countrymen  than  the  unprincipled 
manner  in  which  some  of  the  most  insignificant 
of  them  have  exercised  their  right  of  conferring 
degrees.  Those  who  are  unacquainted  with  Ger- 
many naturally  involve  all  her  universities  in  the 
same  condemnation  with  the  two  or  three  dishon- 
orable corporations  who  have  virtually  sold  their 
worthless  honors  Xp  aspirants  as  base  as  them- 
selves. A  short  account  of  the  manner  in  which 
degrees  are  obtained  in  the  more  respectable  uni- 
versities of  Germany  may  help  to  rescue  them 
from  unmerited  reproach. 

Each  Faculty  has  the  exclusive  right  of  grant- 
ing degrees  in  its  own  sphere,  although  this  pre- 
rogative is  exercised  under  the  authority  of  the 
whole  university.  The  Theological  Faculty  grants 
two  degrees,  those  of  Licentiate  and  Doctor.  The 
Philosophical  Faculty  also  grants  two,  "  Master  of 
Arts  "  and  "  Doctor  of  Philosophy,"  which  are 
generally  taken  together.  The  Medical  and  Judi- 
cial Faculties  give  only  one  degree  each,  that  of 
Doctor. 

Whoever  seeks  the  degree  of  Licentiate  in 
Theology,  and  of  Doctor  and  Master  of  Arts  in 
Philosophy,  must  have  studied  three  years  at  a 
university,  and  must  signify  his  desire  to  the  Dean 
of  his  Faculty  in  a  Latin  epistle,  accompanied  by 
a  short  curriculum  vitce.  Before  he  can  be  ad- 
mitted to  the  viva-voce  examination,  he  is  expected 
to  send  in  a  Doctordissertation,  an  original  trea- 
tise, generally  written  in  Latin,  in  which  he  must 
manifest  not  only  his  proficiency  in  the  subjects 
in  which  he  intends  to  graduate,  but  some  power 
of  original  thought  and  independent  research. 
The  dean  sends  this  treatise  round  to  the  other 
members  of  the  Faculty,  who  have  to  declare  in 
writing  their  opinion  of  its  merits.  If  this  be 
favorable,  a  day  is  appointed  for  the  grand  ex- 
amination, which  is  generally  carried  on  in  Latin, 
and  which  all  the  members  of  the  Faculty  are 
expected  to  attend  as  examiners.  The  Doctor- 
ayulus  is  then  subjected  to  a  viva-voce  examination 
by  each  professor  in  turn,  after  which  it  is  de- 
cided by  simple  majority  whether  the  candidate 
has  satisfied  the  examiners  or  not.  If  he  suc- 
ceeds, he  is  directed  to  hold  a  public  "  disputa- 
tion "  (in  Latin),  in  presence  of  the  dean  and 
Faculty,  on  theses  of  his  own  selection,  which  are 
posted  at  the  gates  of  the  university.     After  the 


disputation  the  dean  addresses  the  corona,  in  a 
Latin  speech,  and  hands  the  diploma  to  the  new 
graduate. 

To  obtain  the  degree  of  Doctor  of  Theology, 
the  candidate  must  have  finished  his  academical 
studies  six  years,  and  have  written  some  work, 
which,  in  the  opinion  of  the  Faculty,  is  a  valuable 
contribution  to  theological  literature. 

The  degree  of  Doctor  utriusque  juris  is  taken 
in  nearly  the  same  way  as  those  in  Theology  and 
Philosophy,  except  that  the  law-student  is  some- 
times subjected  to  a  written  examination  previ- 
ously to  the  oral  one. 

The  Medical  Faculty  is  the  only  one  in  which 
it  is  imperative  on  the  student  to  take  the  degree 
of  Doctor.  In  the  other  Faculties  admission  to 
the  privileges  and  honors  of  a  profession  is  ob- 
tained solely  by  passing  the  so-called  state  or 
government  examination. 

The  foregoing  outline  may  suffice  to  show  the 
world-wide  difference  between  the  academical 
institutions  of  England  and  Germany  in  external 
form  ;  yet  they  differ  far  more  essentially  in  the 
spirit  which  animates  them,  in  their  modus  ope- 
randi, and  in  the  objects  which  they  respectively 
pursue.  The  term  university  is  hardly  applicable 
to  our  great  academies ;  for  they  do  not  even 
profess  to  include  the  whole  circle  of  the  sciences 
in  their  programme,  and  their  mode  of  teaching 
differs  in  hardly  any  respect  from  that  of  a  school. 
The  German  university,  on  the  other  hand,  looks, 
at  first  sight,  like  a  mere  aggregate  of  technical 
schools,  designed  to  prepare  men  for  the  several 
careers  of  social  life.  Something  analogous  would 
result  from  bringing  together  in  one  place  our 
universities  of  Oxford  and  Cambridge,  our  the- 
ological training-schools,  Inns  of  Court,  medical 
schools  and  hospitals,  and  our  British  and  Ken- 
sington Museums,  with  their  schools  of  art,  and 
then  dividing  the  whole  body  of  teachers  and 
students  into  four  faculties,  and  bringing  it  under 
the  control  of  her  Majesty's  Government.  Yet 
such  mere  juxtaposition  would  not  alone  suffice 
to  form  a  German  university.  Such  a  collection 
in  one  place  of  professional  training-schools, 
whose  only  object  is  the  rapid  preparation  of 
young  men  for  their  future  callings,  does  exist 
in  Paris  ;  and  yet  Gabriel  Monod  could  say,  with- 
out contradiction,  that,  with  the  exception  of 
Turkey,  France  was  the  only  country  in  Europe 
which  possessed  no  university  in  the  proper  sense 
of  the  word.  The  German  Faculties  are  also 
technical  schools,  but  they  are  intimately  and  in- 
separably united  by  a  common  scientific  method, 
which  makes  the  practical  studies  of  each  a  me- 


246 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


diurn  of  the  highest  scientific  training.  Prepara- 
tion for  a  profession  is  indeed  the  main  object 
of  a  German  university ;  but  it  is  not,  as  in 
France,  the  only  one.  The  great  principle  of 
teaching  in  the  former  is  the  continual  blending 
of  instructian  and  research,  and  the  German  uni- 
versities are  such  good  schools,  because  they  are 
not  only  places  of  instruction  but  workshops  of 
science.  The  enlargement  and  strengthening  of 
the  mind  which  the  English  systems  aims  at  ex- 
clusively, the  Germans  endeavor  to  combine  with 
preparation  for  the  practical  business  of  life. 
Their  professors  have  to  supply  the  state  with  a 
sufficient  number  of  young  men  capable  of  under- 
taking the  duties  of  clergymen,  schoolmasters, 
lawyers,  physicians,  civil  servants,  etc.,  and  we 
know  that  this  practical  end  is  fully  attained. 
But  the  successful  result  is  a  matter  of  perpetual 
astonishment  to  us,  with  our  ideas  and  our  ex- 
perience, when  we  come  to  consider  the  nature 
of  the  means  employed.  The  professor  announces 
a  course  of  lectures,  which  the  student  may  at- 
tend or  not  as  he  pleases  ;  and  these  lectures  are 
not,  as  we  might  expect,  a  compendium  of  prac- 
tical knowledge,  which  his  pupils  may  commit  to 
memory  and  reproduce  at  their  examinations, 
and  use  at  their  first  start  in  their  professional 
career,  but  generally  an  original  scientific  inves- 
tigation of  some  new  field  of  thought,  a  peering 
from  the  heights  of  accumulated  knowledge  into 
the  dim  and  cloud-shadowed  horizon.  In  every 
lecture  the  professor  is  supposed  to  be  engaged 
in  the  act  of  creation,  and  the  student  to  be  im- 
bibing the  scientific  spirit  and  acquiring  the  sci- 
entific method — watching  the  weaver  at  his  loom 
and  learning  to  weave  for  himself.  Whether  the 
latter  does  his  part  or  not  is  entirely  his  own 
concern.  He  is  never  questioned  in  his  class  or 
examined  at  the  end  of  the  term  or  year,  and 
may  pass  his  whole  university  life  without  any 
intimate  personal  acquaintance  with  the  man 
whose  business  it  is  to  cultivate  his  powers  and 
fit  him  to  serve  his  generation.  The  sources  of 
the  practical  knowledge  he  needs  are,  of  course, 
pointed  out  to  him  for  private  reading,  but  he  is 
left  to  use  them  when  and  how  he  pleases,  and 
to  prepare  himself  alone,  or  in  company  with  his 
fellow-students,  for  his  distant  examination.  Nor 
is  the  higher  work  of  the  professor  supplemented, 
as  with  us,  by  private  tutors,  "  coaches,"  or 
"  crammers."  In  fact,  there  is  no  part  of  our 
collegiate  system  which  is  more  universally  rep- 
robated by  the  Germans.  "  What  we  want  for 
our  students,"  they  say,  "  is  not  the  assistance 
of  private  tutors,  but  private  independent  study 


without  assistance.  .  .  .  Away  with  all  supervision 
and  drilling  !  If  you  were  to  subject  our  men  to 
private  tuition,  and  regulate  and  inspect  their 
studies,  you  would  destroy  at  a  blow  the  scien- 
tific spirit  in  our  universities.  The  main  object  of 
a  university,  as  distinguished  from  a  school,  is 
to  foster  independent  thought — the  true  founda- 
tion of  independence  of  character.  The  student 
must,  of  course,  be  fitted  to  gain  his  livelihood, 
but  show  him  where  the  necessary  information  is 
to  be  acquired,  and  place  an  examination  in  full 
view  at  the  end  of  his  curriculum,  and  he  will 
prepare  himself  far  better  than  if  he  were 
crammed  by  others,  in  a  manner  not  suited,  per- 
haps, to  his  mental  constitution." 

I  will  now  recapitulate  the  principal  charac- 
teristic differences  between  the  German  and  the 
English  university. 

The  former,  as  we  have  seen,  is  a  national 
institution,  entirely  supported  by  the  state,  sub- 
ject to  the  supervision  and  control  of  the  central 
government,  frequented  by  all  but  the  poorest 
classes  of  the  community,  and  therefore  immedi- 
ately and  directly  influenced  by  political  and 
social  changes.  The  latter  is  a  wealthy  corpora- 
tion enjoying  a  very  large  measure  of  indepen- 
dence, frequented  chiefly  by  the  higher  and  more 
conservative  classes,  but  little  influenced  by  po- 
litical changes  or  the  prevailing  opinions  and 
customs  of  the  masses,  dwelling  in  empyrean 
heights  remote  from  the  noise  and  heat  of  con- 
tending factions  and  all  the  changes  and  chances 
of  the  work-a  day  world. 

"  Semota  ab  rebus  sejunctaque  longe, 
Nam  privata  dolore  omni,  privata  periclis, 
Ipsa  suis pollens  opibus  nihil  indiga  uostri." 

Again,  the  internal  government  of  the  Corpus 
Acad,  in  Germany  is  almost  entirely  in  the  hands 
of  the  actual  teachers ;  and  the  most  eminent 
professors  are  also  the  chief  rulers  of  the  uni- 
versity, as  rectors,  deans  of  faculty,  or  members 
of  the  Senate.  In  Oxford  and  Cambridge,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  lecturers  and  tutors,  the  working 
bees  of  the  community,  have  but  a  small  share  of 
its  wealth  and  power,  which  is  for  the  most  part 
in  the  hands  of  learned  and  dignified  "Heads" 
and  irresponsible  Fellows,  who  are  not  expected 
to  take  much  part  in  the  actual  teaching.  The 
natural  result  is,  that  we  have  many  admirable 
teachers,  and  many  very  learned  men,  but  few 
writers.  No  impulse  of  rivalry  or  hope  of  pro- 
motion irresistibly  impels  our  scholars  to  give  the 
fruits  of  their  labor  to  the  world,  and  they  too 
often  enjoy  them  alone.  We  have  always  the  un- 
easy feeling  that  there  are  men  at  our  universities 


GERMAN  UNIVERSITIES. 


who  might  well  compete  with  German  professors, 
who  yet  do  little  for  the  advancement  of  science, 
and  are  almost  unknown  beyond  their  college 
walls. 

According  to  the  German  view  of  the  matter, 
the  professor  ought  to  be  a  learner  even  more 
than  a  teacher.  He  is  engaged  in  a  constant  race 
and  rivalry  with  competitors,  not  only  at  his  own 
university,  but  throughout  the  great  republic  of 
letters  to  which  he  belongs,  and  in  which  he  seeks 
for  fame,  position,  and  emolument.  In  the  choice 
of  a  professor,  therefore,  the  university  (which 
has  the  right  of  proposing  names  to  the  Minister 
of  Education)  and  the  government  are  guided  al- 
most entirely  by  the  comparative  merits  mani- 
fested in  the  published  writings  of  the  aspirants. 
The  questions  asked  are :  "  What  work  has  he 
done  ?  "  "  What  is  he  doing  ?  "  A  vague  repu- 
tation for  mere  learning,  a  good  delivery,  or  a 
pleasing  style,  will  avail  him  little.  They  prefer, 
not  the  best  teacher,  as  they  would  for  the  gymna- 
sium, but  the  greatest  thinker,  the  most  creative 
genius,  and  leave  him  to  make  himself  intelligible 
to  the  students  as  he  can.     They  are  not  disturbed 

at  hearing  that  Prof.  M or  N has  but  few 

hearers,  and  "  shoots  above  their  heads  ; "  or  by 
such  cases  as  that  of  the  philosopher  Hegel,  who 
said  that  "  only  one  of  his  pupils  understood  him, 
and  he  misunderstood  him."  A  light  set  on  a 
hill,  they  think,  cannot  be  altogether  hidden,  and 
some  few  may  catch  the  prophet's  mantle  as  he 
rises.  They  care  far  more  for  substance  than 
form,  for  native  gold  than  current  silver  coin ; 
and  hence  it  comes  that  so  many  German  profess- 
ors and  authors  are,  as  compared  with  their 
French  and  English  brethren,  dull  and  awkward 
lecturers,  obscure  and  unreadable  writers.  And 
thus  the  German  scholar  works  directly  under  the 
eyes  of  the  government,  the  lettered  public,  and 
indeed  the  whole  nation.  Every  sound  that  he 
utters  is  immediately  heard  in  the  vast  whisper- 
ing-chamber of  the  temple  of  knowledge — 
weighed  and  discussed  at  a  thousand  centres.  A 
new  discovery  in  science,  a  new  edition  of  a  clas- 
sic author,  a  light  thrown  on  the  history  of  the 
past,  any  proof,  in  short,  of  superior  genius  or 
talent,  may  not  only  give  him  the  much-coveted 
Sitz  und  Stimrne  (seat  and  voice)  in  the  general 
council  of  the  republic  of  letters,  but  insure  him 
a  higher  place  in  the  social  scale,  and  offers  of  a 
more  lucrative  post. 

The  English  head,  professor,  or  tutor,  when 
once  appointed,  enjoys  a  kind  of  monopoly  of 
authority  or  teaching,  and  may  do  his  ministering 
zealously  or  gently,  without  fear  of  rivalry,  with- 


out any  immediate  or  certain  gain  or  loss  of  rep- 
utation or  emolument.  He  stands  in  no  relation 
either  to  the  government  or  the  public,  to  both  of 
which  he  may  be  almost  unknown.  He  has  no 
broadly-marked  career  before  him,  in  which  dis- 
tinction and  reward  necessarily  wait  on  great  abil- 
ity and  great  exertion,  and  if  he  is  ambitious  he 
generally  leaves  the  university  for  some  more  ex 
tensive  and  promising  field  of  labor. 

The  difference  between  the  character  of  the 
English  and  German  student  is,  if  possible,  still 
more  striking.  When  an  English  boy  leaves 
school  for  the  university,  he  is  not  conscious  of 
a  very  sharp  break  or  turning-point  in  his  life ; 
he  is  only  entering  on  another  stage  of  the  same 
high-road.  He  goes  to  pursue  nearly  the  same 
studies  in  very  nearly  the  same  way  as  before. 
He  expects  to  meet  his  old  companions,  and  to 
indulge  in  his  dearly-loved  boyish  sports  on  the 
river  and  in  the  field.  He  enjoys,  of  course,  a 
greater  degree  of  freedom,  and  receives  a  much 
higher  kind  of  instruction,  in  accordance  with  his 
riper  age  and  greater  powers  ;  but  the  subjects  of 
his  study  are  still  chosen  for  him,  and  prosecuted, 
not  for  their  so-called  "  utility,"  but  for  their 
value  as  gymnastic  exercises  of  the  mind.  As  at 
school,  he  is  directed  in  his  course,  and  the  in. 
struction  is  still  catechetical.  Throughout  the 
whole  of  his  career  at  college  he  is  subjected  to 
examination  in  certain  fixed  subjects,  and  even 
books,  by  the  study  of  which  he  can  alone  escape 
reproof  and  obtain  distinction  and  reward.  His 
mind  is  still  almost  exclusively  receptive,  bound  to 
take  the  food  and  medicine  prepared  and  pre- 
scribed for  him  by  duly-authorized  purveyors  and 
practitioners.  He  is  still,  in  short,  in  general 
training  for  the  race  of  life,  and  is  allowed  no 
free  disposal  of  his  time  and  energy,  no  free  in 
dulgence  of  his  peculiar  tastes. 

How  different  the  feelings  and  experience  of 
the  German  gymnasiast,  as  he  passes  from  the 
purgatory  of  school  to  the  paradise  of  college ! 
In  his  boyhood  he  has  been  mentally  schooled 
and  drilled  with  a  strictness  and  formality  of 
which  we  have  no  conception.  Every  step  he 
takes  is  marked  out  for  him  with  the  utmost  care 
and  precision  by  the  highest  authority,  and  he  has 
scarcely  a  moment  that  he  can  call  his  own.  It 
is  continually  dinned  into  his  ears  that  he  is  not 
to  reason  or  to  choose,  but  to  learn  and  to  obey ; 
and  he  does  obey  and  learn  with  incredible  docil- 
ity and  industry,  and  toils  joylessly  along  the 
straight  and  narrow  path,  between  the  high  and 
formal  walls,  from  stage  to  stage  of  his  arduous 
school-life,  clearing  one  examination-fence  after 


24S 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


another,  or  falling  amid  its  thorns,  till  the  last  is 
surmounted  which  separates  him  from  the  Ger- 
man's heaven. 

And  what  a  change  awaits  him  there !  The 
cap  of  the  student  is  to  him  the  cap  of  liberty ; 
his  bonds  are  loosed,  his  chains  struck  off,  he  is 
introduced  into  the  Eden  of  freedom  and  knowl- 
edge, "  furnished  with  every  tree  that  is  pleasant 
to  the  sight  and  good  for  food,"  and  told  that  he 
"  may  freely  eat  of  all."  The  very  same  author- 
ities, central  and  local,  who  have  hitherto  demand- 
ed from  him  dumb  and  blind  obedience,  and  con- 
trolled his  bodily  and  mental  freedom  in  every 
possible  way,  now  loudly  proclaim  to  him  that  his 
chief  duty,  the  chief  principle  and  law  of  his  be- 
ing, is — to  be  free.  The  professors  contend  for 
his  applause  and  patronage,  society  allows  him 
the  greatest  latitude  as  suited  to  his  age  and  pro- 
fession; the  very  police,  so  terrible  to  other  men, 
looks  indulgently  on  him,  as  a  privileged  being, 
and  mutters  as  it  sees  him  kicking  over  the  traces, 
"  Es  ist  ja  ein  Student."  For  three  or  four  long 
years  no  one  has  the  right  to  dictate  to  him,  or 
to  bind  him  by  any  tradition  or  any  rule.  He 
must,  of  course,  prepare  for  the  inevitable  exami- 
nation at  the  end  of  his  university  career,  but  he 
may  do  so  how  and  when  he  pleases,  and  in  the 
mean  time  he  can  rest  from  the  exhausting  toils 
of  his  school-life,  and  cultivate  at  leisure  the 
powers  of  which  he  is  most  conscious,  and  in  the 
exercise  of  which  he  most  delights.  He  has  sev- 
eral universities  from  which  to  choose,  and  if  one 
professor  does  not  please  him  he  can  generally 
find  another  who  is  lecturing  on  the  same  subject ; 
and  he  is  by  no  means  slow  in  recognizing  which 
are  the  rising  and  which  the  setting  stars  in  the 
academic  firmament. 

When  we  come  to  compare  the  results  of  the 
two  systems,  we  find  them  such  as  we  might  ex- 
pect. The  Germans  are  the  explorers  in  the 
world  of  thought,  and  the  first  settlers  in  the 
newly-discovered  regions,  who  clear  the  ground 
and  make  it  tillable  and  habitable.  At  a  later 
period  the  English  take  possession,  build  solid 
houses,  and  dwell  there.  The  Germans  send  their 
students  out  into  the  fields  of  knowledge,  like 
working-bees,  to  gather  honey  from  every  side. 
The  English  lead  their  pupils  into  well-stored 
hives  to  enjoy  the  labors  of  others.  The  German 
student  cares  little  for  the  accumulated  learning 
of  the  past,  except  as  a  vantage-ground  from 
which  to  reach  some  greater  height.  He  has 
little  reverence  for  authority,  and,  if  he  does  set 
up  an  idol,  he  is  very  apt  to  throw  it  down  again. 
His  chief  delight  is  to  form  theories  of  his  own, 


and  he  can  build  a  very  lofty  structure  on  a  very 
insufficient  foundation.  As  compared  with  the 
"  first-class  "  Oxford  man  or  Cambridge  wrangler 
he  has  read  but  little,  and  would  make  a  very 
moderate  show  in  a  classical  or  mathematical 
tripos  examination;  but  he  has  the  scientific 
method ;  he  is  thorough  and  independent  master 
of  a  smaller  or  larger  region  of  thought;  he 
knows  how  to  use  his  knowledge,  and  in  the  long- 
run  outstrips  his  English  brothers.  The  English 
system  produces  the  accomplished  scholar,  "well 
up  in  his  books ; "  the  reverent  and  zealous  dis- 
ciple of  some  Gamaliel ;  the  brilliant  essayist, 
whose  mind  is  filled  with  the  great  thoughts  and 
achievements  of  the  past,  who  deals  with  ease  and 
grace  with  the  rich  stores  he  has  gathered  by 
extensive  reading;  the  ready  debater,  skilled  in 
supporting  his  arguments  by  reference  to  high 
authority,  and  by  apt  quotations.  But  he  is  re- 
ceptive rather  than  creative,  his  feathers,  though 
gay  and  glossy,  are  too  often  borrowed,  and  not 
so  well  fitted  for  higher  flights  as  if  they  were  the 
product  of  his  own  mental  organism.  In  the  lan- 
guage of  Faust,  we  might  say  of  him — 

"  Erquickung  hast  du  nicht  gewonnen, 
Wenn  sie  dir  nicht  aus  eigener  Seele  quillt." 

The  German  has  read  less,  but  he  has  thought 
more,  and  is  continually  striving  to  add  to  the 
sum  of  human  knowledge.  He  is  impatient  and 
restless  while  he  stands  on  other  men's  ground, 
or  sojourns  in  other  men's  houses;  directly  he 
has  found  materials  of  his  own,  whether  they  be 
stones  or  only  cards,  he  begins  to  build  for  him- 
self, and  would  rather  get  over  a  difficulty  by  a 
rickety  plank  of  his  own  than  by  the  safe  iron 
bridge  of  another.  The  same  furor  Teutonicus 
(the  tendency  to  drive  everything  to  extremes), 
which  urges  on  the  powerful  intellect  to  great  dis- 
coveries in  the  regions  of  the  hitherto  unknown, 
also  goads  the  little  mind  to  peer  with  fussy,  fe- 
verish restlessness  into  every  chink,  to  stir  every 
puddle,  "  to  dig  with  greedy  hand  for  treasure." 

The  Englishman,  meanwhile,  looks  on,  and 
patiently  waits  until  the  new  intellectual  structure 
has  been  well  aired  and  lighted,  and  fitted  up  for 
comfortable  habitation.  The  German  theologian 
or  philosopher  is  often  astonished,  and  not  a  little 
amused,  to  see  some  theory  or  system  taken  up 
by  English  scholars,  who  have  just  learned  Ger- 
man, which  has  long  become  obsolete  in  the  land 
of  its  birth,  and  been  disowned,  perhaps,  by  its 
very  author. 

In  contemplating  the  past  history  and  present 
state  of  the  German  universities,  the   question 


GERMAN  UXIVERSI1IES. 


i^'j 


naturally  arises  whether  the  extraordinary  mental 
fertility  which  characterizes  them  has  been  owing 
to  peculiar  political  and  social  conditions ;  wheth- 
er it  is  likely,  as  many  think,  to  be  injuriously 
affected  by  recent  important  changes,  and  es- 
pecially by  the  amalgamation,  of  the  different 
German  states  into  one  great  empire,  under  the 
hegemony  of  Prussia.  The  literary  fertility  of 
their  universities  is  generally  accounted  for  by 
crediting  the  Germans  with  a  certain  disinterested 
love  of  knowledge  for  its  own  sake,  as  contrasted 
with  our  low  material  hankering  after  loaves  and 
fishes.  We  need  not  seriously  endeavor  to  refute 
so  preposterous  a  theory,  but  only  point  to  the 
facts  that,  while  the  encouragement  of  learning 
and  research  at  the  universities  has  been  one  of 
the  main  objects  of  the  state  in  Germany,  there 
is  no  country  in  Europe  in  which  science  (in  the 
widest  sense  of  the  word)  has  received  so  little 
encouragement  from  government,  has  been  left  so 
entirely  to  reward  itself,  as  in  England.  In  fact, 
since  there  is  no  career  in  our  universities  for  men 
of  learning  and  science,  no  reward  for  literary 
activity  and  successful  research,  the  wonder  is 
that  they  have  done  so  much,  and  can  count  so 
many  great  names  among  their  members.  The 
preeminence  of  German  learning  is  owing  to  no 
natural  superiority  in  the  Germans,  either  mental 
or  moral.  To  understand  the  intense  activity 
■which  prevails  in  their  universities,  we  must  re- 
member that  the  academic  career  has,  for  more 
than  a  century,  exercised  a  very  powerful  attrac- 
tion on  the  most  active  and  gifted  minds  of  the 
nation.  Debarred  by  the  despotic  nature  of  their 
government  from  the  arena  of  politics,  and  by 
class-distinction  from  any  fair  chance  of  promo- 
tion in  the  army  or  the  service  of  the  state,  with 
few  opportunities  of  acquiring  wealth  in  com- 
mercial or  industrial  pursuits,  the  more  ambitious 
spirits  in  the  German  bourgeoisie  have  sought  the 
only  field  of  honor  in  which  the  race  was  to  the 
swift  and  the  battle  to  the  strong.  We  may 
smile  at,  the  small  salaries  of  the  German  pro- 
fessor, but,  when  compared  with  other  govern- 
ment officials  in  his  own  country,  he  is,  or  rather 
was,  well  paid,  and  his  position  in  other  respects 
is  a  singularly  enviable  one.  He  is  in  the  most 
independent  position  in  which  a  German  can  be 
placed,  and  enjoys  a  freedom  of  speech  which  is 
permitted  to  no  other  official,  whatever  his  rank 
may  be ;  a  freedom  which  increases  in  exact  pro- 
portion to  his  abilities  and  fame.  His  peculiar 
privileges  are  owing  partly  to  the  natural  scarcity 
of  great  men,  and  the  respect  wTiich  they  inspire 
in   their  countrymen,   and    partly   to  the   keen 


competition  for  the  possession  of  the  most  illus- 
trious scholars  between  the  universities  of  the 
numerous  independent  states  into  which  Ger- 
many was,  until  recently,  divided.  This  active 
rivalry  enabled  the  distinguished  professor  to  hold 
his  own  even  against  kings  and  ministers.  When 
the  late  Duke  of  Cumberland,  as  King  of  Han- 
over (whose  motto  was  that  "  professors  and  har- 
lots can  always  be  had  for  money"),  expelled  the 
seven  greatest  men  in  Gottingen  for  a  spirited 
protest  against  his  coup  d'etat,  they  were  received 
with  open  arms  even  by  despotic  Prussia.  When 
the  great  Latin  scholar  Ritschl  shook  off  the  dust 
of  his  feet  at  Bonn,  he  was  welcomed  with  the 
highest  honors  by  the  King  of  Saxony,  and  in- 
stalled at  Leipsic. 

The  maintenance  of  the  scientific  spirit  is  en- 
dangered by  the  very  extension  of  the  bounda- 
ries of  science  of  which  that  spirit  is  the  chief 
a"-ent.  The  mass  of  strictly  professional  knowl- 
edge in  each  faculty  is  increasing  every  day,  and 
the  task  of  assimilating  this  engrosses  more  and 
more  of  the  student's  time  and  energy,  and  leaves 
him  fewer  and  fewer  opportunities  for  the  inde- 
pendent prosecution  of  pure  science.  We  hear 
it  said  on  all  sides  that  young  men  must  spend  at 
least  four  years  at  the  universities,  if  they  are  not 
to  sink  into  mere  "  bread-students  ;  "  and  appeals 
have  been  made  to  the  liberality  of  the  German 
public  to  enable  the  more  gifted  students,  by  the 
establishment  of  small  Stiftungen,  to  spend  a 
longer  time  in  study.  Such  appeals,  by-the-way, 
meet  with  very  little  response  in  Germany.  The 
liberality  which  has  filled  England  with  benevo- 
lent institutions  of  every  kind  appears  to  be  al- 
most unknown  elsewhere.  Complaints  are  heard 
in  many  quarters  that  the  "Nachwuchs"  the  after- 
growth, the  rising  generation  of  professors,  is  not 
likely  to  equal  its  predecessors.  It  is  not  long 
ago  since  a  minister  of  education  in  Prussia  com- 
plained of  the  difficulty  of  filling  up  vacant  posts 
in  the  universities  in  a  manner  satisfactory  to 
himself  and  the  students.  How  far  this  falling 
off  is  attributable  to  the  causes  mentioned  above, 
or  the  general  dearth  of  great  men  observable,  at 
the  present  time,  in  every  country  in  Europe,  re- 
mains to  be  seen.  One  thing,  however,  is  abso- 
lutely certain :  that  neither  in  Germany  nor  Eng- 
land can  a  university  be  sustained  by  the  exer- 
tions of "  disinterested  "  votaries  of  science.  With 
the  exception  of  the  Bis  geniti,  the  born  priests  of 
science,  men  will  not  spend  long  years  in  labori- 
ous study  without  hope  of  adequate  reward  in 
the  shape  of  money  or  position.  Science  has 
flourished  at  the  German  seats  of  learning  be- 


250 


TEE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


cause  it  has  been  carefully  fostered  and  judiciously 
rewarded  by  the  state.  It  has  not  flourished  at 
our  universities  because,  while  they  richly  reward 


the  first  fruits  of  the  youthful  intellect,  they  offer 
no  career  to  the  man. — Condensed  from  Macmil- 
larts  Magazine. 


THE  WEAKNESSES  OF  GEEAT  MEN. 


THE  weakness  of  a  great  man  is  often  that 
feature  of  his  character  or  that  particular 
inclination  in  him  which  has  most  interest  for  the 
student  of  humanity.  That  Caesar  was  the  first 
general  and  statesman  of  his  age — that  he  con- 
quered Gaul  and  laid  the  foundations  of  an  em- 
pire which  in  name  at  least  was  to  subsist  for 
more  than  1,800  years — these  are  no  doubt  facts 
of  the  utmost  importance ;  but,  after  all,  they  are 
the  dry  bones  of  history.  The  Shandean  philoso- 
pher is  much  more  interested  to  learn  that  Caesar 
loved  to  oil  his  hair ;  that  he  sincerely  regretted 
its  scantiness  ;  and  that  he  was  excessively  pleased 
when  the  Senate  conferred  on  him  the  privilege 
of  wearing  a  laurel  crown,  and  thus  enabled  him 
partially  to  conceal  the  injury  which  Nature  or 
hard  living  had  wrought.  Dress  has  been  one  of 
the  commonest  weaknesses  of  great  men,  many 
of  whom  were  not  the  less  careful  of  their  per- 
sonal appearance  because  they  affected  an  osten- 
tatious simplicity.  In  the  national  songs  of  France, 
Napoleon  is  the  little  Corporal  in  the  plain  gray 
coat ;  but  we  may  be  sure  that  the  gray  coat  was 
carefully  arranged,  even  as  the  cocked  hat  was 
designedly  worn  in  a  fashion  till  then  unknown. 
And,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  emperor  did  not 
always  array  himself  in  that  sober-colored  vesture 
which  Mr.  Tennyson  has  described  as  the  sym- 
bolic robe  of  freedom.  An  English  traveler  who 
visited  Paris  during  the  brief  interval  of  the 
Peace  of  Amiens,  and  was  introduced  to  the  First 
Consul,  has  left  on  record  his  astonishment  at 
seeing  the  great  enemy  of  England  in  scarlet 
(richly  laced,  by-the-way,  with  gold).  It  may 
interest  some  to  know  that  Napoleon  set  apart 
£800  a  year  for  dress.  Unfortunately,  he  had  a 
weakness  for  white  kerseymere  breeches ;  and, 
being  often  wholly  absorbed  with  cares  of  state 
(as  courtly  chroniclers  apologetically  observe),  he 
would  constantly  spill  ink,  or  gravy,  or  coffee, 
upon  the  aforesaid  garments,  which  he  hastened 
to  change  as  soon  as  he  perceived  the  mishap. 
This  circumstance  cost  the  blameless  but  timid 
Comte  de  Remusat  his  place  as  Master  of  the 
Robes.  For  the  emperor  soiled  his  clothes,  and 
especially  his  white  breeches,  so  frequently  and 


so  grievously,  that  the  imperial  tailor  (M.  Leger) 
was  constantly  receiving  fresh  orders,  and  £800 
a  year  became  quite  insufficient  to  meet  that 
functionary's  little  bills.  Now,  the  Comte  de 
Remusat,  who  knew  that  the  emperor  hated  any 
disorder  in  his  accounts,  was  foolishly  afraid  to 
speak  to  him  on  the  subject.  Meanwhile  M.  Leger 
became  pressing  in  his  demands  for  payment. 
At  first  he  sent  in  his  bill  every  month,  then 
every  fortnight,  then  every  week,  then  twice  a 
week,  then  every  day ;  but  the  Master  of  the 
Robes  continued  to  return  unsatisfactory  answers. 
At  length  M.  Leger,  whose  patience  was  exhausted, 
took  the  bold  step  of  complaining  to  the  emperor 
in  person,  at  the  very  moment  that  his  Majesty 
was  trying  on  a  new  uniform.  With  astonish- 
ment and  anger  Napoleon  learned  that  he  owed 
his  tailor  £1,200.  The  same  day  he  paid  the  bill 
and  dismissed  M.  de  Remusat  from  his  post,  which 
was  given  to  M.  de  Montesquiou-Fezensac,  a  cham- 
berlain in  the  imperial  household.  "  I  hope  Mon- 
sieur le  Comte,"  said  Napoleon,  between  a  smile 
and  a  frown,  to  the  newly-appointed  master,  "  that 
you  will  not  expose  me  to  the  disgrace  of  being 
dunned  for  the  breeches  I  am  wearing."  Frederick 
the  Great  regulated  this  department  of  expendi- 
ture in  a  much  simpler  way :  he  had  but  one  fine 
gala-dress,  which  lasted  him  all  his  life,  for  he 
took  care  not  to  soil  it.  His  work-day  suits  were 
shabbier  than  those  which  gentlemen  abandon  to 
their  valets — the  waistcoat-pockets  crammed  with 
snuff,  and  the  rest  of  the  apparel  liberally  sprinkled 
with  the  same  pungent  powder.  The  king's  most 
amiable  weakness — if,  indeed,  it  can  be  called  one 
— was  his  partiality  for  dogs.  Several  of  these 
favorites  were  allowed  to  occupy  the  best  arm- 
chairs in  the  royal  study,  and  were  not  teased 
when  they  acted  as  dogs  will  act.  "  After  all," 
said  Frederick,  "  a  Pompadour  would  cost  me 
much  more."  But  Frederick  had  other  weaknesses 
which  were  not  equally  amiable. 

On  the  whole,  the  Great  Slovens  have  prob- 
ably been  as  numerous  as  the  Great  Dandies  ; 
and  few  will  deny  that  utter  carelessness  as  to 
personal  appearance  is  at  least  as  much  of  a 
weakness  as  its  opposite.     The  well-known  text 


THE  WEAKNESSES  OF  GREAT  MEK 


251 


which  some  worthy  people  have  put  forward  on 
this  subject  does  not,  when  properly  translated, 
enjoin  us  to  "  take  no  thought,"  but  ODly  "  not 
to  be  over-anxious,"  in  respect  of  what  we  shall 
put  on. 

Johnson,  perhaps  the  greatest  sloven  of  all 
ages,  said  one  of  the  best  things  ever  uttered 
against  the  puritanical  view  of  this  matter.  "  Let 
us  not  be  found,  when  our  Master  calls  us,  strip- 
ping the  lace  off  our  waistcoats,  but  the  spirit  of 
contention  from  our  souls  and  tongues.  Alas ! 
sir,  a  man  who  cannot  get  to  heaven  in  a  green 
coat  will  not  find  his  way  thither  the  sooner  in  a 
gray  one."  Slovenliness  seems  to  have  been 
rather  a  weakness  of  lawyers,  as  well  as  of  liter- 
ary men — pace  the  bar  and  the  press  of  to-day. 
If  in  society  we  except  "  present  company,"  so 
in  writing  we  exclude  persons  living.  Lord  Ken- 
yon  was  so  terrible  a  sloven  that  one  wonders 
George  III.  never  scolded  him  about  his  personal 
appearance,  as  his  Majesty  once  did  in  respect  of 
his  unlucky  habit  of  misquoting  classical  authors. 
"I  wish,  my  lord,"  the  king  was  pleased  to 
remark,  "that  you  would  leave  off  your  bad  Latin 
and  stick  to  your  good  law." 

Kenyon's  law  was  certainly  good ;  but  the 
judge  had  a  weakness  as  well  as  the  man.  As 
his  biographer  puts  it,  "Lord  Kenyon  trusted 
too  much  to  the  power  of  the  terrors  of  the  law 
in  guarding  the  right  of  property  from  fraud  or 
violence ;  and  he  inflicted  death  (a  great  deal  too 
often)  as  the  most  terrible,  and  therefore  the 
most  preventive,  punishment."  The  weakness, 
however,  was  of  the  understanding,  and  not  of 
the  heart ;  the  chief-justice  being  very  far  from 
a  man  of  cruel  disposition,  as  the  following  anec- 
dote, at  once  ghastly  and  affecting,  bears  witness : 
He  had  passed  sentence  of  death  upon  a  young 
woman  who  had  been  found  guilty  of  theft,  but 
had  intimated  that  he  meant  to  recommend  her 
to  mercy.  The  young  woman  only  heard  the 
formula  of  the  sentence,  in  its  horrible  precision 
of  language,  and  fainted  away.  Lord  Kenyon, 
evidently  much  agitated*  called  out :  "  I  don't 
mean  to  hang  you.  Will  nobody  tell  her  that  I 
don't  mean  to  hang  her  ?  " 

For  the  disciple  of  Mr.  Carlyle  the  word 
Clothes  has  acquired  a  wide  extension  of  mean- 
ing; and  Herr  Teufelsdrock  might  have  smiled 
approval  of  the  Monacan  irreconcilable's  warn- 
ing, "  Rabagas,  on  commence  par  une  culotte,  et 
on  finit  par  une  decoration."  Ever  since  titles 
and  ribbons  were  invented,  a  desire  for  them  has 
been  the  weakness  of  great  minds,  and  of  minds 
that  seemed  in  all  things  else  the  very  types  of 


common-sense.  Our  rugged  Cromwell  longed  to 
be  called  King  Oliver ;  and  Louis  Philippe,  with 
all  his  liberalism,  was  grieved  at  heart  because  his 
subjects  would  not  let  him  take  the  style  of  Louis 
XIX.,  and  because  they  made  him  King  of  the 
French,  instead  of  King  of  France  and  Navarre. 
M.  Guizothas  told  us  of  the  genuine  pleasure  expe- 
rienced by  his  sovereign  when  the  Queen  of  Eng- 
land conferred  on  bim  the  order  of  the  Garter. 
Once  he  had  the  blue  ribbon,  Louis  Philippe  fan- 
cied he  could  no  longer  be  sneered  at  as  "  King 
of  the  Barricades,"  but  would  be  looked  on  as  a 
thoroughly  orthodox  monarch,  and  a  member  of 
the  most  select  society  in  the  world.  A  similar 
weakness  is  said  to  have  been  displayed  by  a  man 
who  was,  perhaps,  one  of  the  main-stays  of  the 
Orleans  dynasty.  He  was  the  first  member  of  a 
famous  house  of  bankers,  who  settled  in  Paris ; 
and  is  said  to  have  taken  very  seriously  to  heart 
the  title  of  baron,  conferred  on  him  by  the  Em- 
peror of  Austria.  According  to  M.  Larchey,  the 
great  financier  never  traveled  without  a  certain 
purse  in  Russian  leather,  on  which  a  baron's 
coronet  was  more  than  conspicuous.  In  the 
course  of  a  certain  journey  he  stopped  at  Lyons, 
and,  it  being  early  in  the  morning,  entered  a  res- 
taurant, where  he  asked  for  a  bouillon,  which 
French-bred  persons  think  a  cheering  thing  to 
begin    the   day  with.      Having    dispatched  the 

bouillon,  M.  de  R took  out  the  famous  purse, 

and  asked  for  the  bill.  The  waiter,  espying  the 
coronet,  and  not  being  versed  in  heraldic  lore, 
thought  it    safest    to    address  the  stranger  as 

"Monsieur  le  Due."     M.  de  R gave  but  five 

sous  of  pourboire,  and  observed,  with  that  accent 
of  which  the  secret  has  died  with  him,  "  Che  ne 
suis  pas  tuc."  By-and-by  he  came  back  to  lunch. 
The  same  waiter  served  him,  and  proved  quite  as 
attentive  as  in  the  morning.  Only  this  time  he 
addressed  the  customer  as  "  Monsieur  le  Comte." 
The  banker  gave  him  five  francs  for  himself,  but 
observed,  at  the  same  time,  "  Che  ne  suis  pas 
gonte."    A  couple  of  hours  later,  on  his  way  to 

the  station,  M.  de  R stepped  in  once  more, 

to  take  a  cup  of  coffee.  The  waiter,  much  mys- 
tified, ventured  to  call  him  "  Monsieur  le  Baron," 
and  received  a  louis  d'or  by  way  of  tip,  while  the 
giver  added,  with  an  air  of  grave  satisfaction, 
these  words,  "  Oui — che  suis  paron." 

Altogether,  the  number  of  great  men,  who 
seemed  hardly  to  understand  how  much  above 
the  symbols  of  external  greatness  they  stood,  is 
painfully  large.  In  that  list  is  our  William  III., 
of  all  persons,  who  took  a  strange  pleasure  in 
wearing  the  actual  corporeal  crown  of  England, 


252 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


and  the  royal  robes  in  which  majesty  is  entitled 
to  wrap  itself,  when  to  majesty  seemcth  good. 
Sir  William  Hamilton,  again,  devoted  too  many 
of  the  best  hours  of  his  early  manhood  to  fishing 
a  baronetcy  (which  he  fancied  necessary  to  his 
well-being)  out  of  the  obscurity  of  the  seven- 
teenth century.  But  for  those  lost  hours,  the 
Philosophy  of  the  Conditioned  might  have  been 
more  completely  thought  out.  Bacon  and  (in  a 
lesser  degree)  Scott  afford  melancholy  examples 
of  a  similar  weakness,  and  its  vexatious,  not  to 
say  tragic,  consequences. 

Again,  though  a  contempt  for  titles  and  deco- 
rations (especially  since  their  relative  value  has 
changed)  has  been  common  enough  for  many  a 
day,  one  cannot  help  thinking  that  the  refusal  of 
them  has  in  not  a  few  cases  proceeded  from  the 
same  motive  which  made  others  seek  them.  The 
weakness  of  false  pride  was  shown  not  more  by 
the  Macedonian  conqueror  who  proclaimed  him- 
self a  god,  than  by  the  philosopher  in  the  tub 
who  was  rude  to  him.  Indeed,  it  was  an  excel- 
lent answer  that  Alexander  made  when  some  one 
praised  Antipater  in  his  hearing  because  that 
officer  refused  to  follow  the  Asiatic  fashions 
which  were  being  adopted  by  his  colleagues,  and 
continued  to  wear  black  while  they  wore  purple. 
"  Yes,"  said  the  king ;  "  but  Antipater  is  all  pur- 
ple within."  The  virtue  of  some  persons  is  un- 
pleasantly ferocious.  One  cannot  help  regretting, 
for  instance,  that  Bentham,  when  the  Czar  Alex- 
ander sent  him  a  diamond  ring,  did  not  decline  it 
— if  he  must  have  declined  it — with  less  of  a 
flourish  of  trumpets.  There  is  something  that 
jars  on  one's  mind  in  that  message  about  its  not 
being  his  mission  to  receive  diamond  rings  from 
emperors,  but  to  teach  nations  the  lessons  of  wis- 
dom— or  words  much  to  that  effect.  Who  had  ever 
supposed  it  was  his  mission  to  receive  diamond 
rings  from  anybody  ?  The  humility  of  men  who 
are  much  talked  about  is  seldom  a  perfectly  genu- 
ine article.  Did  they  really  think  nothing  of 
themselves  they  would  be  more  than  human. 
Anent  this  matter,  there  is  a  curious  story  told 
of  St.  Philip  Neri,  who  was  commissioned  by  the 
pope  to  inquire  into  the  truth  of  certain  miracles 
alleged  to  have  been  worked  by  a  nun.  St.  Phil- 
ip employed  a  very  simple  test.  He  resolved  to 
ascertain  whether  the  nun  had  true  humility, 
which,  as  one  of  the  cardinal  virtues,  must  be 
possessed  by  any  one  before  he  or  she  can  re- 
ceive the  gift  of  performing  signs  and  wonders. 
Entering  her  cell  with  a  pair  of  dirty  boots  on, 
he  pulled  them  off,  threw  them  at  her  head,  and 
ordered  her  to  clean  them.     Vehement  and  shrilly 


expressed  was  the  indignation  of  the  lady ;  where- 
at St.  Philip  reported  to  his  holiness  that  a  new 
saint  had  not  arisen  to  edify  the  Church. 

Among  the  rare  instances  of  true  Christian 
humility  with  which  we  meet  in  that  long  record 
of  struggles  for  precedence  designated  as  history, 
is  one  singularly  affecting.  Madame  Mailly,  the 
first  mistress  of  Louis  XV.,  is  said,  after  her  loss 
of  the  king's  favor,  to  have  led  a  life  of  unaffect- 
ed piety  and  devotion.  As  the  French  annalist 
quaintly  puts  it,  "  She  loved  God  as  she  had 
loved  the  king."  One  day,  being  late  for  church, 
she  had  some  difficulty  in  reaching  her  usual 
seat.  Several  persons  had  to  rise  to  let  her  pass, 
chairs  had  to  be  pushed  back,  and  some  little 
confusion  resulted.  An  ill-tempered  man  snarled 
out,   "  that  it  was  a  pretty  noise  to  make  for  a 

."     "  Since  you  know  her,"  replied  Madame 

de  Mailly,  "  pray  the  good  God  for  her."  Still, 
Madame  de  Mailly  would  have  done  better  to 
be  punctual. 

It  is  to  be  feared  that  the  most  common 
weaknesses  of  great  men  are  of  the  same  kind  as 
those  of  little  men.  Formidable  indeed  would 
be  the  full  and  accurate  list  of  illustrious  glut- 
tons, illustrious  tipplers,  and  illustrious  persons 
who  smoked  more  tobacco  than  was  good  for 
them.  In  some  rare  cases,  their  weakness  occa- 
sionally brought  forth  their  strength :  the  con- 
versation of  Addison,  many  a  speech  of  Sheri- 
dan's and  of  the  younger  Pitt's,  a  few  songs  of 
Schiller's,  were  doubtless  instances  of  the  power 
of  wine  to  stimulate  the  mental  faculties.  In- 
deed,  Schiller  seems  to  have  for  a  long  time  habit- 
ually written  under  the  influence  of  a  bottle  of 
Rhenish,  with  which  he  would  lock  himself  up  in 
the  evening,  and  write  cheerily  through  the  hours 
of  the  night.  But  unquestionably  the  most  as- 
tonishing feat  of  this  kind  was  Blackstone's  com- 
position of  his  "  Commentaries  "  over  successive 
bottles  of  port.  One  feels  almost  respect  for  the 
hardness  of  a  head  which  could  think  out  so 
clearly  under  such  an  influence  some  of  the  stiff- 
est  points  of  a  jurisprudence  which,  so  to  say, 
had  neither  head  nor  tail.  In  speaking  of  the 
classic  age  of  English  eloquence,  one  must  ex- 
cept the  greatest  name  of  all  from  the  list  of 
Bacchic  orators.  Fox  could  drink,  and  alas  !  get 
drunk ;  but,  as  a  rule,  he  appears  to  have  post- 
poned his  sacrifices  to  Dionysus  till  after  the  de- 
bates, which  he  could  the  more  easily  do  as  he 
lived  chiefly  by  night.  Pitt  would  jestingly  com- 
plain that  in  this  respect  his  rival  took  a  mean 
advantage  of  him.  He  himself  rose  tolerably 
early,  and  being   generally  prime-minister — the 


THE  WEAKNESSES  OF  GREAT  MEN. 


253 


expression  sounds  strange  in  these  days,  but  is 
strictly  accurate — he  was  occupied  with  official 
business  till  it  was  time  to  go  to  the  House  of 
Commons,  when  he  was,  perhaps,  already  fagged 
and  jaded  with  work. 

Very  different  was  Fox's  mode  of  life  during 
the  session.  At  noon,  or  one  o'clock,  his  friends 
would  call  on  their  chief  and  find  him  in  bed,  or 
lounging  about  in  his  night-shirt,  looking  ex- 
tremely unkempt,  and  (if  the  truth  must  be  told) 
dirty.  A  conversation  would  follow,  plans 
would  be  arranged,  and,  by-and-by,  his  toilet 
done,  and  a  cup  of  tea  swallowed,  Fox  would 
stroll  down,  fresh  and  vigorous,  toward  St.  Ste- 
phen's, to  speak  as  no  orator  ever  spoke  since 
Demosthenes. 

Tobacco  has  not  till  lately  been  so  common  a 
weakness  of  the  great  as  the  fermented  juice  of 
the  grape ;  but  famous  smokers  would  still  make 
a  mighty  and  revered  company.  Among  the  ear- 
liest of  Britain's  worthies  whose  devotion  to  the 
weed  was  excessive,  may  he  cited  Hobbes.  In  Dr. 
Rennet's  "  Memoirs  of  the  Cavendish  Family  " 
will  be  found  a  very  interesting  account  of  the 
way  in  which  the  author  of  the  "  Leviathan " 
loved  to  spend  his  day.  "His  professed  rule  of 
health  was  to  dedicate  the  morning  to  his  exer- 
cise, and  the  afternoon  to  his  studies.  At  his 
first  rising,  therefore,  he  walked  out  and  climbed 
any  hill  within  his  reaching ;  or,  if  the  weather  was 
not  dry,  he  fatigued  himself  within-doors  by  some 
exercise  or  other,  to  be  in  a  sweat.  .  .  .  After 
this  he  took  a  comfortable  breakfast,  and  then 
went  round  the  lodgings  to  wait  upon  the  earl, 
the  countess,  and  the  children,  and  any  consider- 
able strangers,  paying  some  short  addresses  to 
all  of  them.  [He  was  then  living  with  Lord 
Devonshire,  sometimes  at  Chatsworth,  and  some- 
times at  Hardwicke.]  He  kept  these  rounds  till 
about  twelve  o'clock,  when  he  had  a  little  dinner 
provided  for  him,  which  tie  ate  always  by  him- 
self without  ceremony.  Soon  after  dinner  he  re- 
tired to  his  study,  and  had  his  candle,  with  ten 
or  twelve  pipes  of  tobacco,  laid  by  him  ;  then, 
shutting  his  door,  he  fell  to  smoking,  thinking, 
and  writing,  for  several  hours." 

Whatever  may  have  been  the  abstract  merits 
of  Hobbes's  regimen,  it  appears  to  have  agreed 
with  him,  for  he  lived  over  ninety-one  years. 
The  worst  effect  of  the  ten  or  twelve  daily  pipes 
was  probably  to  intensify  the  natural  irritability 
of  his  disposition ;  for  the  soothing  influence  of 
tobacco  is  only  temporary,  while  its  permanent 
effect  is  the  opposite  of  calming.  S)  at  least 
more    than    one    distinguished    physician     has 


averred.  That  Hobbes  was  terribly  peevish  in 
his  old  age  there  can  be  no  doubt.  We  read  that 
"  he  did  not  easily  brook  contradiction."  And, 
to  put  it  mildly,  he  had  a  somewhat  excessive  opin- 
ion of  his  own  powers.  It  was  one  of  his  boasts, 
for  instance,  that,  "  though  physics  were  a  new 
science,  yet  civil  philosophy  was  still  newer, 
since  it  could  not  be  styled  older  than  his  book 
'  De  Cive.'  "  One  hardly  remembers  a  more  con- 
ceited observation,  unless  it  be  Cobbett's  advice 
to  young  people  as  to  the  best  books  for  them  to 
read :  "  Read  my  books.  This  does,  it  will  doubt- 
less be  said,  smell  of  the  shop.  No  matter.  Ex- 
perience has  taught  me,"  etc.  Among  Cobbett's 
weaknesses  seems  to  have  been  a  love  of  ale ;  or, 
perhaps  it  would  be  more  accurate  to  say,  a  be- 
lief that  ale  was  preordained  by  the  celestial  pow- 
ers as  the  natural  and  fit  liquor  for  Britons  to 
quaff.  The  drinking  of  tea,  which  was  becoming 
common  with  every  order  of  society  in  his  time, 
moved  him  to  the  fiercest  indignation,  as  it  had 
in  a  former  generation  excited  the  fears  of  Dun- 
can Forbes,  who  conceived  that  the  brewing  in- 
terest would  be  ruined  by  the  general  adoption 
of  the  new  beverage.  The  lord  president  of  the 
Court  of  Session  is  reported  to  have  rigorously 
forbidden  the  consumption  of  tea  by  his  own 
servants — even  to  have  dismissed  a  housemaid 
who  was  taken  pot-handed  in  the  act.  Duncan 
Forbes  little  dreamed  that  the  day  would  come 
when  statesmen  would  be  loudly  urged  to  sup- 
port the  tea  interest  and  discourage  the  beer 
interest.  To  return  for  a  moment  to  Cobbett,  it 
would  be  unjust  not  to  acknowledge  that  he  was 
himself  of  exemplary  sobriety  in  an  exceedingly 
tipsy  age.  Indeed,  he  recommends  pure  water  as 
well  as  ale.  But  these  two  were,  he  thought,  the 
only  rational  drinks.  His  opinion  may  remind 
some  of  Sydney  Smith's  statement  that,  when  he 
went  to  reside  in  Somersetshire,  the  servants  he 
had  brought  with  him  from  Yorkshire  seemed  to 
think  the  making  of  cider  a  tempting  of  Provi- 
dence, which  had  clearly  intended  malt,  and  not 
apples,  as  the  legitimate  produce  out  of  which 
man  should  find  the  means  of  intoxication. 

After  all,  there  were  some  grave  reasons  for 
Cobbett's  objection  to  the  habitual  consumption 
of  tea  and  coffee  (he  denominated  them  both  un- 
der the  generic  term  of  "  slops  ") ;  more  than  one 
writer  on  the  science  of  diet  being  of  opinion  that 
Nature  destined  them  rather  as  medicines  than  as 
daily  beverages.  Both  the  one  and  the  other 
have  been  the  weakness  of  hundreds  to  whose 
intellects  the  world  owes  some  of  its  choicest 
treasures.     Sir  James  Mackintosh  went  so  far  as 


254 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


to  say  that  the  power  of  a  man's  mind  would  gen- 
erally be  found  to  be  in  proportion  to  the  amount 
of  coffee  he  drank.  How  well  Cowper  loved  tea, 
and  how  well  he  sang  its  praises,  we  all  know. 
As  to  Dante,  so  to  him,  the  evening  brought  the 
pleasantest  hours  of  the  twenty-four : 

"  Now  stir  the  fire,  and  close  the  shutters  fast ; 
Let  fall  the  curtains,  wheel  the  sofa  round  ; 
And  while  the  bubbling  and  loud-hissing  urn 
Throws  up  a  6teamy  column,  and  the  cups, 
That  cheer  but  not  inebriate,  wait  on  each, 
So  let  us  welcome  peaceful  evening  in  I  " 

Yet  one  may  suspect  that  frequent  cups  of  tea 
did  not  improve  the  nervous  system  of  the  un- 
happy poet;  though  he  had  other  weaknesses 
which  were  of  themselves  sufficient  to  account  for 
the  final  ruin  of  his  mind. 

Innumerable  have  been  the  varieties  of  human 
weaknesses  in  respect  of  things  edible  and  pota- 
ble. We  forget  the  name  of  the  French  lady 
who  said  she  would  commit  a  baseness  for  the 
sake  of  fried  potatoes.  More  than  one  person 
may  have  only  wanted  her  candor  to  make  a 
similar  avowal  of  excessive  affection  for  a  particu- 
lar dish.  The  English  king  who  died  of  a  surfeit 
of  peaches  and  new  ale  was  hardly  a  great  man ; 
but  the  king  who  died  of  lampreys  was  in  the  first 
rank  of  the  statesmen  and  warriors  of  his  age,  to 
say  nothing  of  being  something  of  a  scholar  into 
the  bargain.  Englishmen  have  small  affection  for 
the  memory  of  Philip  II.,  who  irreparably  ruined 
his  digestion  by  immoderate  indulgence  iD  pastry ; 
but  he  is  still  regarded  by  Spaniards  as  one  of 
their  greatest  monarchs.  To  turn  to  men  of  un- 
questioned genius,  Byron's  most  innocent  passion 
seems  to  have  been  for  soda-water,  on  which  at 
one  time  he  almost  subsisted,  with  the  aid  of  dry 
biscuits.  Apparently  Beckford  had  a  similar 
weakness  for  the  gaseous  fluid.  During  the  three 
days  and  two  nights  of  continuous  work  in  which 
he  composed  "  Vathek,"  soda-water  was  his  prin- 
cipal sustenance. 

The  names  of  Byron  and  Beckford,  unequal 
as  they  are,  both  call  to  mind  one  of  the  most 
frequent  and  most  troublesome  failings  of  the 
great,  and  of  those  who  for  their  brief  day  were 
thought  great.  "  England's  wealthiest  son  "  and 
England's  cleverest  son  were,  the  one  and  the 
other,  incorrigible  posers.  In  spite  of  Mr.  Mat- 
thew Arnold's  fine  lines,  one  may  suspect  that 
Byron  did  not  allow  "  the  pageant  of  his  bleeding 
heart "  to  lose  in  effect  from  want  of  careful  ar- 
rangement. "  It  is  ridiculous  to  imagine,"  ob- 
served the  blunt  common-sense  of  Macaulay, 
"  that  a  man  whose  mind  was  really  imbued  with 


scorn  of  his  fellow-creatures  would  publish  three 
or  four  books  every  year  in  order  to  tell  them  so ; 
or  that  a  man  who  could  say  with  truth  that  he 
neither  sought  sympathy  nor  needed   it,  would 
have  admitted  all  Europe  to  hear  his  farewell  to 
his  wife,  and  his  blessings  on  his  child."     Among 
other  distinguished  farceurs,  as  the  French  plain- 
ly term  persons  who  act  off  the  stage,  everybody 
will  readily  place  Louis  XIV.  and  Napoleon  I. 
(perhaps  also  Napoleon  III.) ;  and,  reluctantly, 
Chatham,  together  with  Burke,  whose  dagger  ex- 
hibition is  hopelessly  indefensible.     Rousseau  is 
perhaps  the  prince  of  the  tribe ;  though  Diderot 
has  not  inconsiderable  claims  to  occupy  that  bad 
eminence.     Devaines,  indeed,  gives  a  wonderful 
account  of  the  latter's  genius  for  what  might  be 
called  domestic  tragedy.    As  the  statesman  knew 
the  writer  well  (and  was  always  accounted  a  vera- 
cious chronicler),  there  is  no   valid   reason  for 
refusing  him  credence.     On  the  eve  of  Diderot's 
departure  for  Russia,  Devaines  went  to  say  good- 
by  to  him.     Diderot,  as  he  assures  us,  received 
him  with  tears  in  his  eyes,  and  led  him  into  his 
study ;  where,  in  a  voice  choked  with  sobs,  he 
broke  forth  into  a  monologue  in  these  terms : 
"  You  see  before  you  a  man  in  despair !     I  have 
passed  through  the  most  cruel  possible  of  scenes 
for  a  father  and  a  husband.     My  wife.  .  .  .  My 
daughter.  .  .  .  Ah !  how  can  I  separate  myself 
from  them,  after  having  been  a  witness  to  their 
heart-rending  grief !    We  were  at  table ;    I  sat 
with  one  on  either  side  of  me :  no  strangers,  as 
you  may  be  sure.     I  wished  to  give  to  them  and 
to  them  alone  my  last  moments.     What  a  dinner ! 
What  a  spectacle  of  desolation !  .  .  .  We  could 
neither  eat  nor  drink.  .  .  .  Ah !  my  friend,  how 
sweet  it  is  to  be  loved  by  beings  so  tender,  but 
how  terrible  to  quit  them  !     No  ;  I  shall  not  have 
that  hateful  courage.     What  are  the  cajoleries  of 
power  compared  with  the  outpourings  of  nature  ? 
I  stay ;  I  have  made  up  my  mind ;  I  will  not 
abandon  my  wife  and  daughter;  I  will  not  be 
their  executioner ;  for,  my  friend,  believe  me,  my 
departure  would  be  their  death."     As  the  philoso- 
pher spoke,  he  leaned  over  his  friend,  and  be- 
dewed M.  Devaines's  waistcoat  with  his   tears. 
Before  the  friend  had  time  to  answer  with  a  few 
words  of  sympathy,  Madame  Diderot   suddenly 
burst  into  the  room.     The  impassioned  address 
which  she  proceeded  to  deliver  had  at  least  the 
merit  of  sincerity:  "And  pray,  M.  Diderot,  what 
are  you  doing  there?     You  lose  your  time  in 
talking  stuff,  and  forget  your  luggage.     Nothing 
will  be  ready  to-morrow.     You  know  you  ought 
to  be  off  early  in  the  morning ;  yet  there  you  are 


THE  WEAKNESSES  OF  GREAT  MEX 


255 


at  your  fine  phrases,  and  your  business  taking 
care  of  itself.  See  what  comes  of  dining  out  in- 
stead of  staying  at  home.  You  promised  me, 
too,  that  you  wouldn't  go  to-day  !  But  everybody 
can  command  you,  except  us.  Ah  !  what  a  man  ! 
My  goodness,  what  a  man  !  "  Devaines  with  dif- 
ficulty kept  his  countenance,  and  lost  no  time  in 
beating  a  retreat.  Next  day  he  was  not  surprised 
to  learn  that  Diderot  had  managed  to  tear  him- 
self from  his  wife  and  daughter,  and  that  they  ap- 
peared to  be  bearing  his  absence  with  resigna- 
tion. 

The  truth  is,  that,  on  a  careful  survey  of  the 
facts,  one  is  forced  to  the  conclusion  that  Diderot 
made  the  journey  partly  in  order  to  escape  from 
the  beloved  one,  who  was  a  model  of  constancy 
and  devotion,  but  had  a  shrill  voice,  which, 
again,  was  the  exponent  of  a  quick  temper.  He 
was  very  poor,  and  had  advertised  his  library  for 
sale.  Catherine  II.  generously  purchased  it  at  its 
full  price ;  then  appointed  Diderot  its  custodian, 
at  a  handsome  salary,  fifty  years  of  which  was 
paid  in  advance.  It  was  not  even  required  that 
the  books  should  be  brought  to  St.  Petersburg. 
Diderot,  however,  determined  to  go  and  thank 
the  empress  in  person,  which  was  no  doubt  a 
graceful  resolution  on  his  part.  Only  there  was 
no  especial  reason  why  he  should  have  staid 
several  months  in  Holland  on  the  way,  even  if 
we  adsiit  that  the  most  direct  route  to  the  capi- 
tal of  the  czars  lay  through  that  country.  Once 
at  the  court  of  Catherine  he  was  petted  and  made 
much  of,  as  may  well  be  believed ;  and  his  de- 
light knew  no  bounds.  From  St.  Petersburg  he 
wrote  to  Mdlle.  Voland  that  "  while  in  a  country 
called  the  land  of  freemen,  he  felt  as  a  slave ; 
but  now,  in  a  country  called  the  land  of  slaves, 
he  felt  like  a  freeman."  Either  Diderot  saw 
things  Muscovite  through  rose-colored  spectacles, 
or  a  certain  orthodox  empire  ha^  been  progress- 
ing backward,  as  Americans  say,  for  the  last 
century. 

"  The  first  step  toward  philosophy,"  said  Di- 
derot, on  his  death-bed,  "  is  incredulity."  What- 
ever may  be  the  worth  of  this  axiom,  one  is 
tempted,  after  a  perusal  of  "  The  Religieuse,"  to 
think  that  an  excessive  credulity  was  among  the 
author's  intellectual  weaknesses.  At  any  rate,  it 
is  clear  that  no  seandal  in  respect  of  monks  or 
nuns  was  too  black  or  too  improbable  for  Di- 
derot to  give  it  credit.  Of  course,  the  wish  was 
father  to  the  belief. 

The  credulous  suspicion  with  which  Diderot 
regarded  a  numerous  class  of  his  fellow-beings  is 
supposed  to  have  been  the  feeling  with  which 


Talleyrand  regarded  the  whole  human  race.  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  the  prince  does  not  seem  to 
have  thought  so  ill  of  our  common  nature  ;  but 
he  had  a  weakness  for  saying  "  good  things," 
which  may  be  defined  as  bad  things,  about  other 
people.  And  one  of  his  happiest  mots  was  mere- 
ly a  witty  reproof  of  that  spirit  which  greedily 
catches  at  the  suggestion  of  a  hidden  motive  for 
the  plainest  action.  Some  one  told  him  that  M. 
de  Semonville  had  a  bad  cold.  "  What  interest 
can  M.  de  Semonville  have  in  catching  cold  ?  " 
quoth  Talleyrand.  Yet,  if  Napoleon's  greatest 
minister  had  been  a  more  suspicious  person  than 
he  really  was,  there  would  have  been  some  excuse 
for  him.  His  youth  was  passed  in  a  very  hot-bed 
of  intrigue  and  back-stairs  influence ;  and,  if  we 
are  to  admit  as  trustworthy  the  evidence  of 
Chamfort  (as  there  seems  no  reason  why  we 
should  not),  Talleyrand's  own  mother  may  have 
given  him  some  strange  lessons  in  the  art  of 
getting  on.  Certainly,  there  was  no  very  healthy 
moral  to  be  drawn  from  such  a  history  as  the 
following  :  A  woman  was  plaintiff  or  defendant — 
it  matters  not  which — in  an  action  about  to  be 
tried  by  the  Parliament  of  Dijon.  To  gain  her 
cause,  it  seemed  to  her  the  most  natural  thing  in 
the  world  to  try  and  get  some  great  person  to  say 
a  word  to  the  judges  in  her  favor.  With  this  end 
in  view  she  went  to  Paris,  and  begged  the  Keeper 
of  the  Seals  to  intercede  for  her.  On  the  keeper's 
refusal,  she  applied  to  the  Countess  of  Talleyrand, 
who,  taking  an  interest  in  the  woman,  wrote  her 
self  to  the  minister,  but  with  no  better  success 
than  her  protegee.  Madame  de  Talleyrand  then 
remembered  that  her  son,  the  Abbe  de  Perigord 
(the  future  Bishop  of  Autun),  was  somewhat  of 
a  favorite  with  the  Keeper  of  the  Seals ;  to  whom, 
accordingly,  at  his  mother's  request,  the  hopeful 
young  ecclesiastic  was  induced  to  write.  A  third 
refusal  was  the  result  of  this  third  application. 
The  fair  litigant,  with  an  energy  worthy  of  a 
better  object,  now  determined  to  go  to  Versailles, 
and  seek  to  see  the  minister.  The  coach  in  which 
she  went  was  so  uncomfortable  that  she  got  down 
at  Sevres,  intending  to  walk  the  rest  of  the  way. 
She  had  not  proceeded  far  before  she  fell  in  with 
a  man  who,  on  her  asking  to  be  shown  the  way, 
offered  to  take  her  by  a  short  cut.  They  began 
to  talk,  and  she  told  him  of  her  trouble.  He 
said,  "  To-morrow  you  shall  have  what  you  re- 
quire." She  looked  at  him,  astonished,  but  made 
no  answer.  Arrived  at  Versailles,  she  succeeded 
in  obtaining  the  same  day  an  audience  of  the 
minister,  who,  however,  declined  to  comply  with 
her   request.      Meanwhile  her  new   friend   had 


256 


TEE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


waited  for  her  outside.  On  her  reappearance  he 
begged  of  her  to  stay  at  Versailles  for  the  night 
— next  day  she  would  hear  tidings  of  him.  On 
the  following  morning  he  brought  her  just  such  a 
letter  from  the  Keeper  of  the  Seals  as  she  had 
prayed  for.  Who  was  this  walking  Providence  ? 
A  clerk's  clerk,  named  Etienne.  Whence  his 
power.     The  father  of  mischief  only  knew. 

A  propos  of  the  administration  of  law  in  olden 
France,  it  is  a  mournful  confession  to  have  to 
make  that  Henri  IV.  was  not  a  sufficiently  wise 
and  virtuous  ruler  to  refrain  from  tampering 
with  the  independence  of  his  own  judges.  On 
one  occasion,  for  instance,  he  sent  for  M.  de 
Turin,  who  was  to  give  judgment  in  the  case  of 
M.  de  Bouillon  vs.  M.  de  Bouillon  la  Mark,  and, 
without  preamble,  said,  "  M.  de  Turin,  I  wish  M. 
de  Bouillon  to  win  his  suit."  "  Very  well,  sire," 
replied  the  judge ;  "  there  is  nothing  easier :  I 
will  send  you  the  papers,  and  you  shall  decide 
the  case  yourself."  With  which  words  he  with- 
drew ;  when  some  one  observed  to  the  king,  "Your 
Majesty  does  not  know  that  man — he  is  quite 
bold  enough  to  do  what  he  has  said."  The  king 
sent  after  him ;  and,  sure  enough,  the  messenger 
found  the  worthy  magistrate  loading  a  porter 
with  brief-bags,  and  directing  him  to  take  them 
to  the  palace.  Tallemant  des  Beaux  is  responsi- 
ble for  the  story.  Henri's  grandson  naturally  in- 
herited this  royal  weakness  for  being  to  his  sub- 
jects all  in  all ;  but  even  Louis  IV.  occasionally 
found  a  man  who  could  face  him.  Thus,  the 
Chancellor  Voisin  positively  refused  to  affix  the 
seals  to  a  pardon,  the  proposed  object  of  the 
monarch's  clemency  being  known  to  the  minister 
to  be  an  irreclaimable  scoundrel.  The  king  took 
the  seals  and  acted  for  the  nonce  as  his  own 
chancellor ;  then  returned  them  to  their  regular 
custodian.  "  I  cannot  accept  them,"  replied 
Voisin;  "they  are  polluted."  "What  a  man!" 
exclaimed  Louis,  half  impatiently  and  half  admir- 
ingly, as  it  should  seem,  for  he  threw  the  pardon 
into  the  fire ;  upon  which  the  chancellor  con- 
sented to  resume  the  seals. 

Louis's  idea  that  he  might,  at  a  pinch,  seal 
his  own  ordinances,  was  not  unworthy  of  Fred- 
erick the  Great,  who  was  ready  himself  to  dis- 
charge every  possible  function  of  the  body  poli- 
tic, and  was  at  once  the  eye,  the  tongue,  and  the 
right  hand,  of  the  state  —  occasionally,  if  one 
might  push  the  simile  so  far,  its  foot,  and  booted 
foot,  as  the  shins  of  the  judges  who  would  not 
take  their  sovereign's  view  of  Miller  Arnold's 
case  might  have  testified.  Probably  Frederick's 
love  of  doing  even  the  official  drudgery  of  his 


dominions  may  have  proceeded,  if  we  examine 
its  final  cause,  from  much  the  same  reason  as 
that  which  impelled  him  to  labor  at  the  com- 
position of  French  verses.  It  was  an  ambition 
(and  no  mean  ambition  had  it  been  attainable), 
not  only  to  be  first  of  all,  but  to  be  first  in  all 
things.  As  the  Homeric  chieftain  was  proud  to 
be  a  stout  spearman  as  well  as  a  skilled  leader, 
so  Frederick  apparently  longed  to  be  the  intel- 
lectual as  well  as  the  civil  head  of  the  common- 
wealth which  he  had  almost  reconstructed  to  its 
foundations.  Mr.  Irving  mentions  a  trait  of  Co- 
lumbus which  is  sufficient  evidence  of  a  very 
similar  weakness  in  the  discoverer  of  the  New 
World.  Columbus  had  somewhat  childishly  set 
his  heart  on  being  the  first  to  see  land  with  the 
human  eye,  as  if  it  were  not  enough  glory  to 
have  discovered  it  with  the  eye  of  science,  en- 
lightened by  imagination.  Such  as  it  was,  Co- 
lumbus fancied  he  had  achieved  the  lesser  as  well 
as  the  greater  distinction.  His  claim,  however, 
was  Jdisputed  by  a  common  sailor,  who,  as  may 
well  be  imagined,  had  small  chance  of  being  be- 
lieved before  the  admiral.  Maddened  with  dis- 
appointment at  the  loss  of  the  splendid  reward 
which  had  been  promised,  and  which  he  had 
hoped  to  obtain,  the  unhappy  man  is  said  to 
have  forsworn  at  once  his  country  and  his  faith, 
and  to  have  taken  service  with  the  Moors.  One 
can  only  hope  he  was  never  made  prisoner  by 
his  compatriots,  for  the  Inquisition  would  have 
made  short  work  with  him.  But  Columbus  does 
not  come  well  out  of  the  story. 

Other  weaknesses  of  great  men  for  doing 
little  things  have  proved  less  harmful  to  others 
and  to  their  own  reputation.  Among  them  may 
be  cited  Rossini's  passion  for  making  macaroni 
after  a  peculiar  and,  it  must  be  admitted,  an  ex- 
cellent fashion.  He  seemed  as  proud  of  his  cu- 
linary accomplishments  as  of  having  composed 
"  William  Tell,"  which  masterpiece,  as  will  be 
remembered,  closed  his  operatic  career.  The 
reason  Rossini  alleged  for  passing  the  last  forty 
years  of  his  life  in  almost  complete  idleness  was 
akin  to  that  weakness  of  timidity  which  made 
Gerard  Hamilton '  silent  after  his  single  speech. 
"An  additional  success,"  said  Rossini,  "would 
add  nothing  to  my  fame ;  a  failure  would  injure 
it.  I  have  no  need  of  the  one,  and  I  do  not 
choose  to  expose  myself  to  the  other." 

1  It  may  not  be  generally  known  that,  once  across 
St.  George's  Channel,  Hamilton  became  more  coura- 

I  geous.  He  often  spoke  with  effect  in  the  Irish  House 
of  Commons ;  it  was  only  at  Westminster  that  he  re- 

\  maincd  mute. 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  AFTER-LIFE. 


257 


Goldsmith's  fond  belief  that  he  possessed  a 
knowledge  of  medicine  is  known  to  all.  Possibly 
it  hastened  his  death,  for  he  would  prescribe  for 
himself.  Eugene  Sue  labored  under  a  delusion 
of  the  same  kind ;  only  for  his  there  was  some 
slight  ground  in  fact,  the  author  of  the  "  Mys- 
teries of  Paris "  having  actually  been  a  regi- 
mental surgeon  in  his  youth.  It  must  be  ad- 
mitted, too,  that  a  droll  anecdote  about  Sue's 
performances  in  his  later  years  indicates  rather 
that  he  was  sometimes  very  drunk  than  that  he 
utterly  lacked  professional  skill.  He  had  one 
day  dined  with  his  friend  Romieu  at  the  Cafe  de 
Paris,  and  had  dined  well — in  fact,  they  had  both 
dined  well ;  and  as  they  sauntered  along  the 
boulevards,  by  way  of  aiding  digestion,  Romieu 
slipped,  fell  down,  and  hurt  his  leg.  Sue  called 
a  cab,  put  his  friend  in,  and  drove  home,  where 
he  dressed  the  wound.  He  then  put  Romieu  to 
bed,  and  settled  himself  into  an  arm-chair  for  the 


night.  Next  morning  he  hastened  to  examine 
the  wound,  only  to  discover  that  he  had  tended 
the  wrong  leg ! 

Few,  indeed,  are  the  men  who  have  been 
great  in  more  than  one  department  of  human 
knowledge  and  skill;  though  (if  one  may  avail 
one's  self  of  the  Oxford  terminology)  there  have 
been  a  respectable  number  who  have  combined  a 
first-class  reputation  in  one  field  of  distinction 
with  a  second-class  in  another.  It  is  pleasant,  in 
this  year  of  the  Rubens  Tercentenary,  to  re- 
member that  the  famous  painter  acquitted  him- 
self with  credit  in  a  diplomatic  capacity.  A  lady 
once  asked  Casanova  "  whether  Rubens  had  not 
been  an  embassador  who  amused  himself  with 
painting."  "  I  beg  pardon,  madam,"  replied  the 
artist ;  "  he  was  a  painter  who  amused  himself 
with  embassies."  One  shudders  to  think  of  the 
depths  of  ignorance  or  impertinence  the  lady's 
question  reveals. — Cornhill  Magazine. 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  AFTER-LIFE.1 


Bt   ARTHUR  P.   STANLEY. 


IT  is  said  that  the  late  King  of  Prussia,  on  see- 
ing Eton  College,  exclaimed,  "  Happy  is  that 
country  where  the  old  is  ever  entwined  with  the 
new,  where  the  new  is  ever  old,  and  the  old  is 
ever  new."  That  is  most  true ;  but,  if  he  had 
come  to  Bristol  at  this  time,  he  might  have  even 
improved  on  his  remark,  and  said,  "  Happy  is  that 
country  where  the  old  is  ever  giving  birth  to  the 
new,  where  the  new  is  ever  springing  from  the 
old."  For  in  the  cathedral  he  would  have  seen 
the  Abbey  Church  of  Robert  Fitzharding,  the 
fine  old  descendant  of  the  wild  sea-kings,  awak- 
ening into  a  new  life,  and  stretching  forth  a  gigan- 
tic arm  which  had  seemed  to  be  paralyzed  to  its 
very  socket.  And  he  would  have  seen  the  new 
start  of  a  young  institution  of  teachers  sent  into 
this  commercial  city,  in  large  measure  by  the  en- 

1  An  address  delivered  by  Dean  Stanley  on  the  oc- 
casion of  the  new  session  of  University  College,  Bris- 
tol, October  27,  1877.2 

3  University  College,  Bristol,  was  founded  in  1876, 
11  to  supply  for  persons  of  both  sexes  above  the  ordi- 
nary school  age  the  means  of  continuing  their  stud- 
ies in  science,  lansuasjes,  history,  and  literature;  and 
more  particularly  to  afford  appropriate  instruction  in 
those  branches  of  applied  science  which  are  employed 
in  the  arts  and  manufactures."  The  funds  of  the  col- 
lege are  chiefly  derived  from  local  contributions  ;  but 
the  college  receives  subsidies  from  Balliol  College  and 
New  College,  Oxford,  and  from  the  Worshipful  the 
Clothworkers'  Company  of  London. 

53 


ergies  of  two  ancient  colleges,  which  a  hundred 
years  ago  would  have  been  thought  the  most  retro- 
grade and  the  most  exclusive  of  all  our  academi- 
cal communities.  I  have  spoken  of  the  Cathe- 
dral of  Bristol  in  the  proper  place.  Let  me  now 
say  a  few  words  on  its  new  college. 

I  will  not  go  back  to  the  question  of  the  util- 
ity of  such  institutions  themselves.  This  was 
sufficiently  set  forth  some  years  ago  by  my  excel- 
lent friend  the  Master  of  Balliol,  who  has  done 
so  much  for  Oxford  and  for  Bristol,  and  by  those 
many  other  distinguished  persons  who  then  ad- 
dressed you.  The  college  has  been  begun,  and 
it  is  not  of  the  college,  but  of  its  work,  that  I 
have  to  speak.  And,  in  so  doing,  it  has  been 
suggested  to  me  that  it  might  be  useful  to  make 
a  few  general  remarks  on  a  commonplace  subject 
—"The  Education  of  After-Life."  It  is  closely 
connected  with  the  special  functions  of  this  in- 
stitution, and  it  has  this  further  advantage,  that 
its  consideration  may  not  be  altogether  without 
profit  to  the  more  miscellaneous  public. 

In  what  sense  can  education  be  said  to  be  car- 
ried on  at  all  in  an  institution  so  rudimentary,  so 
slightly  equipped  as  this?  You  have  no  build- 
ings, you  have  no  antiquity,  you  have  no  tradi- 
tions, you  have  no  discipline,  you  have  none  of 


258 


TEE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTELY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


those  things  which  in  our  older  institutions  are 
almost  the  atmosphere  in  which  education  lives, 
and  moves,  and  has  its  being.  You  have  them 
not ;  and  we  do  not  for  a  moment  underrate  the 
loss.  But  there  are  here,  at  any  rate,  two  mate- 
rials of  education,  which  may  continue  through- 
out life,  and  which  are,  perhaps,  after  all,  the 
only  two  indispensable  elements — the  teachers 
and  the  taught. 

1.  The  teachers — let  me  say  something  of 
them.  When  at  Oxford,  in  my  younger  days, 
there  were  discussions  about  the  reforms  of  the 
university ;  there  was  one  want  which  we  regarded 
as  supremely  felt,  and  this  was  the  want  of  pro- 
fessors, that  is  to  say,  of  teachers,  who  might  be 
"as  oracles,  whereat  students  might  come"  in 
their  several  branches  of  knowledge.  These  were 
in  consequence  called  into  existence,  and  among 
you  also  they  exist  already.  I  am  not  now  speak- 
ing personally  of  the  actual  professors,  though 
doubtless  your  practical  experience  of  them 
would  bear  out  much  of  what  I  say.  But  I  speak 
of  the  advantage  to  any  community,  to  any  young 
man  or  woman,  of  being  brought  into  contact 
with  higher  intelligences.  No  operation  in  the  way 
of  external  impulse,  or  stimulus,  or  instruction,  in 
our  passage  through  this  mortal  existence,  is  equal 
to  the  impression  produced  upon  us  by  the  contact 
of  intellects  and  characters  superior  to  ourselves. 
It  is  for  this  reason  that  a  college  like  yours  must 
always  have  the  chance  of  contributing,  directly 
and  forcibly,  to  the  elevation  of  those  among 
whom  it  is  placed.  A  body  of  men,  brought  to- 
gether by  the  enthusiasm  of  teaching  others, 
with  a  full  appreciation  of  great  subjects,  with  an 
ardent  desire  of  improving  not  only  others  but 
themselves,  cannot  fail  to  strike  some  fire  from 
some  one  soul  or  other  of  those  who  have  the 
opportunity  of  thus  making  their  acquaintance. 
It  need  not  be  that  we  follow  their  opinions ;  the 
opinions  may  vanish,  but  the  effect  remains.  Soc- 
rates left  no  school  behind  him ;  the  philosophers 
who  followed  him  were  broken  into  a  thousand 
sections,  but  the  influence  and  stimulus  which 
Socrates  left,  never  ceased,  and  have  continued 
till  the  present  hour.  If  we  look  for  a  moment  at 
the  records,  on  the  one  hand,  of  aspirations  en- 
couraged, of  great  projects  realized ;  or,  on  the 
other  hand,  of  lost  careers,  of  broken  hopes,  how 
often  shall  we  find  that  it  has  been  from  the  pres- 
ence or  from  the  want  of  some  beneficent,  intel- 
ligent, appreciative  mind  coming  in  among  the 
desponding,  the  distressed,  the  storm-tossed  souls 
of  whom  this  world  contains  only  too  many.  To 
take  the  example  of  two  poets — one  whose  grave 


is  in  the  adjacent  county,  one  belonging  to  your 
own  city — how  striking  and  how  comforting  is 
the  reflection  of  the  peaceful,  useful,  and  happy 
close  of  the  life  of  George  Crabbe,  the  poet ;  for 
eighteen  years  pastor  of  Trowbridge !  All  that 
happiness,  all  that  usefulness,  he  owed  to  the 
single  fact  that,  when  a  poor,  forsaken  boy  in 
the  streets  of  London,  he  bethought  himself  of 
addressing  a  letter  to  Edmund  Burke.  That  great 
man  had  the  penetration  to  see  that  Crabbe  was 
not  an  impostor — not  a  fool.  He  took  the  poor 
youth  by  the  hand,  he  encouraged  him,  he  pro- 
cured for  him  the  career  in  which  he  lived  and 
died.  He  was,  it  is  hardly  too  much  to  say,  the 
instrument  of  his  preservation  and  of  his  regen- 
eration. On  the  other  hand,  when,  with  Words- 
worth, we  think  of  Chatterton,  "the  marvelous 
boy,  the  sleepless  soul  that  perished  in  his  pride," 
how  impossible  it  is  to  avoid  the  reflection  that, 
if  he  had  met  with  some  congenial  sphere,  such 
as  this  college  now  presents,  some  kindly  hand 
to  lead  him  forward,  some  wise  direction  (over 
and  above  the  kindness  which  he  met  from  per- 
sonal friends)  that  might  have  rescued  him  from 
his  own  desperate  thoughts,  we  should  have  been 
spared  the  spectacle  of  the  premature  death  of 
one  whose  fate  will  always  rank  among  the  tragi- 
cal incidents  of  the  history  not  only  of  Bristol 
but  of  England. 

It  is  too  much  to  expect  that  there  may  be  a 
Burke  among  your  professors,  or  a  Chatterton 
among  your  pupils.  But  the  hopeful  and  the 
melancholy  lesson  are  both  worth  remembering. 

2.  And  now,  leaving  the  body  of  teachers, 
these  two  instances  remind  me  to  turn  to  the 
body  of  students.  I  can  but  plunge  in  the  dark 
to  give  any  advice,  but  this  much  is  surely  ap- 
plicable to  all  of  them.  I  will  do  my  best,  and 
perhaps  here  and  there  a  word  may  be  useful. 

Bear  in  mind  both  the  advantages  and  the 
disadvantages  which  the  voluntary  education  of 
students  in  after-life  involves,  by  the  mere  fact 
of  the  freedom  of  choice — freedom  in  studies, 
freedom  in  subjects,  freedom  of  opinions.  A 
self-educated  man  is,  in  some  respects,  the  bet- 
ter, in  some  respects  the  worse,  for  not  having 
been  trained  in  his  early  years  by  regular  routine. 
We  have  an  illustration  of  both  the  stronger  and 
the  weaker  side  of  self-education  in  the  case  of 
Mr.  Buckle,  the  author  of  the  "  History  of  Civili- 
zation." At  the  time  of  his  greatest  celebrity,  it 
was  often  remarked  that  no  man  who  had  been 
at  regular  schools  or  universities  could,  on  the 
one  hand,  have  acquired  such  an  enormous 
amount  of  multifarious  knowledge,  and  such  a 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  AFTER-LIFE. 


259 


grasp  of  so  many  details ;  while,  on  the  other 
hand,  no  one  but  a  self-educated  man,  feeding  his 
mind  here  and  there,  without  contradiction,  with- 
out submission,  without  the  usual  traditions  of 
common  instruction,  could  have  fallen  into  so 
many  paradoxes,  so  many  negligences,  so  many 
ignorances.  It  is  enough  to  state  this  fact,  in 
order  to  put  you  on  your  guard  against  the  dan- 
gers of  your  position,  and  also  to  make  you  feel 
its  hopes  and  opportunities.  Over  the  wide  field 
of  science  and  knowledge  it  is  yours  to  wander. 
The  facts  which  you  acquire  will  probably  take  a 
deeper  hold  on  your  minds  from  having  been 
sought  out  by  yourselves ;  but  not  the  less  should 
you  remember  that  there  are  qualifying  and  con- 
trolling influences  derived  from  the  more  regular 
courses  of  study  which  are  of  lasting  benefit, 
and  the  absence  of  which  you  must  take  into  ac- 
count in  judging  of  the  more  desultory  and  the 
more  independent  researches  which  you  have  to 
make.  A  deaf  person  may  acquire,  and  often 
has  acquired,  a  treasure  of  knowledge  and  a  vigor 
of  will  by  the  exclusion  of  all  that  wear  and  tear, 
of  all  that  friction  of  outer  things,  which  fill  the 
atmosphere  of  those  who  have  the  possession  of 
all  their  senses.  But,  nevertheless,  a  deaf  per- 
son, in  order  not  to  be  misled  into  extravagant 
estimates  of  his  own  judgment,  or  of  the  value 
of  his  own  pursuits,  should  always  be  remind- 
ed that  he  has  not  the  same  means  of  correct- 
ing and  guarding  his  conclusions  and  opinions 
as  he  would  have  if  he  were  open  to  the  insensi- 
ble influence  of  "  the  fibres  of  conversation,"  as 
they  have  been  well  called,  which  float  about  in 
the  general  atmosphere,  that  for  him  has  no  ex- 
istence. Self-education  is  open  both  to  the  ad- 
vantages and  disadvantages  of  deafness  ;  knowl- 
edge is  at  some  entrances  quite  shut  out,  while 
such  knowledge  as  gets  in  occupies  the  mind 
more  completely,  but  always  needs  to  be  remind- 
ed that  there  is  a  surrounding  vacuum.  With 
this  general  encouragement,  and  this  general 
warning,  let  us  proceed. 

3.  There  are  in  connection  with  this  institu- 
tion two  chief  departments  of  human  knowledge 
open  to  those  who  educate  themselves — Science 
and  Literature.  Of  Science,  which  provides  for 
the  larger  part  of  your  instruction,  I  can  unfor- 
tunately say  but  little,  for  the  simple  reason  that, 
from  my  own  ignorance,  I  have  nothing  to  con- 
tribute on  the  subject.  Still,  I  cannot  be  insen- 
sible to  the  immense  enjoyment  which  every 
branch  of  it  must  furnish  to  those  with  whom  it 
enters,  not  merely  into  the  pleasures,  but  into 
the  actual  work,  of  their  daily  life.      It  is  hard, 


for  example,  to  overstate  the  advantage  which  it 
must  be  to  those  who  are  immersed  in  the  busi- 
ness and  the  commerce  of  a  great  town  like  this, 
that,  amid  the  fluctuations  of  speculation,  and 
the  interminable  discussions  of  labor  and  capital, 
they  should  have  fixed  in  their  minds  the  solid 
principles  of  political  economy.  It  was  with  a 
thrill  of  delight,  quite  apart  from  agreement  or 
disagreement,  that  I  read  not  long  ago  of  one  of 
our  chief  public  men  in  Parliament  taking  his 
stand  aloof  from  his  party,  and  despite  his  own 
interests,  in  defense  of  the  dry  and  arid  sci- 
ence of  political  economy,  which  he  thought  was 
unduly  depreciated  among  large  classes  of  our 
countrymen.  Dry  and  arid  it  may  be,  but  I  can- 
not doubt  that  it  is,  as  it  were,  the  backbone  of 
much  of  our  social  system,  and  it  gives  a  back- 
bone to  all  into  whose  minds  it  has  thoroughly 
entered. 

Then  in  geology,  astronomy,  chemistry,  and 
the  natural  sciences  generally,  what  a  large  field 
is  open  before  you  for  your  pleasure  and  profit ! 
When  Wordsworth  said  in  his  fine  ode  that  there 
had  passed  away  "  a  glory  and  a  freshness  "  from 
the  earth,  he  little  thought  that  there  was  another 
freshness  and  glory  coming  back,  in  the  deeper 
insight  which  science  would  give  into  the  wonders 
and  the  grandeur  of  Nature.  I  have  heard  people 
say  who  have  traveled  with  Sir  Charles  Lyell, 
that  to  see  him  hanging  out  of  the  window  of  a 
railway-carriage,  to  watch  the  geological  forma- 
tions as  he  passed  through  a  railway-cutting,  was 
as  if  he  saw  the  sides  hung  with  beautiful  pict- 
ures. 

4.  Then,  when  we  come  to  literature,  what  a 
world  of  ideas  is  opened  by  a  public  library,  or 
even  a  private  library — by  such  libraries,  great 
or  small,  as  have,  by  individual  or  corporate  mu- 
nificence, been  opened  in  every  quarter  of  Bris- 
tol !    What  a  feast  there  is  in  a  single  good  book  ! 

We  sometimes  hardly  appreciate  sufficiently 
the  influence  which  literature  exercises  over  large 
phases  of  the  world.  By  literature,  I  mean  those 
great  works  of  history,  poetry,  fiction,  or  philoso- 
phy, that  rise  above  professional  or  commonplace 
uses,  and  take  possession  of  the  mind  of  a  whole 
nation,  or  a  whole  age.  It  was  pointed  out  to 
me  the  other  day  how  vast  an  effect  had  been 
wrought  by  the  famous  Persian  poet  Ferdusi,  in 
welding  together  into  one  people  the  discordant 
races  of  the  Mussulman  conquerors  and  the  in- 
digenous Persians,  by  his  great  poem  on  Persian 
history,  which  he,  belonging  to  the  Mussulman 
conquerors,  wove  out  of  the  legendary  lore  of  the 
conquered  race.     But,  indeed,  it  is  not  necessary 


260 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


to  go  to  Persia  for  an  example.  How  vast  an  in- 
fluence for  good  has  been  exercised  on  this  cen- 
tury by  the  novels  of  Sir  Walter  Scott !  It  is 
not  only  that,  by  superseding  the  coarser  though 
often  vigorous  fictions  of  the  last  century,  they 
purified  the  whole  current  of  English  literature — 
it  is  not  only  that  they  awakened  an  interest  in 
the  past,  and  also  gave  a  just  view  of  the  present 
and  the  future,  beyond  almost  any  writings  of  our 
time,  but  that  they  bound  together,  in  an  indis- 
soluble bond,  the  two  nations,  Scotland  and 
England,  which  before  that  time  had  been  almost 
as  far  asunder  as  if  one  of  them  had  been  on  the 
other  side  of  the  Channel,  instead  of  on  the  other 
side  of  the  Tweed.  Often  it  has  been  said,  and 
truly,  that  no  greater  boon  could  be  conferred  on 
Ireland  than  that  a  genius  as  wide-spreading,  as 
deeply  penetrating,  and  as  calmly  judging,  as  Sir 
Walter  Scott,  could  be  raised  up  to  give  a  like 
interest  to  the  scenery,  the  history,  the  traditions, 
and  the  characters  of  Ireland. 

I  have  given  these  two  examples  of  the  na- 
tional influence  of  literature,  because  they  show, 
on  a  great  scale,  what  can  be  effected  by  the 
finest  thoughts  put  into  the  finest  words.  To  be 
conversant  with  them  is  an  education  of  after-life 
which  never  ceases.  We  read  such  books  again 
and  again,  and  there  is  always  something  new  in 
them.  Spend,  if  possible,  one  hour  each  day  in 
reading  some  good  and  great  book.  The  num- 
ber of  such  books  is  not  too  many  to  overwhelm 
you.  Every  one  who  reflects  on  the  former  years 
of  his  education  can  lay  his  finger  on  half  a 
dozen,  perhaps  even  fewer,  which  have  made  a 
lasting  impress  upon  his  mind.  Treasure  up 
these.  It  is  not  only  the  benefits  which  you 
yourself  derive  from  them — it  is  the  impression 
which  they  leave  upon  you  of  the  lasting  power 
of  that  which  is  spiritual  and  immaterial.  How 
many  in  all  classes  of  life  may  say  of  their  own 
experience  that  which  was  said  in  speaking  of 
his  library,  by  one  of  your  most  illustrious  towns- 
men, who  was  my  own  earliest  literary  delight, 
Robert  Southey : 

"  My  days  among  the  dead  are  past ; 

Around  me  I  behold, 
Where'er  these  casual  eyes  are  cast, 

The  mighty  minds  of  old  : 
My  never-failing  friends  are  they, 
With  whom  I  converse  day  by  day. 

"  With  them  I  take  delight  in  weal 

And  seek  relief  in  woe  ; 
And  while  I  understand  and  feel 

How  much  to  them  I  owe, 
My  cheeks  have  often  been  bedewed 
With  tears  of  thoughtful  gratitude. 


'•  My  thoughts  are  with  the  dead  ;  with  them 
I  live  in  long-past  years, 
Their  virtues  love,  their  faults  condemn, 

Partake  their  hopes  and  fears, 
And  from  their  lessons  seek  and  find 
Instruction  with  an  humble  mind." 

And  even  perhaps  some  of  the  youngest  or 
homeliest  among  us  need  not  scruple  to  add  : 

"  My  hopes  are  with  the  dead  ;  anon 

My  place  with  them  will  be, 
And  I  with  them  shall  travel  on 

Through  all  futurity  ; 
Yet  leaving  here  a  name,  I  trust 
That  will  not  perish  in  the  dust." 

5.  But  it  is  not  only  by  books,  whether  of 
literature  or  science,  that  the  self-education  of 
after-life  is  assisted.  When  Joan  of  Arc  was  ex- 
amined before  her  ecclesiastical  judges,  and  was 
taunted  with  the  reproach  that  such  marvelous 
things  as  she  professed  to  have  seen,  and  heard, 
and  done,  were  not  found  written  in  any  book 
which  they  had  studied,  she  answered  in  a  spirit 
akiD,  and  in  some  respects  superior,  to  the  well- 
known  lines  in  which  Hamlet  replies  to  Horatio. 
She  replied,  "  My  Lord  God  has  a  book  in  which 
are  written  many  things  which  even  the  most 
learned  clerk  and  scholar  has  never  come  across." 
Let  me  take  several  examples,  showing  how  edu- 
cation may  be  carried  forward  apart  from  books. 

Let  me  touch  on  the  experiences  presented  to 
our  eyes  and  ears  by  travel.  In  this  age  it  is  one 
of  the  peculiar  advantages  offered  to'all  classes, 
or  almost  all  classes,  which,  in  former  times,  was 
the  privilege  only  of  a  few,  that  the  great  book 
of  foreign  countries  and  the  phenomena  of  Xature 
have  been  opened  to  our  view.  We  hardly  ap- 
preciate how  vast  a  revelation,  how  new  a  crea- 
tion has  been  opened  to  us  in  these  respects 
within  the  last  fifty  years.  A  century  ago  not 
only  were  the  scenes  to  be  visited  closed  against 
us,  but  the  eye  by  which  we  could  see  them  was 
closed  also.  The  poet  Gray  was  the  first  human 
being  who  discovered  the  charms  of  the  English 
lakes  which  are  now  able  even  to  enter  into  a 
battle  of  life  and  death  against  the  mighty  power 
of  a  city  like  Manchester,  because  of  the  enthusi- 
astic interest  which  they  have  enkindled  in  the 
hearts  of  all  who  visit  them.  The  glories  of  the 
valley  of  Chamounix  were  first  made  known  to 
the  European  world  by  two  Englishmen  at  the 
close  of  the  last  century.  Before  that  time  the 
cherished  resorts  of  such  gifted  personages  as 
Voltaire  and  Madame  de  Stael  were  so  selected 
as  carefully  to  exclude  every  view  of  Mont  Blanc 
and  his  great  compeers.  But  in  our  time  all 
these  various  forms  of  beauty  and  graudeur  are 


THE  EDUCATION   OF  AFTER-LIFE. 


261 


appreciated  with  a  keenness,  and  sought  with 
an  enjoyment,  which  must  add  new  life  and  new 
vigor  even  to  the  most  secluded  among  us. 

6.  Besides  the  education  which  distant  travel 
may  give,  there  is  also  a  constant  process  of  self- 
education  which  may  be  carried  on  nearer  home. 
It  is  not  only  that  in  each  successive  age,  or  at 
least  in  the  age  in  which  we  live,  a  new  eye  or 
faculty  has  been  created  by  which  we  are  en- 
abled to  see  remote  objects  which  to  our  fore- 
fathers were  absolutely  unknown ;  but,  according 
to  the  familiar  story  which  we  read  in  our  child- 
hood, every  human  being  may  pass  through  the 
most  familiar  scenes  with  "eyes"  or  "no  eyes." 
Let  me  illustrate  this  by  the  instruction  which 
can  be  conveyed  to  an  inquiring  and  observant 
mind  by  the  city  in  which  our  lot  is  cast.  "  What  a 
book ! "  as  Joan  of  Arc  would  have  said — "  what 
a  book  of  endless  interest  is  opened  to  us  in  Bris- 
tol !  "  How  it  tells  its  own  story  of  the  long  uu- 
broken  continuity  of  importance  in  which  it 
stands  second  among  British  cities  only  to  Lon- 
don !  It  is,  as  Lamartine  says  of  Damascus,  a 
predestinated  city.  Why  was  it  of  such  early 
political  eminence  ?  Because,  if  I  may  use  knowl- 
edge imparted  to  me  since  I  came  among  you,  it 
was  the  frontier  fortress  of  the  English  race  in 
the  south,  as  Chester  was  in  the  north — to  keep 
a  watch  on  the  wild  Welshmen  in  their  hills  be- 
yond the  Severn.  Why  was  it  of  such  early  com- 
mercial eminence,  before  the  birth  of  Manchester, 
or  Liverpool,  or  Birmingham,  or  Glasgow  ?  Be- 
cause it  stood  near  the  mouth  of  that  great  est- 
nary  by  which  alone  at  that  time  England  was 
able  to  hold  communion  with  the  unknown  West, 
with  the  Atlantic,  and  with  the  transatlantic 
world.  At  the  mouth  of  the  Severn,  yet  what  in 
those  early  days  was  even  yet  more  valued,  not 
quite  at  the  mouth — parted  only  by  that  marvel- 
ous cleft  of  the  Avon,  up  which  the  ships  of  old 
time  came  stealing,  as  by  a  secret  passage,  on  the 
back  of  the  enormous  tide  of  the  Bristol  Channel, 
beyond  the  grasp  of  the  pirate  or  buccaneer 
of  the  open  sea.1  And  why  did  it  become  the 
scene  of  all  those  pleasant  tales  of  Miss  Burney, 
or  Miss  Edgeworth,  or  Miss  Austen,  in  later  days, 
which  made  its  localities  familiar  to  the  childhood 
of  those  who,  like  myself,  knew  Bristol  like  a 
household  word  fifty  years  before  they  explored 
it  for  themselves  ?  It  was  the  gush  of  mineral 
springs,  the  "hot  wells,"  now  forgotten,  but  then 
the  rallying-point  of  fashion  and  society,  beneath 

1  "  The  ancient  cities  of  Greece,  on  account  of  the 
piracy  then  prevailing  on  the  sea,  were  built  rather  at 
a  distance  from  the  shore."1    (Thucydides,  i.,  7.) 


your  limestone-rocks.  And  what  makes  it  such 
an  ever-growing,  ever-inspiring  centre  of  institu- 
tions, such  as  Clifton  College,  already  venerable 
with  fame,  and  this  new  University  College  ?  It 
is  the  unrivaled  combination  of  open  downs,  and 
deep  gorges,  and  distant  views,  and  magnificent 
foliage — magnificent  still,  in  the  wreck  and  de- 
vastation which  cause  even  a  stranger  almost  to 
weep,  as  he  passes  through  the  carnage  of  gigan- 
tic trunks  with  which  the  late  hurricane  has 
strewed  the  park  of  King's  Weston.  These  are 
among  the  lessons  which  the  education  of  after- 
life may  bring  out  from  the  pages  of  this  vast  il- 
luminated book  of  the  natural  situation  of  Bris- 
tol, which,  more  even  than  the  Charter  of  King- 
John  or  the  Bishopric  of  Henry  VIII.,  have  given 
to  it  its  long  eventful  history  and  its  never-ceas- 
ing charm. 

7.  Apart  from  the  education  to  be  derived 
from  inanimate  objects,  there  is  the  yet  deeper 
education  to  be  derived  by  those  who  have 
senses  exercised  to  discern  between  true  and 
false,  between  good  and  evil,  from  the  great  flux 
and  reflux  of  human  affairs,  with  which  the  pe- 
culiarity of  our  times  causes  all  to  become  more 
or  less  conversant.  One  of  the  experiences  which 
the  education  of  life  brings  with  it,  or  ought  to 
bring  with  it,  is  an  increasing  sense  of  the 
difference  between  what  is  hollow  and  what 
is  real,  what  is  artificial  and  what  is  honest, 
what  is  permanent  and  what  is  transitory. 
"There  are,"  says  Goethe,  in  a  proverb  point- 
ed out  to  me  long  ago  by  Lord  Houghton  as 
a  summary  of  human  wisdom,  "many  echoes 
in  the  world,  but  few  voices."  It  is  the  business 
of  the  education  of  after-life  to  make  us  more 
and  more  alive  to  this  distinction.  Think  of  the 
popular  panics  and  excitements  which  we  have 
outlived — of  the  delusions  which  we  have  seen 
possess  whole  masses  of  the  people,  educated 
and  uneducated,  and  then  totally  pass  away. 
You  have,  many  of  you,  I  doubt  not,  heard  the 
story  of  the  conversation  of  the  most  famous  of 
all  the  Bishops  of  Bristol  as  he  was  walking  in 
the  dead  of  night  in  the  garden  of  the  now  de- 
stroyed episcopal  palace.  "  His  custom,"  says 
his  chaplain,  "  was,  when  at  Bristol,  to  walk  for 
hours  in  his  garden  in  the  darkest  night  which 
the  time  of  year  would  afford,  and  I  had  frequent- 
ly the  honor  to  attend  him.  He  would  take  a 
turn,  and  then  stop  suddenly  short,  and  ask  the 
question :  '  Why  might  not  whole  communities 
and  public  bodies  be  seized  with  fits  of  insanity 
as  well  as  individuals  ?  Nothing  but  this  prin- 
ciple, that  they  are  liable  to  insanity  equally  at 


262 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


least  with  private  persons,  can  account  for  the 
major  part  of  those  tragedies  of  which  we  read 
in  history.'  I  thought  little,"  adds  the  chaplain, 
"  of  the  odd  conceit  of  the  bishop,  but  I  own  I 
could  not  avoid  thinking  of  it  a  great  deal  since, 
and  applying  it  to  many  cases." 

Yes,  Bishop  Butler  was  right.  Such  mad- 
nesses have  occurred  many  and  many  a  time  be- 
fore, and  they  have  indeed  been  enacted  many 
and  many  a  time  since.  The  madness  of  the  peo- 
ple of  London  in  the  riots  of  Lord  George  Gor- 
don ;  the  madness  of  the  people  of  Birmingham 
when  they  burned  the  library  of  Dr.  Priestley ; 
the  madness  of  the  people  of  Bristol,  which  laid 
waste,  in  1831,  the  very  garden  in  which  Bishop 
Butler  made  the  remark  one  hundred  years  ago ; 
the  innumerable  theological  panics  which  I  have 
seen  rise  and  fall  away  in  my  own  day — are  all 
examples  of  the  danger  to  which  we  are  exposed 
in  public  agitations  unless  by  the  stern  education 
of  after-life  we  deliberately  guard  ourselves 
against  it. 

It  is  with  no  view  of  producing  an  undue  dis- 
trust either  of  human  nature  or  of  popular  judg- 
ments that  I  dwell  on  the  deep  conviction  of  the 
instability  of  temporary  judgments  which  this 
experience  of  life  impresses  upon  us.  Like  all 
insanity  it  is  best  met  by  sanity.  Like  all  false- 
hood and  hollowness,  it  is  best  resisted  by  a 
determination  on  the  part  of  those  who  know 
better,  not  to  give  way  by  one  hair's-breadth  to 
what  they  know  in  their  own  minds  to  be  a  fic- 
tion or  a  crime.  If  we  all  of  us,  as  communities, 
as  parties,  as  churches,  are  liable  to  these  fits  of 
madness,  it  is  the  more  necessary  that  we  should 
educate  ourselves  to  be  our  own  keepers.  And, 
as  in  actual  insanity,  so  in  those  metaphorical  in- 
sanities, it  is  encouraging  to  remember  that  one 
keeper,  one  sane  keeper,  is  often  quite  enough  to 
control  many  madmen.  When  one  verger,  by 
his  own  stout  arm  and  resolute  speech,  saved 
Bristol  Cathedral  from  the  raging  mob,  he  did 
what  many  a  magistrate,  or  politician,  or  ecclesi- 
astic, under  analogous  circumstances,  might  do, 
and  what  they  have  often  failed  to  do,  and  so 
have  wellnigh  ruined  the  commonwealth.  In 
these  illusions  of  which  we  are  speaking,  it  is  not 
so  difficult  after  all  to  detect  the  ring  of  a  true  or 
of  a  hollow  word,  it  is  not  impossible  to  scent  out 
with  an  almost  infallible  instinct  the  savor  of  the 
rotten  or  decaying  or  acrid  element  in  human 
opinion,  or  to  see  wherein  are  to  be  found  the  light 
r.nd  glory  and  sweetness  of  the  eternal  future. 

8.  And  this  leads  me  to  speak  of  that  educa- 
tion which  is  given  in  our  age  and  in  our  country 


more  than  in  any  other,  namely,  education  in 
public  affairs  or  politics.  I  remember  when  in 
Russia  that  a  Russian  statesman  was  speaking 
of  the  important  effects  to  be  hoped  from  the 
endeavor  to  give  more  instruction  to  the  people  ; 
"but,"  he  said,  "there  is  one  process  of  educa- 
tion which  has  been  more  effectual  still,  and  that 
is  the  reform  in  the  administration  of  our  courts 
of  law  and  the  introduction  of  trial  by  jury.  This, 
by  bringing  the  peasants  into  the  presence  of  the 
great  machinery  of  the  state,  by  making  them 
understand  their  own  responsibility,  by  enabling 
them  to  hear  patiently  the  views  of  others,  is  a 
never-failing  source  of  elevation  and  instruction." 
Trial  by  jury,  which  to  the  Russian  peasant  is  as 
it  were  but  of  yesterday,  to  us  is  familiar  by  the 
growth  of  a  thousand  years.  It  is  familiar,  and 
yet  it  falls  only  to  the  lot  of  few.  I  have  myself 
only  witnessed  it  once ;  but  I  thought  it  one 
of  the  most  impressive  scenes  on  which  I  had 
ever  looked.  The  twelve  men,  of  humble  life, 
enjoying  the  advantage  of  the  instruction  of  the 
most  acute  minds  that  the  country  could  furnish ; 
taught  in  the  most  solemn  forms  of  the  English 
language  to  appreciate  the  value  of  exact  truth  ; 
seeing  the  whole  tragedy  of  destiny  drawn  out 
before  their  very  eyes — the  weakness  of  passion, 
the  ferocity  of  revenge,  the  simplicity  of  inno- 
cence, the  moderation  of  the  judge,  the  serious- 
ness of  human  existence — this  is  an  experience 
which  may  actually  befall  but  a  few,  but  to 
whomsoever  it  does  fall  the  lessons  which  it  im- 
parts, the  necessity  of  any  previous  preparation 
for  it  that  can  be  given,  leap  at  such  moments  to 
the  eyes  as  absolutely  inestimable.  But  what  in 
its  measure  is  true  of  the  education  which  a  jury- 
man receives,  and  of  the  necessity  of  education 
for  discharging  the  functions  of  a  juryman,  is  true 
more  or  less  of  all  the  complex  machinery  by 
which  the  duties,  the  hopes,  and  the  fears,  of 
English  citizens  are  called  into  action.  And  here 
again  the  past  history  of  Bristol  furnishes  so  ad- 
mirable an  example  of  an  important  lesson  of 
political  education  that  I  cannot  forbear  directing 
your  attention  to  it.  I  mean  Mr.  Burke's  speech 
in  the  Guildhall  at  Bristol,  in  which  he  refers  to 
certain  points  in  his  parliamentary  conduct  in  the 
year  1770.  In  making  this  reference  you  will  not 
suppose  that  I  am  so  indiscreet  as  to  be  entering 
on  any  political  question,  or  taking  the  side  of 
any  political  party.  I  am  not  favoring  either  the 
Anchor  or  the  Dolphin.  I  am  not  giving  any  ad- 
vice to  either  of  your  respected  members,  nor  to 
any  distinguished  persons  who  may  come  here  on 
the  day  of  your  great  benefactor  Colston. 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  AFTER-LIFE. 


2G3 


No  ;  but  I  am  trying  to  impress  upon  you  all 
the  value  of  the  education  of  after-life  in  raising 
you  to  the  height  of  that  great  argument  in 
which  you  have  to  confront  the  grave  emergen- 
cies of  our  time  and  country.  Burke  is  speaking 
against  the  folly  of  electors  trying  to  engage  their 
representatives  in  matters  of  local  or  peculiar  in- 
terest, as  distinct  from  the  great  questions  of  na- 
tional policy.  "  Look,  gentlemen,"  he  says,  "  to 
the  whole  tenor  of  your  member's  conduct.  Try 
whether  his  ambition  or  his  avarice  has  jostled 
him  out  of  the  straight  line  of  duty,  or  whether 
that  grand  foe  of  the  offices  of  active  life,  that 
master-vice  in  men  of  business,  a  degenerate  and 
inglorious  sloth,  has  made  him  flag  and  languish 
in  his  course  ?  This  is  the  object  of  our  inquiry. 
If  your  member's  conduct  can  bear  this  touch, 
mark  it  for  sterling.  He  may  have  fallen  into 
errors ;  he  must  have  faults ;  but  our  error  is 
greater  and  our  fault  is  radically  ruinous  to  our- 
selves if  we  do  not  bear,  if  we  do  not  even  ap- 
plaud, the  whole  compound  and  mixed  mass  of 
such  a  character.  Not  to  act  thus  is  folly,  I  had 
almost  said  it  was  impiety.  He  censures  God 
who  quarrels  with  the  imperfections  of  man.  .  .  . 
When  we  know  that  the  opinions  of  even  the 
greatest  multitudes  are  the  standard  of  rectitude, 
I  shall  think  myself  obliged  to  make  those  opin- 
ions the  masters  of  my  conscience.  But  if  it  may 
be  doubted  whether  Omnipotence  itself  is  com- 
petent to  alter  the  essential  constitution  of  right 
and  wrong,  sure  I  am  that  such  things  as  they  and 
I  are  possessed  of  no  such  power.  No  man  carries 
further  than  I  do  the  policy  of  making  govern- 
ment pleasing  to  the  people.  But  the  widest  range 
of  this  politic  complaisance  is  confined  within 
the  limits  of  justice.  I  would  not  only  consult 
the  interest  of  the  people,  but  I  would  cheerfully 
gratify  their  humors.  We  are  all  a  sort  of  chil- 
dren that  must  be  soothed  and  managed.  I  think 
I  am  not  austere  or  formal  in  my  nature.  I  would 
bear,  I  would  even  myself  play  my  part  in,  any 
innocent  buffooneries  to  divert  them.  But  I  never 
will  act  the  tyrant  for  their  amusement.  If  they 
will  mix  malice  in  their  sports  I  shall  never  con- 
sent to  throw  them  any  living,  sentient  creature 
whatsoever — no,  not  so  much  as  a  kitling  to  tor- 
ment. ...  I  could  wish,  undoubtedly,  to  make 
every  part  of  my  conduct  agreeable  to  every  one 
of  my  constituents.  But  in  so  great  a  city,  and 
so  greatly  divided  as  this,  it  is  weak  to  expect  it. 
In  such  a  discordancy  of  sentiments  it  is  better  to 
look  to  the  nature  of  things  than  to  the  humors 
of  men.  The  very  attempt  toward  pleasing  every- 
body discovers  a  temper  always  flashy,  and  often 


false  and  insincere.  Therefore,  as  I  have  proceed- 
ed straight  onward  in  my  conduct,  so  I  will  pro- 
ceed in  my  account  of  those  parts  of  it  which  have 
been  most  excepted  to.  But  I  must  first  beg  leave 
just  to  hint  to  you  that  we  may  suffer  very  great 
detriment  by  being  open  to  every  talker.  It  is 
not  to  be  imagined  how  much  of  service  is  lost 
from  spirits  full  of  activity  and  full  of  energy, 
who  are  pressing,  who  are  rushing  forward,  to 
great  and  capital  objects,  when  you  oblige  them 
to  be  continually  looking  back.  While  they  are 
defending  one  service  they  defraud  you  of  a  hun- 
dred. Applaud  us  when  we  run ;  console  us  when 
we  fall ;  cheer  us  when  we  recover ;  but  let  us 
pass  on — for  God's  sake,  let  us  pass  on ! " 

I  venture  to  quote  these  words  of  everlasting 
wisdom  from  one  of  the  greatest  masters  of  the 
English  language  and  of  English  political  science, 
because  they  well  express  that  kind  of  public  edu- 
cation which  the  mere  experience  of  life  ought  to 
give  us,  quite  irrespective  of  the  special  political 
party  to  which  one  may  be  attached.  No  doubt, 
as  Mr.  Burke  says,  it  is  extremely  difficult  to  know 
how  far  to  concede  to  popular  feeling,  or,  indeed, 
how  far  popular  feeling  is  likely  to  be  correct.  We 
must  all  work  with  such  instruments  as  are  at 
hand.  Yet  not  in  politics  only,  but  in  all  public 
affairs,  not  on  one  side  only,  but  on  both  sides  of 
public  life,  it  is  a  peculiar  danger  of  the  genera- 
tion in  which  our  lot  is  cast,  that  we  are  often 
tempted  to  abandon  the  lofty  and  independent 
line  which  Mr.  Burke  and  the  electors  of  Bristol 
then  assumed.  Often,  more  often,  I  fear,  than  in 
the  days  of  our  fathers,  we  meanly  abdicate  the 
function  of  leading  the  opinion  of  those  whom  we 
ought  to  lead,  and  prefer  to  follow  the  opinion  of 
those  who  are  no  better — who  are,  it  may  be, 
worse  than  ourselves.  Sometimes,  instead  of 
choosing  courses  which  we  believe  to  be  for  the 
good  of  the  country,  or  for  the  good,  even,  of  the 
particular  principles  which  we  represent,  we  are 
weak  enough  to  bow  to  the  temporary  exigencies 
of  some  passing  war-cry  on  which  we  ourselves 
have  no  conviction  at  all,  and  which  we  only  en- 
courage for  the  purpose  of  acquiring  power  or  in- 
fluence to  ourselves  or  our  friends.  It  would  be 
easy  to  illustrate  this  branch  of  public  education 
by  examples  nearer  home ;  but  let  us  take  the  ca- 
reer of  that  distinguished  French  statesman  who 
has  just  gone  to  his  rest.  M.  Thiers  had,  no  doubt, 
many  faults,  and  upon  his  memory  will  always  rest 
the  burden  of  one  or  two  of  the  greatest  misfor- 
tunes which  have  overtaken  his  country ;  but  it 
is  to  the  later  years  of  his  course  that  I  would  call 
your  attention.     When  during  the  German  War 


26i 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


of  1870  the  condition  of  France  had  become  well- 
nigh  desperate;  when  the  passions,  whether  of 
the  people  or  of  their  leaders,  still  refused  to  ac- 
cept even  the  slightest  proposals  of  peace,  it  was 
predicted  by  sagacious  persons,  both  in  France 
and  in  England,  that  the  difficulty  of  arriving  at 
any  termination  of  that  disastrous  conflict  was  en- 
hanced by  the  circumstance  that  any  statesman, 
who  ventured  so  far  to  resist  the  torrent  of  na- 
tional frenzy  as  to  make  overtures  to  Germany, 
would  be  certain  to  forfeit  every  chance  of  future 
political  success.  One  man,  however,  in  that  ex- 
treme emergency,  was  found  sufficiently  patriotic 
to  sacrifice  the  objects  of  his  own  ambition — vast 
as  it  was — to  what  he  believed  to  be  the  good  of 
his  country.  That  man  was  Adolphe  Thiers.  And 
what  was  the  result  ?  All  the  predictions  of  which 
I  have  spoken  were  signally  falsified.  The  act  of 
pacification,  by  which  it  was  believed  that  his 
personal  career  was  ruined,  became  the  stepping- 
stone  by  which,  without  dissent,  and  with  almost 
universal  applause,  he  mounted  to  the  highest 
place  in  the  government  of  his  country.  And 
yet,  once  more,  hardly  had  he  been  there  seated, 
when  a  second  catastrophe  overtook  the  nation, 
before  which,  some  of  those  who  usually  under- 
took to  inspire  and  lead  the  masses,  turned  and 
fled  in  dismay.  The  Commune  was  in  possession 
of  Paris  ;  the  working-classes  of  that  great  me- 
tropolis had  seized  the  citadel  of  the  state.  Again 
it  was  predicted  that  no  minister  who  undertook 
the  terrible  task  of  suppressing  that  formidable 
insurrection  could  ever  regain  the  confidence  or 
the  affection  of  the  mass  of  the  Parisian  people. 
And  yet,  what  was  the  result  ?  After  a  recon- 
quest  of  the  capital,  accompanied  by  severities 
which  I  do  not  presume  to  judge,  but  which  cer- 
tainly were  not  calculated  to  conciliate  the  regard 
of  those  whose  power  was  thus  summarily  broken, 
the  same  statesman  was  conveyed  to  his  grave — 
lamented  not  merely  by  the  upper  classes  of  soci- 
ety, which  he  had  preserved  from  ruin,  but  with 
a  singular  and  mysterious  silence  and  solemnity 
of  grief  through  the  midst  of  the  very  population 
which  he  had  thus  rudely  vanquished.  I  repeat 
that  I  do  not  refer  to  these  incidents  as  an  advo- 
cate of  that  remarkable  man — he  has  much  to  an- 
swer for  ;  and  I  am  not  here  either  to  defend  or  to 
condemn — but  these  acts  in  the  last  great  epoch 
of  his  life  are  an  encouragement  to  all  those  who, 
in  the  spirit  of  Edmund  Burke,  are  steadfast  to 
the  dictates  of  their  own  consciences,  confident 
that  they  will  reap  their  reward  before  God  and 
posterity,  but  not  without  the  just  hope  that  they 
may  even  reap  it  in  the  gratitude  of  those  whose 


folly  they  have  resisted.  These  and  the  like  acts 
are  lessons  to  us  that  the  people  have,  at  the  bot- 
tom of  their  hearts,  more  sense  and  more  justice 
than  we  give  them  credit  for.  We  may  trust  that 
the  mass  of  our  fellow-countrymen,  if  we  have 
had  the  courage  in  a  good  cause  to  thwart  their 
unreasoning  frenzy,  will  acknowledge  at  last  that 
they  were  mistaken,  and  that  we  were  right.  This 
is  the  education  of  public  life,  on  which  much 
more  might  be  said  —  on  which  I  could  not 
say  less ;  but  on  which,  perhaps,  I  have  said 
enough. 

9.  There  is  one  more  general  remark  on  the 
education  of  experience  which  brings  us  back  to 
our  college.  We  live  in  these  days  more  rapidly 
than  our  fathers  did ;  we  see  more  changes ;  we 
live,  as  it  is  said,  many  lives  in  one.  Now,  of 
this  rapid  growth  and  various  experience,  there 
is  one  important  lesson.  It  shows  us  how  great 
are  the  possibilities  and  capabilities  of  human  ex- 
istence. A  friend  of  mine  last  year  with  singular 
courage  accomplished  the  rare  and  difficult  task 
of  ascending  Mount  Ararat.  Two  days  after  he 
had  come  down,  his  companion  explained  to  an 
Armenian  Archimandrite  at  the  foot  of  the  moun- 
tain what  my  friend  had  done.  The  venerable 
man  sweetly  smiled,  and  said,  "  It  is  impossi- 
ble." "  But,"  said  the  interpreter,  "  this  travel- 
er has  been  up  and  has  returned."  "  No,"  said 
the  Archimandrite,  "no  one  ever  has  ascend- 
ed and  no  one  ever  will  ascend  Mount  Ararat." 
This  belief  in  the  impossibility  of  what  has  been 
done  is  uncommon,  but  the  belief  in  the  impos- 
sibility of  what  may  be  done  is  very  common ; 
and  it  is  one  delightful  peculiarity  of  the  history 
of  Bristol  that  it  enables  us  to  bear  up  against 
this  natural  prejudice.  It  might  have  been  thought 
impossible  that  there  should  have  been  discov- 
ered a  North  America  as  well  as  a  South  America. 
Yet  it  was  discovered  by  a  Venetian  seaman,  who 
sailed  from  the  harbor  of  Bristol.  It  was  thought 
that  no  steamer  could  ever  cross  the  Atlantic. 
Dr.  Lardner  proved  to  demonstration  in  this  very 
city  of  Bristol  that  such  an  event  could  never 
take  place ;  and  the  late  Lord  Derby  said  that 
of  the  first  steamer  which  crossed  he  would  en- 
gage to  swallow  the  boiler  !  Yet  such  a  steamer 
started  from  the  docks  of  Bristol,  and  safely 
reached  New  York.  It  might  have  been  thought 
that  there  was  something  impossible  in  the  idea 
of  a  beneficent  institution,  living  from  hand  to 
mouth,  supported  by  the  indomitable  faith  of  one 
man,  living  on  Providence.  Yet  this  also  has 
been  fulfilled  on  Ashley  Down.  It  might  have 
been  thought  impossible  that  the  rough  lads  of 


THE   GREEK  MIND  IN  PRESENCE   OF  DEATH. 


265 


Kingswood  should  ever  be  reformed,  or  that  the 
women  of  India  should  ever  be  moulded  by  Eu- 
ropean influences.  Yet  this  also  was  accomplished 
in  our  own  day  by  the  faith  and  energy  of  a  wise 
and  gentle  woman,  dear  to  Bristol — Mary  Carpen- 
ter. It  might  have  been  thought  impossible  that 
an  institution  like  this  should  ever  have  sprung 
into  existence,  that  Oxford  should  ever  have 
come  to  Bristol — that  three  hundred  Bristol  stu- 
dents should  have  been  listening  to  lecturers 
from  Oxford,  Cambridge,  and  Dublin.  Yet  it  has 
been  done.  AU  these  discoverers  have  ascended 
Mount  Ararat ;  and,  though  the  most  incredulous 
Archimandrite  may  shake  his  head  and  sweetly 
smile,  and  say  that  it  cannot  be,  yet  these  things, 
great  and  small,  have  been  achieved — and  achieved  j 
in  safety. 

This  is  one  of  the  best  fruits  of  the  education 
of  after-life.  It  encourages  the  hope  that  impos- 
sibilities may  become  not  only  possibilities  but 
actualities-  There  is  a  great  company  here  of 
the  "  Merchant  Venturers,"  called  so,  I  am  told, 
because  they  made  some  of  those  mighty  vent- 
ures in  former  times  by  which  new  lands  were 
found — new  wealth  and  knowledge  poured  into 
this  ancient  city.  But  there  are  still  many  voy- 
ages to  be  made,  still  much  wealth  to  be  ex- 
pended, still  new  Ararats  to  be  scaled.    We  are 


all  of  us  Merchant  Venturers — we  all  of  us  must 
venture  something,  if  we  would  leave  something 
worth  living  for — nay,  if  we  would  have  something 
to  look  forward  to  hereafter.  Nil  desperandum 
must  be  written,  as  in  the  porch  of  the  Redcliffe 
Church,  so  over  the  entrance  of  every  stage  of 
our  existence. 

Yes,  over  every  stage.  For  this  is  the  last 
word  I  will  venture  to  say  concerning  the  educa- 
tion of  life.  In  the  transformation  of  opinion 
which  is  imperceptibly  affecting  all  our  concep- 
tions of  the  future  state,  and  in  the  perplexities 
and  doubts  which  this  transformation  excites,  the 
idea  that  comes  with  the  most  solid  force  and 
abiding  comfort  to  the  foreground  is  the  belief 
that  the  whole  of  our  human  existence  is  an  edu- 
cation— not  merely,  as  Bishop  Butler  said,  a  pro- 
bation for  the  future,  but  an  education  which 
shall  reach  into  the  future.  The  possibilities  that 
overcome  the  impossibilities  in  our  actual  expe- 
rience show  us  that  there  may  yet  be  greater 
possibilities  which  shall  overcome  the  yet  more 
formidable  impossibilities  lying  beyond  our  expe- 
rience, beyond  our  sight,  beyond  the  last  great 
change  of  all.  Through  all  these  changes,  and 
toward  that  unseen  goal,  in  the  words  of  Mr. 
Burke,  "  let  us  pass  on — -for  God's  sake,  let  us 
pass  on  I " — Maemillan's  Magazine. 


THE  GREEK  MIND  IN  PRESENCE   OF  DEATH, 

INTERPRETED  FROM  RELIEFS  AND  INSCRIPTIONS  ON  A  TJIENIAN  TOMBS. 

By  PERCY  GARDNER . 


AT  Athens  the  gravestones  of  the  ancient 
inhabitants  are  not  only  among  the  most 
Interesting,  but  among  the  most  extensive,  re- 
mains. Near  Piraeus,  through  all  the  Ceramicus, 
and  in  many  other  parts  of  the  city,  excavations 
have  constantly  brought  to  light  a  vast  quantity 
of  inscribed  and  sculptured  slabs  and  columns, 
which  have  mostly,  unlike  antiquities  of  many 
other  classes,  remained  at  Athens,  and  now  fill 
one  wing  of  the  new  museum  and  the  whole  space 
in  front.  But  there  is  a  group  of  gravestones  of 
even  greater  interest  which  are  left  standing,  just 
where  they  were  disinterred,  by  the  old  road 
which  led  through  the  gate  Dipylon,  from  Athens 
to  Eleusis,  the  road  annually  trodden  by  the  pro- 
cession at  the  Eleusinia.  These  tombs,  in  size 
and  beauty  superior  to  the  rest,  are  preserved  for 


us,  as  is  supposed,  by  a  fortunate  chance.1  Sulla, 
when  he  attacked  Athens  and  remorselessly  mas- 
sacred the  miserable  inhabitants,  made  his  ap- 
proach close  to  the  gate  Dipylon.  There  he 
erected  the  long  aggeres  by  which  his  engines 
were  brought  close  to  the  wall,  and  there  his  sol- 
diers threw  down  several  hundred  yards  of  the 
city  ramparts,  which  were  formed  of  sun-baked 
bricks.  Hence  a  vast  mass  of  ruin  which  com- 
pletely overwhelmed  and  buried  the  lines  of 
tombs  immediately  without  the  gate,  and  pre- 
served them  almost  uninjured  until  one  day  when 
they  were  once  more  brought  to  the  light  by  a 
French  archaeological  expedition  in  the  year  1863. 
The  suddenness  with  which  these  monuments 
were  overwhelmed  is  indicated  by  the  fact  that 
1  See  F.  Lenormanfs  "  Voie  Eleusinienne,"  vol.  i. 


266 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


some  of  them  were  and  remained  unfinished  ;  the 
completeness  of  their  disappearance  is  proved  by 
the  silence  of  Pausanias  the  traveler,  who,  pass- 
ing through  all  quarters  of  Athens  in  the  time 
of  the  Antonines,  would  appear  to  have  seen  no 
trace  of  them.  All  of  the  monuments  in  this 
group  are  of  course  indubitably  Athenian,  and 
furnish  the  best  materials  for  the  present  paper. 
Of  the  stones  in  the  museum  it  is  sometimes  im- 
possible to  trace  the  find-spot ;  some  are  Boeotian, 
some  from  Peloponnesus,  some  from  the  islands. 
But  this  uncertainty  need  not  debar  us  from  free- 
ly referring  to  almost  any  as  instances,  for  there 
is  no  great  or  essential  difference  between  Athe- 
nian and  other  gravestones.  It  will  be  quite  fair 
to  treat,  for  the  present  purpose,  all  monuments 
preserved  at  Athens  as  Athenian,  unless  they  be 
known  to  have  come  from  a  distance.  Of  the 
longer  inscriptions  a  large  proportion  are  from 
the  tombs  of  foreign  residents  at  Athens. 

To  the  readers  who  are  likely  to  peruse  these 
pages,  there  are  but  two  points  in  gravestones 
likely  to  prove  very  interesting :  1.  The  reliefs 
which  they  bear ; l  2.  The  inscriptions  engraven 
on  them. 

The  earliest  of  Athenian  sepulchral  monu- 
ments, if  we  leave  out  of  account  buildings  like 
the  Cyclopean  tombs  of  Mycenae,  or  mounds  like 
those  recently  opened  with  such  splendid  results 
at  Spata,  in  Attica,  is  the  often-cited  stele  of 
Aristion.  It  represents  the  deceased  on  a  scale 
somewhat  larger  than  life,  as  standing  clad  in  full 
armor,  spear  in  hand.  The  ground  of  the  relief 
is  red ;  traces  of  color  may  be  seen,  or  rather 
might  at  the  time  of  discovery  be  seen,  on  many 
parts  of  the  body,  and  holes  may  be  observed 
made  by  the  pegs  which  fastened  armor  of  bronze 
on  to  the  body.  The  design  or  idea  of  this  slab 
differs  not  much  from  that  of  a  portrait  statue. 
Clearly  in  early  Greek  times,  for  this  statue  is  given 
to  the  very  beginning  of  the  fifth  century  b.  c,  the 
survivors  wished  to  see  in  the  monument  the 
dead,  as  it  were,  still  living  among  them,  still  to 
be  seen  in  his  daily  dress,  and  about  his  daily 
business. 

But  it  is  from  the  fourth  and  succeeding  cen- 
turies before  the  Christian  era,  that  we  inherit  the 
great  mass  of  the  sculptured  tombstones  which 
crowd  the  museums.  No  one  can  spend  a  few 
hours  among  these  without  perceiving  that  the 

1  On  the  subject  of  these  reliefs  there  is  no  complete 
work,  but  several  monographs,  the  best  of  which  are 
those  of  Friedlander  and  Pervanoglu.  Where  my  own 
notes  fail  I  have  quoted  the  descriptions  of  the  latter 
writer. 


representations  fall  naturally  into  four   or  five 
classes. 

The  first  class  and  the  most  extensive  consists 
of  formal  groups  wanting  in  distinctive  character, 
which  display  the  dead  either  alone  or  in  com- 
pany with  others.     The  companions,  where  there 
are  such,  are  sometimes  other  members  of  the 
family,  sometimes   slaves  or  attendants,  who,  in 
accordance  with  the  well-known  canon  of  Greek 
art,  which  gives  larger  stature  to  the  person  of 
more  importance,  are  always  represented  as  of 
diminutive  size.     Sometimes  the  companion  is  not 
a  person  at  all,  but  a  favorite  animal,  a  pet  dog 
or  bird.     Such  subjects  are  common  in   Mace- 
donian times.      The  grouping  is  usually  simple 
and  graceful,  the  attitudes  natural  and  unforced, 
the  movements,  if  movement  there  be,  measured. 
But  the  execution  is  not  of  the  best,  save  in  a  few 
remarkable  cases,  and  there  is  a  want  of  inven- 
tion, nay,  there  is  even  vulgarity,  in  the  designs. 
Like   our    modern    photographers,   the   inferior 
Greek  artists  who  condescended  to  this  kind  of 
work  had  a  few  cardinal  notions  as  to  possibilities 
of  arrangement,  and  could  not  easily  be  induced 
to  depart  from  them.     I  will  give  the  details  of  a 
few  reliefs  of  this  class :  1.  A  seated  lady,  who 
with  her  left  hand  holds  the  end  of  the  veil  which 
covers  her  face  ;  before  her  stands  a  man,  facing 
her.    2.  A  pair  of  sisters,  Demetria  and  Pamphile. 
Pamphile  is  seated,  and  turns  her  head  toward 
the  spectator ;  with  her  right  hand  she  grasps 
the  end  of  her  veil.    Demetria  stands  over  against 
her,  her  right  hand  folded  across  her  breast,  and 
grasps  her  veil  with  her  left  hand.    3.  A  man 
clad  in  long  himation  stands,  in  his  hand  a  scroll. 
In  front  of  him  stands  a  small  male  figure,  naked, 
holding  a  vessel,  perhaps  an  oil-flask.     The  scroll 
which  the  master  holds  and  the  flask  of  the  slave 
seem  here  to  have  as  little  meaning  as  the  books 
and  the  flower-baskets  of  photographic  rooms. 
4.  A  mother  clad  in  flowing  Ionian  drapery  is 
seated  to  left.     Her  left  hand  rests  on  the  seat ; 
with  her  right  she  lifts  something  from  a  little 
toilet-box  which   a   servant  holds  out.      Bound 
her  knees  clings  a  little  girl.    5.  A  lad   stands 
clasping  to  his  breast  a  bird  which  a  snake  at  his 
feet  threatens  and  springs  upward  to  reach.     In 
other  reliefs  we  find  a  dog  in  the  place  of  the 
snake ;  sometimes  a  dog  is  standing  elsewhere  in 
the  picture.     Tame  birds  -would  seem  to  have 
been  the  usual  playmates  of  Athenian  children, 
and  tame  dogs  the  constant  companions  of  young 
men,  while  in  many  houses  a  favorite  which  would 
be  rarely  appreciated  in  England,  a  snake,  was 
nurtured. 


THE  GREEK  MIND  IN  PRESENCE  OF  DEATH. 


267 


As  this  is  the  commonest  class  of  reliefs,  so 
evidently  it  is  the  least  original  and  interesting. 
Here  most  is  left  to  the  sorry  invention  and  feeble 
sympathy  of  the  sculptor,  who  knew  naught  of 
the  deceased,  and  allows  us  to  know  no  more 
than  could  be  ascertained  from  the  sources  of 
information  which  among  the  old  Greeks  corre- 
sponded to  the  first  column  of  the  Times  or  the 
pages  of  Burke  with  us.     But  it  is  by  do  means 
rare  to  find  on  sepulchral  slabs  a  more  exact  ref- 
erence to  the  past  life  or  the  habits  of  the  dead. 
Sometimes  we  are  told  more  than  the  bare  fact 
that  the  departed  was  father,  mother,  wife,  or 
sister — was  young,  old,  or  in  the  prime  of  life.     I 
select  the  following :  1.  A  youth,  naked,  or  wear- 
ing the  light  chlamys  only,  stands  holding  in  his 
hand  the  strigil  and  oil-flask,  those  invariable  ac- 
companiments of  gymnastic  exercises  among  the 
Greeks.    No  doubt  the  survivors,  who  chose  the 
design,  wished  to  indicate  that  their  friend  was 
prominent  in  manly  sports  and  labors.     In  this, 
the  field  of  his  best  energies,  they  wished  him 
still  to  seem  to  live.    2.  A  young  man,  clad  in  a 
chlamys,  charges  with  spear  advanced  a  wild-boar, 
which  is  coming  out  of  its  lair;  at  his  side  is 
a  dog,  which  leaps  forward  at  the  quarry.    Above, 
on  a  rock,  stands  a  deer.     We  see  at  a  glance  that 
this  is  the  tomb  of  one  who  loved  the  chase.     3. 
On  a  rock  sits  a  man  in  an  attitude  of  grief;  be- 
neath is  the  sea,  and  on  it  a  boat  with  or  without 
sailors.     It  is  a  generally-received  opinion  that 
monuments  of  this  character  were  set  up  over 
those  who  had  been  wrecked  at  sea.     4.  A  young 
rider,  clad  in  the  light  chlamys  of  the  Athenian 
cavalry,  charges,  at  once  trampling  beneath  his 
horse's  hoofs  and  transfixing  with   his  spear  a 
fallen  foe,  who  tries  in  vain  with  his  shield  to  ward 
off  the  attack  of  his  triumphant  enemy.     From 
the  accompanying  inscription  we  know  that  this 
monument  was  erected  in  honor  of  Dexilaus,  one 
of  the  five  horsemen  at  Corinth — that  is  to  say, 
as  is  supposed,  one  of  the  five  horsemen  who  fell 
in  the  battle  under  the  walls  of  Corinth,  in  which 
the  Athenians  were  engaged  in  the  year  B.  c.  394. 
The  relief  thus  dates  almost  from  the  best  time 
of  Attic  art,  and  it  is  worthy  of  its  time.     It  does 
not,  of  course,  represent  the  moment  of  the  death 
of  the  young  warrior;  we  see  him  strong  and 
triumphant,  such  as  his  friends  would  fain  have 
seen  him  always ;  to  show  him  fallen  would  have 
suited  an  enemy  rather  than  a  friend.     5.  Another 
relief,  although  set  up  in  honor  of  a  man  of 
Ascalon,  is  clearly  of  Athenian  handiwork  and 
design.     A  sleeping  man  rests  on  a  couch.     Close 
to  his  head  rises  on  its  hind-paws  a  lion,  who  is 


clearly  ready  to  slay  or  carry  him  off.  On  the 
other  side  of  the  couch  is  a  warrior  who  attacks 
and  repels  the  beast.  In  the  background  appears 
the  prow  of  a  ship.  From  a  Greek  metrical  in- 
scription which  accompanies  this  relief,  it  would 
appear  that  the  Phoenician  stranger  here  buried 
had  incurred  great  peril  at  some  previous  period 
of  his  life  from  the  attack  of  a  lion,  who  seems  to 
have  surprised  him  resting  on  the  shore,  but  who 
was  driven  off  by  the  timely  arrival  of  friends  just 
landed  from  their  ship.  6.  A  man  and  his  wife, 
both  muffled  in  ample  garments,  advance  toward 
the  spectator.  Between  them  advances  a  priestess 
of  Isis,  clad  in  the  dress  of  her  calling,  holding 
in  her  right  hand  the  sistrum,  in  her  left  the  ves- 
sel of  sacred  water.  It  is  possible,  the  inscrip- 
tions which  accompany  this  representation  being 
illegible,  that  the  monument  was  erected  to  a 
father  and  mother,  and  to  their  daughter  devoted 
to  Isis.  Or  it  is  possible  that  we  have  here  ex- 
pressed in  a  symbolical  form  the  devotion  of  a 
man  and  woman  to  that  mysterious  worship  which 
spread  in  Ptolemaic  times  from  the  bank  of  the 
Nile  over  all  lands,  and  their  firm  trust  that  in 
the  next  world  Isis  would  recognize  and  protect 
her  worshipers. 

Such  are  a  few  specimens  of  the  reliefs  which 
give  us  more  precise  information  with  regard  to 
the  lives  and  habits  of  the  dead.  In  the  same 
way,  those  who  had  devoted  themselves  to  a  pro- 
fession appear  on  their  tombs  with  the  badges  of 
that  profession ;  physicians,  for  instance,  with  the 
cupping-glass  and  other  instruments  of  their  daily 
use.  So  the  priestesses  of  Apollo  and  Aphrodite 
appear  with  the  symbols  of  their  guardian  dei- 
ties. And  in  this  matter  it  is  clear  that  the  Athe- 
nians merely  followed  one  of  the  most  natural 
of  all  instincts  leading  to  a  custom  common 
among  all  nations.  Thus  in  the  "  Odyssey,"  the 
ghost  of  the  drowned  oarsman,  Elpenor,  begs 
Ulysses,  when  he  reaches  the  island  of  J£?ea. : 

"  Kaise  thou  a  tomb  upon  the  shore  beside  the  hoary 

sea, 
Memorial  of  my  blighted  life  for  future  times  to  be  ; 
Make  thou  my  tomb  beside  the  sea,  and  on  it  fix  the 

oar, 
Which  once  among  my  comrades  dear,  while  yet  I 

lived,  I  bore." 

And  thus,  even  in 'our  own  day,  what  device  is 
commoner  on  a  soldier's  grave  than  sword  and 
cannon,  or  on  a  painter's  than  palette  and  brush  ? 
But  although  the  sculptors  of  tombs  usually 
designed  references  to  the  past  life  of  those  they 
commemorated,  such  was  not  always  the  case. 
After  all,  past  was  past,  and  it  were  idle  to  deny 


268 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


that  the  moment  of  death  brought  a  vast  change 
over  everything.  The  next  class  of  reliefs  have 
reference  to  the  fact  and  the  moment  of  death. 
Among  the  Romans  that  fact  was  symbolized  in 
art  frequently  by  sleep ;  and  among  all  Christian 
nations  it  has  become  usual  to  speak  of  death  in 
metaphorical  language  borrowed  from  the  rest  of 
night.  But  it  was  not  usually  merely  as  a  deeper 
sleep  that  death  presented  itself  to  the  imagi- 
nation of  Athenian  sculptors.  They  considered 
death  rather  as  a  departure,  a  going  far  away  from 
and  losing  sight  of  one's  family  and  friends. 
Scenes  of  leave-taking  are  among  the  most  fre- 
quent of  all  sepulchral  reliefs.  I  am  not,  how- 
ever, sure  that  this  leave-taking  is  quite  con- 
sciously adopted  as  the  image  of  death.  Indeed, 
all  images  of  death  were  somewhat  distasteful  to 
the  joyous  sensuousness  of  Athenian  taste.  But 
when  an  artist  had  to  represent  the  dead  and  the 
surviving  friends  of  the  dead  in  a  group,  this  post- 
ure of  farewell,  which  must  have  been  one  of 
the  most  usual  and  natural  to  think  of,  seems  to 
have  frequently  suggested  itself,  and,  in  virtue 
of  its  inherent  appropriateness  to  the  occasion, 
to  have  become  more  and  more  common.  This 
leave-taking  presents  itself  in  the  least  intrusive 
and  gentlest  form  in  those  representations  where 
a  lady  appears  dressing  herself  with  the  assist- 
ance of  her  maids  for  an  out-door  journey,  throw- 
ing over  her  head  the  ample  veil,  and  perhaps 
handing  to  an  attendant  nurse  the  babe  whom  she 
cannot  take  out  into  the  open  air  with  her.  Some- 
times the  preparations  are  more  advanced;  the 
lady  sits  or  stands  veiled  and  prepared  for  a  jour- 
ney, and  gives  her  hand  to  husband  or  father 
who  stands  opposite.  Sometimes  two  men  grasp 
hands  as  if  about  to  travel  in  different  directions. 
Occasionally  a  horse  appears  in  the  background, 
or  the  head  of  a  horse  is  seen  through  a  window, 
which  is  destined  to  carry  away  the  master  of  the 
house.  In  this  very  introduction  of  the  horse 
we  see  how  much  the  notion  of  travel  preponder- 
ates in  those  scenes  over  that  of  death.  For  the 
horse  was  in  no  way  connected  by  the  Greeks 
with  death.  The  rider  on  the  pale  horse  had  yet 
to  be  introduced  to  the  popular  imagination  by 
the  writer  of  the  Apocalypse,  who  must  have 
borrowed  from  a  non-Hellenic  source.  Dwelling 
closely  hemmed  in  by  the  sea,  they  never  thought 
of  the  dead  as  traveling  to  other  worlds  by  land, 
but  usually  as  going  over  the  waves  mysterious 
and  vast  to  some  distant  island,  or  perhaps  as 
penetrating  into  deep  abysses  of  the  land.  But, 
for  journeys  from  town  to  town  in  Hellas,  the 
horse  was  the  appropriate  conveyer,  from  which 


fact  he  becomes  the  symbol  of  all  moving  and 
journeying. 

The  old  opinion  of  archaeologists  with  regard 
to  these  scenes  of  farewell,  an  opinion  grounded 
on  insufficient  induction,  was  that  in  them  the 
dead  were  represented  as  seated,  the  survivors 
as  standing  and  taking  leave  of  them.  It  is  now 
acknowledged  that  this  is  not  the  case.  It  is  true 
that  most  commonly  in  the  groups  one  is  seated, 
while  of  the  standing  figures  one  grasps  his  or  her 
hand.  But  a  careful  study  of  the  accompanying 
inscriptions  proves  that  it  is  sometimes  the  dead 
person  who  stands  while  the  survivor  sits ;  and, 
again,  in  other  cases  both  the  dead  and  the  living 
stand,  while  sometimes,  again,  of  the  several  dead 
persons  commemorated  some  stand  and  some  are 
seated.  The  fact  is  that  any  pedantic  rule  of  uni- 
formity is  put  out  of  the  question  by  the  circum- 
stances under  which  sepulchral  reliefs  were  de- 
signed and  executed.  It  was  essential  to  the 
composition  of  a  group,  thought  the  artists,  that 
some  of  the  figures  should  stand  and  others  sit ; 
but  the  question  which  should  do  each  was  set- 
tled, not  by  a  desire  to  convey  a  careful  meaning 
to  the  eyes  of  beholders,  but  by  the  study  of  a 
little  graceful  variety,  within  somewhat  narrow 
limits,  and  the  influence  of  every-day  custom 
which  made  it  far  more  natural  and  usual  that  a 
woman  should  be  seated  when  taking  leave  of  a 
man,  than  a  man  when  taking  leave  of  a  woman. 
Sometimes  a  little  life  breaks  in  on  the  cold  for- 
mality of  the  group.  Children  cling  about  their 
mother's  knee,  or  daughters  stand  by  in  an  atti- 
tude betokening  their  grief;  but  those  circum- 
stances which  might  move  emotion  in  the  specta- 
tor are  quite  banished  or  kept  sedulously  in  the 
background.  Here,  as  ever,  the  Greek  abode  by 
that  motto,  "Nothing  in  extremes,"  which  ex- 
presses the  ultimate  law  of  all  his  art. 

Another  set  of  representations  introduce  us  to 
a  scene  of  banqueting.1  1.  A  man  reclines  on  a 
couch  in  the  posture  adopted  by  the  Greeks  at 
their  meals — before  him  a  three-legged  table. 
Near  his  head  sits  a  woman  on  a  chair,  holding  in 
her  hand  the  end  of  her  veil.  2.  Similar  two  fig- 
ures appear  to  those  in  the  last  relief,  but  in  ad- 
dition there  is  in  the  foreground  a  slave  pouring 
wine  from  a  larger  into  a  smaller  vessel.  3.  A 
man  reclining  at  table  holds  a  cup  in  his  right 
hand ;  near  him  sits  his  wife,  behind  whom  is  a 
slave  pouring  wine  from  an  amphora.     Behind  the 

1  M.  Albert  Dumont  has  published  a  volume  on  this 
class  of  monuments.  The  work  has  been  crowned  by 
the  French  Institute,  but  I  have  been  unable  to  find  a 
copy  in  English  libraries. 


THE  GREEK  MIND  IN  PRESENCE  OF  DEATH. 


269 


couch  stands  a  draped  bearded  figure ;  beneath  it 
is  a  dog  gnawing  at  some  fragment  of  food.  In 
the  place  of  this  dog  we  elsewhere  find  a  snake. 
4.  Two  men  recline  side  by  side  on  a  couch ;  in 
front  of  one  is  a  three-legged  table  laden  with 
food.  At  the  two  extremities  of  the  couch  sit 
two  women.  In  the  foreground  is  a  galley,  of 
which  the  oars,  but  not  the  rowers,  are  visible,  in 
which  is  seated  a  weird  figure  with  matted  locks, 
clad  in  a  short,  rough  cloak,  who  stretches  his 
hand  toward  one  of  the  reclining  banqueters. 
This  latter  figure  has  usually  been  taken  for  the 
ferryman  of  the  dead,  Charon,  come  to  claim  the 
feasters  as  his  passengers  into  the  next  world. 
In  scenes  of  this  character,  also,  it  is  not  unusual 
to  find  in  the  background  a  horse,  or  at  least  the 
head  of  one;  here,  too,  the  coming  journey 
throws  its  shadow  over  the  group. 

With  the  sculptures  of  this  class  are  frequent- 
ly associated  a  set  of  representations,  which 
would  seem  to  have  something  more  than  a  casu- 
al connection  with  them,  though  the  exact  nature 
of  such  connection  is  very  obscure.  I  refer  to 
the  ex  voto  tablets  commonly  set  up  in  Greek 
temples  by  those  who  had  escaped  from  disease, 
peril,  or  death,  in  honor  of  the  deity  to  whom  they 
attributed  their  deliverance,  and  for  a  lasting  me- 
morial of  their  gratitude.  Such  tablets  have  been 
found  in  special  abundance  in  the  temeni,  sacred 
to  Hades  or  Sarapis,  as  god  of  the  nether  world, 
and  of  Asklepius  and  Hygieia.  When  Sarapis  is 
the  deity  thus  honored,  he  appears  on  the  tablet 
as  reclining  on  a  couch,  on  his  head  the  modius, 
which  is  the  symbol  of  his  dominion  in  realms  be- 
low, and  sometimes  as  accompanied  by  his  bride 
Isis  or  Persephone.  A  train  of  worshipers  ap- 
proaches from  the  side  of  the  tablet,  bringing  in 
animals  for  sacrifice.  Of  the  ex  voto  tablets  dedi- 
cated to  the  deities  of  healing,  perhaps  the  clear- 
est specimen  appears  copied  on  certain  coins  of 
the  city  of  Perinthus,  in  Thrace.  On  these  we 
see  Asklepius  reclining  on  a  couch.  Beside  him 
sits  his  daughter  Hygieia,  and  in  front  is  a  three- 
legged  table  laden  with  food,  at  the  feet  of  which 
is  a  serpent.  From  the  side  enters  a  train  of  vo- 
taries dragging  in  a  sacrificial  pig.  Above,  a 
cluster  of  arms  hangs  on  a  peg,  and  through  a 
window  appears  the  head  of  a  horse  who  stands 
without.  It  is  not  easy  to  understand  the  sym- 
bolism of  all  parts  of  these  pictures,  but  the  gen- 
eral meaning  cannot  be  doubtful.  We  see  in 
them  representations  of  the  gratitude  of  those 
whose  health  was  restored  in  the  temples  of  the 
deity  Asklepius,  the  hospitals  of  antiquity.  The 
train  of  worshipers  represents  their  family,  and 


the  pig  of  the  reliefs  had,  doubtless,  his  original 
in  an  animal  actually  sacrificed  to  the  god.  Why 
the  horse  and  the  arms  appear  in  the  background 
we  need  not  try  to  ascertain. 

It  will  be  easily  understood  how  difficult  it 
sometimes  becomes,  in  the  absence  of  inscriptions, 
to  tell  whether  a  relief  is  to  be  classed  among  the 
ex  voto  tablets  of  deities  or  among  sepulchral 
scenes.  In  many  cases  we  seem  to  be  near  the 
border-line  between  the  two  classes  of  monuments, 
as  in  the  following:  Two  men  recline  on  a  couch, 
each  of  them  holding  a  drinking-horn.  By  them 
sits  a  woman,  while  a  slave  in  the  foreground  is 
engaged  in  pouring  wine  into  a  vessel.  In  front 
appears  a  three-legged  table,  beneath  which  is  a 
snake ;  in  the  corner  is  seen  a  horse's  head.  Here 
horse's  head  and  snake  remind  us  of  the  ex  voto 
tablets,  although  there  can  be  little  doubt  that 
the  subject  is  from  a  tomb.  Both  horse's  head 
and  snake  reappear  in  the  following,  which  seems 
to  belong  to  the  ex  voto  class  of  monuments :  Two 
men  recline  on  a  couch,  one  holdiDg  a  drinking- 
horn.  On  either  side  a  woman  is  seated.  Three 
figures  approach  in  the  attitude  of  worshipers. 

Now,  the  greatest  perplexity  has  arisen  from 
the  confusion  of  two  classes  of  reliefs,  which  may, 
indeed,  have  something  in  common,  but  are  wide- 
ly different  in  meaning.  To  separate  finally  the 
classes,  and  to  trace  out  their  ultimate  connec- 
tion with  each  other,  is  a  work  still  to  be  done, 
and  one  which  will  require  patience  and  judgment. 
Meantime  we  may  perhaps  be  permitted  to  ex- 
press doubt  whether  there  is  a  single  relief  proved 
by  inscription  or  other  circumstance  to  be  from 
a  tomb  in  which  worshipers  appear  in  the  act 
of  sacrifice  or  adoration.  Wherever  these  are 
seen  it  seems  reasonable,  in  the  absence  of  evi- 
dence to  the  contrary,  to  assume  that  the  monu- 
ment is  erected  in  honor  of  a  deity,  not  in  mem- 
ory of  a  man.  But  all  the  scenes  where  simple 
feasting  is  going  on,  where  servants  are  decant- 
ing wine,  and  wives  seated,  according  to  the 
Greek  custom,  near  the  couch  on  which  their 
feasting  husbands  recline,  may  be  presumed  to 
be  sepulchral  until  proved  to  be  otherwise. 

There  are  three  theories,  all  well  supported  by 
the  voice  of  learned  men,  as  to  the  meaning  of 
these  scenes  of  feasting  on  tombs.  According  to 
the  first  view,  what  is  represented  is  the  dead 
supping  in  Hades.  This  theory  was  mainly  based 
upon  the  confusion  above  pointed  out.  The  per- 
son reclining  on  the  couch  was  thought  to  be  fre- 
quently receiving  worship  and  sacrifice.  Some- 
times on  his  head  he  was  supposed  to  bear  the 
modius,  the  emblem  worn  by  Sarapis  in  his  char- 


270 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTELY.— SUPPLEMENT, 


acter  of  deity  of  the  lower  world.  Therefore  it 
was  assumed  that  the  dead  man  was  deified  and 
represented  as  receiving  high  honor  from  the 
living.  If,  however,  we  allow  as  sepulchral  only 
the  scenes  whence  worshipers  are  excluded, 
then  there  remains  nothing  godlike  or  manes-like 
in  the  banqueting  figure  ;  we  lose  all  reason  for 
supposing  the  scene  of  the  banquet  to  be  Hades. 
Moreover,  where  the  husband  reclines  there  sits 
the  wife ;  if  this  be  in  Hades,  how  is  it  that  the 
wife  was  usually  surviving,  in  fact  often  erected 
the  tomb  to  the  husband's  memory  ?  And,  in- 
deed, nothing  could  be  more  dissonant  with 
Greek  ideas  than  to  ascribe  a  glorified  existence 
after  death  to  mortals  indiscriminately;  at  the 
best  Hades  was  shadowy  and  cold,  and  a  banquet 
there  would  be  but  a  faint  and  feeble  echo  of 
earthly  banquets,  quite  untouched  by  any  high 
exaltation  or  any  worship  from  the  happier  liv- 
ing. 

The  second  theory  is  that  we  have  in  these 
scenes,  in  emblematic  form,  pictures  of  those 
feasts  at  the  tomb  which  the  Greeks  in  ancient, 
as  in  modern  days,  spread  from  time  to  time,  lest 
the  departed  should  suffer  hunger  in  the  next 
world.  That  the  dead  have  the  same  needs  as 
the  living  is  a  notion  widely  spread  among  bar- 
barians and  semi-civilized  peoples.  For  this  rea- 
son the  savage  buries  with  the  dead  chief  his 
horse,  perhaps  his  wife :  for  this  reason  many  of 
the  nations  of  antiquity  stored  bread  and  wine  in 
the  tombs  with  the  corpse.  The  early  Greeks 
not  only  buried  weapons  with  the  dead,  but  even 
whetstones  to  keep  the  edges  of  those  weapons 
bright ;  and  commonly  placed  in  the  mouth  of 
each  corpse  a  piece  of  money  to  defray  the  ex- 
penses of  his  journey  to  the  next  world.  Thus, 
too,  on  certain  days  the  survivors  held  a  feast  at 
the  tomb  of  a  departed  friend,  leaving  place  for 
the  dead  and  supposing  him  to  partake  in  the 
spirit. 

It  is  quite  possible  that  this  may  be  the  true 
account  of  the  matter.  Nevertheless,  I  am  more 
inclined  to  accept  the  third  of  the  suggested  ex- 
planations, namely,  that  what  we  see  before  us  on 
these  reliefs  is  neither  more  nor  less  than  a  daily 
scene  from  the  ordinary  life  of  the  dead  person. 
If  the  toilet  be  represented  on  the  tomb,  why 
should  not  the  family  meal,  that  most  charming 
and  most  characteristic  of  all  daily  scenes  ?  How 
could  husband  and  wife  be  shown  us  in  more 
close  and  amiable  proximity  than  when  feasting 
together,  and  feeling  the  same  thrill  of  pleasure 
from  the  enjoyment  of  earthly  good  ?  A  priori 
we  should  have  expected  eating  to  be  a  favorite 


subject  with  the  composers  of  sepulchral  groups, 
and  should  beware  of  seeking  a  far-off  explana- 
tion of  our  scenes  when  a  nearer  one  will  suffice. 
It  is  true  that  there  are,  even  in  the  scenes  un- 
doubtedly sepulchral,  some  adjuncts  which  seem 
scarcely  in  keeping  with  the  ordinary  dinner- 
table — the  snake,  for  instance,  in  the  foreground 
and  the  horse  in  the  background ;  but  of  these 
an  explanation  is  possible.  The  snake  was  com- 
monly domesticated  among  the  Greeks,  and  so 
may  appear  only  as  a  domestic  animal.  But  I 
prefer  the  explanation  which  is  ready  to  see  in  it 
an  allusion  to  the  future  death  of  the  banqueting 
master  of  the  house,  the  snake  being  in  many_ 
countries,  on  account  of  its  habit  of  living  in  the 
ground,  looked  upon  as  the  companion  and  rep- 
resentative of  the  dead.  In  the  same  way  the 
horse  may  only  convey  a  delicate  allusion  to  fu- 
ture departure  on  a  long  journey.  Such  slight 
allusions  would  seem  to  suit  Greek  taste  better 
than  more  direct  references.  More  direct  refer- 
ences, however,  do  sometimes  appear,  as  in  the 
relief  mentioned  above  as  No.  4,  where  Charon  in 
his  bark  appears  to  summon  the  feasters  from 
their  wine. 

There  are  still  other  ways  in  which,  on  the 
sepulchral  reliefs  which,  so  to  speak,  introduce 
us  into  the  midst  of  life,  a  faint  allusion  to  death, 
a  slight  flavor  of  mortality,  is  introduced.  We 
often  see  an  urn  placed  in  a  corner,  such  an  urn 
as  when  a  body  was  burned  received  its  ashes,  or 
such  as  was  set  up,  as  we  learn  from  Demos- 
thenes, over  those  who  died  unmarried.  Like 
the  skeleton  at  an  Egyptian  feast,  this  urn  would 
seem  meant  to  show  that  in  the  gayest  moment 
of  life  death  hovers  near,  waiting  to  strike.  The 
same  moral  is  conveyed  in  other  cases,  by  the  ap- 
pearance at  the  side  or  in  the  foreground  of  a 
snake  entwined  round  a  tree ;  the  snake  being,  as 
I  have  already  remarked,  the  companion  of  the 
dead,  sometimes  even  the  embodiment  of  the 
dead  man's  spirit  or  ghost.  And  in  scenes  where 
there  is  no  allusion  to  death  so  concrete  or  con- 
ventional as  the  above,  there  is  over  all  an  aspect 
of  grief  and  dissatisfaction.  Children  or  slaves 
are  weeping  without  apparent  cause,  or  women 
stand  with  an  arm  folded  across  their  breasts, 
their  head  resting  on  a  hand,  in  an  attitude  con- 
secrated by  the  Greeks  to  sorrow,  not  as  among 
us  to  mere  reflection. 

All  the  scenes  of  which  I  have  spoken  have 
this  in  common,  that  they  represent  to  us  the  de- 
ceased, with  or  without  the  living.  But  some- 
times, though  rarely,  the  Greeks  substituted  for 
these  groups  a  merely  symbolical  figure  of  an 


THE  GREEK  MIND  IN  PRESENCE  OF  DEATH. 


271 


animal  or  some  fabulous  creature.  On  a  tomb  at 
Athens,  erected  in  memory  of  one  Leon,  stands  a 
marble  Hon,  evidently  in  punning  allusion  to  his 
name.  Over  the  tomb  of  the  celebrated  courte- 
san Lai's,  in  the  suburbs  of  Corinth,  was  a  group 
representing  a  lioness  standing  over  a  prostrate 
ram — a  symbol  the  reference  of  which  to  the  ex- 
traordinary career  and  splendid  success  of  the 
woman  is  evidently  appropriate.  Stone  snakes 
often  guarded  a  tomb,  in  imitation  of  the  living 
snakes  sure  soon  to  glide  about  it,  on  the  same 
principle  on  which,  when  the  Athenians  sought  a 
(loral  decoration  for  a  stele,  they  selected  the 
acanthus,  which  is  notorious  for  freely  growing 
among  stones.  But  it  was  especially  the  forms 
of  female  monsters — sirens,  sphinxes,  and  har- 
pies— which  were  selected  for  the  adornment  of 
tombs.  All  these  were  spoken  of  in  legend  as 
fatal  evils,  carrying  off  to  death  young  men  and 
maidens.  The  sirens  especially  slew  the  young 
after  attracting  them  by  the  sweetness  of  their 
singing,  and  so  well  became  the  graves  of  those 
who  were  lost  in  the  mid  ardor  of  their  pursuit 
of  the  delights  of  youth. 

Battles  of  heroes  and  Amazons,  Dionysiac 
revels,  and  mythological  scenes,  occurring  on 
sarcophagi,  belong  invariably  to  Roman  times, 
and  represent  phases  of  thought  quite  other  than 
those  suggested  by  the  reliefs  inspired  by  genuine 
Greek  feeling.  It  is  extremely  seldom  that  any 
mythological  subject  is  found  on  Greek  tombs  at 
all.  Indeed,  I  am  aware  but  of  two  instances. 
Charon  is  allowed,  by  the  general  consent  of 
archaeologists,  to  be  represented  in  a  scene  above 
described.  And  in  another  very  interesting  rep- 
resentation— which,  however,  is  not  Athenian — 
Hermes  appears  as  the  conductor  of  souls,  lead- 
ing gently  by  the  hand  a  young  girl  to  the  future 
world.  So  small  is  the  part  played  by  the  gods 
in  sepulchral  scenes.  Not  a  trace  appears  of 
scenes  of  future  happiness  or  misery,  no  allusion 
to  that  future  judgment  of  souls  which  is  so 
prominently  brought  before  us  in  Egyptian  pict- 
ures. Only,  in  times  when  the  Egyptian  worship 
of  Sarapis  and  Isis  had  penetrated  to  Athens,  and 
served  there  to  impart  purer  and  higher  views  as 
to  future  punishment  and  reward,  we  do  some- 
times find  the  priestess  of  Isis  going  before  the 
departed  with  all  pomp  of  worship  to  guide  them 
through  the  perils  of  the  last  journey,  and  lead 
them  to  a  safe  resting-place.  But  these  scenes 
only  illustrate  the  triumph  of  the  religious  no- 
tions of  the  Egyptians  over  the  susceptible 
Greeks  at  a  time  when  their  national  city  life  was 
extinct,  and  they  were  driven  by  the  fewer  attrac- 


tions of  the  present  life  to  think  more  about  the 
possibilities  of  the  next. 

It  seems  to  be  desirable,  in  view  of  the  un- 
founded assertions  so  frequently  set  forth  on  the 
subject  of  Greek  art,  to  gather  what  light  we  can 
on  that  most  interesting  subject  from  the  facts 
above  summarized.  In  doing  so,  however,  it  is 
above  all  things  necessary  to  bear  in  mind  the 
conditions  under  which  sepulchral  monuments 
were  designed  and  executed.  And,  first,  it  is 
quite  clear  that,  where  several  persons  who  died 
at  intervals  are  buried  in  one  tomb,  they  cannot 
all  have  been  adequately  represented  in  the  re- 
lief which  would  naturally  be  the  production  of 
a  single  time.  A  citizen  dies,  and  a  relief  is 
erected  over  his  body,  perhaps  representing  him 
as  taking  a  farewell  of  his  wife,  while  his  infant 
son  stands  by.  This  same  son,  maybe,  dies  in 
middle  life  and  is  buried  with  his  father,  and  an 
epigram  is  inserted  on  the  monument  stating  the 
fact.  It  may  thus  happen  that  a  man  of  thirty 
or  forty  may  appear  in  the  sepulchral  relief  as 
an  infant.  Such  slight  inconsistencies  are  insep- 
arable from  the  nature  of  these  monuments.  But 
it  must  be  confessed  that  sometimes  between  in- 
scription and  sculpture  there  are  contradictions 
which  cannot  be  thus  easily  explained,  and  which 
raise  serious  reflections.  The  fact  is  that  the 
conviction  is  forced  upon  us,  by  the  comparison 
of  a  multitude  of  instances,  that  very  often  the 
relief  placed  on  a  tomb  did  not  possess  much  ref- 
erence to  its  contents.  There  can  be  no  doubt 
that  the  more  ordinary  sorts  of  representations 
were  made  in  numbers  by  the  sculptors,  and,  as 
we  should  phrase  it,  kept  in  stock  by  them  for 
customers  to  choose  from.  And,  if  the  would-be 
buyer  found  a  group  of  which  the  general  out- 
line and  arrangement  suited  him,  he  would  scarce- 
ly decline  to  purchase  it  because  it  was  not  en- 
tirely appropriate,  because  it  made  his  wife  look 
twenty  years  too  young,  or  even  turned  the  boys 
of  his  family  into  girls.  Like  a  true  Athenian  he 
would  probably  be  more  disposed  to  make  use  of 
such  a  discrepancy  as  an  argument  to  induce  the 
seller  to  lower  his  price  than  to  incur  the  expense 
of  having  a  new  slab  executed  on  purpose  for 
him.  Those  who  are  let  into  this  secret  will  not 
be  surprised  if  they  occasionally  find  a  subject 
repeated  exactly  on  two  tombs  without  variation, 
nor  if  a  sculptured  group  is  little  in  harmony 
with  the  inscribed  list  of  the  dead. 

Even  in  those  cases  in  which  a  relief  was 
executed  by  special  order  on  the  death  of  a  per- 
son, a  relief  adapted  in  plan  and  intended  in  de- 
tails to  represent  the  deceased  happy  amid  his 


272 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


family  or  pursuing  his  favorite  avocation,  we 
must  not  expect  too  much.  Even  here,  the 
sculptor  confines  himself  to  a  generalized  or 
idealized  representation.  Probably  he  knew 
naught  of  the  dead,  almost  certainly  he  took  no 
pains  to  exactly  imitate  the  living.  Hence  the 
same  conventional  types,  the  bearded  man,  the 
veiled  woman,  the  girl,  the  infant,  repeat  them- 
selves almost  without  variety,  through  all  the 
Macedonian  period  of  Athenian  graves.  The 
men  who  appear  on  sepulchral  reliefs  of  the 
same  period  are  as  much  alike  one  to  another  as 
the  horsemen  of  the  frieze  of  the  Parthenon,  or 
the  fighting  heroes  of  the  iEgina  pediments.  In 
Roman  times  this  is  far  less  the  case ;  but,  among 
the  Greeks  of  the  fourth  and  third  centuries  b.  c, 
the  artist  was  careful  only  of  the  type,  and  care- 
less of  the  individual  peculiarities ;  so  far  at 
least  as  existing  remains  enable  us  to  judge. 

Nevertheless,  it  is  quite  an  error  to  suppose 
that  the  Athenians  were  all  cast  in  one  mould. 
They  differed  one  from  another  quite  as  much  as 
an  equal  number  of  Englishmen  taken  at  random. 
And  of  this  the  proof  is  conclusive.  For  there 
still  exists  at  Athens  a  remarkable  series  of  por- 
traits of  those  citizens  who  in  succeeding  years 
undertook  the  office  of  gymnasiarch.  This  series 
stretches  over  a  long  period,  and  while  it  is  true 
that  that  period  belongs  to  the  decline,  not  the 
flourishing  greatness  of  the  city,  yet  there  is  no 
reason  to  believe  that  at  the  time  Athenian  blood 
had  been  very  much  mixed  with  that  of  other 
races,  or  the  type  deteriorated.  Taking  these 
statues,  then,  as  portraits  of  some  of  the  most 
prominent  Athenian  citizens,  and  probably  some 
of  the  purest-blooded,  what  do  we  find  ?  One 
head  is  almost  African  in  type,  with  thick  lips 
and  woolly  hair  ;  one  might  be  taken  for  that  of 
an  English  judge ;  one  for  that  of  an  Italian 
street-musician.  Looking  on  these  faces,  one  can 
scarcely  believe  that  the  artists  did  not  grossly 
exaggerate  the  salient  characteristics  of  the  faces 
of  those  they  had  to  portray.  And  even  if  it 
were  so,  we  may  safely  affirm  that  an  Athenian 
crowd  of  the  period  must  have  contained  as  many 
widely-divergent  types  as  an  English  or  French 
one.  So  of  the  Greek  princes  who  reigned  dur- 
ing the  third  and  second  centuries  before  the 
Christian  era  over  the  disjecta  membra,  the  frag- 
ments of  the  empire  of  the  Great  Alexander,  we 
possess  quite  a  portrait-gallery  in  their  numerous 
and  excellent  coins.  Here,  too,  we  find  the  widest 
variety  of  type,  many  coins  presenting  to  us  heads 
which  no  one,  whose  knowledge  of  Greek  art  was 
superficial,  would   suppose   to  be  Greek  at  all. 


But  although  individual  Greeks  differed  thus 
widely  one  from  another,  and  although,  in  the 
Alexandrine  times  of  Greek  art,  artists  quite  un- 
derstood the  art  of  taking  portraits,  yet  through- 
out the  forms  and  features  of  those  sculptured  on 
tombs  are  quite  conventionally  rendered.  And 
in  nothing  does  one  see  more  clearly  than  here 
the  blending  of  Attic  good  taste  with  Attic  super- 
ficiality, and  dislike  of  too  deep  or  too  persistent 
emotion.  For  a  tombstone  calling  up  in  a  gen- 
eral way  past  life  and  past  happiness  would  be 
a  constant  source  of  emotion,  gentle  and  melan- 
choly, but  not  too  intense  in  degree ;  while  the 
sight  of  the  very  features  of  dead  father,  mother, 
wife,  or  child,  would  be  too  startling,  and  cause 
far  more  pain  than  pleasure.  We  moderns  are 
less  afraid  of  pain,  and,  when  we  place  on  tombs 
any  representation  of  the  dead  at  all,  make  it  as 
exact  a  likeness  as  we  can.  But  most,  even  now, 
prefer  a  mere  slab  in  the  graveyard,  and  a  por- 
trait in  the  family-room  or  the  bedroom. 

The  sources  of  these  generalized  types  of 
man,  youth,  woman,  and  child,  are  of  course  to 
be  found  in  the  common  feeling  of  the  Hellenic 
nation,  working  through  the  brains  and  hands  of 
the  ablest  statuaries.  As  in  the  accepted  type 
of  Zeus,  the  Greek  sculptures  embodied  all  that 
seemed  to  them  most  venerable,  wise,  and  majes- 
tic ;  as  in  the  accepted  type  of  Apollo,  they  com- 
bined youthful  beauty  with  supreme  dignity  ;  so 
in  the  accepted  type  of  matron  they  strove  to 
embody  all  the  matronly  virtues,  in  the  young 
girl  all  childish  grace  and  promise,  in  the  beard- 
ed man  the  dignity  and  self-control  of  a  worthy 
citizen,  such  as  Aristides  or  Epaminondas.  The 
type  was  fixed  in  the  case  of  human  beings,  as  in 
the  case  of  the  Hellenic  deities,  by  the  sculptures 
of  the  generation  which  succeeded  those  who  had 
fought  at  Marathon  and  Plataese,  and  altered  but 
little  after  that  until  the  collapse  of  Hellenic  in- 
dependence and  Hellenic  art. 

Goethe  has  expressed,  in  a  passage  which 
cannot  be  too  often  quoted,  the  ultimate  truth 
about  Greek  sepulchral  reliefs  : 

"  The  wind  which  blows  from  the  tombs  of  the 
ancients  comes  with  gentle  breath  as  over  a  mound 
of  roses.  The  reliefs  are  touching  and  pathetic, 
and  always  represent  life.  There  stand  father  and 
mother,  their  son  between  them,  gazing  at  one  an- 
other with  unspeakable  truth  to  nature.  Here  a 
pair  clasp  hands.  Here  a  father  seems  to  rest  on 
his  couch  and  wait  to  be  entertained  by  his  fami- 
ly. To  me,  the  presence  of  these  scenes  was  very 
touching.  Their  art  is  of  a  late  period,  yet  are 
they  simple,  natural,  and  of  universal  interest. 


THE  GREEK  MIND  IN  PRESENCE  OF  DEATH. 


273 


Here  there  is  no  knight  in  harness  on  his  knees 
awaiting  a  joyful  resurrection.  The  artist  has 
with  more  or  less  skill  presented  to  us  only  the 
persons  themselves,  and  so  made  their  existence 
lasting  and  perpetual.  They  fold  not  their  hands, 
gaze  not  into  heaven  ;  they  are  on  earth,  what  they 
were,  and  what  they  are.  They  stand  side  by  side, 
take  interest  in  one  another,  love  one  another; 
and  that  is  what  is  in  the  stone,  even  though  some- 
what unskillfully,  yet  most  pleasingly  depicted."  » 

It  is  a  proof  at  once  of  the  genius  of  Goethe, 
and  of  his  keen  sympathy  with  all  that  is  truly 
Greek,  that,  at  a  time  before  Greek  art  was  half 
understood,  he  was  able  to  judge  from  the  few 
inferior  specimens  known  to  him  of  the  general 
character  of  these  sepulchral  reliefs.  That  on 
which  he  lays  his  master-hand  is  certainly  their 
most  essential  character.  Their  whole  aspect  is 
turned,  so  to  speak,  from  the  future  to  the  past, 
and  from  heaven  to  earth.  We  whose  ancestors 
have  been,  for  some  twelve  hundred  years,  taught 
constantly  that  death  is  but  the  entrance  to  wider 
life,  that  the  world  is  a  place  of  probation  and 
preparation  for  eternity,  can  scarcely  place  our- 
selves in  thought  in  the  position  of  men  who 
seemed  to  have  found  the  world  charming  and 
delightful,  and  to  have  been  well  satisfied  with  it, 
preferring  to  let  their  minds  dwell  on  the  enjoy- 
ments of  the  past,  rather  than  on  a  future  which 
at  best  was  a  cold  and  gloomy  echo  of  the  pres- 
ent world.  It  is  not  that  they  disbelieved  in  the 
unseen  world,  or  thought  that  the  soul  died  with 
the  body  ;  such  skepticism  was  perhaps  rarer  in 
antiquity  than  in  modern  times,  and  confined  in 
antiquity  as  in  modern  times  to  a  few  of  the 
highly-educated.  But  that  inevitable  future  oc- 
cupied comparatively  very  little  of  their  time  and 
thought ;  it  was  a  cold  shadow  to  be  kept  out 
of  sunny  life  as  much  as  might  be.  And  when 
it  was  thought  of,  it  was  thought  of  without 
very  much  either  of  hope  or  fear.  Terrible  pun- 
ishments in  it  were  reserved  for  terrible  crimi- 
nals, supreme  pleasures  for  the  supremely  good, 
but  for  ordinary  mortals  an  ordinary  fate  was 
reserved,  a  sort  of  ghost  or  echo  of  their  mor- 
tal life,  made  up,  like  that,  of  pleasure  and  pain, 
but  with  both  pleasure  and  pain  diluted  and 
made  ghostly.  From  discontent  with  life  and 
repining  at  the  lot  assigned  by  Fate,  the  Greeks 
would  seem  to  have  been  singularly  free,  and 
no  nation  ever  thought  life  better  worth  living. 
I  shall  have  more  to  say  on  this  subject  further  on. 

It  remains  to  speak  of  the  inscriptions  which 

1  "Italieniscbe  Reise,"  a  propos  of  the  museum 
et  Verona. 

54 


accompany,  or  even  take  the  place  of,  the  re- 
liefs, and  which  have  sometimes  a  considerable 
interest  for  us.  It  will  be  convenient  to  quote 
these  inscriptions  in  English ;  those  who  wish  to 
compare  the  original  Greek  can  easily  do  so  in 
the  complete  work  of  Kumanudes.1 

There  are  in  the  British  Museum  two  sepul- 
chral inscriptions  on  public  tombs 2  of  consider- 
able interest.  Of  these  one  contains  lists  of  all 
the  citizens  who  fell  in  a  single  year  at  the  va- 
rious places  where  Athens  was  carrying  on  war. 
We  learn  from  Thucydides  and  Pausanias  that 
it  was  the  Athenian  custom  thus  annually  to 
honor  with  a  public  monument  all  those  who  had 
in  the  previous  year  fallen  in  the  battles  of  their 
country — a  custom  which  must  have  nerved  for 
death  many  a  soldier's  heart,  as  he  reflected  that 
he  was  sure,  if  he  fell,  of  a  sort  of  immortality 
before  the  eyes  and  in  the  memory  of  his  coun- 
trymen. The  other  inscription,  which  was  writ- 
ten under  a  relief  representing  three  warriors, 
commemorates  those  Athenians  who  fell  before 
Potidaea,  in  the  year  b.  c.  432.     It  runs  thus: 

"  Thus  to  the  dead  is  deathless  honor  paid, 
Who,  fired  with  valor  hot,  in  arms  arrayed, 
Felt  each  our  fathers1  valor  in  him  glow, 
And  won  long  fame  and  victory  o'er  the  foe. 

"  Heaven  claimed  their  spirits,  earth  their  bodies 

took, 
The   foemen's    gate   their   conquering    onslaught 

shook ; 
Of  those  they  routed  some  in  earth  abide, 
Some  in  strong  walls  their  lives  in  terror  hide. 

"  Erechtheus'  city  mourns  her  children's  fall, 
Who  fought  and  died  by  Potideea's  wall, 
True  sons  of  Athens,  for  a  virtuous  name 
They  changed  their  lives,  and  swelled  their  conn- 
try's  fame." 

The  smallness  of  the  number  of  public  epi- 
taphs at  Athens  is  well  compensated  by  the  abun- 
dance of  private  ones,  of  which  upward  of  4,000 
have  been  already  published,  while  every  year 
brings  a  multitude  of  fresh  ones  to  light.  I  will 
attempt  to  class  these,  as  I  did  the  reliefs.  The 
commonest  inscriptions  by  far  are  those  which 
simply  record,  in  the  case  of  a  man,  his  name, 
his  father's  name,  and  his  deme  or  clan  ;  in  the 
case  of  a  woman,  her  name,  that  of  her  father, 
husband,  or  husband  and  father,  with  their  re- 
spective demes.  Of  the  numerous  epitaphs  which 
remain,  perhaps  nine  out  of  ten  are  of  this  sim- 
ple character.     Probably  in  most  cases  they  are 

1  'Attiktjj  'Eiriypa<f>al  'Ettitv/xjSioi.     Athens,  1871. 

4  "  Corpus  of  British  Musenm  Inscriptions,"  i.,  pp. 
102-107.  The  reading  of  the  first  few  lines  is  very 
doubtful.    I  follow  Messrs.  Newton  and  Hicks. 


274 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


of  the  poor,  but  not  in  all,  for  sometimes  they 
accompany  reliefs  of  an  elaborate  character,  or 
are  placed  on  tombs  of  great  size  and  preten- 
sions. Than  such  an  epitaph  nothing  could  pos- 
sibly offend  less  against  good  taste,  and  it  was 
probably  thought  somewhat  sentimental  and 
gushing  at  Athens  to  indulge  in  a  longer  met- 
rical sepulchral  inscription.  When  longer  in- 
scriptions occur,  they  seldom  bear  much  sign 
either  of  taste  or  education.  Their  grammar  is 
often  doubtful,  and,  when  in  metre,  they  halt 
terribly.  They  clearly  belong  to  the  same  class 
of  compositions  as  the  lame  verses  which  abound 
in  English  graveyards.  It  would  seem  that  the 
swans  who  sang  thus  only  found  their  voice  at 
death,  but  the  death  of  friends,  not  their  own. 
The  chance  of  such  publicity  for  one's  verses  as 
may  be  gained  by  placing  them  on  a  tomb 
proved  too  attractive  for  tbem  to  forego. 

In  the  case  of  early  reliefs  we  find  usually 
not  only  the  name  of  the  dead,  but  also  of  the 
artist  who  did  the  work.  In  later  times  this  cus- 
tom dropped,  and  we  have  scarcely  in  any  case  a 
clew  to  the  name  of  the  sculptor.  This  fact  is 
the  more  curious,  inasmuch  as  in  other  remains 
of  antiquity,  vases,  gems,  and  coins,  to  insert  the 
artist's  name  becomes  more  usual  as  we  approach 
the  best  time  of  art.  Not  many  epitaphs  of  an 
earlier  period  than  the  year  b.  c.  400  are  pre- 
served, nor  are  these,  except  in  the  case  of  pub- 
lic tombs,  of  special  importance.  One  is  inter- 
esting to  students  of  epigraphy,  as  it  bears  an 
exact  date,  the  year  b.  c.  430,  when  the  plague, 
following  in  the  wake  of  the  Peloponnesian  army, 
invaded  Attica  :  "lam  the  tomb  of  Myrine,  who 
died  of  the  plague."  Another,  of  an  ordinary 
Attic  type,  has  a  grace  and  charm  which  is  sel- 
dom absent  from  the  productions  of  Attica 
while  yet  unsubdued : 

"  Let  the  reader  pass  on,  be  he  citizen  or 
stranger  from  afar,  having  pitied  for  a  moment  a 
brave  man  who  fell  in  battle,  and  lost  his  young 
prime.  Having  shed  a  tear  here,  go  by,  and  good 
go  with  you." 

To  the  period  between  the  falling  of  Athens 
into  Lysander's  hands  and  the  times  of  the  Roman 
Antonines  belongs  the  vast  body  of  the  epitaphs. 
For  a  more  exact  chronological  classification  the 
materials  at  present  scarcely  exist,  it  being  espe- 
cially hard  to  determine  the  period  of  those  in- 
scriptions which  are  not  accompanied  by  reliefs. 
It  is  best,  therefore,  to  divide  them  into  classes, 
not  by  a  determination  of  date,  but  rather  by  a 
consideration  of  drift  and  content,  and  to  con- 


sider all  as  belonging  to  one  long  period,  a  period 
when  the  Athenian  Empire  had  indeed  passed 
away,  and  external  conquests  were  not  to  be 
hoped  for ;  but  when  Athens  still  ruled  in  the 
realm  of  mind,  and  attracted  to  herself  the  flower 
of  the  culture  of  Hellas  and  the  world.  I  have 
already  said  that  the  commonest  sort  of  inscrip- 
tions comprised  only  the  name  of  the  dead,  his 
father's  name,  and  that  of  his  deme.  But  not  un- 
frequently  a  few  words  of  comment  were  added. 
The  person  who  paid  for  the  erection  of  the  tomb 
liked  to  see  some  record  of  his  liberality.  Thus, 
a  stone  marks  the  spot  where  "  His  sons  buried 
Julius  Zosimianus,  the  head  of  the  School  of 
Zeno,"  that  is,  the  head  of  the  Stoics  of  Athens. 
Another  records  that  "  Polystratus  set  up  this 
portrait  in  memory  of  his  brother."  We  fre- 
quently find  the  trade  or  calling  of  the  deceased 
mentioned  in  his  epitaph.  One  Herakleides  is 
stated  to  have  been  the  greatest  master  of  the 
catapult,  a  warlike  machine,  which  seems  to  have 
required  some  skill  in  the  handling.  Many  other 
trades  are  mentioned  in  connection  with  the  dead. 
One  was  a  bathing-man,  another  a  midwife  and 
physician,  another  a  priestess  of  the  all-producing 
Mother,  probably  Kybele,  another  second  in  rank 
in  joyous  comedy,  another  a  bull-fighter.  On  one 
tomb  the  record  ends  quaintly,  after  mentioning 
that  the  grave  contained  one  or  two  named  per- 
sons, with  the  phrase,  "  also  the  others  who  are 
represented  in  the  relief,"  where  the  stone-mason 
or  his  instructor  seems  to  have  grown  tired  of  a 
bare  list  of  names,  and  stopped  short  in  the  midst. 

All  the  longer  inscriptions  which  are  found 
on  Attic  gravestones,  if  we  except  only  the  class 
of  minatory  or  deprecatory  epitaphs,  which  I  re- 
serve to  the  last,  are  in  metre.  To  this  rule  there 
are  few,  if  any,  exceptions,  so  that  the  ancient 
epitaph-writer  could,  at  least,  unlike  the  modern, 
claim  the  dura  necessitas  as  a  reason  for  attempt- 
ing a  metrical  composition.  I  shall,  however, 
render  into  English  prose  rather  than  verse  the 
specimens  of  these  selected  for  purposes  of  illus- 
tration, as  it  would  convey  quite  a  false  impres- 
sion if  I  were  to  disguise  their  oddities  and  crudi- 
ties under  the  smooth  mantle  of  the  English  he- 
roic verse. 

The  metrical  epitaphs  are  of  four  kinds. 
Those  of  the  first  kind  are  in  the  form  of  a  dia- 
logue between  the  dead  and  the  surviving  friend, 
or  in  some  cases  of  a  mere  direct  address  to  the 
dead.  The  simplest  form  which  such  an  address 
can  take  is  the  XPV^  #aZpe—"  Farewell,  lost 
friend  " — which  is  so  usual  on  tombs  of  a  certain 
period,  but  which  does  not,  apparently,  appear  op 


THE  GREEK  MIND  IN  PRESENCE  OF  DEATH. 


275 


any  which  belongs  certainly  to  an  Athenian.  Of 
this  simple  and  touching  phrase  we  find  a  num. 
ber  of  metrical  amplifications  : 

"  Farewell,  tomb  of  Melite ;  the  best  of  women 
lies  here,  who  loved  her  loving  husband,  Onesi- 
mus ;  thou  wert  most  excellent,  wherefore  he  longs 
for  thee  after  thy  death,  for  thou  wert  the  best  of 
wives.  Farewell,  thou  too,  dearest  husband,  only 
love  my  children." 

But  an  inscription  of  this  kind  is  necessarily 
of  a  late  period,  and  but  little  in  accord  with  the 
canon  of  Greek  taste.  No  doubt,  when  it  was 
set  up,  it  was  at  once  condemned  as  vulgar  by 
people  of  culture. 

Far  more  usual  and  less  extravagant  is  the 
following,  which  details  a  conversation,  not  with 
the  dead,  but  with  his  tomb :  "  Whose  tomb  are 
we  to  call  thee  ?  That  of  famous  Nepos.  And 
who  of  the  children  of  Cecrops  begat  him  ?  say. 
He  was  not  of  the  land  of  Cecrops,  but  from 
Thrace."  Another  epitaph,  after  proceeding  in 
verse,  suddenly  breaks  into  prose:  "And  if  you 
seek  my  name,  I  am  Theogeiton,  son  of  Thymo- 
chus  of  Thebes."  Of  course,  it  is  quite  natural 
that  the  tombstone  should  thus  speak  in  the  first 
person  in  the  name  and  on  behalf  of  the  deceased. 
In  some  of  our  commonest  English  epitaphs,  such 
as  "  Affliction  sore  long  time  I  bore,"  we  find  the 
same  peculiarity;  but  that  a  gravestone  should 
give  information  in  reply  to  cross-questioning  is 
less  usual.  » 

The  second  kind  of  metrical  inscriptions, 
which  is  by  far  the  most  numerous,  speaks  of  the 
past  life  and  history  of  the  deceased.  Thus,  over 
the  grave  of  a  soldier  we  find  : 

"  Of  thy  valor  stands  many  a  trophy  in  Greece 
and  in  the  souls  of  men ;  such  wert  thou,  Nicobo- 
lus,  when  thou  leftest  the  bright  light  of  the  sun 
and  passedst,  beloved  of  thy  friends,  to  the  dwell- 
ing of  Persephone." 

Other  triumphs,  besides  warlike  ones,  are  else- 
where recorded ;  on  the  tomb  of  one  Praxinus, 
the  doer,  we  read  the  punning  epitaph  : 

"  My  name  and  my  father's  this  stone  proclaims, 
and  my  country ;  but  by  my  worthy  deeds  I  at- 
tained such  a  name  as  few  may  obtain." 

We  are  not  aware  in  this  case  to  what  special 
kind  of  deeds  the  inscription  refers ;  often  it  is 
more  explicit,  as  in  the  following,  erected  over  a 
young  statuary : 

"  I  began  to  flourish  as  a  statuary  not  inferior 
to  Praxiteles,  and  came  to  twice  eight  years  of  age. 


My  name  was  Eutychides,1  but  that  name  fate 
mocked,  tearing  me  so  early  away  to  Hades." 

On  the  tomb  of  one  Plutarchus,  who  seems  to 
have  been  a  merchant,  we  find  a  brief  history  of 
his  life : 

"  This  is  the  tomb  of  the  discreet  Plutarchus, 
who,  desiring  fame  which  comes  of  many  toils, 
came  to  Ausonia.  There  he  endured  toils  on  toils 
far  from  his  country,  although  an  only  child  and 
dear  to  his  parents.  Yet  gained  he  not  his  desire, 
though  longing  much,  for  first  the  fate  of  unlovely 
death  reached  him." 

Sometimes  out  of  a  whole  life  one  event  or  cir- 
cumstance of  peculiar  interest  was  taken,  and 
commemorated  as  well  by  inscription  as  relief,  as 
in  the  case  of  that  Phoenician  stranger,  already 
mentioned,  who  narrowly  escaped  the  jaws  of  a 
lion.  The  inscription  on  his  tomb  describes  that 
escape,  and  explains  the  meaning  of  the  repre- 
sentation it  accompanies. 

The  virtues  of  the  dead  must  always  in  all 
countries  form  the  most  frequent  and  suitable 
subject  of  sepulchral  inscriptions.  Athens  is  no 
exception  to  the  rule.  We  find  on  the  grave  of 
a  young  man : 

"  Here  Euthycritus,  having  reached  the  goal  of 
every  virtue,  lies  entombed  in  his  native  soil,  dear 
to  father  and  mother,  and  loved  by  his  sisters  and 
all  his  companions,  in  the  prime  of  his  life." 

A  copper-smelter  from  Crete  has  the  simple  and 
pleasing  epitaph : 

"  This  memorial  to  Sosinus,  of  his  justice,  his 
prudence,  and  his  virtue,  his  sons  erected  on  his 
death." 

The  following  is  from  the  tomb  of  one  Sotius : 

"  Here  in  earth  lies  Sotius,  superior  to  all  in  the 
art  he  practised,  virtuous  of  soul,  and  dear  to  his 
fellow-citizens ;  for  ever  he  studied  to  please  all, 
and  his  heart  was  most  just  toward  his  friends." 

Such  are  a  few  of  the  panegyrics  bestowed  on 
men  after  their  death ;  those  bestowed  on  women 
are  fewer  in  number,  but  not  less  interesting.  A 
young  girl  is  commended  for  her  serious  and 
staid  disposition : 

"  She  who  lies  here  coveted  not,  while  alive, 
garments  or  gold,  but  desired  discretion  and  virtue. 
But  now,  Dionysia,  in  place  of  youth  and  bloom, 
the  Fates  have  awarded  thee  this  sepulchre." 

More  than  once  we  find  epitaphs  which  speak  of 
the  virtue  and  kindness  of  nurses,  evidently  set 
up  by  young  men  who  had  never  ceased  to  care 

1  Child  of  good  luck. 


276 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


for  and  respect  them.  The  ancients  evidently 
felt  for  the  wet-nurse  who  cherished  their  in- 
fancy, slave  as  she  might  be,  something  of  last- 
ing and  filial  affection : 

"  Here  is  laid  in  earth  the  best  of  nurses,  whose 
foster-child  still  misses  her.  I  loved  thee,  nurse, 
when  alive,  and  still  I  honor  thee  though  thou  art 
laid  in  the  ground,  and  shall  honor  as  long  as  I 
live." 

More  characteristic  of  the  Greek  disposition 
than  mere  praise  of  the  dead  are  those  praises  of 
the  good-fortune  of  the  departed,  which  sound 
almost  mocking  to  modern  ears,  and  yet  on  a 
little  reflection  do  not  displease.  Of  one,  Sym- 
machus,  of  Chios,  we  read  on  his  tomb  that 
through  life  his  joys  were  many  and  his  sorrows 
few,  that  he  reached  the  extreme  limit  of  old  age, 
and  lies  in  Athens,  the  city  dear  to  gods  and  men. 
On  the  tombs  of  women  it  is  often  stated  that 
they  were  in  comfortable  circumstances,  and  that 
they  lived  to  see  children's  children.  All  the 
happiness  of  past  life  seemed  to  the  Greeks  a 
gain,  and  even  when  it  was  over  was  to  be  re- 
garded, not  with  bitter  regret,  but  gentle  sympa- 
thy. In  one  inscription,  though  a  late  one,  we 
find  an  elaborate  description  of  the  beauty  of  the 
young  wife  buried  below — of  her  yellow  hair,  her 
bright  eyes,  her  snow-white  forehead,  the  ruddy 
lips  and  ivory  teeth  of  her  lovely  mouth.  These 
things  were  past,  it  is  true,  but  even  so  they  were 
something  better  to  look  back  upon  than  ugli- 
ness. 

Sometimes,  however,  through  the  general  level 
.  of  cheeriness  a  sadder  note  breaks  : 

"  My  name  is  Athena'is,  and  with  grief  I  go  to 
my  place  among  the  dead,  leaving  my  husband 
and  my  darling  children.  A  grudging  web  the 
Fates  spun  for  me." 

When  youthful  promise  is  early  cut  off  it  is 
scarcely  possible  that  it  should  be  spoken  of 
without  a  sound  of  sad  regret.  Even  the  state- 
ment of  the  fact  produces  this  impression  : 

"  If  fortune  had  continued  thy  life,  Macareus, 
and  brought  thee  to  manhood,  strong  wert  thou  in 
the  hope  that  thou  wouldst  become  the  guiding 
spirit  of  tragic  art  among  the  Hellenes.  But  thou 
diest  not  without  fame  for  discretion  and  virtue." 

Even  here  consolation  comes  in  to  modify 
regret,  so  true  to  the  happy  disposition  of  the 
Greeks  was  the  charming  saying  of  Spenser — 

"A  dram  of  sweeteis  worth  a  pound  of  sowret" 

As  in  sepulchral  reliefs,  so  in  epitaphs,  the 
Greek  mourner  usually  turns  his  thought  to  the 


past,  and  dwells  on  the  life  which  is  over  rather 
than  on  any  which  may  be  beginning.  Neverthe- 
less we  do  find,  here  and  there,  some  allusions  to 
the  state  of  the  departed  which  are  of  great  in- 
terest, and  which  furnish  us  with  evidence  on  a 
subject  still  obscure  and  much  discussed,  the  be- 
liefs of  the  ordinary  minds  among  the  Greeks  as 
to  the  future  life,  and  as  to  reward  and  punish- 
ment in  it.  The  small  space  which  these  allu 
sions  occupy,  compared  with  the  whole  body  of 
epitaphs,  shows  how  small  a  corner  of  the  Greek 
thought  was  taken  up  with  meditation  on  mat- 
ters outside  the  present  life.  But  the  materialism 
of  the  Greeks  was  rather  natural  and  practical 
than  speculative,  and  we  nowhere  find  any  posi- 
tive denial  of  future  existence.  In  one  or  two 
epitaphs  there  is  an  appearance  of  such  denial, 
but  its  meaning  must  not  be  pressed.  Thus,  in 
one  case,  we  find  the  phrase,  "  Rising  out  of  earth 
I  am  become  earth  again,"  and  in  another  epitaph, 
one  Nicomedes,  who  calls  himself  the  servant  of 
the  Muses,  says  that  he  is  "  clad  in  wakeless 
sleep."  Here  we  probably  only  have  popular 
phrases  used  in  a  vague  and  indefinite  sense,  and 
without  the  least  intention  of  theorizing  on  the 
nature  of  the  soul.  Commoner  still  are  even 
more  vague  phrases  as  to  the  destination  of  the 
soul,  which  is  said  to  fly  to  heaven,  to  air,  or  to 
ether.1  It  is  ether  which  is  said  in  the  metrical 
inscription  first  quoted  to  receive  the  souls  of  the 
slain  Athenian  warriors.     So  in  the  following: 

"  Here  Dialogus,  student  of  wisdom,  his  limbs 
purged  with  pure  fire,  is  gone  to  the  immortals. 
Here  lie  naked  the  bones  of  Dialogus  the  discreet, 
who  practised  virtue  and  wisdom ;  them  a  little 
dust  hides  sprinkled  over  them  ;  but  the  spirit 
from  his  limbs  the  broad  heaven  has  received." 

Dialogus  was  presumably  a  philosopher,  and 
had  learned  the  difference  between  soul  and 
body.  The  words  "  heaven  and  the  immortals  " 
have  to  him  a  somewhat  vague  meaning,  repre- 
senting rather  something  hoped  for  than  believed 
in  and  expected.  There  is  a  stronger  flavor  of 
philosophic  materialism  in  the  following :  "  Damp 
ether  holds  the  soul  and  mighty  intellect  of  Eu- 
rymachus,  but  his  body  is  in  this  tomb."  The 
word  aleijpy  ether,  is  certainly  used  by  Homer  to 
signify  the  abode  of  the  gods,  and  no  doubt  the 
poet  of  our  metrical  inscription  had  Homer  in  his 
mind,  but  here  the  word  "  damp"  (vyp6s)  seems 
to  point  to  some  materialist  notion  as  to  the 
nature  of  spirit  and  its  affinity  to  the  upper  air. 
A  more  popular  interpretation  must  be  accepted 

1  ovpavos,  a£0)jp. 


THE  GREEK  MIXD  IN  PRESENCE  OF  DEATH. 


277 


id  other  cases,  such  as  :  "  Earth  sent  thee  forth 
to  light,  Sibyrtius,  and  earth  holds  thy  remains, 
but  ether,  the  source  of  thy  soul,  has  received  it 
again." 

But  the  vulgar  notions  with  regard  to  the 
future  state  were  certainly  borrowed  from  Homer, 
sucked  in  by  the  many  with  their  mothers'  milk, 
or  at  least  imbibed  at  school,  where  Homer  occu- 
pied the  place  taken  by  the  Bible  in  our  church- 
schools.  The  Greeks  generally  were  inclined  to 
regard  Homer  as  infallible,  and  so,  when  they 
thought  of  the  future  state  at  all,  pictured  it  ac- 
cording to  his  teaching.  Hence  they  made  it  a 
shadowy  realm  under  the  goverment  of  Hades 
and  Persephone,  a  poor,  washed-out  copy  of  the 
brilliant  life  on  earth.  The  dead  go  to  the  cham- 
ber of  Persephone,  or,  as  it  is  sometimes  phrased, 
the  chamber  of  the  blessed.  "  The  bones  and 
the  flesh  of  our  sweet  son  lie  in  earth,  but  his 
soul  is  gone  to  the  chamber  of  the  holy."  It  is 
clear,  from  some  other  inscriptions,  that  in  that 
chamber  rewards  were  supposed  to  await  the 
good,  and  punishments  the  bad.  Thus  one  man 
writes  on  the  grave  of  his  nurse :  "  And  I  know 
that,  if  below  the  earth  there  be  rewards  for  the 
good,  for  thee,  nurse,  more  than  for  any,  is  honor 
waiting  in  the  abode  of  Persephone  and  Pluto." 
The  suggestive  if  is  again  repeated  elsewhere. 
"  If  there  is  with  Persephone  any  reward  for 
piety,  a  share  of  that  was  bestowed  on  thee  in 
death  by  Fate."  The  expression  in  both  in- 
stances seems  to  be  rather  of  a  wish  or  longing 
than  of  a  sure  and  certain  hope. 

Indeed,  this  wavering  tone  never  becomes  full 
and  confident  until  we  come  down  to  the  times 
of  Christian  inscriptions,  when  a  sudden  and 
marvelous  change  takes  place.  To  the  Christian 
the  place  of  interment  is  no  longer  a  tomb,  but 
a  sleeping-place.  When  he  speaks  of  ether  and 
heaven  as  receiving  the  soul,  the  words  have 
quite  another  ring.  Though  Christian  epitaphs 
at  Athens  be  somewhat  beyond  my  province,  I 
cannot  avoid  introducing  one  or  two,  if  merely  for 
the  sake  of  contrast.  The  following  charmingly 
combines  the  genial  backward  glance  of  the 
Greek  with  the  forward  glance  of  the  believer  : 

"  Look,  friend,  on  the  sacred  beauty  of  Askle- 
piodote,  of  her  immortal  soul  and  body,  for  to  both 
Nature  gave  one  undefiled  beauty,  and,  if  Fate 
seized  her,  it  vanquished  her  not;  in  her  death 
she  was  not  forsaken,  nor  did  she  abandon  her 
husband  though  she  left  him,  but  now  more  than 
ever  watches  him  out  of  heaven,  and  rejoices  in 
him  and  guards  him." 

Or  take  another : 


"  His  body  is  hidden  here  in  earth,  but  his  soul 
is  escaped  to  heaven  (aieijp)  and  returned  to  its 
source,  for  he  has  obtained  the  reward  of  the  best 
of  lives. 

Sometimes  one  catches  a  note  of  a  still  higher 
strain  :  "  There,  whence  pain  and  moans  are  ban- 
ished, take  thy  rest."  I  think  no  one  can  deny 
that  these  epitaphs  are  quite  equal  to  the  pagan 
ones  in  literary  taste  and  felicity  of  language, 
while  in  sentiment  tbey  mark  a  striking  advance. 
It  would  have  been  natural  to  expect  that  the 
religion  of  Isis,  which,  among  all  ancient  faiths, 
clung  most  closely  to  the  belief  in  a  future  life, 
and  which  owed  to  that  circumstance  its  great 
influence  among  the  later  Greeks,  would  have  left 
in  the  epitaphs  some  traces  of  a  surer  hope  and 
trust  in  what  was  beyond  the  grave.  But  such 
is  not  the  case,  and  a  still  more  remarkable  omis- 
sion is  to  be  noticed.  The  great  Eleusinian  mys- 
teries were  celebrated  annually,  within  a  few 
miles  of  Athens.  The  whole  population  must 
have  known  more  or  less  of  the  meaning  of  the 
ceremonies ;  and  there  were  probably  few  adult 
Athenians  who  had  not  been  initiated.  But  it 
has  always  been  supposed  that  the  resurrection 
of  the  dead  and  the  life  to  come  were  the  chief 
matters  on  which  light  was  thrown  during  the 
celebration.  It  has  been  thought  that  the  anal- 
ogy between  the  sowing  of  wheat  and  the  burying 
of  the  dead,  that  analogy  which  the  Apostle  Paul 
works  out  in  full  detail,  was  then  insisted  on. 
Cicero  speaks  of  the  mysteries  of  Eleusis  as  some 
of  the  noblest  productions  of  Attic  soil,  and  de- 
clares that  they  impart  not  only  directions  for 
leading  a  better  life,  but  also  a  better  hope  in 
death.  Polygnotus  painted  on  the  walls  of  the 
Lcsche  at  Delphi  the  punishments  suffered  in 
Hades  by  those  who  neglected  to  have  them- 
selves initiated  in  the  mysteries.  Yet  in  all  the 
Attic  epitaphs  which  have  come  down  to  us  we 
discern  not  a  trace  of  any  such  doctrine  as  we 
should  have  been  disposed,  from  such  indications, 
to  attribute  to  the  college  of  priests  who  con- 
ducted the  mysteries.  When  the  next  world  is 
at  all  spoken  of,  it  either  appears  as  the  Homeric 
realm  of  Hades  and  his  bride  Persephone,  or  else 
is  mentioned  in  the  vague  language  of  the  phi- 
losophers as  ether  and  heaven.  The  conclusion 
seems  inevitable.  We  are  strongly  warned  again? t 
attributing  too  much  influence  over  the  ordinary 
mind,  or  any  very  lofty  and  spiritual  teaching,  to 
the  mysteries.  The  wise  men,  like  Cicero  and 
Plutarch,  may  have  found  in  them  deep  meaning 
and  profound  consolation,  readinjr  into  them  the 
results  of  their  own  philosophy  and  faith  ;  just  as 


278 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


able  men  of  recent  times  have  read  into  them 
most  of  the  doctrines  of  Christianity.  But  to  the 
common  people  they  were  probably  a  string  of 
outward  observances  with  little  inner  meaning. 
Like  the  sacraments  of  Christianity,  to  which  in 
many  respects  they  were  parallel,  they  had  a 
strong  tendency  to  lose  all  life  and  become  mere 
form.  That  their  secret  was  so  well  preserved 
can  be  attributed  to  but  one  cause — that  their 
secret,  such  as  it  was,  was  not  of  a  kind  that 
could  be  communicated.  It  is  certain  that 
throughout  Greece,  in  antiquity,  the  future  life 
was  by  the  common  people  looked  upon  with  dis- 
taste, if  not  with  dread ;  and  that  they  had  no 
doctrine  tending  to  soften  its  repulsion. 

Moral  reflections  and  words  of  advice  form 
a  not  unfrequent  ending  to  Athenian  epitaphs. 
Sometimes  in  these  nothing  more  is  expressed 
than  a  kindly  wish  for  the  reader.  Thus  one 
stranger,  after  stating  that  he  was  shipwrecked, 
adds  in  genial  spirit,  "  May  every  sailor  safely 
reach  his  home  !  "  Another  wishes  for  all  way- 
farers who  read  the  stone  a  prosperous  journey. 
Sometimes  there  is  a  general  observation :  "  It  is 
rare  for  a  woman  to  be  at  once  noble  and  dis- 
creet ; "  or  a  quotation  from  a  poet,  as  in  the 
case  of  the  well-known  line  of  Menander,  "Those 
whom  the  gods  love  die  early."  Sometimes  the 
occasion  is  improved,  as  a  Scotch  minister  would 
say,  and  a  little  sermon  read  to  the  passer-by, 
who  is  advised  to  live  virtuously,  "  knowing  that 
the  abode  of  Pluto  beneath  is  full  of  wealth  and 
has  need  of  nothing " — virtues,  that  is  to  say, 
and  not  riches,  are  the  only  things  which  will 
avail  after  death. 

So  far  with  regard  to  metrical  inscriptions. 
The  long  inscriptions  which  are  not  metrical  are 
nearly  always  of  the  same  kind  as  the  well- 
known  epitaph  of  Shakespeare  —  curses  pro- 
nounced against  those  who  shall  in  future  time  at- 
tempt to  move  or  destroy  the  grave,  curses  of 
which  the  modern  explorer  makes  very  light, 
apparently  supposing  that  their  virtue  has  in  the 
course  of  centuries  departed.  But  in  ancient 
time  they  might  be  more  effectual.  They  are 
always  of  a  very  late  date ;  so  long  as  the  peo- 
ple of  Athens  had  a  common  feeling  and  a  com- 
mon pride  in  their  city,  there  was  small  fear  of 
the  violation  of  the  grave  of  a  citizen,  but  under 
the  Roman  emperors  the  Athenian  citizenship 
and  Greek  nationality  fell  to  pieces,  and  no  one 
felt  sure  of  the  future.  Herodes  Atticus,  the 
wealthiest  citizen  of  Athens  in  the  reign  of 
Hadrian,  who  built  the  Athenians  a  splendid 
marble  Odeum,  set  up  a  monument  to  his  wife 


Appia  Annia  Regilla,  "  the  light  of  the  house," 
which  he  thought  it  necessary  to  fence  by  a  very 
unpleasant  string  of  threats  : 

"  By  the  gods  and  heroes  I  charge  any  -who 
hold  this  place  not  to  move  aught  of  this :  and 
if  any  destroy  or  alter  these  statues  and  honors 
(Tipcs),  for  him  may  earth  refuse  to  bear  fruit,  and 
sea  become  unsailable,  and  may  he  and  his  race 
perish  miserably  ' " 

The  inscription  goes  on  to  heap  blessings  on 
those  who  keep  the  tomb  in  its  place  and  pay  it 
honor.  A  lady  who  bears  the  Eoman  name  of 
Antonia  hands  over,  in  her  epitaph,  her  tomb  to 
keep,  to  Pluto,  and  Demeter,  and  Persephone, 
and  all  the  nether  gods,  calling  down  a  curse  on 
all  who  violate  it.  In  another  epitaph  we  find  a 
formidable  list  of  diseases  which  are  likely  to 
seize  the  violator — palsy,  fever,  ague,  elephanti- 
asis, and  the  rest.  In  another  instance  the  di- 
mensions of  the  curse  are  curtailed,  and  it  is  put 
neatly  into  two  hexameter  verses :  "  Move  not 
the  stone  from  the  earth,  villain,  lest  after  thy 
death,  wretch,  dogs  mangle  thy  unburied  body  !" 

In  the  last-quoted  epitaph  it  is  evidently  the 
writer's  intention  to  threaten  a  punishment  ac- 
cording to  the  lex  lalionis.  To  move  a  tomb- 
stone was  an  offense  of  the  same  class,  though 
in  degree  of  course  slighter,  as  to  leave  the  body 
of  a  dead  man  unburied.  It  is  well  known  how 
keenly  every  Greek  dreaded  that  his  body  should 
after  his  death  be  deprived  of  burial-rites,  and 
how  bitterly  he  condemned  all  who  through  fear 
or  carelessness  abandoned  dead  friends  to  dogs 
and  vultures.  No  doubt  this  dread  was  connect- 
ed with  the  very  ancient  and  wide-spread  notion 
that  those  who  remained  unburied  could  not  rest 
in  the  grave,  were  repelled  from  the  gates  of  the 
world  of  spirits,  and  hovered  as  unhappy  ghosts 
in  the  vicinity  of  their  corpses.  As  the  first 
step  toward  exposing  a  dead  body  was  the  tear- 
ing down  of  the  stone  which  covered  it,  and  as 
the  stone  was,  moreover,  closely  associated  with 
the  dead,  some  of  the  mysterious  horror  which 
guarded  the  corpse  was  transferred  to  the  grave- 
stone above  it.  We  may  consider  ourselves 
happy  that  among  us  gravestones  are  protected 
not  by  curses  but  by  blessings,  by  cherished 
memories  and  associations ;  and  so,  perhaps,  it 
was  in  the  better  times  at  Athens,  only  when  the 
old  civilization  was  falling  into  corruption,  all 
gentler  ties  were  loosed,  and  every  man  fought 
for  himself  and  his,  with  any  weapons  which 
came  nearest. 

One  closes  the  "  Corpus  of  the  Sepulchral  In- 
scriptions "  with   a  feeling  of  surprise — surprise 


JOHX  STUART  MILL'S  PHILOSOPHY  TESTED. 


279 


that  a  people  so  gifted  as  the  Athenians  should 
be  so  helpless  and  tongue-tied  in  the  presence 
of  death.  The  reliefs  do  not  disappoint  a  rea- 
sonable expectation  ;  in  execution,  at  least,  they 
put  our  modern  cemeteries  to  shame,  if  the  range 
of  ideas  expressed  is  somewhat  narrow.  But 
the  inscriptions  are  at  a  far  greater  depth  below 
Greek  poetry  and  oratory  than  the  reliefs  are  be- 
low the  best  Greek  sculpture.  The  reason  may 
partly  be  that  the  reliefs  are  the  work  of  pro- 
fessionals, the  inscriptions  of  amateurs.  But 
there  are  two  other  reasons  of  a  more  satisfac- 
tory character.  The  first  of  these  I  have  already 
mentioned,  that  except  in  the  case  of  soldiers 
and  of  public  characters,  such  as  eminent  poets, 


it  was  considered  bad  taste  at  Athens  to  have 
an  epitaph  at  all;  those,  therefore,  which  we 
find  are  mostly  written  by  persons  of  the  less 
respectable  classes,  and  in  the  later  and  worse 
times  of  the  city.  But  the  deepest  reason,  at 
least  from  the  modern  point  of  view,  is  that  the 
Greek  mind  found  in  death  no  inspiring  power ; 
they  might  regard  its  inevitable  power  with  equa- 
nimity and  even  cheerfulness,  but  in  any  way  to 
rejoice  in  its  presence,  to  look  upon  it  with  hope 
and  warmth  of  heart,  did  not  consist  with  the 
point  of  view  of  their  religion.  Such  feelings 
at  such  a  time  are  inspired  only  by  one  or  two 
religions  of  the  world,  among  which  there  is  no 
place  for  naturalism. —  Contemporary  Review. 


JOHN  STITAKT  MILL'S  PHILOSOPHY  TESTED. 

Br  W.  STANLEY  JEVONS,  F.  E.  S. 


DURING  the  last  few  weeks  the  correspond- 
ence columns  of  the  Spectator  have  con- 
tained letters  on  the  subject  of  the  late  Mr.  Mill's 
opinions  about  the  immortality  of  the  soul.  The 
discussion  began  with  a  letter,  in  which  an  anony- 
mous writer,  G.  S.  B.,  asserted  that  Mill  spoke 
of  immortality  as  probably  an  illusion,  although 
morally  so  valuable  an  illusion  that  it  is  better 
to  retain  it.  He  went  on  to  say,  "  It  is  surely 
time  that  all  this  scientific  shuffling  and  intellect- 
ual dishonesty — for  it  is  nothing  else — should  be 
exposed  and  exploded." 

An  ardent  admirer  of  Mill  was  not  unnatural- 
ly stung  by  this  remark,  and  replied  in  a  letter, 
ably  and  warmly  vindicating  Mill's  truthfulness 
and  "  scrupulous  accurateness."  After  showing, 
as  he  thinks,  that  Mill  never  tried  to  uphold  any 
illusion,  he  thus  concludes  : 

"  It  is  very  difficult  to  misunderstand  Mr.  Mill, 
so  anxious  was  he  always  to  be  clear,  to  be  just, 
to  keep  back  nothing,  to  examine  both  sides,  to 
overstate  nothing,  and  to  understate  nothing,  so 
sensitively  honorable  was  his  mind,  so  transpar- 
ently honest  his  style.  But  these  are  commonplaces 
with  respect  to  him.  I  am  content  to  contrast 
the  scrupulous  accurateness  of  Mr.  Mill  with  what 
appears  of  that  quality  in  '  G.  S.  B.'  " 

In  the  Spectator  of  the  following  week  (Octo- 
ber 27th),  I  took  the  opportunity  to  express  my 
uissent  from  both  the  correspondents,  sayirg : 

"  I  do  not  like  the  expression  '  scientific  shuf- 
fling and  intellectual  dishonesty '  which  G.  S.  B. 
has  used,  for  fear  it  should  imply  that  Mill  know- 


ingly misled  his  readers.  It  is  impossible  to  doubt 
that  Mill's  mind  was  '  sensitively  honorable,' 
and,  whatever  may  be  his  errors  of  judgment, 
we  cannot  call  in  question  the  perfect  good  faith 
and  loftiness  of  his  intentions.  On  the  other 
hand,  it  is  equally  difficult  to  accept  what  Mr.  Mal- 
leson  says  as  to  the  '  scrupulous  accurateness '  of 
Mill's  '  Essays  on  Religion.'  He  was  scrupulous, 
but  the  term  •  accurateness,'  if  it  means  '  logical 
accurateness,'  cannot  be  applied  to  his  works  by 
any  one  who  has  subjected  them  to  minute  logical 
criticism." 

I  then  pointed  out  that,  in  pages  103  and  109  of 
his  "  Essays  on  Religion,"  Mill  gives  two  differ- 
ent definitions  or  descriptions  of  religion.  In  the 
first  he  says  that 

"  the  essence  of  religion  is  the  strong  and  earnest 
direction  of  the  emotions  and  desires  toward  an 
ideal  object,  recognized  as  of  the  highest  excel 
lence,  and  as  rightfully  paramount  over  all  selfish 
objects  of  desire." 

In  the  second  statement  he  says  : 

"  Religion,  as  distinguished  from  poetry,  is  the 
product  of  the  craving  to  know  whether  these 
imaginative  conceptions  have  realities  answering 
to  them  in  some  other  world  than  ours." 

A  week  afterward  Mr.  Malleson  made  an  ingen- 
ious attempt  to  explain  away  or  to  palliate  the 
obvious  discrepancy  by  reference  to  the  context. 
I  do  not  think  that  any  context  can  remove  the 
discrepancy ;  in  the  one  case  the  object  of  desire 
is  an  ideal  object ;  in  the  other  case  the  craving, 
which  I  presume  means  a  strong  desire,  is  toward 


280 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


realities  in  some  other  world  ;  and_the  difference 
between  ideal  and  real  is  too  wide  for  any  con- 
text to  bridge  over.  Besides,  I  will  ultimately 
give  reasons  for  holding  that  Mill's  text  cannot 
be  safely  interpreted  by  the  context,  because 
there  is  no  certainty  that  in  his  writings  the 
same  line  of  thought  is  steadily  maintained  for 
two  sentences  in  succession. 

Mill's  "  Essays  on  Religion  "  have  been  the 
source  of  perplexity  to  numberless  readers.  His 
greatest  admirers  have  been  compelled  to  admit 
that  in  these  essays  even  Mill  seems  now  and 
then  to  play  with  a  word,  or  unconsciously  to 
mix  up  two  views  of  the  same  subject.  It  has 
been  urged,  indeed,  by  many  apologists,  including 
Miss  Helen  Taylor,  their  editor,  that  Mill  wrote 
these  essays  at  wide  intervals  of  time,  and  was 
deprived,  by  death,  of  the  opportunity  of  giving 
them  his  usual  careful  revision.  This  absence  of 
revision,  however,  applies  mainly  to  the  third 
essay,  while  the  discrepant  definitions  of  religion 
were  quoted  from  the  second  essay.  Moreover, 
lapse  of  time  will  not  account  for  inconsistency 
occurring  between  pages  103  and  109  of  the 
same  essay.  The  fact  simply  is,  that  these  es- 
says, owing  to  the  exciting  nature  of  their  sub- 
jects, have  received  a  far  more  searching  and 
hostile  criticism  than  any  of  his  other  writings. 
Thus  inherent  defects  in  his  intellectual  charac- 
ter, which  it  was  a  matter  of  great  difficulty  to 
expose  in  so  large  a  work  as  the  "  System  of 
Logic,"  were  readily  detected  in  these  brief,  can- 
did, but  most  ill-judged  essays. 

But,  for  my  part,  I  will  no  longer  consent  to 
live  silently  under  the  incubus  of  bad  logic  and 
bad  philosophy,  which  Mill's  works  have  laid 
upon  us.  On  almost  every  subject  of  social  im- 
portance— religion,  morals,  political  philosophy, 
political  economy,  metaphysics,  logic — he  has  ex- 
pressed unhesitating  opinions,  and  his  sayings  are 
quoted  by  his  admirers  as  if  they  were  the  oracles 
of  a  perfectly  wise  and  logical  mind.  Nobody 
questions,  or  at  least  ought  to  question,  the  force 
of  Mill's  style,  the  persuasive  power  of  his  words, 
the  candor  of  his  discussions,  and  the  perfect 
goodness  of  his  motives.  If  to  all  his  other  great 
qualities  had  been  happily  added  logical  accurate- 
ness,  his  writings  would  indeed  have  been  a  source 
of  light  for  generations  to  come.  But  in  one  way 
or  another  Mill's  intellect  was  wrecked.  The 
cause  of  injury  may  have  been  the  ruthless 
training  which  his  father  imposed  upon  him 
in  tender  years ;  it  may  have  been  Mill's  own 
life-long  attempt  to  reconcile  a  false  empiri- 
cal philosophy  with  conflicting  truth.     But,  how- 


ever it  arose,  Mill's  mind  was  essentially  illogi- 
cal. 

Such,  indeed,  is  the  intricate  sophistry  of 
Mill's  principal  writings,  that  it  is  a  work  of  much 
mental  effort  to  trace  out  the  course  of  his  falla- 
cies. For  about  twenty  years  past  I  have  been  a 
more  or  less  constant  student  of  his  books :  dur- 
ing the  last  fourteen  years  I  have  been  compelled, 
by  the  traditional  requirements  of  the  University 
of  London,  to  make  those  works  at  least  partially 
my  text-books  in  lecturing.  Some  ten  years  of 
study  passed  before  I  began  to  detect  their  fun- 
damental unsoundness.  During  the  last  ten  years 
the  conviction  has  gradually  grown  upon  my  mind 
that  Mill's  authority  is  doing  immense  injury  to 
the  cause  of  philosophy  and  good  intellectual 
training  in  England.  Nothing,  surely,  can  do  so 
much  intellectual  harm  as  a  body  of  thoroughly 
illogical  writings,  which  are  forced  upon  students 
and  teachers  by  the  weight  of  Mill's  reputation, 
and  the  hold  which  his  school  has  obtained  upon 
the  universities.  If,  as  I  am  certain,  Mill's  phi- 
losophy is  sophistical  and  false,  it  must  be  an  in- 
dispensable service  to  truth  to  show  that  it  is  so. 
This  weighty  task  I  at  length  feel  bound  to  under- 
take. 

The  mode  of  criticism  to  be  adopted  is  one 
which  has  not  been  sufficiently  used  by  any  of  his 
previous  critics.  Many  able  writers  have  defended 
what  they  thought  the  truth  against  Mill's  errors ; 
but  they  confined  themselves  for  the  most  part  to 
skirmishing  round  the  outworks  of  the  Associa- 
tionist  Philosophy,  firing  in  every  here  and  there 
a  well-aimed  shot.  But  their  shots  have  sunk 
harmlessly  into  the  sand  of  his  foundations.  In 
order  to  have  a  fair  chance  of  success,  different 
tactics  must  be  adopted ;  the  assault  must  be 
made  directly  against  the  citadel  of  his  logical 
reputation.  His  magazines  must  be  reached  and 
exploded ;  he  must  be  hoist,  like  the  engineer, 
with  his  own  petard.  Thus  only  can  the  discon- 
nected and  worthless  character  of  his  philosophy 
be  exposed. 

I  undertake  to  show  that  there  is  hardly  one 
of  his  more  important  and  peculiar  doctrines 
which  he  has  not  himself  amply  refuted.  It  will 
be  shown  that  in  many  cases  it  is  impossible  to 
state  what  his  doctrine  is,  because  he  mixes  up 
two  or  three,  and,  in  one  extreme  case,  as  many 
as  six  different  and  inconsistent  opinions.  In 
several  important  cases,  the  view  which  he  pro- 
fesses to  uphold  is  the  direct  opposite  of  what  he 
really  upholds.  Thus,  he  clearly  reprobates  the 
doctrine  of  Free-Will,  and  expressly  places  him- 
self in  the  camp  of  Liberty;  but  he  objects  to 


JOHN  STUART  MILL'S  PHILOSOPHY  TESTED. 


281 


the  name  Necessity,  and  explains  it  away  so  in- 
geniously that  he  unintentionally  converts  it  into 
Free-Will.  Again,  there  is  no  doubt  that  Mill 
wished  and  believed  himself  to  be  a  bulwark  of 
the  Utilitarian  Morality  ;  he  prided  himself  on  the 
invention,  or  at  least  the  promulgation,  of  the 
name  Utilitarianism  ;  but  he  expounded  the  doc- 
trines of  the  school  with  such  admirable  candor, 
that  he  converted  them  unconsciously  into  any- 
thing rather  than  the  doctrines  of  Paley  and 
Bentham. 

As  regards  logic,  the  case  is  much  worse. 
He  affected  to  get  rid  of  universal  reasoning, 
which,  if  accomplished,  would  be  to  get  rid  of 
science  and  logic  altogether;  of  course,  he  em- 
ployed or  implied  the  use  of  universals  in  almost 
every  sentence  of  his  treatise.  He  overthrew  the 
syllogism  on  the  ground  of  petilio  principii,  and 
.then  immediately  set  it  up  again  as  an  indispen- 
sable test  of  good  reasoning.  He  defined  logic  as 
the  Science  of  Proof,  and  then  recommended  a 
loose  kind  of  inference  from  particulars  to  partic- 
ulars, which  he  allowed  was  not  conclusive,  that 
is,  could  prove  nothing.  Though  inconclusive, 
this  loose  kind  of  inference  was  really  the  basis 
of  conclusive  reasoning.  Then,  again,  he  founded 
induction  upon  the  law  of  causation,  and  at  the 
same  time  it  was  his  express  doctrine  that  the  law 
of  causation  was  learned  by  induction.  What  he 
meant  exactly  by  this  law  of  causation  it  is  im- 
possible to  say.  He  affirms  and  denies  the  plu- 
rality of  causes.  Sometimes  the  sequence  of 
causation  is  absolutely  invariable,  sometimes  it 
is  conditional.  Generally,  the  law  of  causation  is 
spoken  of  as  Universal,  or  as  universal  through- 
out Nature ;  yet  in  one  passage  (at  the  end  of 
Book  III.,  chapter  xxi.)  he  makes  a  careful 
statement  to  the  opposite  effect,  and  this  state- 
ment, subversive  as  it  is  of  his  whole  system  of 
induction,  has  appeared  in  all  editions  from  the 
first  to  the  last.  On  such  fundamental  questions 
as  the  meaning  of  propositions,  the  nature  of  a 
class,  the  theory  of  probability,  etc.,  he  is  in  error 
where  he  is  not  in  direct  conflict  witli  himself. 
But  the  indictment  is  long  enough  already ;  there 
is  not  space  in  this  article  to  complete  it  in  detail. 
To  sum  up,  there  is  nothing  in  logic  which  he  has 
not  touched,  and  he  has  touched  nothing  without 
confounding  it. 

To  establish  charges  of  this  all-comprehen- 
sive character  will,  of  course,  require  a  large 
body  of  proof.  It  will  not  be  sufficient  to  take 
a  few  of  Mill's  statements  and  show  that  they 
are  mistaken  or  self-inconsistent.  Any  writer 
may  now  and  then  fall  into  oversights,  and  it 


would  be  manifestly  unfair  to  pick  a  few  unfortu- 
nate passages  out  of  a  work  of  considerable  ex- 
tent, and  then  hold  them  up  as  specimens  of  the 
whole.  On  the  other  hand,  in  order  to  overthrow 
a  philosopher's  system,  it  is  not  requisite  to  prove 
his  every  statement  false.  If  this  were  so,  one 
large  treatise  would  require  ten  large  ones  to  re- 
fute it.  What  is  necessary  is  to  select  a  certain 
number  of  his  more  prominent  and  peculiar  doc- 
trines, and  to  show  that,  in  their  treatment, 
he  is  illogical.  In  this  article  I  am,  of  course, 
limited  in  space,  and  can  apply  only  one  test, 
and  the  subject  which  I  select  for  treatment  is 
Mill's  doctrines  concerning  geometrical  reason- 
ing. 

The  science  of  geometry  is  specially  suited  to 
form  a  test  of  the  empirical  philosophy.  Mill 
certainly  regarded  it  as  a  crucial  instance,  and 
devoted  a  considerable  part  of  his  "  System  of 
Logic "  to  proving  that  geometry  is  a  strictly 
physical  science,  and  can  be  learned  by  direct 
observation  and  induction.  The  particular  na- 
ture of  his  doctrine,  or  rather  doctrines,  on  this 
subject  will  be  gathered  as  we  proceed.  Of 
course,  in  this  inquiry  I  must  not  abstain  from  a 
searching  or  even  a  tedious  analysis,  when  it  is 
requisite  for  the  due  investigation  of  Mill's  logi- 
cal method ;  but  it  will  rarely  be  found  necessary 
to  go  beyond  elementary  mathematical  knowl- 
edge, which  almost  all  readers  of  the  Contempo- 
rary Review  will  possess. 

As  a  first  test  of  Mill's  philosophy,  I  propose 
this  simple  question  of  fact :  Are  there  in  the 
material  universe  such  things  as  perfectly  straight 
lines  ?  We  shall  find  that  Mill  returns  to  this 
question  a  categorical  negative  answer.  There 
exist  no  such  things  as  perfectly  straight  lines. 
How  then  can  geometry  exist,  if  the  things  about 
which  it  is  conversant  do  not  exist  ?  Mill's 
ingenuity  seldom  fails  him.  Geometry,  in  his 
opinion,  treats  not  of  things  as  they  are  in 
reality,  but  as  we  suppose  them  to  be.  Though 
straight  lines  do  not  exist,  we  can  experiment  in 
our  minds  upon  straight  lines,  as  if  they  did  ex- 
ist. It  is  a  peculiarity  of  geometrical  science, 
be  thinks,  thus  to  allow  of  mental  experimenta- 
tion. Moreover,  these  mental  experiments  are 
just  as  good  as  real  experiments,  because  we 
know  that  the  imaginary  lines  exactly  resemble 
real  ones,  and  that  we  can  conclude  from  them 
to  real  ones  with  quite  as  much  certainty  as  we 
conclude  from  one  real  line  to  another.  If  such 
be  Mill's  doctrines,  we  are  brought  into  the  fol- 
lowing position : 

1.  Perfectly  straight  lines  do  not  really  exist. 


282 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


2.  We  experiment  in  our  minds  upon  imagi- 
nary straight  lines. 

3.  These  imaginary  straight  lines  exactly  re- 
semble the  real  ones. 

4.  If  these  imaginary  straight  lines  are  not 
perfectly  straight,  they  will  not  enable  us  to 
prove  the  truths  of  geometry. 

5.  If  they  are  perfectly  straight,  then  the  real 
ones,  which  exactly  resemble  them,  must  be  per- 
fectly straight :  ergo,  perfectly  straight  lines  do 
exist. 

It  would  not  be  right  to  attribute  such  rea- 
soning to  Mill  without  fully  substantiating  the 
statements.  I  must,  therefore,  ask  the  reader  to 
bear  with  me  while  I  give  somewhat  full  extracts 
from  the  fifth  chapter  of  the  second  book  of  the 
"  System  of  Logic." 

Previous  to  the  publication  of  this  "  system," 
it  had  been  generally  thought  that  the  certainty 
of  geometrical  and  other  mathematical  truths 
was  a  property  not  exclusively  confined  to  these 
truths,  but  nevertheless  existent.  Mill,  however, 
at  the  commencement  of  the  chapter,  altogether 
calls  in  question  this  supposed  certainty,  and  de- 
scribes it  as  an  illusion,  in  order  to  sustain  which 
it  is  necessary  to  suppose  that  those  truths  re- 
late to,  and  express  the  properties  of,  purely  im- 
aginary objects.     He  proceeds : ' 

"It  is  acknowledged  that  the  conclusions  of 
geometry  are  deduced,  partly  at  least,  from  the  so- 
called  definitions,  and  that  those  definitions  are 
assumed  to  he  correct  descriptions,  as  far  as  they 
go,  of  the  objects  with  which  geometry  is  conver- 
sant. Now,  we  have  pointed  out  that,  from  a  defi- 
nition as  such,  no  proposition,  unless  it  be  one 
concerning  the  meaning  of  a  word,  can  ever  fol- 
low, and  that  what  apparently  follows  from  a  defi- 
nition, follows  in  reality  from  an  implied  assump- 
tion that  there  exists  a  real  thing  conformable 
thereto.  This  assumption,  in  the  case  of  the  defi- 
nitions of  geometry,  is  false  : 2  there  exist  no  real 
things  exactly  conformable  to  the  definitions. 
There  exist  no  points  without  magnitude  ;  no 
lines  without  breadth,  nor  perfectly  straight ;  no 
circles  with  all  their  radii  exactly  equal,  nor 
squares  with  all  their  angles  perfectly  right.  It 
will,  perhaps,  be  said  that  the  assumption  does 
not  extend  to  the  actual,  but  only  to  the  possible, 
existence  of  such  things.  I  answer  that,  accord- 
ing to  any  test  we  have  of  possibility,  they  are 
not  even  possible.  Their  existence,  as  far  as  we 
can  form  any  judgment,  would  seem  to  be  incon- 

1  Book  II.,  chapter  v..  section  1,  near  the  com- 
mencement of  the  second  paragraph. 

2  The  word  false  occurs  in  the  editions  up  to  at 
least  the  fifth  edition.  In  the  latest,  or  ninth  edition, 
I  find  the  words,  not  strictly  trite,  substituted  for  false. 


sistent  with  the  physical  constitution  of  our  planet 
at  least,  if  not  of  the  universe." 

About  the  meaning  of  this  statement  no  doubt 
can  arise.  In  the  clearest  possible  language  Mill 
denies  the  existence  of  perfectly  straight  lines,  so 
far  as  any  judgment  can  be  formed,  and  this  de- 
nial extends,  not  only  to  the  actual,  but  the  pos- 
sible, existence  of  such  lines.  He  thinks  that 
they  seem  to  be  inconsistent  with  the  physical  con- 
stitution of  our  planet,  if  not  of  the  universe. 
Under  these  circumstances,  there  naturally  arises 
the  question,  What  does  geometry  treat  ?  A  sci- 
ence, as  Mill  goes  on  to  remark,  cannot  be  con- 
versant with  nonentities ;  and  as  perfectly  straight 
lines  and  perfect  circles,  squares,  and  other  fig- 
ures, do  not  exist,  geometry  must  treat  such  lines, 
angles,  and  figures,  as  do  exist,  these  apparently 
being  imperfect  ones.  The  definitions  of  such 
objects  given  by  Euclid,  and  adopted  by  later . 
geometers,  must  be  regarded  as  some  of  our 
first  and  most  obvious  generalizations  concerning 
those  natural  objects.  But,  then,  as  the  lines  are 
never  perfectly  straight  nor  parallel,  in  reality, 
the  circles  not  perfectly  round,  and  so  on,  the 
truths  deduced  in  geometry  cannot  accurately 
apply  to  such  existing  things.  Thus  we  arrive 
at  the  necessary  conclusion  that  the  peculiar  ac- 
curacy attributed  to  geometrical  truths  is  an  illu- 
sion.    Mill  himself  clearly  expresses  this  result : 1 

"  The  peculiar  accuracy,  supposed  to  be  char- 
acteristic of  the  first  principles  of  geometry,  thus 
appears  to  be  fictitious.  The  assertions  on  which 
the  reasonings  of  the  science  are  founded,  do  not, 
any  more  than  in  other  sciences,  exactly  correspond 
with  the  fact ;  but  we  suppose  that  they  do  so,  for 
the  sake  of  tracing  the  consequences  which  follow 
from  the  supposition." 

So  far  Mill's  statements  are  consistent  enough. 
He  gives  no  evidence  to  support  his  confident  as- 
sertion that  perfectly  straight  lines  do  not  exist; 
but  with  the  actual  truth  of  his  opinion  I  am  not 
concerned.  All  that  would  be  requisite  to  the 
logician,  as  such,  is  that,  having  once  adopted 
the  opinion,  he  should  adhere  to  it,  and  admit 
nothing  which  leads  to  an  opposite  conclusion. 

The  question  now  arises  in  what  way  we  ob' 
tain  our  knowledge  of  the  truths  of  geometry, 
especially  those  very  general  truths  called  axioms. 
Mill  has  no  doubt  whatever  about  the  answer. 
He  says : 2 

"  It  remains  to  inquire,  What  is  the  ground  of 
our  belief  in  axioms— what  is  the  evidence  on 

i  Book  II.,  chapter  v.,  section  1,  at  the  beginning 
of  the  fourth  paragraph. 

2  Same  chapter,  at  the  beginning  of  section  4. 


JOHN  STUART  MILL'S  PHILOSOPHY  TESTED. 


283 


which  they  rest  ?  I  answer,  they  are  experimen- 
tal truths  ;  generalizations  from  ohservation.  The 
proposition,  two  straight  lines  cannot  inclose  a 
space — or,  in  other  words,  two  straight  lines  which 
have  once  met,  do  not  meet  again,  but  continue  to 
diverge — is  an  induction  from  the  evidence  of  our 
senses." 

This  opinion,  as  Mill  goes  on  to  remark,  runs 
counter  to  a  scientific  prejudice  of  long  standing 
and  great  force,  and  there  is  probably  no  propo- 
sition enunciated  in  the  whole  treatise  for  which 
a  more  unfavorable  reception  was  to  be  expected. 
I  think  that  the  "scientific  prejudice"  still  pre- 
vails, but  I  am  perfectly  willing  to  agree  with 
Mill's  demand  that  the  opinion  is  entitled  to  be 
judged,  not  by  its  novelty,  but  by  the  strength  of 
the  arguments  which  are  adduced  in  support  of 
it.  These  arguments  are  the  subject  of  our  in- 
quiry. Mill  proceeds  to  point  out  that  the  prop- 
erties of  parallel  or  intersecting  straight  lines  are 
apparent  to  us  in  almost  every  instant  of  our 
lives.  "  We  cannot  look  at  any  two  straight  lines 
which  intersect  one  another,  without  seeing  that 
from  that  point  they  continue  to  diverge  more 
and  more."  1  Even  Whewell,  the  chief  opponent 
of  Mill's  views,  allowed  that  observation  suggests 
'be  properties  of  geometrical  figures ;  but  Mill  is 
not  satisfied  with  this,  and  proceeds  to  controvert 
the  arguments  by  which  Whewell  and  others  have 
attempted  to  show  that  experience  cannot  prove 
the  axiom. 

The  chief  difficulty  is  this :  before  we  can  as- 
sure ourselves  that  two  straight  lines  do  not  in- 
close space,  we  must  follow  them  to  infinity.  Mill 
faces  the  difficulty  with  boldness  and  candor  : 

"What  says  the  axiom?  That  two  straight 
lines  cannot  inclose  a  space ;  that  after  having  once 
intersected,  if  they  are  prolonged  to  infinity  they 
do  not  meet,  but  continue  to  diverge  from  one  an- 
other. How  can  this,  in  any  single  case,  be  proved 
by  actual  observation  ?  We  may  follow  the  lines 
to  any  distance  we  please  ;  but  we  cannot  follow 
them  to  infinity  ;  for  aught  our  senses  can  testify, 
they  may,  immediately  beyond  the  farthest  point 
to  which  we  have  traced  them,  begin  to  approach, 
and  at  last  meet.  Unless,  therefore,  we  had  some 
other  proof  of  the  impossibility  than  observation 
affords  us,  we  should  have  no  ground  for  believing 
the  axiom  at  all. 

"  To  these  arguments,  which  I  trust  I  cannot 
be  accused  of  understating,  a  satisfactory  answer 
will,  I  conceive,  be  found,  if  we  advert  to  one  of 
the  characteristic  properties  of  geometrical  forms 
— their  capacity  of  being  painted  in  the  imagina- 
tion with  a  distinctness  equal  to  reality  :  in  other 

1  Same  section,  near  the  beginning  of  fourth  para- 
graph. 


words,  the  exact  resemblance  of  our  ideas  of  form 
to  the  sensations  which  suggest  them.  This,  in 
the  first  place,  enables  us  to  make  (at  least  with  a 
little  practice)  mental  pictures  of  all  possible  com- 
binations of  lines  and  angles,  which  resemble  the 
realities  quite  as  well  as  any  which  we  could  make 
on  paper ;  and  in  the  next  place,  make  those  pict- 
ures just  as  fit  subjects  of  geometrical  experimenta- 
tion as  the  realities  themselves ;  inasmuch  as  pict- 
ures, if  sufficiently  accurate,  exhibit  of  course  all 
the  properties  which  would  be  manifested  by  the 
realities  at  one  given  instant,  and  on  simple  inspec- 
tion ;  and  in  geometry  we  are  concerned  only  with 
such  properties,  and  not  with  that  which  pictures 
could  not  exhibit,  the  mutual  action  of  bodies  one 
upon  another.  The  foundations  of  geometry  would 
therefore  be  laid  in  direct  experience,  even  if  the 
experiments  (which  in  this  case  consist  merely  in 
attentive  contemplation)  were  practised  solely  upon 
what  we  call  our  ideas,  that  is,  upon  the  diagrams 
in  our  minds,  and  not  upon  outward  objects.  For 
in  all  systems  of  experimentation  we  take  some 
objects  to  serve  as  representatives  of  all  which  re- 
semble them  ;  and  in  the  present  case  the  condi- 
tions which  qualify  a  real  object  to  be  the  repre- 
sentative of  its  class,  are  completely  fulfilled  by  an 
object  existing  only  in  our  fancy.  Without  deny- 
ing, therefore,  the  possibility  of  satisfying  our- 
selves that  two  straight  lines  cannot  inclose  a 
space,  by  merely  thinking  of  straight  lines  with- 
out actually  looking  at  them — I  contend,  that  we 
do  not  believe  this  truth  on  the  ground  of  the 
imaginary  intuition  simply,  but  because  we  know 
that  the  imaginary  lines  exactly  resemble  real  ones, 
and  that  we  may  conclude  from  them  to  real  ones 
with  quite  as  much  certainty  as  we  could  conclude 
from  one  real  line  to  another.  The  conclusion, 
therefore,  is  still  an  induction  from  observation." i 

I  have  been  obliged  to  give  this  long  extract 
in  full,  because,  unless  the  reader  has  it  all  fresh- 
ly before  him,  he  will  scarcely  accept  my  analy- 
sis. In  the  first  place,  what  are  we  to  make  of 
Mill's  previous  statement  that  the  axioms  are 
mductions  from  the  evidence  of  our  senses  ?  Mill 
admits  that,  for  aught  our  senses  can  testify,  two 
straight  lines,  although  they  have  once  met,  may 
again  approach  and  intersect  beyond  the  range 
of  our  vision.  "  Unless,  therefore,  we  had  some 
other  proof  of  the  impossibility  than  observa- 
tion affords  us,  we  should  have  no  ground  for  be- 
lieving the  axiom  at  all." 2  Probably  it  would 
not  occur  to  most  readers  to  inquire  whether  such 
a  statement  is  consistent  with  that  made  two  or 
three  pages  before,  but  on  examination  we  find  it 
entirely  inconsistent.     Before,  the  axioms  were 

1  Book  II.,  chapter  v.,  section  5.    The  passage  oc- 
curs in  the  second  and  third  paragraphs. 
8  End  of  the  second  paragraph. 


2S4 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


inductions  from  the  evidence  of  our  senses  ;  now, 
we  must  have  "  some  other  proof  of  the  impossi- 
bility than  observation  affords  us." 

This  further  proof,  it  appears,  consists  in  the 
attentive  contemplatation  of  mental  pictures  of 
straight  lines  and  other  geometrical  figures.  Such 
pictures,  if  sufficiently  accurate,  exhibit,  of  course, 
all  the  properties  of  the  real  objects,  and  in  the 
present  case  the  conditions  which  qualify  a  real 
object  to  be  the  representative  of  its  class  are 
completely  fulfilled.  Such  pictures,  Mill  admits, 
must  be  sufficiently  accurate  ;  but  what,  in  geom- 
etry, is  sufficient  accuracy  ?  The  expression  is, 
to  my  mind,  a  new  and  puzzling  one.  Imagine, 
since  Mill  allows  us  to  do  so,  two  parallel  straight 
lines.  What  is  the  sufficient  accuracy  with  which 
we  must  frame  our  mental  pictures  of  such  lines,  in 
order  that  they  shall  not  meet  ?  If  one  of  the 
lines,  instead  of  being  really  straight,  is  a  portion 
of  a  circle  having  a  radius  of  a  hundred  miles,  then 
the  divergence  from  perfect  straightness  within 
the  length  of  one  foot  would  be  of  an  order  of 
magnitude  altogether  imperceptible  to  our  senses. 
Can  we,  then,  detect  in  the  mental  picture  that 
which  cannot  be  detected  in  the  sensible  object? 
This  can  hardly  be  held  by  Mill,  because  he  says, 
further  on,  that  we  are  only  warranted  in  substi- 
tuting observation  of  the  image  in  our  mind  for 
observation  of  the  reality  by  long-continued  ex- 
perience that  the  properties  of  the  reality  are 
faithfully  represented  in  the  image. 

Now,  since  we  may  (at  least  with  a  little  prac- 
tice) form  mental  pictures  of  all  possible  combina- 
tions of  lines  and  angles,  we  may,  I  presume, 
form  a  picture  of  lines  which  are  so  nearly  paral- 
lel that  they  will  only  meet  at  a  distance  of  100,- 
000  miles.  If  we  cannot  do  so,  how  can  we  de- 
tect the  difference  between  such  lines  and  those 
that  are  actually  parallel  ?  Mill  meets  this  diffi- 
culty.    If  two  lines  meet  at  a  great  distance, 

"we  can  transport  ourselves  thither  in  imagina- 
tion, and  can  frame  a  mental  image  of  the  appear- 
ance which  one  or  both  of  the  lines  must  present 
at  that  point,  which  we  may  rely  on  as  being  pre- 
cisely similar  to  the  reality.  Now,  whether  we  fix 
our  contemplation  upon  this  imaginary  picture, 
or  call  to  mind  the  generalizations  we  have  had 
occasion  to  make  from  former  ocular  observation, 
we  learn  by  the  evidence  of  experience,  that  a  line 
which,  after  diverging  from  another  straight  line, 
begins  to  approach  to  it,  produces  the  impression 
on  our  senses  which  wc  describe  by  the  expression, 
'  a  bent  line,'  not  by  the  expression,  '  a  straight 
line.'  "  i 

1  Book  II.,  chapter  v.,  section  5,  end  of  fourth  para- 
graph. 


In  this  passage  we  have  somewhat  unexpect- 
edly got  back  to  the  senses.  We  may  call  to  mind 
the  generalizations  from  former  ocular  observa- 
tion, and  we  have  the  evidence  of  experience  to 
distinguish  between  the  impressions  made  on  our 
senses  by  a  bent  line  and  a  straight  line.  But 
what  will  happen  if  the  bent  line  be  a  circle  w  ith 
a  radius  of  a  million  miles  ?  Have  we  the  evi- 
dence of  experience  that  two  such  lines,  which 
seem  to  be  parallel  for  the  first  hundred  miles, 
afterward  begin  to  approach,  and  finally  intersect  ? 
If  so,  our  senses  must  enable  us  to  see  clearly 
and  to  exactly  measure  quantities  a  hundred 
miles  away.  Or  again,  if  there  be  two  lines  which 
close  in  front  of  me  are  one  foot  apart,  but  which 
a  hundred  miles  away  are  one  foot  plus  the  thou- 
sandth of  an  inch  apart,  they  are  not  parallel 
Will  my  senses  enable  me  to  perceive  the  magni- 
tude of  the  thousandth  part  of  an  inch  placed  a 
hundred  miles  off? 

But  we  have  had  enough  of  this  trifling.  Any 
one  who  has  the  least  knowledge  of  geometry 
must  know  that  a  straight  line  means  a,  perfectly 
straight  line :  the  slightest  curvature  renders  it 
not  straight.  Parallel  straight  lines  mean  per- 
fectly parallel  straight  lines ;  if  they  be  in  the 
least  degree  not  parallel,  they  will,  of  course, 
meet  sooner  or  later,  provided  that  they  be  in  the 
same  plane.  Now,  Mill  said  that  we  get  an  im- 
pression on  our  senses  of  a  straight  line ;  it  is 
through  this  impression  that  we  are  enabled  to 
form  images  of  straight  lines  in  the  mind.  We 
are  told,1  moreover,  that  the  imaginary  lines  ex- 
actly resemble  real  ones,  and  that  it  is  long-con- 
tinued observation  which  teaches  us  this.  It  fol- 
lows most  plainly,  then,  that  the  impressions  on 
our  senses  must  have  been  derived  from  really 
straight  lines.  Mill's  philosophy  is  essentially 
and  directly  empirical ;  he  holds  that  we  learn 
the  principles  of  geometry  by  direct  ocular  per- 
ception, either  of  lines  in  Nature,  or  their  images 
in  the  mind.  Now,  if  our  observations  had  been 
confined  to  lines  which  are  not  parallel,  we  could 
by  no  possibility  have  perceived,  directly  and 
ocularly,  the  character  of  lines  which  are  paral- 
lel. It  follows,  that  ice  must  have  perceived  per- 
fectly parallel  lines  and  perfectly  straight  lines, 
although  Mill  previously  told  us  that  he  considered 
the  existence  of  such  things  to  be  "  inconsistent  with 
the  physical  constitution  of  our  planet,  at  least,  if 
not  of  the  universe." 

Perhaps  it  may  be  replied  that  Mill  simply 
made  a  mistake  in  saying  that  no  really  straight 

1  Same  section,  about  thirteen  lines  from  the  end 
of  the  third  paragraph. 


JOHN  STUART  MILL'S  PHILOSOPHY  TESTED. 


285 


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

"  The  notion  that  what  is  of  primary  impor- 
tance to  the  logician  in  a  proposition,  is  the  rela- 
tion between  the  two  ideas  corresponding  to  the 
subject  and  predicate  (instead  of  the  relation  be- 
tween the  two  phenomena  which  they  respectively 
express),  seems  to  me  one  of  the  most  fatal  errors 
ever  introduced  into  the  philosophy  of  Logic  ;  and 
the  principal  cause  why  the  theory  of  the  science 
has  made  such  inconsiderable  progress  during  the 

1  Book  I.,  chapter  v.,  section  1,  fifth  paragraph. 


last  two  centuries.  The  treatises  on  Logic,  and 
on  the  branches  of  Mental  Philosophy  connected 
with  Logic,  which  have  been  produced  since  the 
intrusion  of  this  cardinal  error,  though  sometimes 
written  by  men  of  extraordinary  abilities  and  at- 
tainments, almost  always  tacitly  imply  a  theory 
that  the  investigation  of  truth  consists  in  contem- 
plating and  handling  our  ideas,  or  conceptions  of 
things,  instead  of  the  things  themselves  :  a  doc- 
trine tantamount  to  the  assertion  that  the  only 
mode  of  acquiring  knowledge  of  Nature  is  to 
study  it  at  second  hand,  as  represented  in  our 
own  minds." 

Mill  here  denounces  the  cardinal  error  of  in- 
vestigating Nature  at  second  hand,  as  represent- 
ed in  our  own  minds.  Yet  bis  words  exactly  de- 
scribe that  process  of  mental  experimentation 
which  he  has  unquestionably  advocated  in  geom- 
etry, the  most  perfect  and  certain  of  the  sci- 
ences. 

It  may  be  urged,  indeed,  with  some  show  of 
reason,  that  the  method  which  might  be  erro- 
neous in  one  science  might  be  correct  in  another. 
The  mathematical  sciences  are  called  the  exact 
sciences,  and  they  may  be  of  peculiar  character. 
But,  in  the  first  place,  Mill's  denunciation  of  the 
handling  of  ideas  is  not  limited  |>y  any  excep- 
tions ;  it  is  applied  in  the  most  general  way,  and 
arises  upon  the  general  question  of  the  Import 
of  Propositions.  It  is,  therefore,  in  distinct  con- 
flict with  Mill's  subsequent  advocacy  of  mental 
experimentation. 

In  the  second  place,  Mill  is  entirely  precluded 
from  claiming  the  mathematical  sciences  as  pecul- 
iar in  their  method,  because  one  of  the  principal 
points  of  his  philosophy  is  to  show  that  they  are 
not  peculiar.  It  is  the  outcome  of  his  philosophy 
to  show  that  they  are  founded  on  a  directly  em- 
pirical basis,  like  the  rest  of  the  sciences.  He 
speaks l  of  geometry  as  a  "  strictly  physical  sci- 
ence," and  asserts  that  every  theorem  of  geome- 
try is  a  law  of  external  Nature,  and  might  have 
been  ascertained  by  generalizing  from  observa- 
tion and  experiment.5  What  will  our  physicists 
say  to  a  strictly  physical  science,  which  can  be 
experimented  on  in  the  private  laboratory  of  the 
philosopher's  mind  ?  What  a  convenient  sci- 
ence !  What  a  saving  of  expense  in  regard  of 
apparatus,  and  materials,  and  specimens  ! 3 

1  Book  III.,  chapter  xxiv.,  section  7,  about  the 
tenth  line. 

5  Same  section,  beginning  of  second  paragraph. 

3  Since  writing  the  above,  I  have  made  the  signifi- 
cant discovery  that  in  the  first  and  second  editions  a 
clause  follows  the  passage  quoted  from  Book  I.,  chap- 
ter v.,  section  1,  paragraph  5  (vol.  i.,  middle  of  page 


286 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


Incidentally,  it  occurs  to  me  to  ask  whether 
Mill,  in  treating  geometry,  had  not  forgotten  a 
little  sentence  which  sums  up  the  conclusion  of 
the  first  section  of  his  chapter  on  Names  ? ' 
Here  he  luminously  discusses  the  question  wheth- 
er names  are  more  properly  said  to  be  the  names 
of  things,  or  of  our  ideas  of  things.  After  giv- 
ing some  reasons  of  apparent  cogency,  he  con- 
cludes emphatically  in  these  words :  "  Names1 
therefore,  shall  always  be  spoken  of  in  this  work 
as  the  names  of  things  themselves,  and  not  mere- 
ly of  our  ideas  of  things."  Here  is  really  a  diffi- 
culty. Straight  line  is  certainly  a  name,  and  yet 
it  can  hardly  be  the  name  of  a  thing  which  is  not 
a  straight  line.  It  must  then  be  the  name  either 
of  a  real  straight  line,  or  of  our  idea  of  a  straight 
line.  But  Mill  distinctly  denied  that  there  were 
such  things  as  straight  lines,  "in  our  planet  at 
least ; "  hence  the  name  (unless,  indeed,  it  be  the 
name  of  lines  in  other  planets)  must  be  the  name 
of  our  ideas  of  straight  lines.  He  promised  ex- 
pressly that  names  "  in  this  work,"  that  is,  in  the 
"  System  of  Logic,"  should  always  be  spoken  of 
as  the  names  of  things  themselves.  It  must  have 
been  by  oversight,  then,  that  he  forgot  this  em- 
phatic promise  in  a  later  chapter  of  the  same  vol- 
ume. We  may  excuse  an  accidental  lapsus  me- 
morial, but  a  philosopher  is  unfortunate  who 
makes  many  such  lapses  in  regard  to  the  funda- 
mental principles  of  his  system. 

But  let  us  overlook  Mill's  breach  of  promise, 
and  assume  that  we  may  properly  employ  ideal 
experiments.  We  are  told2  that,  though  it  is 
impossible  ocularly  to  follow  lines  "  in  their  pro- 
longation to  infinity,"  yet  this  is  not  necessary. 
"  Without  doing  so  we  may  know  that  if  they 
ever  do  meet,  or  if,  after  diverging  from  one  an- 
other, they  begin  again  to  approach,  this  must 

119),  in  the  following  words  :  "  A  process  by  which,  I 
will  venture  to  affirm,  not,  a  single  truth  ever  was  ar- 
rived at,  except  truths  of  psychology,  a  science  of 
which  Ideas  or  Conceptions  are  avowedly  (along  with 
other  mental  phenomena)  the  subject-matter."  These 
words  do  not  appear  in  the  fifth  and  ninth  editions. 
Now,  as  Mill  could  not  possibly  pretend  to  include 
geometry,  a  strictly  physical  science,  under  psychology, 
we  find  him  implying,  or  rather  asserting,  that  not  a 
single  truth  ever  was  arrived  at  in  geometry  by  the 
very  method  of  handling  our  ideas  on  which  he  de- 
pends for  the  knowledge  of  the  axioms  of  geometry. 
The  striking  out  of  these  words  seems  to  indicate 
that  he  had  perceived  the  absolute  conflict  of  his  two 
doctrines  ;  yet  he  maintains  his  opinion  about  the 
cardinal  error  of  handling  ideas,  and  merely  deletes  a 
too  glaring  inconsistency  which  results  from  it. 

1  Book  I.,  chapter  ii.,  section  1,  near  the  end. 

a  Book  IT.,  chapter  v.,  section  5,  beginning  of  fourth 
paragraph. 


take  place  not  at  an  infinite,  but  at  a  finite  dis- 
tance. Supposing,  therefore,  such  to  be  the  case, 
we  can  transport  ourselves  thither  in  imagina- 
tion, and  can  frame  a  mental  image  of  the  ap- 
pearance which  one  or  both  of  the  lines  mu>t 
present  at  that  point,  which  we  may  rely  on  as 
being  precisely  similar  to  the  reality."  Now,  we 
are  also  told  •  that  "  neither  in  Nature  nor  in  the 
human  mind  do  there  exist  any  objects  exactly 
corresponding  to  the  definitions  of  geometry." 
Not  only  are  there  no  perfectly  straight  lines,  but 
there  are  not  even  lines  without  breadth.  Mill 
says,2 "  We  cannot  conceive  a  line  without  breadth ; 
we  can  form  no  mental  picture  of  such  a  line ; 
all  the  lines  which  we  have  in  our  minds  are  lines 
possessing  breadth."  Now  I  want  to  know  what 
Mill  means  by  the  prolongation  of  a  line  which 
has  thickness  and  is  not  straight.  Let  us  examine 
this  question  with  some  degree  of  care. 

In  the  first  place,  if  the  line,  instead  of  being 
length  without  breadth,  according  to  Euclid's 
definition,  has  thickness,  it  must  be  a  wire ;  if  it 
had  had  two  dimensions  without  the  third,  it 
would  surely  have  been  described  as  a  surface, 
not  a  line.  But  then  I  want  to  know  how  we  are 
to  understand  the  prolongation  of  a  wire.  Is  the 
course  of  the  wire  to  be  defined  by  its  surface  or 
by  its  central  line,  or  by  a  line  running  deviously 
within  it?  If  we  take  the  last,  then,  the  line  be- 
ing devious  and  uncertain,  its  prolongation  must 
be  undefined.  If  we  take  a  certain  central  line, 
then  either  this  line  has  breadth  or  it  has  no 
breadth ;  if  the  former,  all  our  difficulties  recur ; 
if  the  latter —  Well,  Mill  denied  that  we  could 
form  the  idea  of  such  a  line.  The  same  difficulty 
applies  to  any  line  or  lines  upon  the  surface,  or 
to  the  surface  itself  regarded  as  a  curved  surface 
without  thickness.  Unless,  then,  we  can  get  rid 
of  thickness  in  some  way  or  other,  I  feel  unable 
to  understand  what  the  prolongation  of  a  line 
means. 

But  let  us  overlook  this  difficulty,  and  assume 
that  we  have  got  Euclid's  line — length  without 
breadth.  In  fact,  Mill  tells  us3  that  "we  can 
reason  about  a  line  as  if  it  had  no  breadth  "  be- 
cause we  have  "  the  power,  when  a  perception  is 
present  to  our  senses,  or  a  conception  to  our  in- 
tellects, of  attending  to  a  part  only  of  that  per- 
ception or  conception,  instead  of  the  whole."  I 
believe  that  this  sentence  supplies  a  good  instance 

1  Book  II.,  chapter  v.,  section  1,  beginning  of  third 
paragraph. 

2  Same    section,  second  paragraph,  eleven  lines 
from  end. 

3  Same  paragraph,  seventeen  lines  from  end. 


JOEX  STUART  MILL'S  PHILOSOPHY  TESTED. 


2S7 


of  a  non  sequitur,  being  in  conflict  with  the  sen- 
tence which  immediately  follows.     Mill  holds  that 
we  learn  the  properties  of  lines  by  experimenta- 
tion on  ideas  in  the  mind ;  these  ideas  must  surely 
be  conceived,  and  they  cannot  be  conceived  with- 
out thickness.     Unless,  then,  the  reasoning  about 
a  line  is  quite  a  different  process  from  experiment- 
ing, I  fail  to  make  the  sentences  hold  together  at 
all.     If,  on  the  other  hand,  we  can  reason  about 
lines  without  breadth,  but  can  only  experiment 
on  thick  lines,  would  it  not  be  much  better  to 
stick  to  the  reasoning  process,  whatever  it  may  be, 
and  drop  the  mental  experimentation  altogether  ? 
But  let  that  pass.     Suppose  that,  in  one  way 
or  other,  we  manage  to  attend  only  to  the  direc- 
tion of  the  line,  not  its  thickness.     Now,  the  line 
cannot  be  a  straight  line,  because  Mill  tells  us 
that  neither  in  Nature  nor  in  the  human  mind  is 
there  anything  answering  to  the  definitions  of 
geometry,  and  the  second  definition  of  Euclid  de- 
fines a  straight  line.     If  not  straight,  what  is  it? 
Crooked,  I  presume.     What,  then,  are  we  to  un- 
derstand by  the  prolongation  of  a  crooked  line  ? 
If  the  crooked  line  is  made  up  of  various  portions 
of  line  tending  in  different  directions,  if,  in  short, 
it  be  a  zigzag  line,  of  course  we  cannot  prolong  ii 
in  all  those  directions  at  once,  nor  even  in  any 
two  directions,  however  slightly  divergent.     Let 
us  adopt,  then,  the  last  bit  of  line  as  our  guide. 
If  this  bit  be  perfectly  straight,  there  is  no  diffi- 
culty in  saying  what  the  prolongation  will  be. 
But  then  Mill  denied  that  there  could  be  such  a 
bit  of  straight  line;   for  the  length  of  the  bit 
could  scarcely  have  any  relevance  in  a  question 
of  this  sort.     If  not  a  straight  line,  it  may  yet  be 
a  piece  of  an  ellipse,  parabola,  cycloid,  or  some 
other  mathematical  curve.    But  if  a  piece  of  an 
ellipse,  do  we  mean  a  piece  of  a  perfect  ellipse  ? 
In  that  case  one  of  the  definitions  of  geometry 
has  something  answering  to  it  in  the  mind  at 
least ;  and  if  we  conceive  the  more  complicated 
mathematical  curves,  surely  we  can  conceive  the 
straight  line,  the  most  simple  of  curves.     But  if 
these  pieces  of  line  are  not  perfect  curves,  that 
is,  do  not  fulfill  definite  mathematical  laws,  what 
are  they  ?     If  they  also  are  crooked,  and  made 
up  of  fragments  of  other  lines  and  curves,  all  the 
difficulty  comes  over  again.     Apparently,  then, 
we  are  driven  to  the  conception  of  a  line,  no  por- 
tion of  which,  however  small,  follows  any  definite 
mathematical  law  whatever.     For  if  any  portion 
has  a  definite  law,  the  last  portion  may  as  well 
be  supposed  to  be  that  portion;  then  we  can 
prolong  it  in  accordance  with  that  law,  and  the 
result  is  a  perfect  mathematical  line  or  curve,  of 


which  Mill  denied  the  existence  either  in  Nature 
or  in  the  human  mind.  We  are  driven,  then,  to 
the  final  result  that  no  portion  of  any  line  follows 
any  mathematical  law  whatever.  Each  line  must 
follow  its  own  sweet  will.  What,  then,  are  we  to 
understand  by  the  prolongation  of  such  a  line  ? 
Surely  the  whole  thing  is  reduced  to  the  absurd. 

But  in  this  inquiry  we  must  be  patient.  Let 
us  forget  the  non-existence  of  straight  lines,  the 
cardinal  error  of  mental  experimentation,  and 
whatever  little  oversights  we  have  yet  fallen 
upon.  Let  us  suppose  there  really  are  geomet- 
rical figures  which  we  can  treat  in  the  manner 
of  "  a  strictly  physical  science,"  such  as  geometry 
seems  to  be.  What  lessons  can  we  draw  from 
Mill's  Logic  as  to  the  mode  of  treating  the  fig- 
ures ?  A  plain  answer  is  contained  in  the  follow- 
ing extract  from  the  second  volume  : 

"Every  theorem  in  geometry,"  he  says,1  "is 
a  law  of  external  Nature,  and  might  have  been  as- 
certained by  generalizing  from  observation  and 
experiment,  which  in  this  case  resolve  themselves 
into  comparison  and  measurement." 

Here  we  are  plainly  told  that  the  solution  of 
every  theorem  in  geometry  may  be  accomplished 
by  a  process  of  which  measurement  is,  to  say  the 
least,  a  necessary  element.  No  doubt  a  good 
deal  turns  upon  the  word  "  generalizing,"  by 
which  I  believe  Mill  to  mean  that  what  is  true  of 
the  figure  measured  will  be  true  of  all  like  figures 
in  general  Give  him,  however,  the  benefit  of 
the  doubt,  and  suppose  that,  after  measuring,  we 
are  to  apply  some  process  of  reasoning  before 
deciding  on  the  properties  of  our  figure.  Still  it 
is  plain  that,  if  our  measurements  are  not  accu- 
rate, we  cannot  attain  to  perfect  or  unlimited  ac- 
curacy in  our  results,  supposing  that  they  depend 
upon  the  data  given  by  measurement.  Now,  I  wish 
to  know  how  Mill  would  ascertain  by  generalizing 
from  comparison  and  measurement  that  the  ratio 
of  the  diameter  and  circumference  of  a  circle  is 
that  of  one  to  3.141592653589'79323846.  .  .  . 

Some  years  ago  I  made  an  actual  trial  with  a 
pair  of  compasses  and  a  sheet  of  paper  to  ap- 
proximate to  this  ratio,  and,  with  the  utmost  care, 
I  could  not  come  nearer  than  one  part  in  540. 
Yet  Mr.  W.  Shanks  has  given  the  value  of  this 
ratio  to  the  extent  of  T07  places  of  decimals,2 
and  it  is  a  question  of  mere  labor  of  computation 
to  carry  it  to  any  greater  length.     It  is  obvious 

1  Book  III.,  chapter  xxiv.,  section  7,  beginning  of 
second  paragraph. 

a  Proceedings  of  the  Royal  Society  (1872-'73),  vol 
xxi.,  p.  319. 


288 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


that  the  result  does  not  and  cannot  depend  on 
measurement  at  all,  or  else  it  would  be  affected 
by  the  inaccuracy  of  that  measurement.  It  is 
obviously  impossible,  from  inexact  physical  data, 
to  arrive  at  an  exact  result,  and  the  computa- 
tions of  Mr.  Shanks  and  other  calculators  are 
founded  on  a  priori  considerations ;  in  fact,  upon 
considerations  which  have  no  necessary  connec- 
tions with  geometry  at  all.  The  ratio  in  ques- 
tion occurs  as  a  natural  constant  in  various 
branches  of  mathematics,  as,  for  instance,  in  the 
theory  of  error,  which  has  no  necessary  connec- 
tion with  the  geometry  of  the  circle. 

It  is  amusing  to  find,  too,  that  Mill  himself 
happens  to  speak  of  this  same  ratio,  in  his  "  Ex- 
amination of  Hamilton," 1  and  he  there  says, 
"  This  attribute  was  discovered,  and  is  now 
known,  as  a  result  of  reasoning."  He  says  noth- 
ing about  measurement  and  comparison.  What 
has  become,  in  this  critical  case,  of  the  empirical 
character  of  geometry  which  it  was  his  great  ob- 
ject to  establish  ?  A  few  lines  further  on  (p. 
372)  he  says  that  mathematicians  could  not  have 
found  the  ratio  in  question  "  until  the  long  train 
of  difficult  reasoning  which  culminated  in  the  dis- 
covery was  complete."  Now,  we  are  certainly 
dealing  with  a  theorem  of  geometry,  and  if  this 
could  have  been  solved  by  comparison  and  meas- 
urement, why  did  mathematicians  resort  to  this 
long  train  of  difficult  reasoning  ? 

I  need  hardly  weary  the  reader  by  pointing 
out  that  the  same  is  true,  not  merely  of  many 
other  geometrical  theorems,  but  of  all.  That  the 
square  on  the  hypothenuse  of  a  right-angled  tri- 
angle is  exactly  equal  to  the  sum  of  the  squares 
on  the  other  sides  ;  that  the  area  of  a  cycloid  is 
exactly  equal  to  three  times  the  area  of  the  de- 
scribing circle ;  that  the  surface  of  a  sphere  is  ex- 
actly four  times  that  of  any  of  its  great  circles  ; 
even  that  the  three  angles  of  a  plane  triangle 
are  exactly  equal  to  two  right  angles — these  and 
thousands  of  other  certain  mathematical  theorems 

1  Second  edition,  p.  371. 


cannot  possibly  be  proved  by  measurement  and 
comparison.  The  absolute  certainty  and  accuracy 
of  these  truths  can  only  be  proved  deductively. 
Reasoning  can  carry  a  result  to  infinity — that  is 
to  say,  we  can  see  that  there  is  no  possible  limit 
theoretically  to  the  endless  repetition  of  a  pro- 
cess. Thus  it  is  found,  in  the  117th  proposition 
of  Euclid's  tenth  book,  that  the  side  and  diagonal 
of  a  square  are  incommensurable.  No  quantity 
however  small,  can  be  a  sub-multiple  of  both ;  or, 
in  other  words,  their  greatest  common  measure 
is  an  infinitely  small  quantity.  It  has  also  been 
shown  that  the  circumference  and  diameter  of  a 
circle  are  incommensurable.  Such  results  cannot 
possibly  be  due  to  measurement. 

It  may  be  well  to  remark  that  the  expression 
"  a  false  empirical  philosophy,"  which  has  been 
used  in  this  article,  is  not  intended  to  imply  that 
all  empirical  philosophy  is  false.  My  meaning  is 
that  the  phase  of  empirical  philosophy  upheld  by 
Mill  and  the  well-known  members  of  his  school, 
is  false.  Experience,  no  doubt,  supplies  the  ma- 
terials of  our  knowledge,  but  in  a  far  different 
manner  from  that  expounded  by  Mill. 

Here  this  inquiry  must  for  the  present  be  in- 
terrupted. It  has  been  shown  that  Mill  under- 
takes to  explain  the  origin  of  our  geometrical 
knowledge  on  the  ground  of  his  so-called  "  Em- 
pirical Philosophy,"  but  that  at  every  step  he  in- 
volves himself  in  inextricable  difficulties  and  self- 
contradictions.  It  may  be  urged,  indeed,  that 
the  groundwork  of  geometry  is  a  very  slippery 
subject,  and  forms  a  severe  test  for  any  kind  of 
philosophy.  This  may  be  quite  true,  but  it  is  no 
excuse  for  the  way  in  which  Mill  has  treated  the 
subject ;  it  is  one  thing  to  fail  in  explaining  a 
difficult  matter :  it  is  another  thing  to  rush  into 
subjects  and  offer  reckless  opinions  and  argu- 
ments, which,  on  minute  analysis,  are  found  to 
have  no  coherence.  This  is  what  Mill  has  done, 
and  he  has  done  it,  not  in  the  case  of  geometry 
alone,  but  in  almost  every  other  point  of  logical 
and  metaphysical  philosophy  treated  in  his  works. 
— Contemporary  Review. 


THE  EVOLUTION  THEORY. 


289 


THE   EVOLUTION   THEORY  AND    ITS  RELATIONS    TO   THE 

PHILOSOPHY   OF  NATURE.1 


Br  Professor  EENST    HAECKEL,  of  Jena  University. 


AS  we  meet  here  to-day  to  celebrate  the  open- 
ing of  the  fiftieth  Congress  of  German 
Naturalists,  our  first  care  should  be  to  show  how 
much  each  particular  branch  of  research  contrib- 
utes to  the  sum  of  human  knowledge.  Educated 
people  of  every  class,  who  watch  with  the  liveliest 
interest  the  astonishing  progress  of  natural  sci- 
ence, have  special  reason  to-day  to  put  to  us  the 
question,  "  What,  in  view  of  the  general  develop- 
ment of  the  human  mind,  are  the  results  which 
you  present  to  us?"  In  compliance,  therefore, 
with  the  invitation  with  which  you  have  honored 
me,  and  to  recompense  the  kind  attention  which 
I  pray  you  to  grant  me  for  a  few  moments,  I  have 
chosen  for  the  subject  of  my  discourse  a  topic  of 
high  mutual  interest,  namely,  the  relations  of  sci- 
ence in  general,  or  of  the  philosophy  of  Nature, 
to  that  branch  of  research  with  which  I  am  more 
nearly  concerned,  the  Evolution  Theory. 

During  the  last  ten  years  or  more,  no  other 
doctrine  has  taken  hold  so  firmly  of  the  attention 
of  the  public,  or  has  so  violently  agitated  our 
profoundest  convictions,  as  the  resuscitated  the- 
ory of  evolution  and  the  monistic  philosophy 
with  which  it  is  connected.  By  its  aid  alone  can 
we  resolve  the  question  of  questions — the  one 
great  fundamental  question  of  man's  place  in 
Nature.  And  since  man  is  the  measure  of  all 
things,  the  ultimate  bases,  the  highest  principles 
of  all  science,  naturally  depend  on  the  place  in 
Nature  assigned  to  man  as  our  knowledge  of  the 
cosmos  increases. 

As  every  one  knows,  it  is  to  Charles  Darwin, 
more  than  any  other  man,  that  our  present  doc- 
trine of  evolution  is  indebted  for  the  supremacy 
it  enjoys.  He  it  was  that,  eighteen  years  ago, 
first  broke  the  ice  of  dominant  prejudices,  being 
inspired  with  that  same  idea  of  unity  in  the 
development  of  the  universe  which,  in  the  last 
century,  impressed  the  minds  of  our  greatest 
thinkers  and  poets,  at  whose  head  we  must  place 
Immanuel  Kant  and  Wolfgang  Goethe.  In  set- 
ting up  his  theory  of  natural  selection,  Darwin 
gave  a  firm  foundation  to  that  biological  side  of 
the  general  theory  of  evolution — the  most  impor- 

1  An  address  delivered  at  the  Munich  meeting  of 
German  Naturalists  and  Physicians.  Translated  by 
J.  Fitzgerald,  A.  M. 

55 


tant  side  of  that  theory — which  appeared  as  early 
as  the  beginning  of  this  century  under  the  title 
of  derivation  of  beings,  or  theory  of  descent.  In 
vain  had  the  old  philosophy  of  Nature  previously 
contended  for  the  theory  of  descent;  neither 
Lamarck  nor  Geoffrey  St.-Hilaire  in  France, 
neither  Oken  nor  Schelling  in  Germany,  could  se- 
cure its  triumph.  It  is  now  just  fifty  years  since 
Lorenz  Oken,  in  this  very  town  of  Munich,  com- 
menced his  academic  lectures  on  the  doctrine  of 
evolution ;  and  it  becomes  us,  I  think,  to  lay  a 
crown  of  laurel  on  the  tomb  of  that  profound  zo- 
ologist, that  enthusiastic  philosopher.  Again,  it 
was  Oken,  too,  who,  out  of  an  ardent  desire  of  uni- 
fying science,  called  together  at  Jena,  in  1822, 
the  first  Congress  of  German  Naturalists ;  on  this 
ground  alone  he  would  have  a  special  claim  on 
our  gratitude  at  this  fiftieth  anniversary. 

The  philosophy  of  Nature  could  at  that  time 
only  sketch  the  general  plan  and  barely  lay  the 
foundation  of  the  grand  edifice  of  the  unity  of 
development.  The  materials  required  for  its  con- 
struction were  not  collected  till  a  later  period, 
through  the  labors  of  a  multitude  of  diligent  and 
painstaking  workers.  A  mighty  literature,  a  re- 
markable perfection  of  the  methods  of  research, 
give  evidence  of  the  amazing  progress  made  by 
natural  science  since  Oken's  day.  At  the  same 
time,  however,  the  boundless  extension  of  the 
field  of  observation,  and  the  consequent  division 
of  labor,  have  led  to  a  deplorable  waste  of 
energies ;  the  more  direct  interest  taken  in  the 
observation  of  details  has  totally  obscured  the 
nobler  end  of  investigating  general  laws. 

And  what  is  the  result  ?  That,  during  the  pe- 
riod when  this  active  research  most  flourished — 
that  is,  the  thirty  years  from  1830  to  1859 — the 
two  chief  branches  of  natural  history  proceeded 
on  principles  diametrically  opposed  to  each  other. 
Take,  first,  the  problem  of  the  development  of  the 
globe.  Ever  since  1830,  since  the  publication  of 
Lyell's  "  Principles  of  Geology,"  the  idea  that  our 
planet  did  not  originate  in  an  act  of  supernatural 
creation ;  so,  too,  that  it  had  passed  through  no 
series  of  revolutions  as  radical  as  they  were  mys- 
tical ;  but  that,  rather,  it  had  been  formed  natu- 
rally and  gradually  by  a  process  of  progressive 
and  uninterrupted  development,  has  been  spread- 


290 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


ing  more  and  more.  In  the  history  of  the  devel- 
opment of  living  things,  on  the  contrary,  entire 
confidence  was  reposed  in  the  ancient  and  unten- 
able myth,  according  to  which  every  species  of 
animals  or  of  plants  was,  like  man  himself,  cre- 
ated independently  of  every  other  species.  These 
creations,  it  was  supposed,  had  succeeded  to  one 
another  in  series,  without  any  tie  of  filiation.  This 
flat  contradiction  of  the  two  doctrines — the  ge- 
ologists' theory  of  natural  development,  and  the 
naturalists'  myth  of  a  supernatural  creation— was 
ended  by  Darwin  in  1859  in  favor  of  the  former. 
Since  then  we  no  longer  make  any  difficulty  about 
believing  that  the  formation  and  the  transfor- 
mation of  the  living  things  inhabiting  our  globe 
obey  the  grand  eternal  laws  of  a  mechanical  evo- 
lution, precisely  like  the  earth  itself  and  the  whole 
system  of  the  universe. 

We  no  longer  are  required  now,  as  was  the 
case  fourteen  years  ago  at  the  Stettin  meeting  of 
the  Congress  of  Naturalists,  to  gather  together 
proofs  of  the  new  theory  of  evolution  founded  by 
Darwin.  Since  that  time,  the  knowledge  of  that 
truth  has  made  most  satisfactory  progress.  In 
the  field  of  research  with  which  my  own  labors 
are  concerned,  in  the  extensive  science  of  organic 
forms  or  morphology,  it  is  everywhere  recognized 
as  of  the  very  highest  importance,  as  basic.  Com- 
parative anatomy  and  embryology,  systematic  zo- 
ology and  botany,  can  no  longer  disregard  the 
theory  of  descent.  It  alone  is  able  to  explain  the 
mysterious  relations  of  innumerable  organic  forms 
to  one  another  ;  in  other  words,  to  refer  them  to 
their  mechanical  causes.  Their  mutual  resem- 
blances are  explained  to  be  a  natural  conse- 
quence, as  being  an  inheritance  from  a  common 
ancestral  form ;  and  their  differences  are  ac- 
counted to  be  the  necessary  effect  of  an  adapta- 
tion to  different  conditions  of  existence.  By  the 
theory  of  descent  alone  can  we  explain,  simply 
and  naturally,  the  facts  of  paleontology,  of  cho- 
rology,  and  of  oecology ; !  by  its  aid  alone  can  we 
account  for  those  remarkable  rudimentary  organs 
— eyes  that  see  not,  wings  that  do  not  fly,  mus- 
cles that  do  not  contract — in  a  word,  all  those 
useless  parts  of  the  body  which  so  embarrass  the 
prevailing  teleology.  These  organs  clearly  show 
that  conformity  to  an  end,  in  the  structure  of  or- 
ganic forms,  is  neither  general  nor  complete ; 
they  do  not  emanate  from  a  plan  of  creation 
drawn  up  beforehand,  but  were  of  necessity  pro- 

1  Chorology  treats  of  the  geographical  and  topo- 
graphical distribution  of  organisms  ;  oncology  of  the 
habitations,  the  means  of  existence,  and  the  mutual 
relations  of  organisms. 


duced  by  the  accidental  clash  of  mechanical 
causes.1 

The  man  who,  in  the  face  of  these  imposing 
facts,  should  still  demand  proofs  in  favor  of  the 
theory  of  descent,  would  himself  give  evidence 
only  of  one  thing,  namely,  his  lack  of  knowledge 
and  of  understanding.  To  demand  proofs  exact 
and  strictly  experimental  "would  be  a  totally  dif- 
ferent thing.  Such  a  demand — and  it  is  cften 
made — results  from  a  very  wide-spread,  errone- 
ous idea,  that  all  natural  sciences  may  be  exact 
sciences.  But  the  truth  is,  that  only  a  small  frac- 
tion of  the  natural  sciences  is  exact,  namely,  such 
of  them  as  are  based  on  mathematics.  These  are, 
first,  astronomy,  and,  above  all,  the  higher  me- 
chanics ;  then  the  greater  part  of  physics  and 
chemistry,  as  also  a  good  deal  of  physiology,  and 
only  a  very  small  portion  of  morphology.  In 
the  last-named  department  of  biology  the  phe- 
nomena are  so  complex,  so  variable,  that,  as  a 
rule  with  respect  to  them,  the  mathematical 
method  is  out  of  the  question.  Though  we  may) 
as  a  broad  principle,  require  for  all  sciences  an 
exact  and  even  a  mathematical  basis,  and  though 
the  possibility  of  finding  such  a  basis  may  be  ad- 
mitted, nevertheless,  in  nearly  all  the  branches 
of  biology  we  are  absolutely  unable  to  comply 
with  this  condition.  Here  the  historical,  the  his- 
torico-philosophical  method  is  the  best  substitute 
for  the  exact  or  physico-mathematical  method. 

This  is  particularly  true  of  morphology.  In 
truth,  we  attain  scientific  knowledge  of  organic 
forms  only  through  the  history  of  their  develop- 
ment. The  great  progress  of  our  times  in  this 
branch  of  science  comes  from  the  fact  that  we 
have  extended  the  signification  and  the  scope  of 
the  history  of  development  infinitely  beyond  the 
limits  it  had  before  Darwin's  day.  Before  his 
time,  that  term  was  applied  only  to  the  develop- 
ment of  the  organized  individual,  now  styled  em- 
bryology or  ontogeny.  When  the  botanist  traced 
the  plant  to  its  seed,  or  the  zoologist  the  animal 
to  the  egg,  they  both  supposed  that  with  this 
history  of  the  embryo  they  had  settled  the  whole 
question  of  morphology.  Our  greatest  embryolo- 
gists,  Wolff,  Baer,  Remack,  Schleiden,  and  (till  re- 
cently) the  whole  school  founded  by  them,  knew 
only  of  individual  embryology.  Nowadays,  and 
for  us,  the  mysterious  phenomena  of  embryology 
are  very  different  things.  They  are  no  longer 
incomprehensible  enigmas ;  we  grasp  their  pro- 
found  meaning.      In   obedience  to  the  laws  of 

1  Dysteleology  treats  of  rudimentary  organs  ns  con- 
tradicting the  "  conformity  to  an  end  "  of  the  support- 
ers of  teleology,  or  the  doctrine  of  final  causes. 


THE  EVOLUTION  THEORY. 


291 


heredity,  the  different  states  assumed  under  our 
own  eyes  in  a  very  brief  period  by  the  embryo 
are  simply  a  condensed  and  abridged  summing  up 
of  the  corresponding  form-changes  through  which 
the  ancestors  of  the  form  underexamination  have 
passed  in  the  course  of  ages.  From  a  hen's-egg, 
placed  in  a  hatching  apparatus,  we  see  coming 
forth  after  twenty-one  days  a  young  chick ;  we 
are  no  longer  mute  with  wonder  at  the  marvel- 
ous changes  which  conduct  us  from  the  simple 
ovula-cell  to  the  gastrula,  from  the  gastrula  to 
the  vermiform  and  acephalous  embryo,  and  from 
the  latter  to  the  higher  embryonic  forms  which 
present  the  organization  of  a  fish,  an  amphibian, 
a  reptile,  and  finally  a  bird.  What  is  more,  we 
from  all  this  infer  the  series  of  corresponding  an- 
cestral forms  from  the  unicellular  amoeba  to  the 
gastraa,  and  so  on  through  Vermes,  Acrania, 
Fishes,  Amphibia,  and  Reptilia,  to  the  Birds. 
Thus  does  the  series  of  embryonic  forms  in  the 
chicken  present  to  us  a  sketch-list  of  its  real 
ancestors. 

The  direct,  original  connection,  then,  which  ex- 
ists between  the  embryology  of  the  individual  and 
the  genealogical  history  of  its  ancestors,  con- 
stitutes our  fundamental  biogenetic  law,  and  is 
summed  up  in  this  brief  expression  :  embryology 
(or  ontogeny)  is  a  synopsis  of  genealogy  (or  phylo- 
geny),  the  laws  of  heredity  being  the  condition. 
This  palingenetic  abridgment  is  momentarily  dis- 
turbed only  when  there  appear,  in  consequence 
of  adaptation  to  the  conditions  of  embryonic  life, 
cenogenetic  modifications. 

The  phylogenetic  meaning  of  embryological 
phenomena  is  the  only  explanation  we  can  offer 
of  them  as  yet — an  explanation  that  is  confirmed 
in  the  highest  degree  and  completed  by  the  re- 
sults of  comparative  anatomy  and  paleontology. 
The  truth  is,  that  this  matter  does  not  admit  of 
exact  or  even  experimental  demonstration.  For 
all  these  biological  data,  from  the  very  nature  of 
things,  have  to  do  with  historical  and  philosophi- 
cal natural  science.  Their  common  aim  is  to  dis- 
cover historic  facts  which,  in  the  lapse  of  many 
thousands  of  years,  took  place  on  the  surface  of 
our  young  planet,  long  before  the  coming  of  the 
human  race.  Direct,  exact  demonstration  of  them 
is  a  thing  utterly  beyond  the  limits  of  possibility. 

By  a  critical  study  of  the  historical  archives, 
and  by  a  prudent  though  bold  use  of  speculative 
hypothesis,  we  may  indirectly  come  at  the  truth. 
Phylogeny  turns  these  historic  data  to  account, 
and  determines  their  significance  after  the  same 
manner  as  the  other  historical  sciences.  Just  as 
the  historian,  with   the  aid  of  chronicles,  biog- 


raphies, and  private  letters,  faithfully  describes 
for  us  events  that  occurred  long  ago;  as  the 
archaeologist,  from  the  study  of  sculptures,  inscrip- 
tions, utensils,  learns  the  grade  of  civilization 
reached  by  a  people  that  long  since  disappeared ; 
as  the  philologist,  by  comparing  kindred  lan- 
guages, whether  in  their  present  state  or  in  their 
most  ancient  documents,  shows  that  they  have  de- 
veloped and  that  they  have  their  source  in  a  com- 
mon mother-language — so  the  naturalist,  by  mak- 
ing critical  use  of  the  phylogenetic  archives  of 
comparative  anatomy,  ontogeny,  and  paleontology, 
acquires  an  approximately  correct  knowledge  of 
the  facts  which,  in  the  lapse  of  untold  ages,  have 
brought  about  changes  in  the  forms  of  organic 
life  upon  the  earth. 

The  genealogical  history  of  organisms  or  phy- 
logeny cannot  rest  on  foundations  more  exact, 
more  experimental,  than  its  elder  and  more  fa- 
vored sister,  geology.  Nevertheless  the  scientific 
value  of  the  latter  is  now  universally  recognized. 
Only  an  ignorant  person  can  now  smile  incred- 
ulously on  being  told  that  the  mighty  ranges  of 
the  Alps,  whose  snow-capped  crests  glisten  from 
afar,  consist  simply  of  indurated  sea-ooze.  The 
stratification  of  these  mountains,  and  the  fossils 
imbedded  in  them,  admit  no  other  explanation, 
though  the  thing  is  incapable  of  exact  demon- 
stration. All  geologists  to-day  agree  in  admit- 
ting a  succession,  a  fixed  classification  of  these 
Alpine  strata,  though  this  classification  presup- 
poses a  stratigraphic  system  that  nowhere  exists 
unbroken.  Do  not  our  phylogenetic  hypotheses 
possess  the  same  value  as  these  generally-accepted 
geological  hypotheses  ?  The  only  difference  be- 
tween them  is  that  this  vast  hypothetical  ensem- 
ble of  geology  is  incomparably  more  perfect,  more 
simple,  more  easily  comprehended,  than  that  of 
phylogeny,  which  is  still  young. 

The  historical  sciences  of  Nature,  geology 
and  phylogeny,  constitute  a  strong  bond  between 
the  exact  natural  sciences  on  the  one  hand,  and 
the  purely  historical,  intellectual  sciences  on  the 
other.  Thus  does  biology  in  general,  but  particu- 
larly systematic  zoology  and  botany,  rise  actually 
to  the  grade  of  natural  history — a  title  of  honor 
which  they  have  long  borne,  but  which  they  de- 
serve only  in  our  own  time.  If  these  sciences  are 
still  oftentimes  designated,  and  even  in  official 
quarters,  "  descriptive  "  sciences,  as  distinguished 
from  the  "explicative"  sciences,  that  fact  only 
shows  how  erroneous  an  idea  people  have  hith- 
erto had  of  their  true  scope.  Since  the  natural 
system  of  organisms  has  come  to  be  regarded  as 
the  expression  of  their  genealogy,  systematics, 


292 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


with  its  dry  descriptions,  gives  place  to  the  more 
vivid  history  of  the  genealogy  of  classes  and 
species. 

But,  whatever  we  may  think  of  this  enormous 
progress  of  morphology,  it  does  not  of  itself  suf- 
fice to  explain  the  extraordinary  influence  of  the 
present  doctrine  of  evolution  upon  general  sci- 
ence, or  the  philosophy  of  Nature.  That  influ- 
ence depends,  as  we  know,  rather  on  the  special 
consequences  of  the  theory  of  descent  as  applied 
to  man.  The  ancient  question  of  the  origin  of 
our  own  species  is,  for  the  first  time,  solved  by 
this  theory  in  a  scientific  sense.  If  the  doctrine 
of  evolution  is  true  in  general ;  if  there  is,  in- 
deed, a  natural  and  historic  genealogy  of  living 
beings,  then  man,  too,  the  lord  of  creation,  is  de- 
scended from  the  sub-kingdom  Vertebrata,  the 
class  Mammalia,  the  sub-class  Placentalia,  and 
the  order  Monkeys.  Already  in  1*735,  Linne,  in 
his  "System  of  Nature,"  classed  man  with  the 
monkeys  and  the  bats,  in  the  order  of  Primates. 
None  of  the  later  zoologists  have  been  able  to 
separate  him  from  the  Mammalia.  Conclusion : 
this  place  unanimously  assigned  to  him  in  classi- 
fication means  phylogenetically  only  one  thing,  to 
wit,  that  he  is  a  branch  of  that  class  of  ani- 
mals. 

In  vain  has  every  effort  been  made  to  invali- 
date this  pregnant  consequence  of  the  doctrine 
of  evolution ;  vain  has  been  every  attempt  at 
making  an  exception  in  favor  of  man,  and  saving 
him  from  such  an  ancestry ;  in  vain  has  been 
constructed  for  him  an  ancestral  line  distinct  from 
the  genealogical  tree  of  the  Vertebrata.  The 
phylogenetic  data  of  comparative  anatomy,  on- 
togeny, and  paleontology,  speak  so  plainly  in  fa- 
vor of  a  unitary  derivation  of  all  vertebrate  ani- 
mals sprung  from  a  common  source,  that  doubt  is 
impossible.  No  philologist  who  compares  the 
German,  Russian,  Latin,  Greek,  and  Sanskrit  lan- 
guages, will  say  that  they  may  have  sprung  from 
different  sources,  however  great  the  differences 
between  them  may  be.  Nay,  all  are  agreed,  as  a 
result  of  critical  study  of  the  structure  and  the 
development  of  these  diverse  languages,  that 
they  all  descend  from  the  Aryan  or  Indo-Ger- 
tnanic.  So,  too,  all  morphologists  are  profoundly 
impressed  with  the  idea,  in  short  convinced,  that 
all  the  Vertebrata,  from  amphioxus  to  man  inclu- 
sively— that  all  fishes,  amphibians,  reptiles,  birds, 
and  mammals,  are  the  descendants  of  one  primitive 
vertebrate.  Indeed,  we  cannot  suppose  that  the 
life-conditions,  varied  and  complex  as  they  are, 
which  through  a  long  line  of  evolutive  processes 
have  led  to  the  creation  of  the  vertebrate  type, 


have  occurred  more  than  once  in  the  course  of 
the  earth's  history. 

For  the  subject  in  hand,  we  are  concerned 
only  with  man's  animal  origin.  We  therefore 
will  dwell  no  longer  on  the  lower  stages  of  our 
genealogy.  We  would  merely,  in  passing,  state 
that  its  upper  stages  are  now  firmly  established, 
thanks  to  the  labors  of  distinguished  morpholo- 
gists, among  whom  Gegenbaur  and  Huxley  hold 
the  first  rank. 

True,  it  is  still  often  asserted  that  here  we 
have  to  do  only  with  the  descent,  the  origin  of 
man's  body,  and  not  of  his  intellectual  functions. 
To  meet  this  serious  objection  we  must,  first  of 
all,  bear  in  mind  the  physiological  fact  that  our 
life  is  inseparably  tied  to  the  organization  of  our 
central  nervous  system.  Now,  the  latter  is  con- 
stituted like  the  same  system  in  the  higher  verte- 
brates, and  comes  into  existence  in  the  same  way ; 
even  according  to  Huxley's  researches  the  struct- 
ural differences  existing  between  the  brain  of 
man  and  that  of  the  higher  monkeys  are  much 
less  than  the  differences  between  the  higher  and 
the  lower  monkeys.  Besides,  the  function  or 
work  of  an  organ  cannot  be  thought  of  without 
the  organ  itself,  and  the  function  always  devel- 
ops simultaneously  with  the  organ.  Hence  we 
are  forced  to  the  conclusion  that  our  psychic  fac- 
ulties have  been  developed  slowly,  gradually,  in  a 
ratio  with  the  phylogenetic  building  up  of  our  brain 

For  the  rest,  this  great  question  of  the  soul 
comes  up  before  us  now  in  a  very  different  aspect 
from  that  it  wore  twenty  or  even  ten  years  ago. 
Under  whatever  form  we  may  picture  to  ourselves 
the  union  of  soul  and  body,  of  spirit  and  matter, 
it  is  still  clear,  on  the  theory  of  evolution,  that  all 
organic  matter  at  least,  if  not  matter  in  general, 
is  in  some  sense  possessed  of  psychic  properties. 
In  the  first  place  the  progress  of  microscopic  re- 
search has  shown  that  the  elementary  anatomic 
parts  of  organs — the  cells — generally  possess  an 
individual  psychic  life.  Ever  since  forty  years 
ago,  when  Schleiden  proposed  at  Jena  the  cell- 
theory  of  the  vegetable  kingdom — which  theory 
was  straightway  applied  by  Schwann  to  the  ani- 
mal kingdom — we  ascribe  to  these  microscopic 
beings  an  individual  life  of  their  own.  Cells  are, 
according  to  Briicke,  true  individuals  of  the  first 
(or  lowest)  order — elementary  organisms.  The 
fruitful  application  made  by  Virchow  in  his  "  Cel- 
lular Pathology "  of  the  theory  in  question  to 
medicine  in  general,  presupposes  that  the  cells 
must  not  be  regarded  as  the  inert,  passive  mate- 
rials of  the  organism,  but  as  the  living  and  active 
members  of  the  same  state. 


TEE  EVOLUTION  TEEORY. 


293 


Finally,  this  view  rests  upon  the  study  of  In- 
fusoria, Amoebae,  and  other  one-celled  organisms. 
In  them  we  again  find,  in  the  individual,  isolated 
cells,  the  same  manifestations  of  psychic  life,  sen- 
sation and  perception,  will  and  movement,  as  in 
the  higher  animals,  which  consist  of  multitudi- 
nous cells.  In  sociate  as  well  as  in  solitary  cells 
the  psychical  life  resides  in  one  and  the  same 
substance — protoplasm.  Further,  we  know  that 
moneres  and  other  rudimentary  organisms — mere 
detached  bits  of  protoplasm — possess  sensation 
and  the  power  of  movement,  just  as  does  the  en- 
tire cell.  From  this  we  should  conclude  that  the 
cell-soul,  which  is  the  basis  of  scientific  psycholo- 
gy, is  itself  only  a  compound,  i.  e.,  the  sum  of 
the  psychic  properties  of  the  protoplasmic  mole- 
cules, called  also  plastidules.1  Thus  the  soul  of 
the  plastidule  would  be  the  ultimate  factor  to 
which  could  be  reduced  the  psychic  life  of  living 
things. 

Does  the  doctrine  of  evolution  hereby  ex- 
haust its  psychological  analysis  ?  By  no  means. 
The  new  organic  chemistry  teaches  us  that  it  is 
the  physical  and  chemical  properties  of  a  certain 
element,  carbon,  which,  by  its  complex  combina- 
tions with  other  elements,  produces  the  special 
psychological  properties  of  organized  bodies,  and 
in  particular  of  protoplasm.  The  moneres,  con- 
sisting only  of  protoplasm,  form  as  it  were  a 
bridge  over  the  deep  gulf  which  divides  organic 
from  inorganic  Nature.  They  show  us  how  the 
simplest  organisms  must  have  sprung,  in  the  be- 
ginning, from  inorganic  carbon  combinations.  If 
a  certain  number  of  carbon-atoms  combined  with 
a  certain  number  of  hydrogen,  oxygen,  nitrogen, 
and  sulphur  atoms  to  form  a  unit,  a  plastidule, 
we  may  regard  the  soul  of  the  plastidule,  that  is 
to  say,  the  sum  total  of  its  vital  properties,  as  the 
necessary  product  of  the  forces  of  all  the  atoms 
combined.  Then,  from  the  monistic  point  of 
view,  we  may  call  this  sum  of  the  atomic  forces 
the  soul  of  the  atom.  From  the  chance  meeting 
and  the  multiplied  combinations  of  these  atom- 
souls — always  constant,  always  incommutable — 
come  the  multiple  and  highly-variable  souls  of 
the  plastidules,  which  are  the  molecular  factors 
of  organic  life. 

Having  reached  these  extreme  psychological 
consequences  of  the  monistic  doctrine,  or  of  the 
doctrine  of  evolution,  we  meet  again  those  an- 
cient '  conceptions  of  the  universal  animation  of 

1  Plastidules,  protoplasm  molecules  considered  as 
the  elementary  factors  of  all  vital  properties.  They 
are.  so  to  speak,  organic  atoms,  the  atoms  of  the  pby- 
iioloeist. 


matter,  which  have  been  variously  expressed  by 
such  philosophers  as  Democritus,  Spinoza,  Bru- 
no, Leibnitz,  and  Schopenhauer.  All  psychic  life 
is  ultimately  reducible  to  two  elementary  functions, 
namely,  sensation  and  motion :  on  the  one  hand, 
excitation  ;  on  the  other,  reflex  movements.  The 
simple  sensation  of  pleasure  or  displeasure,  the 
simple  motion  of  attraction  or  of  repulsion,  are 
the  sole  elements  which,  by  an  endless  series  of 
complex  combinations,  constitute  the  whole  sum 
of  psychic  activity.  The  hate  or  the  love  of 
atoms,  the  attraction  or  the  repulsion  of  mole- 
cules, the  motion  and  sensation  of  cells  and  cel- 
lular organisms,  the  thought  and  consciousness 
of  man,  these  are  the  different  steps  of  one  and 
the  same  evolutive  psychological  process. 

The  unitary  conception  of  the  universe,  or 
monism,  toward  which  the  new  doctrine  of  evolu- 
tion leads  us,  puts  an  end  to  the  opposition  which 
has  hitherto  existed  between  the  various  dualistie 
systems  of  the  universe.  It  avoids  the  narrow- 
ness of  both  materialism  and  spiritualism  ;  it  com- 
bines practical  idealism  with  theoretical  realism  ; 
it  unites  the  science  of  Nature  and  the  science  of 
mind  in  one  unitary  general  science,  which  com- 
prises all. 

The  present  theory  of  evolution  is  not  only  of 
very  great  theoretical  value,  as  forming  the  con- 
necting link  between  these  different  sciences ;  it 
furthermore  yields  practical  results.  Neither  medi- 
cine, considered  as  an  applied  natural  science,  nor 
political  economy,  jurisprudence,  or  theology,  in 
so  far  as  they  form  a  part  of  applied  philosophy, 
can  henceforth  resist  its  influence.  Nay,  I  am 
convinced  that  it  is  precisely  in  such  domains 
that  it  will  prove  to  be  the  most  powerful  lever 
of  progress  and  perfectionment ;  and,  inasmuch 
as  the  great  aim  of  the  sciences  just  named  is  the 
education  of  the  young,  the  doctrine  of  evolution, 
as  being  the  most  potent  instrument  of  education, 
must  make  its  authoritative  voice  heard  even  in 
the  school-room.  It  must  not  enter  the  school 
simply  by  tolerance,  but  must  be  its  directing 
principle. 

If  I  may  be  permitted  briefly  to  call  attention 
to  the  more  important  aspects  of  this  question,  I 
would  first  of  all  dwell  upon  the  paramount  advan- 
tages of  the  genetic  method.  Both  teachers  and 
pupils  will  take  infinitely  greater  interest  in  the 
subject-matter  of  instruction,  if,  first  of  all,  they 
put  to  themselves  the  question,  "  How  did  this 
thing  come  into  existence — how  did  it  develop  ?  " 
With  the  question  of  development  comes  that  of 
causality,  and  after  all  it  is  the  knowledge  that 
we   acquire   of  proximate  causes,  and   not  the 


294 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


knowledge  of  facts  themselves,  that  satisfies  our 
desire  of  knowing  and  our  reason.  The  knowledge 
of  the  simple  general  causes  to  which  phenomena 
the  most  diverse  and  the  most  complex  are  refer- 
able, at  once  simplifies  and  deepens  our  instruc- 
tion. The  understanding  of  causes  changes  a  dry 
science  into  one  of  vivid  interest.  The  true  meas- 
ure of  intellectual  development  is  not  the  quan- 
tity of  facts  learned,  but  the  way  in  which  we 
understand  their  causes. 

To  what  extent  are  the  fundamental  principles 
of  the  doctrine  of  evolution  to  be  introduced  into 
the  schools  ?  In  what  order  are  its  principal 
branches — cosmogony,  geology,  animal  and  plant 
phylogeny,  anthropology — to  be  taught  in  the 
various  classes  ?  That  is  a  matter  to  be  decided 
by  the  professors  themselves.  I  believe  that  com- 
prehensive reformation  of  our  school  system  in 
this  direction  is  inevitable,  and  that  it  will  be 
eminently  successful.  What  a  gain  it  would  be, 
for  instance,  if  that  important  branch  of  instruc- 
tion, languages,  were  treated  according  to  the 
comparative  and  genetic  method !  What  in- 
creased interest  would  be  given  to  physical  geog- 
raphy, if  it  were  genetically  connected  with  geol- 
ogy !  What  new  life  and  light  would  be  infused 
into  the  dry  and  wearisome  systematics  of  animal 
and  plant  forms,  were  they  to  be  represented 
simply  as  the  divergent  branches  of  a  common 
genealogical  stem  !  Finally,  how  different  the 
idea  we  should  have  of  our  own  organism,  were 
we  no  longer  to  regard  ourselves,  on  the  authori- 
ty of  myths  and  phantoms,  as  the  fictitious  image 
of  an  anthropomorphic  creator,  but  rather,  in 
the  clear  light  of  phylogeny,  to  consider  ourselves 
as  the  most  highly-developed  form  of  the  animal 
kingdom — as  an  organism  which,  in  the  course 
of  millions  and  millions  of  years,  has  gradually 
been  evolved  from  a  long  line  of  vertebrate  an- 
cestors, and  which  in  the  struggle  for  life  has 
risen  high  above  its  kindred ! 

By  stimulating  every  branch  of  instruction, 
the  theory  of  evolution  will  awaken  in  the  breasts 
of  masters  and  pupils  the  consciousness  of  their 
true  dependence.  As  an  historical  science  it  will 
reconcile  the  two  systems  of  instruction  which 
are  at  present  vying  with  each  other  for  mastery 
in  the  school — the  old,  classic,  historico-philo- 
sophical  system  on  the  one  hand ;  the  new,  exact, 
physico-mathematical  system  on  the  other.  Both 
are  equally  correct,  equally  indispensable.  The 
human  mind  will  not  attain  its  perfect  develop- 
ment save  by  satisfying  both  at  once.  If,  hith- 
erto, education  has  been  too  exclusively  classi- 
cal, a  like   thing  happens   too  often   nowadays 


in  the  exact  education.  The  doctrine  of  evolu- 
tion reduces  the  two  systems  to  a  true  propor- 
tion by  serving  as  a  bond  of  union  between  exact 
science  and  classical  science — the  science  of  Na- 
ture and  the  science  of  mind.  It  points  out  ev- 
erywhere the  tide  of  life  which  flows  with  a  single, 
unbroken  stream.  Everywhere  it  discloses  to  the 
assiduous  seeker  fresh  scientific  conquests  to  be 
achieved ;  it  "  gently  brings  the  mind  to  the 
truth."  This  boundless  perspective  of  progres- 
sive perfectionment  which  is  opened  to  us  by  the 
doctrine  of  evolution  is  the  strongest  protest 
against  the  pitiable  "  ignorabimus  "  which  is  re- 
echoed from  all  sides.  No  man  can  foretell  at 
what  "  limits  "  the  human  mind  will  stand  still  in 
the  conquest  of  Nature,  or  how  far  its  invading 
progress  will  extend  in  the  future. 

The  most  urgent  demand,  and  the  one  most  dif- 
ficult to  comply  with,  addressed  by  practical  phi- 
losophy to  the  evolution  doctrine  is,  it  appears  to 
me,  the  demand  for  a  new  morality.  No  doubt 
the  development  of  moral  character,  of  religious 
convictions,  will  hereafter,  as  hitherto,  be  the 
great  concern  of  education.  But  hitherto,  in  all 
classes  of  society,  the  conviction  has  been  that 
moral  precepts  are  closely  connected  with  cer- 
tain ecclesiastical  tenets  ;  and  since  these  tenets, 
or  dogmas — mixed  up  as  they  are  with  old  crea- 
tion-myths— are  in  absolute  contradiction  with 
the  evolution  doctrine,  it  has  been  supposed  that 
the  existence  of  religion  and  morality  was  in  dan- 
ger from  that  doctrine. 

This  apprehension  is,  in  my  opinion,  baseless. 
It  is  the  result  of  confounding  natural  religion, 
which  is  true  and  rational,  with  the  dogmatic  and 
mythological  religion  of  the  Church.  The  com- 
parative history  of  religions,  which  is  one  of 
the  most  important  branches  of  anthropology, 
teaches  us  how  diversified  are  the  garments  in 
which  different  nations  and  periods,  in  accord- 
ance with  their  respective  characters  and  needs, 
are  wont  to  clothe  the  religious  idea.  From  it  we 
learn  that  even  the  dogmas  of  the  Church  itself 
have  slowly  and  uninterruptedly  developed.  New 
churches  and  new  sects  arise ;  old  ones  die  out. 
How  long  does  any  given  form  of  belief  persist, 
under  the  most  favorable  conditions  ?  A  thou- 
sand years  or  two — a  brief  span  of  time,  which 
is  lost  in  the  eternity  of  the  geological  ages.  Fi- 
nally, the  comparative  history  of  civilization  also 
shows  us  how  faint  is  the  connection  between 
true  morality  and  any  definite  form  of  faith  or  of 
church  constitution.  Often  the  utmost  brutality, 
the  extremest  savagery  of  manners,  are  associated 
with  the  absolute  predominance  of  a  church.    We 


THE  EVOLUTION  THEORY. 


295 


have  only  to  look  at  the  middle  ages.  On  the 
other  hand,  we  find  the  highest  degree  of  morality 
in  men  who  are  entirely  freed  from  church  creeds. 

Outside  of  all  creeds  and  churches,  there  ex- 
ists in  germ  in  the  heart  of  every  man  a  true  natural 
religion,  which  is  inseparably  identified  with  our  na- 
ture's best  side.  Its  first  precept  is  love  and  the 
abnegation  of  our  natural  egoism  in  favor  of  our 
neighbor,  and  in  view  of  the  good  of  the  race  to 
which  we  belong.  This  moral  law  is  more  ancient 
than  church  religion ;  it  is  the  development  of 
the  social  instincts  of  animals.  The  beginnings 
of  it  we  find  among  divers  classes  of  mammals, 
birds,  and  insects.  Agreeably  to  the  law  of  as- 
sociation and  the  division  of  labor,  many  indi 
viduals  unite  to  form  a  community,  a  common- 
wealth. The  existence  of  these  commonwealths 
necessarily  depends  on  the  reciprocal  relations  of 
their  members,  and  on  each  one  foregoing  his  in- 
dividual interest  for  the  good  of  the  whole.  The 
consciousness  of  this  necessity,  the  feeling  of 
duty,  is  simply  a  social  instinct,  and  instinct  is 
always  a  psychic  habit  which,  acquired  through 
adaptation  and  then  becoming  hereditary,  at  last 
appears  to  be  innate. 

If  we  would  understand  the  great  force  of  the 
sentiment  of  duty  in  animals,  we  need  only  over- 
turn an  ant-hill.  What  do  we  see  amid  the  ruin  ? 
We  see  thousands  of  ant-citizens  all  intent,  not 
on  saving  their  own  lives,  but  in  protecting  the 
precious  commonwealth  to  which  they  belong. 
The  doughty  men-at-arms  make  sturdy  opposition 
when  we  would  introduce  our  hand  ;  the  nurses 
of  the  young  ones  save  the  so-called  "  ants'-eggs  " 
— the  nymphae  on  whom  the  future  of  the  com- 
munity depends ;  the  industrious  workers  begin 
on  the  spot,  with  indomitable  courage,  to  clear 
away  the  debris,  and  to  construct  a  new  dwelling- 
place.  The  wonderful  degree  of  civilization  found 
among  ants,  bees,  and  other  social  species,  sprung 
originally  from  the  rudest  beginnings,  just  as  our 
human  civilization  did. 


Nay,  even  the  tenderest  affections  of  the  hu- 
man heart,  those  which  inspire  all  our  poetry,  we 
find  in  germ  in  the  animal  kingdom.  What  shall 
we  say  of  the  deep  mother's  love  of  the  lioness, 
the  touching  conjugal  affection  of  parrots  known 
as  "inseparable,"  the  devotion  and  fidelity  of  the 
dog  ?  The  noble  sentiments  of  sympathy  and  love 
which  thus  find  expression  are  but  perfected  in- 
stincts, as  is  the  case  in  man  himself. 

So  understood,  the  ethics  of  the  evolution 
theory  does  not  need  to  seek  for  new  principles  ; 
we  have  only  to  refer  to  their  true  bases  the  an- 
cient precepts  of  duty.  Long  prior  to  all  church 
religions,  these  natural  precepts  governed  man's 
common  and  legal  life,  just  as  they  governed  the 
social  life  of  animals.  The  churches  should 
utilize  these  weighty  data,  instead  of  combating 
them.  The  future  is  not  of  that  theology  which 
vainly  struggles  against  the  victorious  doctrine 
of  evolution,  but  rather  of  that  which  will  adopt 
it  and  turn  it  to  account. 

Far  from  apprehending,  from  the  influence  of 
the  evolution  doctrine  on  our  religious  convictions, 
an  overthrowing  of  all  existing  moral  laws,  and  a 
deplorable  emancipation  of  egoism,  we  look  rather 
for  the  establishment  of  natural  morals  based  on 
the  immovable  foundation  of  natural  laws.  By 
acquainting  us  with  our  true  place  in  Nature,  an- 
thropogeny  demonstrates  the  necessity  of  our  an- 
cient social  obligations. 

Like  the  theoretic  philosophy  of  Nature,  prac- 
tical philosophy,  and  pedagogy,  henceforth  will 
derive  their  principles  not  from  pretended  revela- 
tions, but  from  the  natural  conceptions  of  the 
doctrine  of  evolution.  This  victory  of  monism 
over  dualism  opens  to  us  rich  horizons  of  hope 
for  the  unending  progress  of  our  development, 
moral  as  well  as  intellectual.  Bearing  all  this  in 
mind,  we  must  say,  All  hail  to  the  evolution  the- 
ory, reconstituted  in  our  day  by  Darwin  ;  it  is  the 
mightiest  lever  of  general  science,  or  Nature- 
philosophy,  both  pure  and  applied  ! 


296 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


THE  LIBERTY  OF  SCIENCE  IN  THE  MODERN  STATE.1 

By  Professor  RUDOLF  VIECHOW,  of  Berlin  University. 


WHEN  the  committee  of  arrangements  hon- 
ored me  with  an  invitation  to  address 
the  meeting  from  this  place,  I  asked  myself 
whether  it  was  not  best  to  discuss  one  special 
topic  of  the  recent  development  of  our  science 
from  a  point  of  view  originally  proposed  by  my- 
self, but  more  recently  recalled  to  your  minds  by 
Herr  Klebs.  I  have,  however,  once  more  con- 
cluded to  treat  a  subject  of  general  interest,  prin- 
cipally because,  as  I  believe,  the  time  has  come 
when  some  understanding  must  be  reached  be- 
tween science  as  represented  and  studied  by  us, 
on  the  one  hand,  and  the  general  life  of  the  com- 
munity on  the  other ;  and  also  because  in  the 
history  of  the  nations  of  Continental  Europe  the 
time  is  even  now  coming  on  apace  when  the  in- 
tellectual destinies  of  nations  must  be  determined, 
perhaps  for  a  long  time  to  come,  in  the  tribunals 
of  last  resort. 

Not  for  the  first  time,  gentlemen,  am  I  able 
at  a  meeting  of  German  naturalists  to  point  in 
warning  to  almost  dramatic  occurrences  in  our 
neighbor  state.  Again  and  again,  at  times  when 
this  Association  has  met,  I  have  had  occasion  to 
refer  to  events  which  had  just  taken  place  be- 
yond the  Rhine ;  and  these,  however  remote  they 
may  appear  to  be  from  our  concernments,  never- 
theless, in  the  long-run,  always  touch  upon  the 
same  domain  of  controversy — namely,  the  role 
of  modern  science  in  the  modern  state.  To  be 
frank — and  here  we  may,  perhaps,  be  doubly  so 
— the  question  that  is  ever  pressing  upon  us  is 
that  of  Ultramontanism  and  Orthodoxy.  I  con- 
fess that  it  is  with  unfeigned  alarm  that  I  look 
forward  to  the  events  of  the  next  few  years 
among  our  neighbors.  At  the  present  moment 
we  here  may  look  about  us  with  some  pride  and 
await  the  tide  of  events  with  a  degree  of  calm- 
ness. But  to-day,  when  we  are  engaged  in  cele- 
brating the  fiftieth  anniversary  of  this  assembly, 
it  is  surely  opportune  to  call  to  mind  what  great 
changes  have  taken  place  in  Germany,  and  par- 
ticularly in  Munich,  since  the  days  when  Oken 
first  assembled  the  German  naturalists  and  physi- 
cians. 

1  An  address  delivered  at  the  Munich  meeting  of 
the  Gorman  Association  of  Physicians  and  Naturalists. 
Nature's  translation,  revised  and  corrected  by  J. 
Fitzgerald,  A.  M. 


I  propose  only  to  refer  very  briefly  to  two 
facts  that,  though  well  known,  are  still  of  suffi- 
cient interest  to  be  mentioned  again.  The  first 
is  that,  even  when  in  1822  the  few  members  con- 
stituting the  first  assembly  of  German  naturalists 
met  at  Leipsic,  the  holding  of  such  a  meeting 
seemed  so  hazardous  a  thing  that  the  sessions 
were  held  in  secret.  It  was  not  till  1861 — 
39  years  later — that  the  names  of  the  mem- 
bers who  had  been  present  from  Austria  could 
be  published.  The  second  fact,  which  has  direct 
reference  to  the  memory  of  Oken,  is  that  this 
esteemed  and  illustrious  teacher,  this  ornament 
of  the  Munich  High-School,  was  fated  to  die  in 
exile  in  the  same  Swiss  canton  in  which  Ulrich 
von  Hutten  ended  his  life  of  trouble  and  conflict. 
Gentlemen,  the  bitter  exile  which  oppressed 
Oken's  last  years  and  caused  him  to  languish 
away  far  from  the  spot  where  he  had  expended 
the  best  powers  of  his  life,  this  exile  will  ever 
remain  as  the  signature  of  the  period  through 
which  we  have  victoriously  passed.  And  so  long 
as  there  is  an  Association  of  German  Naturalists, 
it  behooves  us  gratefully  to  remember  that,  down 
to  the  day  of  his  death,  this  man  bore  all  the 
signs  of  a  martyr,  and  to  look  upon  him  as  one 
of  those  witnesses  unto  blood  who  have  achieved 
for  us  the  freedom  of  science. 

Nowadays,  gentlemen,  it  is  easy  to  speak  of 
the  liberty  of  science  in  Germany  ;  now  we  are 
perfectly  secure  even  here,  where,  only  a  few  de- 
cades back,  the  fear  was  great  that  a  new  change 
of  things  might  perhaps  produce  the  extreme  re- 
verse, and  we  can  without  let  or  hinderance  discuss 
the  highest  and  most  difficult  problems  of  life  and 
the  hereafter.  Surely  the  addresses  which  were 
delivered  at  the  first  and  second  general  meetings 
are  proof  sufficient  that  Munich  is  now  a  place 
which  can  bear  to  hear  the  representatives  of 
science  in  the  most  perfect  liberty.  I  was  not 
able  to  listen  to  all  these  addresses,  but  I  have 
since  read  those  of  Profs.  Haeckel  and  Nageli, 
and  I  must  say  we  cannot  ask  more  than  such 
freedom  of  discussion. 

If  it  were  only  a  question  of  rejoicing  over 

this  possession,  I  should  indeed  not  have  claimed 

your  attention  for  the   subject   in  hand.      But, 

gentlemen,  we  have  arrived  at  a  point  where  it 

I  becomes  necessary   to    investigate   whether  we 


TEE  LIBERTY  OF  SCIENCE  IN  TEE  MODERN  STATE. 


297 


may  hope  to  retain  securely  for  the  future  the 
possession  which  we  actually  enjoy.  The  fact 
that  we  are  enabled  to  discuss,  as  we  do  to-day, 
is  not  for  one  who,  like  myself,  has  had  long  ex- 
perience of  public  life,  a  sufficient  assurance  that 
it  will  always  remain  so.  Therefore,  I  think  that 
not  only  should  we  strive  to  awaken  the  interest 
of  the  public,  but  I  believe  we  should  ask  our- 
selves what  we  must  do  to  maintain  the  present 
condition  of  things.  I  will  tell  you  at  once,  gen- 
tlemen, what  I  conceive  to  be  the  chief  result  of 
my  reflections,  and  what  I  most  desire  to  prove. 
I  wish  to  show  that,  for  the  present,  we  have 
nothing  more  to  ask,  but  that,  on  the  contrary, 
we  have  now  reached  the  point  where  it  must 
needs  be  our  special  task,  by  our  moderation, 
and  by  a  certain  renunciation  of  pet  theories  and 
personal  views,  to  make  it  possible  for  the  favor- 
able disposition  of  the  nation,  which  we  now  en- 
joy, to  persist  and  not  to  change  to  the  contrary. 
In  my  opinion,  we  are  actually  in  danger  of 
compromising  the  future  by  making  too  ample 
use  of  the  freedom  afforded  by  the  present  state 
of  things ;  and  I  would  warn  you  against  indulg- 
ing such  caprices  of  personal  speculation  as  you 
see  nowadays  displayed  in  sundry  departments  of 
natural  science.  The  discourses  of  those  who 
have  preceded  me,  that  of  Prof.  Nageli  in  particu- 
lar, contain,  for  all  who  read  them,  a  multitude 
of  highly-important  observations  on  the  course 
and  the  limits  of  scientific  knowledge  ;  but  these 
it  cannot  be  my  task  to  repeat  here.  Still,  I 
have  some  remarks  to  make  about  them,  and  I 
desire  to  adduce  a  few  practical  instances  from 
the  experience  of  natural  science,  in  order  to 
show  how  great  is  the  difference  between  real 
science  in  the  strictest  sense  of  that  term — for 
which  alone,  in  my  opinion,  we  can  justly  demand 
that  full  measure  of  liberty  which  may  be  called 
liberty  of  science,  or,  more  correctly  still,  per- 
haps, liberty  of  scientific  teaching — and,  on  the 
other  hand,  that  wider  domain  which  belongs 
rather  to  speculation  ;  which  raises  the  problems 
toward  which  research  is  to  be  directed ;  which 
by  anticipation  formulates  propositions  that  have 
yet  to  be  demonstrated,  and  whose  truth  has 
yet  to  be  discovered,  though  in  the  mean  time 
they  may  be  with  a  certain  probability  accepted, 
inasmuch  as  they  fill  up  gaps  in  our  knowl- 
edge. We  must  not  forget  that  there  exists  a 
line  of  demarkation  in  natural  science  between 
what  is  speculative  and  what  is  actually  proved 
and  ultimately  determined.  The  people  demand 
of  us  that  this  line  not  only  should  be  on  occasion 
drawn  as  clearly  as  possible,  but  that  it  be  so 


fixed  and  determined  that  every  one  shall  for  ever- 
more know  just  where  it  lies,  and  how  far  he  can 
be  required  to  accept  as  truth  what  he  is  taught. 
Such,  gentlemen,  is  the  task  on  which  we  have  to 
work  in  our  own  minds. 

The  practical  questions  which  are  connected 
with  this  lie  very  near.  It  is  evident  that,  for 
whatever  we  consider  to  be  assured  scientific  truth, 
we  must  demand  complete  admission  into  the 
scientific  treasury  of  the  nation.  This  the  nation 
must  lake  to  itself — it  must  consume  and  digest  it, 
and  continue  to  work  at  it.  Herein  lies  the 
double  advantage  which  natural  science  offers  to 
the  nation :  on  the  one  hand  the  material  progress, 
that  enormous  progress  which  has  been  made  in 
modern  times.  All  the  benefits  derived  from  the 
steam-engine,  telegraphy,  photography,  etc. ;  all 
our  discoveries  in  chemistry  and  the  production 
of  dyestuffs,  etc. — all  rest  essentially  on  the  fact 
that  we  men  of  science  establish  firmly  certain 
propositions,  and  when  these  have  been  fully 
demonstrated,  so  that  we  know  them  to  be  scien- 
tific truth,  we  give  them  to  the  nation  at  large ; 
then  others,  too,  can  work  with  them,  and  create 
new  products,  before  unthought  of,  which  come 
into  the  world  as  perfect  novelties,  and  which 
transform  the  condition  of  society  and  of  nations. 
All  this  constitutes  the  material  importance  of 
our  labors.  Their  intellectual  value  is  of  like 
importance.  If  I  present  the  nation  with  a  scien- 
tific truth  that  is  fully  demonstrated,  to  which  not 
the  least  doubt  attaches ;  if  I  ask  every  one  to 
convince  himself  of  the  correctness  of  this  truth, 
to  assimilate  it,  to  make  it  part  of  his  own 
thoughts,  of  course  I  assume  that  his  conception 
of  things  in  general  will  be  similarly  affected. 
Every  essentially  new  truth  of  this  kind  must 
needs  influence  a  man's  whole  mode  of  viewing 
things,  his  method  of  thinking. 

If,  for  instance,  to  cite  a  ease  that  lies  near, 
we  consider  the  advances  made  during  the  past 
few  years  in  our  knowledge  of  the  human  eye, 
beginning  at  the  time  when  the  several  com- 
ponent parts  of  the  eye  were  first  anatomically 
separated,  when  these  several  anatomically  sepa- 
rated parts  were  first  examined  microscopically 
and  their  respective  structures  determined,  down 
to  the  time  when  we  gradually  learned  the  vital 
properties  and  the  physiological  functions  of  the 
different  parts,  until  at  last,  by  the  discovery  of  the 
retina-purple  (Sehpurpur),  and  its  photographic 
properties,  an  advance  was  made  of  which  but 
a  year  ago  we  hardly  had  an  idea — then  it  is 
evident  that  with  each  progressive  step  of  this 
kind  some  department  of  optics,  particularly  the 


298 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


doctrine  of  vision,  is  determined  and  changed. 
Through  this  discovery  we  get  definite  knowledge 
of  the  action  of  light  within  the  human  body  it- 
self, and  we  see  that  it  is  a  quite  peripheral  organ 
of  the  body,  not  at  all  the  brain,  but  the  eye,  that 
experiences  this  action.  Furthermore,  we  learn 
that  this  photographic  process  is  not  an  intel- 
lectual operation,  but  a  chemical  action  performed 
with  the  aid  of  certain  vital  processes;  and  that 
in  reality  what  we  see  is,  not  external  objects, 
but  their  images  in  the  eye.  We  thus  gain  a  new 
analytical  fact  to  aid  us  in  understanding  our 
relations  to  the  outer  world,  and  in  more  sharply 
distinguishing  between  the  purely  psychic  and 
the  purely  physical  elements  of  vision.  The  re- 
sult is  a  reconstruction,  in  part,  of  optics,  and,  at 
the  same  time,  of  psychology.  Chemistry  now 
steps  in  to  investigate  matters  that  heretofore  it 
had  taken  no  cognizance  of,  namely,  the  highly- 
important  questions  :  "  What  is  the  retina-purple  ? 
What  manner  of  substance  is  this  ?  How  is  it 
formed,  how  decomposed,  how  reformed?"  The 
solution  of  these  questions  will  not  fail  to  open 
an  entirely  new  field  of  research  ;  and  it  is  to  be 
hoped  also  that  we  shall  soon  witness  new  ad- 
vances in  technical  photography — that  we  shall 
be  enabled  to  produce  colored  photographs. 
Here,  then,  is  an  advance  made  simultaneously  on 
two  different  planes — progress  both  material  and 
intellectual.  And  thus  it  is  that,  with  each  real 
advance  in  the  knowledge  of  Nature,  a  series  of 
changes  must  of  necessity  take  place  not  only  in 
the  external  but  also  in  the  internal  relations  of 
man  ;  and  no  one  can  prevent  the  new  knowledge 
from  affecting  him.  Each  new  fragment  of  real 
knowledge  has  its  effect  on  man,  producing  new 
ideas,  new  trains  of  thought,  and  ultimately  every 
one  finds  himself  compelled  to  consider  even  the 
highest  problems  of  mind  in  the  light  of  natural 
phenomena. 

But  there  are  certain  practical  considerations 
that  concern  us  more  nearly.  Everywhere  through- 
out Germany  we  are  now  occupied  in  remodeling 
our  educational  systems,  enlarging  and  develop- 
ing them  and  determining  their  forms.  The  new 
Prussian  education  acts  are  on  the  threshold  of 
coming  events.  In  all  the  German  states  larger 
schoolhouses  are  being  built,  new  educational 
establishments  founded,  the  universities  enlarged, 
high-schools  and  middle  schools  established.  The 
question  arises :  "  What  is  to  be  the  chief  staple 
of  the  instruction  given  ?  What  shall  be  the  aim 
of  the  school  ?  In  what  direction  shall  it  work  ?  " 
If  natural  science  demands,  and  if  for  years  we 
ourselves  have  been  striving  to  gain,  an  influence 


in  the  schools  ;  if  we  demand  that  natural  science 
shall  be  admitted  into  the  schools  in  a  larger 
measure,  and  instilled  into  the  minds  of  the 
young,  there  to  form  the  basis  of  new  ideas,  then 
surely  is  it  high  time  for  us  to  come  to  an  under- 
standing as  to  what  we  may  and  what  we  will 
demand.  When  Prof.  Haeckel  declares  it  to  be 
a  question  for  the  schoolmaster  to  determine 
whether  the  theory  of  descent  should  even  now 
be  made  the  groundwork  of  education,  whether 
the  plastidule-soul  should  be  assumed  as  the  basis 
of  all  our  conceptions  of  Mind,  and  whether  the 
phylogeny  of  man  should  be  traced  back  to  the 
lowest  classes  of  the  organic  world,  or  beyond, 
up  to  spontaneous  generation,  in  my  opinion  ho 
shirks  the  difficulty.  If  the  theory  of  descent  is 
so  certain  as  Prof.  Haeckel  assumes  it  to  be,  we 
must  needs  demand  for  it  a  place  in  the  schools. 
It  is  not  to  be  thought  of  that  so  weighty  a  doc- 
trine, one  so  revolutionary,  so  intimately  affecting 
the  consciousness  of  all,  a  doctrine  that  of  itself 
constitutes  as  it  were  a  new  religion,  should  not 
be  implanted  bodily  in  the  system  of  education. 
How  could  we  bring  ourselves  to  observe  abso- 
lute silence  in  the  schools,  with  regard  to  such  a 
revelation,  as  I  may  call  it,  or  to  leave  it  to  the 
option  of  the  schoolmaster,  whether  or  not  he 
shall  acquaint  his  pupils  with  the  greatest  and 
most  important  advances  that  have  been  made  in 
science  during  this  entire  century  ?  That,  gentle- 
men, were  an  act  of  resignation  of  the  austerest 
kind,  and  in  reality  it  never  would  be  practised. 
The  schoolmaster  who  accepted  the  doctrine 
would  teach  it  unconsciously,  and  he  could  not 
do  otherwise.  He  would  have  to  dissimulate,  he 
would  at  times  have  to  abdicate  his  own  knowl- 
edge in  the  most  artificial  way,  so  as  not  to  be- 
tray his  acquaintance  with  and  acceptance  of  the 
doctrine  of  descent,  or  the  fact  that  he  knows 
precisely  how  man  originated  and  whence  he  is 
come ;  and  if  he  does  not  know  whither  man  goes, 
at  least  he  would  think  that  he  knows  precisely 
how  in  the  course  of  aeons  the  progressive  series 
has  shaped  itself.  Therefore,  I  say  that,  though 
we  were  not  actually  to  demand  the  admission  of 
the  theory  of  descent  into  the  plan  of  education, 
it  would  introduce  itself. 

Nor  must  we  forget,  gentlemen,  that  what 
here  we  express,  perhaps  still  with  a  certain  timid 
reserve,  is  propagated  by  those  outside  with  a 
confidence  increased  a  thousand-fold.  For  in- 
stance, I  once  laid  down  the  proposition — in  op- 
position to  the  doctrine  then  reigning  of  the  de- 
velopment of  organic  life  from  inorganic  matter — 
that  each  cell  has  its  origin  in  another  cell,  at 


THE  LIBERTY  OF  SCIENCE  IX  THE  MODERN  STATE. 


299 


least  in  pathology,  and  more  especially  in  human 
pathology.  I  may  remark  here  that  in  both  re- 
lations I  still  to-day  consider  this  phrase  a  per- 
fectly correct  one.  But  after  I  had  promulgated 
this  doctrine,  and  had  formulated  the  origin  of  the 
cell  from  the  cell,  others  were  not  wanting  who 
extended  this  phrase  not  only  in  the  organic  world 
far  beyond  the  limits  assigned  by  me,  but  who 
put  it  down  as  generally  valid  even  beyond  the 
limits  of  organic  life.  I  have  received  the  most 
wonderful  communications,  both  from  America 
and  Europe,  in  which  the  whole  of  astronomy 
and  geology  was  based  upon  the  cellular  theory, 
because  it  was  thought  impossible  that  what  was 
decisive  for  the  life  of  organic  nature  upon  this 
earth  should  not  be  equally  applicable  to  the 
heavenly  bodies — they,  too,  being  round  bodies, 
which  had  shaped  themselves  into  globes  and 
represented  so  many  cells  flying  about  in  univer- 
sal space  and  playing  a  part  there  similar  to  that 
of  the  cells  in  our  body. 

I  cannot  pronounce  these  men  to  have  been 
all  arrant  fools  and  simpletons.  Indeed,  from 
some  of  their  arguments,  I  have  conceived  the 
idea  that  many  of  them  were  men  of  education, 
who  had  studied  much,  and  at  last  had  attacked 
the  problems  of  astronomy,  but  who  could  not  see 
that  the  adaptation  (Zweckmcissigkeit)  of  heaven- 
ly phonomena  to  their  ends  should  have  a  differ- 
ent basis  from  that  of  man's  organization.  Henoe, 
in  their  pursuit  of  a  monistic  conception,  they 
reached  the  conclusion  that  the  heavens,  too — 
nay,  even  that  the  whole  universe — must  be  an 
organism  adapted  to  ends,  and  that  the  only  prin- 
ciple governing  it  must  be  the  cell-principle.  I 
cite  this  only  in  order  to  show  what  shape  things 
take  outside,  how  "  theories  "  are  enlarged,  and 
how  our  own  doctrines  may  return  to  us  in  a  form 
fearful  to  ourselves.  Now,  only  imagine  how  the 
theory  of  descent  may  be  shaped  to-day  in  the 
head  of  a  socialist ! 

Indeed,  gentlemen,  this  may  seem  ridiculous 
to  many,  but  it  is  very  serious,  and  I  only  hope 
that  the  theory  of  descent  may  not  produce  those 
horrors  in  our  country  which  similar  theories 
have  actually  brought  to  our  neighbors.  Any- 
how this  theory,  if  carried  through  to  its  conse- 
quences, has  an  extremely  dangerous  side,  and  that 
the  socialists  have  a  certain  notion  of  it  already, 
you  will  doubtless  have  remarked.  We  must 
make  this  quite  clear  to  ourselves. 

Nevertheless,  be  the  matter  as  dangerous  as 
it  may,  the  confederates  as  bad  as  possible,  and 
yet  I  say,  from  the  moment  when  we  are  con- 
vinced that  the  theory  of  descent  is  a  doctrine 


perfectly  proved,  so  certain  that  we  could  swear 
by  it,  that  we  could  say,  thus  it  is — from  that 
moment  we  must  not  hesitate  to  introduce  it  into 
general  life,  transmit  it  not  only  to  every  educat- 
ed person,  but  teach  it  to  every  child,  make  it  the 
basis  of  our  whole  conception  of  the  universe,  of 
society,  and  of  the  state,  and  found  our  educa- 
tional system  upon  it.  This  I  consider  a  neces- 
sity. 

In  saying  this  I  am  not  at  all  afraid  of  the  re- 
proach which,  to  my  astonishment,  has  made  a 
great  noise  in  my  Prussian  Fatherland,  while  I 
was  absent  in  Russia :  I  mean  the  reproach  of  half- 
knowledge.  Strange  to  say,  it  was  one  of  our  so- 
called  liberal  journals  which  asked  the  question 
whether  the  great  errors  of  our  time,  and  social- 
ism in  particular,  were  not  based  upon  the  diffu- 
sion of  half-knowledge.  With  reference  to  this  I 
would  like  to  state  here,  in  the  midst  of  the  Nat- 
uralists' meeting,  that  all  human  knowledge  is  only 
piece-work.  All  of  us  who  call  ourselves  natural- 
ists, only  possess  fragments  of  natural  science  ; 
none  of  us  is  able  to  come  here  and  represent 
with  equal  right  every  one  of  the  sciences,  or  par- 
ticipate in  the  discussions  of  every  one  of  the 
sections.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  just  because  they 
have  developed  themselves  in  a  certain  one-sided 
direction,  that  we  esteem  specialists  so  highly. 
Outside  of  our  respective  specialties,  our  science 
is  half-knowledge.  It  were  much  to  be  desired 
if  we  could  only  succeed  in  diffusing  this  half- 
knowledge  more  and  more,  if  we  could  succeed  in 
causing  at  least  the  majority  of  educated  persons 
to  progress  far  enough  to  be  able  to  survey  the 
principal  directions  which  the  several  departments 
of  natural  science  are  taking,  and  to  follow  their 
development  without  meeting  difficulties  too  great 
to  be  overcome,  so  that  they  might  at  least  be 
aware  of  the  general  progress  of  science,  if,  in- 
deed, they  were  not  acquainted,  at  every  moment, 
with  the  totality  of  all  single  and  special  proofs. 
We  do  not  get  much  further  ourselves.  I,  for 
instance,  have  honestly  tried  during  my  life  to 
obtain  chemical  knowledge ;  I  have  even  worked 
in  a  laboratory ;  but  I  feel  quite  incompetent 
to  sit  down  at  some  chemical  meeting  without 
preparation,  and  to  discuss  modern  chemistry  in 
all  directions.  Nevertheless,  I  am  able  to  pene- 
trate, after  a  time,  so  far  into  any  chemical  novel- 
ty that  it  does  not  strike  me  as  incomprehensible. 
But  I  must  always  first  acquire  this  understand- 
ing, I  have  not  got  it  to  start  with  ;  and  when  I 
want  it  again  I  must  acquire  it  again.  That 
which  honors  me  is  the  knowledge  of  my  igno- 
rance.    The  most  important  part  is  that  I  know 


300 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


perfectly  well  what  I  do  not  know  of  chemistry. 
If  I  did  not  know  that,  then,  of  course,  I  should 
always  be  wavering  to  and  fro.  But  as  I  imagine 
that  I  atu  tolerably  well  aware  what  I  do  not  know, 
I  say  to  myself  every  time  I  am  obliged  to  enter  a 
domain  which  is  still  closed  to  me :  "  Now  I  must 
begin  again  to  learn ;  now  I  must  study  afresh ; 
now  I  must  do  as  anybody  does  who  enters  the 
domain  of  science."  The  great  error,  which  is 
shared  even  by  many  educated  people,  consists 
in  not  remembering  that,  with  the  enormous  ex- 
tent of  natural  science  and  with  the  inexhaustible 
quantity  of  its  details,  it  is  impossible  for  any  one 
person  to  master  the  whole. 

We  must  acquire  such  familiarity  with  the 
fundamentals  of  natural  science  and  the  gaps 
which  exist  in  our  knowledge,  that  every  time 
we  find  a  gap  of  this  kind  we  shall  say  to  our- 
selves, "  Now  you  enter  a  domain  which  is  un- 
known to  you."  If  every  one  had  this  much 
knowledge,  many  a  one  would  strike  his  breast 
and  own  that  it  is  a  ticklish  thing  to  draw  uni- 
versal inferences  with  regard  to  the  history  of  all 
things,  so  long  as  he  is  not  entirely  master  of  the 
material  on  which  the  inferences  are  based. 

It  is  easy  to  say:  "A  cell  consists  of  small 
particles,  and  these  we  call  plastidules;  and  plas- 
tidules  are  composed  of  carbon,  hydrogen,  oxy- 
gen, and  nitrogen,  and  are  endowed  with  a  spe- 
cial soul ;  this  soul  is  the  product  or  the  sum  of 
the  forces  which  the  chemical  atoms  possess." 
This  may  be  all  so;  I  cannot  judge  of  it  exactly. 
This  is  one  of  those  points  which  are  yet  unap- 
proachable for  me  ;  I  feel  there  like  a  navigator 
who  gets  upon  a  shoal,  the  extent  of  which  he 
cannot  guess.  But  yet  I  must  say  that  until  the 
properties  of  carbon,  hydrogen,  oxygen,  and  ni- 
trogen, are  so  defined  that  I  can  understand  how 
a  soul  results  from  their  combination,  I  cannot 
admit  that  we  are  justified  in  introducing  the 
plastidule-soul  into  the  educational  programme, 
or  in  asking  every  educated  man  to  recognize  it 
as  a  scientific  truth,  from  which  logical  conclu- 
sions may  be  drawn,  or  on  which  he  may  base 
his  conception  of  the  universe.  We  really  can- 
not demand  any  such  thing.  On  the  contrary,  I 
think  that  before  we  put  forward  such  theses  as 
the  expression  of  science,  before  we  say  this  is 
modern  science,  we  must  first  make  a  whole 
series  of  laborious  investigations.  We  must 
therefore  sag  to  the  schoolmasters,  "  Do  not  teach 
this."  This,  gentlemen,  is  the  resignation  which, 
in  my  opinion,  they  ought  to  exercise  who  deem 
such  a  solution  in  itself  to  be  the  probable  out- 
come of  scientific  investigation.     We  can   cer- 


tainly not  differ  on  that  point  for  a  moment,  that, 
if  this  doctrine  of  the  soul  were  really  true,  it 
could  only  be  confirmed  by  a  long  series  of  sci- 
entific researches. 

In  the  history  of  the  natural  sciences  is  re- 
corded a  multitude  of  facts  which  go  to  show 
that  certain  problems  remain  a  long  time  in  sus- 
pense, awaiting  solution.  And  if  this  solution  is 
found  at  last,  and  found  in  a  direction  of  which 
there  was  a  presentiment  perhaps  centuries  ago, 
it  does  not  follow  that  during  those  times  which 
were  occupied  only  by  speculation  or  presenti- 
ment the  problem  might  have  been  taught  as  a 
scientific  fact. 

Herr  Klebs  spoke  of  contagium  animatum  the 
other  day,  i.  e.,  the  idea  that  in  diseases  the  trans- 
mission takes  place  by  means  of  living  organ- 
isms, and  that  these  organisms  are  the  causes  of 
contagious  diseases.  The  doctrine  of  contagium 
animatum  is  lost  in  the  obscurity  of  the  middle 
ages.  This  expression  has  been  handed  down  to 
us  by  our  forefathers,  and  it  was  very  prominent 
in  the  sixteenth  century.  Certain  works  of  that 
period  exist,  which  propound  contagium  anima- 
tum as  a  scientific  dogma  with  the  same  confi- 
dence, with  the  same  kind  of  justification,  with 
which  the  doctrine  of  the  plastidule-soul  is  now- 
adays advocated.  Nevertheless,  the  living  causes 
of  diseases  could  not  be  found  for  a  long  time. 
The  sixteenth  century  could  not  find  them,  nor 
could  the  seventeenth  nor  the  eighteenth.  In  the 
nineteenth  century  we  have  begun  to  find  con- 
iagia  animata  one  by  one.  Zoology  and  botany 
have  both  contributed  their  contingent ;  we  have 
found  animals  and  plants  which  represent  conta- 
gia,  and  a  special  part  of  the  theory  of  contagia 
has  been  confirmed  in  zoology  and  botany,  quite 
in  the  sense  of  the  theories  of  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury. But  you  will  already  have  seen  from  the 
address  of  Herr  Klebs  that  the  proof  is  not  yet 
all  in.  However  much  we  may  be  disposed  to 
admit  the  general  validity  of  the  old  doctrine, 
now  that  a  series  ot  new  living  contagia  have 
been  found,  now  that  we  know  cattle-disease  and 
diphtheria  to  be  diseases  which  are  caused  by 
special  organisms,  still  we  may  not  yet  say 
that  all  contagious  or  even  all  infectious  dis- 
eases are  caused  by  living  organisms.  After  it 
has  appeared  that  a  doctrine,  which  was  pro- 
pounded as  early  as  the  sixteenth  century,  and 
which  has  since  obstinately  emerged  again  and 
again  in  the  ideas  of  men,  has  at  last,  since  the 
second  decade  of  the  present  century,  obtained 
more  and  more  positive  proofs  for  its  correct- 
ness, we  might  really  think  that  now  it  was  our 


THE  LIBERTY  OF  SCIENCE  IN  THE  MODERN  STATE.  301 


duty  to  infer,  in  the  sense  of  an  inductive  exten- 
sion of  our  knowledge,  that  all  contagia  and 
miasmata  are  living  organisms.  Indeed,  gentle- 
men, I  will  admit  that  this  conception  is  an  ex- 
tremely probable  one.  Even  those  investigators 
who  have  not  yet  gone  so  far  as  to  regard  con- 
tagia and  miasmata  as  living  beings  have  yet  al- 
ways said  that  they  resemble  living  beings  very 
closely,  that  they  have  properties  which  we 
otherwise  know  in  living  beings  only,  that  they 
propagate  their  kind,  that  they  increase  and  are 
regenerated  under  special  circumstances,  that, 
indeed,  they  appear  like  real  organic  bodies — 
these  men,  nevertheless,  have  waited,  and  rightly, 
until  the  existence  of  infective  organisms  was 
proved.  Thus  does  prudence  still  counsel  re- 
serve. 

We  must  not  forget  that  the  history  of  science 
presents  a  number  of  facts  which  teach  us  that 
phenomena  which  are  very  closely  allied  to  one 
another  may  occur  under  very  unlike  conditions. 
When  fermentation  was  traced  to  the  presence 
of  certain  fungi,  when  it  was  known  that  its 
beginning  is  closely  connected  with  the  develop- 
ment of  certain  species  of  fungi,  the  inference 
was  easily  drawn  that  all  processes  related  to 
fermentation  happen  in  the  same  way;  I  mean 
all  those  processes  which  are  comprised  under 
the  name  of  "  catalytic,"  and  which  occur  so  fre- 
quently in  the  human  and  animal  body  as  well  as 
in  plants.  There  were,  indeed,  some  scientific 
men  who  imagined  that  digestion,  which  is  one 
of  the  processes  which  closely  resemble  those  of 
fermentation,  was  brought  about  by  certain  fungi 
which  occur  frequently  (in  the  special  case  of  cat- 
tle the  question  has  been  practically  discussed), 
and  which  were  supposed  to  cause  digestion  in 
the  stomach  in  the  same  way  as  the  ferment  fungi 
cause  fermentation  elsewhere.  We  now  know 
that  .the  digestive  juices  have  absolutely  nothing 
to  do  with  fungi.  Much  as  they  may  possess 
catalytic  properties,  we  are  yet  certain  that  their 
active  substances  are  chemical  bodies  which  we 
can  extract  from  them,  which  we  can  isolate  from 
their  other  component  parts,  and  which  we  can 
cause  to  act  in  the  isolated  state  free  from  any 
admixture  of  living  organisms.  The  human  sali- 
va has  the  property  of  very  rapidly  converting 
starch  and  dextrine  into  sugar,  and  every  time 
we  eat  bread,  "  sweet "  bread  is  formed  in  the 
mouth ;  nevertheless  we  have  here  no  fungus,  no 
ferment  organism,  but  only  certain  chemical  sub- 
stances which  produce  transformations  very  simi- 
lar to  those  produced  within  the  fungi.  Here, 
then,  we  see  two  processes  that  closely  resemble 


one  another  brought  about  in  very  different  ways, 
the  one  in  the  interior  of  the  ferment  fungus,  the 
other  in  the  digestive  organs  of  man ;  in  one  case 
the  process  is  connected  with  a  definite  vegetal 
organism,  in  the  other  case  it  takes  place  without 
any  such  organism,  and  simply  through  a  liquid. 

I  should  consider  it  a  great  misfortune  if  we 
were  not  to  continue,  in  the  same  way  as  I  have 
done  now,  to  examine  in  each  single  case  whether 
the  hypothesis  we  frame,  the  idea  which  we  form, 
and  which  may  be  highly  probable,  is  really  true, 
whether  it  is  justified  by  facts.  Here  I  would  re- 
mind you  that  there  are  cases  also  among  the  in- 
fectious diseases  where  most  undoubtedly  a  simi- 
lar contrast  exists.  My  friend  Herr  Klebs  will 
no  doubt  pardon  me  if  I,  even  now,  in  spite  of 
the  recent  progress  which  the  doctrine  of  infective 
fungi  has  made,  still  maintain  my  reserve,  and 
only  admit  that  fungus  which  has  been  proved  by 
demonstration,  while  I  deny  all  the  other  fungi  as 
long  as  I  do  not  hear  of  facts  which  attest  them. 
Among  infectious  diseases  there  is  a  certain  group 
which  are  caused  by  organic  poisons — I  will  only 
mention  one  of  them,  which,  according  to  my 
opinion,  is  very  instructive — I  mean  the  poison- 
ing by  a  snake-bite,  a  very  celebrated  and  most 
remarkable  form.  If  we  compare  this  kind  of 
poisoning  with  those  kinds  which  are  generally 
called  infectious  diseases  (infection  means  little 
else  than  poisoning),  we  must  admit  that  there 
exists  the  closest  analogy  between  the  two  in  the 
course  they  usually  take.  As  far  as  the  succession 
of  the  symptoms  is  concerned,  there  is  nothing  to 
negative  the  hypothesis  that  the  ensemble  of  phe- 
nomena consequent  on  snake-bite  was  caused  by 
fungi  entering  the  body  and  producing  certain 
changes  in  different  organs.  Indeed,  there  are 
some  processes,  septic  processes,  for  instance, 
where  just  such  phenomena  occur,  and  it  is  cer- 
tain that  some  forms  of  poisoning  by  snake-bite 
resemble  some  forms  of  septic  infection  as  much 
as  one  egg  resembles  another.  And  yet  we  have 
not  the  least  cause  to  suspect  an  importation  of 
fungi  into  the  body  in  the  case  of  snakebite, 
while  in  the  case  of  septic  processes  we,  on  the 
contrary,  acknowledge  and  recognize  this  impor- 
tation. 

The  history  of  natural  science  has  numerous 
examples,  which  ought  always  to  cause  us  more 
and  more  to  restrict  our  doctrines  absolutely  to 
that  domain  only  in  which  we  can  actually  prove 
them,  and  not  by  way  of  induction  to  proceed  so 
far  as  to  extend  doctrines  immeasurably  which 
have  only  been  proved  for  one  or  more  cases. 
Nowhere  is  the  necessity  of  such  restriction  more 


302 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


apparent  than  in  the  history  of  evolution.  The 
question  of  the  primal  origin  of  organic  beings, 
a  question  which  is  at  the  basis  of  advanced  Dar- 
winism, is  very  ancient.  We  know  not  who  was 
the  first  to  attempt  a  solution  of  it.  But  when 
we  quote  the  old  popular  theory,  which  teaches 
that  all  possible  living  things,  whether  animals  or 
plants,  may  originate  from  a  lump  of  clay — a 
lumplet,  as  the  case  might  be — we  should  at  the 
same  time  remember  that  the  famous  doctrine  of 
generalio  cequivoca,  or  epigenesis,  is  closely  allied 
to  it,  and  that  it  has  been  a  common  idea  for 
thousands  of  years.  Now,  with  Darwinism  the 
doctrine  of  spontaneous  generation  has  been 
taken  up  again,  nor  can  I  deny  that  there  is 
something  very  alluring  in  the  idea  of  thus 
crowniug  the  theory  of  descent,  and,  after  the 
whole  series  of  living  forms  has  been  constructed, 
from  the  lowest  of  the  protista  up  to  the  highest 
human  organism,  of  furthermore  connecting  this 
long  series  with  the  inorganic  world.  All  this  is 
in  harmony  with  that  tendency  toward  generaliza- 
tion which  is  so  characteristic  of  the  human  mind 
that  it  has  ever  since  the  earliest  times  occupied 
a  place  in  the  speculation  of  mankind.  We  do 
unquestionably  repugn  against  divorcing  the  or- 
ganic world  from  the  rest  of  the  universe  as  some- 
thing apart,  and  we  incline  rather  to  make  the 
union  between  them  closer.  In  this  sense  it  is 
some  satisfaction  to  be  able  to  say  that  the  group 
of  atoms  known  as  Carbon  &  Co. — though  rather 
curt,  the  style  is  nevertheless  correct  enough,  in- 
asmuch as  carbon  is  the  main  thing — that  the  firm 
of  Carbon  &  Co.  once  upon  a  time  separated  it- 
self from  ordinary  carbon,  and  under  special  con- 
ditions produced  the  first  plastidule,  and  that  it 
still  continues  to  do  the  same  thing.  But  in  the 
face  of  this  we  have  to  state  that  all  real  scientific 
knowledge  has  proceeded  in  the  opposite  direc- 
tion. We  date  the  beginning  of  our  real  knowl- 
edge of  the  development  of  higher  organisms  from 
the  day  when  Harvey  uttered  the  famous  propo- 
sition, Onine  vivum  ex  ovo — every  living  being 
comes  from  an  egg.  This  proposition,  as  we  now 
know,  is  incorrect  in  its  universality.  We  can 
nowadays  no  longer  regard  it  as  fully  established ; 
indeed,  we  now  know  of  a  multitude  of  genera- 
tions and  propagations  that  take  place  without 
ova.  From  the  time  of  Harvey  down  to  that  of 
our  illustrious  friend  Von  Siebold,  who  obtained 
general  recognition  for  the  doctrine  of  partheno- 
genesis, there  has  been  established  a  whole  series 
of  limitations  which  go  to  show  that  the  expres- 
sion Omne  vivum  ex  ovo  was  as  a  general  propo- 
sition inexact.     Nevertheless,  it  were  the  height 


of  ingratitude  not  to  recognize  in  Harvey's  oppo- 
sition to  the  old  generalio  cequivoca  the  greatest 
advance  that  has  been  made  by  science  in  this 
field.  Later  we  became  acquainted  with  a  great 
number  of  new  forms  of  propagation  in  sundry 
species  of  living  beings — as  direct  segmentation, 
gemmation,  and  alternate  generation.  All  these 
forms  of  generation,  parthenogenesis  included, 
constitute  the  grounds  upon  which  we  have  re- 
jected all  unitary  systems  of  the  generation  of 
organic  individuals.  Instead  of  a  unitary  scheme, 
we  have  a  number  of  different  schemes ;  and  now 
we  have  no  one  formula  to  explain  once  for  all 
how  a  new  animal  existence  begins. 

Generatio  cequivoca,  however  often  attacked 
and  refuted,  nevertheless  confronts  us  continu- 
ally. True  it  is,  that  not  a  single  positive  fa  ct  is 
known  proving  that  generatio  cequivoca  has  ever 
occurred ;  that  ever  inorganic  masses,  for  in- 
stance, the  firm  of  Carbon  &  Co.,  have  spontane- 
ously developed  into  an  organic  substance.  Still 
I  admit  that  if  we  will  form  an  idea  how  the  first 
organic  being  could  have  originated  by  itself, 
nothing  remains  but  to  go  back  to  spontaneous 
generation.  This  is  clear  :  if  I  will  not  accept  a 
theory  of  creation  ;  if  I  will  not  believe  that  there 
was  a  special  Creator  who  took  up  a  lump  of  clay 
and  breathed  into  it  the  breath  of  life  ;  if  I  would 
account  for  things  in  my  own  way,  I  must  recur 
to  generatio  cequivoca.  Tertium  non  datur.  Noth- 
ing else  remains  if  once  we  say,  "I  do  not  admit 
creation,  but  I  do  want  an  explanation."  If  that 
is  your  antecedent  proposition,  then  you  must 
proceed  to  your  consequent  and  say,  "  Ergo  I  ad- 
mit generatio  cequivoca.'1'1  But  we  have  no  actual 
proof  for  it.  Nobody  has  ever  seen  generatio 
cequivoca  occurring  in  reality,  and  every  one  who 
maintained  that  he  had  seen  it  has  been  refuted, 
not  by  theologians  at  all,  but  by  naturalists.  I 
mention  this,  gentlemen,  in  order  to  let  our  im- 
partiality appear  in  the  right  light,  and  this  is 
very  necessary  at  times.  We  always  have  our 
weapons  in  ourselves  and  about  us,  to  fight  against 
that  which  is  not  fortified  with  proof. 

I  therefore  say  that  I  must  admit  the  theo- 
retical justification  of  such  a  formula.  Whoever 
will  have  a  formula,  whoever  says,  "  I  absolutely 
want  a  formula,  I  wish  to  be  perfectly  at  one 
with  myself,  I  must  have  a  coherent  conception 
of  the  universe,"  must  either  admit  generatio 
cequivoca  or  creation ;  there  is  no  other  alterna- 
tive. If  we  want  to  be  outspoken  we  may  in- 
deed own  that  naturalists  have  a  slight  predilec- 
tion for  gcnci-atio  cequivoca.  It  would  be  very 
beautiful  if  it  could  be  proved. 


THE  LIBERTY  OF  SCIENCE  IN  THE  MODERN  STATE. 


303 


But  we  must  admit  that  it  is  not  yet  proved. 
Proofs  are  still  wanting.  If  any  kind  of  proof 
were  to  be  successfully  given  we  would  acquiesce. 
But  even  then  it  would  have  to  be  determined, 
first,  to  what  extent  we  could  admit  generatio 
cequivoca.  We  should  quietly  have  to  continue 
our  investigations,  because  nobody  will  think 
that  spontaneous  generation  is  valid  for  the  to- 
tality of  organic  beings.  Possibly  it  would  only 
apply  to  a  single  series  of  beings.  But  I  believe 
we  have  time  to  wait  for  the  proof.  Whoever 
remembers  in  what  a  regrettable  manner,  quite 
recently,  all  attempts  to  find  a  certain  basis  for 
generatio  (cquivoca,  in  the  lowest  forms  of  the 
transition  from  the  inorganic  to  the  organic  world, 
have  failed,  should  consider  it  doubly  dangerous 
to  demand  that  this  ill-famed  doctrine  should  be 
adopted  as  a  basis  for  all  human  conceptions  of 
life.  I  may,  doubtless,  suppose  that  the  story 
of  Bathybius  has  become  known  to  nearly  all 
educated  persons.  With  this  Bathjbius  the  hope 
has  again  vanished  that  generatio  cequivoca  can 
be  proved. 

I  think,  therefore,  that  with  regard  to  this 
first  point,  the  connection  between  the  organic 
and  the  inorganic,  we  must  simply  own  that  in 
reality  we  know  nothing.  We  may  not  set  down 
our  hypothesis  as  a  certainty,  our  problem  as  a 
dogma;  that  cannot  be  permitted.  Just  as  in 
working  up  the  doctrines  of  evolution  it  has  been 
far  more  certain,  more  fertile,  and  more  in  ac- 
cordance with  the  progress  of  accredited  natural 
science,  to  analyze  the  original  unitary  hypothesis 
part  by  part,  we  shall  also  have  first  to  keep 
apart  the  organic  and  inorganic  in  the  old  well- 
known  analyzing  way,  and  not  synthetize  them 
prematurely. 

Nothing,  gentlemen,  has  been  more  injurious 
to  natural  science,  nothing  has  done  more  harm 
to  its  progress  and  to  its  position  in  the  opinion 
of  nations,  than  premature  syntheses.  While 
laying  stress  upon  this,  I  would  point  out  spe- 
cially how  our  Father  Oken  was  damaged  in  the 
opinion  not  only  of  his  contemporaries,  but  also 
of  the  following  generation,  because  he  was  one 
of  those  who  admitted  syntheses  into  their  con- 
ceptions to  a  far  greater  extent  than  a  stricter 
method  would  have  allowed.  Let  us  not  dis- 
regard the  example  of  the  Nature-philosophers ; 
do  not  let  us  forget  that  every  time  that  a  doc- 
trine which  has  passed  for  a  certain,  well-found- 
ed, reliable  one,  and  of  universal  application, 
turns  out  to  be  faulty  in  its  outlines,  or  is  found 
to  be  an  arbitrary  and  despotic  one  in  essential 
and  great  points,  then  a  great  number  of  men 


lose  their  faith  in  science  entirely.  Then  the 
reproaches  begin  :  "  You  are  not  sure  even  your- 
selves; your  doctrine,  which  is  called  truth  to- 
day, is  a  falsehood  to-morrow ;  how  can  you  de- 
mand that  your  doctrine  shall  become  the  ob- 
ject of  instruction  and  a  part  of  the  general  con- 
sciousness ?  "  From  such  experiences  I  take  the 
warning  that  if  we  wish  to  continue  to  claim  the 
attention  of  all  we  must  resist  the  temptation  of 
pushing  our  hypotheses,  our  merely  theoretical 
and  speculative  views,  into  prominence,  so  as  to 
make  them  the  basis  of  a  conception  of  the  uni- 
verse. 

If  what  I  have  said  before  is  true — that  balf- 
knowledge  is  more  or  less  predicable  of  all 
naturalists,  that  in  many,  perhaps  in  most,  of  the 
lateral  branches  of  their  own  sciences,  they  are 
only  half-knowers ;  if  later  on  I  said  that  the  true 
naturalist  was  distinguished  by  his  being  perfect- 
ly aware  of  the  limits  of  his  knowledge  and  his 
ignorance,  then  you  understand,  gentlemen,  that 
also  with  regard  to  the  public  at  large  we  must 
confine  our  claims  to  demanding  that  what  every 
single  investigator  in  his  own  direction,  in  his 
sphere,  can  designate  as  reliable  truth  which  is 
common  to  all — that  only  this  shall  be  admitted 
into  the  general  plan  of  education. 

In  thus  marking  the  limits  of  our  knowl- 
edge we  must  remember  before  all  things  that 
what  is  generally  termed  natural  science  is,  like 
all  other  knowledge  in  this  world,  composed  of 
three  totally  different  parts.  Generally  a  differ- 
ence is  only  made  between  objective  and  subjective 
knowledge,  but  there  is  a  certain  intermediate 
part — I  mean  belief — which  also  exists  in  science, 
with  this  difference  only,  that  here  it  is  applied 
to  other  things  than  in  the  case  of  religious  be- 
lief. It  is  rather  unfortunate,  in  my  opinion,  that 
the  expression  "belief"  has  been  so  completely 
monopolized  by  the  Church,  that  one  can  hardly 
apply  it  to  any  secular  object  without  being  mis- 
understood. In  reality,  even  in  science  there  is 
a  certain  domain  of  faith,  wherein  the  individual 
no  longer  undertakes  to  prove  what  is  handed 
down  to  him  as  true,  but  accepts  it  as  simple 
tradition:  and  this  is  precisely  the  same  thing 
which  we  see  in  the  Church.  Conversely,  I  may 
observe — and  my  view  is  one  that  is  not  rejected 
by  the  Church  itself — that  it  is  not  belief  alone 
which  is  taught  in  the  Church,  but  that  even 
church-doctrines  have  their  objective  and  their 
subjective  sides.  No  church  can  avoid  develop- 
ing in  the  three  directions  I  have  pointed  out :  in 
the  middle  the  path  of  belief,  which  is  certainly 
very  broad,  but  on  the  one  side  of  which  there  is 


304: 


TEE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTELY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


a  certain  quantity  of  objective  historical  truth,  | 
and  on  the  other  a  variable  series  of  subjective 
and  often  very  fantastic  ideas.  In  this  ecclesi- 
astical and  scientific  doctrines  are  alike.  The 
cause  of  this  is  that  the  human  mind  is  one,  and 
that  it  carries  the  method  which  it  follows  in  one 
domain  finally  into  all  the  others  as  well.  Still  vve 
must  always  have  clear  ideas  as  to  how  far  each  of 
the  directions  mentioned  extends  in  the  different 
domains.  Thus,  for  example,  in  the  ecclesiastical 
domain — for  in  this  it  is  most  easily  exemplified 
— we  have  the  special  dogma,  the  so-called  posi- 
tive belief:  of  this  I  need  not  speak.  But  each 
church  has  furthermore  its  peculiar  historical 
side.  It  says,  "  This  has  happened,  this  has 
occurred,  these  events  have  taken  place."  This 
historical  truth  is  not  only  handed  down,  but 
makes  its  appearance  in  the  garb  of  an  objec- 
tive truth,  with  definite  evidences.  This  is  the 
case  with  the  Christian  religion  just  as  much  as 
with  the  Mohammedan,  with  Judaism  as  with 
Buddhism.  On  the  other  side  we  find  the  left 
wing  as  it  were,  where  subjectivity  reigns  ;  there 
the  individual  dreams,  there  visions  come  and 
hallucinations.  One  religion  promotes  them  by 
special  drugs,  another  by  abstinence,  etc.  Thus 
subjective  individual  currents  are  developed,  which 
occasionally  assume  the  shape  of  perfectly  in- 
dependent phenomena  existing  by  the  side  of 
and  apart  from  the  previous  ecclesiastical  do- 
main, which  at  times  are  rejected  as  heresies,  but 
which  often  enough  merge  into  the  main  current 
of  the  recognized  church-doctrine.  All  this  we 
find  again  in  natural  science.  There  too  we  have 
the  current  of  dogma,  there  too  we  have  the  cur- 
rents of  objective  and  subjective  doctrines.  Con- 
sequently our  task  is  a  compound  one.  First  of 
all  we  try  to  reduce  the  dogmatic  current.  The 
principal  aim  of  science  has  for  centuries  been  to 
strengthen  more  and  more  the  risht,  the  conser- 
vative side.  This  side,  which  collects  the  ascer- 
tained facts  with  full  consciousness  of  the  evi- 
dences ;  which  adheres  to  experiment  as  the  highest 
means  of  proof ;  which  is  in  possesssion  of  the 
real  scientific  treasury,  has  steadily  grown  larger 
and  broader,  and  this  principally  at  the  expense 
of  the  dogmatic  stream.  Really,  if  we  only  con- 
sider the  number  of  natural  sciences  which  since 
the  end  of  the  last  century  have  grown  and  now 
flourish,  we  must  admit  that  an  almost  incredi- 
ble revolution  has  taken  place. 

There  is  no  science  in  which  this  is  so  emi- 
nently evident  as  in  medicine,  because  that  is  the 
only  science  which  has  a  continuous  history  of 
nearly  3,000  years.     We  are,  so  to  speak,  the 


patriarchs  of  science,  inasmuch  as  we  have  the 
dogmatic  current  at  its  longest.  This  current 
was  so  strong  that,  in  the  early  part  of  the  mid- 
dle ages,  even  the  Catholic  Church  embraced  it, 
and  the  heathen  Galen  appeared  like  a  father  of 
the  Church  in  the  ideas  of  men ;  indeed,  if  we 
read  the  poems  of  that  period,  he  often  presents 
himself  exactly  in  the  position  of  a  father  of  the 
Church.  Medical  dogma  persisted  until  the  time 
of  the  Reformation.  Vesalius  and  Paracelsus, 
who  were  Luther's  contemporaries,  made  the  first 
grand  attempts  at  reduction ;  they  drove  piles 
into  the  bed  of  the  dogmatic  stream,  constructed 
dikes  by  its  sides,  and  left  only  a  narrow  chan- 
nel. Beginning  with  the  sixteenth  century,  it  has 
grown  narrower  and  narrower  every  century,  so 
that  finally  only  a  very  small  chancel  has  remained 
for  the  therapeutists.  So  passes  away  earthly 
glory. 

Only  30  years  ago  the  Hippocratic  method 
was  spoken  of  as  something  so  sublime  and  im- 
portant that  nothing  more  sacred  could  be  imag- 
ined. Nowadays  we  must  own  that  this  method 
is  annihilated  nearly  down  to  its  root.  At  least, 
a  good  deal  of  imagination  is  necessary  if  we  say 
that  any  physician  of  the  present  day  acts  as  Hip- 
pocrates did.  Indeed,  if  we  compare  the  medi- 
cine of  to-day  with  the  medicine  of  the  year  1S0O 
— it  so  happened  that  the  year  1800  marks  a 
great  turning-point  in  medicine — we  find  that  our 
science  has  undergone  a  complete  reformation 
during  the  last  *70  years.  At  that  time  the  great 
Paris  school  was  formed,  immediately  under  the 
influence  of  the  French  Revolution,  and  we  must 
admire  the  genius  of  our  neighbors  that  enabled 
them  to  find  all  at  once  the  fundamental  basi8  of 
an  entirely  new  science.  If  now  we  see  medi- 
cine continue  its  development  in  the  greater 
breadth  of  objective  knowledge,  we  must  never 
forget  that  the  French  were  the  precursors,  as  in 
the  middle  ages  the  Germans  were. 

In  citing  medicine  as  an  example,  I  only  wished 
to  show  you  in  brief  what  changes  have  come 
about  both  in  the  methods  and  in  the  data  of  sci- 
ence. I  am  confident  that  in  medicine,  by  the 
close  of  this  century,  there  will  remain  only  so 
much  of  the  dogmatic  current  as  might  easily 
pass  through  a  water-main.  For  the  rest,  the  ob- 
jective current  will  probably  altogether  swallow 
up  the  dogmatic. 

The  subjective  stream  will  still,  perhaps,  re- 
main. Perhaps  even  then  many  an  individual  will 
dream  his  beautiful  dreams.  The  field  of  objec- 
tive facts  in  medicine,  great  as  it  has  become,  has 
yet  left  such  a  number  of  lateral  fields,  that  for 


THE  LIBERTY  OF  SCIENCE  IN  THE  MODERN  STATE. 


305 


anybody  who  wants  to  speculate  plenty  of  oppor- 
tunities offer  daily.  And  these  opportunities  are 
honestly  made  use  of.  A  multitude  of  books 
would  remain  unwritten  if  only  objective  things 
were  to  be  communicated.  But  the  subjective* 
wants  are  still  so  great  that  I  believe  I  am  justi- 
fied in  maintaining  that,  of  our  present  medical 
literature,  about  one-half  might  safely  remain  un- 
published, without  doing  any  damage  worth  men- 
tioning to  the  objective  side. 

Now,  when  we  teach,  in  my  opinion,  we  ought 
not  to  look  upon  this  subjective  side  as  an  essen- 
tial object  in  the  doctrine.  I  believe  I  now  belong 
to  the  oldest  professors  of  medicine ;  I  have  taught 
my  science  now  for  over  30  years,  and  I  may  say 
that  during  these  30  years  I  have  honestly  striven 
to  free  my  mind  more  and  more  from  all  subjective 
tendency,  and  to  get  more  and  more  into  the  ob- 
jective current.  Nevertheless,  I  openly  confess 
that  I  find  it  impossible  to  give  up  subjectivity 
altogether.  Every  year  I  see  again  and  again 
that,  even  in  points  where  I  had  believed  myself 
to  be  entirely  objective,  I  still  retained  a  large 
number  of  subjective  ideas.  I  do  not  go  so  far 
as  to  require  everybody  to  express  himself  entire- 
ly without  any  admixture  of  subjectiveness,  but  I 
do  say  that  we  must  set  ourselves  the  task  to 
transmit  to  the  students  the  real  knowledge  of 
facts  in  the  first  place,  and,  if  we  go  further, 
we  must  tell  them  each  time :  "  But  this  is  not 
proved  ;  but  this  is  my  opinion,  my  idea,  my 
theory,  my  speculation." 

This,  however,  we  can  only  do  with  those  who 
are  already  educated  and  developed.  We  cannot 
carry  the  same  method  into  the  elementary  schools ; 
we  cannot  say  to  each  peasant-boy,  "  This  is  a 
fact,  this  we  know,  and  that  we  only  suppose." 
On  the  contrary,  that  which  is  known,  and  that 
which  is  only  supposed,  as  a  rule,  get  so  thorough- 
ly mixed  up  that  that  which  is  supposed  becomes 
the  main  thing,  and  that  which  is  really  known 
appears  only  of  secondary  importance.  There- 
fore we  who  support  science,  we  who  live  in  sci- 
ence, are  all  the  more  called  upon  to  abstain  from 
carrying  into  the  heads  of  men,  and  most  of  all 
into  the  heads  of  teachers,  that  which  we  only 
suppose.  True,  we  cannot  give  facts  simply  in 
the  shape  of  raw  material ;  that  is  impossible. 
They  must  be  arranged  in  a  certain  systematic 
order.  But  we  must  not  extend  this  arrangement 
beyond  what  is  absolutely  necessary. 

And  here  I  have  an  objection  to  make  to  Herr 
Nageli's  address.  Herr  Nageli  has  discussed, 
certainly  in  the  most  measured  way,  and — you 
will  notice  this  if  you  read  his  address — in  a  thor- 

56 


oughly  philosophical  manner,  the  difficult  ques- 
tions which  he  has  chosen  as  subjects  for  his  dis- 
course. Nevertheless,  he  has  taken  a  step  which 
I  consider  extremely  dangerous.  He  has  done  in 
another  direction  what  is  in  one  way  done  by  ge- 
neratio  cequivoca.  He  asks  that  the  psychological 
domain  shall  be  extended  not  only  from  animals 
to  plants,  but  that  we  shall  actually  carry  from  the 
organic  world  into  the  inorganic  our  conceptions 
of  the  nature  of  mental  phenomena.  This  meth- 
od of  thinking,  which  is  represented  by  great 
philosophers,  is  natural  in  itself.  If  any  one  wants 
by  any  means  to  connect  mental  phenomena  with 
those  of  the  rest  of  the  universe,  then  he  will 
necessarily  come  to  transfer  mental  processes, 
as  they  occur  in  man  and  the  animals  of  highest 
organization,  to  the  lower  and  lowest  animals ; 
then  a  soul  is  even  ascribed  to  plants ;  further  on 
the  cell  thinks  and  feels,  and  finally  he  finds  a 
passage  down  to  chemical  atoms,  which  hate  or 
love  one  another,  seek  one  another,  or  flee  from 
one  another.  All  this  is  very  fine  and  excellent, 
and  may  after  all  be  quite  true.  It  may  be.  But, 
then,  do  we  really  want,  is  there  any  positive  sci- 
entific necessity  for  extending  the  domain  of  men- 
tal phenomena  beyond  the  circle  of  those  bodies 
in  which  and  by  which  we  see  them  really  hap- 
pening? I  have  no  objection  to  carbon-atoms 
having  a  soul,  or  to  their  acquiring  a  soul  by  their 
union  with  the  plastidule  ;  but  I  do  not  knoic  how 
I  am  to  find  out  whether  the  thing  is  so.  This  is 
simply  playing  with  words.  If  I  declare  at- 
traction and  repulsion  to  be  psychic  phenom- 
ena, then  I  simply  throw  Psyche  out  of  the 
window,  and  Psyche  is  Psyche  no  longer.  The 
phenomena  of  the  human  mind  may  eventu- 
ally be  explained  in  a  chemical  way,  but  for 
the  present,  I  think,  it  is  not  our  task  to  mix 
up  these  domains.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  our 
duty  to  keep  them  strictly  where  we  understand 
them.  And  as  I  have  always  laid  stress  upon 
this,  that  we  should  not  in  the  first  line  try  to 
find  the  transition  from  the  inorganic  into  the 
organic,  but  that  we  should  first  of  all  determine 
the  contrast  between  the  inorganic  and  the  or- 
ganic, and  carry  on  our  investigations  among 
those  contrasts  in  the  same  way,  I  now  maintain 
that  the  only  way  to  progress — and  I  hold  the 
firmest  conviction  that  we  shall  not  advance  at 
all  otherwise — is  to  limit  the  domain  of  mental 
phenomena  to  where  we  really  perceive  mental 
phenomena,  and  not  to  suppose  mental  phenomena, 
where  perhaps  they  may  be,  but  where  we  do  not 
notice  any  visible,  audible,  sensible,  in  one  word, 
perceptible  phenomena,  which  we  might  call  men- 


306 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


tal.  There  is  no  doubt  that  for  us  mental  phe- 
nomena pertain  to  certain  animals,  not  to  the 
totality  of  all  organic  beings,  not  even  to  all 
animals  generally,  and  I  maintain  this  without 
hesitation.  We  have  no  reason  yet  to  say  that 
the  lowest  animals  possess  psychic  attributes ;  we 
find  them  only  in  the  higher  animals,  and  with 
perfect  certainty  only  in  the  highest. 

Now  I  will  admit  with  pleasure  that  certain 
gradations,  certain  gradual  transitions,  certain 
points  can  be  found,  where  from  mental  phenom- 
ena one  gets  to  phenomena  of  simply  material  or 
physical  nature.  I  certainly  do  not  declare  that 
it  will  never  be  possible  to  bring  psychical  phe- 
nomena into  immediate  connection  with  physical 
ones.  All  I  say  is,  that  at  present  we  are  not 
justified  in  setting  down  this  possible  connection 
as  a  scientific  doctrine,  and  I  must  distinctly  op- 
pose the  attempts  to  enlarge  our  doctrines  pre- 
maturely in  this  manner,  and  to  bring  again  and 
again  into  the  foreground  as  a  positive  statement 
what  we  so  often  proved  a  useless  problem.  We 
must  distinguish  strictly  between  what  we  want 
to  teach  and  what  we  want  to  investigate.  What 
we  investigate  are  problems.  We  need  not  keep 
them  to  ourselves  ;  we  may  communicate  them  to 
the  whole  world  and  say,  "  There  is  the  problem, 
this  is  what  we  are  trying  to  find  ;"  like  Columbus, 
who,  when  he  started  to  discover  India,  made  no 
absolute  secret  of  it,  but  who  eventually  did  not 
find  India,  but  America.  And  the  same  happens 
to  us  not  rarely.  We  start  to  prove  certain 
problems  which  we  suppose  to  be  perfectly  cor- 
rect, and  in  the  end  we  find  something  quite  dif- 
ferent, which  we  never  expected.  The  investiga- 
tion of  such  problems,  in  which  the  whole  nation 
may  be  interested,  must  be  open  to  everybody. 
That  is  the  liberty  of  research.  But  the  problem 
is  not  at  once  to  be  the  object  of  instruction. 
When  we  teach  we  must  confine  ourselves  to 
those  smaller  domains  which  are  already  so  large, 
and  which  we  have  actually  mastered. 

Gentlemen.  I  am  convinced  that  only  with  a 
resignation  of  this  kind,  which  we  impose  on 
ourselves,  which  we  exercise  toward  the  rest  of 
the  world,  shall  we  be  enabled  to  conduct  the 
fight  against  our  enemies  with  a  victorious  result. 
All  attempts  to  transform  our  problems  into  doc- 
trines, to  introduce  our  theories  as  the  basis  of  a 
plan  of  education,  particularly  the  attempt  simply 
to  depose  the  Church,  and  to  replace  its  dogma 
by  a  religion  of  descent,  these  attempts,  I  say, 
must  fail,  and  their  failure  would  at  the  same 
•time  very  seriously  compromise  the  position  of 
science  generally. 


Therefore  let  us  be  moderate,  let  us  exercise 
resignation,  so  as  to  set  forth  even  our  favorite 
problems,  always  as  problems  only,  and  let  us 
never  tire  of  saying :  "  Do  not  take  this  for  con- 
firmed truth  ;  bear  in  mind  that  this  may  perhaps 
be  changed  ;  only  for  the  moment  we  are  of 
opinion  that  it  may  be  true." 

By  way  of  illustration  I  will  add  another  ex- 
ample. At  this  moment  there  are  probably  few 
naturalists  who  are  not  of  opinion  that  man  is 
allied  to  the  rest  of  the  animal  world,  and  that  a 
connection  will  possibly  be  found,  if  indeed  not 
with  apes,  then  perhaps  in  some  other  direction, 
as  is  now  the  opinion  of  Prof.  Vogt. 

I  acknowledge  openly  that  this  is  a  desidera- 
tum of  science.  I  am  quite  prepared  for  it,  and 
I  should  not  for  a  moment  wonder  nor  be  alarmed 
if  the  proof  were  found  that  the  ancestors  of  man 
belonged  to  some  other  order  of  vertebrates. 
You  know  that  just  at  present  I  work  by  prefer- 
ence in  the  field  of  anthropology,  but  yet  I  must 
declare  that  every  step  of  positive  progress  which 
we  have  made  in  the  domain  of  prehistoric  an- 
thropology has  really  moved  us  further  away 
from  the  proof  of  this  connection.  At  this  mo- 
ment anthropology  studies  the  question  of  fossil 
man.  From  man  in  the  present  "  period  of  crea- 
tion "  we  have  descended  to  the  Quaternai-y  period, 
to  that  period  when,  as  Cuvier  maintained  with 
the  greatest  confidence,  man  did  not  exist.  Now  - 
adays  Quaternary  man  is  a  generally  accepted  fact 
Quaternary  man  is  no  longer  a  problem,  but  a  real 
doctrine.  But  Tertiary  man,  on  the  contrary,  is 
a  problem,  though  a  problem  which  is  already 
being  discussed  according  to  the  evidence  of  facts. 
There  are  objects  already  about  which  discus- 
sions are  going  on  as  to  whether  they  may  be 
admitted  as  proofs  of  the  existence  of  man  during 
the  Tertiary  period.  We  do  not  merely  speculate 
on  the  subject,  but  we  discuss  certain  objects, 
whether  they  may  be  recognized  as  witnesses  for 
the  existence  of  man  during  the  Tertiary  period. 
The  question  raised  is  answered  differently,  ac- 
cording to  whether  these  objective  material  ele- 
ments of  proof  are  considered  sufficient  or  not. 
Even  men  who,  like  the  Abbe  Bourgeois,  are  de- 
cided ecclesiastics,  are  convinced  that  man  lived 
during  the  Tertiary  period  ;  for  them  Tertiary  man 
is  already  a  doctrine.  For  us,  who  are  of  a  more 
critical  nature,  Tertiary  man  is  still  a  problem, 
but,  as  we  must  acknowledge,  a  problem  worthy 
of  discussion.  Let  us,  therefore,  for  the  present 
remain  at  Quaternary  man,  whom  we  really  find. 
If  we  study  this  Quaternary,  fossil  man,  who  ought 
after  all  to  stand  nearer  to  our  ancestors  in  the 


THE  LIBERTY  OF  SCIENCE  IN  THE  MODERN  STATE. 


307 


series  of  descent,  or  rather  of  ascent,  we  find  a 
man  just  the  same  as  we  are  ourselves. 

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


This  is  quite  possible,  since  during  the  last  few 
years  the  remarkable  discovery  has  been  made  in 
North  America  that  the  fossil  ancestors  of  our 
horses  occur  in  countries  from  which  the  horse 
had  entirely  disappeared  for  a  long  time.  When 
America  was  discovered  there  were  no  horses 
there  at  all ;  in  the  very  place  where  the  ances- 
tors of  our  horses  had  lived  no  living  horse  had 
remained.  Thus  it  may  also  be  that  Tertiary  man 
has  existed  in  Greenland  or  Lemuria,  and  will 
again  be  brought  to  light  from  under  the  ground 
somewhere  or  other.  But,  as  a  fact,  we  must 
positively  acknowledge  that  there  is  always  a 
sharp  limit  between  man  and  the  ape.  We  can- 
not teach,  we  cannot  designate  as  a  revelation  of 
science  the  doctrine  that  man  descends  from  the  ape 
or  from  any  other  animal.  We  can  but  desig- 
nate this  as  a  problem,  however  probable  it  may 
appear. 

The  experience  of  the  past  should  have  been 
for  us  sufficient  warning  not  needlessly  to  give 
way  to  the  temptation  of  drawing  premature  con- 
clusions. Here,  gentlemen,  is  the  difficulty  that 
faces  every  scientific  man  who  addresses  the  pub- 
lic. He  who  writes  or  speaks  to  the  public  should 
exercise  double  care  now  in  finding  out  how  much 
of  what  he  knows  and  says  is  objectively  true. 
He  must  as  much  as  possible  have  all  his  induc- 
tive amplifications,  all  his  analogous  reasonings 
printed  in  small  type  underneath  the  text,  and 
only  what  is  objectively  true  embodied  in  the 
text.  In  that  way,  gentlemen,  we  may  perhaps 
succeed  in  winning  an  ever-increasing  circle  of 
followers  and  fellow-workers,  and  in  effectively 
interesting  the  educated  public.  Unless  we  do 
so,  gentlemen,  I  fear  we  overrate  our  power. 
Old  Bacon,  it  is  true,  said  with  justice,  Scientia 
est  potentia — knowledge  is  power.  But  he  also 
defined  knowledge ;  and  knowledge,  as  he  under- 
stood it,  was  not  speculative  knowledge — knowl- 
edge of  problems — but  objective  knowledge  of 
facts.  Gentlemen,  in  my  opinion,  we  shall  abuse 
our  power,  endanger  our  influence,  if  we  do  not 
fall  back  on  this  perfectly  solid,  this  perfectly 
safe  and  impregnable  ground.  Thence  we  can, 
as  investigators,  invade  the  domain  of  problems, 
and  I  am  convinced  that  every  attempt  of  this 
kind  will  then  find  the  necessary  safety  and  support. 


308 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


THE   CUKIOSITIES   OF  CREDULITY. 


By  WILLIAM  B.  CARPENTER,  C.  B.,  M.  D.,  LL.D.,  F.  R.  S. 


IN  the  last  number  of  Fraser^s  Magazine,  Mr. 
A.  R.  Wallace  holds  me  up  as  "  an  example 
of  what  prepossession  and  blind  skepticism  can 
do  for  a  man  ; "  "  how  it  makes  a  scientific  man 
unscientific,  a  wise  man  foolish,  and  an  honest 
man  unjust." 

The  following  historical  narrative  will  serve,  I 
think,  as  "  an  example  of  what  prepossession  and 
blind  credulity  can  do  for  a  man,"  and  will  fur- 
ther afford  a  very  useful  lesson  as  to  the  "  falla- 
cies of  testimony  "  in  regard  to  the  class  of  sub- 
jects at  present  under  discussion  between  Mr. 
Wallace  and  myself. 

Every  one  who  has  attended  to  the  history  of 
animal  magnetism  knows  full  well  that  a  belief 
in  its  higher  pretensions  not  only  prevailed  ex- 
tensively in  France  during  the  decade  of  1820- 
'30,  but  took  a  very  strong  hold  of  the  medical 
profession  in  that  country,  many  of  its  most  dis- 
tinguished members  giving  their  public  attesta- 
tion to  the  reality  of  those  claims.  Thus  M. 
Rostan,  one  of  the  ablest  medical  psychologists 
of  his  day,  contributed  to  the  first  edition  (1825) 
of  the  "  Dictionnaire  des  Sciences  Medicales  "  (of 
which  he  was  one  of  the  conductors)  an  article 
on  "  Magnetisme  Animal,"  in  which  he  detailed 
experiments  carried  on  by  himself  and  other  emi- 
nent physicians,  which  had  entirely  satisfied  them 
of  the  truth  of  clairvoyance.  Another  very  able 
advocate  of  mesmerism  during  this  epoch  was  M. 
Georget,  a  young  physician  of  high  reputation, 
and  the  author  of  a  much-esteemed  treatise  on 
the  "  Physiology  of  the  Nervous  System."  '  And 
a  commission  appointed  by  the  French  Academy 
of  Medicine  in  1826  to  inquire  into  the  subject 
(of  which  commission  M.  Husson,  physician  to 
the  Hotel  Dieu,  was  the  reporter)  reported  in  the 
same  sense  in  1831,  its  members  bearing  their 
personal  testimony  to  the  genuineness  of  phenom- 
ena which  they  had  themselves  witnessed  and 
tested,  and  of  which  they  considered  that  no 
reasonable  doubt  could  be  entertained. 

1  It  so  happened  that  my  father,  having  broken  down 
in  health  from  overwork,  was,  during  some  months  of 
!S26-'27,  under  the  medical  care  of  MM.  Itostan  and 
Georget,  the  latter  of  whom  told  him  that  the  evidence 
of  the  reality  of  spiritual  existence  afforded  by  clairvoy- 
ance had  brought  him  back  from  a  state  of  materialis- 
tic atheism— exactly  what  a  lady  of  high  culture  told 
me  some  twenty  years  ago  in  regard  to  spiritualism. 


The  state  of  mind  of  these  eminent  men,  there- 
fore, in  regard  to  mesmerism  was  thus  exactly 
parallel,  on  the  one  hand,  to  that  of  the  authori- 
ties of  Salem  (New  England)  in  1692  in  regard  to 
witchcraft,  and,  on  the  other,  to  the  present  atti- 
tude of  Mr.  Wallace  and  his  associates  in  regard 
to  spiritualism.  On  evidence  which  "  hundreds 
of  the  most  solemn  people  knew  to  be  true,"  the 
Salemites  hung  scores  of  innocent  people.  And 
so,  on  evidence  which  Mr.  Wallace  and  his  friends 
know  to  be  true,  they  brand  as  "  arrogant  "  skep- 
tics not  only  myself,  but  the  great  body  of  medi- 
cal and  scientific  men  of  whose  opinions  on  this 
subject  I  am  the  exponent,  because,  warned  by 
the  experience  I  am  now  relating,  we  decline  to 
accept  their  testimony  as  binding  on  our  own  be- 
lief. 

Our  mental  attitude,  on  the  other  hand,  is  that 
of  the  courageous  skeptics  of  1692,  who,  pos- 
sessed by  "  the  froward  spirit  of  Sadduceeism," 
caused  the  release  of  150  reputed  witches,  and 
the  stoppage  of  proceedings  against  200  more,  in 
spite  of  the  indignant  protests  of  Dr.  Cotton 
Mather,  and  the  "  hundreds  of  most  solemn  peo- 
ple "  who  backed  it  up.  And  it  is  also  that  of  the 
obstinate  skeptics  in  the  French  Academy  of  Med- 
icine, forty-six  years  ago,  who  dared  to  question 
the  authority  of  MM.  Rostan  and  Georget,  as  well 
as  of  the  eminent  reporter  and  other  members  of 
its  commission  ;  and  who  succeeded  in  prevent- 
ing the  academic  adoption  of  their  report,  which 
was  simply  enterre  in  the  archives  of  the  Academy, 
as  the  expression  of  the  opinion  of  the  individuals 
composing  that  commission. 

Early  in  183*7,  however,  the  academic  discus- 
sion was  renewed  ;  and  this  renewal  elicited  the 
following  remarkable  statement  from  M.  Bous- 
quet:  "  Messieurs,  tout  le  monde  a  la  pretention 
de  bien  voir ;  tout  le  monde  croit  avoir  bien  vu  ; 
et  vous  savez  combien  un  homme  est  fort,  lors- 
qu'il  peut  dire—'  J'ai  vu.'  (Test  sans  doute  un 
grand  avantage  ;  toutefois  l'illusion  est  a  cote  de 
la  realite.  Georget  croyait  done  avoir  bien  vu  ; 
il  y  parait  assez  a  la  maniere  dont  il  parle  du 
magnetisme  dans  son  ouvrage  sur  le  systeme 
nerveux.  Ccpendant,  on  sait  aujourd'hui  qu'il  a 
etc  trompe  par  des  miserables  qui  s'en  vantent. 
Je  tiens  cela  de  M.  Londe,  le  collaborateur  de 
Georget,  et  le  temoin  de  toutes  ses  experiences. 


THE  CURIOSITIES   OF  CREDULITY. 


309 


Ainsi,  Messieurs,  Georget  est  mort  plein  de  foi 
dans  le  magnetisme ;  son  ouvrage  reste,  et  l'au- 
teur  n'est  pas  la  pour  effacer  les  erreurs  qu'il 
contient."  Tlie  circumstance  referred  to  by  Dr. 
Bousquet  was  a  death-bed  confession  made  by  a 
female  hospital  patient,  one  of  the  principal  sub- 
jects of  MM.  Rostan  and  Georget's  experiments 
on  clairvoyance;  who  declared  that  she  and  a 
confederate  (who  occupied  the  next  bed)  used  to 
spend  many  delicious  hours  of  their  nights  in 
chuckling  over  the  deceits  they  had  put  on  the 
doctors,  and  in  contriving  new  ones  for  the  next 
day.  The  effect  of  this  disclosure  upon  the  mind 
of  M.  Rostan  (which  I  learned  at  the  time  through 
the  private  channel  already  referred  to)  is  shown 
by  the  fact  that  when  a  second  edition  of  the 
"  Dietionnaire  de  Medecine  "  came  out  in  1838,  he 
withdrew  the  article  he  had  contributed  to  the 
first,  this  being  replaced  by  one  from  the  pen  of 
M.  Calmeil  (a  physician  of  the  highest  repute  in 
the  same  line),  which  went  as  strongly  against 
the  pretensions  of  animal  magnetism  as  Rostan's 
article  of  1825  had  gone  in  their  favor. 

At  a  subsequent  sitting  of  the  Academy,  an 
earnest  appeal  was  made  to  it  by  a  young  mag- 
netizer,  M.  Berna,  to  enter  anew  upon  a  system- 
atic investigation  of  the  whole  subject.  "  Ma 
croyance  au  magnetisme,"  he  urged,  "  n'est  point 
le  fruit  de  l'enthousiasme  ou  d'un  examen  super- 
ficiel,  mais  de  plusieurs  annees  d'experiences  et 
de  meditation.  .  .  .  Je  propose  de  faire  voir,  sur 
des  personnes  que  j'ai  actuellement  a  ma  dispo- 
sition, des  faits  concluants  en  faveur  du  magne- 
tisme." Moved  by  the  obvious  sincerity  of  this 
appeal,  and  unwilling  to  hold  back  from  inquir- 
ing into  the  facts  which  M.  Berna  professed  him- 
self fully  prepared  to  substantiate,  the  Academy 
appointed  a  second  commission,  which  included 
MM.  Roux,  Bouillaud,  Hippolyte  Cloquet,  Pelle- 
tier,  and  other  distinguished  members  of  its  body, 
with  M.  Dubois  (d'Araiens)  as  its  reporter.  This 
commission  reported,  six  months  afterward,  that 
M.  Berna  had  utterly  failed  to  prove  his  case ; 
the  only  fait  concluant  demonstrated  being  that 
he  had  been  victimized  by  cunning  cheats. 
Against  this  conclusion  a  protest  was  made  by 
M.  Kusson,  the  reporter  of  the  first  commission ; 
but  the  report  of  M.  Dubois  was  nevertheless 
almost  unanimously  adopted  by  the  Academy.  It 
was  to  meet  the  argument  of  M.  Husson— that, 
although  M.  Berna's  clairvoyantes  had  failed,  other 
magnetizers  might  bring  forward  more  "  lucid  " 
subjects — that  M.  Burdin  offered  his  prize ;  and 
a  third  commisssion  was  then  appointed,  for  the 
special  purpose  of  investigating  the  claims   of 


clairvoyance.  This  third  commission  included, 
with  M.  Husson,  the  reporter  of  the  first,  and  M. 
Dubois,  the  reporter  of  the  second,  such  acknowl- 
edged leaders  of  the  medical  profession  as  MM. 
Chomel,  Louis,  Double,  and  Morcau.  It  contin- 
ued open  to  the  investigation  of  all  claims  to  the 
Burdin  prize  for  a  period  of  three  years.  It  de- 
tected and  exposed  the  trickery  of  the  claimants 
who  ventured  to  present  themselves.  And  when, 
in  1840,  it  presented  its  report,  the  Academy  was 
so  completely  satisfied  that  the  members  of  its 
first  commission  had  been  (like  the  Salemites  of 
1692)  "  sadly  deluded  and  mistaken,"  that  it  ar- 
rived at  the  determination  thenceforth  to  regard 
all  communications  on  the  subject  of  animal  mag- 
netism as  non  avenues,  having  no  more  claims  on 
its  attention  than  claims  to  the  discovery  of 
"  perpetual  motion,"  or  the  "  quadrature  of  the 
circle,"  would  have  upon  that  of  the  Academy  of 
Sciences. 

Now,  I  ask  what  would  be  thought  of  the 
fairness  of  a  stanch  Scripturalist  who  should  now 
quote,  as  valid  testimony  to  the  universality  of 
the  Noachian  Deluge,  the  "Reliquiae  Diluvianae" 
of  Dr.  Buckland,  whose  fundamental  doctrine  was 
subsequently  retracted  by  its  author  in  his  Bridg- 
water Treatise  ;  or  should  accuse  a  scientific  op- 
ponent either  of  culpable  ignorance,  or  of  inten- 
tional sttppressio  veri,  in  making  no  mention  of  a 
report  presented  in  favor  of  the  same  doctrine  to 
a  scientific  society,  which  not  only  never  adopted 
it,  but,  in  the  course  of  a  few  years,  passed  upon 
it  the  strongest  possible  sentence  of  condemna- 
tion ?  Yet  this  is  exactly  what  Mr.  Wallace 
has  done  in  reviewing  my  "  Lectures "  in  Mr. 
Crookes's  journal,  accusing  me  of  "  ignoring  ev- 
ery particle  of  evidence  which  is  too  powerful  to 
be  explained  away,"  and  citing,  as  conspicuous 
examples  of  one-sidedness,  my  silence  as  to  M. 
Rostan's  article  and  M.  Hussou's  report.  If  time 
had  permitted,  I  should  have  most  gladly  ad- 
duced in  my  "  Lectures  "  these  very  testimonies 
as  conspicuous  examples  of  the  extent  to  which 
the  most  able  but  "  prepossessed  "  men  may  be 
led  away  by  cunning  cheats — M.  Rostan  by  his 
own  confession,  and  the  members  of  the  first 
commission  on  the  almost  unanimous  verdict  of 
the  French  Academy  of  Medicine. 

That  animal  magnetism  is  now,  as  in  1840, 
regarded  by  the  highly-trained  medical  intelli- 
gence of  France  as  a  "  dead  letter,"  only  worthy 
of  attention  as  a  "curiosity  of  history,"  which 
"points  a  moral"  in  regard  to  other  like  de- 
mands on  human  credulity,  may  be  judged  from 
the  manner  in  which  it  is  treated  in  one  of  the 


310 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


great  medical  dictionaries  now  in  course  of  pub- 
lication. The  second  section  of  the  "  Dietion- 
naire  Encyclopedique"  contains  a  long  and  elab- 
orate historical  article  on  "  Magnetisme  Animal," 
from  the  pen  of  M.  Dechambre,  who  has  the 
reputation  of  being  one  of  the  ablest  of  French 
medical  critics.  After  bringing  down  his  history 
to  1840,  M.  Dechambre  thus  continues :  "  Ici 
pourrait  se  terminer  l'histoire  analytique  du  ma- 
gnetisme animal ;  car  il  ne  se  produira  plus  de- 
sormais,  en  France  du  moins,  que  des  faits  isoles, 
depourvus  de  toute  authenticite,  et  le  plus  sou- 
vent  pour  les  besoins  d'une  miserable  industrie." 
Further  on,  he  says :  "  Quant  a  toutes  les  pro- 
prietes  et  facultes  extraordinaires  dont  on  a  dote 
les  somnambules,  et  qu'il  est  inutile  de  rappeler, 
nous  attendons  sans  impatience  ni  preoccupation 
qu'on  en  demontre  mieux  l'existence ;  et  nous 
les  considerons,  jusqu'a  nouvel  ordre,  comme  un 
double  produit  de  l'illusion  et  de  la  supercherie." 
And  he  sums  up  as  follows  :  "  Comme  ceux  des 
effets  que  nous  regardons  comme  possibles  resul- 
tent  d'une  autre  cause  que  l'influence  d'un  agent 
special  dit  magnetisme,  nous  terminons  par  cette 
conclusion  radicale :  le  magnetisme  animal  n'existe 
pas." 

In  this  condemnation  M.  Dechambre  does  not 
hesitate  to  include  the  Odylism  of  Von  Reichen- 
bach,  which  Mr.  Wallace  (in  his  review  of  my 
"  Lectures  ")  blames  me  for  repudiating — the 
reality  of  Eeichenbach's  experimental  results 
having  been  attested  by  about  sixty  persons  of 
repute  in  Vienna,  including  "  a  number  of  litera- 
ry, official,  and  scientific  men  and  their  fami- 
lies ; "  and  having  been  verified  in  this  country 
by  Prof.  Gregory,  of  Edinburgh,  and  by  Dr. 
Ashburner  in  London.  Now,  it  so  happened  that 
I  was  assured  at  the  time  by  the  late  Prof.  Dau- 
beny,  of  Oxford,   who   himself  witnessed  Von 


Eeichenbach's  experiments  at  Vienna,  that  noth- 
ing could  be  more  loose  and  unscientific  than  the 
manner  in  which  they  were  conducted  ;  and  the 
verdict  of  that  very  clear-sighted  and  trustwor- 
thy observer  has  been  subsequently  confirmed 
by  the  general  consensus  of  the  scientific  and 
medical  public  of  Germany,  which,  as  I  have 
been  recently  assured  by  my  distinguished  friend 
Prof.  Hofmann,  of  Berlin,  would  treat  any  at- 
tempt to  rehabilitate  Odyle  (as  it  appears  from 
M.  Dechambre's  testimony  that  it  would  be  treat- 
ed by  the  scientific  and  medical  public  of  France) 
as  simply  non  avenu.  And  any  one  who  is  ac- 
quainted with  the  state  of  scientific  and  medical 
opinion  in  this  country  must  be  well  aware  that 
any  attempt  to  rehabilitate  Odyle,  except  on  the 
basis  of  a  new  set  of  experiments,  in  which  the 
old  sources  of  fallacy  should  be  carefully  guarded 
against,  would  be  utterly  futile ;  neither  the  au- 
thority of  Prof.  Gregory  in  Edinburgh,  nor  that 
of  Dr.  Ashburner  in  London,  having  been  con- 
sidered by  the  scientific  and  medical  contempora- 
ries among  whom  they  respectively  lived,  and  to 
whom  their  qualifications  for  such  an  inquiry 
were  well  known,  as  of  more  account  than  that 
of  Von  Reichenbach  himself. 

I  do  not  for  a  moment  call  in  question  the 
right  of  any  one  either  to  hold  or  to  express  his 
belief  in  clairvoyance  and  Odylism.  But  I  do 
protest  against  the  right  of  such  a  one  either  to 
call  in  question  the  candor  and  honesty  of  any 
other  who  entertains  an  opinion  as  to  the  proba- 
tive value  of  the  evidence  on  these  subjects  that 
differs  from  his  own  ;  or  to  charge  him  with  per- 
verting the  facts  of  history  because  his  conclu- 
sions as  to  the  untrustworthiness  of  that  evidence 
are  drawn  from  a  survey  of  the  whole  of  the  his- 
tory, and  not  from  selected  parts  of  it. — Athe- 
naeum. 


THE   GEEM-THEORY  OF  DISEASE. 


Br  II.  CHARLTON  BASTIAN,  F.  R.  S.,   M.  D. 


T 


*  HOUGH  it  may  be  conceded  that  with  our 
present  state  of  knowledge  an  affirmative 
decision  in  regard  to  the  absolute  proof  of  the 
present  occurrence  of  archebiosis  (spontaneous 
generation)  may  be  still  withheld,  there  is,  I 
think,  no  similar  warrant  for  suspense  of  judg- 
ment in  regard  to  the  Germ-Theory  of  Disease, 
or,  as  it  is  also  called,  the  doctrine  of  Contagium 


Vivum.  Existing  evidence  seems  to  me  abun- 
dantly sufficient  for  the  rejection  of  this  doctrine 
as  untrue.1 

1  Since  this  paper  was  read,  the  doctrine  has  again 
been  proclaimed — and  never  with  more  force  and  abil- 
ity—by Dr.  William  Roberts  {British  Medical  Jovrnal, 
August  11,  1877).  Its  essential  points  may  be  stated 
in  the  words  of  its  latest  exponent.     He  says:  "I 


THE  GERM-THEORY  OF  DISEASE. 


311 


My  urine  and  potash  experiments  will  go  far 
to  illustrate  this  difference  in  the  weight  of  the 
evidence  in  regard  to  the  two  questions. 

A  "  sterilized  "  fluid — that  is,  one  which  left 
to  itself  would  always  remain  pure — may  be 
caused  to  ferment  by  the  addition  of  a  certain 
proportion  of  liquor  potassae  devoid  of  all  living 
things,  especially  if  the  influence  of  the  potash 
be  favored  by  certain  accessory  physical  condi- 
tions. This  fact  is  admitted  by  M.  Pasteur  him- 
self. During  the  fermentation  thus  initiated,  a 
matter  (ferment)  appears  and  increases,  which  is 
capable  of  spreading  a  similar  process  far  and 
wide  in  suitable  media. 

But,  on  the  strengh  of  the  analogy  upon  which 
the  germ-theorists  rely,  we  may  find  in  such  an  ex- 
periment a  warrant  for  the  belief  that  in  a  healthy 
person,  free  from  the  contagium  of  typhoid  fever 
or  any  other  of  its  class,  certain  kinds  of  ingesta 
(solids  or  fluids),  wholly  free  from  all  specific 
poison  may,  with  or  without  the  favoring  influ- 
ence of  other  altered  conditions,  give  rise  to  an 
independent  zymotic  process.  And  during  the 
process  thus  initiated,  a  matter  (contagium)  ap- 
pears and  increases  in  certain  of  the  fluids  or  tis- 
sues of  the  body,  which  is  capable  of  spreading 
a  similar  disease  far  and  wide  among  receptive 
members  of  the  community. 

Can  the  germless  liquor  potassae  plus  the  favor- 
ing conditions  (the  principal  of  which  is  a  certain 
high  temperature)  be  regarded  as  the  "cause" 
of  the  fermentation  ?  The  answer  does  not  ad- 
mit of  doubt :  the  effect  in  question  would  not 
have  taken  place  without  their  influence.  The 
old  logical  formula  in  regard  to  the  word,  ccssante 
causa,  cessat  effectus,  completely  justifies  this  point 
of  view ;  and  so  also  does  the  definition  of  Sir  John 
Herschel.     A  "  cause,"  said  this  philosopher,  is 

have  already  directed  your  attention  to  the  analogy 
between  the  action  of  an  organized  ferment  and  a  con- 
tagious fever.  The  analogy  is  probably  real,  in  so  far, 
at  least,  that  it  leads  us  to  the  inference  lhat  contagi- 
um, like  a  ferment,  is  something  that  ia  alive.  ...  If, 
then,  the  doctrine  of  a  contagium  vivum  be  true,  we 
are  almost  forced  to  the  conclusion  that  contagium 
consists  (at  least  in  the  immense  majority  of  cases) 
of  an  independent  organism  or  parasite  ;  and  it  is  in 
this  sense  alone  that  I  shall  consider  the  doctrine,  .  .  . 
it  is  more  than  probable,  looking  to  the  general  analogy 
between  them,  that  all  infective  diseases  conform  in 
some  fashion  to  one  fundamental  type.  If  septic  Bac- 
teria are  the  cause  of  septicemia,  if  the  Spirilla  are 
the  cause  of  relapsing  fever,  if  the  Bacillus  anthracis 
is  the  cause  of  splenic  fever,  the  inference  is  almost 
irresistible  that  other  analogous  organisms  are  the 
cause  of  other  infective  inflammations  and  of  other 
specific  fevers."— September,  1877. 


"  an  assemblage  of  phenomena  which  occurring, 
some  other  phenomenon  invariably  commences  or 
has  its  origin." 

But  there  is  a  point  of  view  which  must  not 
be  lost  sight  of.  It  is  of  considerable  importance, 
and  has  of  late  been  dwelt  upon  by  G.  H.  Lewes 
with  his  usual  force  and  clearness.  He  says :  '• 
"  The  fact  that  it  is  a  convenience  to  select  some 
one  element  out  of  the  group,  either  for  its  con- 
spicuousness,  its  novelty,  or  its  interest,  and  that 
we  call  it  the  cause  of  the  change,  throwing  all 
the  other  elements  into  the  background  of  con- 
ditions, must  not  make  us  overlook  the  fact  that 
this  cause — this  selected  condition — is  only  effec- 
tive in  coalescence  with  the  others.  Every  con- 
dition is  causal ;  the  effect  is  but  the  sum  of  the 
conditions." 

This  brings  us  to  the  only  point  of  doubt  which 
can  possibly  exist  in  regard  to  the  interpretation 
of  my  experiment.  It  is  whether  our  most  prom- 
inent causal  element,  the  liquor  potassae,  exercises 
its  influence  (a)  partly  upon  the  fluid  and  partly 
upon  certain  otherwise  dead  or  impotent  germs 
still  lurking  within  the  vessel,  or  (b)  simply  upon 
the  mere  chemical  constituents  of  the  fluid  me- 
dium, but  in  such  a  way  as  actually  to  engender 
minute  particles  of  living  matter  which  thereafter 
appear  as  ferment-organisms. 

If  a  practically  dead  germ  can  by  any  treat" 
ment  be  revived,  it  may  take  its  place  as  one  of 
the  causal  conditions  leading  to  fermentation ; 
hence  it  is  that  a  certain  reserve  may  still  be 
maintained  as  regards  the  absolute  proof  of  the 
possibility  of  a  germless  origin  of  common  fer- 
mentations, and  the  almost  simultaneous  occur- 
rence of  a  new  birth  of  living  units  (archebiosis). 

But  all  similar  grounds  for  reserve  are  ab- 
sent— are  non-existent,  in  fact — in  regard  to  the 
bearing  of  this  experiment  upon  the  possibility 
of  an  occasional  independent  origin  for  zymotic 
disease,  whether  or  not  such  disease  is  character- 
ized by  the  appearance  within  the  body  of  any 
distinctive  living  organisms.2 

This  I  will  now  endeavor  to  demonstrate. 

It  is  the  process  of  fermentation  which  is 
supposed  to  be  in  part  analogous  to  the  zymotic 
disease.  It  is  true  that  a  contagious  something 
becomes  engendered  during  fermentation  and 
during  zymosis,  by  means  of  which  the  process 
or  the  disease  may  be  spread  abroad.     But  there 

»  "Problems  of  Life  and  Mind,"  vol.  ii.,  p.  390. 

3  The  rule  is,  that  organisms  are  present  in  fermen- 
tations, while  they  are,  so  far  as  we  know,  quite  ex- 
ceptional in  zymotic  diseases. 


312 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


are  important  differences  in  regard  to  the  possi- 
ble independent  origin  of  the  two  processes  which 
have  hitherto  been  only  too  much  neglected.  The 
treatment  of  this  subject  has  often  been  much  too 
superficial.  In  order  to  produce  a  kind  of  picto- 
rial effect  whicli  may  easily  captivate  the  imagi- 
nation, difficulties  are  often  ignored,  and  many 
new,  modifying,  or  antagonistic  points  of  view 
have  even  of  late  been  treated  as  though  they 
were  non-existent. 

A  few  words  will  suffice  to  make  plain  some 
of  the  differences  between  the  respective  condi- 
tions which  would  be  operative  in  the  germless 
origin  of  fermentation  on  the  one  hand,  and  in 
the  de  novo  origin  of  a  contagious  disease  on  the 
other.  And  in  so  doing  I  shall  be  able,  I  think, 
at  the  same  time,  to  show  how  much  simpler  it 
would  be  to  bring  about  an  independent  zymosis 
than  an  independent  fermentation — that  is,  if  we 
are  to  rely  on  the  analogy  upon  which  the  germ- 
theorists  base  their  arguments. 

During  the  great  majority  of  fermentations, 
living  organisms  make  their  appearance  and  rap- 
idly multiply.  These  living  organisms  have  been 
proved  to  be  common  producers  of  chemical  prin- 
ciples, some  of  which  are  soluble  ferments,  oth- 
ers (like  pyrogen)  are  poisons  which  may  be  al- 
most as  deadly  as  that  of  a  serpent,  while  others 
still  are  inert  and  appear  as  mere  pigment-gran- 
ules. It  is  proved  that  some  of  these  chemical 
principles  act  as  true  ferments.1  It  is  thought, 
and  it  is  probable,  that  the  organisms  themselves 
— altogether  apart  from  their  media  and  what 
else  they  may  contain — may  be  capable  of  doing 
the  same.  Still  this  has  not  yet  been  definitely 
proved ;  so  that  the  action  of  soluble  chemical 
ferments  is  at  present  almost  better  substanti- 
ated than  that  of  the  living  organisms  by  whicli 
they  may  have  been  formed.  By  means  of  boil- 
ing alcohol  and  other  agents  these  bodies  can  be 
isolated  and  freed  from  living  impurity.  It  is, 
however,  much  more  difficult  entirely  to  separate 
minute  living  organisms  from  their  media,2  and, 
consequently,  more  difficult  to  be  perfectly  cer- 
tain in  regard  to  their  potencies.     It  is,  however, 

1  Pasteur,  Comptes  Eendus,  July  3, 1876,  p.  4. 

8  The  more  efficient  means  of  filtering  organisms 
from  their  media,  which  we  now  possess,  by  mean?  of 
porous  earthenware,  ought  to  be  useful  in  this  direc- 
tion. Such  organisms  and  their  germs  might  be  sub- 
sequently washed  with  several  distilled  waters,  just 
as  a  chemist  would  wash  a  delicate  precipitate.  It 
would  be  strange,  indeed,  if  this  very  mild  usage  inter- 
fered with  the  properties  of  organisms  which  at  other 
times  are  credited  with  such  remarkable  powers  of 
endurance. 


on  account  of  the  derivation  of  the  chemical  fer- 
ments from  the  living  units,  and  because  of  the 
presence  of  these  latter  bodies  in  all  fermenting 
mixtures,  that  their  own  agency  is  still  regarded 
by  many  as  essential  to  the  initiation  of  ordinary 
fermentations.  But,  as  I  have  already  indicated, 
we  much  need  further  information  as  to  the  pre- 
cise mode  in  which  fermentation  is  initiated  and 
carried  on  by  soluble  ferments  like  that  which 
M.  Musculus  discovered  in  and  separated  from 
urine.  If  they  (all  or  any  of  them)  are  capable 
of  setting  up  fermentations  in  germless  fluids  in 
the  course  of  which  organisms  appear,  such  phe- 
nomena would  most  effectually  disprove  an  exclu- 
sive germ-theory. 

Turning  now  to  the  process  of  zymosis,  we 
find  the  available  generative  conditions  altogether 
different.  Here  we  have  to  do  not  with  fluids 
only,  but  with  tissues  and  organs  composed  of 
living  elements  characterized  by  all  kinds  and 
degrees  of  activity.  Some  of  them  produce  the 
various  soluble  ferments  of  the  body,  some  may 
produce  poisons,  and  others  habitually  lead  to 
the  formation  of  pigment-granules — vital  acts 
severally  similar  in  kind  to  those  which  the  com- 
mon ferment-organisms  are  known  to  manifest. 
Tissue-elements  without  number  having  such  and 
multitudes  of  other  properties  are,  therefore,  ever 
present,  capable  under  certain  influences  of  being 
more  or  less  easily  diverted  into  unhealthy  modes 
of  action,  so  that  many  of  them  may  become 
true  living  ferments  in  the  modern  sense  of  that 
term,1  and  therefore  possible  producers  of  chemi- 
cal ferments  (contagia)  capable  of  initiating  some 
or  the  whole  of  the  series  of  changes  by  which 
they  were  themselves  produced,  in  other  suitable 
sites. 

The  essential  difference  between  the  two  prob- 
lems thus  becomes  plain.  The  only  point  which 
my  experiment  leaves  in  the  least  doubtful  in  re- 
gard to  the  causal  conditions  initiating  fermenta- 
tion is,  whether  any  latent,  powerless,  and,  as  it 

1  How  legitimate  this  statement  is  may  be  seen 
from  what  M.  Pasteur  himself  says.  These  are  his 
most  mature  views:  "I  have  been  gradually  led  to 
look  upon  fermentation  as  a  necessary  consequence  of 
the  manifestation  of  life,  when  that  life  takes  place 
without  the  direct  combustion  due  to  free  oxygen.  .  .  . 
We  may  partially  see,  as  a  consequence  of  this  theory, 
that  every  being,  every  organ,  every  cell  which  lives 
or  continues  its  life  without  making  use  of  atmos- 
pheric air,  or  which  uses  it  in  a  manner  insufficient 
for  the  whole  of  the  phenomena  of  its  own  nutrition, 
must  possess  the  characteristics  of  a  ferment  with 
regard  to  the  substance  which  is  the  source  of  its  to- 
tal or  complementary  heat."— Comptes  Bendus,  1872,  t. 
lxxv.,  p.  784. 


THE  GERM-THEORY  OF  DISEASE. 


313 


were,  dead  organized  ferment  may  still,  in  spite 
of  the  usual  evidence  to  the  contrary,  lurk  in  the 
seemingly  "sterilized"  fluid.  This,  however,  is 
the  very  point  about  which  there  is  no  shadow 
of  doubt  in  regard  to  zymosis.  Possible  ferments 
without  number  are,  by  necessity,  present  in  the 
form  of  tissue-elements.  So  that  if  we  are  to  be 
guided  by  the  analogy  upon  which  all  germ-theo- 
rists so  strongly  rely,  the  independent  generation 
of  a  zymotic  process  should,  for  the  reason  above 
specified,  be  incomparably  more  easy  to  be  brought 
about  than  fermentation  in  a  germless  fluid.  In 
regard  to  the  independent  origin  of  a  zymosis, 
the  all-important  point  is,  not  whether  latent 
ferments  exist,  but  whether  any  causes,  or  sets 
of  unhygienic  conditions,  can  rouse  or  modify,  in 
certain  special  modes,  the  activity  of  any  of  these 
myriads  of  potential  ferments  of  which  the  hu- 
man organism  is  so  largely  composed.  And  if, 
as  some  germ-theorists  would  have  us  believe, 
impotent  germs  of  common  ferment-organisms, 
incapable  of  exclusion,  are  also  widely  dissemi- 
nated throughout  the  body,  these,  if  they  are  such 
unavoidable  elements,  could  (in  regard  to  the  eti- 
ology of  disease)  only  be  looked  upon  as  com- 
ponents of  the  body,  ranking  side  by  side  with 
the  tissue-elements  themselves. 

Thus  such  organized  ferments  or  germs  as  are 
possibly  absent  from  the  "  sterilized  "  experimen- 
tal fluids  are  confessedly  present  by  myriads  in 
persons  who  may  be  sickening  under  the  influ- 
ence of  various  unhygienic  conditions  or  non- 
specific states  of  the  system ;  and  the  only  point 
which  is  regarded  as  doubtful  in  connection  with 
the  de  novo  origin  of  a  zymosis  is  what  analogy 
might  lead  us  to  affirm  as  completely  proved  by 
my  experiments,  viz.,  that  certain  conditions,  or 
states  of  system,  may  be  capable  of  rousing  some 
of  such  ferments  into  a  specific  kind  of  activity, 
wholly  apart  from  the  influence  of  any  specific 
contagia  coming  from  without.1 

1  While  the  last  sheets  of  this  paper  are  passing 
through  the  press,  a  very  interesting  address  by  Dr. 
B.  W.  Richardson,  F.R.S.,  has  been  published  (Nature, 
October  4,  1877),  entitled  "  A  Theory  as  to  the  Nat- 
ural or  Glandular  Origin  of  the  Contagious  Diseases." 
In  it  the  author  advances  many  strong  arguments 
against  the  germ-theory  ;  he  also  propounds  some  in- 
teresting speculations  as  to  the  mode  of  origin  and 
action  of  the  chemical  principles,  or  poisons,  which 
constitute,  as  he  believes,  the  "  contagia  "  of  the  com- 
municable diseases.  Some  such  views  make  a  very 
fitting  supplement  to  tbe  doctrines  which  I  have  been 
here  attempting  to  establish  in  regard  to  these  dis- 
eases ;  only  we  must,  as  Dr.  Richardson  observes, 
seek  gradually  to  put  well-proved  facts  in  the  places 
now  occupied  by  mere  speculations.  In  regard  to  the 
practical  aspects  of  the  two  opposite  doctrines,  Dr. 


Even  if  independent  ferment  organisms  of 
common  or  special  kinds  do  make  their  appear- 
ance during  any  process  of  zymosis  originated  in 
the  manner  above  suggested,  they  would,  from 
the  point  of  view  of  the  etiology  of  disease,  be 
just  as  much  consequences  of  the  morbific  influ- 
ences as  proliferation  of  tissue-elements  is  a  con- 
sequence of  the  direct  application  of  acetic  acid 
or  any  other  irritant. 

But  here,  in  order  to  make  this  point  of  view 
more  plain,  a  short  digression  is  necessary. 

The  intracellular  fermentation  in  vegetal  tis- 
sues supplies  us  with  a  kind  of  link  between  the 
ordinary  processes  of  fermentation  and  the  zy- 
motic processes  of  animals.  MM.  Lechartier  and 
Bellamy,  as  well  as  Pasteur  and  others,  have  now 
clearly  shown  that  in  vegetal  tissues  placed  under 
certain  abnormal  or  unhealthy  conditions,  fer- 
mentative phenomena  take  place  essentially  simi- 
lar to  those  occurring  in  solutions  containing  in- 
dependent ferment-organisms.  And  just  as  the 
vegetal  cell  can  do  what,  in  other  cases,  the  inde- 
pendent organism  does,  so  it  is  supposed  that  in 
the  process  of  zymosis  tissue-elements  may  take 
on  a  specifically  faulty  action,  leading  to  the  for- 
mation of  certain  chemical  principles  or  "con- 
tagia "  in  the  fluids  or  tissues  of  the  animal  body ; 
so  that,  in  the  great  majority  of  zymotic  diseases, 
offcast  particles  from  the  body,  whether  living  or 
dead,  when  saturated  with  such  principles,  may 
constitute  the  veritable  contagia  by  which  the 
specific  disease  is  spread  abroad  among  the  com- 
munity. 

In  the  majority  of  the  cases  of  intracellular 
fermentation  no  independent  organisms  are  gen- 
erated, though  in  others,  as  in  that  of  the  beet- 
root and  the  potato,  they  are  invariable  con- 
comitants. Similarly  in  the  majority  of  zymotic 
diseases  no  independent  organisms  are  generated, 
though  in  others,  such  as  relapsing  fever  and 

Richardson  makes  some  very  pertinent  observations. 
'•If  the  contagium  vivum  view  be  true,"  be  says,  "  if 
the  air  around  us  is  charged  with  invisible  germs, 
which  come  whence  we  know  not,  which  have  unlim- 
ited power  to  fertilize,  which  need  never  cease  to 
fertilize  and  multiply,  what  hope  is  there  for  the 
skill  of  man  to  overcome  these  hidden  foes  ?  Why  on 
some  occasion  may  not  a  plague  spread  over  tbe 
whole  world,  and  destroy  its  life  universally  ?  While, 
on  the  other  hand,  if  the  opposite  notion  be  true,  we 
have  complete  mastery  over  the  diffusion  of  the  poi- 
sons of  all  the  communicable  diseases.  We  have  but 
to  keep  steadily  in  view  that  the  producing  and  the 
reproducing  poweris  in  the  affected  body,  and  wecan, 
even  with  our  present  knowledge,  all  but  completely 
limit  the  action  to  the  propagating  power  of  that 
body — its  power.  I  mean,  of  secretion  and  diffusion  of 
secretion.—  October  6,  1877. 


314 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


splenic  fever,  they  are  invariable  concomitants ; 
and  being  engendered  in  diseased  parts  and  fluids 
they  may  thereafter  themselves  act  either  as  real 
contagia  or  as  carriers  of  contagion. 

The  causal  conditions  capable  of  inducing 
fermentation  in  the  beet-root  and  the  potato,  and 
with  it  the  appearance  of  Bacteria  in  swarms 
throughout  their  tissues,  are  known,  and  have  no 
ordinary  connection  with  preexisting  Bacteria. 
And  similarly  the  causal  conditions  capable  of 
inducing  relapsing  fever  and  splenic  fever,  though 
not  so  definitely  known,  may  nevertheless  have 
no  ordinary  connection  with  preexisting  Spirilla 
and  Bacilli  resembling  those  which  appear  in  the 
blood  or  tissues  of  the  patients  suffering  from 
either  of  these  diseases. 

Thus  the  mere  fact  that  in  certain  zymotic 
diseases  living  organisms  have  been  proved  to 
appear,  affords  of  itself  no  support  whatever  to 
an  exclusive  germ-theory,  as  I  shall,  after  this 
digression,  endeavor  to  show. 

The  fact  may  be  quite  otherwise  explained, 
either  (1)  in  accordance  with  the  views  of  certain 
germ-theorists,  though  these  are  in  direct  oppo- 
sition to  the  statements  of  others  of  the  same 
party  ;  (2)  in  accordance  with  the  statements  of 
this  second  section  of  the  germ-theorists,  sup- 
plemented by  a  belief  in  heterogenesis  : 

1.  The  presence  of  latent  germs  of  common 
though  modifiable  ferment-organisms  throughout 
the  body  is  invoked  by  one  section  of  the  germ- 
theorists,  who  contend  that  certain  altered  states 
of  health,  together  with  altered  vitality  of  tissues, 
may  rouse  such  hitherto  latent  common  organ- 
isms into  activity,  and  occasionally  convert  them 
into  so-calied  "  specific  "  forms  capable  of  new 
actions.  But  based  as  this  view  is  upon  wholly 
insufficient  evidence,  and  with  its  fundamental 
position  denied  by  other  leading  germ-theorists, 
it  would,  eveD  had  it  been  securely  founded,  be 
quite  inadequate  to  meet  the  necessities  of  their 
position.  A  special  zymotic  disease,  which  had 
arisen  in  the  manner  above  indicated,  would  as- 
suredly have  had  what  is  termed  a  de  novo  origin 
— it  would  have  started  from  no  specific  cause, 
and  would  never  have  developed,  but  for  the 
existence  of  those  "determining  conditions" 
which  brought  about  the  altered  state  of  health 
and  tissues.  This  group  of  conditions  would 
therefore  constitute  the  cause  of  the  disease; 
and  inasmuch  as,  by  the  hypothesis  we  are  now 
considering,  the  common  germs  are  held  to  be 
ever  present  and  unavoidable,  any  changes  or  de- 
velopments which  they  might  take  on  could  only 
be  studied  in  the  same  rank  and  side  bv  side  with 


those  of  the  other  tissue  elements — that  is,  as 
consequences  or  phenomena  of  the  disease. 

2.  It  was  originally  affirmed  by  Prof.  Burdon- 
Sanderson,1  and  it  has  of  late  been  distinctly 
reasserted  by  M.  Pasteur,2  that  the  blood  and  in- 
ternal tissues  of  healthy  animals  and  of  man  are 
entirely  free  from  ferment-organisms  or  their 
germs.  Some  have  sought  to  modify  this  view, 
on  the  strength  of  certain  experiments  which  are 
so  extremely  inconclusive  as  to  make  it  almost 
puerile  to  have  brought  them  forward.3 

For,  however  strong  the  evidence  is  that 
living  units  may,  on  certain  occasions,  be  even 
proved  experimentally  to  appear  in  fluids  in 
which  no  living  matter  previously  existed  (arche- 
biosis),  it  is  even  stronger  to  show  that,  under 
certain  conditions,  similar  low,  independent  forms 
of  life  may  originate  in  the  midst  of  living  tissues 
previously  free  from  them,  by  a  kind  of  trans- 
formation (heterogenesis)  of  some  of  the  units  of 
protoplasm,  which,  though  still  living,  have  been 
modified  in  nature  and  tendency  by  reason  of 
their  existence  in  a  partially  devitalized  area. 

The  evidence  in  favor  of  this  last  kind  of 
change  may  be  regarded  wholly  apart  from  that 
furnished  by  the  closed-flask  experiments,  from 
which  it  is  quite  distinct.  It  suffices,  I  thick,  to 
account  for  the  presence  of  organisms  in  some 
of  those  local  and  general  diseases  with  which 
they  are  known  to  be  associated,  and,  therefore, 
to  complete  the  proof  that  even  such  disease  may 
originate  de  novo  (as  well  as  by  contagion),  and 
that  the  organisms  which  characterize  them  are, 
in  such  cases,  consequences  or  concomitant  prod- 
ucts, not  causes  of  the  local  or  general  condi- 

1  "  Thirteenth  Eeport  ol  the  Medical  Officer  of  the 
Privy  Council." 

2  Comptes  Eendus,  April  30, 1877,  p.  000. 

8  Cutting  out  portions  of  the  internal  organs  of  re- 
cently-killed animals,  enveloping  them  with  super- 
heated paraffine,  and  then  placing  them  in  an  incuba- 
tor at  a  suitable  temperature  to  see  whether  germs 
and  organisms  will  appear,  would,  even  if  taken 
alone,  obviously  permit  no  certain  conclusion  to  be 
drawn  from  their  appearance.  But  the  evidence  relied 
upon  by  Sanderson  and  Pasteur  tends  as  strongly  to 
show  that  they  are  not  developments  of  preexisting 
germs,  as  certain  other  evidence  subsequently  to  be 
mentioned  tends  to  show  that  they  are  heterogenetic 
products  ("Transactions  of  the  Pathological  Society," 
1875,  p.  267).  Yet,  following  a  now  long-established 
custom  of  ignoring  the  possibility  of  the  heterogenetic 
origin  of  Bacteria,  the  results  of  such  experiments 
are  by  some  supposed  to  demonstrate  the  existence 
of  latent  germs  in  an  organ  like  the  spleen,  for  in- 
stance, which  is  wholly  cut  off  from  outside  commu- 
nication—and even  when  the  blood  itself  is  declared 
to  be  germlcss. 


THE  GERM-THEORY  OF  DISEASE. 


515 


tions  at  whose  bidding  they  appear.  The  ele- 
ments of  the  proof  are  these : 

(a.)  First,  there  is  the  evidence  which  has  been 
adduced  by  various  observers  as  a  result  of  the 
study  by  the  microscope  of  the  mode  in  which 
organisms  appear  within  tissue-elements.  I  do 
not  lay  much  stress  upon  this  here,  because  evi- 
dence of  such  a  nature  is  more  open  to  various 
objections  than  that  which  is  to  follow.1 

(b.)  Although  the  blood  and  internal  tissues 
of  healthy  animals  and  of  man  are  free  from  in- 
dependent organisms  and  their  germs,  yet  such 
organisms  will  habitually  show  themselves  after 
death,  in  the  course  of  a  few  days,  throughout 
all  the  organs  of  one  of  the  lower  animals  or  of 
man — even  when  life  has  been  abruptly  termi- 
nated during  a  state  of  health.  It  cannot  be 
said,  in  explanation  of  this,  that  the  organisms 
naturally  present  in  the  intestinal  canal  have 
been  enabled  to  spread  through  the  body  so  as 
to  reach  its  inmost  recesses  after  death — since 
many  of  the  organisms  found  are  motionless,  and 
others  have  mere  to-and-fro  movements  of  a  non- 
progressive character.  The  blood,  again,  has 
ceased  to  circulate,  so  that  this  fluid,  germless 
during  life,  cannot  after  death  be  considered  to 
act  even  as  a  carrier.  If  the  organisms  them- 
selves cannot  make  their  way  through  the  tissues, 
and  if  no  carrier  exist,  they  must  naturally  have 
been  born  in  or  near  the  sites  in  which  they  are 
found. 

Phenomena  of  this  kind  are  to  be  witnessed 
even  in  insects,  such  as  silk-worms  and  flies  ;  and 
the  organisms  that  habitually  develop  in  them 
after  death  are,  as  in  the  case  of  higher  animals, 
just  such  organisms  as  appear  in  some  of  their 
best  -  known  contagious  diseases.2  Certain  of 
these  diseases,  like  "  muscardine,"  seem  to  be 
generable  de  novo  at  the  will  of  the  operator  by 
merely  placing  the  animal  for  a  few  days  under 
particular  sets  of  unhealthy  conditions. 

(c.)  Some  of  the  ferment-organisms  may  also 
be  made  to  appear  at  will  in  certain  parts  of  still 
living  and  previously  healthy  animals  by  deter- 
mining in  any  such  part  either  (1)  a  greatly  low- 
ered vital  activity,  or  (2)  an  active  perversion  of 
the  nutritive  life  of  the  part  of  considerable  in- 
tensity : 

1.  This  subject  has  been  studied  experimen- 
tally by  Messrs.  Lewis  and   Cunningham,3  two 

1  On  this  subject  see  "Beginnings  of  Life,"  vol.  ii., 
p.  342. 

2  Ibid.,  pp.  327,  note  1,  and  330,  and  "  Transactions 
of  the  Pathological  Society,"  1875,  p.  343. 

3  "The  Fungus-Disease  of  India,"  Calcutta,  1875, 
p.  89. 


thoroughly  competent  and  trustworthy  observers, 
whose  researches  during  recent  years  have  won 
for  them  a  deservedly  high  reputation.  They 
say:  "The  object  of  the  experiments  was  to  as- 
certain whether,  by  interfering  with  the  vascular 
supply  of  certain  tissues  and  organs  of  the  body 
of  an  animal  without  injuring  the  isolated  tissue, 
we  should  be  able  within  the  course  of  some  hours 
to  detect  organisms  in  those  parts  in  the  same 
manner  as  we  had  been  able  to  do  when  an  ani- 
mal had  been  killed  under  chloroform  and  set 
aside  in  a  warm  place.  We  found  that  such  was 
the  result,  and  that  a  kidney,  for  example,  when 
[its  artery  was]  carefully  ligatured  without  inter- 
fering with  its  position  in  the  abdomen,  would  be 
found  after  some  hours  to  contain  precisely  sim- 
ilar organisms ;  whereas  the  other  kidney,  whose 
circulation  had  not  been  interfered  with,  con- 
tained no  trace  of  any  vegetation  whatever." l 

2.  Facts  of  this  second  order  have  been  thor- 
oughly established  by  the  important  researches 
of  Prof.  Burdon-Sanderson.  He  says : 2  "  If  a  few 
drops  of  previously  boiled  and  cooled  dilute  solu- 
tion of  ammonia  are  injected  underneath  the  skin 
of  a  Guinea-pig,  a  diifuse  inflammation  is  pro- 

1  On  September  17,  1877, 1  had  an  opportunity  of 
seeing  how  far  this  would  hold  good  for  the  human 
subject.  On  that  day  I  made  an  examination,  twelve 
hours  after  death,  of  the  body  of  a  young  man  who 
had  been  suffering  from  severe  beart-disease  in  Uni- 
versity College  Hospital.  His  temperature  bad  only 
been  slightly  raised  for  about  forty-eight  hours  before 
death  ;  but  there  was  reason  for  believing  that  em- 
bolic obstructions  had  recently  occurred  in  one  or 
both  kidneys.  Abundant  "vegetations  "  were  found 
on  the  mitral  and  aortic  valves,  and  two  or  three  em- 
bolic patches  existed  in  each  kidney,  some  being  re- 
cent and  others  ef  older  date.  One  large  yellowish 
embolic  patch  was  likewise  found  occupying  the  upper 
extremity  of  an  enlarged  spleen.  Some  blood  from 
the  right  ventricle  and  some  urine  from  the  bladder, 
carefully  removed  with  capillary  tubes,  on  examina- 
tion with  the  microscope  and  a  one-twelfth  object- 
glass,  showed  no  organisms  of  any  kind.  Portions 
of  tissue  cut  from  the  interior  of  the  liver  also  showed 
no  organisms.  On  the  other  hand,  the  embolic  patch 
in  the  spleen  as  well  as  those  in  the  kidney,  both  old 
and  recent,  showed,  when  portions  of  their  disin- 
tegrated substance  were  examined,  organisms,  more 
or  less  abundantly  distributed,  similar  to  those  which 
Messrs.  Cunningham  and  Lewis  have  figured.  Some 
were  Bacilli,  and  some  were  more  like  what  Cohn 
now  distinguishes  as  Vibriones.  They  were  not  so 
abundant  as  to  be  always  found  without  careful  exam- 
ination ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  in  the  diseased  splen- 
ic tissue  there  were  a  multitude  of  small  acicular  crys- 
tals which  an  inexperienced  observer  might  mistake 
for  motionless  organisms.  In  the  lower  healthy  por- 
tion of  the  spleen  no  onrnnisms  were  found. 

2  "Transactions  of  the  Pathological  Society,"  1872, 
pp.  306-308. 


316 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


duced,  the  exudation  liquid  of  which  is  found 
after  twenty-four  hours  to  be  charged  with  Bac- 
teria. .  .  .  Other  chemical  agents,"  he  adds,  "  will 
lead  to  the  same  results,  and  always  under  con- 
ditions which  preclude  the  possibility  of  the  intro- 
duction of  any  infecting  matter  from  without." 

Elsewhere '  the  same  investigator  refers  to 
experiments  which  were  made  about  the  same 
time,  in  order  to  throw  light  upon  the  cause  of 
the  appearance  of  Bacteria  in  certain  peritoneal 
exudations,  and  to  ascertain  whether  or  not  their 
presence  was  to  be  considered  as  "  a  mere  result 
of  the  intensity  of  the  peritonitis."  He  says: 
"  To  determine  this,  experiments  were  made 
during  the  following  month  (May,  1871),  which 
consisted  in  inducing  intense  peritonitis  by  the 
injection,  not  of  exudation  liquids,  but  of  chem- 
ical irritants,  particularly  dilute  ammonia  and 
concentrated  solution  of  iodine  in  hydriodic  acid. 
As  regards  the  ammonia,  precautions  were  taken 
to  guard  against  contamination  by  boiling  and 
cooling  the  liquids  as  well  as  the  implements  to 
be  used  immediately  before  injection.  In  the 
case  of  the  iodine  solution  this  was,  of  course, 
unnecessary.  In  every  instance  it  was  found 
that  the  exudation  liquids,  collected  from  twenty- 
four  to  forty-eight  hours  after  injection,  were 
charged  with  Bacteria,  whence  it  appeared  prob- 
able that  the  existence  of  these  organisms  was 
dependent,  not  on  the  nature  of  the  exciting  liquid 
by  which  the  inflammation  was  induced,  but  on 
the  intensity  of  the  inflammation  itself." 

From  the  various  evidence  more  or  less  fully 
referred  to  in  the  present  section  it  seems  to  me 
legitimate  to  conclude : 

1.  That  if  we  are  to  be  guided  by  the  anal- 
ogy now  dwelt  upon  as  existing  between  fermen- 
tation and  zymosis,  it  would  be  perfectly  certain 
that  the  latter  process  can  originate  de  novo — 
that  is,  under  the  influence  of  certain  general  or 
special  conditions,  and  where  specific  contagia  of 
any  kind  are  at  first  absent,  though  they  subse- 
quently appear  as  results  or  concomitant  products. 
So  that  an  exclusive  theory  of  "  contagion,"  as 

>  "  Reports  of  the  Medical  Officer  of  the  Privy  Coun- 
cil," etc.,  new  series,  No.  vi.,  1815,  p.  57. 


the  only  present  cause  of  communicable  diseases, 
is  not  supported  by  experimental  evidence. 

2.  That  some  contagia  are  mere  not-living 
chemical  principles,  though  others  may  be  living 
units. 

3.  That  even  in  the  latter  case,  if  the  pri- 
mary contagious  action  be  really  due  to  the 
living  units  and  not  to  the  media  in  which  they 
are  found,  such  primary  action  is  probably  de- 
pendent rather  upon  the  chemical  changes  or 
"contact  actions"  which  they  are  capable  of  set- 
ting up  than  upon  their  mere  growth  and  vege- 
tative multiplication. 

4.  That  where  we  have  to  do  with  a  true 
living  contagium  (whether  pus -corpuscle  or 
ferment-organism),  the  primary  changes  which  it 
incites  are  probably  of  a  nature  to  engender 
(either  in  the  fluids  or  from  the  tissue-elements  of 
the  part)  bodies  similar  to  itself,  so  that  the  in- 
fected part  speedily  swarms  therewith.  When 
pus  from  a  certain  fecus  of  inflammation  comes 
into  contact  with  a  healthy  conjunctiva,  and 
therein  excites  a  contagious  form  of  inflammation, 
no  one  adopts  the  absurd  notion  that  all  the  pus- 
corpuscles  in  this  second  inflammatory  focus  are 
the  lineal  descendants  of  those  which  acted  as  the 
contagium ;  and  the  mode  of  action  may  be  al- 
together similar  when  matter  containing  Bacilli, 
by  coming  into  contact  with  a  wounded  surface, 
gives  rise  to  splenic  fever  and  the  appearance  of 
such  organisms  all  through  the  body.  The  old 
notion  about  the  excessive  self-multiplication  of 
the  original  contagium  is  probably  altogether  er- 
roneous. 

Thus  all  the  distinctive  positions  of  those  who 
advocate  a  belief  in -the  so-called  "  Germ-Theory 
of  Disease,"  or  rely  upon  the  exclusive  doctrine 
of  a  "  Contagium  Vivum,"  seem  to  be  absolutely 
broken  down  and  refuted.  We  may  give  that 
attention  to  the  appearance  and  development  of 
independent  organisms  in  association  with  morbid 
processes  which  the  importance  of  their  presence 
demands,  but  we  must  regard  them  as  concom- 
itant products,  and  not  at  all,  or  except  to  an 
extremely  limited  extent,  as  causes  of  those  local 
and  general  diseases  with  which  they  are  insepa- 
rably linked. 


JOHN  STUART  MILL'S  PHILOSOPHY  TESTED. 


317 


JOHN  STUART  MILL'S  PHILOSOPHY  TESTED. 

By  W.  STANLEY  JEVONS,  F.  E.  S. 


II. 


IN  the  previous  article  on  John  Stuart  Mill's 
"  Philosophy,"  I  made  the  strange  assertion 
that  Mill's  mind  was  essentially  illogical.  To  those 
who  have  long  looked  upon  him  as  their  guide, 
philosopher,  and  friend,  such  a  statement  must 
of  course  have  seemed  incredible  and  absurd, 
and  it  will  require  a  great  body  of  evidence  to 
convince  them  that  there  is  any  ground  for  the 
assertion.  My  first  test  of  his  logicalness  was 
derived  from  his  writings  on  geometrical  science. 
I  showed,  by  carefully  authenticated  extracts, 
that  Mill  had  put  forth  views  which  necessarily 
imply  the  existence  of  perfectly  straight  lines ; 
yet  he  had  at  the  same  time  distinctly  denied  the 
existence  of  such  lines.  It  was  pointed  out  that 
he  emphatically  promised  to  use  names  always  as 
the  names  of  things,  not  as  the  names  of  our 
ideas  of  things ;  yet,  as  straight  lines  in  his  opin- 
ion do  not  exist,  the  name  straight  line  is  either 
the  name  of  "just  nothing  at  all,"  as  James 
Mill  would  have  said,  or  else  it  is  the  name  of  our 
ideas  of  what  they  are.  It  is  by  experimenting 
on  these  ideal  straight  lines  in  the  mind  that  we 
learn  the  axioms  and  theorems  of  geometry  ac- 
cording to  Mill ;  nevertheless  Mill  had  denounced, 
as  the  cardinal  error  of  philosophy,  the  handling 
ideas  instead  of  things,  and  had,  indeed,  in  the 
earlier  editions  of  the  "  System  of  Logic,"  as- 
serted that  not  a  single  truth  ever  had  been  ar- 
rived at  by  this  method,  except  truths  of  psy- 
chology. Mill  asserted  that  we  might  experi- 
ment on  lines  in  the  mind  by  prolonging  them  to 
any  required  distance ;  but  these  lines  according 
to  Mill's  own  statements  must  have  thickness, 
and  on  minute  inquiry  it  was  found  impossible  to 
attach  any  definite  meaning  at  all  to  the  prolon- 
gation of  a  thick  line.  Finally,  it  .was  pointed 
out  that,  when  Mill  incidentally  speaks  of  an  im- 
portant mathematical  theorem  concerning  the 
ratio  of  the  diameter  and  circumference  of  the 
circle,  he  abandons  his  empirical  philosophy  pro 
tempore,  and  speaks  of  the  ratio  in  question  as 
being  discovered  by  a  long  train  of  difficult  rea- 
soning. 

Such  is  the  summary  of  the  first  small  install- 
ment of  my  evidence.  On  some  future  occasion 
I  shall  return  to  the  subject  of  geometrical  rea- 
soning, which  is  far  from  being  exhausted.     It 


will  then  be  proved  that,  on  the  question  whether 
geometry  is  an  inductive  or  a  deductive  science, 
Mill  held  opinions  of  every  phase ;  in  one  part 
of  his  writings  geometry  is  strictly  inductive ;  in 
another  part  it  is  improperly  called  inductive ; 
elsewhere  it  is  set  up  as  the  type  of  a  deductive 
science,  and  anon  it  becomes  a  matter  of  direct 
observation  and  experiment ;  presently  Mill  dis- 
covers, unexpectedly,  that  there  is  no  difference 
at  all  between  an  inductive  and  a  deductive  sci- 
ence— the  true  distinction  is  between  a  deductive 
and  an  experimental  science.  But  Mill  charac- 
teristically overlooks  the  fact  that,  if  the  differ- 
ence lies  between  a  deductive  and  an  experimental 
science,  and  not  between  a  deductive  and  an  in- 
ductive science,  then  a  similar  line  of  difference 
must  be  drawn  between  an  inductive  and  an 
experimental  science,  although  Mill's  inductive 
methods  are  the  Four  Experimental  Methods. 

But  the  origin  of  our  geometrical  knowledge 
is  a  very  slippery  subject,  as  I  before  allowed. 
It  would  not  be  fair  to  condemn  Mill  for  the 
troubles  in  which  he  involved  himself  in  regard 
to  such  a  subject  if  there  were  no  other  counts 
proved  against  him.  Certainly  he  selected  geom- 
etry as  a  critical  test  of  the  truth  of  his  empiri- 
cal philosophy,  but  he  may  have  erred  in  judg- 
ment in  choosing  so  trying  a  test.  Let  us,  there- 
fore, leave  geometry  for  the  present,  and  select 
for  treatment  in  this  second  article  a  much 
broader  and  simpler  question — one  which  lies  at 
the  basis  of  the  philosophy  of  logic  and  knowl- 
edge. We  will  endeavor  to  gain  a  firm  compre- 
hension of  Mill's  doctrine  concerning  the  nature 
and  importance  of  the  relation  of  Resemblance. 
This  question  touches  the  very  nature  of  knowl- 
edge itself.  Now,  critics  who  are  considered  to 
be  quite  competent  to  judge  have  declared  that 
Mill's  logic  is  peculiarly  distinguished  by  the 
thorough  analysis  which  it  presents  of  the  cogni- 
tive and  reasoning  processes.  Mill  has  not  re- 
stricted himself  to  the  empty  forms  and  methods 
of  argument,  but  has  pushed  his  inquiry,  as  they 
think,  boldly  into  the  psychology  and  philosophy 
of  reasoning.  In  the  "  System  of  Logic,"  then, 
we  shall  find  it  clearly  decided  whether  resem- 
blance is.  or  is  not,  the  fundamental  relation  with 
which  reasoning  is  concerned.     It  was  the  doc- 


318 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


trine  of  Locke,  as  fully  expounded  in  the  fourth 
book  of  his  great  Essay,  that  knowledge  is  the 
perception  of  the  agreement  or  disagreement  of 
our  ideas. 

"  Knowledge,  then,"  says  Locke,  "  seems  to 
me  to  be  nothing  but  the  perception  of  the  con- 
nection and  agreement,  or  disagreement  and  re- 
pugnancy, of  any  of  our  ideas.  In  this  alone  it 
consists.  "Where  this  perception  is,  there  is  knowl- 
edge ;  and,  where  it  is  not,  there,  though  we  may 
fancy,  guess,  or  believe,  yet  we  always  come  short 
of  knowledge." 

Many  other  philosophers  have  likewise  held 
that  a  certain  agreement  between  things,  various- 
ly described  as  resemblance,  similarity,  identity, 
sameness,  equality,  etc.,  really  constituted  the 
whole  of  reasoned  knowledge  as-  distinguished  from 
the  mere  knowledge  of  sense.  Condillac  adopted 
this  view,  and  stated  it  with  admirable  breadth 
and  brevity,  saying,  "  L'evidence  de  raison  con- 
siste  uniquement  dans  l'identite." 

Mill  has  not  failed  to  discuss  this  matter,  and 
his  opinion  on  the  subject  is  most  expressly  and 
clearly  stated  in  the  chapter  upon  "  The  Import 
of  Propositions."  1  He  analyzes  the  state  of  mind 
called  Belief,  and  shows  that  it  involves  one  or 
more  of  five  matters  of  fact — namely,  Existence, 
Coexistence,  Sequence,  Causation,  Resemblance. 
One-  or  other  of  these  is  asserted  (or  denied)  in 
every  proposition  which  is  not  merely  verbal. 
No  doubt  relations  of  the  kinds  mentioned  form 
a  large  part  of  the  matter  of  knowledge,  and 
they  must  be  expressed  in  propositions  in  some 
way  or  other.  I  believe  that  they  are  expressed 
in  the  terms  of  propositions,  while  the  copula  al- 
ways signifies  agreement,  or,  as  Condillac  would 
have  said,  identity  of  the  terms.  But  we  need 
not  attempt  to  settle  a  question  of  this  difficulty. 
We  are  only  concerned  now  with  the  position  in 
his  system  which  Mill  assigns  to  Resemblance. 
This  comes  last  in  the  list,  and  it  is  with  some 
expression  of  doubt  that  Mill  assigns  it  a  place 
at  all.     He  says  : 2 

"  Besides  propositions  which  assert  a  sequence 
or  coexistence  between  two  phenomena,  there  are, 
therefore,  also  propositions  which  assert  resem- 
blance between  them— as,  this  color  is  like  that 
color;  the  heat  of  to-day  is  equal  to  the  heat  of 
yesterday.  It  is  true  that  such  an  assertion  might 
with  some  plausibility  be  brought  within  the  de- 
scription of  an  affirmation  of  sequence  by  consid- 
ering it  as  an  assertion  that  the  simultaneous  con- 
templation of  the  two  colors  is  followed  by  a  spe- 

1  Book  I.,  chapter  v. 

2  Book  I.,  chapter  v..  section  6. 


cific  feeling  termed  the  feeling  of  resemblance. 
But  there  would  be  nothing  gained  by  encumber- 
ing ourselves,  especially  in  this  place,  with  a  gen- 
eralization which  may  be  looked  upon  as  strained. 
Logic  does  not  undertake  to  analyze  mental  facts 
into  their  ultimate  elements.  Resemblance  be- 
tween two  phenomena  is  more  intelligible  in  it- 
self than  any  explanation  could  make  it,  and  un- 
der any  classification  must  remain  specifically  dis- 
tinct from  the  ordinary  cases  of  sequence  and  co- 
existence." 

It  would  seem,  then,  that  Mill  had,  to  say  the 
least,  contemplated  the  possibility  of  resolving 
Resemblance  into  something  simpler — namely, 
into  a  special  case  of  sequence  and  coexistence ; 
but  he  abstains,  not  apparently  because  it  would 
be  plainly  impossible,  but  because  logic  does  not 
undertake  ultimate  analysis.  It  would  encumber 
us  with  a  "  strained  generalization,"  whatever 
that  may  be.  He  therefore  accords  it  provision- 
ally a  place  among  the  matters  of  fact  which 
logic  treats. 

Postponing  further  consideration  of  this  pas- 
sage, we  turn  to  a  later  book  of  the  "  System 
of  Logic,"  in  which  Mill  expresses  pretty  clearly 
his  opinion  that  Resemblance  is  a  minor  kind  of 
relation  to  be  treated  last  in  the  system  of  Logic, 
as  being  of  comparatively  small  importance.  In 
the  chapter  headed  "  Of  the  Remaining  Laws  of 
Nature,"1  we  find  Mill  distinctly  stating  that2 
"  the  propositions  which  affirm  Order  in  Time,  in 
either  of  its  two  modes,  Coexistence  and  Succes- 
sion, have  formed,  thus  far,  the  subject  of  the 
present  book.  And  we  have  now  concluded  the 
exposition,  so  far  as  it  falls  within  the  limits  as- 
signed to  this  work,  of  the  nature  of  the  evidence 
on  which  these  propositions  rest,  and  the  pro- 
cesses of  investigation  by  which  they  are  ascer- 
tained and  proved.  There  remain  three  classes 
of  facts :  Existence,  Order  in  Place,  and  Resem- 
blance, in  regard  to  which  the  same  questions 
are  now  to  be  resolved." 

From  the  above  passage  we  should  gather 
that  Resemblance  has  not  been  the  subject  treated 
in  the  preceding  chapters  of  the  third  book,  or 
certainly  not  the  chief  subject. 

Of  the  remaining  three  classes  of  facts,  Exist- 
ence is  dismissed  very  briefly.  So  far  as  relates 
to  simple  existence,  Mill  thinks 3  that  the  induc- 
tive logic  has  no  knots  to  untie,  and  he  proceeds 
to  the  remaining  two  of  the  great  classes  into 
which   facts   have   been   divided.      His  opinion 

1  Book  III.,  chapter  xxiv. 

2  First  section,  near  the  beginning. 

3  Same  section. 


JOHN  STUART  MILL'S  PHILOSOPHY  TESTED. 


319 


about  Resemblance  is  clearly  stated  in  the  sec- 
ond section  of  the  same  chapter,  as  follows: 

"  Resemblance  and  its  opposite,  except  in  the 
case  in  which  they  assume  the  names  of  Equality 
and  Inequality,  are  seldom  regarded  as  subjects  of 
science;  they  are  supposed  to  be  perceived  by 
simple  apprehension  ;  by  merely  applying  our 
senses  or  directing  our  attention  to  the  two  ob- 
jects at  once,  or  in  immediate  succession." 

After  pointing  out  that  we  cannot  always  bring 
two  things  into  suitable  proximity,  he  adds : 

"  The  comparison  of  two  things  through  the 
intervention  of  a  third  thing,  when  their  direct 
comparison  is  impossible,  is  the  appropriate  scien- 
tific process  for  ascertaining  resemblances  and  dis- 
similarities, and  is  the  sum  total  of  what  Logic 
has  to  teach  on  the  subject. 

"  An  undue  extension  of  this  remark  induced 
Locke  to  consider  reasoning  itself  as  nothing  but 
the  comparison  of  two  ideas  through  the  medium 
of  a  third,  and  knowledge  as  the  perception  of  the 
agreement  or  disagreement  of  two  ideas:  doctrines 
which  the  Condillac  school  blindly  adopted,  with- 
out the  qualifications  and  distinctions  with  which 
they  were  studiously  guarded  by  their  illustrious 
author.  Where,  indeed,  the  agreement  or  dis- 
agreement (otherwise  called  resemblance  or  dis- 
similarity) of  any  two  things  is  the  very  matter  to 
be  determined,  as  is  the  case  particularly  in  the 
sciences  of  quantity  and  extension,  there  the  pro- 
cess by  which  a  solution,  if  not  attainable  by  direct 
perception,  must  be  indirectly  sought,  consists  in 
comparing  these  two  things  through  the  medium 
of  a  third.  But  this  is  far  from  being  true  of  all 
inquiries.  The  knowledge  that  bodies  fall  to  the 
ground  is  not  a  perception  of  agreement  or  dis- 
agreement, but  of  a  series  of  physical  occurrences, 
a  succession  of  sensations.  Locke's  definitions  of 
knowledge  and  of  reasoning  required  to  be  limited 
to  our  knowledge  of,  and  reasoning  about,  Resem- 
blances." 

"We  learn  from  these  passages,  then,  that 
science  and  knowledge  have  little  to  do  with 
resemblances.  Except  in  the  case  of  equality 
and  inequality,  resemblance  is  seldom  regarded  as 
the  subject  of  science,  and  Mill  apparently  accepts 
what  he  holds  to  be  the  prevailing  opinion.  The 
sum  total  of  what  logic  has  to  teach  on  this  sub- 
ject is  that  two  things  may  be  compared  through 
the  intervention  of  a  third  thing,  when  their  di- 
rect comparison  is  impossible.  Locke  unduly 
extended  this  remark  when  he  considered  reason- 
ing itself  as  nothing  but  the  comparison  of  two 
ideas  through  the  medium  of  a  third.  Locke's 
definitions  of  knowledge  and  of  reasoning  require 
to  be  limited  to  our  knowledge  of,  and  reasoning 
about,  resemblances. 


In  the  preceding  part  of  the  third  book  of 
the  "  System  of  Logic,"  then,  we  have  not  been 
concerned  with  Resemblance.  The  subjects  dis- 
cussed have  been  contained  in  propositions  which 
affirm  Order  in  Time,  in  either  of  its  modes,  Co- 
existence and  Succession.  Resemblance  is  an- 
other matter  of  fact,  which  has  been  postponed 
to  the  twenty-fourth  chapter  of  the  third  book,  and 
there  dismissed  in  one  short  section,  as  being 
seldom  regarded  as  a  subject  of  science.  Under 
these  circumstances  we  should  hardly  expect  to 
find  that  Mill's  so-called  Experimental  Methods 
are  wholly  concerned  with  resemblance.  Cer- 
tainly these  celebrated  methods  are  the  subject 
of  science;  they  are,  according  to  Mill,  the  great 
methods  of  scientific  discovery  and  inductive 
proof;  they  form  the  main  topic  of  the  third 
book  of  the  Logic,  indeed,  they  form  the  central 
pillars  of  the  whole  "  System  of  Logic."  It  is  a 
little  puzzling,  then,  to  find  that  the  names  of 
these  methods  seem  to  refer  to  Resemblance,  or 
to  something  which  much  resembles  resemblance. 
The  first  is  called  the  Method  of  Agreement ;  the 
second  is  the  Method  of  Difference ;  the  third  is 
the  Joint  Method  of  Agreement  and  Difference ; 
and  the  remaining  two  methods  are  confessedly 
developments  of  these  principal  methods.  Now, 
does  Agreement  mean  Resemblance  or  not?  If 
it  does,  then  the  whole  of  the  third  book  may  be 
said  to  treat  of  a  relation  which  Mill  has  pro- 
fessedly postponed  to  the  second  section  of  the 
twenty-fourth  chapter. 

Let  us  see  what  these  methods  involve.  The 
canon  of  the  first  method  is  stated  in  the  follow- 
ing words,1  which  many  an  anxious  candidate  for 
academic  honors  has  committed  to  memory: 

"If  two  or  more-  instances  of  the  phenomenon 
under  investigation  have  only  one  circumstance  in 
common,  the  circumstance  in  which  alone  all  the 
instances  agree,  is  the  cause  (or  effect)  of  the  given 
phenomenon." 

Now,  when  two  or  more  instances  of  the 
phenomenon  under  investigation  agree,  do  they, 
or  do  they  not,  resemble  each  other  ?  Is  agree- 
ment the  same  relation  as  resemblance,  or  is  it 
something  different  ?  If,  indeed,  it  be  a  separate 
kind  of  relation,  it  must  be  matter  of  regret  that 
Mill  did  not  describe  this  relation  of  agreement 
when  treating  of  the  "Import  of  Propositions." 
Surely  the  propositions  in  which  we  record  our 
observations  of  "  the  phenomenon  under  investi- 
gation" must  affirm  agreement  or  difference,  and 
as  the  experimental  methods  are  the  all-important 

1  Book  III.,  chapter  viii..  section  1,  near  the  end. 


320 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


instruments  of  science,  these  propositions  must 
have  corresponding  importance.  Perhaps,  how- 
ever, we  shall  derive  some  light  from  the  con- 
text ;  reading  on  a  few  lines  in  the  description  of 
the  Method  of  Difference,1  we  find  Mill  saying 
that— 

"  In  the  Method  of  Agreement  we  endeavored 
to  obtain  instances  which  agreed  in  the  given  cir- 
cumstance but  differed  in  every  other:  in  the 
present  method  (i.  e.,  the  Method  of  Difference) 
we  require,  on  the  contrary,  two  instances  resem- 
bling one  another  in  every  other  respect,  but  dif- 
fering in  the  presence  or  absence  of  the  phenome- 
non we  wish  to  study." 

It  would  really  seem,  then,  as  if  the  great  Ex- 
perimental Method  depends  upon  our  discovering 
two  instances  resembling  one  another.  Here  re- 
semblance is  specified  by  name.  We  seem  to 
learn  clearly  that  Agreement  must  be  the  same 
thing  a3  Resemblance  ;  if  so,  Difference  must  be 
its  opposite.  Proceeding  accordingly  to  con- 
sider the  Method  of  Difference,  we  find  its  re- 
quirements described  in  these  words  : 2  "  The 
two  instances  which  are  to  be  compared  with  one 
another  must  be  exactly  similar,  in  all  circum- 
stances except  the  one  which  we  are  attempting 
to  investigate." 

This  exact  similarity  is  not  actual  identity,  of 
course,  because  the  instances  are  two,  not  one. 
Is  it,  then,  resemblance  ?  If  so,  we  again  find 
the  principal  subject  of  Mill's  Logic  to  be  that 
which  he  relegated  to  section  2  of  chapter  xxiv. 
If  we  proceed  with  our  reading  of  Mill's  chapter 
on  the  "  Four  Experimental  Methods,"  we  still 
find  sentence  after  sentence  dealing  with  this  re- 
lation of  resemblance,  sometimes  under  the  very 
same  name,  sometimes  under  the  names  of  simi- 
larity, agreement,  likeness,  etc.  As  to  its  appar- 
ent opposite,  difference,  it  seems  to  be  the  theme 
of  the  whole  chapter.  The  Method  of  Difference 
is  that  wonderful  method  which  can  prove  the 
most  general  law  on  the  ground  of  two  instances  ! 
But  of  this  peculiarity  of  the  Method  of  Differ- 
ence I  shall  treat  on  another  occasion. 

Perhaps,  however,  after  all,  I  may  be  misrep- 
resenting Mill's  statements.  It  crosses  my  mind 
that  by  Resemblance  he  may  mean  something 
different  from  exact  similarity.  The  Methods  of 
Agreement  and  Difference  may  require  that  com- 
plete likeness  which  we  should  call  identity  of 
quality.  It  is  only  fair  to  inquire,  then,  whether 
he  uses  the  word  Resemblance  in  a  broad  or  a 

1  Same  chapter,  second  section. 
=  Same  chapter,  third  section,  third  paragraph, 
fourth  line. 


narrow  sense.  On  this  point  Mill  leaves  us  in  no 
doubt ;  for  he  says  distinctly,1  "  This  resemblance 
may  exist  in  all  conceivable  gradations,  from  per- 
fect undistinguishableness  to  something  extremely 
slight." 

Again,  on  the  next  page,  while  distinguishing 
carefully  between  such  different  things  as  nu- 
merical identity  and  indistinguishable  resem- 
blance, he  clearly  countenances  the  wide  use  of 
the  word  resemblance,  saying,2  "  Resemblance, 
when  it  exists  in  the  highest  degree  of  all,  amount- 
ins;  to  undistinEfuishableness,  is  often  called  iden- 
tity."  It  seems,  then,  that  all  grades  of  likeness 
or  similarity,  from  indistinguishable  identity  down 
to  something  extremely  slight,  are  properly  com- 
prehended under  resemblance  ;  and  it  is  difficult 
to  come  to  any  other  conclusion  than  that  the 
agreement  and  similarity  and  difference  treated 
throughout  the  Experimental  Methods  are  all  cases 
of  that  minor  relation,  seldom  considered  the 
subject  of  science,  which  was  postponed  by  Mill 
to  the  second  section  of  the  twenty-fourth  chap- 
ter. 

But  the  fact  is,  that  I  have  only  been  playing 
with  this  matter.  I  ought  to  have  quoted  at 
once  a  passage  which  was  in  my  mind  all  the 
time — one  from  the  chapter  on  the  Functions  and 
Value  of  the  Syllogism.  Mill  sums  up  the  con- 
clusion of  a  long  discussion  in  the  following 
words : 3 

"  We  have  thus  obtained  what  we  were  seek- 
ing, a  universal  type  of  the  reasoning  process. 
We  find  it  resolvable  in  all  cases  into  the  following 
elements  :  Certain  individuals  have  a  given  attri- 
bute ;  an  individual  or  individuals  resemble  the 
former  in  certain  other  attributes  ;  therefore  they 
resemble  them  also  in  the  given  attribute." 

All  reasoning,  then,  is  resolvable  into  a  case 
of  resemblance  ;  the  word  resemble  is  itself  used 
twice  over,  and,  as  I  shall  hereafter  show,  the 
word  attribute,  synonymous  with  properly,  is  but 
another  name,  according  to  Mill,  for  resemblance. 
It  is  true  that  this  quotation  is  taken  from  the 
second  book  of  the  System,  not  from  the  preced- 
ing part  of  the  third  book  to  which  Mill  referred 
as  not  having  treated  of  resemblance.  But  this 
can  hardly  matter,  as  he  speaks  of  the  universal 
type  of  the  reasoning  process,  which  must  include, 
of  course,  the  whole  of  the  inductive  methods 
expounded  in  the  third  book. 

But,  in  case  the  reader  should  not  be  quite 
satisfied,  I  will  give  yet  one  more  quotation,  taken 

i  Book  I.,  chapter  iii.,  section  11,  ParaGraph  4. 

s  Same  section,  fifth  paragraph,  third  line. 

s  Book  II.,  chapter  iii.,  section  7.  at  beginning. 


JOHN  STUART  MILL'S  PHILOSOPHY  TESTED. 


321 


from  the  twentieth  chapter  of  the  third  book,  a 
chapter,  therefore,  which  closely  precedes  the 
chapter  on  "  The  Remaining  Laws  of  Nature," 
where  Mill  dispatches  Resemblance.  This  chap- 
ter treats  nominally  of  analogy,  but  what  must 
be  our  surprise  to  find  that  in  reality  it  treats 
from  beginning  to  end  of  Resemblance !  This  is 
the  way  in  which  he  describes  reasoning  by  anal- 
ogy:1 

"  It  is,  on  the  -whole,  more  usual,  however,  to 
extend  the  name  of*  analogical  evidence  to  argu- 
ments from  any  sort  of  resemblance,  provided 
they  do  not  amount  to  a  complete  induction : 
without  peculiarly  distinguishing  resemblance  of 
relations.  Analogical  reasoning,  in  this  sense, 
may  be  reduced  to  the  following  formula  :  Two 
things  resemble  each  other  in  one  or  more  re- 
spects ;  a  certain  proposition  is  true  of  the  one ; 
therefore,  it  is  true  of  the  other.  But  we  have 
nothing  here  by  -which  to  discriminate  analogy 
from  induction,  since  this  type  will  serve  for  all 
reasoning  from  experience.  In  the  strictest  induc- 
tion, equally  with  the  faintest  analogy,  we  conclude 
because  A  resembles  B  in  one  or  more  properties, 
that  it  does  so  in  a  certain  other  property." 

It  seems,  then,  that  the  universal  type  of  the 
reasoning  process  wholly  turns  upon  the  pivot  of 
resemblance.  The  stone  which  was  despised  and 
slightingly  treated  in  a  brief  section  of  the  twenty- 
fourth  chapter,  has  become  the  corner-stone  of 
Mill's  logical  edifice.  It  would  almost  seem  as  if 
Mill  were  one  of  those  persons  who  are  said  to 
think  independently  with  the  two  halves  of  their 
brain.  On  the  one  side  of  the  great  longitudinal 
fissure  must  be  held  the  doctrine  that  resem- 
blance is  seldom  a  subject  of  science ;  on  the 
other  side,  Mill  must  have  thought  out  the  im- 
portant place  which  resemblance  holds  as  the 
universal  type  of  the  reasoning  and  inductive  pro- 
cesses. Double-mindedness,  the  Law  of  Oblivis- 
cence,  or  some  Deus  ex  machine/,  must  be  called 
in  ;  for  it  is  absurd  to  contemplate  the  possibility 
of  reconciling  Mill's  statement  of  the  universal 
type  of  all  reasoning  with  his  remarks  upon 
Locke's  doctrine.  Locke,  he  says  in  the  passage 
already  quoted,  unduly  extended  the  importance 
of  resemblance,  when  he  made  all  reasoning  a  case 
of  it,  and  Locke's  definition  of  knowledge  and  of 
reasoning  required  to  be  limited  to  our  knowledge 
of  and  reasoning  about  resemblances.  Yet,  accord- 
ing to  Mill  himself,  the  universal  type  of  all  rea- 
soning turns  wholly  on  resemblance.  Under  such 
circumstances,  it  is  impossible  to  discuss  serious- 

1  Book  III.,  chapter  xx.,  beginning  of  second  sec- 
tion. 

57 


ly  the  value  of  Mill's  analysis  of  knowledge- 
Which  part  of  the  analysis  are  we  to  discuss  ? 
That  in  which  resemblance  is  treated  as  the  basis 
of  all  reasoning,  or  that  in  which  it  belongs  to 
the  "  remaining  "  and  "  minor  matters  of  tact," 
which  had  not  been  treated  in  the  books  of  induc- 
tion, and  which  therefore  remained  to  be  disposed 
of? 

We  have  not  yet  done  with  this  question  of 
resemblance;  it  is  the  fundamental  question  as 
regards  the  theory  of  knowledge  and  reasoning, 
and,  even  at  the  risk  of  being  very  tedious,  I  must 
show  that  in  the  deep  of  Mill's  inconsistency  there 
is  still  a  lower  deep.  I  have  to  point  out  that 
some  of  his  opinions  concerning  the  import  of 
propositions  may  be  thus  formulated  : 

1.  The  names  of  attributes  are  names  for  the 
resemblances  of  our  sensations. 

2.  Certain  propositions  affirm  the  possession 
of  properties,  or  attributes,  or  common  peculiari- 
ties. 

3.  Such  propositions  do  not,  properly  speak- 
ing, assert  resemblance  at  all. 

Proceeding  in  the  first  place  to  prove  that 
Mill  has  made  statements  of  the  meaning  attrib- 
uted to  him,  we  find  the  matter  of  the  first  in  a 
note '  written  by  Mill  in  answer  to  Mr.  Herbert 
Spencer,  who  had  charged  Mill  with  confounding 
exact  likeness  and  literal  identity.  With  the 
truth  of  this  charge  we  will  not  concern  ourselves 
now ;  we  have  only  to  notice  the  following  dis- 
tinct statement :  "  What,  then,  is  the  common 
something  which  gives  a  meaning  to  the  general 
name  ?  Mr.  Spencer  can  only  say,  it  is  the  simi- 
larity of  the  feelings  ;  and  I  rejoin,  the  attribute 
is  precisely  that  similarity.  The  names  of  attri- 
butes are  in  their  ultimate  analyses  names  for  the 
resemblances  of  our  sensations  (or  other  feelings). 
Every  general  name,  whether  abstract  or  con- 
crete, denotes  or  connotes  one  or  more  of  those 
resemblances."  Mill's  meaning  evidently  is  that 
when  you  apply  a  general  name  to  a  thing,  as  for 
instance  in  calling  snow  white,  you  mean  thnt 
there  is  a  resemblance  between  snow  and  other 
things  in  respect  of  their  whiteness.  The  general 
name  white  connotes  this  resemblance ;  the  ab- 
stract name  whiteness  denotes  it. 

Let  us  now  consider  a  passage  in  the  chapter 
on  the  Import  of  Propositions,  which  must  be 
quoted  at  some  length  :  - 

1  Book  IT.,  chapter  ii.,  section  3.  near  the  beginning 
of  the  third  paragraph  of  the  foot-note.  This  note 
does  not  occur  in  some  of  the  early  editions. 

3  Book  I.,  chapter  v.,  section  6,  second  paragraph. 


322 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


"  It  is  sometimes  said  that  all  propositions 
whatever,  of  which  the  predicate  is  a  general 
name,  do,  in  point  of  fact,  affirm  or  deny  resem- 
blance. All  such  propositions  affirm  that  a  thing 
belongs  to  a  class ;  but  things  being  classed  to- 
gether according  to  their  resemblance,  everything 
is  of  course  classed  with  the  things  which  it  is 
supposed  to  resemble  most ;  and  thence,  it  may  be 
said,  when  we  affirm  that  gold  is  a  metal,  or  that 
Socrates  is  a  man,  the  affirmation  intended  is,  that 
gold  resembles  other  metals,  and  Socrates  other 
men,  more  nearly  than  they  resemble  the  objects 
contained  in  any  other  of  the  classes  coordinate 
with  these." 

Of  this  doctrine  Mill  goes  on  to  speak  in  the 
following  curious  remarks,1  to  which  I  particular- 
ly invite  the  reader's  attention  : 

"  There  is  some  slight  degree  of  foundation 
for  this  remark,  but  no  more  than  a  slight  degree. 
The  arrangement  of  things  into  classes,  such  as 
the  class  metal,  or  the  class  man,  is  grounded  in- 
deed on  a  resemblance  among  the  things  which 
are  placed  in  the  same  class,  but  not  on  a  mere 
general  resemblance  :  the  resemblance  it  is  ground- 
ed on  consists  in  the  possession  by  all  those  things, 
of  certain  common  peculiarities  ;  and  those  peculi- 
arities it  is  which  the  terms  connote,  and  which 
the  propositions  consequently  assert ;  not  the  re- 
semblance. For  though  when  I  say,  Gold  is  a 
metal,  I  say  by  implication  that  if  there  be  any 
other'mefals  it  must  resemble  them,  yet  if  there 
were  no  other  metals  I  might  still  assert  the  prop- 
osition with  the  same  meaning  as  at  present, 
namely,  that  gold  has  the  various  properties  im- 
plied in  the  word  metal ;  just  as  it  might  be  said, 
Christians  are  men,  even  if  there  were  no  men 
who  were  not  Christians.  Propositions,  there- 
fore, in  which  objects  are  referred  to  a  class  be- 
cause they  possess  the  attributes  constituting  the 
class,  are  so  far  from  asserting  nothing  but  resem- 
blance, that  they  do  not,  properly  speaking,  assert 
resemblance  at  all." 

I  have  long  wondered  at  the  confusion  of  ideas 
which  this  passage  exhibits.  We  are  told  that  I 
the  arrangement  of  things  in  a  class  is  founded 
on  a  resemblance  between  the  things,  but  not  a 
"mere  general  resemblance,"  whatever  this  may 
mean.  It  is  grounded  on  the  possession  of  cer- 
tain "common  peculiarities."  I  pass  by  the 
strangeness  of  this  expression  ;  I  should  have 
thought  that  common  peculiarity  is  a  self-contra- 
dictory expression  in  its  own  terms;  but  here  it 
seems  to  mean  merely  attribute  or  qualify.  The 
terms  then  connote  this  attribute,  rot  the  resem- 
blance. Here  we  are  in  direct  and  absolute  con- 
flict with  Mill's  previous  statement  that  attribute 

1  Same  section,  third  paragraph. 


is  precisely  that  similarity — that  common  some- 
thing— which  gives  a  meaning  to  the  general  name, 
and  that  the  names  of  attributes  are,  in  their  ul- 
timate analysis,  names  for  the  resemblances  of  our 
sensations.  Previously  he  said  that  "  every  gen- 
eral name  "  connotes  one  or  more  of  these  resem- 
blances ;  now  he  says  that  it  is  "  these  peculiari- 
ties "  which  the  terms  connote,  and  which  the 
propositions  consequently  assert,  not  the  resem- 
blances. But  these  peculiarities  are  common  pecu- 
liarities— that  is,  common  qualities  or  attributes. 
The  self-contradiction  is  absolute  and  complete, 
except,  indeed,  so  far  as  Mill  admits  that  there  is 
"  some  slight  degree  of  foundation  "  for  the  re- 
mark which  he  is  controverting. 

We  will  afterward  consider  what  is  this  slight 
degree  of  foundation ;  but  proceeding  for  the 
present  with  the  interpretation  of  the  remarkable 
passage  quoted,  we  learn  that  when  I  say,  "  Gold 
is  a  metal,"  I  may  imply  that  if  there  are  other 
metals  it  must  resemble  them ;  yet,  if  there  were 
no  other  metals,  I  might  still  assert  that  gold  has 
the  various  properties  implied  in  the  word  metal. 
The  "  Law  of  Obliviscence"  seems  to  have  been 
at  work  here ;  Mill  must  have  quite  forgotten  that 
he  was  speaking  of  propositions,  "  of  which  the 
predicate  is  a  general  name,"  or  the  name  of  a 
class.  Now  if,  as  Mill  sometimes  holds,  a  class 
consists  only  of  the  things  in  it,1  there  must  be 
more  metals  than  gold,  else  metal  would  not  be  a 
general  name.  If,  as  Mill  elsewhere  says,  to  the 
contrary  effect,  the  class  may  exist  whether  the 
things  exist  or  not,"  we  still  have  him  on  the  other 
horn  of  the  dilemma ;  for  then  the  meaning  of 
the  general  name  must  consist  in  its  connotation, 
which  consists  of  attributes,  which  are  but  another 
name  for  resemblances.  Yet,  forsooth,  the  propo- 
sition does  not,  properly  speaking,  assert  resem- 
blances at  all. 

The  important  passage  quoted  above  is,  as  we 
might  readily  expect,  inconsistent  with  various 
other  statements  in  the  "  System  of  Logic,"  as,  for 
instance,  most  of  the  seventh  section  of  the  chap- 
ter on  "Definition,"  where  we  are  told3  that  the 
philosopher  "  only  gives  the  same  name  to  things 
which  resemble  one  another  in  the  same  definite 
particulars,"  and  that  the  inquiry  into  a  defini- 
tion4 "is  an  inquiry  into  the  resemblances  and 
differences  among  those  things"     Elsewhere  we 

i  "  System  of  Logic,"  Book  II.,  chapter  ii.,  section 
2,  fourth  paragraph. 

s  Book  1.,  chapter  vii.,  section  1,  first  paragraph. 

s  Book  I. ,  chapter  viii.,  section?,  paragraph  4,  about 
the  seventeenth  line.  This  section  is  numbered  8  in 
some  of  the  early  editions. 

*  Same  section,  paragraph  8,  line  7. 


JOHN  STUART  MILL'S  PHILOSOPHY  TESTED. 


523 


are  told '  that  "  the  general  names  given  to  ob- 
jects imply  attributes,  derive  their  whole  meaning 
from  attributes  ;  and  are  chiefly  useful  as  the  lan- 
guage by  means  of  which  we  predicate  the  attri- 
butes which  they  connote."  Again,  in  the  chap- 
ter on  the  "  Requisites  of  a  Philosophical  Lan- 
guage," he  says : 2 

"  Now  the  meaning  (as  has  so  often  been  ex- 
plained) of  a  general  eonnotative  name  resides 
in  the  connotation  ;  in  the  attribute  on  account  of 
which,  and  to  express  which,  the  name  is  given. 
Thus,  the  name  of  animal  being  given  to  all 
things  which  possess  the  attributes  of  sensation 
and  voluntary  motion,  the  word  connotes  those 
attributes  exclusively,  and  they  constitute  the 
whole  of  its  meanings." 

Now,  the  attribute,  as  tee  learned  at  starting,  is 
but  another  name  for  a  Resemblance,  and  yet  a 
proposition  of  which  the  predicate  is  a  general 
name,  does  not,  properly  speaking,  assert  resem- 
blance at  all. 

The  inconsistency  is  still  more  striking  when 
we  turn  to  another  work,  namely,  John  Stuart 
.Mill's  edition  of  his  father's  "Analysis  of  the 
Human  Mind."  Here,  in  a  note 3  on  the  subject 
of  classification,  Mill  objects  to  his  father's  ultra- 
nominalist  doctrine,  that  "  men  were  led  to  class 
solely  for  the  purpose  of  economizing  in  the  use 
of  names."  Mill  proceeds  to  remark4  that  "  we 
could  not  have  dispensed  with  names  to  mark  the 
points  in  which  different  individuals  resemble  one 
another :  and  these  are  class-names."  Referring 
to  his  father's  peculiar  expression — "  individual 
qualities  " — he  remarks  very  properly  : 

"  It  is  not  individual  qualities  that  we  ever 
have  occasion  to  predicate.  .  .  .  We  never  have 
occasion  to  predicate  of  an  object  the  individual 
and  instantaneous  impressions  which  it  produces 
in  us.  The  only  meaning  of  predicating  a  qual- 
ity at  all,  is  to  affirm  a  resemblance.  "When  we 
ascribe  a  quality  to  an  object,  we  intend  to  assert 
that  the  object  affects  us  in  a  manner  similar  to 
that  in  which  we  are  affected  by  a  known  class  of 
objects." 

A  few  lines  farther  down  he  proceeds  : 

"  Qualities,  therefore,  cannot  be  predicated 
without  general  names ;  nor,  consequently,  with- 
out classification.  "Wherever  there  is  a  general 
name  there  is  a  class ;  classification,  and  general 
names,  are  things  exactly  coextensive." 

1  Book  IV.,  chapter  iii.,  eight  lines  from  end  of 
chapter. 

2  Book  IV.,  chapter  iv.,  section  2,  second  line. 

3  VoL  i.,  p.  260. 

4  Page  261. 


This  is,  no  doubt,  quite  the  true  doctrine  ;  but 
what  becomes  of  the  paragraph  already  quoted, 
which  appeared  in  eight  editions  of  the  "  System 
of  Logic,"  during  Mill's  lifetime  ?  In  that  para- 
graph he  asserted  that  propositions  referring  an 
object  to  a  class  because  they  possess  the  attri- 
butes constituting  the  class,  do  not,  properly 
speaking,  assert  resemblance  at  all.  Now,  when 
commenting  on  his  father's  doctrine,  Mill  says 
that  the  only  meaning  of  predicating  a  quality  at 
all,  is  to  affirm  a  resemblance. 

In  a  later  note  in  the  same  volume  Mill  is,  if 
possible,  still  more  explicit  in  his  assertion  that 
the  predication  of  general  names  is  a  matter  of 
attributes  and  resemblances.     He  begins  thus : 1 

"  Rejecting  the  notion  that  classes  and  classi- 
fication would  not  have  existed  but  for  the  neces- 
sity of  economizing  names,  we  may  say  that  ob- 
jects are  formed  into  classes  on  account  of  their 
resemblance." 

On  the  next  page  he  says  in  the  most  distinct 
manner : 

"Still,  a  class-name  stands  in  a  very  different 
relation  to  the  very  definite  resemblances  which  it 
is  intended  to  mark,  from  that  in  which  it  stands 
to  the  various  accessory  circumstances  which  may 
form  part  of  the  image  it  calls  up.  There  are  cer- 
tain attributes  common  to  the  entire  class,  which 
the  class -name  was  either  deliberately  selected 
as  a  mark  of,  or,  at  all  events,  which  guide  us  in 
the  application  of  it.  These  attributes  are  the  real 
meaning  of  the  class-name — are  what  we  intend 
to  ascribe  to  an  object  when  we  call  it  by  that 
name." 

There  can  be  no  possible  mistake  about  Mill's 
meaning  now.  The  class-name  is  intended  to  mark 
definite  resemblances.  These  resemblances  must 
be  the  attributes  which  the  class-name  was  either 
deliberately  selected  as  a  mark  of,  or  which  guide 
us  in  the  application  of  it.  These  attributes  are 
the  real  meaning  of  the  class-naine — are  what  we 
intend  to  ascribe  to  an  object,  when  we  call  it  by 
that  name.  Yet  we  were  told  in  the  passage  of 
the  "  System  of  Logic  "  to  which  I  invited  the 
reader's  special  attention,  that  propositions  in 
which  objects  are  referred  to  a  class,  because 
they  possess  the  attributes  constituting  the  class, 
are  so  far  from  asserting  nothing  but  resem- 
blance, that  they  do  not,  properly  speaking,  as- 
sert resemblance  at  all.  A  class-name  is  now 
spoken  of  as  intended  to  mark  definite  resem- 
blances. Previously  we  ware  informed  that,  in 
saying,  "  Gold  is  a  metal,"  I  do  not  assert  re- 

1  James  Mill's  "Analysis  of  the  Human  Mind," 
new  editioD,  vol.  i.,  p.  283. 


324 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT 


semblance,  forsooth,  because  there  might  be  no 
other  metal  but  gold.  Yet  metal  is  spoken  of  as 
a  class,  so  that  the  word  metal  is  a  class-name, 
and  the  whole  discussion  refers  to  propositions 
of  which  the  predicates  are  general  names. 

The  fact  is,  the  passage  contains  more  than 
one  non-sequitur ;  it  tacitly  assumes  that  metal 
might  continue  to  be  a  class-name,  while  there 
was  only  one  kind  of  metal,  so  that  there  would 
be  nothing  else  to  resemble.  Then  there  is  an- 
other non-sequitur  when  Mill  proceeds  straight- 
way to  another  example,  thus — "just  as  it  might 
be  said,  Christians  are  men,  even  if  there  were 
no  men  who  were  not  Christians."  The  words 
"just  as "  here  mean  that  this  example  bears 
cut  the  last ;  but  Christians  and  men  being 
plural,  the  predicate  men  is  now  clearly  a  class- 
name,  and  the  meaning  is  that  Christians  all  re- 
semble each  other  in  the  attributes  connoted  by 
the  class-name  man.  Mill  adds,  indeed,  the 
words  "  even  if  there  were  no  men  who  were  not 
Christians."  Here  is  unquestionable  confusion 
of  thought.  Man  is  a  class-name  and  connotes 
the  definite  resemblances  of  the  objects  in  the 
class,  even  if  the  class  happens  to  be  coextensive 
with  the  class  Christians.  If  I  say,  "  Men  are 
capable  of  laughter,"  the  general  predicate  "  ca- 
pable of  laughter"  connotes  a  character  in  which 
men  resemble  each  other,  even  though  there  be 
no  beings  capable  of  laughter  who  are  not  men. 
Thus,  when  we  closely  examine  the  passage  in 
question,  it  falls  to  pieces  ;  it  has  no  logical  co- 
herence.1 

I  may  remark  incidentally  that  it  is  strange 
to  meet,  in  a  discussion  of  the  fundamental  prin- 
ciples of  logic  and  knowledge,  with  things  which 
have  a  slight  degree  of  foundation.  The  element- 
ary principles  of  a  science  either  are  true  or  are 
not  true.  There  is  no  middle  term.  Degree  in 
such  matters  is  out  of  place.  But  in  Mill's  philo- 
sophical works,  as  I  shall  have  various  opportuni- 
ties to  show,  there  is  a  tendency  to  what  may  be 
called  philosophical  trimming.  Instead  of  saying 
outright  that  a  thing  is  false,  he  says  too  fre- 
quently that  it  is  "  not  strictly  true,"  as  in  the 
case  referring  to  the  primary  ideas  of  geometry 
quoted  in  my  last  article.  Mill's  opinions,  in 
fact,  so  frequently  came  into  conflict  with  each 
other,  that  he  acquired  the  habit  of  leaving  a  lit- 

1  In  my  own  opinion,  an  affirmative  proposition 
assert*  resemblance  in  its  highest  degree,  i.  e.,  iden- 
tity, even  when  the  subject  and  predicate  are  singular 
terms  ;  but  to  prevent  confusion,  I  argue  the  question 
on  Mill's  assumption  that  the  predicate  is  a  general  or 
class  name. 


tie  room  to  spare  in  each  of  his  principal  state- 
ments :  they  required  a  good  deal  of  fitting  to- 
gether. Now  "  the  slight  degree  of  foundation  " 
for  the  remark  that  propositions,  of  which  the 
predicate  is  a  general  name,  do  assert  resem- 
blance, seems  to  be  explained  in  the  two  para- 
graphs which  follow  that  quoted,  and  these  we 
will  now  consider. 

Mill  proceeds  to  remark  x  that  there  is  some- 
times a  convenience  in  extending  the  boundaries 
of  a  class  so  as  to  include  things  which  possess 
in  a  very  inferior  degree,  if  in  any,  some  of  the 
characteristic  properties  of  the  class,  provided 
that  they  resemble  that  class  more  than  any 
other.  He  refers  to  the  systems  of  classification 
of  living  things,  in  which  almost  every  great 
family  of  plants  or  animals  has  a  few  anomalous 
genera  or  species  on  its  borders,  which  are  ad- 
mitted by  a  kind  of  courtesy.  It  is  evident, 
however,  that  a  matter  of  this  sort  has  nothing 
to  do  with  the  fundamental  logical  question  wheth- 
er propositions  assert  resemblance  or  not.  This 
paragraph  is  due  to  the  ambiguity  of  the  word 
resemblance,  which  here  seems  to  mean  vague  or 
slight  resemblance,  as  distinguished  from  that  in- 
contestable resemblance  which  enables  us  to  say 
that  things  have  the  same  attribute.  In  fact,  a 
very  careful  reader  of  the  sections  in  which  Mill 
treats  of  resemblance  will  find  that  there  is  fre- 
quent confusion  between  definite  resemblance, 
and  something  which  Mill  variously  calls  "  mere 
general  resemblance  "  or  "  vague  resemblance," 
which  will  usually  refer  to  similarities  depending 
on  the  degree  of  qualities,  or  the  form  of  ob- 
jects. 

There  is,  however,  a  second  case  bearing  out 
Mill's  opinion  that  there  is  "  some  slight  degree 
of  foundation  "  for  the  remark  that  propositions 
whose  predicates  are  general  terms  affirm  resem- 
blance. This  is  a  matter  into  which  we  must  in- 
quire with  some  care,  so  that  I  give  at  full  length 
the  paragraph  relating  to  it : s 

"  There  is  still  another  exceptional  case,  in 
which,  though  the  predicate  is  the  name  of  a 
class,  yet  in  predicating  it  we  affirm  nothing  but 
resemblance,  that  class  being  founded  not  on  re- 
semblance in  any  given  particular,  but  on  general 
unanalyzable  resemblance.  The  classes  in  ques- 
tion are  those  into  which  our  simple  sensations,  or 
rather  simple  feelings,  are  divided.  Sensations  of 
white,  for  instance,  are  classed  together,  not  be- 
cause we  can  take  them  to  pieces,  and  say  they 
are  alike  in  this,  and  not  alike  in  that,  but  because 

1  Book  I.,  chapter  v.,  section  C.  fourth  paragraph. 

2  Book  I.,  chapter  v.,  section  6,  paragraph  5. 


JOJIX  STUART  MILL'S  PHILOSOPHY  TESTED. 


325 


we  feel  them  to  be  alike  together,  though  in  dif- 
ferent degrees.  When,  therefore,  I  say,  '  The  col- 
or I  saw  yesterday  was  a  white  color ; '  or, '  The 
sensation  l  feel  is  one  of  tightness,'  in  both  cases 
the  attribute  I  affirm  of  the  color  or  of  the  sensa- 
tion is  mere  resemblance— simple  likeness  to  sen- 
sations which  I  have  had  before,  and  which  have 
had  those  names  bestowed  upon  tbem.  The  names 
of  feelings,  like  other  concrete  general  names,  are 
connotative  ;  but  they  connote  a  mere  resemblance. 
When  predicated  of  any  individual  feeling,  the  in- 
formation they  convey  is  that  of  its  likeness  to  the 
other  feelings  which  we  have  been  accustomed  to 
call  by  the  same  name.  Thus  much  may  suffice 
in  illustration  of  the  kind  of  propositions  in  which 
the  matter  of  fact  asserted  (or  denied)  is  simple 
resemblance." 

Such  a  paragraph  as  the  above  is  likely  to 
produce  intellectual  vertigo  in  the  steadiest 
thinker.  In  an  off-hand  manner  we  are  told  that 
this  much  may  suffice  in  illustration  of  an  excep- 
tional case  in  which  resemblance  happens  to  be 
predicated.  This  resemblance  is  mentioned  slight- 
ingly as  mere  resemblance,  or  general  unanalyzable 
resemblance.  Yet,  when  we  come  to  inquire  seri- 
ously what  this  resemblance  is,  we  find  it  to  be 
that  primary  relation  of  sensation  to  sensation, 
which  lies  at  the  basis  of  all  thought  and  knowl- 
edge. Prof.  Alexander  Bain  is  supposed  to  be, 
since  Mill's  death,  a  mainstay  of  the  empirical 
school,  and,  in  his  works  on  "  Logic,"  he  has  un- 
fortunately adopted  far  too  much  of  Mill's  views. 
But,  in  Prof.  Bain's  own  proper  writings,  there  is 
a  vigor  and  logical  consistency  of  thought  for 
which  it  is  impossible  not  to  feel  the  greatest  re- 
spect. 

Now  we  find  Mr.  Bain  laying  down,  at  the 
commencement  of  his  writings  on  the  intellect,1 
that  the  primary  attributes  of  intellect  are :  1. 
Consciousness  of  difference  ;  2.  Consciousness  of 
agreement ;  and,  3.  Retentiveness.  He  goes  on 
to  say  with  admirable  clearness  that  discrimina- 
tion or  feeling  of  difference  is  an  essential  of  in- 
telligence. The  beginning  of  knowledge,  or  ideas, 
is  the  discrimination  of  one  thing  from  another. 
As  we  can  neither  feel  nor  know  without  a  tran- 
sition or  change  of  state,  every  feeling,  and  every 
cognition,  must  be  viewed  as  in  relation  to  some 
other  feeling  or  cognition.  There  cannot  be  a 
single  or  absolute  cognition. 

Then,  again,  Mr.  Bain  proceeds  to  say  that 

i  "  Mental  and  Moral  Science.  A  Compendium  of 
Psychology  and  Ethics,"  1868,  pp.  82,  83.  The  same 
doctrine  of  the  nature  of  knowledge  is  stated  in  the 
treatise  on  "  The  Senses  and  the  Intellect,"  second  edi- 
tion, pp.  325-331 ;  in  the  '-Deductive  Logic,"  pp.  4,  5, 
9,  and  elsewhere. 


the  conscious  state  arising  from  agreement  in  the 
midst  of  difference  is  equally  marked  and  equally 
fundamental : 

"  Supposing  us  to  experience,  for  the  first  time, 
a  certain  sensation,  as  redness  ;  and,  after  being  en- 
gaged with  other  sensations,  to  encounter  redness 
again  ;  we  are  struck  with  the  feeling  of  identity,  or 
recognition  ;  the  old  state  is  recalled  at  the  instance 
of  the  new  by  the  fact  of  agreement,  and  we  have 
the  sensation  of  red,  together  with  a  new  and  pe- 
culiar consciousnes,  the  consciousness  of  agreement 
in  diversity.  As  the  diversity  is  greater,  the  shock 
of  agreement  is  more  lively." 

Then  Prof.  Bain  adds,  emphatically  : 

"  All  knowledge  finally  resolves  itself  into  dif- 


ferences and  agreements.  To  define  anything,  as 
a  circle,  is  to  state  its  agreements  with  some  things 
(genus)  and  its  difference  from  other  things  (dif- 
ferentia)." 

Prof.  Bain  then  treats  as  the  fundamental  act 
of  intellect  the  recognition  of  redness  as  identi- 
cal with  redness  previously  experienced.  This  is 
changing  red  for  white,  exactly  the  same  illustra- 
tion as  Mill  used  in  the  example,  "  The  color  I 
saw  yesterday  was  a  white  color."  Now  Mr.  Bain 
says,  and  says  truly,  that  all  knowledge  finally 
resolves  itself  into  differences  and  agreements. 
Propositions,  accordingly,  which  affirm  these  ele- 
mentary relations,  must  really  be  the  most  impor- 
tant of  all  classes  of  propositions.  They  must  be 
the  elementary  propositions  which  are  presup- 
posed or  summed  up  in  more  complicated  ones. 
Yet  such  is  the  class  of  propositions  which  Mill 
dismisses  in  an  off-hand  manner  in  one  paragraph 
as  "  still  another  exceptional  case." 

If  we  look  into  the  details   of  Mill's  para- 
graph, perplexity  only  can  be  the  result.      He 
speaks  of  "  the  class  being  founded  not  on  resem- 
blance in  any  given  particular,  but  on  general  un- 
analyzable resemblance^     The  classes  in  question 
are  those  into  which  "  our  simple  sensations,  or 
rather  simple  feelings,  are  divided."     Now,  what 
can  he  possibly  mean  by  any  given  particular? 
If  the  color  I  saw  yesterday  was  a  white  color, 
that  was  the  given  particular  in   which  resem- 
blance existed.     No  doubt  the  resemblance  is  un- 
analyzable, because  analysis  has  done  its  best, 
and  the  matter  refers,  Mill  states,  to  a  simple  sen- 
sation.    When  we  are  dealing  with  the  elements 
of  knowledge,  of  course  analysis  is  no  longer  ap- 
plicable.    But  I  confess  myself  unable  to  under- 
stand why  he  calls  it  general  unanalyzable  resem- 
blance.    If  I  understand  the  matter  aright,  Mill 
should    have  said    specific    analyzed  resemblance. 
When  one  red  flower  is  noticed  to  resemble  an- 


326 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


other  red  flower  in  color,  the  general  resemblance 
has  been  analyzed  and  found  to  consist  in  a  spe- 
cific resemblance  of  color  to  color.  If  I  see  an 
orange,  I  know  it  to  be  an  orange,  because  it 
resembles  similar  fruits  which  I  have  often  heard 
so  called.  In  the  first  instance,  the  resemblance 
may  be  to  my  mind  mere  general  resemblance ; 
that  is  to  say,  I  may  not  devote  separate  atten- 
tion to  the  several  points  of  resemblance.  But 
if  one  asks  me  why  I  call  it  an  orange,  I  must 
analyze  my  feeling  of  resemblance,  and  I  then 
discover  that  the  color  of  the  fruit  resembles  the 
color  of  fruit  formerly  called  oranges,  and  that  in 
regard  to  the  form,  the  texture  of  the  surface,  the 
hardness,  the  smell,  and  so  forth,  there  are  other 
resemblances.  My  knowledge,  as  Prof.  Bain 
says,  finally  resolves  itself  into  differences  and 
agreements.  But  the  agreements  in  question  are 
precisely  those  resemblances — the  base-work  of 
all  knowledge — which  Mill  dismisses  as  still  an- 
other exceptional  case. 

There  is  really  no  mystery  or  perplexity  in 
the  matter,  except  such  as  Mill  has  created  by 
the  perversity  of  bis  intellect.     Mill  has  made 
that  into  a  species,  which  is  really  the  summum 
genus   of  knowledge.     Locke   truly  pronounced 
knowledge  to  consist  in  the  perception  of  agree- 
ment or  repugnance  of  our  ideas,  and  Prof.  Bain 
has  stated  the  same  view  with  a  force  and  dis- 
tinctness  which   leave    nothing   to   be   desired. 
But  Mill,  strange  to  say,  has  treated  this  all- 
fundamental   relation   among   "The   Remaining 
Laws  of  Nature,"  "  Minor  Matters  of  Fact,"  or 
"Exceptional  Cases."     It  is  usually  impossible 
to  trace  the  causes  which  led  to  Mill's  perversi- 
ties, but,  in  this  important  case,  it  is  easy  to  ex- 
plain the   peculiarity   of  his  views  on   Resem- 
blance.    He  was  laboring  under  hereditary  preju. 
dice.     His  father,  James  Mill,  in  his  most  acute 
but  usually  wrong-headed  book,  the  "Analysis 
of  the  Phenomena  of  the  Human  Mind,"  had 
made  still  more  strange  mistakes.     In  several 
curious  passages  the  son  argues  that  we  cannot 
resolve  resemblance  into  anything  simpler.   These 
needless  arguments  are  evidently  suggested  by 
parts   cf  the  "Analysis"   in  which   the   father 
professed   to   resolve   resemblances   into  cases  of 
sequence  ! 

Thus,  when  James  Mill  is  discussing1  the 
"Association  of  Ideas,"  he  objects  to  Hume 
specifying  Resemblance  as  one  of  the  grounds 
of  association.     He  says  : 

"  Resemblance   only  remains,  as    an    alleged 

1  "Analysis:"  first  edition,  vol.  i.,  p.  79;  second 
edition,  vol.  i.,  p.  lit. 


principle  of  association,  and  it  is  necessary  to  in- 
quire whether  it  is  included  in  the  laws  which  have 
been  above  expounded.  I  believe  it  will  be  found 
that  we  are  accustomed  to  see  like  things  togeth- 
er. When  we  see  a  tree,  we  generally  see  more 
trees  than  one  ;  when  we  see  an  ox,  we  generally 
see  more  oxen  than  one ;  a  sheep,  more  6heep 
than  one  ;  a  man,  more  men  than  one.  From  this 
observation,  I  think,  we  may  refer  resemblance  to 
the  law  of  frequency,  of  which  it  seems  to  form  a 
particular  case." 

I  cannot  help  regarding  the  misapprehension 
contained  in  this  passage  as  perhaps  the  most 
extraordinary  one  which  could  be  adduced  in  the 
whole  range  of  philosophical  literature.  Resem- 
blance is  reduced  to  a  particular  case  of  the  law 
of  frequency,  that  is,  to  the  frequent  recurrence 
of  the  same  thing,  as  when,  in  place  of  one  man, 
I  see  many  men.  But  how  do  I  know  that  they 
are  men,  unless  I  observe  that  they  resemble 
each  other  ?  It  is  impossible  even  to  speak  of 
men  without  implying  that  there  are  various 
things  called  men  which  resemble  each  other  suf- 
ficiently to  be  classed  together  and  called  by  the 
same  name.  Nevertheless  James  Mill  seems  to 
have  been  actually  under  the  impression  that  he 
had  got  rid  of  resemblance  ! 

Later  on  in  the  same  work,1  indeed,  we  have 
the  following  statement : 

"  It  is  easy  to  see,  among  the  principles  of  as- 
sociation, what  particular  principle  it  is,  which  is 
mainly  concerned  in  Classification,  and  by  which 
we  are  rendered  capable  of  that  mighty  opera- 
tion; on  which,  as  its  basis,  the  whole  of  our 
intellectual  structure  is  reared.  That  principle  is 
Resemblance.  It  seems  to  be  similarity  or  re- 
semblance which,  when  we  have  applied  a  name 
to  one  individual,  leads  us  to  apply  it  to  another, 
and  another,  till  the  whole  forms  an  aggregate, 
connected  together  by  the  common  relation  of 
every  part  of  the  aggregate  to  one  and  the  same 
name.  Similarity,  or  Resemblance,  we  must  re- 
gard as  an  Idea  familiar  and  sufficiently  under- 
stood for  the  illustration  at  present  required.  It 
will  itself  be  strictly  analyzed,  at  a  subsequent 
part  of  this  inquiry." 

In  writing  this  passage,  James  Mill  seems  to 
have  forgotten,  quite  in  the  manner  of  his  son, 
that  he  had  before  treated  Resemblance  as  an 
alleged  principle  of  association,  and  had  referred 
it  to  a  particular  case  of  the  law  of  frequency. 
Here  it  reappears  as  the  principle  on  which  the 
whole  of  our  intellectual  structure  is  reared.  It 
is  strange  that  so  important  a  principle  should 
elsewhere  be  called  an  "  alleged  principle,"  and 

i  "Analysis:"  first  edition,  vol.  i.,  pp.  212,  213; 
second  edition,  vol.  i.,  pp.  270,  271. 


JOHN  STUART  MILL'S  PHILOSOPHY  TESTED. 


327 


equally  strange  that  it  should  afterward  be 
"  strictly  analyzed."  Before  we  get  down  to  the 
basis  of  our  intellectual  structure  it  might  be 
supposed  that  analysis  had  exhausted  itself. 

James  Mill  gives  no  reference  to  the  subse- 
quent part  of  the  inquiry  where  this  analysis  is 
carried  out,  nor  do  I  find  that  John  Stuart  Mill, 
or  the  other  editors  of  the  second  edition,  have 
supplied  the  reference.  Doubtless,  however,  the 
analysis  is  given  in  the  second  section  of  chapter 
xiv.,  where,  in  treating  of  "  Relative  Terms,"  1 
he  inquires  into  the  meaning  of  Same,  Different, 
Like,  or  Unlike,  and  comes  to  the  conclusion 
that  the  resemblance  between  sensation  and  sen- 
sation is,  after  all,  only  sensation.     He  says  : 

"  Having  two  sensations,  therefore,  is  not  only 
having  sensation,  but  the  only  thing  which  can, 
in  strictness,  be  called  having  sensation ;  and  the 
having  two  and  knowing  they  are  two,  which  are 
not  two  things,  but  one  and  the  same  thing,  is  not 
only  sensation,  and  nothing  else  than  sensation, 
but  the  only  thing  which  can,  in  strictness,  be 
called  sensation.  The  having  a  new  sensation, 
and  knowing  that  it  is  new,  are  not  two  things, 
but  one  and  the  same  thing." 

This  is,  no  doubt,  a  wonderfully  acute  piece 
of  sophistical  reasoning ;  but  I  have  no  need  to 
occupy  space  in  refuting  it,  because  John  Stuart 
Mill  has  already  refuted  it  in  several  passages 
which  evidently  refer  to  his  father's  fallacy. 
Thus  I  have  already  quoted,  at  the  commence- 
ment of  this  article,  a  statement  in  which  John 
Stuart  Mill  argues  that  resemblance  between  two 
phenomena  is  more  intelligible  than  any  explana- 
tion could  make  it.  Again,  in  editing  his  father's 
"  Analysis,"  Mill  comments  at  some  length  upon 
this  section,2  showing  that  it  does  not  explain 
anything,  nor  leave  the  likenesses  and  unlike- 
nesses  of  our  simple  feelings  less  ultimate  facts 
than  they  were  before. 

But  though  Mill  thus  refuses  to  dissolve  re- 
semblance away  altogether,  his  thoughts  were 
probably  warped  in  youth  by  the  perverse  doc- 
trines which  his  father  so  unsparingly  forced 
upon  his  intellect.  Too  early  the  brain-fibres  re- 
ceived a  decided  set,  from  which  they  could  not 
recover,  and  all  the  power  and  acuteness  of  Mill's 
intellect  were  wasted  in  trying  to  make  things  fit, 
which  could  not  fit,  because  mistakes  had  been 
made  in  the  very  commencement  of  the  structure. 

This  misapprehension  of  the  Mills,  pere  ei 
Jils,  concerning  resemblance,  is  certainly  one  of 

1  "  Analysis :"'  first  edition,  vol.  ii.,  p.  10  ;  second 
edition,  vol.  ii.,  pp.  11. 12. 
"  Vol.  ii.,  pp.  17-20. 


the  most  extraordinary  instances  of  perversity  of 
thought  in  the  history  of  philosophy.  That  which 
is  the  summum  genus  of  reasoned  knowledge,  they 
have  either  attempted  to  dissolve  away  altogether, 
or,  after  grudgingly  allowing  its  existence,  have 
placed  in  the  position  of  a  minor  species  and  ex- 
ceptional case.  Yet  it  is  impossible  to  use  any 
language  at  all  without  implying  the  relation  of 
resemblance  and  difference  in  every  term.  There 
is  not  a  sentence  in  Mill's  own  works  in  which 
this  fact  might  not  be  made  manifest  after  a  little 
discussion.  We  cannot  employ  a  general  name 
without  implying  the  resemblance  between  the 
significates  of  that  name,  and  we  cannot  select 
any  class  of  objects  for  attention  without  dis- 
criminating them  from  other  objects  in  general. 
To  propose  resemblance  itself  as  the  subject  of 
inquiry  presupposes  that  we  distinguish  it  from 
other  possible  subjects  of  inquiry.  Thus,  when 
James  Mill  is  engaged  (in  a  passage  already 
quoted)  in  dissipating  the  relation  of  resem- 
blance, he  presupposes  resemblance  in  every 
name.  What  is  a  new  sensation,  unless  it  re- 
sembles other  new  sensations  in  being  discrimi- 
nated from  old  sensations  ?  What  is  a  sensation 
unless  it  resembles  other  sensations  in  being  sep- 
arated in  thought  from  things  which  are  nol-sen- 
sations?  But  it  is  truly  amusing  to  find  that,  in 
the  very  first  sentence  of  the  paragraph  imme- 
diately following  that  quoted,  James  Mill  uses 
the  word  resemblance.  He  says, '  "  The  case 
between  sensation  and  sensation  resembles  that 
between  sensation  and  idea."  Nevertheless,  James 
Mill  sums  up  the  result  of  the  section  of  his  work 
in  question  by  the  following: 2 

"  It  seems,  therefore,  to  be  made  clear,  that  in 
applying  to  the  simple  sensations  and  ideas  their 
absolute  names,  which  are  names  of  classes,  as  red, 
green,  sweet,  bitter ;  and  also  applying  to  them 
names  which  denote  them  in  pairs,  as  such  and 
such;  there  is  nothing  whatsoever  but  having  the 
sensations,  having  the  ideas,  and  making  marks 
for  them." 

This  sentence,  if  it  means  anything,  means 
that  our  sensations  and  our  ideas  have  no  ties 
between  them  except  in  the  common  marks  or 
names  applied  to  them.  The  connection  of  re- 
semblance is  denied  existence.  This  ultra-nom- 
inalism of  the  father  is  one  of  the  strangest  per- 
versities of  thought  which  could  be  adduced  ;  and? 
though  John  Stuart  Mill  disclaims  such  an  absurd 
doctrine  in  an  apologetic  sort  of  way,  yet  he  nev- 

1  "Analysis  :"  first  edition,  vol.  ii.,  p.  10  ;  second 
edition,  vol.  ii.,  p.  12. 

•  Ibid.,  first  edition,  p.  15;  second  edition,  p.  17. 


328 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


er,  as  I  shall  now  and  again  have  to  show,  really 
shook  himself  free  from  the  perplexities  of  thought 
due  to  his  father's  errors. 

It  may  seem  to  many  readers  that  these  are 
tedious  matters  to  discuss  at  such  length.  After 
aH,  the  import  of  propositions  and  the  relation  of 
resemblance  are  matters  which  concern  metaphy- 
sicians only,  or  those  who  chop  logic.  But  this 
is  a  mistake.  A  system  of  philosophy — a  school 
of  metaphysical  doctrines — is  the  foundation  on 
which  is  erected  a  structure  of  rules  and  infer- 
ences touching  our  interests  in  the  most  vital 
points.  John  Stuart  Mill,  in  his  remarkable  "  Au- 
tobiography," has  expressly  stated  that  a  princi- 
pal object  of  his  "  System  of  Logic"  was  to  over- 
throw deep-seated  prejudices,  and  to  storm  the 
stronghold  in  which  they  sheltered  themselves. 
These  are  his  words  :  1 

"  Whatever  may  be  the  practical  value  of  a 
true  philosophy  of  these  matters,  it  is  hardly  pos- 
sible to  exaggerate  the  mischiefs  of  a  false  one. 
The  notion  that  truths  external  to  the  mind  may 
be  known  by  intuition  or  consciousness,  indepen- 
dently of  observation  and  experience,  is,  I  am  per- 
suaded in  these  times,  the  great  intellectual  sup- 
port of  false  doctrines  and  bad  institutions.  By 
the  aid  of  this  theory,  every  inveterate  belief  and 
every  intense  feeling,  of  which  the  origin  is  not 
remembered,  is  enabled  to  dispense  with  the  ob- 
ligation of  justifying  itself  by  reason,  and  is  erect- 
ed into  his  own  all-sufficient  voucher  and  justifica- 
tion. There  never  was  such  an  instrument  devised 
for  consecrating  all  deep-seated  prejudices.  And 
the  chief  strength  of  this  false  philosophy  in  morals, 
politics,  and  religion,  lies  in  the  appeal  which  it  is 
accustomed  to  make  to  the  evidence  of  mathemat- 
ics and  of  the  cognate  branches  of  physical  sci- 
ence. To  expel  it  from  these,  is  to  drive  it  from 
its  stronghold;  and  because  this  had  never  been 
effectually  done,  the  intuitive  school,  even  after 
what  my  father  had  written  in  his  'Analysis  of 
the  Mind,'  had  in  appearance,  and  as  far  as  pub- 
lished writings  were  concerned,  on  the  whole  the 
best  of  the  argument.  In  attempting  to  clear  up 
the  real  nature  of  the  evidence  of  mathematical 
and  physical  truths,  the  '  System  of  Logic '  met 

»  "  Autobiography,"  pp.  225-227. 


the  intuitive  philosophers  on  ground  on  which 
they  had  previously  been  deemed  unassailable ; 
and  gave  its  own  explanation,  from  experience 
and  association,  of  that  peculiar  character  of  what 
are  called  necessary  truths,  which  is  adduced  as 
proof  that  their  evidence  must  come  from  a  deep- 
er source  than  experience.  Whether  this  has  been 
done  effectually,  is  still  subjudice;  and  even  then, 
to  deprive  a  mode  of  thought,  so  strongly  rooted 
in  human  prejudices  and  partialities,  of  its  mere 
speculative  support,  goes  but  a  very  little  way 
toward  overcoming  it ;  but,  though  only  a  step,  it 
is  a  quite  indispensable  one  ;  for  since,  after  all, 
prejudice  «an  only  be  successfully  combated  by 
philosophy,  no  way  can  really  be  made  against 
it  permanently  until  it  has  been  shown  not  to 
have  philosophy  on  its  side." 

This  is  at  least  a  candid  statement  of  mo- 
tives, means,  and  expected  results.  Whether 
Mill's  exposition  of  the  philosophy  of  the  mathe- 
matical sciences  is  satisfactory  or  not,  we  par- 
tially inquired  in  the  previous  article  ;  and  in  one 
place  or  another  the  inquiry  will  be  further  prose- 
cuted in  a  pretty  exhaustive  manner.  Mill  allowed 
that  the  philosophy  of  his  solution  was  still  sub 
judice,  and  it  must  remain  in  that  position  for 
some  time  longer.  But  of  the  importance  of  the 
matter  it  is  impossible  to  entertain  a  doubt.  If 
Mill's  own  philosophy  be  yet  more  false  than  was, 
in  his  opinion,  the  philosophy  which  he  under- 
took to  destroy,  we  may  well  adopt  his  own  esti- 
mate of  the  results.  "  Wliatever"  he  says,  "  may 
be  the  practical  value  of  a  true  philosophy  of  these 
matters,  it  is  hardly  possible  to  exaggerate  the  mis- 
chiefs  of  a  false  one."  Intensely  believing,  as  I 
do,  that  the  philosophy  of  the  Mills,  both  father 
and  son,  is  a  false  one,  I  claim,  almost  as  a  right, 
the  attention  of  those  who  have  sufficiently  stud- 
ied the  matters  in  dispute  to  judge  the  arduous 
work  of  criticism  which  I  have  felt  it  my  duty  to 
undertake. 

Erratum. — In  the  first  article  on  John  Stuart 
Mill's  Philosophy,  Contemporary  Review  for  De- 
cember, 1877,  vol.  xxxi.,  p.  170,  fifth  line  (Popular 
Science  Monthly  Supplement,  No.  IX.,  p.  280, 
second  column,  last  line),  for  Libiity  read  Necessi- 
ty.— Contemporary  Review. 


DISSECTING  A    DAISY. 


329 


DISSECTING    A    DAISY. 


By  Professor  GKANT  ALLEN. 


I  AM  lying  on  my  back  in  the  sunshine,  close 
to  the  edge  of  a  southward-sloping  cliff,  on 
the  green  and  smiling  coast  of  Dorsetshire. 
There  is  a  pleasant  scent  of  thyme  upon  the 
breeze,  and  a  drowsy  buzzing  strikes  my  ear 
from  the  great  awkward  humble-bee  who  is  bus- 
tling about  in  his  burly  fashion  from  blossom  to 
blossom  just  before  my  eyes.  A  few  yards  away 
a  couple  of  country  lassies,  some  four  or  five 
years  old,  are  picking  bunches  of  centaury  and 
buttercup,  which  they  immediately  pull  to  pieces 
with  evident  enjoyment  of  their  destructive 
power.  Being  by  trade  a  philosopher,  I  proceed 
to  philosophize  upon  their  conduct,  and  pluck 
the  nearest  flower  I  can  reach,  in  imitation  of  my 
bucolic  fellow-creatures.  It  happens  to  be  a 
daisy.  I  look  at  it  closely,  and  think  to  myself, 
"  What  a  lovely  little  blossom  it  is,  after  all !  "  As 
a  psychologist  I  am  bound  to  account  for  my  own 
pleasure  in  looking  at  it,  and  for  the  delight  with 
which  my  five-year-old  friends  pull  it  to  pieces. 
Let  me  dissect  my  daisy,  then,  not  literally  and 
materially,  as  they  do,  but  in  a  psychological  and 
jesthetic  sense.  Let  me  set  to  work  and  find  out 
exactly  what  it  is  in  the  daisy  which  makes  me 
like  it,  and  what  it  is  in  myself  that  makes  a 
daisy  please  me. 

In  two  previous  articles  I  endeavored  to  show 
the  readers  of  this  Magazine  what  was  the  source 
of  our  pleasure  in  looking  at  a  carved  cocoanut 
cup  and  a  polished  granite  obelisk.1  In  the  pres- 
ent paper  I  shall  try  to  explain  the  higher  aesthet- 
ic enjoyment  derived  from  the  contemplation  of 
a  simple  blossom.  It  might  at  first  sight  appear 
that  the  love  of  little  meadow-flowers  was  a  more 
elementary  feeling  than  the  appreciation  of  a 
work  of  art  like  the  bowl  or  the  obelisk.  But  I 
think  if  we  look  carefully  at  the  matter  we  shall 
see  reason  to  believe  that  even  in  children  and 
much  more  in  adults  the  pleasure  derived  from 
the  contemplation  of  a  daisy  is  far  higher,  more 
complex,  and  more  developed,  than  the  primitive 
sense  of  beauty  in  a  human  utensil  or  a  massive 
monolithic  monument.  We  shall  see  as  we  go 
on  that  mankind  has  really  advanced  from  the 
admiration  for  colored  and  sculptured  human 
products  to  the  admiration  for  color  and  sculpt- 

1  See  the  CornhiU  Magazine  for  October  and  Novem- 
ber, 187T. 


ure  in  plants  and  flowers  and  shells  and  min- 
erals ;  and  that  the  appreciation  of  art,  rude  or 
refined,  has  been  a  stepping-stone  to  the  appre- 
ciation of  Nature,  forming  a  necessary  factor  in 
the  evolution  of  each  new  mode  of  aesthetic 
pleasure. 

One  element  in  the  love  for  flowers  is  un- 
doubtedly of  immense  antiquity  in  the  whole  race 
of  vertebrate  animals,  and  goes  back  much  fur- 
ther than  the  origin  of  human  arts.  I  mean  the 
stimulation  of  bright  color — the  most  conspicu- 
ous constituent  in  the  pleasure  felt  by  children 
and  by  savages,  and  by  no  means  an  inconsider- 
able element  in  the  enjoyment  of  our  most  refined 
horticulturists.  There  are  good  grounds  for  be- 
lieving that  this  gratification  is  shared  by  a  large 
part  of  the  animal  creation,  and  has  descended 
to  us  men  from  our  early  half-human  frugivorous 
ancestors.  The  bright  hues  of  fruits  and  flowers 
seem  to  have  been  acquired  by  them  as  attractive 
allurements  for  the  animal  eye,  and  as  aids  to 
cross-fertilization  or  the  dispersion  of  seeds.  At 
any  rate,  we  find  many  animals  acutely  sensitive 
to  the  stimulation  of  brilliant  colors ;  and  we 
know  that  human  infants  will  notice  red  or  yel- 
low patches  long  before  their  attention  is  at- 
tracted by  more  sombre  hues.  Accordingly,  we 
may  consider  that  the  primordial  element  of 
beauty  in  flowers  is  to  be  found  in  their  bright 
coloring,  which  affords  immediate  pleasurable 
stimulation  to  the  eye  by  its  brilliance  and  pun- 
gency. 

But  primeval  man  did  not  probably  care  very 
greatly  for  flowers,  even  when  gorgeously  adorned 
in  all  the  richest  tints  of  the  rainbow.  The  en- 
joyment of  color  seems  to  have  been  a  gradual 
growth,  and  to  have  depended  largely  on  the 
taste  for  personal  decoration.  The  modern  sav- 
age does  not  particularly  trouble  himself  about 
any  bright-hued  objects  that  cannot  be  employed 
for  his  individual  adornment.  He  picks  up  and 
prizes  bits  of  coral,  or  brilliant  pebbles,  or  glis- 
tening shells,  because  these  can  be  manufactured 
into  necklets  or  waistbands.  He  robs  birds  of 
their  gorgeous  plumage,  and  animals  of  their  gay 
*furs,  to  make  himself  a  cloak  or  a  girdle.  He 
stains  his  body  blue  and  yellow,  or  paints  his 
weapons  and  domestic  implements  with  such  rude 
pigments  as  he  can  extract  from  plant  or  clay  or 


330 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


mollusk.  But  he  does  not  care  very  much  for 
such  transitory  beauty  as  that  of  leaves  and  flow- 
ers, which  cannot  be  worked  up  into  a  permanent 
means  of  human  decoration.  Yet  by  accustom- 
ing his  eyes  to  feast  on  the  bright  hues  of  his 
ochre-stained  bow  and  his  wampum-belt,  he  is 
laying  the  foundation  for  far  higher  and  more 
discriminative  aesthetic  pleasures  in  later  genera- 
tions. The  susceptibility  to  the  pungent  stimu- 
lation of  dispersed  color  which  the  savage  derives 
from  his  ante-human  ancestors,  he  improves  and 
strengthens  by  exercise  on  his  broad  contrasts 
of  red  and  blue,  and  hands  on  in  a  more  devel- 
oped form  to  his  semi-barbarous  and  civilized 
descendants. 

Even  savages,  however,  cannot  fail  to  be 
struck  by  the  hues  of  flowers  when  they  are  very 
large  and  very  brilliant.  The  Malays,  who  re- 
ported to  Dr.  Arnold  their  discovery  of  the  first 
liafflesia — the  monstrous  parasitical  blossom  of 
Sumatra,  a  yard  in  diameter,  which  deceives  in- 
sects by  its  exact  resemblance  in  smell  and  ap- 
pearance to  a  piece  of  putrid  meat — testified 
their  admiration  by  cries  of  "  Come,  come !  A 
flower,  big,  beautiful,  wonderful !  "  Such  masses 
of  blossom  as  we  find  on  the  lilac,  the  tulip-tree, 
the  rhododendron,  and  the  hibiscus,  must  fix  and 
gratify  the  eye  of  the  most  callous  savage.  There 
is  scarcely  a  literature  in  the  world,  if  it  be  but 
the  embryo  songs  of  the  South-Sea-Islanders, 
which  does  not  contain  abundant  mention  of 
flowers  as  beautiful  objects,  whose  loveliness  is 
apparent  even  to  those  rude,  poets  and  their  bru- 
tal audience.  Though  negro  children  never  pluck 
the  road-side  posies  as  our  own  little  villagers  do, 
yet  I  have  found  it  difficult  to  keep  their  hands 
off  the  scarlet  bunches  of  poinsettia,  the  crimson- 
hearted  foliage  of  caladium,  and  the  purple  sprays 
of  bougainvillia.  Even  among  the  unsophisti- 
cated Admiralty-Islanders,  the  officers  of  the 
Challenger  found  little  garden-plots  filled  with  a 
wild  profusion  of  red  or  yellow  blossom. 

So  with  ourselves,  the  mere  pleasure  of  color 
enters  largely  into  our  love  for  the  golden  crocus, 
the  imperial  tulip,  and  the  joyous  geranium.  We 
get  a  pleasant  shock  of  varied  stimulation  from 
a  garden  glowing  with  roses,  peonies,  fuchsias, 
chrysanthemums,  asters,  dahlias,  and  Canterbu- 
ry bells.  We  look  with  delight  upon  the  hang- 
ing masses  of  laburnum,  the  clustered  wealth  of 
apple  -  blossom,  the  crimson  glory  of  Virginia- 
creeper,  tinged  by  the  first  autumnal  frost.  I 
do  not  say  that  we  have  here  no  higher  emotion- 
al and  poetic  sentiments,  intermingled  with  the 
simple  delight  of  color  in  some  inextricable  way  : 


on  the  contrary,  I  shall  try  to  show  hereafter 
that  such  feelings  inevitably  complicate  the  anal- 
ysis of  our  mental  state  in  admiring  a  hyacinth, 
a  daffodil,  or  a  gladiolus.  But  in  spite  of  these 
superadded  emotional  elements,  I  think  the  un- 
mixed delight  of  pure  color  -  stimulation  must 
count  for  a  great  deal.  It  is  the  most  original 
part  of  our  pleasure  in  looking  at  a  flower,  and  to 
the  last  it  remains  the  principal  part  in  many  cases. 

Among  our  English  wild-flowers  there  are  not 
a  few  that  challenge  attention  on  the  ground  of 
brilliancy  and  purity  of  hue  alone,  without  tak- 
ing into  consideration  other  aesthetic  advantages. 
The  dark  purple  of  the  fritillary  and  the  lighter 
shades  of  the  foxglove  would  make  them  beauti- 
ful even  apart  from  the  drooping,  serpentine  grace 
of  the  one  and  the  tall,  clustered  shaft  on  which 
the  other  bears  its  dappled  bells.  The  intense 
yellow  of  the  buttercup,  the  marsh  marigold,  and 
the  gorse,  would  extort  our  praise  if  it  occurred 
in  any  costly  exotic.  Clover,  broom,  lucerne, 
poppies,  cornflowers,  thistles,  dandelions,  con- 
volvulus, and  heather,  are  all  bright  enough  to 
fix  our  eyes  upon  their  lovely  tints  as  we  scan 
the  fields  in  which  they  grow.  Each  blossom 
stands  out  as  a  little  patch  of  pungent  color  in 
the  midst  of  the  uniform  background  of  green 
which  throws  them  up  in  strong  relief.  And  so 
the  eyes  of  our  village  children  are  attracted 
from  one  to  another  in  succession  (just  as  the 
eyes  of  the  bee,  for  whose  guidance  their  fair 
tints  were  first  developed,  are  drawn  on  from 
each  to  its  neighbor),  and  their  little  hands  are 
soon  filled  with  cowslips,  and  primroses,  and 
white-fringed  daisies,  like  the  one  which  I  am 
now  holding  in  my  palm,  and  which  is  to  form 
the  text  for  our  morning's  discourse. 

Our  daisy  is  not  like  some  of  these  other 
flowers,  a  gayly-decked,  flaunting  madam,  in  robe 
of  crimson  and  ornaments  of  gold.  She  has  do 
very  fine  colors  and  no  very  large  mass  of  bloom 
to  unfold  before  our  admiring  gaze.  And  yet,  I 
suppose,  there  never  was  a  flower  about  which  so 
much  poetry  has  been  written  in  books,  and  said 
in  love-making,  and  thought  in  the  heart  of  man, 
as  this  same  humble,  quiet  little  daisy.  More- 
over, since  all  poetry  is  only  aesthetic  feeling 
crystallized  into  words,  there  must  be  some  won- 
derful potency  in  this  tiny  flower,  little  as  it  at- 
tracts our  eyes  by  its  outer  hues,  or  we  should 
not  find  its  name  so  often  in  the  pages  of  our 
poets.  But,  before  we  go  on  to  see  what  good 
points  it  actually  has,  let  us  look  briefly  at  those 
which  it  has  not,  that  we  may  thus  more  clearly 
realize  the  problem  before  us. 


DISSECTING  A  DAISY 


331 


We  have  seen  that  the  daisy  has  not  bright 
color  in  any  conspicuous  degree,  nor  has  it  a 
noticeable  size.  But  besides  these  disadvantages, 
it  also  lacks  the  pleasant  property  of  perfume. 
Some  of  our  bright-hued  flowers,  like  the  rose 
and  the  carnation,  add  this  further  beauty  to 
their  large  dimensions  and  delicate  tints  ;  others, 
a  little  less  fortunate,  like  the  primrose,  the  wall- 
flower, the  heliotrope,  the  violet,  and  the  mead- 
ow-sweet,  make  up  by  their  exquisite  scent  for 
the  comparative  sobriety  of  their  petals.  Many 
of  those  blossoms  which  can  boast  scarcely  any 
attractions  of  form  or  pigment  yet  gratify  us  by 
their  delicious  fragrance;  such  are  mignonette, 
lavender,  sweet-brier,  and  rosemary.  But  the 
little  daisy  cannot  lay  claim  to  this  source  of 
pleasure ;  it  cannot  even  compete  with  thyme, 
marjoram,  or  hawthorn,  far  less  with  the  lilac, 
the  orange,  or  the  flowering  almond. 

Furthermore,  the  daisy  does  not  possess  that 
intellectual  interest  which  many  blossoms  arouse 
by  their  quaintness  or  unusual  form.  There  is  a 
certain  uncanny  look  about  a  listera,  a  snap- 
dragon, or  a  bee-orchis,  which  is  sure  to  fix  our  at- 
tention upon  it  for  a  moment.  Monk's-hood,  with 
its  queer  cowl  and  upright  honey-glands  ;  cock's- 
comb,  with  its  intricate  mass  of  crimson  fluff; 
begonia,  with  its  lop-sided  leaf  and  quadrangular 
blossom ;  calceolaria,  with  its  padded  and  in- 
flated slipper  ;  the  dodder  twining  thread-like  its 
long  pink  filaments  ;  the  teazle,  imbedded  in  its 
prickly  mail ;  the  cactus,  seeming  to  spring  from 
the  middle  of  a  leaf — all  these  have  an  oddity 
and  idiosyncrasy  which  insures  at  least  a  curious 
glance.  But  the  daisy  is  just  a  simple,  symmet- 
rical, yellow-centred  flower — or  at  least  (to  save 
my  credit  with  the  botanical  reader)  it  looks  so 
to  a  cursory  inquirer.  It  has  a  shape  with  which 
we  are  perfectly  familiar  through  a  thousand  ex- 
amples, from  sunflowers  to  camomile  ;  and  there 
is  nothing  about  it  in  any  way  to  draw  toward  it 
the  eye  of  a  careless  wayfarer. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  daisy  is  free  from  some 
disagreeable  qualities  which  spoil  the  beauty  of 
certain  other  plants.  It  has  not  the  objection- 
able odor  of  its  sister  composites,  such  as  mil- 
foil, tansy,  and  corn-marigold.  If  it  cannot  com- 
pete with  the  honeysuckle  or  the  lily-of-the-valley, 
it  does  not  disgust  us  like  the  leek,  the  dragon 
arum,  and  the  strong  -  smelling  night  -  plants. 
Again,  though  the  colors  of  the  daisy  are  not 
very  brilliant,  at  any  rate  it  is  a  recognizable 
flower  in  the  popular  sense,  not  an  insignificant 
botanical  inflorescence  like  that  of  a  grass,  an 
oak,  or  a  plantain.     It  is  quite  prominent  enough 


to  catch  the  eyes  of  children,  who  pass  over 
dock,  and  groundsel,  and  galeum ;  indeed,  on  a 
level  plot  of  grass  it  is  sure  to  gain  a  certain 
amount  of  notice  from  every  one  in  contrast  with 
the  green  area  by  which  it  is  surrounded.  It  was 
the  first  flower  I  could  see  just  now,  when  I 
stretched  my  hand  for  a  text  to  philosophize 
upon,  though,  when  I  look  down  closer  in  the 
grass,  I  see  half  a  dozen  little  blossoms  of  tinier 
dimensions  which  escaped  my  notice  beside  the 
larger  disk  of  the  daisy. 

All  this  while,  however,  the  daisy  has  been 
lying  passive  in  my  hand,  under  sentence  of  vivi- 
section, while  I  have  been  quietly  settling  in  my 
own  mind  what  it  is  not.  It  is  time  for  me  now 
to  change  my  method  of  inquiry,  and  to  discover 
what  it  is. 

First  of  all,  as  I  take  it  up  and  look  at  it 
closely,  I  see  that  it  is  a  little,  white-fringed 
flower,  with  a  yellow  centre.  Though  not  very 
brilliant,  it  has  quite  color  enough  to  be  pretty. 
Its  white  is  pure  and  lucid  ;  its  yellow  is  clear 
and  soft ;  while  its  outer  edge  is  tipped  with  a 
dainty  pink,  that  rivals  the  inner  surface  of  a 
shell.  When  it  was  half  open,  this  pink  edge 
was  its  most  conspicuous  part ;  and,  as  I  turn  to 
look  again,  I  see  that  my  five-year-old  psycho- 
logical subjects  are  stringing  a  number  of  its  fel- 
lows in  their  pinky  stage  into  a  rosy-colored 
daisy-chain.  Clearly,  on  the  score  of  color  alone, 
our  daisy  might  fairly  lay  claim  to  a  certain 
share  of  simple  beauty.  I  doubt  whether  my 
little  friends  here  care  for  much  else  in  its  com- 
position besides  this  commonest  and  earliest  ele- 
ment of  aasthetic  pleasure. 

I  look  again,  and  I  see  that  beyond  its  delicate 
tint  it  has  the  charm  of  symmetrical  form.  Its 
outer  rays  are  disposed  in  regular  order,  radiat- 
ing from  the  centre  of  the  head  ;  while  its  inner 
orb  is  a  perfect  circle  of  soft,  yellow  bloom.  In 
recognizing  this  source  of  pleasure,  we  pass  from 
the  purely  sensuous  factor  of  color  to  the  intel- 
lectual one  of  symmetry.  The  mind  is  agreeably 
occupied  in  noticing  the  circular  shape,  the  or- 
derly repetition  of  form,  and  the  even  arrange- 
ment both  of  parts  and  hues.  Next  to  the  pri- 
mordial pleasure  of  brilliant  optical  stimulation, 
this  is  perhaps  the  earliest  in  historical  develop- 
ment of  all  aesthetic  feelings  ;  and,  unlike  the 
other,  it  is  of  purely  human  origin.  Birds  and 
mammals — perhaps  even  reptiles — are  apparently 
gratified  by  pure  color  ;  but  only  man  is  capable 
of  taking  pleasure  in  the  intellectual  recognition 
of  symmetrically-repeated  forms.  We  saw,  in 
the  case  of   the  cocoanut  which  we  carved  to- 


332 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


gcther  last  October,  how  early  this  love  for  regu- 
lar patterns  appeared  among  mankind,  and  how 
large  a  share  it  bore  in  the  evolution  of  aesthetic 
taste.  Derived  originally  from  the  contemplation 
of  the  organic  world,  it  has  reacted  at  last  upon 
our  perceptions  of  organisms  themselves.  From 
the  tattooing  and  carving  of  the  savage ;  from 
the  paddles,  the  bowls,  and  the  clubs,  of  early 
chieftains ;  from  the  Greek  temples,  and  urns, 
and  key.patterns ;  from  the  Eoman  arch  and  am- 
phitheatre and  tessellated  pavement ;  from  the 
Gothic  rose-window,  and  sedilia,  and  screen  ; 
from  obelisk,  and  column,  and  monument ;  from 
every  vase,  basin,  table,  plate,  dish,  carpet,  wall- 
paper, and  decorative  device  generally,  through- 
out all  time,  savage,  barbarous,  or  civilized,  we 
have  learned  to  expect  symmetry  and  regularity, 
and  to  feel  a  pleasure  at  their  due  occurrence. 
And,  as  I  look  at  this  little  daisy  in  my  hand,  I 
recognize  in  it  the  possession  of  those  attributes 
which  concur  with  its  color  to  make  me  call  it 
pretty. 

I  take  the  daisy  in  my  fingers  and  pull  out 
one  of  the  pink-tipped  rays.  As  I  inspect  it 
closely,  I  see  that  it  forms  a  perfect  but  very  ir- 
regular floret.  Our  daisy,  then,  is  a  composite 
plant,  and  this  which  looks  a  single  blossom  is 
in  reality  a  thick-set  head  of  lovely  little  bells. 
Gaze  hard  into  the  central  mass,  and  you  will 
see  them  clustered  thickly  together,  each  with  a 
yellow  fringe,  shaped  like  a  Canterbury  bell, 
within  which  lie  the  stamens  and  pistil,  scarcely 
visible  without  the  aid  of  a  lens.  In  the  very 
heart  of  the  flower,  each  tiny  floret  is  still  un- 
opened— in  the  bud,  so  to  speak — and  they  stand 
like  little  golden  knobs,  too  small  to  count  with 
the  naked  eye.  Toward  the  circumference,  how- 
ever, the  separate  bells  are  fully  opened,  and,  if 
you  will  take  the  trouble  to  look  hard  enough, 
you  will  see  that  they  are  perfect  miniature  flow- 
ers, every  one  having  a  deeply-cleft  corolla,  which 
forms  a  bright-ye'flow  tube  with  five  projecting, 
vandyked  points.  The  outer  florets  of  all  are 
the  pinky-white  rays  which  first  attracted  our 
attention,  and,  when  I  look  at  one  of  them  by 
itself,  I  can  see  that  it  is  a  marvelously  mis- 
shapen representative  of  the  little  inner  bells.  Its 
corolla  has  grown  together  into  a  single,  one- 
sided leaflet,  in  which  we  can  scarcely  distinguish 
a  trace  of  the  original  petals,  four  or  five  in  num- 
ber, answering  to  the  vandyked  points  of  the 
internal  bells.  Its  color  has  been  entirely  blanched, 
while  at  the  outer  extremity  it  has  been  dyed  with 
a  melting  shade  of  delicate  pink.  Its  stamens 
have  disappeared  altogether,  but  the  pistil  still 


remains  as  in  the  central  blossoms.  My  scientific 
teachers  have  taught  me  to  recognize  in  this 
arrangement  the  joint  effect  of  incident  sunlight, 
freer  elbow-room,  and  natural  selection.  Most 
of  the  daisy-shaped  composites  have  an  outer 
row  of  radial  florets,  to  give  size,  color,  and  at- 
tractiveness to  the  blossom,  and  to  allure  those 
great  fertilizing  agents,  the  bees  and  the  butter- 
flies ;  while  the  real  working  organs,  the  golden 
bells,  lie  thickly  packed  together  in  the  middle, 
and  take  a  comparatively  passive  part  in  the  task 
of  fascinating  the  insect-eye.  But  at  present, 
when  my  purpose  is  purely  aesthetic,  I  must  neg- 
lect these  interesting  biological  speculations  and 
return  to  my  analysis  of  a  daisy,  viewed  as  a 
beautiful  object  alone. 

What  a  new  sphere  of  aesthetic  pleasure  this 
discovery,  that  the  daisy  is  composite,  has  laid 
open  before  us  !  I  was  just  beginning  to  tire  of 
its  pinky  rays  and  its  yellow  centre,  my  inter- 
est in  its  various  parts  was  just  b  eginning  to 
flag,  when  suddenly  I  find  a  whole  unthought-of 
region  disclosed  to  my  delighted  view.  I  can  sit 
and  look  at  it  now,  and  have  full  occupation  for 
my  intellect  at  least  ten  minutes  longer.  In  the 
case  of  our  cocoanut  we  saw  already  how  large 
an  element  of  aesthetic  pleasure  is  given  us  in 
the  intellectual  interest  and  the  sensuous  gratifi- 
cation of  numerous  visual,  salient  points.  If  we 
look  at  a  book  of  engravings,  and  turn  over  the 
pages  in  rapid  listlessness,  it  is  clear  that  we  are 
not  receiving  very  much  pleasure  from  their  con- 
tents ;  but  if  we  linger  for  ten  minutes  over  a 
single  plate,  marking  every  detail  and  taking  in 
every  figure,  the  inference  is  strong  that  we  are 
thoroughly  enjoying  our  occupation. 

Yet  such  enjoyment  is  not  always  of  necessity 
aesthetic  in  kind.  If  I  had  never  seen  a  daisy 
before,  and  were  pulling  it  to  pieces  for  the  pur- 
pose of  settling  its  botanical  affinities,  my  inter- 
est, though  strong,  would  be  purely  scientific.  I 
should  not  be  concentrating  my  attention  on 
its  color  and  its  symmetry,  but  rather  noticing 
trivial  and  sensuously  dull  traits  in  its  internal 
economy,  reduced  to  botanical  rule  and  number. 
I  should  not  be  thinking  of  it  in  such  poetical 
terms  as  golden  bells  and  pink-tipped  rays,  but 
in  the  cut-and-dried  phraseology  of  natural  sci- 
ence :  "  Inner  florets,  bisexual,  regular,  of  five 
yellow  petals,  combined  into  a  tubular  corolla  ; 
stamens  four  to  five,  anthers  combined  ;  pistil 
with  one  cell,  one  style,  and  two  stigmas,"  and 
much  more  to  the  same  technical  effect.  In  all 
this  process,  the  sense  of  laborious  investigation 
and  toilsome  straining  of  the  eye  and  the  intel- 


DISSECTING  A  DAISY 


333 


lect  would  be  too  prominent  to  allow  of  its  inclu- 
sion among  aesthetic  feelings.  But  when  we  look 
into  a  daisy  merely  to  recognize  its  minute  work- 
manship, its  marvelous  complexity,  its  incredible 
accuracy  of  detail,  our  pleasure  is  truly  and  sim- 
ply aesthetic  in  kind. 

In  the  last  sentence  we  have  hit  by  accident 
upon  the  source  of  this  pleasure.  It  is  derived 
from  the  gratification  with  which  we  regard  deli- 
cate workmanship  in  human  products.  Both  the 
cocoanut  and  the  obelisk  showed  us  how  large  a 
factor  this  feeling  forms  in  our  appreciation  of 
artistic  handicraft.  The  theory  of  special  crea- 
tion, which  taught  us  for  so  many  generations  to 
regard  each  organism  as  a  separate  invention  of 
the  Supreme  ilind,  naturally  led  us  to  extend  the 
notion  of  intentional  ornamentation  and  decora- 
tive detail  to  these  living  forms,  moulded  into 
shape  by  the  finger  of  God.  And  even  now, 
when  many  of  us  have  learned  to  see  in  every 
plant  or  animal  the  natural  resultant  of  antece- 
dent causes  acting  by  physical  laws  on  an  endless 
line  of  ancestors,  we  still  figure  to  ourselves  the 
minute  organization  of  each  in  terms  of  human 
activity.  We  find  a  flower  or  a  shell  most  beau- 
tiful when  we  think  of  it  as  an  artistic  product. 
The  very  words  we  apply  to  them — sculpture, 
tracery,  chiseling,  and  so  forth — are  derived 
from  the  works  of  man,  and  add  a  fresh  sense 
of  beauty  to  the  natural  objects  which  we  invest 
with  their  connoted  ideas.  A  couple  of  examples 
will  make  this  clear. 

As  I  came  along  this  morning  from  the  quiet 
watering-place  where  we  have  pitched  our  sum- 
mer tent,  I  did  a  little  amateur  geologizing  in 
the  blue  lias  cliffs  which  I  passed  on  my  way. 
Among  other  fossils,  I  found  this  ammonite.  A 
beautiful  object  it  is,  even  in  the  eyes  of  children, 
who  may  often  be  seen  hunting  for  them  in  the 
fallen  debris  of  the  cliff;  for  its  surface  is  brill- 
iant with  a  metallic  iridescence,  and  gold  or 
bronze  alternate  every  moment  on  its  shining 
crystalline  texture  with  fitful  gleams  of  gorgeous 
purple  and  strange  undertones  of  lucid  green. 
But  a  closer  glance  reveals  other  beauties  besides 
this  simple  effect  of  scattered  light-rays.  The 
spire  is  composed  of  three  or  four  overlapping 
whorls,  exquisitely  graceful  in  their  curved  out- 
line and  fullness  of  depth.  The  dorsal  ridge,  or 
backbone  of  the  shell,  is  embossed  with  small 
studs  and  projections  at  proportionate  distances. 
The  sides  are  covered  by  a  fluted  pattern,  carved 
with  a  delicate  accuracy  which  no  human  graver 
could  compass.  And,  more  wonderful  than  all, 
traversing  this  sculptured  surface  in  every  direc- 


tion are  tiny  lines  of  tracery,  like  the  leaves  of  a 
very  delicate  fern,  repeated  at  measured  intervals 
over  all  the  whorls.  In  and  out  they  wind,  each 
one  following  exactly  the  same  course  as  its 
neighbors,  so  that  the  space  between  any  two 
lines  forms  a  symmetrical  and  marvelously  mi- 
nute pattern,  compared  to  which  the  finest  lace  is 
a  mere  bungling  mass  of  knotted  cord.  This  am- 
monite was  once  a  chambered  shell,  like  that  of 
the  pearly  nautilus  in  our  own  time ;  and  each 
of  these  sutures,  as  the  sculptured  lines  are  called 
in  scientific  books,  marks  the  point  of  juncture 
between  one  of  the  chamber-walls  and  the  exter- 
nal shell.  Wrinkled  and  twisted  into  ten  thou- 
sand folds,  it  yet  preserves  throughout  its  exquisite 
symmetry,  and  presents  to  our  eyes  an  appear- 
ance of  decorative  design  which  no  amount  of 
reasoning  can  dispel  from  our  fancy  and  our 
aesthetic  imagination.  To  the  last,  we  shall  think 
of  it  as  a  piece  of  Nature's  handiwork,  and  praise 
her  for  the  exquisite  taste  and  unapproachable 
skill  which  she  lavishes  on  all  her  productions. 

Or,  take  again  some  of  those  fossil  trees  of 
the  coal-measures,  which  grew  like  huge  club- 
mosses  and  mare's-tails  to  the  height  of  our  own 
modern  tropical  palms.  Even  a  geologist  de- 
scribes them  as  "  fluted  columns,  ornately  carved 
in  the  line  of  the  channeled  flutes ; "  as  "  sculpt- 
ured into  gracefully-arranged  rows  of  pointed  and 
closely-imbricated  leaves,  similar  to  those  into 
which  the  Ronran  architects  fretted  the  torus  of 
the  Corinthian  order ;  "  and  as  "  furnishing  ex- 
amples of  a  delicate  diaper-work,  like  that  so  ad- 
mired in  our  more  ornate  Gothic  buildings — such 
as  Westminster  Abbey  or  Canterbury  and  Chi- 
chester Cathedrals — only  greatly  more  exquisite 
in  their  design  and  finish."  Wherever  we  look 
at  a  description  of  beautiful  natural  objects  which 
owe  their  effectiveness  to  detail  and  intricacy,  we 
shall  find  the  self-same  language  employed.  The 
apparent  similarity  to  human  handicraft  is  the 
peg  upon  which  we  hang  our  aesthetic  admira- 
tion. 

So,  too,  with  our  little  daisy.  As  we  peer 
into  its  golden  disk,  we  see  in  it  one  of  Nature's 
most  complicated  works — a  whole  head  of  flow- 
ers, each  in  perfect  miniature,  with  every  part 
complete,  crowded  into  a  circle  of  half  an  inch 
diameter.  It  is  truly  wonderful  !  I  will  call  my 
little  neighbors  here,  and  ask  them  to  enjoy  the 
spectacle  with  me.  Strange,  indeed  !  they  come 
and  look  at  it,  but  don't  betray  the  slightest 
symptom  of  interest.  I  try  again.  I  take  a  sin- 
gle bell  on  the  point  of  a  pin,  and  dilate  upon  its 
loveliness.     The  eldest  of  the  two  stares  at  me 


334 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


in  mingled  pity  and  contempt.  "  It's  only  a 
daisy ! "  she  says,  in  her  native  Dorsetshire 
tongue.  There  is  nothing  more  in  it.  Why ! 
dear  me,  I  had  forgotten  my  "  Peter  Bell."  I 
see  it  now,  and  repent  me  of  my  bad  psychology. 
I  have  been  asking  these  children  to  experience 
a  feeling  for  which  they  have  no  appropriate 
nervous  organ.  I  have  been  requesting  the  blind 
to  enjoy  the  glories  of  sunset,  or  exhorting  the 
deaf  to  drink  in  the  touching  strains  of  Men- 
delssohn. Indeed,  if  the  reader  will  believe  me, 
I  don't  think  I  would  have  conimitted  such  a 
blunder  in  practical  psychology  except  for  the 
sake  of  experiment,  example,  and  precept.  These 
little  maidens  can  receive  pleasure  from  the  pink 
and  white  and  yellow  of  the  blossom ;  perhaps 
they  can  even  appreciate  the  symmetrical  arrange- 
ment of  disk  and  rays  and  daisy-cup ;  but  they 
cannot  possibly  see  the  beauties  of  those  tiny 
separate  specks  of  yellow  which  the  educated  ob- 
server resolves  into  perfect  individual  flowers. 

How  could  it  be  otherwise  ?  In  the  individ- 
ual and  in  the  race  appreciation  of  art  must  come 
before  appreciation  of  Nature.  Only  by  connect- 
ing the  workmanship  of  flowers  and  shells  and 
insects  with  the  workmanship  of  bowls  and  pad- 
dles and  sculptured  stone,  can  we  ever  rise  to  a 
love  for  beauty  in  these  natural  shapes.  The  sav- 
age who  delights  in  patiently- wrought  clubs  and 
war-canoes  can  see  no  marvel  in  the  delicate 
handicraft  of  the  ammonite,  the  lycopodium,  or 
the  thistle-flower.  Indeed,  I  venture  myself  to 
think  that  our  enjoyment  of  the  beauty  of  design 
in  Nature — as  opposed  to  the  more  sensuous  grat- 
ification of  form  and  color — is  largely  due  to  the 
influence  of  that  Hebrew  cosmogony  which  for 
fifty  generations  has  formed  an  intimate  portion 
of  our  every-day  life.  It  has  taught  us  to  look 
upon  every  plant  or  animal  as  made,  while  the 
savage  regards  them  merely  as  growing.  And 
though  we  may  now  accept  a  somewhat  different 
account  of  the  origin  of  life,  yet  we  cannot  cast 
away  in  a  moment — let  us  hope  we  may  never 
cast  away — the  beautiful  and  poetical  implica- 
tions of  the  earlier  creed. 

But  these  little  peasant-children  beside  me  can 
hardly  profit  much  by  the  sublime  conception  of 
the  Hebrew  bards.  They  have  never  seen  those 
fluted  pillars  and  diapered  patterns  on  which  the 
taste  for  intricate  design  has  been  slowly  built  up. 
They  and  their  ancestors  forever  have  formed 
their  aesthetic  ideas  from  the  glazed  pottery  and 
rude  furniture  of  the  laborer's  cottage.  They  can 
admire  a  red-and-blue  German  print,  or  a  pink- 
and-white  daisy  viewed  as  a  whole;  but  I  doubt 


whether  they  would  look  twice  at  the  deeply-re- 
cessed Norman  doorway  of  Iffley  Church,  or  the 
Prentice's  Column  in  Roslyn  Chapel.  Much  less, 
then,  can  they  transfer  this  feeling  of  admiration 
for  skill  and  delicacy  of  handicraft  to  the  foliated 
suture  of  my  lias  ammonite  or  the  bell-shaped 
florets  of  my  dissected  daisy. 

It  could  not  have  been  for  this,  I  suppose, 
that  I  noticed  them  pulling  to  pieces  their  centau- 
ries when  I  first  lay  down  here.  Probably  not. 
That  was  doubtless  an  ebullition  of  the  natural 
taste  for  destruction  which  we  all  inherit,  more 
or  less,  from  our  predatory  ancestors.  It  was 
not  without  reason  that  those  pseudo-philoso- 
phers, the  phrenologists,  assigned  a  separate 
bump  on  their  fanciful  cranial  chart  to  the  fac- 
ulty of  destructiveness.  The  self-same  impulse 
which  drove  our  naked  forefathers  to  burn  one 
another's  villages,  entered  into  alliance  at  later 
times  with  political  or  religious  fanaticism  to  over- 
throw the  temples  of  Ephesus  and  Persepolis,  the 
library  of  Alexandria,  the  painted  windows  of  our 
own  cathedrals,  the  H6tel-de-Ville,  and  the  Co- 
lonne  Vendome.  Iconoclasts  and  Puritans  and 
Communards  doubtless  fully  believed  in  the  jus- 
tice of  their  principles,  but  they  all  felt  a  grim 
pleasure,  one  imagines,  in  the  destruction  of  idol- 
atrous images  -nd  anti-social  monuments.  As  I 
was  coming  here  this  morning,  I  passed  through 
a  field  of  stubble  with  a  thick  sprinkling  of  tall 
thistle-heads.  Whenever  I  came  within  reach  of 
a  big  one,  I  cut  it  <  ff  with  a  smart  blow  from  my 
stick.  The  thistle  deserves  no  quarter  as  an  en- 
emy to  the  agricultural  interest,  and  it  was  cer- 
tainly very  pleasant  to  see  their  heads  roll  off  so 
nicely  at  a  single  clean  cut. 

So  far  we  have  looked  at  those  aesthetic  points 
in  our  daisy  which  a  complete  examination  of  its 
structure  could  not  fail  immediately  to  suggest. 
But  there  are  many  others  which,  though  not  so 
obvious  to  the  analyst,  are  far  more  generally 
perceived  than  those  with  which  we  have  lately 
dealt.  We  will  retrace  our  steps  to  the  stage 
where  we  have  merely  considered  the  daisy  in 
its  aspects  as  a  colored  and  symmetrical  object. 
Everybody  feels  at  once  that  it  is  a  great  deal  more 
than  that.     Let  us  see  why. 

In  the  first  place,  it  is  a,  flower — a  real  flower, 
with  all  the  general  attributes  of  flowers  as  a 
class.  Milliners  will  sell  you  an  artificial  daisy 
which  really  looks  at  first  sight  nearly  as  good  as 
the  genuine  article.  But  you  and  I  feel  that  a  nat- 
ural field-grown  daisy  is  worth  a  good  ten  thou- 
sand of  such  tinsel  abominations.  And  yet  notice 
here  a  curious  revulsion  which  has  been  brought 


DISSECTING  A   DAISY. 


335 


about  in  our  feelings  during  the  evolution  of 
civilization.  A  savage  does  not  care  much  for 
flowers :  they  are  bright  and  pretty  enough,  but, 
if  he  picks  them,  they  fade  in  half  an  hour.  Give 
him  a  few  pieces  of  red  and  blue  cloth  or  glass, 
similarly  dyed,  and  he  infinitely  prefers  them  to 
the  handiwork  of  Natm-e.  He  would  consider 
the  milliner's  daisy  ever  so  much  prettier  than 
the  living  flower.  The  vulgar  among  ourselves 
think  a  bunch  of  wax  or  paper  flowers  beautiful 
ornaments  for  a  sitting-room  table,  more  lasting 
and  so  more  desirable  than  an  actual  bouquet ; 
whereas,  with  more  refined  natures,  the  feeling  of 
artificiality  spoils  the  one,  and  the  sense  of  reality 
gives  the  other  loveliness.  A  great  many  threads 
of  feeling  go  to  make  up  this  complex  mental 
state. 

For  one  thing,  the  texture  and  composition  of 
the  two  are  quite  different.  The  daisy's  leaves 
are  soft  and  smooth  and  delicate,  while  the  imita- 
tion is  hard  and  glazed  and  coarse-grained.  The 
daisy  will  bear  looking  into,  and  the  closer  we 
look  the  more  beauty  do  we  discover ;  but  the 
artificial  flower  is  all  made  up  of  wires  and  twisted 
rag,  which  disclose  their  ugly  workmanship  when 
we  scrutinize  them  too  curiously.  The  daisy's 
pigment  is  diffused  within  its  cells  like  the  native 
roses  of  a  maiden's  cheek ;  but  the  pink  of  the 
milliner's  flowers  is  smeared  on  outside  like  the 
rouge  and  pearl-powder  of  a  vulgar  actress.  We, 
who  are  accustomed  to  manufactured  goods,  have 
learned  to  discriminate  between  the  coarse  handi- 
work of  man  and  the  dainty  devices  of  Nature. 
We  recognize  the  difference  between  the  micro- 
scopic cells  of  a  real  leaf  and  the  twisted  fibres 
of  a  calico  petal.  Sometimes  a  false  begonia  or 
coleus  on  a  London  landing  deceives  us  for  a  mo- 
ment, but,  so  soon  as  we  discover  by  the  touch  its 
artificial  character,  all  feeling  of  beauty  is  gone  in 
a  moment.  It  is  the  freshness,  the  smoothness, 
the  delicate  texture,  the  living  flower,  which  we 
love,  as  well  as  the  mere  brightness,  and  color,  and 
form. 

Again,  in  our  adult  minds  the  very  fragility  and 
short-livedness  of  the  real  daisy  give  it  a  certain 
poetical  interest.  We  like  it  the  better  for  being 
so  frail.  We  don't  care  for  that  tough  calico  thing, 
with  knobs  of  yellow  composition,  which  will  stand 
any  amount  of  knocking  about.  We  would  rather 
have  a  live  daisy,  whose  little  leaves  will  shrink 
and  die  at  any  exposure  or  rough  treatment. 

Furthermore,  the  daisy  is  not  merely  a  natu- 
ral object  and  a  living  thing,  but  it  is  yet  more 
specifically  a  flower.  Our  sentiment  toward  it  is 
not  at  all  the  same  as  that  which  we  entertain 


with  regard  to  a  bird  or  a  butterfly.  With  them, 
the  consciousness  of  animal  life,  of  pleasurable 
existence,  occupies  the  foreground  of  our  mental 
picture.  We  think  of  t'nem  as  happy  and  joyous 
and  free ;  we  watch  them  with  delight  as  the  one 
cleaves  the  unresisting  air  in  rapid  motion,  and 
the  other  flits  fairy-like  from  blossom  to  blos- 
som, sucking  the  honey  from  their  perfumed 
depths.  A  stuffed  bird  or  a  dried  butterfly  in  a 
cabinet  does  not  affect  us  with  the  like  gladsome 
sentiments.  The  color  and  form  are  still  the 
same,  but  the  life  and  the  joy  are  wanting  to  fill 
in  the  measure  of  our  sympathetic  delight.  A 
flower,  however,  rests  its  claims  on  totally  differ- 
ent grounds.  Dim  recollections  of  childhood, 
vague  echoes  of  pleasure  felt  by  generations  long 
dead,  whose  experience  yet  reverberates  through 
our  brains  by  the  mystic  transmission  of  heredity 
— these  give  to  the  flower,  insentient  and  uncon- 
scious as  it  is,  a  certain  deeper  beauty  of  its  own. 
Some  attraction  toward  a  form  of  life  so  unlike 
our  own,  so  unfathomable,  so  incapable  of  reali- 
zation to  our  minds,  exists  in  every  poetical 
heart,  and  reaches  its  furthest  development  in 
such  an  exquisite,  if  overwrought,  outpouring  as 
Shelley's  "  Sensitive-Plant." 

But  all  these  poetical  feelings,  which  to  the 
educated  and  refined  among  us  have  come  to  be 
part  and  parcel  of  our  love  for  flowers,  do  not 
exist  at  all  among  children  or  unrefined  adults. 
They  like  them  chiefly  as  colored  and  symmetri- 
cal objects,  very  little  distinctively  as  flowers. 
Now  and  then  one  may  meet  a  cottager  whose 
sentiments  on  the  subject  are  more  like  one's 
own ;  but,  on  the  whole,  these  sub  tiler,  evanes- 
cent elements  of  .esthetic  pleasure  are  confined  to 
the  literary  and  artistic  class.  It  was  the  error  of 
Burke  and  Alison  to  refer  all  aesthetic  pleasure 
to  these  rare  constituents,  overlooking  the  far 
commoner  gratifications  of  immediate  sensuous 
stimulation. 

Even  among  the  most  refined,  there  are  cer- 
tain flowers,  like  the  gladiolus  and  the  tulip, 
which  attract  us  chiefly  by  their  brilliant  hues ; 
and  others,  like  the  daisy  and  the  violet,  which 
appeal  more  strongly  to  our  associated  sentiments. 
We  have  seen  already  what  is  the  aesthetic  worth 
of  a  flower  as  a  flower:  let  us  ask  next  what  is 
the  value  of  a  daisy  as  a  daisy. 

Dear  little  daisy,  how  beautiful  it  is,  hiding 
its  modest  little  head  in  the  grass,  and  bowing 
gently  before  the  tyrant  breeze  !  We  think  of  it 
as  such  a  shrinking,  unassuming,  lovable  little 
flower.  It  does  not  flaunt  abroad  like  the  marsh- 
mallow,  nor  grow  in  weedy  patches  like  the  dan- 


336 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


delion  ;  but  it  just  raises  its  pretty,  simple  head 
in  the  midst  of  a  level  sward  of  close-cropped 
grass.  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  has  pointed  out  how 
nearly  the  tender  feeling  toward  our  children — 
our  little  ones,  as  we  love  to  call  them — is  allied 
with  the  tender  regard  for  littleness  generally. 
"  Sweet  little  thing,"  the  women  say  of  any  tiny 
work  of  urt,  or  bird  or  plant.  And  all  wom- 
en being  by  nature  mothers,  it  is  no  wonder 
that  their  hearts  go  forth  toward  whatever  seems 
weak  and  helpless  and  shrinking,  even  as  their 
own  babies  are.  "  Dear  little  flower,"  says  every 
man  instinctively,  as  he  stoops  to  pick  the  first 
daisy  of  the  season.  The  tininess  of  the  daisy  is 
evidently  one  source  of  its  attractiveness. 

Dear  little  English  daisy,  growing  at  home  on 
every  common  and  pasture  and  roadside  through- 
out the  length  and  breadth  of  the  land  !  Emphat- 
ically to  us  an  English  flower,  toward  which,  as  a 
symbol  of  home,  we  turn  with  loving  regret  and 
longing  of  heart  in  distant  lands  across  the  sea. 
In  Mr.  Charles  Eeade's  "Never  too  Late  to 
Mend,"  there  is  a  touching  scene  in  which  a  par- 
ty of  rough  miners  and  ex-convicts  go  together 
on  a  Sunday  morning  through  the  Australian 
bush  to  see  and  hear  an  English  lark.  Many  a 
wayfarer  in  the  heats  of  a  tropical  summer  or  the 
depths  of  a  Canadian  winter  has  been  gladdened 
and  refreshed  for  a  moment  by  the  fragrance  of 
an  English  violet,  crushed  and  mangled  in  a  let- 
ter, but  still  redolent  of  England  and  of  home. 
And  so,  too,  our  little  English  daisy  is  to  all  of 
us  a  rallying-point  for  many  memories  of  home, 
in  whatsoever  quarter  of  the  globe  our  lot  for  the 
moment  may  be  cast. 

Dear  little  familiar  daisy,  picked  when  we 
were  children  in  the  fields  around  us,  or  on  the 
half-holidays,  when  we  turned  out  from  town  for 
a  blow  in  the  country  and  a  feast  of  green  grass 
and  bright  blossoms  !  We  wove  it  then  into  daisy- 
chains,  or  pulled  it  to  pieces  as  we  sat,  and  learned 
its  well-known  features  by  heart  a  thousand  times 
over.  And  when  we  pick  it  again  on  a  spring 
morning  now,  it  comes  back  to  us  as  a  love  of  our 
childhood,  and  we  feel  a  thrill  of  personal  affec- 
tion even  to-day  toward  that  insensible  little  mass 
of  yellow  bloom. 

In  all  these  emotional  ways  does  the  daisy  ap- 
peal to  our  affections.  Besides  its  beauty  of  color 
and  symmetry  of  form,  besides  its  intellectual  in- 
terest as  a  composite  and  its  sentimental  claims 
as  a  flower,  it  has  a  title  to  our  love  in  its  charac- 
ter of  a  simple  little  familiar  English  daisy.  This 
is  the  secret  of  its  frequent  appearance  in  poe- 
trv  and  its  effectiveness  in  rhetorical  illustration. 


And,  finally,  the  figure  which  it  takes  in  literature 
reacts  upon  the  feelings  with  which  we  regard  it 
in  the  actuality.  We  think  at  once  of  a  daisy,  a 
rose,  or  a  violet,  as  poetical,  while  we  only  think 
of  a  dahlia  or  a  hollyhock  as  handsome.  With 
the  reading  class,  memories  of  Wordsworth,  and 
Burns,  and  Tennyson,  cling  about  every  individual 
daisy.  But  here  again  we  must  beware  of  that 
literally  prce-posterous  theory  which  would  refer 
the  beauty  of  an  aesthetic  object  to  its  external 
associations.  The  daisy  is  admitted  as  a  com- 
ponent of  poetry  because  it  is  a  flower,  pink  and 
white  and  yellow,  pretty,  symmetrical,  graceful, 
familiar,  and  domestic.  Poetry  is  all  made  up  of 
such  pretty  objects,  strung  into  a  beautiful  frame- 
work of  metre,  and  connected  by  a  thread  of  nar- 
rative or  abstract  lyrical  thought.  And  then,  in 
consequence,  we  love  the  objects  themselves  all 
the  better,  because  of  the  good  company  in  which 
we  have  so  often  found  them.  But  they  must  al- 
ways have  been  either  pretty  or  lovable  in  them- 
selves to  begin  with,  or  else  they  would  never 
have  found  their  way  into  poetry  at  all. 

And  now  that  we  have  reached  this  rough 
analysis  of  the  aesthetic  pleasure  involved  in  the 
contemplation  of  a  daisy,  let  us  hark  back  again 
to  inquire  by  what  steps  it  has  arisen.  The  first 
basis  of  our  enjoyment  we  saw  to  be  the  sensu- 
ous gratification  of  pure  color.  Though  red  and 
orange  are  the  most  agreeable  of  all  hues  to  the 
unsophisticated  eye,  yet  white  and  yellow  are  by 
no  means  without  their  proper  effectiveness.  This 
pleasure  we  believed  to  be  the  fundamental  one 
in  our  appreciation  of  a  daisy,  as  of  all  other 
flowers.  It  is  this  which  first  fixes  our  attention 
upon  it,  and  which  gives  it  an  immediate  claim  to 
be  included  in  the  aesthetic  class.  Of  all  the  grati- 
fication involved  in  its  perception  that  of  color  is 
by  far  the  most  universal,  and  in  several  cases  it 
is  probably  the  only  one. 

Next,  in  order  of  development,  comes  the 
pleasure  of  symmetry.  It  is  not  perceived  by 
very  young  children,  because  it  is  not  immediate 
and  sensuous,  like  that  of  color,  but  requires  an 
intellectual  exercise  of  the  higher  organs,  whose 
functions  are  not  developed  in  early  life.  But 
with  this  exception  it  is  almost  universal  in  the 
human  race,  though  it  does  not  seem  to  be  shared 
by  our  anthropoid  kinsmen. 

Above  this,  again,  come  the  emotional  pleas- 
ures of  familiarity  and  homeliness.  These  re- 
quire a  considerable  evolution  of  the  domestic 
and  social  feelings  before  they  can  attain  to  any 
great  intensity.  They  are  probably  quite  wanting 
in   absolute  savages,  and  very  little   developed 


DISSECTING  A   DAISY. 


337 


among  such  peoples  as  the  negroes  and  Malays. 
But  there  are  considerable  traces  of  a  love  for 
familiar  flowers  in  the  verse  of  the  Hindoos,  the 
Japanese,  and  the  Greeks  ;  while  the  feeling  is 
easily  recognized  in  our  own  unlettered  peasantry. 
Among  all  the  literary  class  it  reaches  a  very 
highly-evolved  and  conspicuous  form. 

The  next  element  to  be  developed  is  that  of 
sentimental  attachment  to  a  flower  as  such.  This 
takes  its  rise  out  of  the  preceding  stages,  coupled 
with  that  intellectual  advance  which  makes  the 
distinction  between  natural  and  artificial  products 
wider  and  more  impassable. 

Still  later  the  poetical  and  literary  associations 
come  in  to  complicate  our  simple  aesthetic  feel- 
ing. While  last  of  all  to  appear  upon  the  field 
are  those  purely  scientific  elements  which  result 
from  a  physical  analysis  of  the  flower  into  its 
component  parts.  But  these  two  final  sources  of 
festhetic  pleasure,  though  late  in  order  of  time, 
belong  to  portions  of  our  nature,  every  day  in- 
creasing in  depth  and  power.  Just  as  in  the  kin- 
dred region  of  the  sublime  every  fresh  enlarge- 
ment of  our  gaze  into  the  surrounding  infinities 
of  space  and  time  increases  and  deepens  our  sense 
of  sublimity  for  all  our  after-life,  so  in  this  other 
region  of  the  beautiful,  every  fresh  enlargement 
of  our  acquaintance  with  Nature  lays  open  before 
us  newer  and  yet  newer  sources  of  pleasurable 
aesthetic  feeling.  The  geologist,  the  botanist,  and 
the  naturalist,  are  forever  exercising  their  eyes 
and  their  intellects  on  unseen  or  unobserved  feat- 
ures of  crystals,  and  minerals,  and  ferns,  and 
flowers,  and  butterflies,  and  birds,  which  quicken 
their  appetite  for  the  beautiful  in  Nature,  and  will 
doubtless  lead  the  way  hereafter  to  further  de- 
velopments of  aesthetic  expression  in  art. 

It  has  been  the  error  of  all  systematizers,  how- 
ever, to  begin  with  these  highest  and  most  evolved 
factors  of  aesthetic  emotion,  instead  of  beginning 
with  the  simplest  and  most  primordial.  Being 
themselves  educated  and  cultivated  men,  they 
have  thought  only  of  feelings  shared  by  them  with 
the  educated  and  cultivated  classes  generally. 
Perhaps  they  have  considered  the  simpler  and 
commoner  feelings  participated  in  by  the  child 
the  savage,  and  the  animal,  as  too  trivial  and  vul- 
gar to  be  worthy  of  their  exalted  notice.  If  they 
wish  to  account  for  the  beauty  of  a  daisy,  they 
do  not  refer  to  its  color  and  its  shape,  but  talk  only 
of  its  humility,  its  modesty,  its  simplicity,  and  its 
poetical  associations.  These  are  certainly  factors 
in  their  own  complex  and  imaginative  mental 
state,  but  do  they  constitute  the  primitive  ele- 


ments of  beauty  as  understood  by  ninety-nine  out 
of  a  hundred  human  beings  everywhere  ?  If  you 
ask  any  intelligent  child,  he  will  give  you  a  truer 
and  more  philosophic  answer  :  "  I  like  a  daisy  be- 
cause it's  a  pretty  flower,  and  pink,  and  white, 
and  round,  and  yellow ;  and  you  can  string  them 
on  a  straw,  and  they  look  beautiful."  The  tran- 
scendentalists  who  try  to  account  for  all  beauty 
on  a  theory  of  typical  infinity,  unity,  repose,  sym- 
metry, purity,  and  moderation,  will  find  no  echo 
in  the  heart  of  the  child  or  the  savage.  My  little 
friends  in  the  meadow  here  can  readily  agree  with 
me  that  a  pink  daisy  is  a  very  pretty  thing,  but 
they  seem  to  be  somewhat  uncertain  on  the  ques- 
tion whether  it  is  a  type  of  Divine  incomprehensi- 
bility. Perhaps  they  enjoy  the  even  arrangement 
of  its  radial  florets,  but  I  doubt  whether  they  see 
in  its  symmetry  a  type  of  Divine  justice. 

We  might  venture  to  go  further,  I  think,  and 
to  assert  that  those  higher  emotional  feelings 
which  the  Associationists  make  the  basis  of  the 
aesthetic  property  are  really  and  truly  not  aesthetic 
at  all.  The  modesty,  humility,  and  familiarity,  of 
the  daisy  make  us  say,  "  How  touching  and  how 
dear  it  is!"  which  are  expressions  proper  to  our 
affections ;  but  its  pinkness,  whiteness,  and  reg- 
ularity, make  us  say,  "  How  pretty  or  how  beauti- 
ful it  is ! "  which  are  expressions  proper  to  our 
aesthetic  sentiment.  The  sensuous  pleasures 
which  Alison  rejected  are,  in  reality,  the  prime 
elements  of  beauty,  and  to  the  vast  majority  of 
persons  the  only  ones  ever  perceived.  Perfume, 
softness,  color,  form,  symmetry,  musical  tone, 
rhythm,  these  are  the  main  and  primordial  com- 
ponents of  all  aesthetic  objects ;  and  if  we  add 
to  them  harmony,  variety,  and  decorative  detail 
of  a  sort  which  testifies  to  or  recalls  human  work- 
manship, we  have  summed  up  all  the  properties 
which  in  strictness  entitle  any  natural  or  artificial 
product  to  the  name  of  beautiful.  The  higher 
intellectual  and  emotional  feelings  come  in  to 
supplement  and  intensify  the  original  pleasures 
thus  defined ;  but  they  yield  us  rather  the  sense 
of  pathos,  of  sublimity,  of  tenderness,  of  scien- 
tific interest,  than  that  of  beauty  in  the  strictest 
sense. 

^Esthetics  is  the  last  of  the  sciences  in  which 
vague  declamation  is  still  permitted  to  usurp  the 
place  of  ascertained  fact.  The  pretty  imagina- 
tive theories  of  Alison,  of  Jeffrey,  and  of  Prof. 
Ruskin,  are  still  allowed  to  hold  the  field  against 
scientific  research.  People  think  them  beautiful 
and  harmless,  forgetting  that  everything  is  fraught 
with  evil  if  it  "warps  us  from  the  living  truth." 


58 


338 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


We  shall  never  understand  the  nature  of  beauty 
so  long  as  we  attack  our  problem  from  the  wrong 
side.  As  in  every  other  department  of  knowl- 
edge, so  in  aesthetics,   we  must  be    content   to 


begin  at  the  beginning,  and  then  we  may,  per- 
haps, have  fair  hopes  of  some  day  reaching  the 
end. 

—  Comhill  Magazine. 


DOG-POISON    IN    MAN. 

By  HENRY  W.  ACLAND,  M.  D. 


PERIODICAL  literature  has  developed  one 
great  change  in  modern  life,  and  there  is  no 
subject  too  technical,  none  too  professional,  to 
be  brought  before  the  general  reader.  As  re- 
gards medical  questions,  the  great  surgeon,  Bro- 
die,  and  the  Nestor  of  English  medicine,  Sir 
Thomas  Watson,  led  the  way. 

The  subject  of  the  present  paper,  that  of  the 
mode  of  working  in  man  of  poison  from  a  mad 
dog,  has  one  advantage,  that  it  well  illustrates 
the  importance  of  viewing  biological  studies  as  a 
whole,  and  shows  that  human  and  comparative 
pathology  are  inseparable. 

Let  us  consider  what  hydrophobia  is,  and  how 
it  comes  to  exist :  1.  now  it  acts.  2.  How  it  is 
spread.     3.  How  it  is  to  be  prevented. 

We  must  look  at  these  from  a  general  rather 
than  from  a  medical  point  of  view. 

Hydrophobia,  as  all  know,  is  the  result  of  an 
animal  poison  operating  on  man.  What  does 
this  mean  ?  What  are  animal  poisons  ?  Whence 
do  they  come?     How  do  they  operate? 

The  subject  of  animal  poisons  is  one  of  strange 
— nay,  of  fascinating  interest.  It  is  so  extensive 
that,  if  pursued  in  detail,  it  would  wholly  exhaust 
the  patience  of  any  that  had  not  a  special  pur- 
pose in  following  it  through  its  manifold  partic- 
ulars. Some  idea  of  it,  however,  may  be  easily 
gained. 

We  are  each  of  us  constructed  on  a  definite 
plan,  the  outcome  of  we  know  not  how  many 
myriads  of  ages  operating  under  definite  condi- 
tions by  regular  laws.  We  have  a  certain  form 
which  varies  according  to  the  race  from  which 
we  spring.  We  are  composed  of  matter  much 
the  same  in  every  human  being,  and  little  vary- 
ing in  all  animal  life  endued  with  the  higher  kinds 
of  consciousness.  The  fish,  the  reptile,  the  bird, 
the  gentle  quadruped  that  culls  the  living  herb, 
the  fierce  brute  that  spreads  terror  and  death, 
whether  for  sustenance  or  delight,  all  have  a 
structural  kinship  with  ourselves.  We  are  but  a 
part  of  a  vast  army  of  living  things,  living  in  the 


warmth  of  one  life-sustaining  fire,  breathing  the 
same  air,  imbibing  the  same  moisture,  obeying 
the  same  physical  attractions,  building  in  and  in 
the  same  chemical  elements,  growing  a  kindred 
growth,  deploying  for  a  time  the  same  animal 
forces,  dying  the  same  death,  disintegrated  by  the 
same  physical  decomposition,  returning  to  the 
same  air,  and  water,  and  dust. 

How  strange,  then,  that  this  family,  so  knit 
up,  should  find  in  itself  members  whose  function 
should  seem  to  be  that  of  bringing  instant  de- 
struction to  those  about  them,  for  no  purpose 
that  we  can  see — neither  for  self-defense  nor  for 
self-maintenance  by  way  of  food  !  It  is  as  though 
there  were  set  in  the  eternal  order  of  things, 
somewhere  in  the  animal  series,  a  terrible  mate- 
rial contrast  with  the  heavenward  aspirations  of 
the  soul  of  man. 

Poisons,  no  doubt,  surround  us.  We  have 
heard  enough  of  late  of  poisoning  air,  poisoning 
water,  poisoning  food,  poisoning  soil.  The  mar- 
vel is,  that  animals  exist  who  themselves  generate 
them  for  the  sake  of  poisoning. 

Since  much  of  the  poison  which  surrounds  us 
is  created  by  ourselves,  Ls  origin  may  be  to  a 
great  extent  prevented  by  ourselves.  But  the 
growth  of  some  poisons  is  beyond  control,  ex- 
cept by  the  destruction  of  the  grower ;  for  in- 
stance, the  poison  of  snakes.  This  is  the  sim- 
plest case  of  an  animal  communicable  poison.  No 
manner  of  life,  nor  self-discipline,  could  hinder  the 
snake  from  manufacturing  his  deadly  dynamite, 
or  from  using  it  when  manufactured. 

How,  then,  does  this  typical  animal  poison  act 
so  as  to  produce  its  terrible  results  ?  "  Snake- 
poison,"  says  Sir  Joseph  Fayrer,  "  is  essentially 
a  neurotic ;  and,  when  it  takes  full  effect,  kills 
by  annihilating  the  source  of  nerve-force  in  ways 
which  bid  fair  to  be  elucidated  by  modern  inves- 
tigation." 

To  illustrate  this,  I  quote  from  that  scientific 
surgeon  and  accomplished  physiological  inquirer 
the  following  typical  case  : 


DOG-POISON  IN  MAN 


339 


"  Lotawon  Ohumar,  aged  fifty  years,  was  bitten 
on  August  7,  1870,  under  the  following  circum- 
stances :  He  was  sleeping  in  a  poultry-yard  in  Be- 
nares, when  he  suddenly  awoke  by  a  great  noise 
among  the  fowls  at  4  a.  it.,  and,  while  moving 
about  to  ascertain  the  cause,  was  bitten  by  some- 
thing that  he  did  not  see,  as  it  was  dark — he  sus- 
pected it  was  a  snake.  When  daylight  appeared 
he  found  a  fowl  lying  dead,  and  he  then  himself 
began  to  feel  ill ;  a  little  later  he  become  insensi- 
ble, and  unable  to  stand.  The  only  mark  of  in- 
jury was  a  black  spot  near  the  ankle-joint.  The 
wound  was  incised  and  liquor  ammoniae  applied  to 
it.  It  was  also  administered  internally  every  fif- 
teen minutes ;  twenty  drops  with  water,  equal 
parts,  were  injected  under  the  skin,  but  he  never 
rallied,  and  died  half  an  hour  after  admission."  l 

Another  instance,  quite  as  characteristic  of 
life  among  our  native  brethren  in  India,  is  worth 
perusal : 

"  Information  was  received  at  6  p.  m.  of  Novem- 
ber 21st,  that  a  native  boy,  name  and  residence 
unknown,  had  died  from  the  effects  of  snake-bite. 
It  appears  that  the  diseased  had  been  on  the  Dia- 
mond Harbor  Koad,  and,  near  the  house  of  the  in- 
formant, had  gone  into  the  jungle,  having  pre- 
viously laid  down  on  the  road-side  a  basket  contain- 
ing a  snake  and  some  other  things  used  by  snake- 
charmers.  He  returned  in  a  few  minutes,  and  was 
observed  to  be  rubbing  his  right  with  his  left 
hand ;  on  being  questioned  as  to  what  was  the 
matter,  as  he  looked  as  though  he  was  suffering, 
he  said  he  had  a  burning  sensation  all  over  his 
body,  and  shortly  after  he  fell  down  and  died. 
He  had,  while  in  the  jungle,  met  with  a  snake,  the 
kind  he  did  not  mention,  and,  on  trying  to  catch  it, 
it  bit  him  on  the  back  of  his  right  hand.  .  .  .  The 
precise  time  between  the  bite  and  the  death  is  not 
known,  but  it  could  not  have  been  more  than  from 
fifteen  to  twenty  minutes,  from  the  account  I  re- 
ceived of  the  circumstances  of  the  case."  2 

The  effect  of  virulent  snake-poison,  as,  for  in- 
stance, that  of  the  cobra,  is  producedjiYs;1,  by  its  in- 
troduction into  the  blood  ;  second,  by  affecting  the 
nerves  either  at  their  periphery,  or  along  their 
course,  or  at  their  centre.  Depression  and  faint- 
ness  are  the  first  result;  then  loss  of  coordinat- 
ing power ;  then  paralysis,  convulsions,  and  as- 
phyxia.3 

It  would  seem  by  various  experiments  and 
observations  on  cobra-poisoned  animals  and  men, 
that  the  motor-nerves  alone,  or  the  spinal  cord, 

1  Fayrer,  "  Thanatophidia  of  India,"  p.  58. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  59. 

3  This  is  admirably  described,  and  in  the  fullest 
manner,  by  Fayrer  in  the  "  Proceedings  of  the  Royal 
Society,"  1S74,  p.  a 


or  the  brain,  may  be  each  separately  affected,  or 
any  combination  of  them. 

Fayrer  quotes  Genesis,  chapter  xlix.  17,  where 
Jacob  says,  "  Dan  is  an  adder  in  the  path,  that 
biteth  the  horse  heels,  so  that  his  rider  falleth 
backward  " — i.  e.,  produces  instant  paralysis  of 
the  hinder  limbs.  This  snake-poison  is  the  sim- 
plest, deadliest,  naturalest,  healthy  poison. 

The  poison  created  by  the  dog,  our  compan- 
ion and  friend,  is  in  another  category.  It  is  not 
natural  to  him.  He  is  himself  a  victim.  The 
poison  he  transmits  he  has  received.  It  works 
almost  certainly  his  o  >vn  destruction.  He  spreads 
it  without  intention.  Man  perhaps  helps  to  cause 
it  by  his  treatment  of  him.  It  is  a  consequence 
of  his  faithfulness  and  of  his  domestic  relations, 
and  of  his  familiarity,  that  he  inflicts  the  injury 
on  his  master.  The  rabies,  which  is  his  torment 
and  curse,  brings  about  the  hydrophobia  in  his 
protector  and  guardian.  It  lies  with  man  to  save 
the  dog  from  the  sickness,  which,  once  engen- 
dered, rebounds  with  terrible  force  on  the  human 
family. 

Since  the  secreted  poison  which  the  dog  emits 
when  himself  affected  by  rabies  does  not  produce 
on  man  the  same  results  that  it  produces  on  the 
dog,  it  might  be  suspected  that  there  is  something 
wild  and  uncertain  in  the  modus  operandi  of  a 
poison.  It  is  not  so.  It  has  been  well  said  by  a 
classical  writer  that  there  are  three  prime  laws 
of  poisons : 

1.  That  all  have  certain  definite  and  specific 
actions. 

2.  That  they  lie  latent  a  certain  but  varying 
period  of  time  before  these  actions  are  set  up. 

3.  That  the  phenomena  which  result  from  the 
poison,  when  roused  into  action,  vary  according 
to  the  dose,  and  the  condition  or  special  charac- 
ter of  the  victim. 

In  illustration  of  these  laws,  we  may  cite, 
firstly,  so  fateiliar  an  instance  as  that  scarlet- 
fever  poison  will  not  produce  small-pox  ;  sec- 
ondly, that  the  effect  may  be  latent  only  a  moment 
(as  in  the  poison  of  prussic  acid,  and  the  poison 
of  the  cobra)  before  the  symptoms  are  set  up ; 
or  it  may  be  latent  for  definite  days,  as  in  mea- 
sles ;  or  for  uncertain  weeks,  months,  or  even 
years,  as  in  hydrophobia ;  and,  thirdly,  that  tem- 
perament, state  of  health,  mode  of  life,  race,  in- 
heritance, the  animal,  as  well  as  the  nature  of 
the  poison  itself,  produce  remarkable  variations 
in  the  action  of  some  poisons. 

What,  then,  is  canine  rabies  ?  and  how  does 
rabies  arise  ?  Probably  never  spontaneously,  or, 
if  it  ever  does  so,  it  is  certainly  with  extreme 


340 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.—  SUPPLEMENT. 


rarity.  It  is  communicated  from  one  rabid  ani- 
mal to  another  animal  which  becomes  rabid. 
Whether  it  ever  does  originate  except  by  com- 
munication is  a  question  belonging  to  the  inter- 
minable controversy  of  spontaneous  generation. 

I  quote  from  Youatt  a  graphic  description  of 
rabies  in  the  dog  : 

"  The  early  symptoms  of  rabies  in  the  dog  are 
occasionally  very  obscure.     In  the  greater  number 
of  cases,  these  are  sullenness,  fidgetiness,  and  con- 
tinual shifting  of  posture.     Where  I  have  had  op- 
portunity, I  have  generally  found  these  circum- 
stances in  regular  succession.     For  several  consec- 
utive hours,  perhaps,  he  retreats  to  his  basket  or 
his  bed.     He  shows  no  disposition  to  bite,  and  he 
answers  the  call  upon  him  laggardly.     He  is  curled 
up,  and  his  face  is  buried  between  his  paws  and 
his  breast.    At  length  he  begins  to  be  fidgety.    He 
searches  out  new  resting-places  ;  but  he  very  soon 
changes  them  for  others.     He  takes  again  to  his 
own  bed ;  but  he  is  continually  shifting  his  post- 
ure.    He  begins  to  gaze  strangely  about  him  as  he 
lies  on  his  bed.     His  countenance  is  clouded  and 
suspicious.    He  comes  to  one  and  another  of  the 
family,  and  he  fixes  on  them  a  steadfast  gaze  as 
if  he  would  read  their  very  thoughts.     'I  feel 
strangely  ill,'  he  seems  to  say;   'have  you  any- 
thing to  do  with  it  ?  or  you  ?  or  you  ? '    Has  not  a 
dog  mind  enough  for  this  ?    If  we  have  observed 
a  rabid  dog  at  the  commencement  of  the  disease, 
we  have  seen  this  to  the  very  life. 

"  There  is  a  species  of  dog— the  small  French 
poodle — the  essence  of  whose  character  and  con- 
stitution is  fidgetiness  or  perpetual  motion.      If 
this  clog  has  been  bitten,  and  rabies  is  about  to 
establish  itself,  he  is  the  most  irritative,  restless 
being  that  can  be  conceived ;  starting  convulsively 
at  the  slightest  sound ;   disposing  of  his  bed  in 
every  direction ;  seeking  out  one  retreat  after  an- 
other in  order  to  rest  his  wearied  frame,  but  quiet 
only  for  a  moment  in  any  one,  and  the  motion  of 
his  limbs  frequently  simulating  chorea  and  even 
epilepsy.     A  peculiar  delirium  is  an  early  symp- 
tom, and  one  that  will  never  deceive.    A  young 
man  had  been  bitten  by  one  of  his  dogs ;  I  was  re- 
quested to  meet  a  medical  gentleman  on  the  sub- 
ject :  I  was  a  little  behind  my  time.     As  I  entered 
the  room  I  found  the  dog  eagerly  devouring  a  pan 
of  sopped  bread.      'There  is  no  madness  here,' 
said  the  gentleman.    He  had  scarcely  spoken,  when 
in  a  moment  the  dog  quitted  the  sop,  and,  with  a 
furious  bark,  sprang  against  the  wall  as  if  he  would 
seize  some  imaginary  object  that  he  fancied  was 
there.     '  Did  you  see  that  \ '  was  my  reply ;  '  what  j 
do  you  think  of  it  ? '     'I  see  nothing  in  it,'  was 
his  retort ;  '  the  dog  heard  some  noise  on  the  other  | 
side  of  the  wall.'     At  my  serious  urging,  however,  I 
he  consented  to  excise  the  part.     I  procured  a  poor 
worthless  cur,  and  got  him  bitten  by  this  dog,  and 
carried  the  disease  from  this  dog  to  the  third  vie-  I 


tim ;  they  all  became  rabid  one  after  the  other 
and  there  my  experiment  ended." 1 
And  again : 

"  A  terrier,  ten  years  old,  had  been  ill,  and  re- 
fused all  food  for  three  days.  On  the  fourth  day 
he  bit  a  cat  of  which  he  had  been  unusually  fond, 
and  he  likewise  bit  three  dogs.  I  was  requested 
to  see  him.  I  found  him  loose  in  the  kitchen,  and 
at  first  refused  to  go  in,  but,  after  observing  him 
for  a  minute  or  two,  I  thought  that  I  might  vent- 
ure. He  had  a  peculiarly  wild  and  eager  look, 
and  turned  sharply  round  at  the  least  noise.  He 
often  watched  the  flight  of  some  imaginary  object, 
and  pursued  with  the  utmost  fury  every  fly  that 
he  saw.  He  searchingly  sniffed  about  the  room, 
and  examined  my  legs  with  an  eagerness  that  made 
me  absolutely  tremble.  His  quarrel  with  the  cat  had 
been  made  up,  and  when  he  was  not  otherwise 
employed  he  was  eagerly  licking  her  and  her  kit- 
tens. In  the  excess  or  derangement  of  his  fond- 
ness, he  fairly  rolled  them  from  one  end  of  the 
kitchen  to  another.  With  difficulty  I  induced  his 
master  to  permit  me  to  destroy  him." 

No  person  of  ordinary  observation  need  be 
told  that  dogs,  like  little  children,  have  all  their 
personal  characters,  which  they  carry  with  them 
into  their  hours  of  sickness  and  suffering. 

"  It  is  not  every  dog  that  in  the  most  aggra- 
vated state  of  the  disease  shows  a  disposition  to 
bite.    The  finest  Newfoundland  dog  that  I  ever 
saw  became  rabid.     He  had  been  bitten  by  a  cur, 
and  was  supposed  to  have  been  thoroughly  ex- 
amined in  the  country.     No  wound,  however,  was 
found :  the  circumstance  was  almost  forgotten,  and 
he  came  up  to  the  metropolis  with  his  master.    He 
became  dull,  disinclined  to  play,  and  refused  all 
food.     He  was  continually  watching  imaginary  ob- 
jects, but  he  did  not  snap  at  them.     There  was  no 
howl,  nor  any  disposition  to  bite.    He  offered  him- 
self to  be  caressed,  and  he  was  not  satisfied  except 
he  was  shaken  by  the  paw.     On  the  second  day  I 
saw  him.     He  watched  every  passing  object  with 
peculiar  anxiety,  and  followed  with  deep  attention 
the  motions  of  a  horse,  his  old  acquaintance  ;  but 
he  made  no  effort  to  escape,  nor  evinced  any  dis- 
position to  do  mischief.     I  went  to  him,  and  patted 
and  coaxed  him,  and  he  told  me,  as  plainly  as  looks 
and  actions  and  a  somewhat  deepened  whine  could 
express  it,  how  much  he  was  gratified.     I  saw  him 
on  the  third  day.     He  was  evidently  dying.     He 
could  not  crawl  even  to  the  door  of  his  temporary 
kennel ;  but  he  pushed  forward  his  paw  a  little  way, 
and,  as  I  shook  it,  I  felt  the  tetanic  muscular  action 
which  accompanies  the  departure  of  life. 

"  On  the  other  hand,  there  are  rabid  dogs 
whose  ferocity  knows  no  bounds.  If  they  are 
threatened  with  a  stick,  they  fly  at  and  seize  it, 
and  furiously  shake  it.     They  are  incessantly  em- 

1  Youatt,  "  The  Dog,"  p.  131. 


DOG-POISON  IN  MAN. 


341 


ployed  in  darting  to  the  end  of  their  chain,  and  ' 
attempting  to  crush  it  with  their  teeth,  and  tearing 
to  pieces  their  kennel,  or  the  wood-work  that  is 
within  their  reach.  They  are  regardless  of  pain. 
The  canine  teeth,  the  incisor  teeth  are  torn  away  ; 
yet,  unwearied  and  insensible  to  suffering,  they 
continue  their  efforts  to  escape.  A  dog  was  chained 
near  a  kitchen-fire.  He  was  incessant  in  his  en- 
deavors to  escape,  and,  when  he  found  that  he 
coidd  not  effect  it,  he  seized,  in  his  impotent  rage, 
the  burning  coals  as  they  fell,  and  crushed  them 
with  his  teeth. 

"  If  by  chance  a  dog  in  this  state  effects  his 
escape,  he  wanders  over  the  country  bent  on  de- 
struction. He  attacks  both  the  quadruped  and 
the  biped.  He  seeks  the  village  street  or  the 
more  crowded  one  of  the  town,  and  he  suffers  no 
dog  to  escape  him.  The  horse  is  his  frequent 
prey,  and  the  human  being  is  not  always  safe 
from  his  attack.  A  rabid  dog  running  down  Park 
Lane,  in  1825,  bit  no  fewer  than  five  horses,  and 
fally  as  many  dogs.  He  was  seen  to  steal  treach- 
erously upon  some  of  his  victims,  and  inflict  the 
fatal  wound.  Sometimes  he  seeks  the  more  dis- 
tant pasturage.  He  gets  among  the  sheep,  and 
more  than  forty  have  been  fatally  inoculated  in 
one  night.  A  rabid  dog  attacked  a  herd  of  cows, 
and  five-and-twenty  of  them  fell  victims.  In  July, 
1813,  a  mad  dog  broke  into  the  menagerie  of  the 
Duchess  of  York  at  Oatlands,  and,  although  the 
palisades  that  divided  the  different  compartments 
of  the  menagerie  were  full  six  feet  in  height,  and 
difficult  or  apparently  almost  impossible  to  climb, 
he  was  found  asleep  in  one  of  them  ;  and  it  was 
clearly  ascertained  that  he  had  bitten  at  least  ten 
of  the  dogs."  * 

How  subtilely  and  by  what  small  change  of 
circumstance  results  maybe  altered,  the  following 
will  show : 

"  There  is  a  beautiful  species  of  dog,  often  the 
inhabitant  of  the  gentleman's  stable — the  Dalma- 
tian or  coach  dog.  He  has,  perhaps,  less  affection 
for  the  numan  species  than  any  other  dog,  except 
the  greyhound  and  the  bull-dog ;  he  has  less  sa- 
gacity than  most  others,  and  certainly  less  courage. 
He  is  attached  to  the  stable  ;  he  is  the  friend  of  the 
horse;  they  live  under  the  same  roof;  they  share 
the  same  bed ;  and,  when  the  horse  is  summoned 
to  his  work,  the  dog  accompanies  every  step.  They 
are  certainly  beautiful  dogs,  and  it  is  pleasing  to 
see  the  thousand  expressions  of  friendship  between 
them  and  the  horse  ;  but,  in  their  continual  excur- 
sions through  the  streets,  they  are  exposed  to  some 
danger,  and  particularly  to  that  of  being  bitten  by 
rabid  dogs.  It  is  a  fearful  business  when  this 
takes  place.  The  coachman  probably  did  not  see 
the  affray  ;  no  suspicion  has  been  excited.  The 
horse  rubs  his  muzzle  on  the  dog,  and  the  dog  licks 

»  Youatt,  "  The  Dog,"  pp.  140,  141. 


the  face  of  the  horse ;  and  in  a  great  number  of 
cases  the  disease  is  communicated  from  the  one  to 
the  other.  The  dog  in  process  of  time  dies,  the 
horse  does  not  long  survive,  and,  frequently  too, 
the  coachman  shares  their  fate.  I  have  known  at 
least  twenty  horses  destroyed  in  this  way."  l 

Many  cases  of  detailed  history  might  be  quoted 
from  the  vast  literature  of  this  subject — a  litera- 
ture, the  extent  of  which,  from  Aristotle  to  Sir 
Thomas  Watson,  would  surprise  many.  I  would 
refer  the  reader  to  Youatt's  charming  book  on 
the  dog,  and  to  the  admirable  and  exhaustive 
writings  of  Fleming,  the  industrious  advocate  of 
the  study  of  Comparative  Pathology,  whence  I 
will  give  two  passages  that  will  show  the  havoc 
which  may  be  caused,  and  how  it  is  caused.  And* 
first,  by  one  dog  : 

"  If  the  mad  dog  is  not  confined  in  a  cage,  but 
kept  in  a  room  where  there  is  more  liberty,  it  wan- 
ders about  in  every  direction,  and  with  all  the 
greater  agitation — if  not  accustomed  to  be  separated 
from  its  human  companions.  It  is  continually  on 
the  move,  and  rambles,  seeks,  smells,  howls  at  the 
walls,  flies  at  the  phantoms  that  seem  to  pursue  it, 
gnaws  at  the  bottoms  of  doors,  and  furniture,  and 
may  at  last  make  an  escape  through  glass  doors  or 
windows.  If  persons  are  only  separated  from  it 
by  glass  it  does  not  hesitate  to  smash  the  fragile 
barrier:  being  all  the  more  determined  to  get 
through  it  when  excited  by  seeing  them,  and  moved 
by  the  fatal  desire  to  bite,  which  now  entirely  dom- 
inates it.  The  larger  the  obstacles  the  wilder  its 
fury,  and  no  sacrifice  is  too  great  to  obtain  liberty. 
House-dogs  are  trying  every  moment  to  escape  from 
their  dwelling ;  and  those  which  are  kept  tied  up 
or  shut  in  a  room  are  constantly  endeavoring  to 
break  their  attachment,  or  to  destroy  the  doors  or 
partitions  that  confine  them,  in  order  to  satisfy  their 
longing  to  be  at  large. 

"  "When  a  rabid  dog  makes  its  escape  it  goes 
freely  forward,  as  if  impelled  by  some  irresistible 
force — traveling  considerable  distances  in  a  short 
time,  and  attacking  every  living  being  it  meets  on 
its  way ;  preferring  dogs,  however,  to  other  ani- 
mals, and  the  latter  rather  than  mankind.  Cats 
also  appear  to  be,  next  to  dogs,  most  liable  to  be 
injured.  A  mad  dog  that  had  done  a  considerable 
amount  of  mischief  in  Lancashire,  in  1869,  was 
seen,  in  one  part  of  its  career,  trotting  along  the 
road  with  a  cat  in  its  mouth,  which  it  had  picked 
up  from  a  cottage,  and  which,  some  time  afterward, 
it  dropped  to  attack  a  cow.  Fowls,  likewise,  are 
particularly  exposed  to  the  assaults  of  the  rabid 
dog.  When  it  attacks,  and  endeavors  to  tear  its 
victims,  it  does  so  in  silence,  never  uttering  a  snarl 
or  a  cry  of  anger ;  and,  should  it  chance  to  be  injured 
in  return,  it  emits  no  cry  or  yell  of  pain.  Though 
it  will  not  so  readily  assault  mankind  as  it  will 

1  Yonatt,  "  The  Dog,1"  p.  134. 


342 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


other  creatures,  yet  it  is  most  prudent,  when  in  the 
presence  of  a  mad  dog,  to  allow  it  to  pass,  instead 
of  attacking  it,  unless  there  is  a  certainty  of  killing 
it  without  the  risk  of  being  wounded  by  its  teeth. 
The  degree  of  ferocity  would  appear  to  be  influ- 
enced very  much  by  the  natural  disposition  of  the 
dog,  and  the  training  it  has  received.  Some,  for 
instance,  only  snap  or  give  a  slight  bite  in  passing ; 
while  others,  on  the  contrary,  bite  furiously  and 
tear  the  objects  presented  to  them  or  which  they 
meet  in  their  way,  and  sometimes  with  such  an 
extreme  degree  of  violence  as  to  injure  their  mouths 
and  break  their  teeth,  or  even  their  jaws.  If 
chained  up,  they  will  gnaw  the  chain  until  their 
teeth  are  worn  away  and  the  jawbones  laid  bare. 

"  The  rabid  dog  does  not  continue  its  progress 
very  long.  Exhausted  by  fatigue,  by  the  fits  of 
madness  excited  in  it  by  the  objects  it  meets  in  its 
way,  by  hunger,  thirst,  and  also,  no  doubt,  as  a 
consequence  of  the  disease  itself,  its  limbs  soon 
become  feeble.  Then  it  slackens  its  rate  of  trav- 
eling, and  walks  unsteadily  ;  its  drooping  tail,  its 
head  inclined  toward  the  ground,  the  mouth  open, 
and  the  protruded  tongue  of  a  lead-blue  color,  and 
covered  with  dust — all  this  gives  the  distressed 
creature  a  very  striking  and  characteristic  physiog- 
nomy. In  this  condition,  however,  it  is  much  less 
to  be  dreaded  than  in  its  early  fits  of  fury.  If  it  is 
still  bent  on  attacking,  it  is  only  when  it  meets 
with  anything  directly  in  its  track  that  it  seeks  to 
satisfy  its  rage  ;  but  it  is  no  longer  sufficiently  ex- 
citable to  change  its  direction,  or  go  out  of  its 
course  to  attack  an  animal  or  a  man  not  immedi- 
ately in  its  path.  It  is  extremely  probable,  also, 
that  its  fast-failing  vision  and  deadened  scent  pre- 
vent its  being  so  easily  impressed  by  surrounding 
objects  as  it  previously  was."  1 

The  incident  which  is  selected  by  Fleming 
concerning  the  Durham  pack,  though  well  known, 
is  too  instructive  to  be  unnoticed  : 

"  For  the  last  seven  or  eight  years  the  Durham 
County  hounds,  under  the  management  of  a  com- 
mittee, have  had  Thomas  Dowdswell,  from  Lord 
Macclesfield's,  as  their  huntsman  ;  and  it  is  not  too 
much  to  say  that  by  careful  breeding,  with  the  ad- 
vantage of  some  of  the  best  blood,  the  pack  has 
been  brought  to  a  state  of  perfection  never  sur- 
passed since  the  time  of  Mr.  Ralph  Lambton,  who 
for  so  many  years  hunted  the  country  at  present 
occupied  by  these  unfortunate  hounds.  The  pack 
of  forty-one  couples  commenced  the  season  under 
the  most  promising  auspices,  with  a  country  well 
stocked  with  foxes,  and  every  prospect  of  success ; 
but,  alas  for  men's  calculations  !  a  check  has  come, 
and  every  hope  apparently  so  well  founded  has 
been  destroyed  by  a  visitation  as  sudden  as  it  was 
unexpected. 

"  About  five  weeks  ago,  after  a  very  good  and 

1  Fleming,  "  Rabies  and  Hydrophobia,"  pp.  227-930. 


severe  run,  in  breaking  up  their  fox,  Dowdswell 
observed  a  fine  young  hound,  called  Carver,  by 
Lord  Macclesfield's  Foiler,  going  from  hound  to 
hound  in  a  very  unusual  manner.  Taking  alarm, 
he  had  the  hound  led  home,  and  by  direction  kept 
confined  in  a  place  by  himself  for  a  few  days,  in 
order  to  prove  the  nature  of  the  disease,  which  in- 
creased in  intensity,  and  on  the  third  day  the  dog 
was  perfectly  mad,  biting  and  gnawing  everything 
he  could  reach.  Four  hounds  he  had  bitten  previ- 
ously were  at  once  put  down.  .  .  . 

"  A  few  days  elapsed,  and  other  hounds  were 
seized  in  precisely  the  same  manner,  all  dying  in 
about  three  or  four  days.  As  a  rule,  the  hounds 
so  attacked  were  quite  harmless,  following  the 
huntsman,  and  apparently  grateful  for  anything 
done  for  them.  The  attacks  continued,  and  some 
few  began  to  show  signs  of  rabies.  The  general 
features  of  the  disease  were,  however,  what  is 
generally  called  dumb  madness,  which,  beyond 
doubt,  is  contagious  in  its  character ;  and  seeing 
that  no  hound,  once  attacked,  ever  recovered,  the 
decision  come  to  was  to  put  them  down  imme- 
diately on  the  first  appearance  of  the  symptoms, 
in  order  to  avoid  infection. 

"  Up  to  last  week  about  nine  couples  had  been 
attacked  and  died,  the  disease  still  running  on. 
Of  course,  hunting  was  dropped,  and  the  com- 
mittee, feeling  deeply  their  responsibility,  called 
a  meeting  of  the  subscribers  in  Durham,  on  Mon- 
day last,  to  take  into  consideration  the  proper 
course  to  be  adopted  under  these  painful  circum- 
stances. 

"  The  question  to  be  decided  was,  whether, 
looking  at  the  danger  to  life,  and  the  uncertainty 
as  to  any  known  mode  of  cure,  the  pack  should 
be  destroyed,  or  an  attempt  be  made  to  stamp  out 
the  disease  by  isolating  every  hound.  Up  to  Sat- 
urday it  was  thought  the  latter  plan  might  be 
adopted  and  tried  with  safety;  but  the  Monday 
morning's  report  showed  the  attack  on  several 
more  hounds  had  assumed  unmistakable  symp- 
toms of  rabies.  This  fact  induced  the  meeting  to 
come  to  a  unanimous  resolution  :  '  That  it  was  a 
duty  they  owed  to  the  country  to  sacrifice  the 
whole  of  their  gallant  pack,  and  to  appeal  to  mas- 
ters of  hounds  for  a  few  hounds  to  enable  them  to 
finish  the  season  so  disastrously  cut  short.'  .  .  . 

"  The  remarkable  feature  in  the  history  of  the 
outbreak,  however,  consisted  in  the  fact  that  some 
drafts  of  the  pack  were  sent  to  India  toward  the  end 
of  July,  and  it  was  reported  in  Durham,  at  the 
commencement  of  December,  that  many  of  these 
had  been  attacked  by  a  '  disease  of  the  throat,'  as 
the  reporters  termed  it,  and  '  hanging  of  the  lower 
jaw,'  and  that  '  ail  died.'  "  » 

Thus  it  is  that  fowls,  cattle,  horses,  wild  ani- 
mals, and  men,  are  inoculated,  and  thus  the  virus 

1  Fleming,  "  Rabies  and  Hydrophobia,"  pp.  65-67. 


dog-poison  w  man. 


343 


is  carried  across  Europe  to  the  plains  of  India ! 
We  must  apply  to  death  brought  about  by  rabies 
the  same  general  principles  as  to  death  from 
snake-bite  ;  but  in  the  one  case  the  poison  works 
its  fatal  end  at  once,  in  the  other  it  may  lie  dor- 
mant for  years.  It  lies  dormant  probably  by 
being  entangled  at  the  head  of  the  wound,  and 
there  held  in  its  place  till  some  new  action  liber- 
ates it,  and  lets  it  loose  into  the  circulation:  the 
view  advanced  by  Sir  Thomas  Watson  some  years 
since,  and  now  also  held  by  others. 

We  have  briefly  considered  the  effect  of  the 
poison  of  rabies  inflicted  by  one  dog  upon  an- 
other, as  well  as  the  effect  of  virulent  snake- 
poison  inflicted  on  a  man.  It  remains  to  com- 
pare the  effects  of  the  dog-poison  on  a  man  with 
that  of  the  cobra  upon  him. 

There  arc  points  of  similarity  and  points  of 
divergence. 

The  points  of  similarity  are — first,  that  the 
poison,  if  allowed  to  enter  the  circulation  in  suffi- 
cient quantity,  is  uniformly  fatal ;  and,  secondly, 
that  the  fatal  termination  seems  certainly  to  be 
by  way  of  the  nervous  system. 

We  are  not  yet  in  a  condition  to  say  with  ab- 
solute precision  what  are  the  anatomical  changes 
in  the  nervous  system  either  in  man,  or  in  ani- 
mals not  man.  But  observations  are  rapidly  ac- 
cumulating.1 It  is  certain  that  in  each  case  the 
injury  arises  from  the  introduction  of  the  animal 
poison  into  the  blood.  In  each  case,  therefore, 
the  end  can  be  averted  only  by  keeping  the 
poison  out  of  the  circulation  ;  or,  if  in  it  (in  a 
moderate  quantity),  by  maintaining  life  till  it  com 
be  eliminated:  the  way  by  which  alone  the  wou- 
rali  can  effect  a  cure  ;  and  this  only  if  the  poison 
has  not  wrought  or  set  up  changes  destructive  to 
the  vitality  or  regenerative  power  of  the  nerve- 
elements. 

The  nervous  symptoms  in  man,  when  once  the 
poison  has  fairly  entered  the  system,  gradually 

1  Many  persons  are  engaged  in  prosecuting  re- 
searches into  the  actual  alteration  of  structure  which 
can  be  detected  after  death  from  hydrophobia,  among 
whom  may  be  named  Dr.  Gowers,  of  University  Col- 
lege Hospital,  Dr.  Greenfield,  of  St.  Thomas's,  and  Dr. 
Savage,  to  whom  I  am  indebted  for  valuable  micro- 
scopic preparations.  All  available  knowledge  will 
shortly  be  collected,  under  the  best  auspices,  by  a 
committee  of  the  British  Medical  Association,  includ- 
ing Dr.  Burdon-Sanderson,  Dr.  Lauder  Brunton,  Dr. 
Gowers,  Mr.  Ernest  Hart,  and  Mr.  Callender.  Whether 
the  knowledge  they  will  certainly  gain  as  to  the  modus 
operandi  of  the  poison,  and  the  changes  it  effects  in 
vessels  and  nerves,  will  help  the  cure  when  the 
changes  have  been  set  up,  is  in  the  womb  of  the 
future. 


increase  until  thirst  and  inability  to  drink  remove 
all  doubt  as  to  the  only  result.  The  inability  to 
drink  is  only  a  sign  of  deep-seated  changes  in  the 
nerve-structure. 

Prof.  Rolleston  has  pointed  out  to  me  that 
these  changes,  though  hardly  discernible,  may  be 
so  great  (having  regard  to  the  actual  character 
of  the  force-producing  nerve-cell)  as  to  explain 
entirely,  first,  the  excitement,  and,  second,  the 
destruction  of  the  ordinary  functions  of  the 
nerve-centres,  which  regulate  life.  In  a  paper 
to  which  the  professor  has  referred  me,  by  Dr. 
Mayor,  I  find  it  noticed  that  "  there  may  be  dif- 
ferences between  these  delicate  structures  in  man 
and  other  animals  so  slight  as  to  be  nearly  in- 
appreciable," but  still  differences  of  the  widest 
significance  and  importance ;  and  so  it  may  quite 
be  that  fundamental  changes  shall  take  place  by 
sudden  shock  or  otherwise  in  the  fine  structures 
by  which  the  nerve-force  is  developed  in  man, 
and  yet  the  physical  changes  may  be  wholly  out- 
side the  reach  of  our  observation.  It  is  right  to 
add  that  already  these  changes  have  been  ob- 
served by  Dr.  Gowers,  though  their  exact  import 
cannot  yet  be  declared. 

Hydrophobia  occurring  in  man,  after  com- 
munication of  the  poison  of  rabies,  is  thus  shown 
to  be  a  "  toxoneurosis."  It  would  not  be  desir- 
able, nor  would  it  be  of  any  use  in  a  paper  of 
this  kind,  to  enter  into  a  detailed  description  of 
the  symptoms  of  this  mode  of  death.1  I  have 
thought  it  best  rather  to  illustrate  the  character 
of  the  malady  in  other  ways.  We  must  admit 
that  there  is,  as  yet,  no  cure  known  for  the  dis- 
ease when  once  established  in  man.  The  most  ex- 
travagant remedies  have  been  suggested.  Every 
form  of  pharmacy  and  charlatanism  has  expend- 
ed itself  throughout  all  generations — advocated 
sometimes  by  otherwise  great  names.  The  pages 
of  Ccelius  Aurelianus,  Morgagni,  and  a  host  of 
others,  would  create  considerable  interest,  and 
one  may  say  even  amazement,  on  this  subject. 
The  danger  is  generally  preventable  by  prompt 
measures  taken  at  the  time  when  the  injury  is 
inflicted.  The  weight  of  evidence  seems  to  show 
that  the  actual  cautery  is  the  most  efficacious 
means,  excision  the  next,  and  caustics,  though 
sometimes  sufficient,  are  the  least  to  be  relied 
upon.  This  much  said,  I  must  advert  to  state- 
ments in  various  journals  to  the  effect  that  a  case 
had  been  cured  by  means  of  wourali-poison  by 

1  Those  who  desire  a  graphic  account  of  a  case  of 
hydrophobia,  should  consult  Sir  Thomas  Watson's 
"Lectures  on  the  Practice  of  Medicine,"  vol.  i.,  p.  590, 
sixth  edition,  1871. 


344 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


Dr.  Offenburg.  This  is  not  the  only  case  adduced. 
Another  is  reported  from  America,  with  an  ex- 
cellent but  cautious  commentary  by  a  great 
American  physician,  Dr.  Austin  Flint. 

With  respect  to  Offenburg's  case,  I  must  own 
that  from  information  I  have  received  from  Ger- 
many, through  the  kindness  of  Dr.  Victor  Carus, 
the  distinguished  professor  of  Leipsic,  I  am  by 
no  means  satisfied  that  it  was  a  true  case  of  de- 
veloped hydrophobia.  Of  this,  as  of  the  Ameri- 
can case,  I  can  only  say  that  there  is  enough  to 
justify  and  demand  the  trial  of  the  remedy.  Of 
all  the  efforts  of  scientific  medicine,  it  would  be 
one  of  the  most  remarkable  should  it  turn  out 
to  be  successful.  The  remedy  itself  is  a  terrible 
instrument,  and  requires  the  greatest  skill  in  its 
use.  That  skill  will  not  be  wanting,  the  result  of 
trained  powers  in  experiment. 

Late  one  evening  a  few  weeks  ago,  a  boy  was 
brought  to  the  Radcliffe  Infirmary,  Oxford,  with 
the  dread,  if  not  with  the  signs,  of  hydrophobia. 
He  had  been  bitten  by  a  dog,  five  years  before, 
in  the  hand,  and  again,  two  years  before,  in  the 
leg.  A  pustular  eruption,  the  size  of  a  shilling, 
had  just  appeared  at  the  seat  of  the  bite  on  the 
hand,  where  there  always  had  been  a  small  scar. 
All  connected  with  the  lad  were  in  great  alarm. 
Now  on  this  doubtful  and  slight  symptom  various 
difficult  questions  arose : 

1.  Could  the  period  of  incubation,  if  the  dog 
had  been  mad,  be  five  or  even  two  years  ?  On 
the  historical  evidence,  Yes. 

2.  Would  an  eruption  so  occurring  be  likely 
to  be  the  precursor  of  true  hydrophobia  ?     Yes. 

3.  If  the  genuine  symptoms  appeared,  would 
the  boy  recover  ?  Unless  the  alleged  cases  of 
cure  by  giving  the  wourali-poison  were  true, 
then,  after  the  symptoms  arose,  his  death  within 
four  or  perhaps  five  days  was  certain. 

4.  Can  a  person  die  of  fright,  with  spurious 
symptoms  of  hydrophobia  ?     Yes. 

How  strange  these  simple  questions  and  an- 
swers !  Yet  this  is  the  issue  raised  in  every  case 
that  occurs  of  dog-bite,  where  the  condition  of 
the  dog,  as  in  this  instance,  could  not  be  ascer- 
tained. To  meet  the  symptoms,  should  they 
arise,  Mr.  Yule,  Fellow  of  Magdalen  College,  pre- 
pared for  me  a  solution  of  wourali,  whose  mode 
of  action  he  was  able  accurately  to  determine. 
But  the  sore  healed,  and  nothing  remained  but 
the  old  scar ;  and  the  experiment  of  wourali 
was  not  called  for. 

This  brief  outline  of  the  general  character  of 
the  much-discussed  malady,  in  our  four-footed 
friend,  and  of  the  relation  in  which  we   stand 


toward  it,  naturally  suggests  the  inquiry,  What 
should  be  done  by  every  state  which  is  sufficient- 
ly organized  to  have  an  intelligent  system  of  san- 
itary police  ? 

If  the  state  is  in  earnest  to  put  an  end  to 
hydrophobia,  it  would  not  be  worth  while  to  do 
less  than  this,  that  follows  : 

1.  To  have  a  rigid  dog-tax,  i.  e.,  one  which 
permits  no  unowned,  unregistered  dogs.  Every 
dog  should  have  a  collar,  with  the  name  of  the 
owner  and  the  number  of  the  license. 

2.  Dogs  which  cannot  be  identified  by  these 
means  should  be  destroyed  by  the  sanitary  au- 
thority of  the  district  where  they  are  found. 

3.  No  dogs  should,  for  a  certain  period,  be 
imported  from  abroad,  except  under  condi- 
tions. 

4.  Mr.  Fleming's  suggestion  that  on  every 
dog's  license  should  be  printed  precise  instruc- 
tions as  to  the  signs  of  rabies,  and  as  to  what 
should  be  done  in  case  of  dog-bite,  should  be 
carried  out. 

Practical  statesmen  and  debates  in  the  Houses 
of  Parliament  will  doubtless  suggest  difficulties 
in  these  propositions.  But  it  is  hard  to  think 
that  there  is  no  agency  among  the  excise,  the 
police,  the  Board  of  Trade,  the  sanitary  authori- 
ties, for  carrying  out,  with  but  little  trouble  or 
expense,  these  or  any  other  regulations  of  police 
for  this  end.  Cattle,  sheep,  pigs,  horses,  do  not 
stray  unowned  in  the  streets.  I  am  by  no  means 
sure  that  there  might  not  be  cases  of  exemption 
on  payment  of  a  much  higher  tax.  Indeed,  for 
the  sake  of  the  poor,  the  cost  of  mere  registration 
should  be  low  enough  to  be  hardly  a  productive 
tax.  Packs  of  hounds,  and  some  other  dogs  un- 
der responsible  keeping,  might  earn  immunity 
from  the  hated  collar  on  payment  of  a  sum  quite 
profitable  to  the  state,  though  little  felt  by  the 
owners.  The  owner  of  such  dogs  might  be  safe- 
ly trusted  to  destroy  them  on  due  cause.  It  has 
to  be  borne  in  mind  that  the  disease  may  exist  in 
all  domestic  animals,  and  notably  in  the  wild  one 
reserved  for  sport — the  fox.  He  may  perchance 
communicate  it  to  the  dog. 

Space  will  not  allow  the  distribution  of  rabies 
throughout  the  globe  to  be  fully  considered. 
Fleming  has  ransacked  many  writers  in  every 
country  for  records  of  its  existence.  If  one 
should  take  a  map  of  the  world  and  mark  on  it 
with  a  blue  wafer  the  countries  where  it  is  preva- 
lent ;  with  a  red  one  where  it  exists,  but  is  rare  ; 
and  with  a  yellow  one  where  it  is  absent,  he 
would  see,  in  a  graphic  way,  that  the  temperate 
and  central  zones  of  latitude  are  generally  occu- 


DOG-POISON'  IN  MAN. 


345 


pied,  rather  than  the  extremes  toward  either  pole. 
This  seems  to  depend  not  upon  the  temperature, 
but  upon  comparative  isolation  of  the  northern 
and  southern  countries,  such  as  Greenland,  where 
there  are  many  dogs  and  no  rabies,  and  such  as 
New  Zealand,  Australia,  notwithstanding  their 
communication  with  England,  and  the  islands 
generally  of  the  great  oceans.  But  this  matter 
requires  more  precise  elucidation.  Experiments 
at  Alfort  seem  to  show  that  neither  thirst  nor 
heat  will  originate  it,  and  go  far  to  prove  that  it 
is  a  simple  case  of  communicable  virus.  Great 
pains  have  been  taken  in  France  to  collect  a 
record  of  all  known  cases  of  persons  bitten  by 
mad  dogs.  M.  Bouley,  the  learned  veterinarian 
of  France,  has  given  in  the  Co?nptes  Rendus  for 
1 870  a  careful  and  instructive  abstract  of  reports 
on  the  subject.  It  will  well  repay  perusal.  In 
forty-nine  departments  where  rabies  existed,  320 
persons  had  been  bitten  by  mad  dogs  in  six  years. 
Only  129  had  hydrophobia,  and  123  were  known 
to  have  died.  No  one  of  these  129  had  the  dis- 
ease latent  for  more  than  six  months.  Most  of 
them  died  on  the  second  or  third  day  after  the 
symptoms  appeared.  Of  134  persons  92  re- 
covered whose  wounds  were  cauterized,  and  of 
66  not  cauterized  56  died,  only  10  recovering. 
These  statements  prove  the  almost  complete  im- 
munity through  the  use  of  actual  cautery. 

In  the  case  of  785  dogs  that  were  bitten,  527 
were  killed ;  and  of  25  not  killed  but  observed, 
13  became  mad.  But  let  this  be  noted:  of  785 
thus  bitten,  552  were  accounted  for.  The  author- 
ities let  233  escape.  And  if  these  went  mad  in 
the  proportion  of  those  who  were  observed,  there 
would  remain  116  dogs  left  at  large  mad. 

Statistics  of  this  kind  have  been  unattainable 
for  England.  But  we  have  enough  through  the 
splendid  tables  of  mortality,  monuments  alike  of 
English  civilization  and  of  official  zeal,  prepared 
by  Major  Graham  and  Dr.  Farr  at  Somerset  House, 
to  show  that  the  present  panic  in  this  country 
depends  on  the  horror  of  the  complaint,  not  on 


its  frequency,  and  upon  the  just  conviction  that 
it  is  high  time  to  prevent  its  increase. 

There  are  22,000  cases  of  snake-bite  annually 
in  India,  or  1  to  every  10,000  of  the  population. 
In  England  there  were  in  the  years  1S50  to  1876, 
538  deaths  from  hydrophobia  out  of  12,457,265 
total  deaths.  These  occurred  in  27  years,  at  the 
rate  of  20  annually  in  a  mean  population  of  20,- 
781,799  persons.  The  annual  deaths  to  a  million 
persons  living  were  22,201,  one  being  from  hy- 
drophobia. The  cholera  in  Oxford,  in  1S54,  de- 
stroyed in  a  few  weeks  1 15  persons  out  of  26,000, 
which,  if  expressed  in  the  proportions  of  the 
people  in  India,  would  amount  to  973,077  deaths- 
The  maximum  of  deaths  from  hydrophobia  in 
one  year,  in  England,  from  1850  till  1876,  was  in 
1874,  viz.,  61  in  a  population  of  23,648,609 ;  and 
the  minimum  in  1862,  1  out  of  436,566  deaths 
among  20,371,013  persons.  In  the  year  1876  the 
deaths  from  hydrophobia  were  53,  out  of  510,303 
deaths;  or  1  in  9,628  deaths  occurring  among 
24,244,010  persons:  in  other  words,  one  death  in 
a  year '  from  hydrophobia  among  457,432  living. 
These  figures,  together  with  the  fact  of  the  im- 
munity after  cautery,  and  the  thorough  attention 
now  paid  to  the  subject,  should  reduce  the  alarm 
to  its  natural  proportions  and  place. 

Thus  I  have  endeavored  to  present  a  rough 
sketch  of  a  disorder  which  has  caused  too  much 
anxiety  to  many.  Nothing  can  divest  the  subject 
of  its  wide  and  weird  interest.  Yet  nothing  can 
be  more  reassuring  than  the  knowledge  of  how 
nearly  it  is  under  our  own  control.  The  marvel 
is  that  we  are  and  have  been  so  careless.  Often 
we  may  prevent  where  we  cannot  cure.  This  has 
been  the  message  of  Medicine,  in  the  present  age, 
to  man,  in  more  things  than  the  poison  of  rabies. 

1  Meanwhile  there  was,  during  the  eight  years 
18G9-"76,  an  annual  average  of  212  deaths  among  the 
3,333,345  persons  estimated  to  constitute  the  average 
population  of  London  in  the  same  period,  by  being  run 
over  or  knocked  down  in  the  streets. 

—  Contemporary  Review. 


84G 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


ON  THE  TEACHING  OF  NATURAL  PHILOSOPHY.1 

By  Professor  P.  G.  TAIT. 


AT  the  very  outset  of  our  work  two  questions 
of  great  importance  come  prominently  for- 
ward. One  of  these,  I  have  reason  to  conclude  from 
long  experience,  is  probably  a  puzzling  one  to  a 
great  many  of  you  ;  the  other  is  of  paramount  con- 
sequence to  us  all.  And  both  are  of  consequence 
not  to  us  alone  but  to  the  whole  country,  in  its 
present  feverish  state  of  longing  for  what  it  but 
vaguely  understands  and  calls  science-teaching. 
These  questions  are,  What  is  Natural  Philosophy  ? 
and,  How  is  it  to  be  taught  ? 

A  few  words  only  on  the  first  question  must 
suffice  for  the  present.  The  term  Natural  Phi- 
losophy was  employed  by  Newton  to  describe  the 
study  of  the  powers  of  Nature  :  the  investigation 
of  forces  from  the  motion  they  produce,  and  the 
application  of  the  results  to  the  explanation  of 
other  phenomena.  It  is  thus  a  subject  to  whose 
proper  discussion  mathematical  methods  are  in- 
dispensable. The  "  Principia  "  commences  with 
a  clear  and  simple  statement  of  the  fundamental 
laws  of  motion,  proceeds  to  develop  their  more 
immediate  consequences  by  a  powerful  mathe- 
matical method  of  the  author's  own  creation,  and 
extends  them  to  the  whole  of  what  is  now  called 
Physical  Astronomy.  And  in  the  preface  New- 
ton obviously  hints  his  belief  that  in  time  a  sim- 
ilar mode  of  explanation  would  be  extended  to 
the  other  phenomena  of  external  Nature. 

In  many  departments  this  has  been  done  to  a 
remarkable  extent  during  the  two  centuries  which 
have  elapsed  since  the  publication  of  the  "  Prin- 
cipia." In  others  scarcely  a  single  step  of  any 
considerable  magnitude  has  been  taken  ;  and,  in 
consequence,  the  boundary  between  that  which 
is  properly  the  subject  of  the  natural  philoso- 
pher's inquiries  and  that  which  is  altogether  be- 
yond his  province  is  at  present  entirely  indefinite. 
There  can  be  no  doubt  that,  in  many  important 
respects,  even  life  itself  is  dependent  upon  pure- 
ly physical  conditions.  The  physiologists  have 
quite  recently  seized,  for  their  own  inquiries,  a 
great  part  of  the  natural  philosopher's  apparatus, 
and  with  it  his  methods  of  experimenting.  But 
to  say  that  even  the  very  lowest  form  of  life,  not 
to  speak  of  its  higher  forms,  still  less  of  volition 

1  Extended  from  Notes  of  the  Introductory  Lect- 
ure to  the  ordinary  course  of  Natural  Philosophy  in 
Edinbargh  University,  October  31, 1877. 


and  consciousness,  can  be  fully  explained  on  phys- 
ical principles  alone — i.  e.,  by  the  mere  relative 
motions  and  interactions  of  portions  of  inani- 
mate matter,  however  refined  and  sublimated — is 
simply  unscientific.  There  is  absolutely  nothing 
known  in  physical  science  which  can  lend  the 
slightest  support  to  such  an  idea.  In  fact,  it  fol- 
lows at  once  from  the  Laws  of  Motion  that  a  ma- 
terial system,  left  to  itself,  has  a  perfectly  deter- 
mined future,  i.  e.,  that  upon  its  configuration 
and  motion  at  any  instant  depend  all  its  sub- 
sequent changes ;  so  that  its  whole  history, 
past  and  to  come,  is  to  be  gathered  from  one  al- 
most instantaneous,  if  sufficiently  comprehensive, 
glance.  In  a  purely  material  system  there  is 
thus  necessarily  nothing  of  the  nature  of  a  free 
agent.  To  suppose  that  life,  even  in  its  lowest 
form,  is  wholly  material,  involves  therefore  either 
a  denial  of  the  truth  of  Newton's  laws  of  motion, 
or  an  erroneous  use  of  the  term  "  matter."  Both 
are  alike  unscientific. 

Though  the  sphere  of  our  inquiries  extends 
wherever  matter  is  to  be  found,  and  is  therefore 
coextensive  with  the  physical  universe  itself, 
there  are  other  things,  not  only  without  but  with- 
in that  universe,  with  which  our  science  has  ab- 
solutely no  power  to  deal.  In  this  room  we  sim- 
ply recognize  them,  and  pass  on. 

Modern  extensions  of  a  very  general  state- 
ment made  by  Newton  enable  us  now  to  specify 
much  more  definitely  than  was  possible  in  his 
time  the  range  of  physical  science.  We  may  now 
call  it  the  Science  of  Matter  and  Energy.  These 
are,  as  the  whole  work  of  the  session  will  be  de- 
signed to  prove  to  you,  the  two  real  things  in  the 
physical  universe;  both  unchangeable  in  amount, 
but  the  one  consisting  of  parts  which  preserve 
their  identity,  while  the  other  is  manifested  only 
in  the  act  of  transformation,  and  though  measu- 
rable cannot  be  identified.  I  do  not  at  present 
enter  on  an  exposition  of  the  nature  or  laws  of 
either ;  that  exposition  will  come  at  the  proper 
time ;  but  the  fact  that  so  short  and  simple  a  defi- 
nition is  possible  is  extremely  instructive,  show- 
ing, as  it  unquestionably  does,  what  very  great 
advances  physical  science  has  made  in  recent 
times.  The  definition,  in  fact,  is  but  little  infe- 
rior in  simplicity  to  two  of  those  with  which  most 
of  you  are  no  doubt  already  to  a  certain  extent 


ON  THE   TEACHING    OF  NATURAL  PHILOSOPHY. 


347 


familiar — that  of  geometry  as  the  Science  of  Pure 
Space,  and  of  algebra  as  the  Science  of  Pure  Time. 

But,  for  to-day  at  least,  our  second  question, 
viz.,  How  is  Natural  Philosophy  to  be  taught?  is 
of  more  immediate  importance.  The  ausvver,  in 
an  elementary  class  like  this,  must  of  course  be, 
"  popularly."  But  this  word  has  many  senses, 
even  in  the  present  connection — one  alone  good, 
the  others  of  variously- graduated  amounts  of  bad- 
ness. 

Let  us  begin  with  one  or  two  of  the  bad  ones_ 
The  subject  is  a  very  serious  one  for  you,  and 
therefore  must  be  considered  carefully,  in  spite 
of  the  celebrated  dictum  of  Terence,  Obseqnium 
amicos,  Veritas  odium  parit.  (In  other  words, 
flatter  your  audience  and  tickle  their  ears,  if  you 
seek  to  ingratiate  yourself  with  them ;  tell  them 
the  truth,  if  you  wish  to  raise  enemies.)  But 
science  is  one  form  of  truth.  When  the  surgeon 
is  convinced  that  the  knife  is  required,  it  becomes 
his  duty  to  operate.  And  Shakespeare  gives  us 
the  proper  answer  to  the  time-serving  caution  of 
Terence  and  Cicero  in  the  well-known  words, 
"  Let  the  galled  jade  wince." 

One  of  these  wholly  bad  methods  was  recent- 
ly very  well  put  by  a  Saturday  critic,  as  follows  : 

"  The  name  of  '  Popular  Science'  is,  in  itself, 
a  doubtful  and  somewhat  invidious  one,  being 
commonly  taken  to  mean  the  superficial  exposition 
of  results  by  a  speaker  or  writer  who  himself 
understands  them  imperfectly,  to  the  intent  that 
his  hearers  or  readers  may  be  able  to  talk  about 
them  without  understanding  them  at  all." 

This,  I  need  hardly  say,  is  not  in  any  sense 
science-teaching.  It  appears,  however,  that  there 
is  a  great  demand  for  it,  more  especially  with 
audiences  which  seek  amusement  rather  than  in- 
struction ;  and  this  demand,  of  course,  is  satis- 
fied. Such  an  audience  gets  what  it  wants,  and, 
I  may  add,  exactly  what  it  deserves. 

Not  quite  so  monstrous  a3  that  just  alluded 
to,  yet  far  too  common,  is  the  essentially  vague 
and  highly-ornamented  style  of  so-called  science- 
teaching.  The  objections  to  this  method  are  of 
three  kinds  at  least — each  independently  fatal: 

1.  It  gives  the  hearer,  if  he  have  no  pre- 
vious acquaintance  with  physics,  an  altogether 
erroneous  impression  of  the  intrinsic  difficulty  of 
the  subject.  He  is  exhorted,  in  grandiloquent 
fights  of  labored  earnestness,  to  exert  his  utmost 
stretch  of  intellect,  that  he  may  comprehend  the 
great  step  in  explanation  which  is  next  to  be 
given  ;  and  when,  after  this  effort,  the  impression 
on  his  mind  is  seemingly  quite  inadequate,  he 
begins  to  fancv  that  he  has  not  understood  at  all 


— that  there  must  be  some  profound  mystery  in 
the  words  he  has  heard  which  has  entirely  escaped 
his  utmost  penetration.  After  a  very  few  at- 
tempts he  gives  up  in  despair.  How  many  a 
man  has  been  driven  away  altogether,  whose  in- 
tellect might  have  largely  contributed  to  the  ad- 
vance of  physics,  merely  by  finding  that  he  can 
make  nothing  of  the  pompous  dicta  of  his  teacher 
or  text-book,  except  something  so  simple  that  he 
fancies  it  cannot  possibly  be  what  was  meant ! 

2.  It  altogether  spoils  the  student's  taste  for 
the  simple  facts  of  true  science.  And  it  does 
so  just  as  certainly  as  an  undiluted  course  of 
negro  melodies  or  music-hall  comic  songs  is  de- 
structive of  all  relish  for  the  true  art  of  Mozart 
or  Haydn,  or  as  sensation  novels  render  Scott's 
highest  fancies  tame  by  contrast.     And — 

"...  as  if  increase  of  appetite 
Had  grown  by  what  it  led  on,  .  .  .  " 

the  action  on  the  listener  is  made  to  react  on  the 
teacher,  and  he  is  called  upon  for  further  and 
further  outrages  on  the  simplicity  of  science. 
Sauces  and  spices  not  only  impair  the  digestion, 
they  create  a  craving  for  other  stimulants  of 
ever-increasing  pungency  and  deleteriousness. 

But,  3.  No  one  having  a  true  appreciation 
of  the  admirable  simplicity  of  science  could 
be  guilty  of  these  outrages.  To  attempt  to  in- 
troduce into  science  the  meretricious  adjuncts  of 
"  word-painting,"  etc.,  can  only  be  the  work  of 
dabblers — not  of  scientific  men,  just  as — 

"  To  did  refined  gold,  to  paint  the  lily, 
To  throw  a  perfume  on  the  violet, 
To  smooth  the  ice,  or  add  another  hue 
Unto  the  rainbow  ;  or  with  taper  light 
To  seek  the  beauteous  eye  of  heaven  to  garnish. 
Is  wasteful  and  ridiculous  excess.''' 

None  could  attempt  such  a  work  who  had  the 
smallest  knowledge  of  the  true  beauty  of  Nature. 
Did  he  know  it,  he  would  feel  how  utterly  inade- 
quate, as  well  as  uncalled  for,  were  all  his  great- 
est efforts.  For,  again,  in  Shakespeare's  words, 
such  a  course — 

"  Makes  sound  opinion  sick,  and  truth  suspected, 
For  putting  on  so  new  a  fashioned  robe." 

"In  the  great  majority  of  'popular'  scientific 
works  the  author,  as  a  rule,  has  not  an  exact 
knowledge  of  his  subject,  and  does  his  best  to 
avoid  committing  himself,  among  difficulties 
which  he  must  at  least  try  to  appear  to  explain. 
On  such  occasions  he  usually  has  recourse  to  a 
flood  of  vague  generalities,  than  which  nothing 
can  be  conceived  more  pernicious  to  the  really 
intelligent  student.  In  science  '  fine  language ' 
is  entirely  out  of  place  ;  the  stern  truth,  which  is 


348 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


its  only  basis,  requires  not  merely  that  we  should 
never  disguise  a  difficulty,  but,  on  the  contrary, 
that  we  should  call  special  attention  to  it,  as  a 
probable  source  of  valuable  information.  If  you 
meet  with  an  author  who,  like  the  cuttle-fish,  en- 
deavors to  escape  from  a  difficult  position  by 
darkening  all  around  him  with  an  inky  cloud  of 
verbiage,  close  the  book  at  once  and  seek  infor- 
mation elsewhere." 

But  I  must  come  back  to  the  really  important 
point,  which  is  this  : 

True  science  is  in  itself  simple,  and  should  be 
explained  in  as  simple  and  definite  language  as 
possible. 

Word-painting  finds  some  of  its  most  ap- 
propriate subjects  when  employed  to  deal  with 
human  snobbery  or  human  advice — where  the 
depraved  tastes  and  wills  of  mortals  are  con- 
cerned— not  the  simple  and  immutable  truths 
of  science.  Battles,  murders,  executions ;  po- 
litical, legal,  and  sectarian  squabbles  ;  gossip, 
ostentation,  toadyism,  and  such  like,  are  of  its 
proper  subjects.  Not  that  the  word-painter  need 
be  himself  necessarily  snobbish  or  vicious — far 
from  it.  But  it  is  here,  as  our  best  poets  and 
satirists  have  shown,  that  his  truest  field  is  to  be 
found.  Science  sits  enthroned,  like  the  gods  of 
Epicurus,  far  above  the  influence  of  mere  human 
passions,  be  they  virtuous  or  evil,  and  must  be 
treated  by  an  entirely  different  code  of  rules. 
And  a  great  deal  of  the  very  shallowest  of  the 
pseudo-science  of  the  present  day  probably  owes 
its  origin  to  the  habitual  use,  with  reference  to 
physical  phenomena,  of  terms  or  synonyms  whose 
derivation  shows  them  to  have  reasonable  appli- 
cation to  human  beings  and  their  actions  alone — 
cot  at  all  to  matter  and  energy.  In  dealing  with 
such  pseudo-science  it  is,  of  course,  permissible 
to  me,  even  after  what  I  have  said,  to  use  word- 
painting  as  far  as  may  be  thought  necessary. 

The  Pygmalions  of  modern  days  do  not  re- 
quire to  beseech  Aphrodite  to  animate  the  ivory 
for  them.  Like  the  savage  with  his  totern,  they 
have  themselves  already  attributed  life  to  it.  "  It 
comes,"  as  Helmholtz  says,  "  to  the  same  thing  as 
Schopenhauer's  metaphysics.  The  stars  are  to 
love  and  hate  one  another,  feel  pleasure  and  dis- 
pleasure, and  to  try  to  move  in  a  way  correspond- 
ing to  these  feelings."  The  latest  phase  of  this 
peculiar  non-science  tells  us  that  all  matter  is 
alive  ;  or,  at  least,  that  it  contains  the  "  promise 
and  potency  "  (whatever  these  may  be)  "  of  all 
terrestrial  life."  All  this  probably  originated  in 
the  very  simple  manner  already  hinted  at ;  viz., 


in  the  confusion  of  terms  constructed  for  applica- 
tion to  thinking  beings  only,  with  others  appli- 
cable only  to  brute  matter,  and  a  blind  following 
of  this  confusion  to  its  necessarily  preposterous 
consequences.  So  much  for  the  attempts  to  in- 
troduce into  science  an  element  altogether  incom- 
patible with  the  fundamental  conditions  of  its  ex- 
istence. 

When  simple  and  definite  language  cannot  be 
employed,  it  is  solely  on  account  of  our  ignorance. 
Ignorance  may,  of  course,  be  either  unavoidable 
or  inexcusable. 

It  is  unavoidable  only  when  knowledge  is  not 
to  be  had.  But  that  of  which  there  is  no  knowl- 
edge is  not  yet  part  of  science.  All  we  can  do 
with  it  is  simply  to  confess  our  ignorance  and 
seek  for  information. 

As  an  excellent  illustration  of  this  we  may 
take  two  very  common  phenomena — a  rainbow 
and  an  aurora — the  one,  to  a  certain  extent  at 
least,  thoroughly  understood  ;  the  other  scarcely 
understood  in  almost  any  particular.  Yet  it  is 
possible  that,  in  our  latitudes  at  least,  we  see  the 
one  nearly  as  often  as  the  other.  For,  though 
there  are  probably  fewer  auroras  to  be  seen  than 
rainbows,  the  one  phenomenon  is  in  general  much 
more  widely  seen  than  the  other.  A  rainbow  is 
usually  a  mere  local  phenomenon,  depending  on 
a  rain-cloud  of  moderate  extent;  while  an  aurora, 
w,hen  it  occurs,  may  extend  over  a  whole  terres- 
trial hemisphere.  Just  like  total  eclipses,  lunar 
and  solar.  Wherever  the  moon  can  be  seen,  the 
lunar  eclipse  is  visible,  and  to  all  alike.  But  a 
total  solar  eclipse  is  usually  visible  from  a  mere 
strip  of  the  earth — some  50  miles  or  so  in  breadth. 

The  branch  of  natural  philosophy  which  is 
called  Geometrical  Optics  is  based  upon  three  ex- 
perimental facts  or  laws,  which  are  assumed  as 
exactly  true,  and  as  representing  the  whole  truth 
— the  rectilinear  propagation  of  light  in  any  one 
uniform  medium,  and  the  laws  of  its  reflection  and 
refraction  at  the  common  surface  of  two  such 
media — and  as  a  science  it  is  nothing  more  than 
the  developed  mathematical  consequences  of  these 
three  postulates. 

Hence,  if  these  laws  were  rigorously  true,  and 
represented  all  the  truth,  nothing  but  mathemat- 
ical investigation  based  on  them  would  be  re- 
quired for  the  complete  development  of  the  phe- 
nomena of  the  rainbow — except  the  additional 
postulate,  also  derived  from  experiment,  that  fall- 
ing drops  of  water  assume  an  exact  spherical  form 
— and,  as  data  for  numerical  calculation,  the  ex- 
perimentally-determined refractive  index  for  each 
ray  of  light  at  the  common  surface  of  air  and  water. 


ON  THE  TEACHING   OF  NATURAL  PHILOSOPHY. 


349 


Thus,  for  instance,  we  can  tell  why  the  rain- 
bow has  the  form  of  a  portion  of  a  circle  sur- 
rounding the  point  opposite  to  the  sun ;  why  it 
is  red  on  the  outer  edge ;  what  is  the  order  of  the 
other  colors,  and  why  they  are  much  less  pure 
than  the  red  ;  why  the  whole  of  the  background 
inclosed  within  it  is  brighter  than  that  just  out- 
side, and  so  on.  Also,  why  there  is  a  second 
(also  circular)  rainbow  ;  why  it  is  concentric  with 
the  first,  and  why  its  colors  are  arranged  in  the 
reverse  order,  etc. 

But,  so  long  at  least  as  we  keep  to  geomet- 
rical optics,  we  cannot  explain  the  spurious  bows 
which  are  usually  seen,  like  ripples,  within  the 
primary  and  outside  the  second  rainbow  ;  nor  why 
the  light  of  both  bows  is  polarized,  and  so  forth. 
We  must  apply  to  a  higher  branch  of  our  science ; 
and  we  find  that  Physical  Optics,  which  gives  the 
results  to  which  those  of  geometrical  optics  are 
only  approximations,  enables  us  to  supply  the  ex- 
planation of  these  phenomena  also. 

When  we  turn  to  the  aurora  we  find  nothing 
bo  definite  to  explain.  This  may,  to  some  extent 
at  least,  account  for  our  present  ignorance.  We 
remark,  no  doubt,  a  general  relation  between  the 
direction  of  the  earth's  magnetic  force  and  that 
of  the  streamers  ;  but  their  appearance  is  capri- 
cious and  variable  in  the  extreme.  Usually  they 
have  a  pale-green  color,  which  the  spectroscope 
shows  to  be  due  to  homogeneous  light ;  but  in 
very  fine  displays  they  are  sometimes  blood-red, 
sometimes  blue.  Auroral  arches  give  sometimes 
a  sensibly  continuous  spectrum,  sometimes  a  sin- 
gle bright  line.  We  can  imitate  many  of  the 
phenomena  by  passing  electric  discharges  through 
rarefied  gases ;  and  we  find  that  the  streamers  so 
produced  are  influenced  by  magnetic  force.  But 
we  do  not  yet  know  for  certain  the  source  of  the 
discharges  which  produce  the  aurora,  nor  do  we 
even  know  what  substance  it  is  to  whose  incan- 
descence its  light  is  due.  We  find  by  a  statistical 
method  that  auroras,  like  cyclones,  are  most  nu- 
merous when  there  are. most  spots  on  the  sun; 
but  the  connection  between  these  phenomena  is 
not  yet  known.  Here,  in  fact,  we  are  only  begin- 
ning to  understand,  and  can  but  confess  our  igno- 
rance. 

But  do  not  imagine  that  there  is  nothing 
about  the  rainbow  which  we  cannot  explain,  even 
of  that  which  is  seen  at  once  by  untrained  ob- 
servers. All  the  phenomena  connected  with  it 
which  we  can  explain  are  mathematical  deduc- 
tions from  observed  facts  which  are  assumed  in 
the  investigation.  But  these  facts  are,  in  the 
main,  themselves    not    yet   explained.     Just  as 


there  are  many  exceedingly  expert  calculators 
who  habitually  and  usefully  employ  logarithmic 
tables  without  having  the  least  idea  of  what  a 
logarithm  really  is,  or  of  the  manner  in  which 
the  tables  themselves  were  originally  calculated ; 
so  the  natural  philosopher  uses  the  observed 
facts  of  refraction  and  reflection  without  having 
as  yet  anything  better  than  guesses  as  to  their 
possible  proximate  cause.  And  it  is  so  through- 
out our  whole  subject :  assuming  one  result,  we  can 
prove  that  the  others  must  follow.  In  this  direc- 
tion great  advances  have  been  made,  and  every 
extension  of  mathematics  renders  more  of  such 
deductions  possible.  But  when  we  try  to  reverse 
the  process,  and  thus  to  explain  our  hitherto  as- 
sumed results,  we  are  met  by  difficulties  of  a  very 
different  order. 

The  subject  of  Physical  Astronomy,  to  which 
I  have  already  alluded,  gives  at  once  one  of  the 
most  striking  and  one  of  the  most  easily  intelli- 
gible illustrations  of  this  point.  Given  the  law 
of  gravitation,  the  masses  of  the  sun  and  planets, 
and  their  relative  positions  and  motions  at  any 
one  instant — the  investigation  of  their  future  mo- 
tions, until  new  disturbing  causes  come  in,  is  en- 
tirely within  the  power  of  the  mathematician. 
But  how  shall  we  account  for  gravitation  ?  This 
is  a  question  of  an  entirely  different  nature  from 
the  other,  and  but  one  even  plausible  attempt  to 
answer  it  has  yet  been  made. 

But  to  resume.  The  digression  I  have  just 
made  had  for  its  object  to  show  you  how  closely 
full  knowledge  and  absolute  ignorance  may  be 
and  arc  associated  in  many  parts  of  our  subject — 
absolute  command  of  the  necessary  consaquences 
of  a  phenomenon,  entire  ignorance  of  its  actual 
nature  or  cause. 

And  in  every  branch  of  physics  the  student 
ought  to  be  most  carefully  instructed  about  mat- 
ters of  this  kind.  A  comparatively  small  amount 
of  mathematical  training  will  often  be  found  suffi- 
cient to  enable  him  to  trace  the  consequences  of 
a  known  truth  to  a  considerable  distance ;  and 
no  such  training  is  necessary  to  enable  him  to  see 
(provided  it  be  properly  presented  to  him)  the 
boundary  between  our  knowledge  and  our  igno- 
rance— at  least  when  that  ignorance  is  not  di- 
rectly dependent  upon  the  inadequacy  of  our  de- 
ductive powers. 

The  work  of  Lucretius  is  perhaps  the  only 
really  successful  attempt  at  scientific  poetry. 
And  it  is  so  because  it  was  written  before  there 
was  any  true  physical  science.  The  methods 
throughout  employed  are  entirely  those  of  a  priori 
reasoning,  and  therefore  worse  than  worthless, 


350 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


altogether  misleading.  Scientific  poetry,  using 
both  words  in  their  highest  sense,  is  now  impos- 
sible. The  two  things  are  in  their  very  nature 
antagonistic.  A  scientific  man  may  occasionally 
be  a  poet  also  ;  but  he  has  then  two  distinct  and 
almost  mutually  incompatible  natures ;  and,  when 
he  writes  poetry,  he  puts  science  aside.  But,  on 
the  other  hand,  when  he  writes  science,  he  puts 
poetry  and  all  its  devices  aside.  Mark  this  well ! 
A  poet  may,  possibly  with  great  effect  on  the 
unthinking  multitude,  write  of 

"  .  .  .  .  the  huger  orbs  which  wheel 
In  circuits  vast  throughout  the  wide  abyss 
Of  unimagined  chaos— till  they  reach 
Ethereal  splendor  .  .  .  ." 

(The  word  "  unimagined  "  may  puzzle  the 
reader,  but  it  probably  alludes  to  Ovid's  expres- 
sion "  sine  imagine.'1''  For  this  sort  of  thing  is 
nothing  if  not  classical!  The  contempt  in  which 
"  scholars"  even  now  hold  mere  "physicists"  is 
proverbial.  And  they  claim  the  right  of  using  at 
will  new  words  of  this  kind,  in  whose  company 
even  the  "  tremendous  empyrean "  would,  per- 
haps, not  be  quite  out  of  place.) 

But,  whether  this  sort  of  thing  be  poetry  or 
not,  it  is  in  no  sense  science.  "  Huge,"  and 
"  vast,"  and  such  like  (for  which,  if  the  rhythm 
permit,  you  may  substitute  their  similars,  "  Ti- 
tanic," "gigantic,"  etc.),  good  honest  English 
though  they  be,  are  utterly  unscientific  words. 
In  science  we  restrict  ourselves  to  small  and 
rtreat,  and  these  amply  suffice  for  all  our  wants. 
But  even  these  terms  are  limited  with  us  to  a 
mere  relative  sense  ;  and  it  can  only  be  through 
ignorance  or  forgetfulness  of  this  that  more  so- 
norous terms  are  employed.  The  size  of  every 
finite  object  depends  entirely  upon  the  unit  in 
terms  of  which  you  measure  it.  There  is  nothing 
absolutely  great  but  the  Infinite. 

A  few  moments'  reflection  will  convince  you 
of  the  truth  of  what  I  have  just  said.  Let  us  go 
by  easily  comprehensible  stages  from  one  (so- 
called)  extreme  to  the  other.  Begin  with  the 
smallest  thing  you  can  see,  and  compare  it  with 
the  greatest.  I  suppose  you  have  all  seen  a  good 
barometer.  The  vernier  attached  to  such  an  in- 
strument is  usually  read  to  the  thousandths  of 
an  inch,  but  it  sometimes  leaves  you  in  doubt 
which  of  two  such  divisions  to  choose.  This 
gives  the  limit  of  vision  with  the  unaided  eye. 
Lot  us  therefore  begin  with  an  object  whose  size 
is  about  jt0\t(T  of  an  inch.  Let  us  choose  as  our 
scale  of  relative  magnitude  1  to  250,000  or  there- 
abouts. It  is  nearly  the  proportion  in  which 
each  of  you  individually  stands  to  the  whole  pop- 


ulation of  Edinburgh.  (I  am  not  attempting  any- 
thing beyond  the  rudest  illustration,  because 
that  will  amply  suffice  for  my  present  purpose.) 
Well,  250,000  times  the  diameter  of  our  mini- 
mum visibile  gives  us  a  length  of  ten  feet  or  so — 
three  or  four  paces.  Increased  again  in  about 
the  same  ratio,  it  becomes  more  than  400  miles, 
somewhere  about  the  distance  from  Edinburgh 
to  London.  Perform  the  operation  again,  and 
you  get  (approximately  enough  for  our  purpose) 
the  sun's  distance  from  the  earth.  Operate  once 
more,  and  you  have  got  beyond  the  nearest  fixed 
star.  Another  such  operation  would  give  a  dis- 
tance far  beyond  that  of  anything  we  can  ever 
hope  to  see.  Yet  you  have  reached  it  by  repeat- 
ing, at  most  Jive  times,  upon  the  smallest  thing 
you  can  see,  an  operation  in  itself  not  very  diffi- 
cult to  imagine.  Now,  a8  there  is  absolutely 
nothing  known  to  science  which  can  preclude 
us  from  carrying  this  process  further,  so  there 
is  absolutely  no  reason  why  we  may  not  in  thought 
reverse  it,  and  thus  go  back  from  the  smallest  visi- 
ble thing  to  various  successive  orders  of  smallness. 
And  the  first  of  these  that  we  thus  reach  has 
already  been  pointed  to  by  science  as  at  least  a 
rough  approximation  to  that  coarse-grainedness 
which  we  know  to  exist  (though  we  shall  never 
be  able  to  see  it)  even  in  the  most  homogeneous 
substances,  such  as  glass  and  water.  For  several 
trains  of  reasoning,  entirely  independent  of  one  an- 
other, but  based  upon  experimental  facts,  enable 
us  to  say  with  certainty  that  all  matter  becomes 
heterogeneous  (in  some  as  yet  quite  unknown 
way)  when  we  consider  portions  of  it  whose 
dimensions  are  somewhere  about  g^v.otg.Tnre  °f 
an  inch.  We  have,  as  yet,  absolutely  no  infor- 
mation beyond  this,  save  that,  if  there  be  ulti- 
mate atoms,  they  are  at  least  considerably  more 
minute  still. 

Next  comes  the  very  important  question — 
How  far  is  experimental  illustration  necessary  and 
useful?  Here  we  find  excessively  wide  diver- 
gence, alike  in  theory  and  in  practice. 

In  some  lecture-theatres,  experiment  is  every- 
thing ;  in  others,  the  exhibition  of  gorgeous  dis- 
plays illustrative  of  nothing  in  particular  is  said 
occasionally  to  alternate  with  real  or  imagined 
(but  equally  sensational)  danger  to  the  audience, 
from  which  they  are  preserved  (or  supposed  to 
be  preserved)  only  by  the  extraordinary  presence 
of  mind  of  the  presiding  performers — a  modern 
resuscitation  of  the  ancient  after-dinner  amuse- 
ment of  tight-rope  dancing,  high  above  the  heads 
of  the  banqueters,  where  each  had  thus  a  very 


ON  THE  TEACHIXG   OF  NATURAL  PHILOSOPHY. 


351 


genuine,  if  selfish,  interest  in  the  nerve  and  steadi- 
ness of  the  artists. 

Contrasted  in  the  most  direct  manner  with 
these,  is  the  dictum  not  long  ago  laid  down  : 

"  It  may  he  said  that  the  fact  makes  a  stronger 
impression  on  the  boy  through  the  medium  of  his 
sight — that  he  believes  it  the  more  confidently.  I 
say  that  this  ought  not  to  be  the  case.  If  he  does 
not  believe  the  statements  of  his  tutor — probably  a 
clergyman  of  mature  knowledge,  recognized  abil- 
ity, and  blameless  character— his  suspicion  is  irra- 
tional, and  manifests  a  want  of  the  power  of  appre- 
ciating evidence — a  want  fatal  to  his  success  in  that 
branch  of  science  which  he  is  supposed  to  be  culti- 
vating." 

Between  such  extremes  many  courses  may  be 
traced.  But  it  is  better  to  dismiss  the  consider- 
ation of  both,  simply  on  the  ground  that  they  are 
extremes,  and  therefore  alike  absurd. 

Many  facts  cannot  be  made  thoroughly  intel- 
ligible without  experiment ;  many  others  require 
no  illustration  whatever,  except  what  can  be  best 
given  by  a  few  chalk-lines  on  a  blackboard.  To 
teach  an  essentially  experimental  science  without 
illustrative  experiments  may  conceivably  be  possi- 
ble in  the  abstract,  but  certainly  not  with  profess- 
ors and  students  such  as  are  to  be  found  on  this 
little  planet. 

And,  on  the  other  hand,  you  must  all  remember 
that  we  meet  here  to  discuss  science,  and  science 
alone.  A  university  class-room  is  not  a  place  of 
public  amusement,  with  its  pantomime  displays  of 
red  and  blue  fires,  its  tricks  whether  of  prestigia- 
tion  or  of  prestidigitation,  or  its  stump-oratory. 
The  best  and  greatest  experimenter  who  ever  lived 
used  none  of  these  poor  devices  to  win  cheap  ap- 
plause. His  language  (except,  perhaps,  when  non- 
experimenting  pundits  pressed  upon  him  their  fear- 
ful Greek  names  for  his  splendid  discoveries)  was 
ever  the  very  simplest  that  could  be  used:  his 
experiments,  whether  brilliant  or  commonplace  in 
the  eyes  of  the  mere  sight-seer,  were  chosen  sole- 
ly with  the  object  of  thoroughly  explaining  his 
subject ;  and  his  whole  bearing  was  impressed 
with  the  one  paramount  and  solemn  feeling  of 
duty,  alike  to  his  audience  and  to  scienee.  Long 
ages  may  pass  before  his  equal,  or  even  his  rival, 
can  appear ;  but  the  great  example  he  has  left 
should  be  imitated  by  us  all  as  closely  as  possible. 

Nothing  is  easier  in  extempore  speaking,  as 
I  dare  say  many  of  you  know  by  trial,  than  what 
is  happily  called  "  piling  up  the  agony."  For, 
as  has  been  well  said  : 

".  .  .  .  men  there  be  that  make 
Parade  of  fluency,  and  deftly  play 


With  points  of  speech  as  jugglers  toss  their  balls ; 
A  tiukling  crew,  from  whose  light-squandered  wit 
No  seed  of  virtue  grows.1' 

Every  one  who  has  a  little  self-confidence  and  a 
little  readiness  can  manage  it  without  trouble. 
But  it  is  so  because  in  such  speaking  there  is  no 
necessity  for  precision  in  the  use  of  words,  and 
no  objection  to  any  epithet  whatever,  unless  it 
be  altogether  misplaced.  But  the  essence  of  all 
such  discourse  is  necessarily  fancy,  and  not  fact. 
Here,  during  the  serious  work  of  the  session,  we 
are  tied  down  almost  exclusively  to  facts.  Fan- 
cies must  appear  occasionally;  but  we  admit 
them  only  in  the  carefully-guarded  form  of  a  ref- 
erence to  old  opinions,  or  to  a  "  good  working 
hypothesis."  Still,  facts  are  not  necessarily  dry : 
not  even  if  they  be  mere  statistics.  All  depends 
on  the  way  in  which  they  are  put.  One  of  the 
most  amusing  of  the  many  clever  songs,  written 
and  sung  by  the  late  Prof.  Rankine  in  his  moments 
of  relaxation,  was  an  almost  literal  transcript  of 
a  prosaic  statistical  description  of  a  little  Irish 
town,  taken  from  a  gazetteer !  He  was  a  truly 
original  man  of  science,  and  therefore  exact  in  his 
statements ;  but  he  could  be  at  once  both  exact 
and  interesting.  And  I  believe  that  the  intrinsic 
beauty  of  science  is  such  that  it  cannot  suffer  in 
the  minds  of  a  really  intelligent  audience,  how- 
ever poor  be  the  oratorical  powers  of  its  ex- 
pounder, provided  only  he  can  state  its  facts  with 
clearness.  Oratory  is  essentially  art,  and  there- 
fore essentially  not  science. 

There  is  nothing  false  in  the  theory,  at  least, 
of  what  are  called  Chinese  copies.  If  it  could  be 
fully  carried  out,  the  results  would  be  as  good  as 
the  original — in  fact,  undistinguishable  from  it. 
But  it  is  solely  because  we  cannot  have  the  theory 
carried  out  in  perfection  that  true  artists  are 
forced  to  slur  over  details,  and  to  give  "  broad 
effects,"  as  they  call  them.  The  members  of  the 
pre-Raphaelite  school  are  thoroughly  right  in  one 
part  at  least  of  their  system :  unfortunately,  it  is 
completely  unrealizable  in  practice.  But  the 
"  broad  effects  "  of  which  I  have  spoken  are  true 
art,  though  perhaps  in  a  somewhat  modified 
sense  of  the  word  (which,  not  being  a  scientific 
one,  has  many  shades  of  meaning).  To  introduce 
these  "  broad  effects  "  into  science  may  be  artful, 
but  it  is  certainly  unscientific.  In  so-called  "  pop- 
ular science,"  if  anywhere,  Ars  est  celare  insci- 
entiam.  The  "  artful  dodge  "  is  to  conceal  want  of 
knowledge.  Vague  explanations,  however  artful, 
no  more  resemble  true  science  than  do  even  the 
highest  flights  of  the  imagination,  whether  in 
"Ivanhoe"  or    "Quentin   Durward,"  "Knicker- 


352 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


bocker's  New  York"  or  Macaulay's  " England," 
resemble  history.  And  when  the  explanation  is 
bombastic  as  well  as  vague,  its  type  is  the  same 
as  that  of  the  well-known  speech  of  Sergeant 
Buzfuz. 

One  ludicrous  feature  of  the  "high-falutin" 
style  is  that  if  you  adopt  it  you  throw  away  all 
your  most  formidable  ammunition  on  the  smaller 
game,  and  have  nothing  proportionate  left  for  the 
larger.  It  is  as  if  you  used  a  solid  shot  from  an 
81-ton  gun  upon  a  single  skirmisher!  As  I  have 
already  said,  you  waste  your  grandest  terms,  such 
as  huge,  vast,  enormous,  tremendous,  etc.,  on 
your  mere  millions  or  billions ;  and  then  what  is 
left  for  the  poor  trillions  ?  The  true  lesson  to  be 
learned  from  this  is,  that  such  terms  are  alto- 
gether inadmissible  in  science. 

But  even  if  we  could  suppose  a  speaker  to 
use  these  magnificent  words  as  a  genuine  descrip- 
tion of  the  impression  made  ou  himself  by  certain 
phenomena,  you  must  remember  that  he  is  de- 
scribing not  what  is  known  of  the  objective  fact 
(which,  except  occasionally  from  a  biographic 
point  of  view,  is  what  the  listener  really  wants), 
but  the  more  or  less  inadequate  subjective  im- 
pression which  it  has  produced,  or  which  he  de- 
sires you  to  think  it  has  produced,  on  "  what  he 
is  pleased  to  call  his  mind."  Whether  it  be  his 
own  mind,  or  that  of  some  imaginary  individual, 
matters  not.  To  do  this,  except  perhaps  when 
lecturing  on  psychology,  is  to  be  unscientific. 
True  scientific  teaching,  I  cannot  too  often  re- 
peat, requires  that  the  facts  and  their  necessary 
consequences  alone  should  be  stated  (and  illus- 
trated if  required)  as  simply  as  possible.  The 
impression  they  are  to  produce  on  the  mind  of 
the  reader,  or  hearer,  is  then  to  be  left  entirely  to 
himself.  No  one  has  any  right  to  suppose,  much 
less  to  take  for  granted,  that  his  own  notions, 
whether  they  be  "  so-called  poetic  instincts  "  (to 
use  the  lowest  term  of  contempt)  or  half-compre- 
hended and  imperfectly  -  expressed  feelings  of 
wonder,  admiration,  or  awe,  are  either  more  true 
to  fact  or  more  sound  in  foundation  than  those 
of  the  least  scientific  among  his  readers  or  his 
audience.  When  he  does  so  he  resembles  a  mere 
leader  of  a  claque.  "  Hiss  here,  my  friends  ;  ap- 
plaud there !  Three  cheers  more  !  Three  groans  ! 
Nine  times  nine ! "  And  so  forth  ad  nauseam. 
If  your  minds  cannot  relish  simple  food,  they  are 
not  in  that  healthy  state  which  is  required  for 
the  study  of  science.  Healthy  mental  appetite 
needs  only  hunger-sauce.  That  it  always  has  in 
plenty,  and  repletion  is  impossible. 

But  you  must  remember  that  language  cannot 


be  simple  unless  it  be  definite ;  though  sometimes, 
from  the  very  nature  of  the  case,  it  may  be  very 
difficult  to  understand,  even  when  none  but  the 
simplest  terms  are  used.  Multiple  meanings  for 
technical  words  are  totally  foreign  to  the  spirit  of 
true  science.  When  an  altogether  new  idea  has 
to  be  expressed,  a  new  word  must  be  coined  for 
it.  None  but  a  blockhead  could  object  to  a  new 
word  for  a  new  idea.  And  the  habitual  use  of 
non-scientific  words  in  the  teaching  of  science  be- 
trays ignorance,  or  (at  the  very  least)  willful  in- 
definiteness. 

Do  not  fancy,  however,  that  you  will  have 
very  many  new  words  to  learn.  A  month  of 
Botany  or  of  Entomology,  as  these  are  too  often 
taught,  will  introduce  you  to  a  hundred-fold  as 
many  new  and  strange  terms  as  you  will  require 
in  the  whole  course  of  natural  philosophy;  and, 
among  them,  to  many  words  of  a  far  more  "  diffi- 
cult complexion"  than  any  with  which,  solely  for 
the  sake  of  definiteness,  we  find  ourselves  con- 
strained to  deal. 

But  you  will  easily  reconcile  yourselves  to  the 
necessity  for  new  terms  if  you  bear  in  mind  that 
these  not  only  secure  to  us  that  definiteness  with- 
out which  science  is  impossible,  but  at  the  same 
time  enable  us  to  get  rid  of  an  enormous  number 
of  wholly  absurd  stock-phrases  which  you  find  in 
almost  every  journal  you  take  up,  wherever  at 
least  common  physical  phenomena  are  referred  to. 
When  we  are  told  that  a  building  was  "  struck 
by  the  electric  fluid"  we  may  have  some  difficulty 
in  understanding  the  process ;  but  we  cannot  be 
at  all  surprised  to  learn  that  it  was  immediately 
thereafter  "  seized  upon  by  the  devouring  element, 
which  raged  unchecked  till  the  whole  was  reduced 
to  ashes."  I  have  no  fault  to  find  with  the  penny- 
a-liner  who  writes  such  things  as  these :  it  is  all 
directly  in  the  way  of  his  business,  and  he  has 
been  trained  to  it.  Perhaps  his  graphic  descrip- 
tions may  occasically  rise  even  to  poetry.  But 
when  I  meet  with  anything  like  this — and  there 
are  but  too  many  works,  professedly  on  natural 
philosophy,  which  are  full  of  such  things — I  know 
that  I  am  not  dealing  with  science. 

A  wild  and  plaintive  wail  for  definiteness  often 
comes  from  those  writers  and  lecturers  who  are 
habitually  the  most  vague.  A  few  crocodile  tears 
are  shed,  appearances  are  preserved,  and  they 
plunge  at  once  into  greater  mistiness  of  verbosity 
than  before. 

Considering  the  actual  state  of  the  great  ma- 
jority at  least  of  our  schools  and  our  elementary 
text  books,  I  should  prefer  that  you  came  here 
completely  untaught  in    physical    science.     You 


ON   THE  TE ACHING   OF  NATURAL  PHILOSOPHY. 


353 


will  then  have  nothing  to  unlearn.  This  is  an 
absolutely  incalculable  gain.  Unlearning  is  by 
far  the  hardest  task  that  was  ever  imposed  on  a 
student,  or  on  any  one  else.  And  it  is  also  one  of 
those  altogether  avoidable  tasks  which,  when  we 
have  allowed  them  to  become  necessary,  irritate 
us  as  much  as  does  a  perfectly  unprofitable  one 
— such  as  the  prison-crank  or  shot-drill.  And  in 
this  lies  by  far  the  greatest  responsibility  of  all 
writers  and  teachers.  Merely  to  fail  in  giving 
instruction  is  bad  enough,  but  to  give  false  infor- 
mation can  be  the  work  only  of  utter  ignorance 
or  of  carelessness,  amounting,  so  far  as  its  effects 
go  almost  to  diabolical  wickedness. 

Every  one  of  you  who  has  habitually  made 
use  of  his  opportunities  of  observation  must  have 
already  seen  a  great  deal  which  it  will  be  my  duty 
to  help  him  to  understand.  But  I  should  prefer, 
if  possible,  to  have  the  entire  guidance  of  him  in 
helping  him  to  understand  it.  And  I  should 
commence  by  warning  him  in  the  most  formal 
manner  against  the  study  of  books  of  an  essen- 
tially unscientific  character.  By  all  means  let 
him  read  fiction  and  romance  as  a  relaxation  from 
severer  studies  ;  but  let  the  fiction  be  devoted  to 
its  legitimate  object,  human  will  and  human 
action;  don't  let  it  tamper  with  the  truths  of 
science.  From  the  "Arabian  Nights,"  through 
"  Don  Quixote,"  to  Scott,  the  student  has  an  am- 
ple field  of  really  profitable  reading  of  this  kind ; 
but  when  he  wishes  to  study,  let  him  carefully 
\  eschew  the  unprofitable,  or  rather  pernicious,  spe- 
cies of  literary  fiction  which  is  commonly  called 
"  popular  science." 

As  I  have  already  said,  in  this  elementary 
class,  you  will  require  very  little  mathematical 
knowledge,  but  such  knowledge  is  in  itself  one 
of  those  wholly  good  things  of  which  no  one  can 
ever  have  too  much.  And,  moreover,  it  is  one 
of  the  few  things  which  it  is  not  very  easy  to 
teach  badly.  A  really  good  student  will  learn 
mathematics  in  spile  of  the  badness  of  his  teach- 
ing. No  pompous  generalities  can  gloss  over  an 
incorrect  demonstration  ;  at  least  in  the  eyes  of 
any  one  competent  to  understand  a  correct  one. 
Can  it  be  on  this  account  that  there  are  so  many 
more  aspirants  to  the  teaching  of  physics  than  to 
that  of  the  higher  mathematics  ?  If  so,  it  is  a 
very  serious  matter  for  the  progress  of  science  in 
this  country  ;  as  bad,  at  least,  as  was  the  case  in 
those  old  days  when  it  was  supposed  that  a  man 
who  had  notoriously  failed  in  everything  else 
must  have  been  designed  by  Nature  for  the  voca- 
tion of  schoolmaster ;  a  truly  wonderful  applica- 
tion of  teleology. 

59 


But  even  this  queer  kind  of  dominie  was  not 
so  strange  a  monstrosity  as  the  modern  manikins 
of  paper  science,  who  are  always  thrusting  their 
crude  notions  on  the  world ;  the  anatomists  who 
have  never  dissected,  the  astronomers  who  have 
never  used  a  telescope,  or  the  geologists  who  have 
never  carried  a  hammer !  The  old  metaphysical 
pretenders  to  science  had  at  least  some  small 
excuse  for  their  conduct  in  the  fact  that  true 
science  was  all  but  unknown  in  the  days  when 
they  chiefly  flourished,  and  when  their  a  priori 
dogmatism  was  too  generally  looked  upon  as 
science.  But  that  singular  race  is  now  wellnigh 
extinct,  and  in  their  place  have  come  the  paper- 
scientists  (the  barbarous  word  suits  them  exact- 
ly)— those  who,  with  a  strange  mixture  of  half- 
apprehended  fact  and  thoroughly  appreciated 
nonsense,  pour  out  continuous  floods  of  informa- 
tion of  the  most  self-contradictory  character. 
Such  writers  loudly  claim  the  honors  of  discovery 
for  any  little  chance  remark  of  theirs  which  re- 
search may  happen  ultimately  to  substantiate, 
but  keep  quietly  in  the  background  the  mass  of 
unreason  in  which  it  was  originally  enveloped. 
This  species  may  be  compared  to  midges,  perhaps 
occasionally  to  mosquitoes,  continually  pestering 
men  of  science  to  an  extent  altogether  dispropor- 
tionate to  its  own  importance  in  the  scale  of  be- 
ing. Now  and  then  it  buzzes  shrilly  enough  to 
attract  the  attention  of  the  great  sound-hearted 
but  unreasoning  because  non-scientific  public, 
which,  when  it  docs  interfere  with  scientific  mat- 
ters, can  hardly  fail  to  make  a  mess  of  them. 

Think,  for  a  moment,  of  the  late  vivisection 
crusade  or  of  the  anii-vaccinators.  What  absolute 
fiends  in  human  form  were  not  the  whole  race  of 
really  scientific  medical  men  made  out  to  be,  at 
least  in  the  less  cautious  of  these  heated  denun- 
ciations ?  How  many  camels  are  unconsciously 
swallowed  while  these  gnats  are  being  so  carefully 
strained  out,  is  obvious  to  all  who  can  take  a  calm, 
and  therefore  a  not  necessarily  unreasonable,  view 
of  the  matter. 

But  the  victims  of  such  people  are  not  in 
scientific  ranks  alone.  Every  man  who  occupies 
a  prominent  position  of  any  kind  is  considered  as 
a  fit  subject  for  their  attacks.  By  private  letters 
and  public  appeals,  gratuitous  advice  and  remon- 
strance are  perpetually  intruded  upon  him.  If 
he  succeed  in  anything,  it  is  of  course  because 
these  unsought  hints  were  taken  ;  if  he  fail,  it  is 
because  they  were  contemptuously  left  unheeded  ! 

Enough  of  this  necessary  but  unpleasant  di- 
gression. I  know  that  it  is  at  least  quite  as  easy 
to  understand  the  most  recondite  mathematics 


354 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


as  to  follow  the  highest  of  genuine  physical  rea- 
soning ;  and  therefore,  when  I  find  apparently 
profound  physical  speculation  associated  with 
incapacity  for  the  higher  mathematics,  I  feel  con- 
vinced that  the  profundity  cannot  be  real.  One 
very  necessary  remark,  however,  must  be  made 
here:  not  in  qualification,  but  in  explanation,  of 
this  statement.  One  of  the  greatest  of  physical 
reasoners,  Faraday,  professed,  as  most  of  you 
are  aware,  to  know  very  little  of  mathematics. 
But  in  fact  he  was  merely  unacquainted  with  the 
technical  use  of  symbols.  His  modes  of  regard- 
ing physical  problems  were  of  the  highest  order 
of  mathematics.  Many  of  the  very  best  things 
in  the  recent  great  works  on  Electricity  by  Clerk- 
Maxwell  and  Sir  William  Thomson  are  (as  the 
authors  cheerfully  acknowledge)  little  more  than 
well-executed  translations  of  Faraday's  concep- 
tions into  the  conventional  language  of  the  higher 
analysis. 

I  hope  that  the  time  is  not  far  off  when  no 
one  who  is  not  (at  least  in  the  same  sense  as  Far- 
aday) a  genuine  mathematician,  however  he  may 
be  otherwise  qualified,  will  be  looked  upon  as 
even  a  possible  candidate  for  a  chair  of  Natural 
Philosophy  in  any  of  our  universities.  Of  course 
such  a  danger  would  be  out  of  the  question  if  we 
were  to  constantly  bear  in  mind  the  sense  in 
which  Newton  understood  the  term  natural  phi- 
losophy. There  is  nothing  so  well  fitted  as  mathe- 
matics "  to  take  the  nonsense  out  of  a  man,"  as  it 
is  popularly  phrased.  No  doubt  a  man  may  be  an 
excellent  mathematician,  and  yet  have  absolutely 
no  knowledge  of  physics ;  but  he  cannot  possibly 
know  physics  as  it  is  unless  he  be  a  mathema- 
tician. Much  of  the  most  vaunted  laboratory 
work  is  not  nearly  of  so  high  an  order  of  skilled 
labor  as  the  every-day  duty  of  a  good  telegraph- 
clerk,  especially  if  he  be  in  charge  of  a  siphon- 
recorder.  And  many  an  elaborate  memoir  which 
fills  half  a  volume  of  the  transactions  of  some 
learned  society  is  essentially  as  unsightly  and  in- 
convenient an  object  as  the  mounds  of  valueless 
dross  which  encumber  the  access  to  a  mine,  and 
destroy  what  otherwise  might  have  been  an  ex- 
panse of  fruitful  soil. 

There  are  many  ways  in  which  these  mounds 
may  grow.  The  miner  may  be  totally  ignorant  of 
geology,  and  may  thus  have  bored  and  excavated 
in  a  locality  which  he  ought  to  have  known  would 
furnish  nothing.  Or  he  may  have,  by  chance  or 
by  the  advice  of  knowing  friends,  hit  upon  a  really 
good  locality.  Even  then  there  are  many  modes 
of  failure,  two  of  which  are  very  common.  He 
may  fail  to  recognize  the  ore  when  he  has  got  it ; 


and  so  it  goes  at  once  to  the  refuse-heap,  possibly 
to  be  worked  up  again  long  after  by  somebody 
who  has  a  little  more  mineralogical  knowledge — 
as  in  the  recent  case  of  the  mines  of  Laurium. 
Here  he  may  be  useful — at  second-hand.  Or,  if 
it  be  fossils  or  crystals,  for  instance,  for  which  he 
is  seeking,  his  procedure  may  be  so  rough  as  to 
smash  them  irreparably  in  the  act  of  mining. 
This  is  dog  in  the  manger  with  a  vengeance.  But, 
anyhow,  he  generally  manages  to  disgust  every 
other  digger  with  the  particular  locality  which  he 
has  turned  upside  down;  and  thus  exercises  a 
real,  though  essentially  negative,  influence  on  the 
progress  of  mining. 

The  parallel  here  hinted  at  is  a  very  apt  one, 
and  can  be  traced  much  further.  For  there  are 
other  peculiarities  in  the  modes  of  working  adopt- 
ed by  some  miners,  which  have  their  exact  coun- 
terparts in  many  so-called  scientific  inquiries ;  but, 
for  the  present,  we  must  leave  them  unnoticed. 

There  is  but  one  way  of  being  scientific :  but 
the  number  of  ways  of  being  unscientific  is  in- 
finite, and  the  temptations  alluring  us  to  them  are 
numerous  and  strong.  Indolence  is  the  most  in- 
nocent in  appearance,  but  in  fact  probably  the 
most  insidious  and  dangerous  of  all.  By  this  I 
mean,  of  course,  not  mere  idleness,  but  that  easily 
acquired  and  fatal  habit  of  just  stopping  short  of 
the  final  necessary  step  in  each  explanation.  Far- 
aday long  ago  pointed  this  out  in  his  discourse  on 
"  Mental  Inertia."  Many  things  which  are  ex- 
cessively simple  when  thoroughly  understood  are 
by  no  means  easy  to  acquire ;  and  the  student  too 
often  contents  himself  with  that  half  learning 
which,  though  it  costs  considerable  pains,  leaves 
no  permanent  impression  on  the  mind,  while 
"  one  struggle  more  "  would  have  made  the  sub- 
ject his  own  forever  after. 

Science,  like  all  other  learning,  can  be  reached 
only  by  continued  exertion.  And,  even  when  we 
have  done  our  utmost,  we  always  find  that  the 
best  we  have  managed  to  achieve  has  been  merely 
to  avoid  straying  very  far  from  the  one  true  path. 

For,  though  science  is  in  itself  essentially  sim- 
ple, and  is  ever  best  expressed  in  the  simplest 
terms,  it  is  my  duty  to  warn  you  in  the  most  for- 
mal manner  that  the  study  of  it  is  beset  with  dif- 
ficulties, many  of  which  cannot  but  constitute  real 
obstacles  in  the  way  even  of  the  mere  beginner. 
And  this  forms  another  of  the  fatal  objections  to 
the  school-teaching  of  physical  science.  For  there 
is  as  yet  absolutely  no  known  road  to  science  ex- 
cept through  or  over  these  obstacles,  and  a  cer- 
tain amount  of  maturity  of  mind  is  required  to 
overcome  them. 


TEE  LITTLE  EEALTE  OF  LADIES. 


355 


If  any  one  should  deny  this,  you  may  at  once 
conclude  either  that  his  mental  powers  are  of  a 
considerably  higher  order  than  those  of  Newton 
(who  attributed  all  his  success  to  close  and  pa- 
tient study),  or,  what  is  intrinsically  at  least  some- 
what more  probable,  that  he  has  not  yet  traversed 
the  true  path  himself.  But  it  would  be  a  mere 
exercise  of  unprofitable  casuistry  to  inquire  which 
is  the  less  untrustworthy  guide,  he  who  affirms 
that  the  whole  road  is  easy,  or  he  who  is  contin- 


ually pointing  out  fancied  difficulties.  Here,  as 
in  everything  to  which  the  human  mind  or 
hand  can  be  applied,  nothing  of  value  is  to 
be  gained  without  effort;  and  all  that  your 
teacher  can  possibly  do  for  you  is  to  endeavor,  so 
far  as  in  hira  lies,  to  make  sure  that  your  individ- 
ual efforts  shall  be  properly  directed,  and  that  as 
little  energy  as  possible  shall  be  wasted  by  any 
of  you  in  a  necessarily  unprofitable  direction. — 
Contemporary  Review. 


THE  LITTLE  HEALTH  OF  LADIES.1 


By  FRANCES   POWER  COBBE. 


IN  the  following  pages  I  propose  to  speak,  not 
of  any  definite  form  of  disease,  but  of  that 
condition  of  petite  sante,  valetudinarianism,  and 
general  readiness  to  break  down  under  pressure, 
wherein  a  sadly  large  proportion  of  women  of 
the  higher  classes  pass  their  years.  It  is  un- 
necessary, I  think,  to  adduce  any  evidence  of  the 
prevalence  of  this  semi-invalidism  among  ladies 
in  England,  or  its  still  greater  frequency  abroad, 
and  (emphatically)  in  America.  In  a  very  mod- 
erate circle  of  acquaintance,  every  one  knows  a 
score  of  cases  of  it,  of  that  confirmed  kind  which 
has  scarcely  any  analogue  in  the  physical  condi- 
tion of  men.  If  we  take  a  state  of  perfect  sound- 
ness to  be  represented  by  100,  the  health  of  few 
ladies  will  be  found  to  rise  above  80  or  90 — that 
of  the  majority  will  be,  I  fear,  about  75 — and  a 
large  contingent,  with  which  we  are  now  specially 
concerned,  about  50  or  60.  In  short,  the  health 
of  women  of  the  upper  class  is,  I  think,  unques- 
tionably far  below  par.  Whatever  light  their 
burners  were  calculated  to  shed  on  the  world,  the 
gas  is  half  turned  down,  and  cannot  afford  any- 
thing beyond  a  feeble  glimmer. 

Of  the  wide-extending  wretchedness  entailed 
by  this  petite  sante  of  ladies  it  would  be  easy  to 
speak  for  hours.  There  are  the  husbands  whose 
homes  are  made  miserable  by  unsettled  habits, 
irregular  hours,  a  cheerless  and  depressed,  or 
else,  perhaps,  an  hysterically  excitable  or  peevish 
companion  ;  the  maximum  of  expenditure  in  their 
households,  with  the  minimum  of  enjoyment.     I 

1  To  avoid  misapprehension,  it  may  be  well  to  say 
that  this  word  is  here  used  in  its  older  seuse  of  the 
"  Loaf-givers."  The  ill-health  of  women  who  are  loaf- 
winners  ia,  alas  I  another  and  still  more  sorrowful 
subject. 


think  men,  in  such  cases,  are  most  sincerely  to 
be  pitied,  and  I  earnestly  wish  that  the  moans 
which  they,  and  also  their  mothers  and  sisters, 
not  unnaturally  spend  over  their  hard  lot,  could 
be  turned  into  short,  sharp  words,  resolutely  pro- 
viding that  their  daughters  should  not  adopt  the 
unhealthful  habits  and  fall  into  the  same  miser- 
able state,  perpetuating  the  evil  from  generation 
to  generation. 

As  to  the  poor  children  of  a  feeble  mother, 
their  case  is  even  worse  than  that  of  the  husband, 
as  any  one  may  judge  who  sees  how  delightful 
and  blessed  a  thing  it  is  for  a  mother  to  be  the 
real,  cheerful,  energetic  companion  of  her  sons 
and  daughters.  Not  only  is  all  this  lost,  but  the 
presence  of  a  nervous,  exigeante  invalid  in  the 
dwelling-room  of  the  family  is  a  perpetual  damper 
on  the  healthful  spirits  of  the  children ;  and,  in 
the  case  of  the  girls,  the  mother's  demands  on 
their  attention  (if  she  be  not  a  miracle  of  un- 
selfishness) often  break  up  their  whole  time  for 
study  into  fragments  too  small  to  be  of  practical 
use.  The  desultoriness  of  a  home  wherein  the 
mistress  spends  half  the  day  in  bed  is  ruinous  to 
the  young,  unless  a  most  unusual  degree  of  care 
be  taken  to  secure  them  from  its  ill  effects. 

Pitiable,  however,  as  are  the  conditions  of  the 
husband  and  children  of  the  Lady  of  Little  Health, 
her  own  lot — if  she  be  not  a  mere  malingerer — is 
surely  still  more  deserving  of  sympathy.  She 
loses,  to  begin  with,  all  the  keen  happiness  of 
health,  the  inexplicable,  indefinable  bien-etre  of 
natural  vigor — 

"  the  joy  of  morning's  active  zeal, 
The  calm  delight,  blessing  and  West, 
To  sink  at  night  to  dreamless  rest." 


356 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


She  knows  nothing  of  the  glorious  freedom  of  the 
hills  and  woods  and  rocky  shore ;  she  misses  all 
the  relief  which  lonely  rides  and  walks  afford 
from  those  petty  worries  which,  like  the  wasps 
and  ants  in  the  dreadful  old  Persian  torture,  are 
sure  to  fasten  on  the  poor  wretch  pinned  to  the 
ground.  "  To  be  weak  is  to  be  miserable." 
There  is  no  truer  maxim ;  and,  when  we  reflect 
how  many  women  are  weak — not  merely  in  com- 
parison to  men,  which  is  nothing  to  the  purpose, 
but  weak  absolutely  and  judged  by  the  standard 
of  Nature — we  have  before  us  a  vast,  low-lying 
field  of  dull  wretchedness  profoundly  mournful  to 
contemplate.  Out  of  it,  what  evil  vapors  of  mor- 
bid feelings,  jealousies,  suspicions,  hysterical  pas- 
sions, religious  terrors,  melancholy,  and  even  in- 
sanity, are  generated,  who  shall  estimate  ?  To 
preserve  the  mens  Sana  otherwhere  than  in  the 
corpore  sano  is  a  task  of  almost  superhuman  wis- 
dom and  conscientiousness.  The  marvel  is,  not 
that  so  many  fail,  as  that  a  few  succeed  in  per- 
forming it. 

Be  it  noted,  further,  that  it  is  the  chronic 
petite  sante  much  more  than  any  positive  disease, 
which  is  morally  so  injurious  to  the  sufferer  and 
all  around  her.  I  have  heard  one  whose  long 
years  of  pain  seem  each  to  have  lifted  her  nearer 
to  heaven  remark  with  a  smile,  that  "  actual  pain 
is  always,  in  a  sense,  entertaining  /."  She  in- 
tended, no  doubt,  to  say  that  it  tasked  the  powers 
of  will  and  religious  trust  to  bear  it  firmly.  Out 
of  such  contests  and  such  triumphs  over  either 
bodily  or  mental  suffering,  springs  (as  we  all  rec- 
ognize) that  which  is  most  precious  in  human 
experience,  the  gold  purified  in  the  furnace,  the 
wheat  thrashed#with  the  flail : 

"  Only  upon  some  crops  of  pain  and  woe 
God's  eon  may  lie, 
Each  soul  redeemed  from  self  and  ain  must  know 
Its  Calvary." 

But  the  high  moral  results  of  positive  pain  and 
danger  seem  unattainable  by  such  a  mere  nega- 
tion of  health  as  we  are  considering.  The  sun- 
shine is  good  and  the  storm  is  good,  but  the  gray, 
dull  drizzle  of  November — how  is  any  one  to  gain 
much  from  it  ?  Some  beautiful  souls  do  so,  no 
doubt ;  but  far  more  often  chronic  petite  sante 
leads  to  self-indulgence ;  and  self-indulgence  to 
selfishness  ;  and  selfishness  (invariably)  to  deceit 
and  affectation,  till  the  whole  character  crumbles 
to  pieces  with  dry  rot. 

Now,  I  must  say  at  once  that  I  consider  the 
frequency  of  this  valetudinarianism  among  women 
to  be  a  monstrous  state  of  things,  totally  opposed 
to  any  conception  I  can  form  of  the  intentions  of 


Providence  or  the  laws  of  beneficent  Nature  ;  and 
the  contented  way  in  which  it  is  accepted,  as  if 
it  were  a  matter  of  course,  by  society  and  the 
poor  sufferers  themselves,  and  even  by  such  well- 
meaning  friends  of  women  as  M.  Michelet,  strikes 
me  as  both  absurd  and  deplorable.  That  the 
Creator  should  have  planned  a  whole  sex  of  pa- 
tients— that  the  normal  condition  of  the  female 
of  the  human  species  should  be  to  have  legs 
which  walk  not,  and  brains  which  can  only  work 
on  pain  of  disturbing  the  rest  of  the  ill-adjusted 
machine — this  is  to  me  simply  incredible.  The 
theory  would  seem  to  have  been  suggested  by  a 
study,  not  of  the  woman's  body,  framed  by  the 
great  Maker's  wisdom,  but  from  that  of  her  silly 
clothes  sent  home  from  the  milliner,  with  tags, 
and  buttons,  and  flounces,  meant  for  show,  not 
use ;  and  a  feather  and  an  artificial  flower  by 
way  of  a  head-gear. 

Nay,  my  skepticism  goes  further,  even  into 
the  stronghold  of  the  enemy.  I  do  not  believe 
that  even  the  holy  claims  of  motherhood  ought 
to  involve — or,  if  women's  lives  were  better  regu- 
lated, zvould  involve — so  often  as  they  do,  a  state 
of  invalidism  for  the  larger  part  of  married  life  ; 
or  that  a  woman  ought  to  be  disabled  from  per- 
forming the  supreme  moral  and  intellectual  duties 
of  a  parent  toward  her  first-born  children,  when 
she  fulfills  the  lower  physical  part  of  her  sacred 
office  toward  those  who  come  afterward.  Were 
this  to  be  inevitably  the  case,  I  do  not  see  how  a 
woman  who  has  undertaken  the  tremendous  re- 
sponsibilities of  a  mother  toward  the  opening 
soul  of  a  child  could  venture  to  burden  herself 
with  fresh  duties  which  will  incapacitate  her 
from  performing  them  with  all  her  heart  and 
soul,  and  strength. 

One  of  the  exasperating  things  about  this 
evil  of  female  valetudinarianism  is,  that  the 
women  who  are  its  victims  are  precisely  the 
human  beings  who,  of  our  whole  mortal  race, 
seem  naturally  most  exempt  from  physical  want 
or  danger,  and  ought  to  have  enjoyed  immunity 
from  disease  or  pain  of  any  kind.  Such  ladies 
have  probably  never  from  their  birth  been  ex- 
posed to  hardship,  or  toil,  or  ill-ventilation,  or 
bad  or  scanty  food,  fuel,  or  raiment.  They  have 
fed  on  the  fatness  of  the  earth,  and  been  clothed 
in  purple  and  fine  linen.  They  are  the  true 
lotos-eaters  whom  the  material  cares  of  the  world 
reach  not.     They 

"  live  and  lie  reclined," 
in  a  land  where  (in  a  very  literal  sense) 
"  It  seemet.h  always  afternoon," 
and  where  they  find  a  certain  soothing,  assthetic 


THE  LITTLE  HEALTH  OF  LADIES. 


357 


emotion  in  reading  in  novels  the  doleful  tale  of 
wrong  of  the  "  ill-used  race  of  men  that  cleave 
the  soil  "  —  without  dreaming  of  going  down 
among  them  to  make  that  tale  less  dismal. 

That  these  women,  these  Epicurean  goddesses 
of  the  drawing-room,  should  be  so  often  the  poor, 
fragile,  suffering  creatures  we  behold  them,  un- 
able to  perform  half  the  duties  of  life,  or  taste  a 
third  part  of  its  pleasures — this  is  a  pure  perver- 
sity of  things  which  ought  surely  to  provoke  re- 
volt. 

What  are  the  causes  of  the  valetudinarianism 
of  ladies  ? 

First,  of  course,  there  is  a  considerable  class 
of  inherited  mischief,  feeble  constitutions,  con- 
genital tendencies  to  chronic  troubles,  gout,  dys- 
pepsia, and  so  on,  due  to  the  errors  of  either 
parent,  or  to  their  evil  heritage  of  the  same.  All 
that  need  be  said  here  on  this  topic  is  that  such 
cases  must  necessarily  go  on  multiplying  ad  in- 
finitum till  mothers  regain  the  vigor  which  alone 
permits  them  to  transmit  a  healthy  constitution 
to  their  children. 

Next  to  hereditary  petite  sante,  we  come  to 
cases  where  the  habits  of  the  sufferers  themselves 
are  the  cause  of  the  mischief;  and  these  are  of 
two  kinds — one  resulting  from  what  is  good  and 
unselfish,  and  one  from  what  is  bad  and  frivolous, 
in  the  disposition  of  women. 

Women  are  generally  prudent  enough  about 
their  money;  that  is,  of  their  own  money,  not 
that  of  their  husbands.  I  have  heard  an  ob- 
servant man  remark  that  he  never  knew  a  well- 
conducted  woman  who,  of  her  own  fault,  became 
bankrupt.  But,  as  regards  their  health,  the  very 
best  of  women  have  a  propensity  to  live  on  their 
capital.  Their  nervous  energy,  stimulated  either 
by  conscience  or  affection  or  intellectual  inter- 
ests, suffices  to  enable  them  to  postpone  perpetu- 
ally the  calls  of  their  bodies  for  food,  sleep,  or 
exercise.  They  draw  large  drafts  on  their  physi- 
cal strength,  and  fail  to  lodge  corresponding  sums 
of  restoring  rest  and  nutriment.  Their  physical 
instincts  are  not  imperious,  like  those  of  men ; 
and  they  habitually  disregard  them  when  they 
make  themselves  felt,  till  poor  Nature,  continually 
snubbed  when  she  makes  hor  modest  requests, 
ceases  to  press  for  daily  settlement  of  her  little 
bill,  and  reserves  herself  to  put  in  an  execution 
by-and-by.  The  vegetative  and  the  spiritual  part 
of  these  women  nourish  well  enough ;  but  (as 
Kingsley's  Old  Sandy  says)  "  There  is  a  lack  of 
healthy  animalism "  between  the  two.  They 
seem  to  consider  themselves  as  fire-flies  issuing 


out  of  a  rose,  flitting  hither  and  thither  to  brighten 
the  world,  not  creatures  of  flesh  and  blood,  need- 
ing to  go  to  bed  and  eat  roast- mutton. 

If  we  study  the  condition  of  Mr.  John  Bull  in 
his  robust  middle  age,  we  shall  notice  that  for 
forty  years,  with  few  interruptions,  he  has  en- 
joyed those  "  reg'lar  meals,"  on  which  Tennyson's 
Northern  Farmer  lays  such  stress  as  the  founda- 
tion of  general  stability  of  character.  He  has 
also  walked,  ridden,  rowed,  skated,  smoked  his 
cigar,  and  gone  to  his  bed  (as  nearly  as  circum- 
stances permitted)  when  the  inclination  seized 
him.  If  now  and  again  he  has  omitted  to  gratify 
his  instincts,  it  has  been  for  a  business-like  reason, 
and  not  merely  because  somebody  did  not  hap- 
pen to  wish  to  do  the  same  thing  at  the  same 
time.  He  has  not  often  waited  for  an  hour,  half- 
fainting  for  want  of  his  breakfast,  from  motives 
of  mere  domestic  courtesy  ;  nor  sat  moped  in  a 
hot  room  through  a  long,  bright  day  to  keep  some 
old  person  company ;  nor  resolved  his  dinner 
into  tea  and  muffins  because  he  was  alone  and  it 
was  not  worth  while  to  trouble  the  servants ;  nor 
sat  up  cold  and  weary  till  three  in  the  morning 
to  hear  about  a  parliamentary  debate  wherein  he 
took  only  a  vicarious  interest.  At  the  end  of 
the  forty  years  of  wholesome  indulgence,  the 
man's  instincts  are  more  imperious  and  plain- 
spoken  than  ever,  and,  as  a  reward  for  his  obe- 
dience to  them,  his  organs  perform  their  respec- 
tive offices  with  alacrity,  to  the  great  benefit  of 
himself  and  of  all  dependent  upon  him.  Pretty 
nearly  the  reverse  of  this  has  happened  in  the 
case  of  Mrs.  Bull.  Almost  her  first  lesson  in 
childhood  was  to  check,  control,  and  conceal  her 
wants  and  miseries ;  and  by  the  time  she  has 
grown  up  she  has  acquired  the  habit  of  postpon- 
ing them,  as  a  matter  of  course,  to  the  smallest 
convenience  of  A,  B,  C,  and  D,  father,  mother, 
brothers,  even  servants,  whom  she  will  not  "  put 
out  of  their  way  "  for  herself,  though  no  one 
would  so  much  as  think  whether  they  had  a  way 
to  be  put  out  of,  for  her  brothers.  The  more 
strain  there  is  upon  her  strength,  by  sickness  in 
the  house  or  any  misfortune,  the  more  completely 
she  effaces  and  forgets  herself  and  her  physical 
wants,  recklessly  relinquishing  sleep  and  neglect- 
ing food.  When  the  pressure  is  relieved,  and 
the  nervous  tension  which  supported  her  relaxed, 
the  woman  breaks  down,  as  a  matter  of  course, 
perhaps  never  to  enjoy  health  again. 

It  must  be  borne  in  mind,  also,  in  estimating 
a  woman's  chances  of  health,  that,  if  she  neglect 
to  think  of  herself,  there  is  seldom  anybody  to 
do  for  her  what  she  does  for  her  husband.     No- 


358 


TUB  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


body  reminds  her  to  change  her  boots  when  they 
are  damp ;  nobody  jogs  her  memory  as  to  the 
unwholesomeness  of  this  or  that  beverage  or 
comestible,  or  gives  her  the  little  cossetings 
which  so  often  ward  off  colds  and  similar  petty 
ills.  Unless  the  woman  live  with  a  sister  or 
friend,  it  must  be  scored  one  against  her  chances 
as  compared  to  a  man,  that  she  has  no  wife. 

There  must,  of  course,  be  set  against  all  this 
the  two  facts  that  the  imperiousness  of  men's 
wishes  and  wants  leads  them  often  not  only  to  do 
such  wholesome  things  as  those  of  which  we  have 
been  speaking,  but  into  sundry  unwholesome  ex- 
cesses besides,  for  which  in  due  time  they  pay  by 
various  diseases,  from  gout  up  to  delirium  tremens. 
And  correspondingly,  women's  comparative  in- 
difference to  the  pleasures  of  the  table  keeps 
them  clear  of  the  ills  to  which  gormandizing  and 
bibulous  flesh  is  heir.  We  all  know  scores  of  es- 
timable gentlemen  who  can  scarcely  be  prevailed 
on,  by  the  prayers  and  tears  of  their  wives,  to  re- 
frain from  drinking  a  glass  of  beer  or  port  wine 
which  will  in  all  probability  entail  a  fit  of  the  gout 
next  day ;  but  in  my  whole  life  I  have  never  known 
a  woman  who  consciously  ate  or  drank  things  likely 
to  make  her  ill,  save  one  mild  and  sweet  old  lady, 
whose  predilection  for  buttered  toast  overcame 
every  motive  of  prudence,  and,  alas !  even  of  re- 
ligion, which  I  have  reason  to  believe  she  endeav- 
ored to  bring  to  bear  against  the  soft  temptation. 
But  for  the  purpose  we  have  now  in  hand,  namely, 
that  of  tracing  the  origin,  not  of  acute  diseases, 
but  of  general  petite  sante,  this  aspect  of  the  sub- 
ject is  unimportant.  It  is  precisely  petite  sante 
which  comes  of  the  perpetual  neglect  of  Nature's 
hints — that  she  wants  air,  bread,  meat,  fruit,  tea, 
wine,  sleep,  a  scamper  or  a  canter.  It  is  definite 
disease  which  results  from  over-exercise,  over- 
feeding, and  over-drinking. 

Would  it  not  be  possible,  I  venture  to  ask,  to 
cut  off  this  source  of  feminine  invalidism,  at  all 
events,  by  a  somewhat  more  respectful  attention 
to  the  calls  of  healthful  instinct?  I  am  very  far 
from  wishing  that  women  should  grow  more  self- 
ish, or  less  tenderly  regardful  of  the  convenience 
and  pleasure  of  those  around  them.  Even  sound 
health  of  body — immeasurable  blessing  that  it  is — 
would  be  purchased  too  dearly  if  this  should  hap- 
pen. But  there  ought  surely  to  be  an  adequate 
reason,  not  a  mere  excuse  of  whim  and  caprice  of 
her  own  or  of  anybody  else,  why  a  woman  should 
do  herself  hurt  or  incapacitate  herself  for  future 
usefulness. 

Another  source  of  petite  sante,  I  fear,  may  be 


found  resulting  from  a  lingering  survival  among 
us  of  the  idiotic  notion  that  there  is  something 
peculiarly  "lady-like"  in  invalidism,  pallor,  small 
appetite,  and  a  languid  mode  of  speech  and  man- 
ners. The  very  word  "  delicacy,"  properly  a  term 
of  praise,  being  applied  vulgarly  to  a  valetudinary 
condition,  is  evidence  that  the  impression  of  the 
"  dandies  "  of  sixty  years  ago,  that  refinement  and 
sickliness  were  convertible  terms,  is  not  yet  wholly 
exploded.  "  Tremaine  "  thought  morbidezza — a 
" charming  morbidezza'1'' — the  choicest  epithet  he 
could  apply  to  the  cheek  of  beauty ;  and  the  her- 
oines in  all  the  other  fashionable  novels  of  the 
period  drank  hartshorn  almost  daily,  and  died  of 
broken  hearts,  while  the  pious  young  Protestants 
who  converted  Roman  Catholics  in  the  religious 
tales,  uniformly  perished  of  consumption.  By- 
ron's admiring  biographer  records  how,  at  a  large 
dinner-party,  he  refused  all  viands  except  pota- 
toes and  vinegar  (horrid  combination  !),  and  then 
retired  to  an  eating-house  to  assuage  with  a  beef- 
steak those  cravings  which  even  Childe  Harold 
could  not  silence  with  "chameleon's  food"  of 
"  light  and  air." 

We  have  advanced  indeed  somewhat  beyond 
this  wretched  affectation  in  our  day,  and  young 
ladies  are  not  required  by  les  bienseances  to  exhibit 
at  table  the  public  habits  of  a  ghoul.  In  a  few 
cases,  perhaps,  we  may  opine  that  women  have 
gone  to  the  opposite  extreme,  and  both  eat  and 
drink  more  than  is  desirable.  But  yet  we  are 
obviously  not  wholly  free  from  the  "  delicacy  " 
delusion.  We  are  not  so  clear  as  we  ought  to  be 
on  the  point  that,  though  beauty  includes  other 
elements,  yet  health  is  its  sine  qua  non,  and  that  no 
statuesque  nobility  of  form  (much  less  a  pinched 
waist  and  a  painted  face)  can  constitute  a  beauti- 
ful living  human  creature,  who  lacks  the  tokens 
of  health — clear  eyes,  clear  skin,  rich  hair,  good 
teeth,  a  cool,  soft  hand,  a  breath  like  a  bunch  of 
cowslips,  and  a  free  and  joyous  carriage  of  the 
head  and  limbs. 

Have  we  not,  in  the  senseless  admiration  of 
feebleness  and  pallor  (to  obtain  which  a  fashion- 
able lady  not  long  ago  literally  bled  herself  by 
degrees  to  death),  an  illustration  of  the  curious 
fact  pointed  out  by  Miss  de  Rothschild  in  her  ad- 
mirable essay  on  the  "  Hebrew  Woman," 1  namely, 
that  the  homage  which  Christianity  won  for  weak- 
ness has  tempted  women  to  cultivate  weakness  to 
secure  the  homage  ?  Just  as  Christian  charity 
to  the  poor  has  fostered  mendicancy,  so  has  chiv- 
alrous tenderness  to  the  feeble  inspired  a  whole 
sex  with  the  fatal  ambition  of  becoming  feeble 
1  New  Quarterly  Magazine,  No.  X. 


THE  LITTLE  HEALTH  OF  LADIES. 


359 


(or  of  simulating  feebleness)  to  obtain  the  tender- 
ness. The  misconstruction  and  abuse  of  the  be- 
atitudes of  the  gospel,  as  manifested  in  the  rise 
of  the  mendicant  order  of  friars,  is  notoriously  a 
sad  chapter  of  history.  I  do  not  think  it  a  less 
sorrowful  one  that  an  analogous  abuse  has  led  to  a 
sjrt  of  canonization  of  bodily  and  mental  feeble- 
ness, cowardice,  and  helplessness,  among  women. 
Can  we  question  which  is  the  nobler  ideal — the 
modern,  nervous,  pallid,  tight-laced,  fine  Lady  of 
Little  Health — or  the  "  valiant  woman  "  (as  the 
Vulgate  calls  her)  of  whom  King  Lemuel  saith, 
"  She  girdeth  her  loins  with  strength,  and  strength- 
ened her  arms.  Strength  and  honor  are  her  cloth- 
ing ;  and  she  shall  rejoice  in  time  to  come  ?  " : 

We  have  now  touched  on  the  subject  of  dress, 
which  plays  so  important  a  part  in  the  health  of 
women  that  it  must  here  be  treated  somewhat  at 
length.  A  little  girl  in  a  London  Sunday-school, 
being  asked  by  a  visitor  "  why  God  made  the 
flowers  of  the  field  ?  "  replied  (not  unconscious 
of  the  gorgeous  paper  poppy  in  her  own  bonnet), 
"  Please,  ma'am,  I  suppose  for  patterns  for  arti- 
ficial flowers."  One  might  anticipate  some  an- 
swer scarcely  less  wide  of  the  mark  than  that  of 
this  sophisticated  little  damsel,  were  the  question 
to  be  put  to  not  a  few  grown  women,  "  Why  do 
you  wear  clothes  ?  "  Their  most  natural  response 
would  obviously  be,  "To  be  in  the  fashion."  When 
we  have  visibly  wandered  a  long  way  from  the 
path  of  reason,  the  best  thing  we  can  do  is  to 
look  back  to  the  starting-point  and  find  out,  if 
possible,  where  we  have  diverged.  In  the  mat- 
ter of  raiment  that  starting-point  is  not  hard  to 
find — indeed,  to  mark  it  is  only  to  state  a  series 
of  truisms. 

Human  clothing  has  three  raisons  d'etre,  which, 
in  order  of  precedence,  are  these: 
I.  Health. 
II.  Decency. 

III.  Beauty. 

Health  demands — 

1.  Maintenance  of  proper  temperature  of  the 
body  by  exclusion  of  excessive  heat  and  cold. 

2.  Protection  from  injury  by  rain,  snow,  dust, 
dirt,  stones  to  the  feet,  insects,  etc. 

3.  Preservation  of  liberty  of  action  to  all  the 
organs  of  the  body  and  freedom  from  pressure. 

Decency  demands — 

4.  Concealment  of  some  portions  of  the  hu- 
man frame. 

6.  Distinction  between  the  habiliments  of  men 
and  women  sufficient  to  avert  mistake. 

1  Proverbs  xxxi. 


6.  Fitness  to  the  age  and  character  of  the 
wearer. 

7.  Concealment,  when  possible,  of  any  dis- 
gusting personal  defect. 

Beauty  demands — 

8.  Truthfulness.  The  dress  must  be  genuine 
throughout,  without  any  false  pads,  false  hair,  or 
false  anything. 

9.  Graceful  forms  of  drapery. 

10.  Harmonious  colors. 

11.  Such  moderate  consistency  with  prevail- 
ing modes  of  dress  as  shall  produce  the  impres- 
sion of  sociability  and  suavity,  and  avoid  that  of 
self-assertion. 

12.  Individuality:  the  dress  suiting  the  wear- 
er as  if  it  were  an  outer  body  belonging  to  the 
same  soul. 

(Be  it  noted  that  the  fulfillment  of  this  highest 
condition  of  tasteful  dress  necessarily  limits  the 
number  of  costumes  which  each  person  should 
wear  on  similar  occasions.  No  one  body  can  be 
adorned  in  several  equally  suitable  suits  of  clothes, 
any  more  than  one  soul  could  be  fittingly  housed 
in  twenty  different  bodies.) 

Glancing  back  over  the  above  table,  we  find 
this  curious  fact :  The  dress  of  men  in  all  Western 
nations  meets  fairly  all  the  conditions  of  health 
and  decency,  and  fails  only  on  the  side  of  beauty. 
The  dress  of  iwmen,  on  the  contrary,  ever  variable 
as  it  is,  persistently  misses  the  conditions  of 
health  ;  frequently  violates  the  rules  of  decency  ; 
instead  of  securing  beauty,  at  which  it  aims  first 
instead  of  last,  achieves,  usually,  ugliness. 

It  is  to  be  remembered  for  our  consolation 
and  encouragement  that  men  have  arrived  at 
their  present  good  sense  in  dress  only  within 
two  or  three  generations.  A  hundred  years  ago 
the  lords  of  creation  set  beauty  above  health  or 
convenience,  just  as  the  ladies  do  now,  and  pea- 
cocked about  in  their  peach  blossom  coats  and 
embroidered  waistcoats,  surmounted  by  wigs,  for 
whose  stupendous  discomfort  even  a  seat  on  the 
judicial  beuch  can  scarcely  reconcile  the  modern 
Englishman.  Now,  when  the  men  of  every  Eu- 
ropean nation  have  abjured  such  fantastic  ap- 
parel, we  naturally  ask,  Why  have  not  the  women 
followed  their  example  ?  Why  is  the  husband, 
father,  and  brother,  habited  like  a  being  who  has 
serious  interests  in  life,  and  knows  that  his  per- 
sonal dignity  would  be  forfeited  were  he  to  dress 
himself  in  party-colored,  be-ribboned  garments, 
and  why  is  the  wife,  mother,  or  sister,  bedizened 
like  a  macaw,  challenging  every  observer  to  note 
how  much  of  her  time,  thoughts,  and  money,  must 


360 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


have  been  spent  on  this  futile  object  ?  The  an- 
swer is  one  which  it  is  not  pleasant  to  make,  dis- 
creditable as  it  is  to  both  sexes.  The  women 
who  set  the  fashions  dress  for  admiration ;  and 
men  like  women  who  dress  to  be  admired ;  and 
the  admiration  given  and  received  is  a  very  poor 
and  unworthy  admiration,  not  much  better  than 
a  salmon  gives  to  a  glittering  artificial  fly,  and  hav- 
ing very  little  more  to  do  with  any  real  aesthetic 
gratification — as  is  proved  too  clearly  by  the 
thoroughly  un-beautiful  devices  to  which  fashion 
has  recourse.  It  is  the  well-got-ttp  woman  (to 
borrow  a  very  expressive  phrase),  not  the  really 
well-dressed  woman,  who  receives  by  far  the 
largest  share  of  homage. 

And  now  let  us  see  how  all  this  concerns  the 
health  of  women — how  much  of  their  petite  sante 
is  due  to  their  general  neglect  to  make  health  the 
first  object  of  dress,  or  even  an  object  at  all  com- 
pared to  fashion. 

Tight-lacing  among  habits  resembles  envy 
among  the  passions.  We  take  pride  in  all  the 
rest,  even  the  idlest  and  worst,  but  tight-lacing 
and  an  envious  heart  are  things  to  which  no  one 
ever  confesses.  A  small  waist,  I  suppose,  is  un- 
derstood to  belong  to  that  order  of  virtues  which 
Aristotle  decides  ought  to  be  natural  and  not  ac- 
quired, and  the  most  miserable  girl  who  spends 
her  days  in  a  machine  more  cruel  (because  more 
slowly  murderous)  than  the  old  "  Maiden  "  of  Se- 
ville, yet  always  assures  us,  smiling  through  her 
martyrdom,  that  her  clothes  are  "  really  hanging 
about  her  ! "  It  would  be  waste  of  time  to  dwell 
on  this  supreme  folly.  Mrs.  Haweis,  in  her  very 
noteworthy  new  book,  "  The  Art  of  Beauty,"  has 
given  some  exceedingly  useful  diagrams,  showing 
the  effects  of  the  practice  on  the  internal  organs 
and  skeleton1 — diagrams  which  I  earnestly  recom- 

1  Pp.  49  and  50.  The  preceding  pages  on  what  I 
conceive  to  be  the  raisons  d'etre  of  dress  were  written 
before  I  had  seen  this  exceedingly  clever,  brilliant, 
and  learned  little  book.  While  giving  the  authoress 
thanks  for  her  most  sensible  reprobation  of  many 
senseless  fashions,  and  not  presuming  for  a  moment 
to  question  her  judgment  in  the  matters  of  taste,  on 
which  she  speaks  with  authority,  I  must  here  enter 
my  humble  but  earnest  protest  against  the  over-im- 
portance which,  I  think,  she  is  inclined  to  attach  to 
the  art  of  dress,  among  the  pursuits  of  women  ;  and 
(most  emphatically)  against  her  readiness  to  condone 
—if  it  be  only  committed  in  moderation— the  offense 
against  both  truth  and  cleanliness  of  wearing  false 
\\a.\r  (see  page  173).  It  seems  to  me  quite  clear  that 
hare  the  whole  principle  of  honesty  in  attire  is  sacri- 
ficed. If  no  woman  would  wish  it  to  be  known  that 
the  hair  on  her  head  never  grew  there,  but  on  the 
scalp  of  some  poor  French  girl,  so  poor  as  to  be 
bribed  to  part  with  it,  or  some  unkempt  Russian  peas- 


mend  to  the  study  of  ladies  who  may  feel  a  "  call  " 
to  perform  this  sort  of  English  suttee  for  a  living 
husband.  Mrs.  Haweis  says  that  sensible  men  do 
not  love  wasps,  and  have  expressed  to  her  their 
"  overallishness  "  when  they  behold  them.  Con- 
sidering how  effectively  they  have  hitherto  man- 
aged to  display  their  disapproval  whenever  women 
have  attempted  to  introduce  rational  attire,  it  is 
a  pity,  I  think,  that  they  do  not  "pronounce"  a 
little  more  distinctly  against  this  literally  mortal 
folly. 

I  have  already  alluded  to  the  brain-heating 
chignons,  just  gone  out  of  fashion  after  a  long 
reign  of  mischief;  and  along  with  them  should  be 
classed  the  bonnets  which  expose  the  forehead  to 
the  cold,  while  the  back  of  the  head  is  stewed 
under  its  cushion  of  false  hair,  and  which  have 
the  still  more  serious  disadvantage  of  affording  no 
shelter  to  the  eyes.  To  women  to  whom  the 
glare  of  the  sun  is  permanently  hurtful  to  the 
sight,  the  necessity  of  wearing  these  bonnets  on 
pain  of  appearing  singular,  or  affectedly  youthful, 
constitutes  almost  a  valid  reason  against  living  in 
London.  And  the  remedy,  forsooth,  is  to  hold 
up  perpetually  a  parasol ! — a  yet  further  incum- 
brance to  add  to  the  care  of  the  draggling  train, 
so  that  both  arms  may  be  occupied  during  a  whole 
walk,  and  of  course  all  natural  ease  of  motion 
rendered  impossible.  In  this,  as  in  a  dozen  other 
silly  fashions,  the  women  who  have  serious  con- 
cerns in  life  are  hampered  by  the  practice  of  those 
who  think  of  nothing  but  exhibiting  their  persons  ; 
and  ladies  of  limited  fortune,  who  live  in  small 
rooms  and  go  about  the  streets  on  foot  or  in  cabs, 
are  compelled  (if  they  wish  to  avoid  being  pointed 
at)  to  adopt  modes  of  dress  whose  sole  raison 
d'etre  is  that  they  suit  wealthy  grandes  dames  who 
lounge  in  their  barouches  or  display  their  trains 
over  the  carpets  of  forty-feet-long  drawing-rooms. 
What  snobbery  all  this  implies  in  our  whole  so- 
cial structure  !  Some  ten  millions  of  women  dress, 
as  nearly  as  they  can  afford,  in  the  style  fit  at  the 
most  for  five  thousand ! 

The  practice  of  wearing  decolletee  dresses,  sin- 
ning equally  as  it  does  against  health  and  decen- 


ant  who  rarely  used  a  comb  in  her  life— then  the  wear- 
ing of  that  false  hair  is  an  act  of  deception,  and  in  so 
far,  I  hold,  both  morally  and  even  aesthetically  wrong. 
I  cannot  conceive  why  the  lamp  of  truth,  which  we 
are  now  perpetually  told  must  shine  on  our  architect- 
ure and  furniture,  so  that  nothing  must  appear  stone 
that  is  iron,  and  so  on  ad  infinitum,  should  not  shine 
equally  lucidly  over  the  dress  of  women.  Where  no 
deception  is  meant,  and  where  the  object  is  to  supply  a 
want,  not  to  forge  a  claim  to  beauty— e.g.,  in  the  case 
of  artificial  teeth— there  is  no  harm  involved. 


THE  LITTLE  HEALTH  OF  LADIES. 


361 


cy,  seems  to  be  gradually  receding — from  ordi- 
nary dinners,  where  it  was  universal  twenty  years 
ago,  to  special  occasions,  balls,  and  court  draw- 
ing-rooms. But  it  dies  hard,  and  it  may  kill  a 
good  many  poor  creatures  yet,  and  entail  on  others 
the  life-long  bad  health  so  naturally  resulting 
from  the  exposure  of  a  Targe  surface  of  the  skin 
to  sudden  chills. 

The  thin,  paper-soled  boots  which  leave  the 
wearer  to  feel  the  chill  of  the  pavement  or  the 
damp  of  the  grass  wherever  she  may  walk,  must 
have  shortened  thousands  of  lives  in  Europe,  and 
even  more  in  America.  Combined  with  these, 
we  have  now  the  high  heels,  which,  in  a  short 
period,  convert  the  foot  into  a  shapeless  deformi- 
ty, no  longer  available  for  purposes  of  healthful 
exercise.  An  experienced  shoemaker  informed 
the  writer  that,  between  the  results  of  tight  boots 
and  high  heels,  he  scarcely  knew  a  lady  of  fifty 
who  had  what  he  could  call  a  foot  at  all — they  had 
mere  clubs.  And  this  is  done,  all  this  anguish 
endured,  for  the  sake  of — beauty! 

Bad  as  stays,  and  chignons,  and  high  heels, 
and  paint,  and  low  dresses,  and  all  the  other  fol- 
lies of  dress  are,  I  am,  however,  of  opinion  that 
the  culminating  folly  of  fashion,  the  one  which 
has  most  wide-spread  and  durable  consequences, 
is  the  mode  in  which  for  ages  back  women  have 
contrived  that  their  skirts  should  act  as  drags 
and  swaddling-clothes,  weighing  down  their  hips 
and  obstructing  the  natural  motion  of  the  legs. 
Two  hundred  years  ago  the  immortal  Perrette, 
when  she  wanted  to  carry  her  milk-pail  swiftly  to 
market,  was  obliged  to  dress  specially  for  the 
purpose : 

"Legere  et  court  vetue,  elle  allait  a  grands  pas, 
Ayant  mis  ce  jour-la,  pour  etre  plus  agile, 
Cotillon  simple  et  souliers  plats." 

From  that  time  to  this  the  "  cotillon  simple  " — 
modest,  graceful,  and  rational — has  been  the  rare 
exception,  and  every  kind  of  flounce  and  furbe- 
low, hoops  and  crinolines,  panniers  and  trains, 
"  tied-back  "  costume,  and  robe  collante,  has  been 
successively  the  bane  of  women's  lives,  and  the 
slow  destroyer  of  their  activity. 

It  has  been  often  remarked  that  the  sagacity 
of  Romish  seminarists  is  exhibited  by  their  prac- 
tice of  compelling  boys  destined  for  the  priest- 
hood to  flounder  along  the  streets  in  their  long 
gowns,  and  never  permitting  them  to  cast  them 
aside  or  play  in  the  close-fitting  clothes  wherein 
English  lads  enjoy  their  cricket  and  foot-ball. 
The  obstruction  to  free  action,  though  perhaps 
slight  in  itself,  yet  constantly  maintained,  gradu- 
ally tames  down  the  wildest  spirits  to  the  level 


of  ecclesiastical  decorum.  But  the  lengthiest  of 
soutanes  is  a  joke  compared  to  the  multitudinous 
petticoats  which,  up  to  the  last  year  or  two, 
every  lady  was  compelled  to  wear,  swathing  and 
flowing  about  her  ankles  as  if  she  were  walking 
through  the  sea.  Nor  is  the  fashion  of  these 
later  days  much  better,  when  the  scantier  dress 
is  "tied  back  " — as  I  am  informed — with  an  elas- 
tic band,  much  on  the  principle  that  a  horse  is 
"  hobbled  "  in  the  field  ;  and  to  this  a  tail  a  yard 
long  is  added,  which  must  either  be  left  to  drag- 
gle in  the  mud  or  must  occupy  an  arm  exclusive- 
ly to  hold  it  up.  In  youth  these  skirts  are  bad 
enough,  as  exercising  a  constant  check  on  free 
and  healthful  movement ;  but  the  moment  that 
the  elastic  steps  begin  to  give  place  to  the  lassi- 
tude of  middle  life,  the  case  is  desperate.  There 
is  no  longer  energy  to  overcome  the  impediments 
created  by  the  ridiculous  spancels,  and  the  poor 
donkey  of  a  woman  hobbles  daily  round  a  shorter 
and  shorter  course,  till  at  forty  or  fifty  she  tells 
her  friends  with  a  sigh  that  she  finds  (she  cannot 
imagine  why)  that  she  cannot  walk  at  all ! 

Does  decency  require  such  a  sacrifice  as  this  ? 
Does  the  utmost  strain  of  feminine  modesty  ask 
for  it  ?  If  it  were  so,  I,  for  one,  should  leave  the 
matter  with  a  sigh,  as  not  to  be  remedied.  But 
who  in  his  senses  dreams  that  such  is  the  case  ? 
Who,  in  the  age  of  robes  collantes  and  decolletee 
dresses,  can  pretend  that  a  reasonably  full,  sim- 
ply-cut silk  or  cloth  skirt,  reaching  to  the  ankles 
and  no  longer,  would  not  fulfill  immeasurably 
better  than  any  fashion  we  have  seen  for  many  a 
day  the  requirements  of  true  womanly  delicacy? 
It  is  for  fashion,  not  decency,  that  the  activity 
of  women  is  thus  crushed,  their  health  ruined, 
and  (through  them)  the  health  of  their  children. 
I  hold  it  to  be  an  indubitable  fact  that  if  twenty 
years  ago  a  rational  and  modest  style  of  dress 
had  been  adopted  by  Englishwomen  and  encour- 
aged by  Englishmen,  instead  of  being  sneered 
down  by  fops  and  fools,  the  health  not  only  of 
women,  but  of  the  sons  of  women,  i.  e.,  of  the 
entire  nation,  would  now  be  on  altogether  a  dif- 
ferent plane  from  what  we  find  it.1 

1  The  inquiry,  "  How  fashions  originate  and  with 
whom?'1'1  would  lead  us  too  far  from  the  subject  in 
hand,  but  some  light  is  thrown  on  the  way  in  which 
complicated  arrangements  of  dress  are  maintained 
under  every  variation  and  in  defiance  of  the  true  prin- 
ciples of  taste,  as  well  as  of  health  and  economy,  by 
the  reflection  that  it  would  never  pay  drapers  and 
dress-makers  that  their  customers  should  readily  cal- 
culate how  much  stuff  they  require  for  each  garment. 
For  further  criticism  of  the  follies  of  female  dress — 
the  torrid  and  frigid  zones  of  body  and  limbs — the 
"panniers"  or  "bustles"  creating  kidney-disease; 


362 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


Keviewing  all  these  deplorable  follies,  we  may 
learn  to  make  excuses  for  legislators  who  classi- 
fy women  with  "criminals,  lunatics,  idiots,  and 
minors."  It  needs  a  woman's  knowledge  of  the 
pernicious  processes  to  which  the  opening  minds 
of  girls  are  commonly  subjected — the  false  and 
base  aims  in  life  set  before  them,  the  perverse 
distribution  toward  them  of  approval  and  blame, 
admiration  and  neglect,  and  even  of  love  and  dis- 
like, from  parents,  teachers,  servants,  brothers, 
and  finally  from  the  ballroom  world  into  which 
they  are  now  launched  m  childhood — to  enable 
us  to  make  allowances  for  them,  and  retain  faith 
that  there  sometimes  beats  a  real  woman's  heart 
under  the  ribs  of  a  tightly-laced  corset,  and  that 
a  head  surmounted  by  a  pile  of  dead  women's 
hair  is  not  invariably  devoid  of  brains. 

How  is  the  remedy  for  this  dreary  round  of 
silly  fashions  ever  to  be  attained  ?  No  woman 
who  knows  the  world  and  how  severe  is  the  pen- 
alty of  eccentricity  in  attire,  will  ever  counsel  her 
sisters  to.  incur  it  for  any  motive  short  of  a  dis- 
tinct duty.  But  if  the  hundreds  of  ladies  who 
recognize  the  tyranny  of  senseless  and  unhealth- 
ful  fashions  were  to  combine  forces  to  obey  those 
fashions  just  as  little  as  may  be,  to  go  as  near  the 
wind  in  the  direction  of  simplicity,  wholesome- 
ness,  and  ease  in  their  dress,  as  they  dare,  there 
would  by  degrees  be  formed  a  public  opinion, 
rising  year  by  year  with  the  numbers  and  social 
standing  of  the  representatives  of  common-sense. 
It  must  have  been  in  some  such  way  that  our 
great-grandfathers  dropped  their  swords  and  bag- 
wigs  and  ruffles  and  embroidery,  and  took  to 
dressing — as  even  the  silliest  and  vainest  men  do 
in  these  days — like  rational  beings. 

Next  to  nnhealthful  dress,  women  may  lay 
their  petite  sante  at  the  door  of  their  excessive 
addiction  to  pursuits  giving  exercise  neither  to 
the  brain  nor  yet  to  the  limbs.  If  the  problem 
had  been  set  to  devise  something,  the  doing  of 
which  would  engage  the  very  fewest  and  smallest 
powers  of  the  mind  or  body,  I  know  not  whether 
we  should  give  the  prize  for  solving  it  to  the  in- 
ventor of  knitting,  netting,  crochet,  or  worsted- 
work.  Pursued  for  a  reasonable  period  in  the 
day,  these  employments  are  no  doubt  quite  harm- 
less, and  even  perhaps,  as  some  have  urged,  may 

the  skewering  clown  of  the  arms  by  tight  arm-holes  ; 
the  veils  which  cause  amaurosis,  etc.— and  also  for 
gome  excellent  suggestions  of  reform,  see  "Dress  and 
Health,"  a  little  book  printed  by  Dougall  &  Son,  Mon- 
treal, to  be  obtained  in  London  for  the  present  only 
by  sending  Is.  (id.  in  stamps  to  B.,  15  Belslze  Square, 
N.W. 


be  useful  as  sedatives.  But  that  a  woman  who  is 
driven  by  no  dire  necessity  to  "stitch,  stitch, 
stitch,"  who  has  plenty  of  books  to  read,  and 
two  legs  and  feet  to  walk  withal,  should  volun- 
tarily limit  the  exercise  of  her  body  to  the  little 
niggling  motion  of  the  fingers  required  by  these 
works,  and  the  labor  of  her  mind  to  counting 
stitches,  is  all  but  incomprehensible.  That  the 
consequences  should  be  sickliness  and  feebleness 
seems  to  follow  of  course.  In  old  times  the  ever- 
revolving  spinning-wheel  had  its  full  justification 
in  its  abundant  usefulness,  and  also  iu  the  dearth 
of  intellectual  pursuits  for  women.  But  it  is 
marvelous  that  a  well-educated  Englishwoman, 
not  yet  sinking  into  the  natural  indolence  of  age, 
should  choose  to  spend  about  a  fifth  or  fourth  of 
the  hours  God  has  given  her  on  this  beautiful  earth 
in  embroidery  or  worsted-work.  A  drawing-room 
crammed  with  these  useless  fads — chairs,  cush- 
ions, screens,  and  antimacassars — is  simply;  a 
mausoleum  of  the  wasted  hours  of  the  female 
part  of  the  family.  Happily,  there  is  a  sensible 
diminution  in  this  perpetual  needling,  and  no 
future  Mrs.  Somerville  will  be  kept  for  the  bi  st 
hours  of  her  girlhood  "  shewing  "  her  daily  seam. 
More  intelligent  and  more  active  pursuits  are 
multiplying,  and  the  great  philanthropist  who  in- 
vented lawn-tennis  has  done  more  to  remedy  the 
little  health  of  ladies  than  ten  thousand  doctors 
together. 

We  have  now  glanced  over  a  number  of 
causes  of  petite  saute,  for  which  the  sufferers 
themselves  are  more  or  less  responsible.  Let  us 
turn  to  some  others  regarding  which  they  are 
merely  passive. 

It  is  many  years  since,  in  my  eaily  youth,  I 
was  struck  by  a  singular  coincidence.  Several  of 
my  married  acquaintances  were  liable  to  a  pecul- 
iar sort  of  headache.  They  were  obliged,  owing 
to  these  distressing  attacks,  to  remain  very  fre- 
quently in  bed  at  breakfast-time,  and  later  in  the 
day  to  lie  on  the  sofa  with  darkened  blinds  and 
a  considerable  exhibition  of  eau-de-Cologne.  A 
singular  immunity  from  the  seizures  seemed  to 
be  enjoyed  when  any  pleasant  society  was  ex- 
pected, or  when  their  husbands  happened  to  be 
in  a  different  part  of  the  country.  By  degrees, 
putting  my  little  observations  together,  I  came  in 
my  own  mind  to  call  these  the  "  bad-husband 
headaches,"  and  I  have  since  seen  no  reason  to 
alter  my  diagnosis.  On  the  contrary,  I  am  of 
opinion  that  an  incalculable  amount  of  feminine 
invalidism  arises  from  nothing  but  the  depressing 
influences  of  an  unhappy  home.  Sometimes,  of 
course,   it   is   positive   unkindness   and    cruelty 


THE  LITTLE  HEALTH  OF  LADIES. 


363 


which  the  poor  creatures  endure.  Much  more 
often  it  is  the  mere  lack  of  the  affection  and  care 
and  tenderness  for  which  they  pine  as  sickly 
plants  for  sunshine.  Sometimes  it  is  the  simple 
oppression  of  an  iron  will  over  them  which 
bruises  their  pleasant  fancies,  and  lops  off  their 
innocent  whims,  till  there  is  no  sap  left  in  them 
to  bud  or  blossom  any  more.  Not  seldom  the 
misery  comes  of  frequent  storms  in  the  house- 
hold atmosphere — for  which  the  woman  is  prob- 
ably as  often  to  blame  as  her  companion,  but 
from  which  she  suffers  doubly,  since,  when  they 
have  passed,  he  goes  out  to  his  field  or  his  mer- 
chandise with  what  spirit  he  can  muster,  poor 
fellow !  while  she  sits  still  where  the  blighting 
words  fell  on  her,  to  feel  all  their  bitterness.  Of 
course  it  is  not  only  unkind  husbands  who  make 
women  down-hearted.  There  are  unkind  people 
in  every  relation,  and  the  only  specialty  of  a 
woman's  suffering  from  unkindness  is,  that  she 
is  commonly  almost  like  a  bed-ridden  creature, 
for  whom  a  single  thorn  or  even  a  hard  lump  in 
her  bed  is  enough  to  create  a  soreness.  To  those 
who  can  get  up  and  walk  away,  the  importance 
which  she  attaches  to  the  thorn  or  the  lump 
seems  inexplicable. 

This  balking  of  the  heart  is,  I  suppose,  the 
worst  evil  in  life  to  nine  women  out  of  ten, 
whether  it  take  place  after  marriage  in  finding 
an  uncongenial  husband,  or  before  marriage  when 
a  lover  leaves  them  in  the  lurch  and  causes  them 
a  "disappointment."  This  word,  I  observe,  is 
always  significantly  used  with  reference  to  such 
events,  among  a  certain  class  of  women,  as  the 
disappointment  par  eminence.  When  a  lady  fails 
to  get  her  book  published  or  her  picture  hung  at 
the  Academy,  nobody  speaks  of  her  as  having 
undergone  a  "  disappointment."  I  have  no  doubt 
the  grief  of  losing  the  lover  is  generally  worse 
than  these ;  but  I  wish  that  pride  would  teach 
every  woman  under  such  circumstances  not  to 
assume  the  attitude  of  an  Ariadne,  or  settle  down 
after  a  course  of  sal-volatile  into  languor  and 
little  health  till  she  is  found  at  sixty,  as  M.  About 
deliciously  describes  an  English  old  maid,  "  tant 
soit  peu  dessechee  par  les  langueurs  du  celibat." 
Of  this  kind  of  thing  I  would  fain  hope  we  might 
soon  see  the  end,  as  well  as  of  the  actions  for 
breach  of  promise,  which  are  a  disgrace  to  the 
whole  womanhood  of  the  country. 

But  besides  heart-sorrows,  real  and  imaginary, 
there  are  other  departments  of  women's  natures 
wherein  the  balking  of  their  activities  has  a  de- 
plorable effect  on  their  physical  as  well  as  mental 
condition.     Dr.  Bridges  once  gave  an  admirable 


lecture  at  the  Royal  Institution,  concerning  the 
laboring  and  pauper  class  of  Englishmen.  He 
made  the  remark  (which  was  received  with  emo- 
tion by  the  audience)  that  it  was  not  enough  to 
supply  a  human  being  with  food  and  shelter. 
"  Man,"  he  said,  "  does  not  live  by  bread  alone, 
he  must  have  hope."  May  we  not  say  likewise, 
"  Woman  does  not  live  by  bread  alone — nay,  nor 
by  the  richest  cake?  "  She,  too,  must  have 
hope — something  to  live  for,  something  which 
she  may  look  to  accomplish  for  herself  or  others 
in  God's  world  of  work,  ere  her  night  shall  fall. 
A  Hindoo  Tady,  lately  speaking  at  a  meeting  in 
India,  compared  Mary  Carpenter's  beneficent 
existence  to  a  river  bearing  fertility  to  many 
lands,  while  the  life  of  a  woman  in  the  zenana, 
she  said,  resembled  rather  a  pond.  Surely  every 
woman  worthy  of  the  name  would  desire  to 
be  something  more  than  the  pool,  were  it  only 
a  little  trickling  rill !  But  in  endless  cases  she 
is  dammed  up  on  all  sides,  and  none  the  less 
effectually  that  the  soft  mud  of  affectionate  pre- 
judice forms  the  dam.  If  her  friends  be  rich, 
she  is  sickened  with  excess  of  luxury,  but  pro- 
hibited from  stooping  down  out  of  the  empyrean 
of  her  drawing-room  to  lend  a  finger  to  lift  the 
burdens  of  a  groaning  world.  If  the  family  in- 
come be  small,  and  the  family  pride  proportion- 
ately great,  she  is  required  to  spend  her  life — not 
in  inspiriting,  honorable  money -earning,  but  in 
depressing,  heart  narrowing  money-saw ing.  When 
the  poor  soul  has  borne  this  sort  of  pecuniary 
stay-lacing  for  a  dozen  years,  and  her  forehead 
has  grown  narrow,  and  her  lips  pinched,  and  her 
eyes  have  acquired  a  certain  anxious  look  (which 
I  often  fancy  I  recognize)  as  if  of  concern  about 
sixpences,  then,  forsooth,  the  world  laughs  at 
her  and  says,  "Women  are  so  stingy  !"  How  glad- 
ly, in  a  hundred  cases,  would  that  poor  lady  have 
toiled  to  earn — andnottos«i'e — and  have  been  no- 
bly generous  with  the  proceeds  of  her  industry ! 

We  have  heard  a  great  deal  of  late  of  the 
danger  to  women's  health  of  over-mental  strain 
or  intellectual  labor.  I  do  not  say  there  is  never 
danger  in  this  direction,  that  girls  never  study  too 
much  or  too  early,  or  that  the  daughters  of  wom- 
en who  have  never  used  their  brains  may  not 
have  inherited  rather  soft  and  tender  organs  of 
cogitation  to  start  with.  I  am  no  enthusiast  for 
excessive  book-learning  for  either  women  or  men, 
though  in  books  read  and  books  written  I  have 
found  some  of  the  chief  pleasures  of  a  happy  life. 
Perhaps  if  it  were  my  duty  to  supervise  the  edu- 
cation of  girls  I  should  be  rather  inclined  to  say, 
like  the  hero  of  "  Locksley  Hall :  " 


364 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


"  They  shall  ride  and  they  shall  run, 
....  Leap  the  rainbows  of  the  brooks, 
Not  with    blinded  eyesight  poring  over    miserable 
books." 

But  of  one  thing  I  am  sure,  and  that  is,  that  for 
one  woman  whose  health  is  injured  by  excessive 
study  (chat  is,  by  study  itself,  not  the  baneful 
anxiety  of  examinations  superadded  to  study), 
there  are  hundreds  whose  health  is  deteriorated  by 
want  of  wholesome  mental  exercise.  Sometimes 
the  vacuity  in  the  brains  of  girls  simply  leaves 
them  dull  and  spiritless.  More  often  into  those 
swept  and  empty  chambers  of  their  skulls  enter 
many  small  imps  of  evil  omen.  "  The  exercise  of 
the  intellectual  powers,"  says  an  able  lady  M.  D., 
"  is  the  best  means  of  preventing  and  counteracting 
an  undue  development  of  the  emotional  nature. 
The  extravagances  of  imagination  and  feeling  en- 
gendered in  an  idle  brain  have  much  to  do  with 
the  ill-health  of  girls."  Another  observer,  an 
eminent  teacher,  says,  "  I  am  persuaded,  and  my 
experience  has  been  confirmed  by  experienced 
physicians,  that  the  want  of  wholesome  occupa- 
tion lies  at  the  root  of  the  languid  debility,  of 
which  we  hear  so  much,  after  girls  have  left 
school."  1  And  another,  the  principal  of  one  of 
the  largest  colleges  for  women  in  England,  adds : 
"  There  is  no  doubt  whatever  that  sound  study  is 
an  eminent  advantage  to  young  women's  health  ; 
provided,  of  course,  that  the  general  laws  of 
health  be  attended  to  at  the  same  time." 

Let  women  have  larger  interests  and  nobler 
pursuits,  and  their  affections  will  become,  not 
less  strong  and  deep,  but  less  sickly,  less  craving 
for  demonstrative  tenderness  in  return,  less  vari- 
able in  their  manifestations.  Let  women  have 
sounder  mental  culture,  and  their  emotions — so 
long  exclusively  fostered — will  return  to  the  calm- 
ness of  health,  and  we  shall  hear  no  more  of  the 
intermittent  feverish  spirits,  the  causeless  de- 
pressions, and  all  the  long  train  of  symptoms 
which  belong  to  Protean-formed  hysteria,  and 
open  the  way  to  madness  on  one  side  and  to  sin 
on  the  other. 

And  now,  in  conclusion,  I  must  touch  on  a 
difficult  part  of  my  subject.  Who  is  to  blame  for 
all  the  misery  resulting  from  the  little  health  of 
ladies  ? 

Of  course,  a  large  portion  of  the  evil  must  be 
impartially  distributed  throughout  society,  with 
its  false  ideals  of  womanhood.  Another  portion 
rests  on  parents  and  teachers  ;  and,  of  course,  no 
inconsiderable  part  on  the  actual  sufferers,  who, 

1  "  The  Education  of  American  Girls,"  p.  229. 


t  in  many  cases,  might  find  healthful  aims  in  life 
if  they  had  the  spirit  to  look  for  them,  and  cer- 
tainly need  not  carry  the  destructive  fashions  of 
dress  to  the  climax  they  reach  in  the  red-hot  race 
of  vanity.  There  remains  yet  a  share  of  guilt 
with  the  childish  and  silly  men  who  systematically 
sneer  down  every  attempt  to  make  women  some- 
thing better  than  the  dolls  they  play  with  (just  as 
if  they  would  be  at  a  loss  for  toys,  were  the  dells 
to  be  transformed  into  rational  creatures),  and 
those  others,  even  more  cruelly  selfish,  who  de- 
liberately bar  every  door  at  which  women  knock 
in  search  of  honorable  employment.  After  all 
these,  I  find  one  class  more. 

There  is  no  denying  the  power  of  the  great 
medical  order  in  these  days.  It  occupies,  with 
strangely  close  analogy,  the  position  of  the  priest- 
hood of  former  times,  assumes  the  same  airs  of 
authority,  claims  its  victims  for  torture  (this  time 
among  the  lower  animals),  and  enters  every  fam- 
ily with  a  latch-key  of  private  information,  only 
comparable  to  that  obtained  by  the  confessional. 
If  Michelet  had  written  for  England  instead  of  for 
France,  he  should  have  made  a  book,  not  on 
"  Priests,  Women,  aud  Families,"  but  on  "  Doc- 
tors, Women,  and  Families."  The  influence  of 
the  family  medical  man  on  wives  and  mothers, 
and,  through  them,  on  husbands  and  children,  is 
almost  unbounded,  and  if  it  were  ever  to  be  ex- 
erted uniformly  in  any  matter  of  physical  educa- 
tion, there  is  little  doubt  that  it  would  be  effec- 
tive. 

What,  then,  we  may  reasonably  ask,  have 
these  omnipotent  doctors  done  to  prevent  the 
repetition  of  deadly  follies  in  the  training  of  girls 
generation  after  generation  ?  Now  and  then  we 
have  heard  feeble  cautions,  given  in  an  Eli-like 
manner,  against  tight  lacing,  late  hours,  and  ex- 
citement ;  and  a  grand  display  of  virtuous  indig- 
nation was,  if  I  remember  rightly,  exhibited  about 
a  year  ago  in  a  medical  round-robin,  against  fem- 
inine dram-drinking — a  vice  for  which  the  doc- 
tor's own  prescriptions  are  in  too  many  cases  re- 
sponsible. But  the  steadily-determined  pressure 
on  mothers  and  young  women,  the  insistence  on 
free,  light  petticoats,  soundly -shod  feet,  loose 
stays,  and  well-sheltered  heads — when  has  it  been 
exercised  ?  An  American  medical  lady  says  that 
at  a  post-mortem  examination  of  several  women 
killed  by  accident  in  Vienna,  she  found  the  inter- 
nal organs  of  nearly  all  affected  by  tight-lacing. 
"  Some  ribs  overlapped  each  other ;  one  had  been 
found  to  pierce  the  liver;  and,  almost  without 
exception,  that  organ  was  displaced  below  the 
ribs.  .  .  .  The  spleen  in  some  cases  was  much 


THE  LITTLE  HEALTH  OF  LADIES. 


365 


enlarged,  in  others  it  was  atrophied,"  '  and  so  on.  | 
Do  the  male  doctors,  who  behold  these  and  other 
hideous  sights  continually,  go  out  to  warn  the 
mothers  who  encourage  girls  to  this  ghastly  self- 
destruction,  as  they  do  denounce  the  poor,  mis- 
guided, peculiar  people  and  anti-vaeeinators  who 
cheat  Science  of  her  dues  ? 

At  last,  after  the  follies  of  luxury  and  fashion 
have  gone  on  in  a  sort  of  crescendo  like  the  de- 
scent of  Vathek  into  the  hall  of  Eblis,  till  we  seem 
nearly  to  have  reached  the  bottom,  a  voice  of 
warning  is  heard  !  It  has  pealed  across  the  At- 
lantic, and  been  reechoed  on  the  shores  of  Eng- 
land with  a  cordiality  of  response  which  our  men 
of  science  do  not  often  give  to  American  "  no- 
tions." "Women,  beware!"  it  cries.  "Be- 
ware !  you  are  on  the  brink  of  destruction  !  You 
have  hitherto  been  engaged  only  in  crushing  your 
waists  ;  now  you  are  attempting  to  cultivate  your 
minds  !  You  have  been  merely  dancing  all  night 
in  the  foul  air  of  ballrooms;  now  you  are  begin- 
ning to  speud  your  mornings  in  study  !  You 
have  been  incessantly  stimulating  your  emotions 
with  concerts  and  operas,  with  French  plays  and 
French  novels ;  now  you  are  exerting  your  under- 
standing to  learn  Greek  and  solve  propositions  in 
Euclid  !  Beware — oh,  beware  !  Science  pro- 
nounces that  the  woman  who — studies — is  lost !  " 

Perhaps  there  are  some  women,  now  alive, 
who  did  study  a  little  in  youth,  who  even  spent 
their  nights  occasionally  over  their  books  while 
their  contemporaries  were  running  from  one 
evening  party  to  another — who  now  in  middle 
and  advanced  life  enjoy  a  vigor  which  it  would 
be  very  well  for  their  old  companions  if  they 
could  share.  These  women  know  precisely  d  quoi 
s'cn  tenir  concerning  these  terrific  denunciations. 

There  is  another  point  on  which  it  seems  to 
me  that  a  suspicion  of  blame  must  attach  to  the 
medical  profession.  We  all  believe  that  our  doc- 
tors do  the  utmost  in  their  power  to  cure  acute 
diseases.  When  any  patient  has  scarlet  fever,  or 
small-pox,  or  bronchitis,  he  may  be  sure  that 
his  medical  attendant  will  exert  all  his  skill  and 
care  to  pull  him  through.  But  is  it  equally  cer- 
tain that  out  of  the  20,000  men,  or  thereabouts, 
who  are  qualified  to  practise  medicine  and  sur- 
gery in  thi3  kingdom,  there  are  not  a  few  who 
feel  only  a  modified  interest  in  the  perfect  re- 
covery of  chronic  sufferers  who  represent  to  them 
an  annual  income  of  £50  or  perhaps  £200  ?  A 
few  months  ago  there  appeared  an  article  in  one 
of  the  magazines  expounding  the  way  in  which 
legal  business  was  made  to  grow  in  hydra-fashion, 
i  "  Dress  and  Health,"  p.  20. 


We  have  all  heard  similar  accusations  against 
slaters  and  plumbers,  who  mend  one  hole  in  a 
roof  and  leave  another.  In  short,  we  unhesitat- 
ingly suspect  almost  every  other  trade  and  pro- 
fession of  making  work  for  itself.  Is  it  clearly 
proved  that  doctors  are  in  this  respect  quite  dif- 
ferent from  lawyers  and  other  men,  or  that  the 
temptation  to  keep  a  wealthy  patient  coddling 
comfortably  with  an  occasional  placebo  for  twenty 
years  is  invariably  resisted  ?  The  question  is 
not  easy  to  answer  unhesitatingly  in  the  affirma- 
tive: "Suppose  a  really  radical  cure  were  dis- 
covered whereby  all  the  neuralgic,  and  dyspeptic, 
and  gouty  patients  could  be  made  in  an  hour  as 
sound  as  so  many  trevets,  do  we  believe  implicitly 
and  au  fond  du  cceur  that  that  Heaven-sent  rem- 
edy would  be  rapturously  welcomed  by  the  whole 
medical  profession  ?  "  Is  there  no  truth  at  all 
in  the  familiar  legend  of  the  elderly  lady  whose 
physician,  after  many  years  of  not  unprofitable 
attendance,  advised  her  to  go  to  Bath,  promising 
to  give  her  a  letter  to  the  most  eminent  local 
doctor,  his  intimate  friend,  to  whom  he  would 
thoroughly  explain  her  case  ?  The  lady,  armed 
with  the  introductory  letter,  it  is  said,  proceeded 
on  her  way ;  but  the  curiosity  of  a  daughter  of 
Eve  unhappily  overcame  her  discretion.  "  It  is 
only  about  myself  after  all,"  she  said,  to  pacify 
her  scruples ;  "  and  once  for  all  I  will  learn  what 

dear  Dr.  D does  think  is  my  complaint.     If  I 

am  doomed  to  die,  it  is  better  than  this  pro- 
longed uncertainty."  The  seal  was  broken,  and 
the  lady  read  :  "  Keep  the  old  fool  for  six  weeks, 
and  be  sure  to  send  her  back  to  me  at  the  end. 
Yours  truly." 

There  are  at  this  day,  in  Mayfair  and  Belgra- 
via,  in  Bayswater  and  South  Kensington,  a  dozen 
houses  in  every  street  and  square  at  the  doors  of 
which  the  doctor's  carriage  stops  as  regularly  as 
the  milkman's  cart ;  and  apparently  there  is  just 
as  little  likelihood  that  either  should  cease  to 
stop.  If  the  old  Chinese  custom  were  introduced 
among  us,  and  patients  were  to  pay  their  physi- 
cians a  salary  so  long  as  they  were  in  health,  and 
ceased  to  pay  whenever  they  required  medical 
attendance,  I  very  much  question  whether  we 
should  see  quite  so  many  of  those  broughams 
about  those  doors.  I  cannot  help  fancying  that 
if  the  clock-makers  who  undertake  to  wind  up  our 
domestic  timepieces  were  to  keep  them  in  the 
same  unsatisfactory  and  perpetually  running- 
down  condition  as  the  inner  machineries  of  these 
doctors'  patients,  we  should  in  most  cases  bring 
our  contract  with  the  clock-maker  to  a  close,  and 
wind  up  our  timepieces  in  future  for  ourselves. 


366 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


But  more,  and  in  a  yet  more  serious  way,  the 
doctors  have,  I  conceive,  failed,  not  only  as  guar- 
dians of  the  health  of  women,  but  as  having  (as 
a  body)  opposed  with  determined  and  acrimo- 
nious resistance  an  innovation  which — if  medical 
science  be  good  for  anything — they  could  scarcely 
doubt  would  have  been  of  immense  benefit  to 
them. 

No  one  is  ignorant  how  often  the  most  ago- 
nizing diseases  to  which  female  nature  is  liable 
follow  from  the  neglect  of  early  premonitory 
symptoms,  and  how  often,  likewise,  life-long  inva- 
lidism results  from  disregard  of  the  ailments  of 
youth.  It  is  almost  equally  notorious  how  often 
these  deplorable  catastrophes  are  traceable  di- 
rectly to  the  poor  victim's  modest  shrinking  from 
disclosing  her  troubles  to  a  male  adviser.  When 
such  events  are  spoken  of  with  bated  breath 
among  friends,  it  is  sometimes  said  that  it  was 
the  sufferer's  own  fault— that  she  ought  not  to 
have  felt  any  shyness  about  consulting  a  doctor 
— and  that  it  is  proper  for  everybody  to  "  look 
on  a  doctor  as  an  old  woman."  I  confess  I  do 
not  understand  precisely  such  playing  fast  and 
loose  with  any  genuine  sentiment  of  modesty. 
The  members  of  the  Royal  College  of  Physicians 
and  Surgeons,  and  of  the  Society  of  Apotheca- 
ries, are  not  "  old  women."  They  are  not  even 
all  old,  nor  all  good  men.  A  few  months  before 
they  begin  to  practise — while  they  are  in  the 
"  Bob  Sawyer "  stage — they  are  commonly  sup- 
posed to  be  among  the  least  steady  or  well-con- 
ducted of  youths  ;  and  where  a  number  of  them 
congregate  together — as  in  Edinburgh,  for  exam- 
ple— they  are  apt  to  obtain  an  unenviable  noto- 
riety for  "  rowdyism."  I  have  more  than  once 
myself  witnessed  conduct  on  the  part  of  these 
lads  at  public  meetings  which  every  man  on  the 
platform  denounced  as  disgraceful.  I  could  not 
but  reflect  as  I  watched  them  :  "  And  these  youths 
a  year  hence  will  be  called  to  the  bedsides  of  la- 
dies to  minister  at  hours  of  uttermost  trial  when 
the  extremest  refinement  of  tact  and  delicacy  must 
scarcely  make  the  presence  of  a  man  endurable  ! 
Nay,  they  now  attend  in  crowds  the  clinical  in- 
structions in  the  female  wards  of  the  hospitals, 
and  are  invited  to  inspect  miseries  of  disease  and 
horrible  operations  on  women,  who,  if  of  humbler 
class,  are  often  as  sensitive  and  modest  as  the 
noblest  lady  in  the  land  !  " 

The  feelings  of  Englishwomen  on  all  matters 
of  delicacy  are  probably  keener  than  those  of 
the  women  of  any  other  Western  country,  and  in 
some  particulars  may  possibly  be  now  and  then 
overstrained.     But  who  could  wish  them  to  be 


changed  ?  Who  questions  their  almost  infinite 
value  ?  In  every  instance,  except  the  one  we  are 
discussing,  they  receive  from  Englishmen  the  re- 
spect which  they  deserve.  To  propose  deliberate- 
ly to  teach  girls  to  set  those  sacred  feelings  aside 
on  one  point,  and  that  point  the  one  where  they 
are  necessarily  touched  immeasurably  more  close- 
ly than  anywhere  else,  is  simply  absurd.  They 
could  not  do  it  if  they  would,  and  they  ought  not 
to  do  it  if  they  could.  A  girl  who  would  willing- 
ly go  to  a  man-doctor  and  consult  him  freely 
about  one  of  the  many  ills  to  which  female  flesh 
is  heir,  would  be  an  odious  young  woman.  Vio- 
lence must  be  done  to  her  natural  instincts,  either 
by  the  pressure  of  the  mother's  persuasion  (who 
has  undergone  the  same  peine  forte  et  dure  before 
her),  or  else  by  unendurable  anguish,  before  she 
will  have  recourse  to  aid  which  she  thinks  worse 
than  disease,  or  even  death.  And  so  the  time 
when  health  and  life  might  be  saved  is  lost  by 
delay,  and  when  the  sacrifice  is  made  at  last,  the 
doctor  observes  compassionately,  "  If  you  had 
come  to  me  long  ago  I  might  have  restored  you  to 
health — or  an  operation  could  have  been  per- 
formed which  might  have  saved  your  life.  Now, 
I  grieve  to  say,  it  is  too  late." 

That  the  admission  of  qualified  women  to 
practise  medicine  is  the  proper  and  only  effectual 
remedy  for  this  evil  is  of  course  obvious  to  all. 
In  opposing  such  admission  relentlessly,  as  they 
have  generally  done,  medical  men  have  incurred 
a  responsibility  which  to  me  seems  nothing  short 
of  tremendous.  Whatever  motive  we  may  be 
willing  to  assign  to  them  above  mere  pitiful  rival- 
ry for  practice  and  profit,  it  is  scarcely  possible  to 
suggest  one  which  is  not  grossly  injurious  and 
insulting  to  women,  or  which  ought  for  a  moment 
to  weigh  in  the  balance  against  the  cruel  woes  to 
which  I  have  referred,  or  the  just  claim  of  all 
women  to  receive,  if  they  prefer  them,  the  minis- 
trations of  their  own  sex  in  their  hours  of  suffer- 
ing and  weakness. 

Doctors  are  wont  to  speak — apparently  with 
profound  feeling — of  the  sympathy  they  entertain 
for  their  patients,  and  to  express  their  readiness 
(in  a  phrase  which  has  passed  into  cant)  "  to 
sacrifice  a  hecatomb  of  brutes  to  relieve  the  small- 
est pain  of  a  human  being."  May  not  women 
justly  challenge  them  to  sacrifice  something  a 
little  nearer  to  themselves — their  professional 
pride,  their  trades-unionism,  and  a  certain  frac- 
tion of  their  practice — to  relieve  their  entire  sex 
of  enormous  pain,  mental  and  physical  ? 

I  rejoice  to  believe  that  the  long  contest  draws 
to  a  close,  and  that,  thanks  to  men  like  Mr.  Stans- 


THE  ACTION  OF  LIGHT,   ETC. 


367 


feld  and  Mr.  Cowper  Temple,  there  will  soon  be 
women-doctors,  and  women's  hospitals  attended 
by  women-doctors,  in  every  town  in  the  kingdom. 
I  rejoice  to  know  that  we  possess  already  a  few 
qualified  ladies  who  every  day,  without  wound  to 
the  feelings  of  the  most  sensitive,  receive  the  full 
and  free  confidence  of  girls  and  women,  and  give 


in  return  counsels  to  which  many  attribute  the 
preservation  of  life  and  health  ;  and  which — if 
medical  science  have  any  practical  value — must 
afford  the  rising  generation  a  better  chance  than 
ever  their  mothers  have  had  of  escaping  the  end- 
less miseries  to  themselves  and  all  belonging  to 
them  attendant  on  the  Little  Health  of  Ladies. 
—  Contemporary  Review. 


THE  ACTION  OF  LIGHT    UPON  THE  COLORATION  OF 

THE  ORGANIC  WORLD. 


UNTIL  the  earlier  portion  of  the  present  cen- 
tury, light,  by  the  vast  majority  of  civil- 
ized persons,  was  regarded  as  a  medium  for  the 
sense  of  sight,  and  as  very  little  more.  With 
the  discovery  of  its  chemical  functions,  brought 
home  to  the  popular  mind  by  the  invention  of 
photography,  a  revolution  in  opinion  took  place, 
and  the  danger  now  is,  not  that  its  real  powers 
should  be  overlooked,  but  that  it  should  be  cred- 
ited with  effects  in  which  its  part  is  very  doubt- 
ful. It  has  been  especially  proclaimed  to  be  at 
once  the  creator  and  the  destroyer  of  coloration 
in  the  organic  world.  The  superior  intensity  of 
the  light  to  which  they  are  exposed  has  been 
pronounced  the  chief  cause  why  diurnal  species 
are  more  gayly  colored  than  their  nearest  noctur- 
nal allies,  and  why  the  flora  and  the  fauna — es- 
pecially the  insects  and  the  birds — of  tropical 
regions  are  so  rich  in  hues  of  a  gorgeous  char- 
acter. It  may,  therefore,  be  not  uninteresting  to 
inquire  into  this  supposed  double  function  of 
light,  and  ascertain,  if  possible,  its  limits  in 
either  direction.  In  so  doing  it  will  be  impossi- 
ble for  us  to  overlook  the  views  put  forward  by 
Mr.  A.  R.  Wallace  in  a  recent  issue  of  Macmillarts 
Magazine. 

The  bleaching  power  of  the  sun's  rays,  and 
to  a  less  extent  of  ordinary  diffused  daylight, 
has  been  fully  recognized  in  the  affairs  of  daily 
life.  It  has  been  observed  that  this  same  agency, 
utilized  formerly  in  preparing  vegetable  fibre  for 
the  reception  of  colors,  gradually  destroys,  in  al- 
most every  instance,  the  work  of  the  dyer  and 
the  printer,  and  exerts  a  corresponding  influence 
upon  the  hues  of  plants.  There  is,  however,  a 
distinction  by  which  its  effects  upon  the  integu- 
ments of  animals  are  limited. 

It  is  well  known  that  what  we  designate  as 


color  may  be  produced  either  by  the  interference 
or  by  the  absorption  of  rays  of  light,  and  hence 
the  colors  of  animals  may  be  divided  into  two 
well-marked  classes.  On  the  one  hand,  especially 
in  birds  and  insects,  we  find  hues  which  are  iri- 
descent, changeable  according  to  the  relative  po- 
sitions of  the  observer  and  of  the  light,  and  are 
possessed  of  an  intense,  so-called,  metallic  lustre. 
Such  colors — to  take  familiar  examples — may  be 
seen  in  the  plumage  of  the  peacock,  of  the  star- 
ling, on  the  wings  of  the  "  purple  emperor " 
butterfly  (Apatura  Iris),  on  the  entire  coating 
of  the  rose-beetle  (Cetonia  aurata),  of  the  fire- 
wasp  (Chryseis  ignita),  and  of  many  other  com- 
mon native  insects.  In  the  vegetable  kingdom 
they  may  be  pronounced  unknown.  Such  colors 
are  due  to  the  interference  of  certain  rays  of 
light,  whether  reflected  from  superimposed  trans- 
parent films  or  reflected  from  or  refracted  through 
minute  striae.  These  colors  are  permanent,  even 
on  the  most  prolonged  exposure  to  air,  to  atmos- 
pheric moisture,  or  to  full  sunlight.  Unless  the 
very  texture  of  the  feather,  the  wing-scale,  the 
elytron,  etc.,  be  destroyed  by  putrefaction  or 
combustion,  the  color  remains  unhurt.  Nor  can 
we  by  any  means  extract  from  such  colored  sur- 
faces a  dye  or  pigment  capable  of  being  applied 
to  other  objects. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  are  colors  which  do 
not  change  their  shade  from  whatever  position 
they  are  regarded,  and  which  possess  little  of 
that  intense  lustre  which  marks  the  former  class. 
To  this  kind  belong  the  colors  of  all  flowers, 
of  caterpillars,  of  the  great  majority  of  our  na- 
tive butterflies  and  moths,  and,  in  short,  of  the 
vast  bulk  of  organic  beings.  These  colors  are 
due  to  the  absorption  of  certain  of  the  rays  of 
light,  such    absorption   being  effected   by  sub- 


368 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


stances  known  as  pigments,  and  capable,  when 
present  in  sufficient  quantity,  of  being  extracted 
by  solvents,  and  used  to  dye  or  stain  other  bodies. 
Such  colors  have  not  the  permanence  of  the  first- 
mentioned  class.  Every  entomologist  knows  that 
if  a  case  of  butterflies  be  kept  constantly  exposed 
to  the  sun,  or  even  to  diffused  daylight,  then — no 
matter  how  completely  air,  damp,  and  mites,  may 
be  excluded — the  specimens  fade,  even  though 
the  minute  scales  which  clothe  the  wings  may 
still  be  found  in  their  places.  Yet  the  golden 
spots  on  the  wings  of  the  Plusice  and  the  pearl- 
mother  markings  of  the  "  fritillaries  "  remain  un- 
changed. The  colors  of  most  other  insects  be- 
have in  a  very  similar  manner.  Beetles  are  gen- 
erally supposed  to  wear  a  more  permanent  livery ; 
but  every  coleopterist  must  have  observed  how 
the  reds  of  lady-birds,  of  Aphodius  fimetarius,  of 
Elater  sanguineus,  etc.,  lose  their  purity  and 
brightness  on  exposure,  and  to  some  extent  even 
on  preservation  in  darkness.  Even  darker  and 
more  intense  colors  are  gradually  affected.  Thus 
in  the  collection  of  native  beetles  in  the  British 
Museum,  which  have  doubtless  been  exposed  to 
the  light  for  some  years,  the  jet-black  Typhosus 
vulgaris — absurdly  known  as  the  "  bull-comber  " 
— has  taken  a  decided  chestnut-brown,  while  a 
similar  change  has  come  over  the  blue -black 
elytra  of  the  common  dung-beetle. 

To  test  the  speed  of  the  bleaching  power  of 
light  upon  deep-colored  Coleoptera  we  placed  in 
a  glass  case,  outside  a  southwestern  window,  spec- 
imens of  the  following  species :  Cetonia  aurata, 
Euposcilia  Australasixe,  Typhosus  vulgaris,  Geo- 
trupes  stercorarius,  Abax  striola,  and  Sternoccra 
orientalis  ;  and  exposed  them  to  the  sun  during 
the  months  of  June,  July,  and  August,  1876. 
The  Cetonia  and  the  Sternocera,  whose  colors  are 
of  the  interference  class,  were  unaffected;  but 
the  black  of  the  Typhosus,  the  Geolrupes,  and 
the  Abax,  was  changed  to  a  brown,  and  the  brown 
of  the  Eupcecilia  to  a  very  dirty  yellow.  Thus 
we  see  that  even  the  darkest  and  most  intense 
pigment  or  absorption  colors  are  affected  by 
light ;  and  this  fact  accounts  for  one  class  of  the 
variations  which  are  met  with  in  different  speci- 
mens of  one  and  the  same  species.  An  insect 
that  has  lived  long,  and  has  been  much  exposed  to 
the  sun,  may  have  more  degraded  colors  than 
such  as  are  captured  soon  after  reaching  full  per- 
fection. 

If  we  examine  the  nature  of  the  changes 
produced  by  the  action  of  light,  we  shall  notice 
the  following  facts  :  Pigment  greens,  blues,  lilacs, 
pinks,  and  roses — shades  not  very  abundant  in  the 


animal  kingdom — are  the  first  to  fade.  Full  reds, 
purples,  and  blacks,  resist  longer.  Oranges,  yel- 
lows, fawns,  drabs,  browns,  and  olives,  have  still 
greater  permanence,  merely  taking  a  duller  or 
dirtier  tone.  The  changes  ensue  in  a  definite  di- 
rection. Blues  and  pale  greens  turn  to  a  gray  or 
a  yellowish  drab ;  darker  greens  to  an  olive ; 
lilacs,  pinks,  and  roses,  to  various  shades  of  gray; 
reds  become  a  reddish  or  yellowish  brown;  pur- 
ples a  very  dirty  brown ;  yellows  and  oranges 
verge  more  to  a  pale  brown,  and  may  rank  as 
buffs  or  fawns.  The  alteration  is,  therefore,  from 
the  primary  or  secondary  toward  the  tertiary 
colors,  accompanied  with  a  decrease  in  depth. 
But  we  have  never  seen  a  primary  color,  when 
fading  under  the  influence  of  light,  pass  into  an- 
other primary  color ;  nor  does  any  secondary  or 
tertiary  color  ever  pass  into  a  primary.  The 
change  which  blacks  undergo  will  not  seem  sur- 
prising if  we  reflect  that  in  Nature,  as  well  as  in 
art,  they  generally  consist  of  an  intense  olive  or 
brown  to  which  a  deep  blue  or  purple  is  super- 
added. The  latter  hues,  being  the  more  fugitive, 
fade  first  on  exposure  to  light,  and  thus  a  dirty 
olive  or  a  rusty  brown  must  remain. 

These  changes  are  in  partial  harmony  with 
what  we  observe  in  the  vegetable  kingdom.  A 
dull,  dirty  brown  is  the  ultimate  goal  toward 
which  leaves,  flowers,  and  fruits,  as  well  as  in- 
sects, tend  while  fading;  but  those  splendid  in- 
termediate changes  which  we  find  in  autumnal 
foliage  have  nothing  analogous  in  the  decaying 
colors  of  insects. 

It  is  curious  that  in  the  manufacture  of  those 
artificial  colors  which  now  play  so  important  a 
part  in  tinctorial  operations  a  corresponding  rule 
holds  good.  If  these  dyes,  during  their  elabora- 
tion, are  submitted  to  a  heat  too  high  or  too  pro- 
longed, the  product  becomes  dusky,  and  a  dirty 
brownish  gray  is  the  final  result. 

We  must  further  note  how,  in  the  animal  and 
vegetable  kingdoms,  pure  and  bright  colors  an/ 
connected  with  the  highest  vitality  only.  We 
plant  the  dusky  seed  in  the  earth  amid  the  dark 
remains  of  decomposing  organic  matter,  and  as 
it  grows  up  we  see  it  put  on  higher  and  higher 
colors,  till,  in  the  culminating  moment  of  its  life, 
in  the  act  of  inflorescence,  prismatic  hues  are  all 
but  universal.  Then  begins  the  process  of  de- 
cay, attended  by  a  degradation  of  color.  Similar 
changes  may  be  traced  in  animals.  Externally 
we  need  merely  compare  the  dull-colored  larva 
with  the  brilliant  imago,  or  the  sombre-coated 
nestling  with  the  brighter  plumage  of  the  mature 
bird.     Internally  we  may  contrast  the  intensely- 


TEE  ACTION  OF  LI  GET,   ETC. 


369 


vitalized  scarlet  arterial  blood  with  the  darker- 
colored  and  more  contaminated  venous  blood, 
and  still  further  with  excrementitious  matters. 
The  great  truth  to  which  we  are  here  calling  at- 
tention has  not  altogether  escaped  the  notice  of 
Mr.  Wallace,  who  writes :  "  The  very  frequent 
superiority  of  the  male  bird  or  insect  in  bright- 
ness or  intensity  of  color,  even  when  the  general 
tints  and  coloration  are  the  same,  now  seems  to  me 
to  be  due  to  the  greater  vigor  and  activity  and  the 
higher  vitality  of  the  male.  The  colors  of  an  ani- 
mal usually  fade  during  disease  or  weakness, 
while  robust  health  and  vigor  add  to  their  in- 
tensity.1 This  intensity  of  coloration  is  most 
manifest  in  the  male  during  the  breeding-season, 
when  the  vitality  is  at  a  maximum."  But  we  are 
not  aware  that  either  Mr.  Wallace  or  any  one  else 
has  fully  grasped  the  principle  laid  down  above, 
or  traced  its  numerous  applications,  aesthetic  as 
well  as  biological. 

But  among  the  "  pigment-colors  "  there  is  a 
very  great  diversity  in  permanence  due  to  the  na- 
ture of  the  colors  themselves,  or  to  that  of  the 
tissues  in  which  they  inhere.  Dr.  Hagen  divides 
such  colors  into  epidermal,  placed  in  hair,  in 
feathers,  and  in  the  cbitinic  exo-skeleton  of  in- 
sects ;  and  hypodermal,  situate  in  the  softer  inter- 
nal layers  of  the  skin.  That  the  latter  are  the 
more  easily  affected  by  any  external  influence  is 
natural. 

Alterations  and  degradations  of  color  similar 
to  those  above  mentioned  may,  indeed,  under  cer- 
tain circumstances,  be  produced  even  in  the  ab- 
sence of  light.  But  we  have  direct  experimental 
evidence  to  show  that,  other  things  being  equal, 
animal  matters  retain  their  colors  most  complete- 
ly in  the  absence  of  light,  and  fade  the  more 
rapidly  in  proportion  to  the  intensity  of  the 
illumination  to  which  they  are  exposed.  Hence 
we  are  compelled  to  recognize  light  as  a  destroyer 
of  animal  coloration. 

But  light  is  generally  regarded  not  merely  as 
a  color-destroyer,  but  as  a  color-producer,  and  it 
is  with  this  its  supposed  function  that  we  have 
now  to  deal.  Those  who  take  here  the  affirma- 
tive view  rely  mainly  on  two  facts,  or  supposed 
facts,  to  -which  we  have  already  briefly  referred — 
the  higher  coloration  and  the  superior  brilliance 
of  the  tropical  fauna,  and  the  sombre  hues  of 
nocturnal  and  subterranean  beings.  At  these 
facts  we  must  look,  and  seek  to  ascertain  their 

1  Those  who  are  brought  practically  in  contact  with 
animals  hnve  long  been  familiar  with  the  fact  that  a 
'•  dull  coat "  is  indicative  of  disease,  or  at  least  of 
weakness. 

GO 


meaning.  We  must  of  course  admit  that  Europe 
produces  no  humming  birds  or  trogons,  no  Be- 
liouotce  or  Pachyrhynchi ;  but  we  must  also  re- 
member that  the  total  number  of  species  of  birds, 
of  reptiles,  and  of  insects  found,  say  in  South 
America,  is  far  greater  than  the  sum  total  exist- 
ing in  Britain  or  on  the  European  Continent. 
Hence,  even  if  the  tendency  to  produce  a  gay 
coloration  were  equal  in  either  case,  the  proba- 
bility is  that  South  America  would  be  the  richer 
in  gorgeous  species.  Again,  travelers  who  visit 
tropical  countries  not  unnaturally  select  the  most 
showy  forms,  and  their  collections  are  therefore 
not  a  fair  average.  Naturalists,  such  as  Mr. 
Wallace,  who  have  taken  the  trouble  to  examine 
closely,  find  that  even  in  New  Guinea,  Borneo,  or 
Brazil,  dull-looking  species  exist  in  numbers. 
Had  we  catalogues  of  the  insects  of  such  coun- 
tries as  complete  as  those  we  possess  for  Britain, 
France,  or  Germany,  our  views  as  to  the  general 
character  of  a  tropical  fauna  would  be  doubtless 
modified.  As  the  insects  of  warm  climates,  also, 
are  upon  the  whole  larger  than  those  of  our  hyper- 
borean latitudes,  they  necessarily  attract  atten- 
tion, and  their  beauty  does  not  pass  unseen  ;  yet 
every  entomologist  knows  that  even  in  Britain  we 
possess  "  tiny  miracles  of  Nature "  which,  if 
viewed  with  a  lens  of  low  power,  display  a  splen- 
dor little — if  at  all — inferior  to  the  most  richly- 
attired  tropical  species.  We  will  merely  mention, 
as  instances,  Chryseis  iynita,  Chrysomela  cerealis, 
Donacia  protevs,  Polydrusus  micans  and  Jfavipes, 
Rhynchites  betulce  undpopuli,  Lampra  rutilans,  and 
Anthrazia  salicis.  Calosoma  sycophanta,  also,  if 
very  rare  in  Britain,  is  very  common  in  certain 
parts  of  Central  Europe,  and  may  be  fairly  con- 
sidered one  of  the  most  gorgeous  species  of  the 
entire  family  of  Carabidce  to  be  met  with  in  any 
part  of  the  world. 

The  case,  then,  seems  to  stand  thus:  We 
have  in  Britain  certain  species,  small,  and  it  may 
be  rare,  which  display  the  very  same  shades  of 
color  and  the  same  brilliance  as  we  find  in  the 
most  admired  forms  of  tropical  life.  This  fact 
seems  to  us  scarcely  consistent  with  the  theory 
that  the  more  intense  light  of  low  latitudes  is  a 
prominent  factor  in  the  production  of  splendid 
colors.  Were  such  the  case,  gayly-colored  spe- 
cies in  our  climate  would  not  merely  be  fewer  and 
smaller ;  they  would  rather  be  altogether  wanting. 

Again,  different  portions  of  the  torrid  zone 
differ  very  widely  as  regards  the  number,  and 
even  the  beauty,  of  the  richly-attired  birds  and 
insects  they  produce.  Thus,  as  Mr.  Wallace  has 
pointed  out,  in  New  Guinea  60  per  cent,  of  the 


370 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


birds  are  brilliantly  colored,  while  in  the  Malay 
Islands  and  in  the  valley  of  the  Amazon  the  pro- 
portion does  not  exceed  33  per  cent.  Can  this 
distinction  be  rationally  ascribed  to  any  excess 
of  light  enjoyed  by  New  Guinea  over  and  above 
the  amount  received  by  the  valley  of  the  Ama- 
zon? Both  these  respective  districts  lie  under 
the  equator ;  both  are  fruitful,  plentifully  sup- 
plied with  moisture,  well-wooded,  and  exposed, 
as  far  as  we  can  perceive,  to  very  similar  mete- 
orological conditions.  But  if  excess  of  light  can- 
not be  the  cause  of  the  superiority  of  New  Guinea 
over  equinoctial  Brazil,  why  should  it  be  put 
forward  to  explain  the  superiority  of  Brazil  as 
compared  with  Britain  ?  Why  should  the  fauna 
of  the  Philippine  Islands,  as  is  remarked  by  Mr. 
Wallace  in  his  invaluable  "  Glasgow  Address," 
be  so  rich  in  species  of  exceptionally  splendid 
colors  ?  Can  there  be  in  those  islands  either  any 
excess  in  the  quantity  or  any  peculiarity  in  the 
quality  of  the  sunlight  ?  That  there  is,  no  one 
has  yet  even  attempted  to  show,  and  were  such 
the  case  it  would  doubtless  be  traceable  in  a  va- 
riety of  phenomena  not  limited  to  the  organic 
world. 

Another  important  point  has  been  raised  by 
Mr.  Bates.  He  shows  that  while  in  many  tropi- 
cal butterflies  the  males  are  most  splendidly  col- 
ored, the  females — in  numbers  of  cases  at  least — 
are  sombre  and  insignificant  in  appearance,  so 
much  so  that  in  former  times  they  were  often 
regarded  as  specifically  distinct  from  their  mates. 
If  excess  of  light,  therefore,  be  the  producing 
cause  of  the  splendor  of  the  tropical  Lepidoptera, 
why  should  not  the  effect  appear  alike  in  both 
sexes  ?  To  this  argument,  however,  the  reply 
has  been  made  that  in  these  very  species  the  fe- 
males are  exceedingly  sedentary  in  their  habits, 
remaining  generally  concealed  in  shady  thick- 
ets, while  the  males  flutter  about  in  the  sun- 
shine, and,  being  thus  more  exposed  to  light,  ex- 
perience modifications  which — transmitted  with 
constant  accumulation  from  one  generation  to 
another — have  produced  the  splendor  now  char- 
acteristic of  their  sex.  To  this  question  of  the 
relative  amount  of  exposure  to  light  in  different 
stages  of  existence  we  shall  have  to  return. 

But  the  amount — or  at  least  the  intensity  and 
clearness — of  the  sun  does  not  necessarily  vary 
with  latitude  alone.  The  air  of  some  countries 
is  more  transparent,  less  obscured  by  fogs  and 
clouds  than  that  of  others.  More  light  evidently 
reaches  the  earth's  surface  on  open  plains  or  on 
table-lands  and  in  deserts  than  in  dense  forests 
and  in  narrow  valleys.     Do  we  find  any  corre- 


sponding variation  in  the  prevalent  hues  of  the 
animal  population  of  these  respective  localities  ? 
Mr.  Wallace  points  out  that  the  most  brilliantly- 
clad  birds  and  insects  are  dwellers  in  the  forests 
where  the  amount  of  light  received  is  compara- 
tively scanty.  On  the  other  hand,  in  the  deserts, 
where — as  we  have  already  mentioned — light 
must  attain  its  terrestrial  maximum,  the  prevalent 
coloration,  if  not  dark,  is  certainly  neither  light 
nor  brilliant.  As  the  Rev.  H.  Tristram  remarks, 
in  such  regions  the  smaller  mammalia,  the  birds, 
the  snakes,  and  lizards,  are  alike  sand-colored, 
their  hues  having  evidently  more  reference  to 
concealment  than  to  the  influence  of  an  intense 
illumination.  There  is  indeed,  if  we  wish  to  come 
to  details,  a  curious  want  of  harmony  in  the  effects 
which  light  is  expected  to  produce.  We  know 
that  it  bleaches  in  certain  cases  and  darkens  in 
others ;  but  it  is  no  easy  task  for  us  to  predict 
when  either  of  these  opposite  effects  will  be  mani- 
fested. Still  it  is  perfectly  possible  that  light  might 
have  a  bleaching  power  upon  some  living  organ- 
isms, and  a  darkening  effect  upon  others,  according 
to  their  different  molecular  structure.  There  is, 
for  instance,  little  doubt  but  that  the  air  of  Persia 
is,  as  a  rule,  exceedingly  transparent ;  the  climate 
is  dry,  mists  and  clouds  comparatively  rare,  wood- 
lands scanty,  and  the  country  generally  open. 
We  have  even  heard  it  stated  that  there  the  sat- 
ellites of  Jupiter  are  occasionally  visible  with  the 
naked  eye.  Here,  therefore,  we  have  doubtless 
a  case  of  light  in  its  greatest  intensity ;  but,  ac- 
cording to  Mr.  Blanford,  Persian  specimens  are 
generally  paler  than  their  nearest  European  repre- 
sentatives. Here,  if  light  be  directly  concerned, 
its  action  must  be  of  a  bleaching  character  ;  yet 
we  generally  find  in  mammals,  in  birds  and  rep- 
tiles, as  well  as  in  insects,  the  upper  surface,  or 
portion  most  exposed  to  the  sun,  is  darker  than 
the  under  side,  or  than  parts  generally  kept  in 
the  shade.  An  animal  in  whom  the  contrary  ar- 
rangement prevails — such  as  the  common  badger 
— has  much  of  the  appearance  of  a  caricature. 
This  darkening  of  the  superior  surface  of  animals 
is  again  adduced  as  an  instance  of  the  chromo- 
genic  power  of  light,  a  view  to  which  we  shall 
afterward  take  occasion  to  revert. 

As  regards  the  comparison  between  the  trop- 
ical and  the  extra-tropical  fauna?  the  case  may, 
perhaps,  be  fairly  summed  up  thus :  There  are 
certain  cosmopolitan  groups  whose  members, 
wherever  found,  are  alike  devoid  of  rich  or  brill- 
iant coloration  ;  there  are  other  groups — such  as 
the  Ornithoptcra,  the  Papiliones,  the  Buprestidje, 
the  Cetoniadre,  thetrogons,  humming-birds,  birds- 


TEE  ACTION  OF  LIGET,   ETC. 


371 


of-paradise,  etc. — which  have  a  remarkable  and 
hitherto-unexplained  tendency  to  the  develop- 
ment of  splendid  hues,  and  which,  if  not  exclu- 
sively tropical,  have  their  headquarters  and  pro- 
duce their  largest  representatives  within  the  tor- 
rid zone.  Other  groups,  again,  attain  their  great- 
est splendor  beyond  the  tropics,  e.  g.,  the  ducks, 
the  pheasants,  and,  among  insects,  the  ground- 
beetles,  or  Carabidae.  It  has,  indeed,  been  sug- 
gested that  if  the  colder  regions  of  the  earth  are 
now  inferior  to  the  tropical  districts  in  the  beauty 
of  their  fauna,  the  cause  may  be  sought  in  the 
ravages  of  the  Glacial  epoch.  If  the  most  mag- 
nificent species  were  forest-dwellers,  as  we  now 
find  it  to  be  the  case  in  warm  climates,  their  de- 
struction would  be  almost  inevitably  involved  in 
the  desolation  of  their  haunts,  and  the  annihila- 
tion of  their  food.  Perhaps,  too,  the  very  splen- 
dor of  such  supposed  forms  would  render  them 
more  conspicuous  to  their  enemies,  and  thus  ac- 
celerate their  extirpation.  All  such  speculations, 
however,  are  little  more  than  conjectural.  We 
conclude,  indeed,  judging  from  the  fossil  remains 
of  insects  discovered  at  (Eningen  and  elsewhere 
(see  Quarterly  Journal  of  Science,  vii.,  255),  that 
certain  groups,  now  mainly  tropical  or  sub-tropi- 
cal, were  very  extensively  developed  in  Central 
Europe  ;  but  at  the  same  time  we  find  indications 
that  the  climate,  at  least  as  far  as  warmth  is  con- 
cerned, was  almost  tropical  in  its  character. 

We  may  next  inquire  whether  the  relative 
brilliance  of  color  in  various  animal  groups  is 
at  all  connected  with  their  diurnal  or  nocturnal 
habits,  or  with  their  greater  or  less  exposure  to 
light  at  different  stages  of  their  development.  It 
is  a  truism  that  the  diurnal  Lepidoptera  are  upon 
the  average  much  more  highly  colored  than  the 
nocturnal  species,  the  moths.  Some  weight  has 
been  laid  on  the  circumstance  that  iu  butterflies 
both  sides  of  the  wings  are  freely  exposed  to 
light,  and  that  both  are  also  adorned  with  a  vari- 
ety of  hues,  while  in  moths,  where  the  under  sur- 
face of  the  wings  is  not  turned  to  the  light,  it 
generally  exhibits  a  dull  and  uniform  coloration ; 
but  these  facts  admit  of  much  qualification. 
Even  among  the  small  number  of  beetles  indig- 
enous in  Britain  there  are  some — such  as  Ere- 
bia  Cassiope,  Coenonyrnpha  Davits,  and  Thanaos 
Tages — certainly  less  brightly  colored  than  many 
moths.  Many  species  of  butterflies,  also,  if  rich- 
ly colored  on  the  upper  surface  of  the  wing3,  can 
boast  no  gay  or  varied  tints  beneath.  We  need 
only  mention  the  common  peacock  (Vanessa  lo). 
Again,  in  certain  genera  of  moths  we  find  colors 
as  vivid  as  can  be  met  with  in  butterflies — e.  g., 


Callimorpha,  Euchelia,  Chelonia,  and  Catocala. 
The  most  remarkable  feature  in  these  genera  is 
that  the  chief  display  of  color  appears  on  the 
upper  surface  of  the  hind-wings — a  part  as  lit- 
tle exposed  to  light  as  the  lower  surface,  since 
when  the  insect  is  at  rest,  in  the  daytime,  it 
is  completely  screened  by  the  anterior  pair  of 
wings. 

In  the  larva  state  it  cannot  be  said  that  Lepi- 
dopterous  insects  are  much  exposed  to  light.  As 
a  rule  the  caterpillars  of  the  diurnal  as  well  as 
of  the  nocturnal  species  prefer  shade  to  sunshine. 
It  is  perhaps  somewhat  curious  that  the  habits 
of  the  larva  stand  in  no  regular  connection  with 
the  diurnal  or  nocturnal  character  of  the  mature 
insect. 

Turning  to  the  Coleoptera,  we  find  further 
facts  unfavorable  to  the  supposed  predomi- 
nant influence  of  light  upon  the  development 
of  color.  Such  Coleopterous  larvae — and  they 
are  the  majority — as  live  in  total  darkness  are, 
indeed,  generally  of  a  dull,  dirty  gray,  con- 
trasting strongly  with  caterpillars  which  are 
more  or  less  exposed  to  light,  and  many  of 
which  exhibit  a  bright  and  pleasing  coloration. 
This  circumstance,  like  the  etiolation  of  plants 
reared  up  in  darkness,  is  certainly  in  favor  of  the 
view  that  light  is  not  without  influence  upon  or- 
ganic coloration ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  let  us 
consider  the  after-life  of  some  of  these  dull-look- 
ing beetle-grubs.  The  most  gorgeous,  perhaps, 
of  all  Coleoptera  are  the  Buprestidae.  These 
creatures  spend  the  whole  of  their  larval  and 
pupal  life  within  the  trunks  of  trees,  and  conse- 
quently in  total  darkness.  When  mature,  in- 
deed, they  sport  for  a  time  in  the  checkered  sun- 
light of  the  woodlands.  But  why,  if  light  be  the 
main  cause  of  animal  coloration,  should  they  be 
so  far  superior  in  brilliance  to  the  Longicornes, 
or  wood-beetles,  which  from  birth  to  death  are 
exposed  to  precisely  the  same  circumstances  ? 
Taking  the  opposite  extreme,  the  Staphylinidae — 
of  which  the  common  "  devil's  coach-horse"  is  a 
familiar  example — rank  in  appearance  among  the 
dullest  and  least  decorated  of  all  the  insect 
tribes,  whether  they  inhabit  cold  or  warm  cli- 
mates ;  yet  these  creatures,  instead  of  leading 
the  earlier  part  of  their  life  in  complete  and  con- 
stant darkness,  are  active  when  larvae,  and  may 
be  seen  running  about  in  the  daylight,  seeking 
for  prey.  Surely,  therefore,  bein^r  so  much  more 
exposed  to  light  than  the  Buprestidae  or  the  Ce- 
toniadae,  they  ought,  on  the  theory  we  are  exam- 
ining, to  be  at  least  correspondingly  beautiful. 
Let  us  turn  to  the  Melolonthidae,  of  which  the 


372 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


common  and  destructive  insect  known  as  the 
cockchafer  may  serve  as  the  type.  Their  early 
life  is  spent  in  darkness,  since  when  larvae  they 
live  underground,  devouring  the  roots  of  plants. 
When  mature  their  colors  must  be  pronounced 
far  less  brilliant  than  those  of  their  near  allies, 
the  rose-beetles  (Cetoniadae),  which  are  equally 
nursed  in  darkness.  It  will  be,  of  course,  ob- 
jected that  the  adult  cockchafer  is  a  nocturnal 
— or,  at  least,  a  twilight-loving — insect,  while 
the  rose-beetle  feeds  and  flies  by  day.  We  will, 
therefore,  take  another  instance — that  of  the 
Elateridae,  or  click-beetles.  As  larvae  they,  like 
the  immature  cockchafer,  live  underground,  but 
when  mature  they  are  diurnal  in  their  habits; 
yet  the  general  coloration  of  the  family  is  what 
some  people  call  "  sober,"  scarcely  more  gay 
than  that  of  the  Melolonthidae,  and  forming  a 
most  striking  contrast  to  that  of  the  Buprestidae, 
whom  they  so  closely  approach  at  once  in  their 
structure  and  in  the  degree  of  light  which  they 
encounter,  both  in  their  earlier  stages  and  in  ma- 
ture life.  Again,  we  may  consider  the  weevils 
(Curculionidae),  all  of  them  when  larvae  burrow- 
ing from  daylight  in  the  interior  of  fruits  and  in 
the  buds  and  stems  of  plants ;  yet,  when  mature, 
some  of  them — e.  g.,  the  diamond-beetle — are  as 
remarkably  brilliant  as  others  are  conspicuously 
sombre. 

On  the  other  hand,  attention  is  drawn  to  the 
Chrysomelidae,  to  which  the  redoubtable  Colorado 
beetle — vilely  called  the  potato-bug — belongs,  a 
family  very  richly  and  brightly  colored.  Their 
larvae  are  active,  and  they  are  thus  throughout 
their  lives  exposed  to  the  sunshine. 

Among  the  animal  population  of  the  seas  and 
livers,  also,  we  meet  with  facts,  not  a  few,  diffi- 
cult to  reconcile  with  the  hypothesis  under  ex- 
amination. It  must  be  admitted  that  in  all 
waters,  save  the  very  shallowest,  the  amount  of 
light  enjoyed  must  be  very  decidedly  less  than 
that  which  falls  upon  the  surface  of  the  land  in 
similar  climates  ;  yet  we  do  not  find  that  the 
denizens  of  the  waters  are,  as  a  general  rule,  less 
vividly  colored  than  those  of  the  dry  land.  On 
the  contrary,  fishes,  crustaceans,  mollusks,  be- 
sides aquatic  forms  lower  in  the  scale  of  exist- 
ence, such  as  the  sea-anemones,  display  all  the 
colors  of  the  rainbow  in  a  purity  and  in  a  pro- 
fusion rivaling  what  we  observe  in  the  most  gor- 
geous birds  and  insects.  We  admit  that  splendid 
oceanic  forms  are  more  abundant  in  tropical 
waters  than  in  higher  latitudes,  and  also  that  in 
a  majority  of  cases  the  inmates  of  shallow  waters 
are  more  vividly  colored  than  the  dwellers   in 


deeper  and  consequently  darker  seas.  But  what 
must  be  inferred  from  the  following  observations, 
extracted  from  a  paper  by  H.  N.  Mosely,  late 
naturalist  to  the  Challenger  Expedition,  read  be- 
fore the  Linnacan  Society  on  February  15,  18'7'7  ? 
"A  species  of  Edwardsia,  from  600  fathoms,  has 
undergone  but  little  modification  from  the  littoral 
form.  The  Cerianthus,  from  2,*750  fathoms,  is 
like  its  shore-brethren.  Thus  one  species  is 
found  in  shallow  water  at  the  Philippines,  under 
the  full  glare  of  the  tropical  sun,  while  another 
species  exists  at  three  miles'  depth,  where  solar 
rays  never  penetrate,  and  where  the  water  is  at 
freezing-point.  The  deep  sea-anemones  retain 
vivid  colors  in  the  dark." 

This  fact  is  very  suggestive.  It  agrees  ill 
with  the  often-expressed  view  of  teleologically- 
disposed  naturalists,  that  all  the  brilliant  hues 
of  animal  and  vegetable  life  have  been  called  into 
existence  for  man's  delectation  ;  but  no  less  does 
it  clash  with  the  conclusions  drawn  from  the 
paleness  and  obscurity  of  certain  nocturnal,  sub- 
terranean, or  cave-haunting  animals,  such  as  the 
Coleopterous  larvae  to  which  we  have  referred, 
wood-lice,  crickets,  etc.  Light,  it  would  seem, 
is  not  the  sole  condition  for  the  production  of 
positive  color ;  nor  arc  the  dwellers  in  darkness 
necessarily  restricted  to  a  garb  of  whites,  blacks, 
and  grays.  It  can,  further,  scarcely  be  contended 
that  the  land-shells  of  any  country  are  more 
vividly  and  intensely  colored  than  the  marine 
shells  of  its  coasts,  many  of  which  are  as  highly 
decorated  within  as  without ;  yet  a  land-shell 
will  doubtless  receive  a  larger  share  of  the  solar 
radiations  than  a  sea-shell. 
■  Again,  while  there  is  thus  abundant  proof 
that  an  aquatic  or  even  a  deep-sea  existence  is 
not  necessarily  incompatible  with  a  rich  colora- 
tion, we  find  certain  groups — the  aquatic  insects 
— ordinarily  plain  in  their  hues.  The  water-bee- 
tles, chiefly  frequenting  shallow  pools  and  rivers, 
present  ordinarily  a  dark-olive,  black,  or  brown 
coloration,  relieved  at  most  with  rusty  yellow, 
and  those  of  tropical  climates  show  little,  if  any, 
preeminence  in  this  respect  over  their  allies  from 
colder  regions.  But  these  beetles,  be  it  noted, 
if  devoid  of  splendor,  are  not  etiolated.  The 
water-scorpion,  water-boatman,  and  other  aquatic 
Hemiptera,  though  living  rather  on  than  in  the 
water,  and  fully  exposed  to  light,  are  also  re- 
markably plain  in  their  coloration. 

We  have  repeatedly  referred  to  nocturnal  ani- 
mals ;  but  it  will  be  observed  that  in  the  higher 
forms  of  life  the  common  views  concerning  their 
dominant  colors  scarcely  hold  good.     Thus  the 


THE  ACTION  OF  LIGHT,   ETC. 


37; 


owls,  though  not  decked  out  with  any  metallic 
hues,  differ  little  in  the  general  character  of  their 
coloration  from  their  diurnal  kindred,  the  hawks, 
presenting  bold,  well-defined  patterns,  and  a  va- 
riety of  black,  fawn,  brown,  buff,  and  white 
shades.  Few  mammals  display  more  vivid  hues 
than  the  Felidae,  most  of  which  are  unquestiona- 
bly nocturnal.  Many  nightly  or  subterranean  in- 
sects also,  such  as  Spkodrus  leucopthalmus  and 
Pri&tonychus  (erricola,  showT  no  signs  of  etiolation. 
Even  the  common  cockroach  makes  no  approach 
to  that  pallid,  ghastly  hue  which  is  commonly 
supposed  characteristic  of  animals  inhabiting 
sunless  localities.  Among  nocturnal  species  we 
believe  few,  if  any,  instances  can  be  found  where 
the  male  surpasses  the  female  in  brightness  or 
depth  of  coloring. 

Mr.  Wallace,  however,  while  going  perhaps 
even  further  than  we  should  be  prepared  to  ac- 
company him  in  the  rejection  of  the  theory  which 
regards  animal  coloration  as  directly  proportion- 
ate to  the  intensity  of  solar  radiation,  gives  some 
curious  instances  of  phenomena  proving  that  in 
certain  cases  light  has  a  direct  action  upon  the 
colors  of  organic  beings.  Thus  Mr.  T.  W.  Wood, 
some  time  ago,  pointed  out  that  the  chrysalids 
of  the  small  "cabbage  white"  (Pontia  rapce)  va- 
ried in  color  when  the  larvas  had  been  fed  up 
in  boxes  lined  with  different  colored  materials. 
Those  which  were  kept  in  black  boxes  were  nearly 
black,  while  such  as  had  lived  in  white  boxes 
were  almost  white.  He  observed  corresponding 
changes  in  the  same  species  in  a  state  of  Nature : 
chrysalids  fixed  against  a  whitewashed  wall  being 
whitish  ;  those  secured  to  a  red-brick  wall  being 
reddish  ;  while  those  fixed  against  a  pitched  pak 
ing  were  nearly  black.  The  cocoon  of  the  em- 
peror moth  is  also  observed  to  be  either  white  or 
brown,  in  accordance  with  the  colors  of  surround- 
ing objects.  A  still  more  decisive  instance  of 
such  changes  has  been  observed  in  the  chrysalis 
of  Papilio  Niretis,  a  South-African  butterfly  which 
has  been  studied  by  Mrs.  Barber.  It  acquires, 
more  or  less  exactly,  the  color  of  any  contiguous 
object.  "  A  number  of  the  caterpillars  were 
placed  in  a  case  with  a  glass  cover,  one  side  of  the 
case  being  formed  by  a  red-brick  wall,  the  other 
sides  being  of  yellowish  wood.  They  were  fed 
on  orange-leaves,  and  a  branch  of  the  bottle- 
brush  tree  (Banksia)  was  also  placed  in  the  case. 
When  fully  fed,  some  attached  themselves  to  the 
orange-twigs,  others  to  the  bottle-brush  branch — 
and  these  all  changed  to  green  pupae;. but  each 
corresponded  exactly  in  tint  to  the  leaves  around 
it,  the  one  being  a  dark   and  the  other  a  pale, 


faded  green.  Another  attached  itself  to  the  wood, 
and  the  pupa  became  of  the  same  yellowish  color ; 
while  one  fixed  itself  just  where  the  wood  and 
brick  joined,  and  became  one  side  red,  the  other 
side  yellow." 

This  Mr.  Wallace  pronounces  "  a  kind  of  nat- 
ural photography,  the  particular  colored  rays  to 
which  the  fresh  pupa  is  exposed  in  its  soft,  semi- 
transparent  condition  effecting  such  a  chemical 
change  in  the  organic  juices  as  to  produce  the 
same  tint  in  the  hardened  skin."  This  power  of 
the  pupa  to  assume  the  color  of  closely-adjacent 
objects,  however,  is  limited,  since  when  Mrs. 
Barber  surrounded  one  of  her  caterpillars  with  a 
piece  of  scarlet  cloth  the  pupa  displayed  its  ordi- 
nary green  tint,  though  the  small  red  spots  with 
which  it  is  marked  were  rendered  abnormally 
bright.  It  must  be  recorded,  however,  that  these 
very  interesting  changes  are  confined  to  the  chrys- 
alis, and  do  not  appear  to  have  extended  in  any 
way  to  the  mature  butterfly.  We  have  never 
been  able  to  trace  any  modification  in  the  colors 
of  butterflies  reared,  for  one  generation,  in  ab- 
normally colored  light,  nor,  as  far  as  we  are 
aware,  has  any  other  observer  been  more  suc- 
cessful. 

A  correspondence  has  also  been  in  some  in- 
stances traced  between  the  colors  of  animals  and 
those  of  the  localities  which  they  inhabit  and  the 
food  which  they  eat.  Spiders  have  been  found 
of  exactly  the  same  tint  as  the  flowers  in  which 
they  lurk.  Mr.  Wallace,  on  the  authority  of  Sir 
Charles  Dilke,  mentions  a  pink-colored  Mantis 
which,  when  at  rest,  closely  resembles  the  pink 
flower  of  an  orchis,  and  is  thus  enabled  to  seize 
unsuspecting  butterflies.  But  we  should  be  wrong 
in  ascribing  such  similarity  of  coloration  to  the 
effects  of  reflected  light,  or,  indeed,  of  any  merely 
physical  influence.  They  are  almost  certainly 
due  to  physiological  causes,  and  are  instances  of 
what  is  called  "  protective  coloration." 

There  is  another  class  of  phenomena  which  at 
first  sight  seems  due  to  the  action  of  light.  Many 
insects  when  they  first  emerge  from  the  pupa  are 
abnormally  pale,  and  do  not  take  their  full  ma- 
ture coloration  until  after  a  longer  or  shorter  in- 
terval of  time.  It  was  in  virtue  of  this  property 
that  an  entomologist,  commissioned  by  the  Ger- 
man Government  to  inspect  a  field  where  the 
dreaded  Colorado  beetle  had  made  its  appear- 
ance, was  enabled  to  decide  that  these  insect  en- 
emies had  only  just  appeared  in  the  mature  form, 
and  that  on  turning  up  the  ground  a  further  stock 
would  be  found  in  a  rudimentary  state,  as  on 
actual  trial  was  found  to  be  the  case.     But  this 


374 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


gradual  development  of  color  has  not  been  proved 
to  be  the  result  of  light.  We  have  reared  up 
caterpillars  in  perfect  darkness,  and  have  found 
their  colors  on  reaching  maturity  no  less  brilliant 
than  those  of  their  fellows  which  had  been  ex- 
posed to  light  in  the  ordinary  course  of  Nature. 
In  the  case  of  interference-colors  a  change  in  the 
physical  condition  of  the  integuments,  conse- 
quent of  their  drying  and  hardening  on  exposure 
to  the  air,  is  doubtless  necessary  for  their  devel- 
opment. The  evolution  of  the  pigment-colors  we 
are  at  present  investigating,  and  believe  that  it  is 
simply  due  to  a  process  of  oxidation. 

Some  other  of  the  phenomena  advanced  in 
support  of  the  "light-theory"  of  organic  color- 
ation may  also  be,  with  great  probability,  referred 
to  other  causes.  Thus  some  ascribe  to  light  the 
fact  that  the  upper  surface  of  most  animals  is 
more  intensely  colored  than  their  under  side. 
Many  fishes  have  a  dark  back,  and  a  pale  grayish 
blue  or  greenish  belly ;  but,  as  Mr.  Wallace  points 
out,  this  arrangement  seems  more  protective  than 
due  to  the  action  of  light.  An  enemy — say  a  sea- 
bird — looking  down  from  above  will  have  diffi- 
culty in  distinguishing  the  dark  back  of  the  fish 
amid  the  water.  On  the  other  hand,  an  enemy 
looking  from  below  will  see  the  pale  belly  of  the 
fish  against  the  dull  bluish  color  of  the  sky  as 
seen  on  looking  up  through  the  water,  and  will 
scarcely  detect  its  presence.  Now,  were  this  ar- 
rangement of  colors  reversed,  the  fish  would  be 
much  more  readily  seen,  either  from  above  or 
from  below,  and  the  chances  of  its  escaping  from 
its  enemies  would  be  much  reduced.  At  the  same 
time  it  must  be  confessed  that  this  explanation  is 
not  admissible  in  all  cases  of  a  similar  arrange- 
ment of  color.  Thus  in  many  crustaceans  unable 
to  swim,  and  therefore  not  liable  to  be  seen  by 
any  enemy  from  below,  the  under  surface  is  much 
paler  than  the  back.  Similarly  slugs — whether 
creeping  upon  the  ground,  upon  the  stems  or 
leaves  of  vegetables — are  liable  to  be  espied  from 
the  back  or  the  sides,  but  never  from  beneath ; 
yet  in  most  cases  their  under  surface  is  decided- 
ly paler  than  their  back.  These  instances,  and 
others  which  might  be  adduced,  certainly  seem 
to  agree  better  witli  the  supposition  of  a  darken- 
ing influence  due  to  the  freer  action  of  light  upon 
the  upper  side  than  with  that  of  a  protective  dis- 
tribution of  color. 

But  from  the  whole  of  the  evidence  before  us, 
especial  attention  being  paid  to  the  case  of  the 
deep-sea  anemones,  we  are  forced  to  conclude  that 
the  coloration  of  an  animal  species  is  not,  in  the 
mathematical  use  of  the  word,  a  function  of  the 


amount  of  solar  radiations  to  which  it  is  ex- 
posed. That  this  conclusion  does  not  compel  us 
to  deny  the  influence  of  sunlight  upon  the  hues  of 
all  animals,  under  all  conceivable  circumstances, 
scarcely  needs  to  be  stated. 

The  fact  that  Lepidopterous  larvae  are  in  a 
majority  of  cases,  partially  at  least,  of  a  green 
color,  is  not  inexplicable.  They  retain  in  their 
bodies,  in  an  undecomposed  state,  the  chlorophyll 
of  the  leaves  upon  which  they  have  fed.  Larvae, 
on  the  other  hand,  whether  Lepidopterous  or  Co- 
leopterous, which  feed  not  upon  leaves,  but  upon 
wood,  roots,  seeds,  etc.,  not  containing  chloro- 
phyll, may  naturally  be  found  deficient  in  this 
green  color,  without  our  taking  the  presence  or 
absence  of  light  into  account.  Hence  we  need 
not  wonder  that  the  caterpillars  of  the  goat-moth 
and  the  wood-leopard,  the  larvae  of  the  Longi- 
cornes,  Buprestidae,  Dynastidae,  etc.,  are  not  green : 
they  have  not  been  consuming  a  green  pigment. 
But  why  have  we  comparatively  so  few  green  but- 
terflies and  moths,  and  so  many  green  birds  and 
green  beetles  ?  The  green  colors  found  in  birds 
and  in  beetles — with  the  exception  of  such  forms 
as  Cassida,  a  leaf-feeder — are  due  not  to  a  pig- 
ment, but  to  the  interference  of  light,  so  that  their 
formation  must  be  explained  on  different  princi- 
ples. The  paucity  of  green  butterflies  may,  per- 
haps, be  traced  to  the  fact  that  chlorophyll  is  a 
mixture  of  two  coloring  principles l — cyanophyll, 
which  is  blue,  and  xanthophvll,  which  is  yellow — 
the  latter  of  these  colors  being  much  more  per- 
manent that  the  other.  Hence  if,  as  appears  ex- 
ceedingly probable,  chlorophyll  is  assimilated  by 
leaf-eating  insects,  a  number  of  phenomena  con- 
nected with  their  coloration  become  at  once  intel- 
ligible. We  have  mentioned  in  an  earlier  part  of 
this  paper  that  among  animal  tints  pigment-greens 
are  generally  the  first  to  fade,  and  that  they  be- 
come a  dull  yellow  or  a  yellowish  drab,  as  may 
be  observed  in  a  specimen,  say,  of  Cassida  eques- 

i  tris,  which,  however  carefully  preserved,  soon 
loses  its  pale-green  hue,  and  turns  yellowish.  The 
reason  of  this  change,  we  contend,  is  that  the  cy- 
anophyll or  blue  coloring-matter  first  undergoes 
decomposition,  while  the  yellow  xanthophyll  alone 
remains.  A  similar  change,  taking  place  in  the 
living  animal  in  its  pupa  condition,  is  the  cause 

I  why  pigment-greens  are  so  rare  alike  among  Lep- 

i 

1  Some  authorities  consider  that  chlorophyll  is  a 

i  mixture  not  of  two,  but  of  three  coloring  principles. 

'  (Freray  and  Cloez),  or  of  four  (Stokes).  As  these, 
however,  are  in  all  cases  found  to  be  respectively  blue 
and  yellow,  the  view  vr e  have  taken  will  not  be  affected 
by  these  discordant  results.. 


THE  ACTION  OF  LIGHT,   ETC. 


375 


idoptera  and  Coleoptera,  while  yellows  and  browns 
of  different  shades  are  so  exceedingly  common, 
and  relatively  so  permanent.  We  find  also  that 
certain  caterpillars,  green  in  the  earlier  part  of 
their  life  generally,  though  not  invariably,  take  a 
brown  color  as  they  approach  the  time  of  their 
assuming  the  pupa  state. 

But  even  supposing  that  chlorophyll  is  de- 
monstrably assimilated  or  deposited  in  the  tis- 
sues of  certain  insects,  the  hypothesis  we  have 
been  suggesting  takes  us  but  a  very  little  way. 
We  have  still  to  ask  why  the  green  color  in  cer- 
tain species  remains  undecomposed  to  the  mature 
condition,  while  in  others  it  disappears  in  the 
pupal  or  even  in  the  larval  state,  and  how,  after 
disappearance  or  absence  in  the  larva,  as  in 
Choerocampa  Elpenor,  it  appears  in  the  perfect 
insect  ?  We  have  to  inquire  why  certain  diurnal 
caterpillars,  consuming  as  much  chlorophyll  as 
do  any  others — e.  g.,  Vanessa  lo,  V.  xanthomelas, 
V.  urticce,  etc. — are  free  from  a  green  colora- 
tion? At  the  same  time  we  must  admit  that  in 
caterpillars  of  this  class  a  yellow  pattern  is  very 
rarely  absent,  as  if  the  xanthophyll  had  already 
been  separated  from  the  cyanophyll.  We  have 
to  explain  the  pigment-blues,  of  which  there  seem 
to  be  two,  if  not  three,  the  identity  of  which  with 
cyanophyll  must  not  be  too  rashly  assumed, 
though  in  many  cases  we  see  both  blue  and  yel- 
low spots  appearing  in  a  butterfly,  as  if  the  two 
colors,  which  in  its  earlier  state  had  been  blended 
together,  were  now  separated,  as  in  Papilio  Ma- 
chaon.  We  have,  further,  to  throw  a  light  upon 
the  origin  of  the  pigment-reds,  to  two  of  which 
Mr.  Wallace  refers  as  being  different  in  their 
chemical  constitution  and  behavior. 

But  chlorophyll  is  not  the  only  substance 
which  has  been  called  into  requisition  in  order 
to  explain  the  mysteries  of  animal  coloration.  It 
has  not  escaped  the  attention  of  biologists  that 
all  those  creatures  which  develop,  more  or  less 
frequently,  beautiful  hues,  are  precisely  the  same 
in  which  uric  acid  is  abundantly  secreted — i.  e., 
birds,  reptiles,  insects — while  in  the  mammalia, 
in  which  the  secretion  of  uric  acid  is  trifling,  the 
prevailing  colors  are  dull.  It  was  asserted  that 
while  uric  acid  is  abundantly  found  in  the  excre- 
tions of  parrots,  humming-birds,  etc.,  at  other 
times  of  the  year,  during  and  immediately  before 
the  moulting  season  it  was  absent.  Hence  the 
inference  that  this  compound  might  play  a  part 
in  the  elaboration  of  the  new  plumage  was  not 
unwarrantable.  In  addition  came  the  fact  that  a 
beautiful  violet  color,  known  as  murexide,  and 
capable  of  producing  a  variety  of  shades,  was  ar- 


tificially obtained  from  uric  acid.1  Unfortunately, 
when  these  investigations  were  carried  on,  the 
distinction  between  interference-colors  and  ab- 
sorption-colors had  not  been  fully  apprehended, 
and  the  iridescent  hues  of  humming-birds,  tro- 
gons,  Belionotw,  were  supposed  to  be  due  to  some 
peculiar  pigments  of  unknown  composition.  .Nor 
has  it,  as  far  as  we  are  aware,  ever  been  shown 
that  the  excreta  of  splendidly-colored  birds  are 
richer  in  uric  acid  than  those  of  sea-fowl.  For 
the  present,  therefore,  the  uric-acid  theory  must 
be  considered  as  useless. 

A  consideration  of  the  food  of  different  spe- 
cies might  at  first  sight  appear  likely  to  throw 
some  light  upon  the  nature  of  their  coloration. 
But  we  find  intense  splendor  and  varied  tints 
alike  among  carnivorous  species  (Cicindelidae  and 
certain  Carabidae),  wood-eaters  (Buprestidse),  and 
leaf-eaters  (Chrysomelidse).  We  find  dull  and 
sordid  colors  among  many  carrion  and  dung- 
feeders  (Silphidce,  Aphodiidae,  Staphylinidee), 
while  others  addicted  to  a  similar  diet — such  as 
most  species  of  the  genus  Phanceiis — display  the 
most  splendid  hues.  Nor  is  an  examination  of 
the  diet  of  birds  more  satisfactory.2 

It  may  perhaps  be  thought  that  in  an  inquiry 
into  the  influence  of  light  upon  the  coloration  of 
animals  a  consideration  of  their  diet,  or  of  their 
peculiar  secretions  and  excretions,  is  out  of  place. 
But  whether  solar  radiations,  or  local  atmospheric 
influences,  or  the  need  of  protection  take  a  great- 
er or  smaller  share  in  the  development  of  color, 
there  must  be  essential  differences  in  the  material 
upon  which  these  causes  act.  Mammals  are  ex- 
posed to  the  same  climatic  influences  as  birds 
and  insects,  and  are  likewise  exposed  to  dangers 
which  they  might  escape  by  a  coloration  favor- 
able to  concealment.  Their  hair  is,  chemically 
considered,  a  material  no  less  suitable  for  the 
display  of  gay  and  brilliant  colors  than  are  the 
feathers  of  birds,  the  scales  of  serpents,  or  the 
chitinous  coating  of  insects ;  yet  neither  in  lus- 
tre, in  varying  play  of  color,  nor  in  delicacy  and 

1  Murexide,  known  in  the  commercial  world  as 
"Roman  purple"  and  "  Tyrian  purple,"  was  some 
time  ago  prepared  from  guano — i.  e.,  the  excreta  of 
sea-fowl — and  was  in  considerable  demand  among  dy- 
ers and  calico-printers.  Being  costlier  than  the  coal- 
tar  colors,  it  is  now  superseded. 

2  In  addition  to  the  case  of  chlorophyll  above  men- 
tioned there  seem  to  be  individual  instances  where 
the  coloring-matter  of  a  plant,  if  eaten  by  insects,  may 
be  traced  in  their  secretions.  We  do  not  know 
whether  the  deep  reddish  violet  liquid  which  exudes 
from  Timarcha  laevigata,  an  insect  feeding  upon  bed- 
straw,  a  plant  of  the  madder  tribe,  has  ever  been  ex- 
amined for  alizarin  or  purpurin. 


37G 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


elaborateness  of  design,  do  they  make  even  the 
faintest  approach  to  a  rivalry  with  these  groups 
of  animals.  There  must  therefore  be  an  internal 
source  of  coloration,  not  everywhere  present, 
upon  which  external  influences  may  react. 

Mr.  Wallace,  while  rejecting  the  light-theory, 
brings  forward  certain  principles  which  he  con- 
siders throw  a  light  upon  the  phenomena  of  color 
in  organic  Nature.  While  demurring  to  the  com- 
mon conclusion  that  tropical  light  and  heat  are 
the  cause  of  color,  he  fully  recognizes  the  general 
fact  that  "  all  the  more  intense  and  gorgeous 
tints  are  manifested  by  the  animal  life  of  the 
tropics,  while  in  some  groups,  such  as  butterflies 
and  birds,  there  is  a  marked  preponderance  of 
highly-colored  species."  This  phenomenon  he 
ascribes  to  a  variety  of  causes,  some  of  which 
yet  remain  to  be  discovered.  The  foremost  place 
is  given  to  the  following  consideration :  "  The 
luxuriant  vegetation  of  the  tropics  throughout 
the  entire  year  affords  so  much  concealment  that 
color  may  there  be  safely  developed  to  a  much 
greater  extent  than  in  climates  where  the  trees 
are  bare  in  winter,  during  which  season  the 
struggle  for  existence  is  most  severe,  and  even 
the  slightest  disadvantage  may  prove  fatal." 
Fully  admitting  the  force  of  this  consideration 
in  the  case  of  birds,  we  must  yet,  with  all  the 
deference  due  to  so  eminent  an  authority  as  Mr. 
Wallace,  point  out  that  it  can  have  very  little 
moment  as  regards  insects  which  during  the  win- 
ter are  in  a  dormant  condition,  as  larvae  or 
pupa?,  either  in  the  earth,  in  the  trunks  of  trees, 
or  other  localities  where  neither  beauty  can  be- 
tray them  nor  its  lack  screen  them  from  the  pur- 
suit of  any  enemy. 

As  the  first  among  the  causes  of  coloration  he 
places  the  need  of  protection.  He  points  out 
that  browns  and  other  tertiary  colors,  being  most 
readily  produced  by  "  an  irregular  mixture  of 
many  kinds  of  solar  rays,  are  most  likely  to 
occur  when  the  need  of  protection  is  slight,  or 
even  when  it  does  not  exist  at  all,  always  sup- 
posing that  bright  colors  are  not  in  any  way  use- 
ful to  the  species."  Hence  browns,  olives,  and 
other  dirty  colors,  may  naturally  be  expected  to 
predominate. 

Brilliant  colors,  again,  often  serve  as  a  sign 
that  their  wearer  possesses  some  unpleasant  or 
dangerous  property,  and  hence  warn  possible 
enemies  to  pass  on  and  seek  some  less  nauseous 
prey.  The  number  of  apparently  feeble  and  de- 
fenseless species  which  are  clad  in  the  most  con- 
spicuous colors,  and  which  are  avoided  and  re- 
fused by  birds,  monkeys,  spiders,  etc.,  is  aston- 


ishing. The  present  writer,  in  a  paper  read 
before  the  Entomological  Society  ("Transactions 
of  the  Entomological  Society,"  187Y,  Part  III., 
page  205),  has  shown  that,  in  a  great  number  of 
cases  at  least,  the  most  showy  and  conspicuous 
caterpillars  feed  upon  plants  either  absolutely 
poisonous  or  possessing  offensive  flavors  and 
odors,  whence  the  rejection  of  such  larvae  by  in- 
sectivorous animals.  Their  brilliant  coloration  is 
therefore  simply  a  danger-signal. 

The  theory  of  "  Sexual  Selection,"  upon  which 
Mr.  Darwin  lays  great  weight,  Mr.  Wallace  finds 
himself  unable  to  accept  as  in  any  way  an  ex- 
planation of  the  distribution  of  color  in  animals. 
He  remarks  that  "  while  male  butterflies  rival, 
or  even  excel,  the  most  gorgeous  male  birds  in 
bright  colors  and  elegant  patterns,  there  is  liter- 
ally not  one  particle  of  evidence  that  the  female 
is  influenced  by  color,  or  even  that  she  has  any 
power  of  choice,  while  there  is  much  direct  evi- 
dence to  the  contrary."  In  the  case  of  the  silk- 
moth  Mr.  Darwin  admits  that  "  the  females  ap- 
pear not  to  evince  the  least  choice  in  regard  to 
their  partners."  On  the  principle  of  natural 
selection  among  a  number  of  rival  male  butter- 
flies, "  the  most  vigorous  and  energetic "  will 
probably  be  successful,  and,  as  these  properties 
are  very  generally  correlated  with  intensity  of 
color,  natural  selection  "  becomes  a  preserver  and 
intensifier  of  color."  Very  similar  is  the  case 
among  birds.  We  know  that  in  many  species 
the  male  displays  his  colors  and  ornaments, 
but,  as  Mr.  Wallace  contends,  there  is  a  total 
absence  of  any  evidence  that  the  females  admire, 
or  even  notice,  this  display.  "  The  hen,  the  tur- 
key, and  the  peafowl,  go  on  feeding,  while  the 
male  is  displaying  his  finery,  and  there  is  reason 
to  believe  that  it  is  his  persistency  and  energy, 
rather  than  his  beauty,  which  wins  the  day." 
Here,  again,  vigor  and  intense  vitality  seem  to  be 
the  chief  recommendations  of  the  male  in  the 
eyes  of  the  female,  and  these— as  is  very  strik- 
ingly manifest  in  the  game-cock — appear  corre- 
lated with  intense  coloration.  Mr.  Wallace  re- 
sumes :  "  Evidence  collected  by  Mr.  Darwin  him- 
self proves  that  each  bird  finds  a  mate  under  any 
circumstances.  He  gives  a  number  of  cases  of 
one  of  a  pair  of  birds  being  shot,  and  of  the  sur- 
vivor being  always  found  paired  again  almost 
immediately.  This  is  sufficiently  explained  on 
the  assumption  that  the  destruction  of  birds  by 
various  causes  is  continually  leaving  widows  and 
widowers  in  nearly  equal  proportions,  and  thus 
each  one  finds  a  fresh  mate  ;  and  it  leads  to  the 
conclusion  that  permanently  unpaired  birds  are 


THE  ANCIENT  SILK-TRADERS'  ROUTE. 


377 


very  scarce,  so  that,  speaking  broadly,  every  bird 
finds  a  mate  and  breeds.  But  this  would  almost 
or  quite  neutralize  any  effect  of  sexual  selection, 
of  color,  or  ornament,  since  the  less  highly- 
colored  birds  would  be  at  no  disadvantage  as 
regards  leaving  healthy  offspring."  While  ac- 
cepting this  conclusion,  we  may  ask  whether  the 
same  argument  is  not  capable  of  further  applica- 
tion ?  It  is  generally  stated  that  the  "  fittest  " 
male — i.  e.,  the  one  most  in  harmony  with  the 
circumstances  in  which  he  is  placed — will  have 
the  best  chance  of  securing  a  mate  and  of  leaving 
offspring,  while  the  feebler,  the  slower,  the  less 
energetic,  and  those  least  in  harmony  with  the 
situation,  will  be  left  in  a  state  of  single  blessed- 
ness, and  will  not  transmit  their  attributes  to 
posterity.  But,  on  the  principles  laid  down  in 
the  passage  we  have  just  quoted,  the  effects  of 
natural  selection  will  be  greatly  neutralized.  It 
must,  however,  be  remembered  that  the  destruc- 
tion of  birds,  especially  in  a  state  of  Nature,  will 
not  fall  exclusively  or  mainly  upon  those  which 
have  secured  mates,  but  will  likewise  extend  to 
the  unwedded. 

While  combating  Mr.  Darwin's  view,  that 
the  brilliant  colors  of  butterflies  have  been  ac- 
quired for  the  sake  of  protection,  Mr.  Wallace 
remarks  :  "  It  is,  in  fact,  somewhat  remarkable 
how  very  generally  the  black  spots,  ocelli,  or 
bright  patches  of  color,  are  on  the  tips,  margins, 
or  disks  of  the  wings  ;  and,  as  the  insects  are 
necessarily  visible  while  flying,  and  this  is  the 
time  when  they  are  most  subject  to  attacks  of 


insectivorous  birds,  the  position  of  the  more  con- 
spicuous parts  at  some  distance  from  the  body 
may  be  a  real  protection  to  them."  This  rule, 
however,  is  by  no  means  universal.  The  fire-wasp 
(Chryseis),  and  not  a  few  other  Hymenoptera, 
have  brilliantly-colored  bodies,  but  colorless  and 
transparent  wings,  which,  when  expanded  and  in 
action,  are  scarcely  visible.  In  numbers  of  Lepi- 
doptera  the  more  intense  colors,  especially  reds, 
are  found  entirely  or  mainly  on  the  posterior 
wings,  which  extend  to  a  less  distance  from  the 
body  than  do  the  anterior  pair.  In  many  cases, 
again,  Lepidoptera,  Coleoptera,  and  Hymenoptera, 
display  conspicuous  colors  at  the  extremity  of 
the  abdomen,  where  a  blow  from  the  beak  of  a 
bird  would  doubtless  permanently  disable. 

A  question  may  here  arise  concerning  the  use 
of  the  coloration  of  the  posterior  or  true  wings 
in  certain  beetles,  a  circumstance  not  sufficiently 
examined.  While  these  wings  in  the  vast  ma- 
jority of  Coleopterous  species  are  colorless,  or,  at 
most,  of  a  very  faint  yellowish  hue,  in  the  Colo- 
rado beetle  they  are  pink,  and  purple  in  several 
Chrysochroas,  Pachnodas,  and  Lomapteras.  Why 
should  these  species  thus  differ  from  other  close- 
ly-allied forms,  with  whom  they  appear  to  agree 
most  closely  in  their  habits  ? 

We  have  no  doubt  that  Mr.  Wallace's  formal 
declaration  against  the  doctrine  of  sexual  selec- 
tion will  attract  the  attention  of  disbelievers  in 
evolution,  and  we  venture  to  hope  that  all  the 
comments  which  will  be  elicited  may  not  be  be- 
side the  question. —  Quarterly  Journal  of  Science. 


THE  ANCIENT    SILK-TRADERS'  ROUTE    ACROSS    CENTRAL 

i\SIA. 


T  I  THE  paper  on  the  above  subject  read  by 
-*-  Baron  Kichthofcn  before  the  Berlin  Geo- 
graphical Society,  on  the  5th  of  May  last,  was 
based,  in  a  great  measure,  on  the  general  views 
enumerated  in  the  author's  recently-published 
work  on  China,  the  more  detailed  information 
being  derived  from  Ptolemy  and  Chinese  sources. 
It  opened  with  a  general  sketch  of  Central  Asian 
geography,  in  which  the  parts  played  by  the  Him- 
alayan, Kuen-Lun,  Tien-shan,  and  Altai  systems 
were  clearly  expounded.  The  Tarim  Basin  the 
author  likened  to  a  gigantic  horseshoe-shaped 
plain,  the  sides  of  which  are  formed  by  the  Tien- 


shan  and  the  Kuen-Lun.  This  horseshoe  was 
the  western  part  of  a  former  extensive  sea,  which 
was  bounded  on  the  north  by  the  Altai  Range. 
Its  eastern  limit  cannot  at  present  be  defined  with 
accuracy,  but  it  nowhere  trenched  on  the  confines 
of  modern  China.  One  noteworthy  feature  of 
this  great  inland  sea,  which  is  even  now  testified 
to  by  the  name  Han-hai,  or  "  dried-up  sea,"  ap- 
plied by  the  Chinese  to  its  former  site,  was  the 
depression  or  arm  between  the  Tien-shan  or  Altai 
Ranges,  by  which  it  communicated  with  another 
extensive  sea,  beginning  about  Lake  Balkash. 
In  the  recesses  formed  by  the  spurs  of  the  Tien- 


378 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


shan  and  of  the  North  Persian  Ranges,  civilized 
nations  formerly  existed,  and  extended  to  the 
banks  of  the  Jaxartes  and  Oxus,  and  their  tribu- 
taries. With  the  exception  of  the  less  important 
oases  in  the  Tarim  Basin,  they  were  the  first  civil- 
ized countries  to  be  found  west  of  China,  from 
which  they  were  separated  by  thirty  degrees  of 
longitude,  the  only  practicable  line  of  communi- 
cation lying  across  steppes  and  deserts. 

The  migrations  of  nations  and  the  movements 
of  traders  are  very  unlike,  though  both  follow 
distinct  laws.  The  former  have  always  chosen 
localities  which  have  afforded  them  broad,  easy, 
and  natural  routes  into  warm  and  fertile  plains. 
Mountains  were  only  crossed  where  a  low  pass 
gave  easy  access  to  the  wished-for  goal.  These 
successive  waves  of  migration  came  from  the 
northeast ;  but  when  they  ventured  into  the  basin 
of  the  Tarim,  they  were  caught  in  a  cul-de-sac, 
whence  they  could  only  escape  by  the  way  they 
came.  In  prehistoric  times  migrations  toward 
China  may  have  found  their  way  into  the  re- 
gion referred  to.  But  as  soon  as  its  people  were 
capable  of  looking  after  their  own  interests,  the 
only  available  exit  lay  through  the  Dzungarian 
trough  between  the  Tien-shan  and  Altai  Ranges, 
mentioned  above.  Thence  they  invaded  Europe, 
Persia,  and  India.  Mountain-passes  naturally  did 
not  present  such  insuperable  difficulties  to  pass- 
ing armies,  and  on  several  occasions  large  hosts 
have  made  their  way  from  China  to  Turan  over 
passes  near  the  sources  of  the  Oxus  and  Jaxartes, 
and  from  Turan  to  the  western  oases  in  the  Tarim 
Basin. 

The  movements  of  traders  follow  entirely  dif- 
ferent laws.  They  invariably  sought  the  short- 
est routes  between  the  two  countries  whose 
goods  they  wished  to  exchange  one  for  the  other. 
Among  these  goods,  silk  has  played  an  important 
part  since  the  earliest  ages.  The  duration  of  this 
silk-trade  is  most  conveniently  divided  into  two 
periods :  the  first  from  remote  and  uncertain 
ages  to  about  114  b.  a,  being  the  period  of  indi- 
rect traffic  ;  and  the  second  from  114  b.  c.  to 
120  a.  d.,  being  the  period  of  direct  commerce 
between  China  and  the  Turanian  plains.  In  the 
book  "  Yue-kung,"  which  treats  of  the  history 
of  China  during  the  last  4,000  years,  silk  is  men- 
tioned as  an  article  of  tribute  in  some  of  the 
provinces,  and  we  learn  therefrom  that  the  great 
Yue  aimed  at  introducing  the  growth  of  the  mul- 
berry and  silk  culture  in  the  lands  about  the 
mouth  of  the  Yellow  River.  A  thousand  years 
later  the  "  Chuli  Book,"  which  contains  the  offi- 
cial precepts  of  the  Chu  dynasty,  makes  frequent 


mention  of  silk,  and  it  is  probable  that  the  pre- 
cious jade  of  Khotan  was  largely  exchanged  for 
it,  though,  probably,  not  by  a  direct  traffic  be- 
tween the  two  countries. 

It  is  uncertain  how  far  back  silk-stuffs  were 
first  exported  to  India  and  Western  Asia.  The 
Chinese  name  for  silk  was  Sz\  and  it  is  curious 
to  observe  that  both  this  name  and  the  product 
itself  made  their  way  into  Corea,  Japan,  Mongo- 
lia, and  (especially)  Central  Asia,  and  in  later 
times  into  Greece  and  the  other  European  coun- 
tries. After  a  time  the  letter  r  got  affixed,  and 
the  root-word  was  thus  changed  into  ssir  or  sser. 
The  word  Sherikoth  in  Isaiah  probably  refers  to 
the  same,  and  the  Arabs  to  this  day  call  a  piece 
of  silk  goods  saraqat.  It  is  probable  that  Herod- 
otus, in  speaking  of  the  fineness  of  the  Median 
dresses,  alludes  to  silken  stuffs.  The  first  un- 
doubted mention  of  the  manufacture  is  to  be 
found  in  Nearchus  (320  b.  c),  who  speaks  of  the 
Seric  stuffs  of  India,  of  the  people  called  Seres, 
and  of  their  country  Sera.  There  is  no  evidence 
to  show  by  what  route  these  silks  reached  India, 
Persia,  and  Media.  It  is  supposed  that  the  princes 
of  the  house  of  Tsin,  who  since  the  eighth  cen- 
tury before  Christ  occupied  a  small  principality 
in  the  western  part  of  Shensi,  extended  their 
dominion  into  Central  Asia,  and  that  by  this 
means  the  Chinese  carried  on  direct  trade  with 
the  lands  about  the  Oxus.  This  supposition 
rests  on  three  points :  the  mention  of  a  coun- 
try called  Sinim  by  Isaiah,  the  frequent  men- 
tion of  the  name  Matchin  (which  was  supposed 
to  refer  to  China)  by  Firdusi  in  speaking  of  early 
Persian  history,  and  the  frequent  allusion  in  the 
Mahabharata  to  the  Tchina  people  in  the  north- 
west of  India.  Against  this,  however,  must  be 
remarked  that  the  Tsin  princes  certainly  never 
penetrated  into  Central  Asia,  nor,  as  far  as  can  be 
shown,  beyond  the  Yellow  River ;  that  the  name 
Matchin  was  used  to  designate  any  powerful 
princes  of  Turan,  with  whom  the  Persian  kings  had 
intercourse  ;  while  the  researches  of  recent  trav- 
elers have  disclosed  the  existence  of  a  people 
called  Tchina  in  the  Northwestern  Himalayas. 
There  is  no  proof  that  the  Chinese  ever  journeyed 
beyond  their  western  borders  before  the  second 
century  of  our  era,  or  even  that  they  knew  of  the 
existence  of  other  nations  beyond  their  immediate 
neighbors  in  Central  Asia.  The  producers  and 
consumers  of  the  silk  were  thus  equally  ignorant 
of  its  destination  and  origin.  There  is  good 
reason  for  supposing  that  the  inhabitants  of 
Khotan,  who  were  known  to  the  Greeks  under 
the  name  of  Issedones,  were  the  ehief  medium  of 


THE  ANCIENT  SILK-TRADERS'  ROUTE. 


379 


transmission  of  the  silk-trade  across  the  passes 
into  India  and  over  the  Pamir. 

The  second  period  of  the  silk-trade,  embracing 
the  period  of  direct  traffic  between  China  and 
Turan,  began  with  the  year  114  b.  c,  in  which 
the  first  caravan  set  out  westward,  and  ended 
about  120  a.  d.,  when  the  power  of  the  Han 
dynasty  was  on  the  wane.  The  direct  traffic  only 
flourished  when  all  Central  Asia  was  subject  to 
one  sovereign  will.  It  was  never  more  prosper- 
ous than  when  the  Mongols  exercised  supremacy 
over  the  lands  between  China  and  Europe,  but 
before  that  time  it  had  revived  in  the  seventh  and 
eighth  centuries,  when  the  Tang  dynasty  extended 
their  rule  to  the  Caspian  Sea.  One  of  the  chief 
circumstances  which  helped  to  develop  it  was  the 
building  of  the  Great  Wall,  which  the  great  Tsin- 
shi-wang-ti  erected  to  protect  his  kingdom  from 
the  attacks  of  the  Hiungnu,  who  had  for  centuries 
molested  the  vassal  princes  and  chiefs  on  the  north- 
ern borders  of  the  empire.  During  the  Han  dynasty 
(205  b.  c.)  the  successive  waves  of  invading  hordes 
from  the  steppes  broke  themselves  against  the 
wall,  and  gradually  falling  out  among  themselves, 
dispersed  and  retired  through  the  Dzungarian  Val- 
ley or  depression  into  the  Aralo-Caspian  Basin. 
At  the  beginning  of  the  second  century,  the  Usun 
people,  who  lived  in  the  Alashan  Mountains  and 
near  the  Etsina  River,  engaged  in  conflict  with 
the  Yuetchi  people,  who  lived  about  Kan-chow- 
fu,  and  were  vanquished  by  the  latter,  who  mi- 
grated through  Dzungaria  to  Hi,  where  they  came 
upon  the  &'  people.  Twenty-two  years  later, 
the  Usun  revenged  themselves  by  driving  the 
Yuetchi  out  and  settling  themselves  in  Hi  and 
the  Tien-shan,  while  the  Yuetchi  and  the  Sz'  mi- 
grated toward  the  Jaxartes. 

These  wanderings  now  began  to  have  their 
effect  on  the  silk-trade.  In  140  b.  c.  Hsia-wu-ti, 
the  greatest  king  of  the  Han  dynasty,  wishing  to 
break  the  power  of  the  Hiungnu,  sent  his  gen- 
eral, Tchang-kien,  into  Central  Asia  to  conclude 
a  treaty  of  alliance  with  the  Yuetchi.  This  is  the 
first  Chinese  expedition  to  the  west  of  which  we 
hear,  and  the  report  which,  after  thirteen  years'  ad- 
venturous wanderings,  the  general  furnished,  on 
his  return  home,  has  the  appearance  of  a  descrip- 
tion of  previously-unknown  wonders.  Although 
the  expedition  failed  in  its  immediate  object,  it 
returned  with  the  novel  intelligence  that  in  the 
far  west  of  Turan  there  dwelt  great  and  civilized 
nations,  who  owned  grand  cities  and  engaged  in 
commerce,  who  esteemed  very  highly  the  Chi- 
nese silk,  and  wished  further  to  do  direct  trade 
with  China,  of  whose  greatness  they  had  often 


heard.  The  emperor  recognized  the  impor- 
tance of  acting  on  this  wish,  and  endeavored  by 
every  means  in  his  power  to  further  its  fulfill- 
ment. The  ways  by  which  this  was  attempted  to 
be  carried  out  are  interesting.  Tchang-kien  re- 
ported that  westward  the  Hiungnu  formed  an  in- 
superable bar  to  commerce,  as  they  commanded 
the  entrance  to  the  Tarim  Basin.  But  he  sug- 
gested an  alternative.  Among  the  Tahia,  a  peo- 
ple dwelling  in  towns  south  of  the  Upper  Oxus, 
he  was  surprised  to  see  a  certain  sort  of  reed  or 
grass,  and  a  stuff  which  in  his  opinion  must  have 
come  from  his  native  home,  Shu  (the  plain  of 
modern  Ching-tu-fu).  He  was  informed  that  they 
came  from  a  land  called  Yin-tu,  which  lay  some 
thousand  li  southeast  of  Tahia,  and  where  the 
people  lived  in  hot  plains  and  rode  on  elephants. 
Through  this  land  of  Yin-tu  (i.e.,  India)  Tchang- 
kien  thought  it  would  be  easy  for  people  from 
Shu  to  reach  Tahia.  This  suggestion  was  fol- 
lowed up  with  energy,  and  a  number  of  expeditions 
were  sent,  but  unfortunately  failed  through  the 
hostility  of  the  mountain  tribes,  and  led  to  no 
other  result  than  the  discovery  by  some  merchants 
of  Burmah  and  of  the  great  rivers  of  Southeastern 
Asia. 

In  the  mean  time,  affairs  in  the  north  took  a 
more  favorable  turn.  A  young  leader,  called 
Ho-kiu-ping,  placed  himself  at  the  head  of  a  Chi- 
nese army,  and  for  the  first  time  in  Chinese  his- 
tory advanced  into  the  Steppe,  and  easily  van- 
quished the  Hiungnu,  opening  the  road  into  the 
Tarim  Basin. 

This  was  an  event  of  great  importance  for  the 
future  history  of  China.  The  road  referred  to 
was  called  the  Yue-monn  passage,  or  the  way  of 
the  Yue  gate :  yue  being  the  name  applied  to  the 
jade  of  Khotan,  and  the  Yue-gate  being  a  rocky 
defile  through  which  the  precious  mineral  was 
conveyed  along  the  only  natural  way  between  the 
Tarim  and  China — a  sort  of  depressed  road  be- 
tween high  mountains  on  the  one  side  and  a  steppe 
plateau  on  the  other.  This  approach  proved  to 
be  the  key  of  Central  Asia  and  of  great  future 
moment,  both  in  political  and  commercial  exi- 
gencies. 

The  inhabitants  of  the  oases  on  the  south  of 
the  Tarim,  freed  from  the  presence  of  the  Hiung- 
nu, received  the  Chinese  with  open  arms,  and  in 
the  year  114  b.  c.  the  first  caravan  started  for  the 
West.  Judging  from  the  fact  that  it  reached  the 
land  of  Tahia  and  Ansi,  it  must  have  crossed  the 
Pamir.  But  the  city  of  Tawan  formed  the  chief 
mart ;  it  lay  on  the  Jaxartes  and  the  way  to  it 
was  over  the  Terek  Pass.     From  five  to  ten  large 


380 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


caravans  visited  the  town  yearly,  and  the  first 
sudden  effect  of  this  was  to  depreciate  the  value  of 
the  silk.  On  the  approach,  however,  of  a  Chinese 
army  in  104  b.  c,  matters  improved,  and  the  mar- 
ket for  the  silk  extended  farther  and  farther  west- 
ward, until  the  Roman  Empire  was  reached. 

For  120  years  the  way  remained  open,  but  at 
the  expiration  of  that  time  the  Hiungnu  again 
gained  possession  of  the  trade-route,  and  the 
Tarim  Basin  was  lost  to  the  Chinese  for  fifty-six 
years.  General  Pan-chow  then  not  only  regained 
the  whole  of  the  lost  country,  but  also  (95  a.  d.) 
led  a  victorious  Chinese  army  across  the  Pamir 
Steppe  to  the  Caspian  Sea,  where,  for  a  brief  time, 
the  Chinese  and  Roman  Empires  were  brought 
into  close  proximity,  without,  however,  any  per- 
mauent  result.  In  120  a.  d.  the  Chinese  again 
lost  their  control  of  Turanian  lands,  and  in  150 
a.  d.  all  direct  communication  with  the  west  of 
the  Tarim  Basin  ceased. 

As  regards  the  geography  of  this  subject,  one 
of  the  most  important  points  is  to  fix  the  site  of 
Tawan.  Baron  Richthofen  considers  that  Remu- 
sat's  opinion  that  Tawan  was  the  capital  of  the 
modern  Khokan  or  Ferghana  is  erroneous.  Ta- 
wan, he  points  out,  was  not  the  first  kingdom 
reached  after  crossing  the  Tsung-ling  Pass  (Terek- 
dawan),  but  Hiusiun,  whose  king  lived  in  Usi 
(Osh  ?),  500  li  from  the  mountain-pass.  It  was 
920  li  from  Usi  to  Tawan,  which  would  bring  us 
to  the  great  bend  of  the  Jaxartes,  near  Oratepe, 
which  was  called  Sutrushna  by  the  Arabs,  a  name 
which  we  easily  recognize  in  Su-tui-sha-na,  which 
it  appears  from  Chinese  sources  was  the  subse- 
quent name  of  Tawan.  The  people  of  Tawan 
were  a  commerce-loving  people,  but  brought  the 
silk  only  to  the  nearest  markets,  while  the  Ansi, 
who  possessed  many  towns,  vessels,  and  wagons, 
who  were  addicted  to  agriculture,  and  had  stored 
up  riches,  conveyed  it  to  the  northern  slope  of 
the  Iranian  Plateau  and  the  shores  of  the  Caspian. 
As  regards  the  nationality  of  these  traders,  it 
would  appear  from  Tchang-kien's  description  that 
they  were  Tajiks.  They  spoke  different  tongues, 
but  also  had  one  common  lingua  franca  for  trad- 
ing purposes,  and  there  is  ground  for  concluding 
that  the  trading  inhabitants  of  the  Tawan,  Tahia, 
and  Ansi  kingdoms,  were  the  Persian-speaking 
predecessors  of  the  Tajiks. 

In  the  Han  annals,  the  Chinese  complain  that 
they  were  prevented  by  the  Ansi  from  entering 
into  direct  commercial  relation  with  the  Ta-tsin, 
or  Romans.  The  silk  reached  India  through  the 
medium  of  the  Tahia,  who  inhabited  the  oases  of 
Balkh  and  Kunduz,  and  other  districts  south  of 


the  Oxus.  In  the  last  century  before  Christ  the 
Roman  authors  begin  to  speak  of  Seric  stuffs,  of 
the  land  Serica,  and  its  people,  of  which  they 
heard  only  indirectly  and  from  vague  report. 
There  is  no  proof  that  the  Romans  ever  held  di- 
rect intercourse  with  the  Chinese. 

With  regard  to  the  routes  of  the  silk-traders, 
we  gather  most  information  from  Chinese  sources, 
and  first  among  these  we  must  place  the  annals 
of  the  Han  dynasty.  At  present  we  know  of  one 
route  in  the  valley  of  the  Tarim  which  follows 
the  western  and  northern  edge  of  the  horseshoe 
above  referred  to.  Mediaeval  travelers,  Buddhist 
pilgrims  from  China,  Marco  Polo,  and  Shah 
Rukh's  embassadors,  testify  to  the  existence  in 
their  time  of  kingdoms  and  towns  along  the 
southern  edge  of  the  basin  between  Khotan  and 
Lob-Nor,  and  these  were  united  by  diverse  routes ; 
but  in  the  middle  ages  these  latter  were  fast  dis- 
appearing, and  there  were  traditions  of  buried 
treasures,  sand-covered  towns,  and  even  king- 
doms which  had  disappeared  beneath  the  en- 
croaching sand-desert.  In  the  time  of  the  Han 
dynasty  things  had  not  got  so  far,  and  these  dis- 
tricts were  in  a  better  condition.  There  were 
then  two  kingdoms,  called  Liulan  and  Kuchi,  on 
Lake  Lob,  and  Yuticn  (Khotan),  which  are  gen- 
erally mentioned.  There  were  roads  between 
Lob-Nor  and  Khotan,  called  the  "  southern  roads," 
one  along  the  Tarim,  and  one  along  the  southern 
foot  of  the  Tien-shan  (the  northern  one).  But 
the  latter,  west  of  Kucha,  was  occupied  in  an- 
cient times  by  hostile  tribes,  and  the  southern 
road  was  more  frequently  used.  The  official 
road  extended  from  Liulan,  on  Lake  Lob,  for  720 
li  to  Tsie-mo,  where  roads  to  the  north  and  south 
diverged.  Hsiau-wan  and  Yung-lin  appear  to 
have  been  situated  on  southern  tributaries  of  the 
Tarim  which  are  now  filled  up  with  sand.  The 
road  then  led  to  Yutien  (Khotan),  Sokiu  (Yar- 
kand),  and  Sulei  (Kashgar).  The  roads  over  the 
Pamir  and  Terek  Passes  were  certainly  much 
used ;  but,  unfortunately,  a  detailed  description 
of  them  is  wanting. 

Turning  to  Western  writers,  we  come  first 
upon  Ptolemy,  who  wrote  about  150  a.  d.,  and 
who  derived  much  of  his  information  from  Mari- 
nus  (contemporaneous  with  Pan-chow,  who  con- 
quered the  Tarim  Basin,  and  led  his  army  as  far 
as  the  Caspian).  The  weight  of  evidence  goes 
to  prove  that  Ptolemy's  Serica  denoted  not  merely 
China,  but  also  the  basin  of  the  Tarim,  or  the 
greater  portion  of  it,  and  the  old  silk-traders' 
route  lay  at  the  southern  foot  of  the  Tien-shan. 
The  difficulty  of  identifying  the  places  mentioned 


THE  ANCIENT  SILE-TBADERS    ROUTE. 


381 


by  him  arises  partly  from  the  erroneous  idea  that 
the  present  route  was  the  only  one  then  in  use, 
partly  from  the  omission  to  consult  the  Chinese 
authorities,  and  partly  from  a  failure  to  take  an- 
cient names  in  preference  to  modern  ones  for 
purposes  of  comparison. 

In  expounding  the  geography  of  Serica, 
Ptolemy  found  himself  in  the  position  in  which 
many  geographers  stood  at  the  beginning  of  this 
century  as  regards  their  knowledge  of  diverse 
continents  ;  i.  e.,  they  possessed  a  knowledge  of 
the  countries  which  in  some  particulars  was  pre- 
cise, but  had  to  lay  down  the  courses  of  rivers 
and  the  direction  of  mountain-ranges,  the  posi- 
tions of  cities  and  districts,  out  of  itineraries 
and  vague  information.  By  this  means  rivers, 
which  later  information  showed  to  be  sepa- 
rate, got  thrown  into  one,  mountains  were  in- 
correctly laid  down,  and  maps  were  generally 
erroneously  constructed.  Ptolemy's  knowledge 
was  of  an  analogous  character.  On  the  In- 
dian side  the  districts  at  the  foot  of  the  Hima- 
layas were  known  among  the  Greeks  by  the 
name  of  Emodus.  Of  the  mountainous  land  be- 
tween the  Indus  and  Oxus  little  was  known  be- 
yond the  road  between  Balkh  and  Peshawur. 
The  region  of  the  Upper  Oxus  and  Jaxartes  was 
somewhat  better  known,  and  its  supposed  merid- 
ional range  and  water-parting  was  called  Imaus, 
and  supposed  to  be  a  spur  of  the  Emodus.  Silk 
was  brought  across  both  the  Imaus  and  the 
Emodus :  across  the  former  to  Sogdiana  and 
Bactriana,  and  across  the  latter  to  India.  Be- 
yond was  Serica ;  but  as  this  was  partly  identi- 
fied with  the  political  limits  of  China,  which  was 
known  not  to  reach  as  far  as  the  Imaus,  the  re- 
gion immediately  beyond  was  called  Scythia  extra 
Imaum.  Ptolemy  acquired  his  information  re- 
specting Serica  both  from  India,  in  regard  to  the 
regions  across  the  Emodus,  and  from  Sogdiana 
and  Bactriana,  with  reference  to  the  regions  east 
of  the  Imaus  ;  but,  as  Colonel  Yule  has  remarked, 
he  was  unable  to  focus  the  two  stereoscopic  pict- 
ures into  one.  Marinus,  on  whom  Ptolemy  main- 
ly relied,  was  exposed  to  the  danger  of  misspell- 
ing names,  as  he  acquired  his  information  second- 
hand ;  and  of  the  agents  of  Maes  Titianus,  the 
Macedonian  merchant,  who  went  to  China  for 
silk,  we  do  not  know  of  what  nationality  they 
were,  but  it  is  probable  that  they  were  Persians, 
or  Persian-speaking  Tajiks.  Bearing  this  in 
mind,  as  well  as  the  fact  that  in  Marinus's  time 
Western  travelers  entered  on  Chinese  ground  not 
far  distant  from  Kashgar  or  Yarkand,  and  that  the 
names  of  places  must  be  identified  with  names  of 


some  antiquity,  and  not  with  modern  ones,  we 
shall  be  in  a  position  to  form  a  tolerably  correct 
notion  of  the  silk-route  of  Marinus  and  Ptolemy. 
Its  point  of  departure  was  Baktra  (Balkh),  and  its 
terminus  Tshang-ngan  (Hsi-ngan-fu),  whether  the 
traders  managed  to  reach  this  latter  place  or  not. 
It  is  probable  that  the  embassies  sent  by  the 
princes  between  Persia  and  the  Altai  to  the 
court  of  China  during  the  two  preceding  centu- 
ries did  not  go  beyond  it,  and  that  it  was  not 
even  visited  by  the  foreign  merchants.  The  lat- 
ter appear  to  have  converged  from  different  direc- 
tions on  Sha-chow,  and  the  stations  Yang-kwan 
and  Yu-monn-kwan  were  points  of  departure  for 
the  same. 

The  position  of  the  kingdom  of  the  Issedo- 
nese  is  of  importance  in  determining  the  route 
of  the  silk-traders.  Greek  writers  had  spoken 
of  this  people  as  a  great  nation.  And  in  the 
whole  basin  of  the  Tarim  there  was  only  one 
kingdom  corresponding  entirely  to  the  descrip- 
tion given  by  them,  and  that  was  the  Yue-tien 
of  the  Chinese,  the  capital  of  which  was  Khotan. 
Ptolemy  represents  the  country  of  the  Issedones 
as  lying  north  of  a  mountain-range  which  ha 
calls  the  Kasian  Mountains.  The  similarity  of 
the  name  has  led  Deguignes,  D'Anville,  Lassen, 
Ritter,  Humboldt,  and  other  commentators  on 
Ptolemy,  to  identify  the  same  with  the  modern 
Kashgar.  But  the  name  of  Kashgar  was  not 
then  in  existence,  the  town  being  called  Sulei  for 
several  centuries  after.  A  glance  at  the  map, 
however,  will  show  a  striking  analogy  between 
the  Kasian  Range  and  the  western  Kuen-Lun, 
and  a  further  link  is  found  in  the  name  of  the 
chief  product  of  the  country,  i.  e.,  jade,  which 
among  the  Chinese  was  called  yue,  but  among  the 
Persian  and  Turkish  nations  appears  to  have  been 
generally  called  hash.  The  range  seems  thus, 
by  a  practice  common  elsewhere,  to  have  been 
named  after  its  most  important  mineral  product. 
The  identification  is  clinched  by  the  fact  that 
Issedon  Serica  is  described  by  Ptolemy  as  the 
most  important  place  along  the  trade-route,  and 
the  Chinese  accounts  give  Yue-tien  as  the  chief 
place. 

A  second  phase  of  importance  on  the  line  of 
route  was  Daxata,  which  Hager  has  shown  to  be 
a  Grecized  form  of  the  Persian  Desht — sand — a 
term  which  is  to  be  found  in  the  name  of  the 
town,  Sha-chow,  referred  to  above,  which  really 
means  "  Sand-town."  Turning  to  that  portion  of 
the  route  between  Issedon  Serica  (Khotan)  and 
Daxata  (Sha-chow)  we  come  upon  two  localities, 
Tliogara  and  Lromche.     The  latter  Baron  Richt- 


382 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


hofen  has  been  unable  to  identify,  but  the  for- 
mer name  has,  he  points  out,  similarity  to  the 
Tukhara  of  the  Indians,  or  Tu-ho-lo  of  the  Chi- 
nese, a  people  who  during  the  seventh  century  of 
the  Christian  era  were  found  by  Hwen-Tsang  to 
have  once  dwelt  a  few  days'  journey  east  of  Kho- 
tan,  and  whose  name  still  prevailed  there  at  his 
time,  although  the  people  themselves  (who  are 
probably  identical  with  the  Yuetchi  above  men- 
tioned, or,  at  all  events,  the  greater  part  of  them) 
had,  in  the  second  century  a.  d.,  lived  in  the  vicin- 
ity of  Kan-chow-fu,  and  at  the  time  of  the  Buddh- 
ist pilgrim's  journey  settled  partly  on  the  Upper 
Oxus  and  partly  on  the  Upper  Indus.  It  is  not 
unlikely  that  the  encroachment  of  the  sandy  des- 
ert had  caused  a  portion  of  the  people  to  migrate 
from  their  ancient  oasis  in  the  valley  of  the  Ta- 
rim,  but  that  enough  of  them  remained  to  give 
their  name  to  the  old  site.  The  identity  of  the 
6ite  with  Ptolemy's  Thogaroi  is  confirmed  by  the 
name  Aspacares,  which  is  very  like  the  Persian 
name  for  nation  of  riders,  and  which  referred  to 
the  great  Thibetan  nomad  race  called  No-kiang, 
which,  we  learn  from  Chinese  sources,  dwelt 
south  of  the  oasis.  Asmiraea,  too,  is  described 
by  Ptolemy  as  lying  south  of  the  river  Oikhardes, 
which  must  be  the  Tarim.  The  important  town 
of  Tsiemo,  where  the  northern  and  southern 
roads  diverged,  is  the  only  name  which  has  any 
similarity  to  Asmiraea. 

Eastward  of  Daxata,  or  Sha-chow,  the  old  silk- 
route  rested  only  on  vague  hearsay  evidence. 
The  traders  reported  that  a  river  and  a  mountain 
had  to  be  crossed  before  reaching  the  Sera  metrop- 
olis. The  river  is  given  as  a  branch  of  the  Bau- 
tisos,  which  must  be  the  Hwang-ho.  But  Bau- 
tisos  is  the  name  of  the  stream  flowing  north  of 
the  Emodus  through  the  land  of  the  Bautse  (i.  e., 
Bhot,  or  Thibet  in  its  restricted  sense),  or,  in  other 
words,  the  Yarudzangbo,  or  Upper  Brahmapootra. 
It  is  evident  that  Ptolemy's  information  derived 
from  India  here  occasioned  him  some  confusion, 
and  that  he  has  assumed  that  the  Hwang-ho, 
which  flowed  out  of  a  little-known  mountainous 
country,  and  the  Brahmapootra,  which,  according 
to  the  Thibetans,  flowed  eastward  into  an  un- 
known region,  were  one  and  the  same.  Similar 
instances  of  erroneous  geographical  conclusions 
may  be  found  in  Livingstone's  supposition  that 
the  Lualaba  and  Nile  formed  one  river,  and  the 
theory,  not  long  since  held,  that  the  Sanpu  and 
the  Irrawaddy  were  one  and  the  same. 

The  western  limit  of  Serica  would  appear  to 
have  been  near  Kashgar  and  Yarkand,  where 
Marinus's  information  leads  him  to  place  them. 


Kashgar  (Sulei)  was  a  small  kingdom,  while 
Yarkand  (Sokiu)  was  more  important,  and  was 
often  united  with  Yue-tien,  or  the  Issedon  king- 
dom. In  81  a.  d.  the  Chinese  and  Yue-tien  made 
common  cause  against  Sokiu  and  overthrew  it, 
and  from  that  time  the  western  limit  of  Serica 
appears  to  have  been  where  the  agents  of  Maes 
Titianus  placed  it.  Before  8*7  a  portion  of  the 
Issedon  kingdom  belonged  to  Scythia,  i.  e.,  to  the 
non-Seric  country,  and  Issedon  Scythica  was, 
therefore,  a  natural  form  of  expression.  The 
western  boundary  then  lay  between  Yarkand  and 
Khotan,  and  this  corresponds  with  Ptolemy's 
map.  Another  possible  explanation  is,  that  as 
the  Greeks  designated  all  nomads  by  the  name 
of  Scythians,  and  as  they  heard  of  the  existence 
of  many  of  these  nomad  tribes  eastward  of  the 
Imaus,  Ptolemy  was  induced  to  lay  down  a  sharp 
eastern  boundary  to  Scythia  extra  Imaum,  and 
that  the  same  boundary  formed  the  western 
boundary  of  Serica,  which  was  thus  shifted  too 
far  eastward. 

In  endeavoring  to  fix  the  direction  of  the 
route  of  the  agents  of  Maes  Titianus  between 
Baktra  and  the  Tarim  Basin,  we  meet  with  many 
difficulties.  In  settling  this  question  the  position 
of  Issedon  Scythica  becomes  of  great  impor- 
tance. On  Ptolemy's  map  it  lies  east  of  Imaus, 
west  of  the  sources  of  the  (Echardus,  south  of 
the  Auxacian  Mountains,  which  were  probably 
the  mountains  on  the  west  of  the  Tarim  depres- 
sion, where  they  approach  Aksu,  and  northwest 
of  Issedon  Serica.  This  description  would  cor- 
respond to  Kashgar  and  Yarkand,  and  the  pass 
leading  to  it  would  be  either  the  southernmost 
Pamir  Pass  from  Badakshan  or  the  Terek  Pass  to 
the  north.  The  latter  answers  best  to  the  descrip- 
tion. From  Baktra  there  ran  an  important  route, 
i.  e.,  that  past  Samarcand  throughout  the  length 
of  Ferghana,  and  it  appears,  from  Chinese  author- 
ities, that  this  was  once  a  great  commercial  line  of 
route.  In  the  Takht-i-Suleiman,  near  Osh,  some 
professed  to  recognize  Ptolemy's  "stone  fort," 
which  was  west  of  the  Imaus ;  but  inasmuch  as 
important  places  such  as  Samarcand  are  not 
mentioned,  Colonel  Yule  suggested,  in  1866,  that 
some  intermediate  line  was  the  one  sought  for. 
Later  research  has  proved  that  there  are  various 
routes  through  Karateghin,  and  the  Alai  country, 
which  might  have  been  utilized  for  trade  pur- 
poses. It  is  possible,  therefore,  that  at  the  time 
when  Baktra  was  the  centre  of  a  flourishing  com- 
merce, a  direct  way  to  the  Tarim  Basin  was  pre- 
ferred to  the  circuitous  route  by  Samarcand,  along 
which  also  heavy  dues  were  exacted.     The  land 


BRIEF  NOTES. 


383 


of  the  Comedas  is  probably  the  Kiumito  of  Hwen- 
tsang,  and  the  land  of  Komedh  in  Ibn  Dasta, 
which  probably  lay  northeast  of  the  great  bend 
of  the  Oxus.  The  stone  tower  would  thus  have 
been  situated  at  the  upper  end  of  Kurateghin, 
where  the  valley  rises  up  to  the  steppe  country 
of  the  Alai.  This,  however,  does  not  coincide 
with  the  theory  that  Osh  was  the  site  of  the  stone 
fort. 

There  is  much  room  for  conjecture  in  the 
question  as  to  the  route  from  the  Stone  Fort  to 
Issedon  Scythica.  Ptolemy  gives  a  caravansary 
on  the  line  of  the  Imaus,  i.  e.,  near  the  water- 
parting.  This  would  naturally  be  situated  at  the 
point  of  junction  of  two  important  trade-routes 
and  was  very  probably  at  the  point  where  the 
way  from  Karateghin  joined  that  from  Ferghana 
and  the  Terek  Pass.  At  the  present  time  Balkh 
has  lost  its  importance,  so  that  the  Karateghin 
route  has  fallen  into  disuse ;  but,  in  the  fifteenth 
century,  Shah  Rukh's  embassy,  on  its  return, 
separated  into  two  parties  in  the  "  defile  of  An- 
dijan,"  one  going  toward  Balkh,  and  the  other 
toward  Andijan  and  Samarcand. 

The  summary  of  his  researches  is  thus  given 
by  Baron  Richthofen :  From  114  b.  c.  to  120 
A.  d.  (with  a  break  of  fifty-six  years  between), 
the  silk  was  brought  along  routes  from  Sha-chow 


and  Lob-Nor  which  traversed  the  southern  part 
of  the  Tarim  Basin,  and  preferably  used  the 
Terek  Pass  for  those  caravans  resorting  to  the 
great  mart  of  Tawan,  or  Ora-tepe.  Thence 
the  silk  went  to  Samarcand,  and  thence  partly 
through  the  lands  of  the  Upper  Oxus  to  India, 
and  partly  through  the  lands  of  the  Parthians  to 
Farther  Asia  and  the  Roman  market.  The  only 
journey  of  Western  traders  of  which  we  possess 
detailed  information  did  not,  however,  follow  the 
Samarcand  route,  but  diverged  probably,  at  Merv, 
and  passed  through  Balkh,  probably  through 
Karateghin  and  the  Alai,  entered  the  Tarim  Basin 
at  Kashgar,  proceeded  to  Khotan,  and  followed 
the  southern  border  of  the  basin  of  the  Tarim, 
till  they  reached  Sha-chow.  Thence  to  the  chief 
mart  of  China  the  account  is  too  vague  to  fol- 
low. When  the  Chinese  lost  their  hold  on  the 
Tarim  Basin  in  150  a.  d.,  they  could  no  longer 
protect  their  caravans,  and  the  trade  fell  into  the 
hands  of  the  Persians,  and  Kan-chow-fu  became 
the  frontier  mart  of  China.  The  introduction  of 
the  silk  into  Europe  dates  from  the  sixth  century, 
when  Dizabul,  the  prince  of  the  Tukin,  sent  an 
embassy  to  Constantinople  to  secure  a  market 
for  the  silk.  From  the  following  century  the 
overland  route  of  the  silk-traders  lost  all  its  for- 
mer importance. —  Geographical  Magazine. 


BRIEF    NOTES 


Dr.  Paul  Broca  on  the  Antiquity  of  Man. — 
M.  Paul  Broca,  in  his  opening  address  at  the 
meeting  of  the  French  Association  for  the  Ad- 
vancement of  Science,  sketched  the  history  of 
scientific  opinion  concerning  the  antiquity  of  man. 
M.  Broca  frankly  admitted  that  the  evidence  for 
the  existence  of  man  in  Tertiary  times  is  not  yet 
conclusive.  He  classified  into  three  races  the 
prehistoric  men  whose  bones  have  been  found  in 
Europe.  The  oldest  of  these  three  types  of  man 
is  the  Canstadt  race.  To  this  we  must  refer  the 
Neanderthal  skull.  The  Canstadt  people  were 
of  short  stature,  with  very  long  heads,  much 
flattened  at  the  top,  the  flattening  being  mainly 
due  to  the  retreating  forehead  :  they  were  doli- 
choplatycephalic,  or  with  long  and  flattened  heads. 
These  people  were,  according  to  M.  Broca,  more 
savage  than  any  in  existence  now.  They  date 
back  to  the  Quaternary  period,  and  appear  to 
have  had  a  very  wide  geographical  distribution. 


Next  comes  the  Cromagnon  race,  a  dolichocephalic, 
or  long-headed,  people,  like  those  of  Canstadt, 
but  of  vastly  superior  organization ;  they  flour- 
ished as  far  back  as  the  second  half  of  the  Qua- 
ternary period,  and  were  at  their  zenith  during 
the  reindeer  age.  Finally,  there  is  the  Furfooz 
type,  so  called  from  Furfooz,  in  Belgium,  where 
some  remains  were  found  a  few  years  ago.  The 
men  of  this  race  were  extremely  short,  with  a 
type  of  cranium  decidedly  lower  than  that  of  the 
Cromagnon  people.  The  head  is  rounded,  but 
not  decidedly  brachycephalic.  This  race  arrived 
in  Belgium  at  the  close  of  the  reindeer  age. 
They  were  acquainted  with  the  art  of  making 
pottery. 

Impervious  Coatings  on  the  Skin. — Dr.  Sena- 
tor, of  Berlin,  cites  experiments  made  by  himself 
to  prove  that  the  covering  of  the  skin  of  human 
beings  with  an  impermeable  coating  (varnish,  for 


3S4 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


instance)  is,  contrary  to  the  received  opinion,  a 
harmless  operation.  Dr.  Senator  subjected  a 
patient  suffering  from  subacute  rheumatism  to  a 
gradual  envelopment,  until  both  legs,  from  the 
tips  of  the  toes  to  the  hips,  both  arms,  from  the 
tips  of  the  fingers  to  the  shoulders,  were  incased 
in  sticking-plaster,  and  hi3  back,  abdomen,  and 
breast,  painted  with  collodion,  which  was  daily 
repeated.  The  patient  remained  a  week  in  this 
condition  without  reduction  of  temperature  or 
albuminuria.  Another  case  is  cited,  where  a 
patient  remained  for  three  days  under  similar 
conditions.  A  third  patient  had  a  coating  of 
tar  all  over  the  body  for  a  week,  but  presented 
no  abnormality,  except  blackening  of  the  urine, 
which  was  shown  to  be  due  to  the  presence  of 
carbolic  acid.  In  considering  the  grounds  of  the 
prevailing  opinion  as  to  the  necessarily  fatal 
effect  of  an  impermeable  coating  on  the  skin,  Dr. 
Senator  refers  to  the  case  of  the  gilded  boy — a 
child  who  was  covered  with  gold-leaf  in  order  to 
act  the  character  of  an  "angel"  in  a  miracle- 
play.  This  child,  he  says,  died  so  soon  that  it  is 
probable  that  there  was  something  poisonous  in 
the  gold  leaf.  He  also  quotes  current  American 
history,  to  show  that  a  coat  of  "  tar  and  feathers  " 
of  itself  produces  no  ill  effects. 


Utilizing  the  Flood-  Water  of  the  Nile. — Anoth- 
er gigantic  engineering  project  has  been  suggested, 
namely,  diverting  a  portion  of  the  flood-water  of 
the  Nile  into  the  deserts  of  Nubia,  Libya,  and 
Soodan.  As  is  well  known,  the  main  stream  of 
the  Nile  is  fed  by  the  great  equatorial  lakes  of 
Africa,  and  its  annual  inundations  are  caused  by 
the  in-rush  of  torrent-water,  laden  with  soil  from 
the  fertile  slopes  of  the  Abyssinian  plateau.  This 
silt  is  now  for  the  most  part  deposited  in  the 
bed  of  the  Mediterranean,  where  it  is  gradually 
forming  a  new  delta.  Sir  Samuel  Baker,  in  a 
letter  to  the  London  Times,  after  rehearsing 
these  facts,  proposes  a  plan  by  which  not  only 
the  water  of  the  Nile,  but  the  mud  which  it  now 
deposits  wastefully,  may  be  utilized  as  a  means 
of  fertilizing  the  deserts  south  of  Egypt.  He 
proposes,  by  suitable  engineering  works,  to  divert 


a  portion  of  the  Nile  flood-water  into  these  des- 
erts, where  it  can  deposit  its  rich  sediment  in 
the  sands,  and  also  irrigate  them  so  as  to  trans- 
form them  into  "  cotton-fields  that  would  render 
England  independent  of  America."  He  would 
construct  sluices  and  dams  at  different  points  of 
the  Nile ;  at  the  cataracts,  for  instance.  These 
dams  and  sluices,  by  enabling  craft  to  pass  the 
cataracts,  would  also  render  the  Nile  navigable 
from  the  Mediterranean  to  Gondokoro. 


-The  following 


When  and  how  much  to  eat.- 
remarks  on  "  Regularity  of  Meals "  occur  in  a 
paper  by  Dr.  Wilson,  read  at  the  recent  Domestic 
Economy  Congress  at  Birmingham  :  For  the  ac- 
tive out-door  laborer  and  artisan,  an  early  break- 
fast before  work,  a  mid-day  dinner,  with  an  inter- 
val of  rest,  and  supper  after  the  day's  work  is 
over,  have  long  been  proved  by  experience  to  be 
the  most  conducive  to  health.  For  the  business- 
man, a  later  breakfast,  a  mid-day  luncheon,  and  a 
late  dinner  after  the  day's  work  is  over,  is  the 
best  arrangement.  For  literary  men,  who  write 
more  in  the  evening  than  during  the  day,  an 
early  dinner  and  a  light  supper  will  be  found  to  be 
the  most  advantageous  for  steady  work.  Idlers, 
to  enjoy  life,  if  they  possibly  can,  should  dine 
early  if  they  intend  to  spend  the  evening  at  thea- 
tres and  the  like  ;  but  if  they  accept  dinner-invi- 
tations freely,  they  should  be  very  careful  not  to 
eat  too  much  at  the  mid-day  meal.  The  break- 
fast-hour should  be  determined,  in  great  measure, 
by  the  hour  of  rising,  but  in  any  case  food  should 
be  partaken  of  before  the  material  business  of 
the  day  is  commenced.  Those  who  like  to  take 
a  "constitutional"  before  breakfast  would  find 
their  appetite  whetted,  and  their  walk  made  all 
the  more  enjoyable,  if  they  took  a  little  milk,  or 
cafe-au-lait,  with  bread  or  biscuit,  before  start- 
ing. Work  done  before  breakfast  is  always  irk- 
some and  fatiguing,  and  on  that  account  is  very 
likely  to  be  badly  done.  The  last  meal  should 
be  sufficiently  late  for  the  whole  not  to  be  absorbed 
before  retiring  to  rest.  To  a  person  in  health, 
three  meals  a  day  ought  to  be  quite  sufficient ; 
and  the  practice  of  continually  "taking  some- 
thing "  is  sure  to  bring  on  indigestion. 


WILLIAM  HARVEY. 


335 


WILLIAM   HARVEY. 


Br  T.  II.  HUXLEY. 


OX  the  coming  1st  of  April,  three  hundred 
years  will  have  elapsed  since  the  birth  of 
William  Harvey,  who  is  popularly  known  as  the 
discoverer  of  the  circulation  of  the  blood. 

Many  opinions  have  been  held  respecting  the 
exact  nature  and  value  of  Harvey's  contributions 
to  the  elucidation  of  the  fundamental  problem  of 
the  physiology  of  the  higher  animals  ;  from  those 
which  deny  him  any  merit  at  all — indeed,  round- 
ly charge  him  with  the  demerit  of  plagiarism — to 
those  which  enthrone  him  in  a  position  of  su- 
preme honor  among  great  discoverers  in  science. 
Nor  has  there  been  less  controversy  as  to  the 
method  by  which  Harvey  obtained  the  results 
which  have  made  his  name  famous.  I  think  it  is 
desirable  that  no  obscurity  should  hang  around 
these  questions  ;  and  I  add  my  mite  to  the  store 
of  disquisitions  on  Harvey  which  this  year  is 
likely  to  bring  forth,  in  the  hope  that  it  may  help 
to  throw  light  upon  several  points  about  which 
darkness  has  accumulated,  partly  by  accident  and 
partly  by  design. 

Every  one  knows  that  the  pulsation  which 
can  be  felt  or  seen  between  the  fifth  and  sixth 
ribs,  on  the  left  side  of  a  living  man,  is  caused 
by  the  beating  of  the  heart;  and  that,  in  some 
way  or  other,  the  ceaseless  activity  of  this  organ 
is  essential  to  life.  Let  it  be  arrested,  and,  in- 
stantaneously, intellect,  volition,  even  sensation, 
are  abolished,  and  the  most  vigorous  frame  col- 
lapses, a  pallid  image  of  death. 

Every  one,  again,  is  familiar  with  those  other 
pulsations  which  may  be  felt  or  seen,  at  the 
wrist,  behind  the  inner  ankle,  or  on  the  temples ; 
and  which  coincide  in  number  and  are  nearly 
simultaneous  with  those  of  the  heart.  In  the 
region  of  the  temples,  it  is  easy,  especially  in  old 
people,  to  observe  that  the  pulsation  depends  on 
the  change  of  form  of  a  kind  of  compressible 
branched  structure  which  lies  beneath  the  skin, 
and  is  termed  an  artery.  Moreover,  the  least  ob- 
servant person  must  have  noticed,  running  be- 
neath the  skin  of  various  parts  of  the  body,  no- 
tably the  hands  and  arms,  certain  other  bluish- 
looking  bands  which  do  not  pulsate,  and  which 
mark  the  position  of  structures  somewhat  like 
the  arteries,  which  are  called  veins. 

Finally,  accidental  wounds  have  demonstrated 
to  all  of  us  that  the  body  contains  an  abundance 

61 


of  a  warm  red  fluid — the  blood.  If  the  wound 
has  traversed  a  vein,  the  blood  flows  in  torrents 
from  its  interior,  in  an  even  stream ;  if  it  has  in- 
volved an  artery,  the  flow  takes  place  by  jerks, 
which  correspond  in  interval  with  the  pulsations 
of  the  artery  itself,  and  with  those  of  the  heart. 

These  are  facts  which  must  have  been  known 
ever  since  the  time  when  men  first  began  to  at- 
tend to  and  reflect  upon  the  every-day  course  of 
Nature,  of  which  we  form  a  part.  I  doubt  not, 
also,  that  butchers,  and  those  who  studied  the 
entrails  of  animals  for  purposes  of  divination, 
must  very  early  have  noticed  that  both  the  ar- 
teries and  the  veins  are  disposed  in  the  fashion 
of  a  tree,  the  trunk  of  which  is  close  to  the 
heart,  and  connected  with  it,  while  the  branches 
ramify  all  over  the  body.  Moreover,  they  could 
not  fail  to  observe  that  the  heart  contains  cavi- 
ties, and  that  some  of  these  communicate  with 
the  stem  of  the  arteries,  and  some  with  the  stem 
of  the  veins.  Again,  the  regular  rhythmical 
changes  of  form,  which  constitute  the  beating  of 
the  heart,  are  so  striking  in  recently-killed  ani- 
mals, and  in  criminals  subjected  to  modes  of  pun- 
ishment which  once  were  common,  that  the  dem- 
onstration that  the  heart  is  a  contractile  organ 
must  have  been  very  early  obtained,  and  have 
thus  afforded  an  unintentional  experimental  ex- 
planation of  the  cause  of  the  pulsation  felt  be- 
tween the  ribs. 

These  facts  constitute  the  foundation  of  our 
knowledge  of  the  structure  and  functions  of  the 
heart  and  blood-vessels  of  the  human  and  other 
higher  animal  bodies.  They  are  to  be  regarded 
as  parts  of  common  knowledge,  of  that  informa- 
tion which  is  forced  upon  us  whether  we  desire 
to  possess  it  or  not ;  they  have  not  been  won  by 
that  process  of  seeking  out  the  exact  nature  and 
the  causal  connection  of  phenomena,  to  the  re- 
sults of  which  the  term  science  may  properly  be 
restricted. 

Scientific  investigation  began  when  men  went 
further,  and,  impelled  by  the  thirst  for  knowl- 
edge, sought  to  make  out  the  exact  structure  of 
all  these  parts,  and  to  comprehend  the  mechani- 
cal effects  of  their  arrangement  and  of  their  ac- 
tivity. 

The  Greek  mind  had  long  entered  upon  this 
scientific  stage,  so  far  back  as  the  fourth  century 
before  the  commencement  of  our  era.     For,  in 


386 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


the  works  attributed  to  Aristotle,  which  consti- 
tute a  sort  of  encyclopaedia  of  the  knowledge  of 
that  tinie,  there  is  evidence  that  the  writer  knows 
as  much  as  has  been  mentioned,  and  he  refers  to 
the  views  of  his  predecessors.  Twenty-two  hun- 
dred years  ago  the  sciences  of  anatomy  and  phys- 
iology existed,  though  they  were  as  yet  young, 
and  their  steps  tottered. 

Aristotle's  description  of  the  heart  is  often 
cited  as  an  example  of  his  ignorance,  but  I  think 
unjustly.  However  this  may  be,  it  is  certain  that, 
not  long  after  his  time,  great  additions  were  made 
to  anatomical  and  physiological  science.  The 
Greek  anatomists,  exploring  the  structure  of  the 
heart,  found  that  it  contained  two  principal  cavi- 
ties, which  we  now  call  the  ventricles,  separated 
by  a  longitudinal  partition,  or  septum :  the  one 
ventricle  is  on  its  left,  the  other  on  its  right  side. 
It  was  to  the  fleshy  body  which  contains  the  ven- 
tricles that  the  ancients  restricted  the  title  of 
"  heart."  Moreover,  there  is  another  respect  in 
which  their  terminology  was  so  different  from 
that  of  the  moderns  that,  unless  we  recollect 
that  the  facts  may  be  just  as  accurately  stated  in 
their  fashion  as  in  ours,  we  are  liable  to  fall  into 
the  mistake  of  supposing  that  they  are  blunder- 
ing.1 What  they  speak  of  as  the  auricles  of  the 
heart,  we  term  the  appendices  of  the  auricles; 
and  what  we  call  the  auricles  are,  for  the  ancients, 
on  the  right  side,  a  part  of  the  great  vein  or  vena 
cava,  and,  on  the  left  side,  a  part  of  the  arterial 
system — the  root,  in  fact,  of  what  they  termed 
the  arteria  venosa.  Thus  they  speak  of  the  au- 
ricles as  mere  appendages,  or  dilatations,  situated 
upon  the  arterial  and  venous  trunks  respectively, 
close  to  the  heart ;  and  they  always  say  that  the 
vena  cava  and  the  arteria  venosa  open  into  the 
right  and  left  ventricles  respectively.  And  this 
was  the  basis  of  their  classification  of  the  ves- 
sels, for  they  held  all  those  vessels  which,  in  this 
sense,  open  into  the  right  ventricle  to  be  veins, 
and  all  those  which  open  into  the  left  ventricle  to 
be  arteries.  But  here  a  difficulty  arose.  They 
observed  that  the  aorta,  or  stem  of  the  arteries, 
and  all  the  conspicuous  branches  which  proceed 
from  it  to  the  body  in  general,  are  very  different 
from  the  veins ;  that  they  have  much  thicker 
walls,  and  stand  open  when  they  are  cut,  while 

1  We  pay  thnt  the  heart,  in  man  and  the  hicrher  ani- 
mals, consists  of  two  auricles  and  two  ventricles ;  and 
that  each  auricle  has  an  appendix  in  the  form  of  a 
pouch.  We  term  the  vessel  which  arises  from  the 
riaht  ventricle  the  pulmonary  artery,  because  it  sup- 
plies the  luncs  with  blood.  Those  vessels  which  bring 
away  the  blood  from  the  luEgs  to  the  left  auricle  we 
call  the  pulmonary  veins. 


the  thin-walled  veins  collapse.  But  the  "  vein  " 
which  connected  the  right  ventricle  and  the  lungs 
had  the  thick  coat  of  an  artery,  while  the  "  ar- 
tery "  which  connected  the  left  ventricle  and  the 
lungs  had  the  thin  coat  of  a  vein.  Hence  they 
called  the  former  the  vena  artcriosa,  or  artery- 
like vein,  and  the  latter  the  arteria  venosa,  or 
vein-like  artery. 

The  vena  arteriosa  is  what  we  call  the  pul- 
monary artery,  the  arteria  venosa  is  our  pul- 
monary vein ;  but  in  trying  to  understand  the  old 
anatomists  it  is  essential  to  forget  our  nomen- 
clature and  to  adopt  theirs.  With  this  precau- 
tion, and  with  the  facts  before  our  mind's  eye, 
their  statements  will  be  found  to  be,  in  the  main, 
exceedingly  accurate. 

About  the  year  300  b.  c.  a  great  discovery, 
that  of  the  valves  of  the  heart,  was  made  by 
Erasistratus.  This  anatomist  found,  around  the 
opening  by  which  the  vena  cava  communicates 
with  the  right  ventricle,  three  triangular  mem- 
branous folds,  disposed  in  such  a  manner  as  to 
allow  any  fluid  contained  in  the  vein  to  pass  into 
the  ventricle,  but  not  back  again.  The  opening 
of  the  vena  arteriosa  into  the  right  ventricle  is 
quite  distinct  from  that  of  the  vena  cava ;  and 
Erasistratus  observed  that  it  is  provided  with 
three  pouch-like,  half-moon-shaped  valves ;  the 
arrangement  of  which  is  such  that  a  fluid  can 
pass  out  of  the  ventricle  into  the  vena  arteriosa, 
but  not  back  again.  Three  similar  valves  were 
found  at  the  opening  of  the  aorta  into  the  left 
ventricle.  The  arteria  venosa  had  a  distinct 
opening  into  the  same  ventricle,  and  this  was 
provided  with  triangular  membranous  valves,  like 
those  on  the  right  side,  but  only  two  in  number. 
Thus  the  ventricles  had  four  openings,  two  for 
each ;  and  there  were  altogether  eleven  valves, 
disposed  in  such  a  manner  as  to  permit  fluids  to 
enter  the  ventricles  from  the  vena  cava  and  the 
arteria  venosa  respectively,  and  to  pass  out  of 
the  ventricles  by  the  vena  arteriosa  and  the  aorta 
respectively,  but  not  to  go  the  other  way. 

It  followed  from  this  capital  discovery  that, 
if  the  contents  of  the  heart  are  fluid,  and  if  they 
move  at  all,  they  can  only  move  in  one  way; 
namely,  from  the  vena  cava,  through  the  ventricle 
and  toward  the  lungs,  by  the  vena  arteriosa,  on  the 
right  side ;  and,  from  the  lungs,  by  way  of  the  ar- 
teria venosa,  through  the  ventricle,  and  out  by  the 
aorta  for  distribution  in  the  body,  on  the  left  side. 

Erasistratus  thus,  in  a  manner,  laid  the  foun- 
dations of  the  theory  of  the  motion  of  the  blood. 
But  it  was  not  given  to  him  to  get  any  further. 
What  the  contents  of  the  heart  were,  and  whether 


WILLIAM  HARVEY. 


387 


they  moved  or  not,  was  a  point  which  could  be 
determined  only  by  experiment.  And,  for  want 
of  sufficiently  careful  experimentation,  Erasistra- 
tus  strayed  into  a  hopelessly  misleading  path. 
Observing  that  the  arteries  are  usually  empty  of 
blood  after  death,  he  adopted  the  unlucky  hy- 
pothesis that  this  is  their  normal  condition,  and 
that  during  life,  ?(|!o,  they  are  filled  with  air. 
And  it  will  be  observed  that  it  is  not  improb- 
able that  Erasistratus's  discovery  of  the  valves 
of  the  heart  and  of  their  mechanical  action 
strengthened  him  in  this  view.  For,  as  the  ar- 
teria  venosa  branches  out  in  the  lungs,  what  more 
likely  than  that  its  ultimate  ramifications  absorb 
the  air  which  is  inspired ;  and  that  this  air, 
passing  into  the  left  ventricle,  is  then  pumped  all 
over  the  body  through  the  aorta,  in  order  to  sup- 
ply the  vivifying  principle  which  evidently  resides 
in  the  air ;  or,  it  may  be,  of  cooling  the  too  great 
heat  of  the  blood  ?  How  easy  to  explain  the 
elastic  bounding  feel  of  a  pulsating  artery  by  the 
hypothesis  that  it  is  full  of  air.  Had  Erasistratus 
only  been  acquainted  with  the  structure  of  in- 
sects, the  analogy  of  their  tracheal  system  would 
have  been  a  tower  of  strength  to  him.  There 
was  no  prima-facie  absurdity  in  his  hypothesis — 
and  experiment  was  the  sole  means  of  demon- 
strating its  truth  or  falsity. 

More  than  four  hundred  years  elapsed  before 
the  theory  of  the  motion  of  the  blood  returned 
once  more  to  the  strait  road  which  leads  truth- 
ward  ;  and  it  was  brought  back  by  the  only  pos- 
sible method,  that  of  experiment,  A  man  of  ex- 
traordinary genius,  Claudius  Galenus,  of  Perga- 
mos,  was  trained  to  anatomical  and  physiological 
investigation  in  the  great  schools  of  Alexandria, 
and  spent  a  long  life  in  incessant  research,  teach- 
ing, and  medical  practice.1  More  than  one  hun- 
dred and  fifty  treatises  from  his  pen,  on  philo- 
sophical, literary,  scientific,  and  practical  topics, 
are  extant ;  and  there  is  reason  to  believe  that 
they  constitute  not  more  than  a  third  of  his 
works.  No  former  anatomist  had  reached  his 
excellence,  while  he  may  be  regarded  as  the 
founder  of  experimental  physiology.  And,  it  is 
precisely  because  he  was  a  master  of  the  experi- 
mental method,  that  he  was  able  to  learn  more 
about  the  motions  of  the  heart  and  of  the  blood 
than  any  of  his  predecessors ;  and  to  leave  to 
posterity  a  legacy  of  knowledge,  which  was  not 
substantially  increased  for  more  than  thirteen 
hundred  years. 

The  conceptions  of  the  structure  of  the  heart 

1  Galen  was  born  in  the  year  131  a.  d.,  and  died  in 
or  about  the  year  201. 


and  vessels,  of  their  actions,  and  of  the  motion 
of  the  blood  in  them,  which  Galen  entertained, 
are  not  stated  in  a  complete  shape  in  any  one  of 
his  numerous  works.  But  a  careful  collation  of 
the  various  passages  in  which  these  conceptions 
are  expressed,  leaves  no  doubt  upon  my  mind 
that  Galen's  views  respecting  the  structure  of  the 
organs  concerned  were,  for  the  most  part,  as  ac- 
curate as  the  means  of  anatomical  analysis  at  his 
command  permitted ;  and  that  he  had  exact  and 
consistent,  though  by  no  means  equally  just, 
notions  of  the  actions  of  these  organs,  and  of  the 
movements  of  the  blood. 

Starting  from  the  fundamental  facts  estab- 
lished by  Erasistratus  respecting  the  structure  of 
the  heart  and  the  working  of  its  valves,  Galen's 
great  service  was  the  proof,  by  the  only  evidence 
which  could  possess  demonstrative  value,  namely, 
by  that  derived  from  experiments  upon  living  ani- 
mals, that  the  arteries  are  as  much  full  of  blood 
during  life  as  the  veins  are,  and  that  the  left 
cavity  of  the  heart,  like  the  right,  is  also  filled 
with  blood. 

Galen,  moreover,  correctly  asserted,  though 
the  means  of  investigation  at  his  disposition  did 
not  allow  him  to  prove  the  fact,  that  the  ramifi- 
cations of  the  vena  arteriosa  in  the  substance  of 
the  lungs  communicate  with  those  of  the  artc- 
ria  venosa,  by  direct,  though  invisible,  passages, 
which  he  terms  anastomoses ;  and  that,  by  means 
of  these  communications,  a  certain  portion  of  the 
blood  of  the  right  ventricle  of  the  heart  passes 
through  the  lungs  into  the  left  ventricle.  In  fact, 
Galen  is  quite  clear  as  to  the  existence  of  a  cur- 
rent of  blood  through  the  lungs,  though  not  of 
such  a  current  as  we  now  know  traverses  them. 
For,  while  he  believed  that  a  part  of  the  blood  of 
the  right  ventricle  passes  through  the  lungs,  and 
even,  as  I  shall  show,  described  at  length  the 
mechanical  arrangements  by  which  he  supposes 
this  passage  to  be  effected,  he  considered  that 
the  greater  part  of  the  blood  in  the  right  ventricle 
passes  directly,  through  certain  pores  in  the  sep- 
tum, into  the  left  ventricle.  And  this  was  where 
Galen  got  upon  his  wrong  track,  without  which 
divergence  a  man  of  his  scientific  insight  must  in- 
fallibly have  discovered  the  true  character  of  the 
pulmonary  current,  and  not  improbably  have  been 
led  to  anticipate  Harvey. 

But,  even  in  propounding  this  erroneous  hy- 
pothesis of  the  porosity  of  the  septum,  it  is  in- 
teresting to  observe  with  what  care  Galen  dis- 
tinguishes between  observation  and  speculation. 
He  expressly  says  that  he  has  never  seen  the 
openings  which  he  supposes  to  exist,  and  that  he 


338 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


imagines  them  to  be  invisible,  by  reason  of  their 
small  size  and  their  closure  by  the  refrigeration 
of  the  heart,  after  death.  Nevertheless,  he  can- 
not doubt  their  existence,  partly  because  the  sep- 
tum presents  a  great  number  of  pits  which  ob- 
viously lead  into  its  substance  as  they  narrow, 
and,  as  he  is  so  fond  of  saying,  "  Nature  makes 
nothing  in  vain ; "  and,  partly,  because  the  vena 
cava  is  so  large,  in  comparison  with  the  vena 
arteriosa,  that  he  does  not  see  how  all  the  blood 
poured  into  the  ventricle  could  be  got  rid  of,  if 
the  latter  were  its  only  channel. 

Thus,  for  Galen,  the  course  of  the  blood 
through  the  heart  was — on  the  right  side,  in  by 
the  vena  cava,  out  by  the  vena  arteriosa  and  the 
pores  of  the  septum ;  on  the  left  side,  in  by  the 
pores  of  the  septum  and  by  the  arteria  venosa, 
out  by  the  aorta.  What,  now,  becomes  of  the 
blood  which,  filling  the  vena  arteriosa,  reaches 
the  lungs  ?  Galen's  views  are  perfectly  definite 
about  this  point.  The  vena  arteriosa  communi- 
cates with  the  arteria  venosa  in  the  lungs  by  nu- 
merous connecting  channels.  During  expiration, 
the  blood  which  is  in  the  lungs,  being  compressed, 
tends  to  flow  back  into  the  heart  by  way  of  the 
vena  arteriosa ;  but  it  is  prevented  from  doing 
so,  in  consequence  of  the  closure  of  the  semi- 
lunar valves.  Hence,  a  portion  of  it  is  forced 
the  other  way,  through  the  anastomoses  into  the 
arteria  venosa ;  and  then,  mixed  with  "  pneuma," 
it  is  carried  to  the  left  ventricle,  whence  it  is 
propelled,  through  the  aorta  and  its  branches,  all 
over  the  body. 

Galen  not  only  took  great  pains  to  obtain  ex- 
perimental proof  that,  during  life,  all  the  arteries 
contain  blood  and  not  air,  as  Erasistratus  sup- 
posed ;  but  he  distinctly  affirms  that  the  blood 
in  the  left  ventricle  and  in  the  arteria  venosa  is 
different  from  that  in  the  right  ventricle  and  in  the 
veins,  including  the  vena  arteriosa ;  and  that  the 
difference  between  the  two  lies  in  color,  heat,  and 
the  greater  quantity  of  "  pneuma  "  contained  in 
arterial  blood.  Now,  this  "pneuma"  is  some- 
thing acquired  by  the  blood  in  the  lungs.  The 
air  which  is  inspired  into  these  organs  is  a  kind 
of  aliment.  It  is  not  taken  bodily  into  the  veno- 
sa arteria  and  thence  carried  to  the  left  ventricle 
to  fill  the  arterial  system,  as  Erasistratus  thought. 
On  the  contrary,  Galen  repeatedly  argues  that 
this  cannot  be  the  case,  and  often  refers  to  his 
experimental  proofs  that  the  whole  arterial  sys- 
tem is  full  of  blood  during  life.  But  the  air  sup- 
plies a  material  kindred  to  the  "  pneuma,"  out  of 
which  and  the  blood  the  "  pneuma  "  is  concocted. 
Hence,  the  contents  of  the  arteria  venosa  arc  large- 


ly composed  of  "  pneuma,"  and  it  is  out  of  the  mixt- 
ure of  this  with  the  blood  which  filters  through 
the  septum  that  the  bright  "  pneumatic  "  blood 
found  in  the  arteries,  and  by  them  distributed  over 
the  body,  is  formed.  The  arteria  venosa  is  a  chan- 
nel by  which  "  pneuma  "  reaches  the  heart,  but 
this  is  not  its  exclusive  function ;  for  it  has,  at 
the  same  time,  to  allow  of  the  passage  of  certain 
fuliginous  and  impure  matters  which  the  blood 
contains,  in  the  opposite  direction ;  and  it  is  for 
this  reason  that  there  are  only  two  valves  where 
the  arteria  venosa  enters  the  ventricle.  These, 
not  fitting  quite  tightly,  allow  of  the  exit  of  the 
fuliginous  matters  in  question. 

Modern  commentators  are  fond  of  pouring 
scorn  upon  Galen,  because  he  holds  that  the 
heart  is  not  a  muscle.  But,  if  what  he  says  on 
this  subject  is  studied  with  care  and  impartiality, 
and  with  due  recollection  of  the  fact  that  Galen 
was  not  obliged  to  use  the  terminology  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  it  will  be  seen  that  he  by  no 
means  deserves  blame,  but  rather  praise,  for  his 
critical  discrimination  of  things  which  are  really 
unlike. 

All  that  Galen  affirms  is,  that  the  heart  is 
totally  unlike  one  of  the  ordinary  muscles  of  the 
body,  not  only  in  structure,  but  in  being  inde- 
pendent of  the  control  of  the  will ;  and,  so  far 
from  doubting  that  the  walls  of  the  heart  are 
made  up  of  active  fibres,  he  expressly  describes 
these  fibres  and  what  he  supposes  to  be  their 
arrangement  and  their  mode  of  action.  The 
fibres  are  of  three  kinds,  longitudinal,  transverse, 
and  oblique.  The  action  of  the  longitudinal 
fibres  is  to  draw  in,  that  of  the  circular  fibres  to 
expel,  and  that  of  the  oblique  fibres  to  retain, 
the  contents  of  the  heart.  How  Galen  supposed 
the  oblique  fibres  could  execute  the  function  as- 
cribed to  them,  I  do  not  know ;  but  it  is  clear 
that  he  thought  that  the  activity  of  the  circular 
fibres  increased,  and  that  of  the  longitudinal 
fibres  diminished,  the  size  of  the  cavities  which 
they  surrounded.  Nowadays  we  term  an  active 
fibre  muscular;  Galen  did  not,  unless,  in  addi- 
tion, it  possessed  the  characters  of  voluntary 
muscle. 

According  to  Galen,  the  arteries  have  a  sys- 
tole and  diastole  (that  is,  a  state  of  contraction 
and  a  state  of  dilatation),  which  alternate  with 
those  of  the  ventricles,  and  depend  upon  active 
contractions  and  dilatations  of  their  walls.  This 
active  faculty  of  the  arteries  is  inherent  in  them, 
because  they  are,  as  it  were,  productions  of  the 
substance  of  the  ventricles  which  possess  these 
faculties ;  and  it  is  destroyed  when  the  vital  con- 


WILLIAM  HARVEY. 


389 


tinuity  of  the  arteries  with  the  heart  is  destroyed 
by  section  or  ligature.  The  arteries  fill,  there- 
fore, as  bellows  fill,  not  as  bags  are  blown  full. 

The  ultimate  ramifications  of  the  arteries  open 
by  anastomoses  into  those  of  the  veins,  all  over 
the  body ;  and  the  vivifying  arterial  blood  thus 
communicates  its  properties  to  the  great  mass  of 
blood  in  the  veins.  Under  certain  conditions, 
however,  the  blood  may  flow  from  the  veins  to 
the  arteries,  in  proof  of  which  Galen  adduces  the 
fact  that  the  whole  vascular  system  may  be  emp- 
tied by  opening  an  artery. 

The  two  ventricles,  the  auricles,  the  pulmo- 
nary vessels,  and  the  aorta  with  its  branches,  are 
conceived  by  the  Greek  anatomist  to  be  an  ap- 
paratus superadded  to  the  veins,  which  he  re- 
gards as  the  essential  foundation  and  the  most 
important  part  of  the  whole  vascular  system. 
No  portion  of  Galen's  doctrines  has  been  more 
sharply  criticised  than  his  persistent  refusal  to 
admit  that  the  veins,  like  the  arteries,  take  their 
origin  in  the  heart,  and  his  advocacy  of  the  view 
that  the  fons  et  origo  of  the  whole  venous  system 
is  to  be  sought  in  the  liver.  Here,  however,  I 
must  remark  that  it  is  only  those  who  are  prac- 
tically ignorant  of  the  facts  who  can  fail  to  see 
that  Galen's  way  of  stating  the  matter  is  not  only 
anatomically  justifiable,  but  that,  until  the  true 
nature  of  the  circulation  was  understood,  and 
physiological  considerations  overrode  those  based 
upon  mere  structure,  there  was  much  more  to  be 
said  for  it  than  for  the  opposite  fashion. 

Remembering  that  what  we  call  the  right 
auricle  was,  for  Galen,  a  mere  part  of  the  vena 
cava,  it  is  impossible  not  to  be  struck  by  the 
justice  of  his  striking  comparison  of  the  vena 
cava  to  the  trunk  of  a  tree,  the  roots  of  which 
enter  the  liver  as  their  soil,  while  the  branches 
spread  all  over  the  body.  Galen  remarks  that  the 
existence  of  the  vena  portte,  which  gathers  blood 
from  the  alimentary  canal,  and  then  distributes 
it  to  the  liver,  without  coming  near  the  heart,  is 
a  fatal  objection  to  the  view  of  his  opponents, 
that  all  the  veins  take  their  rise  in  the  heart ; 
and  the  argument  is  unanswerable,  so  far  as  the 
mere  anatomical  facts  are  concerned. 

Nothing  could  have  appeared  more  obvious 
to  the  early  anatomists  than  that  the  store  of 
nutriment  carried  by  the  vena  porta;  to  the  liver 
was  there  elaborated  into  blood,  and  then,  being 
absorbed  by  the  roots  of  the  venous  system,  was 
conveyed  by  its  branches  all  over  the  body.  The 
veins  were  thus  the  great  distributors  of  the 
blood ;  the  heart  and  arteries  were  a  superadded 
apparatus  for  the  dispersion  of  a  "  pneumatized  " 


or  vivified  portion  of  the  blood  through  the  ar- 
teries ;  and  this  addition  of  "  pneuma,"  or  vivifi- 
cation,  took  place  in  the  gills  of  water-breathing 
animals  and  in  the  lungs  of  air-breathers.  But, 
in  the  latter  case,  the  mechanism  of  respiration 
involved  the  addition  of  a  new  apparatus,  the 
right  ventricle,  to  insure  the  constant  flow  of 
blood  through  these  organs  of  "  pneumatization." 

Every  statement  in  the  preceding  paragraphs 
can  be  justified  by  citations  from  Galen's  works; 
and,  therefore,  it  must  be  admitted  that  he  had  a 
wonderfully  correct  conception  of  the  structure 
and  disposition  of  the  heart  and  vessels,  and  of 
the  mode  in  which  the  ultimate  ramifications  of 
the  latter  communicate,  both  in  the  body  gener- 
ally and  in  the  lungs ;  that  his  general  view  of  the 
functions  of  the  heart  was  just ;  and  that  he  knew 
that  blood  passes  from  the  right  side  of  the  heart, 
through  the  lungs,  to  the  left  side,  and  undergoes 
a  great  change  in  quality,  brought  about  by  its 
relation  with  the  air  in  the  lungs,  in  its  course. 
It  is  unquestionable,  therefore,  that  Galen,  so  far, 
divined  the  existence  of  a  "pulmonary  circula- 
tion," and  that  he  came  near  to  a  just  conception 
of  the  process  of  respiration ;  but  he  had  no  ink- 
ling even  of  the  systemic  circulation ;  he  was 
quite  wrong  about  the  perforation  of  the  septum ; 
and  his  theory  of  the  mechanical  causes  of  the 
systole  and  diastole  of  the  heart  and  arteries  was 
erroneous.  Nevertheless,  for  more  than  thirteen 
centuries,  Galen  was  immeasurably  in  advance  of 
all  other  anatomists ;  and  some  of  his  notions, 
such  as  that  about  the  active  dilatation  of  the 
walls  of  the  vessels,  have  been  debated  by  physi- 
ologists of  the  present  generation. 

No  one  can  read  Galen's  works  without  being 
impressed  by  the  marvelous  extent  and  diversity 
of  his  knowledge,  and  by  his  clear  grasp  of  those 
experimental  methods  by  which,  alone,  physiolo- 
gy can  be  advanced.  It  is  pathetic  to  watch  the 
gropings  of  a  great  mind  like  his  around  some 
cardinal  truth,  which  he  failed  to  apprehend 
simply  because  he  had  not  in  his  possession  the 
means  of  investigation  which,  at  this  time,  are 
in  the  hands  of  every  student.  I  have  seen 
learned  disquisitions  on  the  theme,  Why  did  the 
ancients  fail  in  their  scientific  inquiries  ?  I  know 
not  what  may  be  the  opinion  of  those  who  are 
competent  to  judge  of  the  labors  of  Euclid,  or  of 
Hipparchus,  or  of  Archimedes;  but  I  think  that 
the  question  which  will  rise  to  the  lips  of  the  bio- 
logical student,  fresh  from  the  study  of  the  works 
of  Galen,  is  rather,  How  did  these  men,  with  their 
imperfect  appliances,  attain  so  vast  a  measure  of 
success  ?     In  truth,  it  is  in  the  Greek  world  that 


390 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


we  must  seek,  not  only  the  predecessors,  but  the 
spiritual  progenitors,  of  modern  men  of  science. 
The  slumbering  aptitude  of  Western  Europe  for 
physical  investigation  was  awakened  by  the  im- 
portation of  Greek  knowledge  and  of  Greek 
method ;  and  modern  anatomists  and  physiolo- 
gists are  but  the  heirs  of  Galen,  who  have  turned 
to  good  account  the  patrimony  bequeathed  by 
him  to  the  civilized  world. 

The  student  of  the  works  of  the  anatomists 
and  physiologists  of  modern  Europe  in  the 
fifteenth  and  the  beginning  of  the  sixteenth 
century,  will  find  that  they  were  chiefly  occu- 
pied in  learning  of  their  own  knowledge  what 
Galen  knew.  It  is  not  strange,  therefore,  that 
they  were  overpowered  by  so  vast  a  genius,  and 
that  they  allowed  themselves  to  be  enslaved  by 
his  authority,  in  a  manner  which  he*would  have 
been  the  first  to  reprove.  Vesalius,  the  great 
reformer  of  anatomy,  had  a  bitter  struggle  to 
carry  on  Galen's  work,  by  showing  where  he  had 
erred  in  expounding  the  structure  of  the  human 
body,  on  the  faith  of  observations  made  on  the 
lower  animals ;  but  it  was  not  till  the  middle  of 
the  sixteenth  century  that  anything  was  done  to 
improve  on  Galen's  physiology,  and  especially  to 
amend  his  doctrines  concerning  the  movements 
of  the  heart  and  of  the  blood. 

The  first  step  in  this  direction  is  very  general- 
ly ascribed  to  Michael  Servetus,  the  unhappy  man 
whose  judicial  murder  by  slow  fire  was  compassed 
by  John  Calvin ;  he  being  instigated  thereto  by 
theological  antagonism,  intensified  by  personal 
hatred  ;  and  aided  and  abetted  in  his  iniquity  by 
the  Protestant  Churches  of  Switzerland.  The 
whole  story  has  recently  been  clearly  and  fully 
told  by  Dr.  Willis,1  and  I  refer  to  it  only  for  the 
purpose  of  remarking  that  the  name  and  fame 
of  Calvin's  victim  would  probably  have  been  as 
completely  obliterated  as  his  persecutor  intended 
they  should  be,  had  it  not  happened  that  one  or 
two  copies  of  the  "  Christianismi  Restitutio,"  the 
attempted  publication  of  which  was  the  immediate 
cause  of  Servetus's  death,  were  saved  from  de- 
struction. 

Servetus  was  undoubtedly  well  acquainted 
with  anatomy,  inasmuch  as  he  was  demonstrator 
to  Joannes  Guinterus  in  the  School  of  Paris,  where 
he  had  Vesalius  for  his  colleague ;  and,  in  his 
later  years,  he  practised  as  a  physician.  Hence 
it  is  not  wonderful  to  find  that  the  "  Christianismi 
Restitutio,"  although  essentially  a  farrago  of  scat- 
terbrained theological  speculations,  contains  much 

1  "  Servetus  and  Calvin,"  by  R.  Willis,  M.  D.,  1877. 


physiological  matter.  And  it  is  in  developing  his 
conception  of  the  relations  between  God  and  man 
that  Servetus  wrote  the  well-known  passages  on 
which  many  have  asserted  his  claim  to  the  dis- 
covery of  the  course  of  the  blood  from  the  heart, 
through  the  lungs,  and  back  to  the  heart,  or 
what  is  now  termed  the  pulmonary  circulation. 

I  have  studied  the  passages  in  question  with 
great  care,  and  with  every  desire  to  give  Servetus 
his  due,  but  I  confess  I  cannot  see  that  he  made 
much  advance  upon  Galen.1  As  we  have  seen, 
Galen  said  that  some  blood  goes  to  the  left  side 
of  the  heart  from  the  right  side  through  the  lungs, 
but  that  the  greater  part  traverses  the  septum. 
Servetus  appears,  at  first,  to  declare  that  all  the 
blood  of  the  right  side  goes  through  the  lungs  to 
the  left  side,  and  that  the  septum  is  imperforate. 
But  he  qualifies  his  assertion  by  admitting  that 
some  of  the  blood  of  the  right  ventricle  may 
transude  through  the  septum,  and  thus  the  ques- 
tion between  him  and  Galen  becomes  merely  one 
of  degree.  Servetus  cites  neither  observation  nor 
experiment  in  favor  of  the  imperviousness  of  the 
septum;  and  the  impression  upon  my  mind  is  that 
he  really  knew  no  more  than  Vesalius  had  already 
published,  but  that  the  tendency  to  headlong 
speculation,  which  is  so  characteristic  of  the 
man,  led  him  to  rush  in  where  his  more  thought- 
ful colleague  held  back. 

Whatever  may  be  thought  of  the  moral  claim 
of  Servetus  to  be  regarded  as  the  discoverer  of 
the  pulmonary  circulation,  there  is  no  reason  to 
believe  that  he  had  any  influence  on  the  actual 
progress  of  science.2  For  Calvin  dealt  with  all 
the  packages  of  the  edition  of  the  "  Christianis- 
mi Restitutio  "  he  could  lay  hands  on  as  he  had 
served  their  author,  and  it  is  believed  that  only  a 
few  copies  escaped  the  flames.  One  of  these,  in 
the  National  Library  of  France,  is  the  very  book 
used  by  the  counsel  for  the  prosecution,  whom  Cal- 
vin prompted,  at  Geneva  ;  another  is  in  Vienna. 
The  public  had  no  access  to  the  work  until  it  was 
reprinted,  more  than  two  centuries  afterward. 

i  I  cannot  but  think  that  Dr.  Willis's  natural  affec- 
tion for  his  hero  has  carried  him  too  far  when  he  says, 
"  Had  his  '  Restoratiou  of  Christianity'  been  suffered 
to  get  abroad  and  into  the  hands  of  anatomists,  we 
can  hardly  imagine  that  the  immortality  which  now 
attaches  so  truly  and  deservedly  to  the  great  name  of 
Harvey  would  have  been  reserved  for  him."  But  with- 
in six  years  of  Servetus's  death  the  doctrine  of  the 
pulmonary  circulation  did  get  abroad  through  Realdus 
Columbus,  without  the  effect  supposed. 

2  The  arguments  adduced  by  the  learned  and  in- 
genious Tollin  ("Die  entdeckung  der  kreislaufs  durch 
Michel  Servet,"  1876),  on  the  other  side,  will  hardly 
bear  close  scrutiny. 


WILLIAM  EAR  YET. 


391 


The  first  author  who  declared,  without  any 
qualifieation,  that  the  septum  of  the  ventricles  is 
imperforate,  and  that  all  the  blood  of  the  light 
ventricle  traverses  the  lungs  and  (except  so  much 
as  may  be  retained  for  the  nutrition  of  these  or- 
gans) passes  to  the  left  ventricle,  was  Realdus 
Columbus,  Professor  of  Anatomy  in  the  famous 
School  of  Padua.  The  remarkable  treatise,  "  De 
Re  Anatomica,"  of  this  able  anatomist,  was  pub- 
lished in  1559,  or  only  six  years  after  the  death 
of  Servetus,  of  whose  notions  there  is  no  evidence 
that  Columbus  had  any  cognizance.  Moreover, 
Columbus,  as  able  an  experimenter  as  he  was  a 
skillful  dissector,  deals  with  the  question  in  a  very 
different  way  from  Servetus ;  so  that,  from  his 
time,  the  existence  of  the  pulmonary  circulation, 
in  the  modern  sense,  may  be  said  to  have  become 
established.  Ambroise  Pare,  the  great  surgeon, 
writing  in  lol79,1  refers  to  the  course  of  the 
blood  through  the  lungs  as  notoriously  the  dis- 
covery of  Columbus.  And  I  think  not  only  that 
Realdus  Columbus  is  entitled  to  the  whole  credit 
of  this  very  considerable  advance  upon  Galen's 
views,  but  that  he  is  the  only  physiologist,  be- 
tween the  time  of  Galen  and  that  of  Harvey,  who 
made  any  important  addition  to  the  theory  of  the 
circulation. 

The  claim  which  is  put  forward  on  behalf 
of  the  celebrated  botanist  Ciesalpinus  appears  to 
me  to  be  devoid  of  any  foundation.5  Many  years 
after  the  publication  of  the  work  of  Realdus 
Columbus,  who  was  professor  at  the  most  famous 
and  most  frequented  anatomical  school  of  the 
time,  and  who  assuredly  was  the  last  man  to  hide 
his  light  under  a  bushel,  Csesalpinus  incidentally 
describes  the  pulmonary  circulation  in  terms 
which  simply  embody  a  statement  of  Columbus's 
doctrine,  adding  nothing,  and,  to  his  credit  be  it 
said,  claiming  nothing.     Like  all  the  rest  of  the 

1  "The  Work9  of  Ambrose  Parey,"  translated  by 
Thomas  Johnson,  1691,  p.  97. 

2  "  Videmus  Cssalpinum  eadem  de  sanguinis  itinere 
per  pulmonem,  atque  de  valvularum  usu  quae  Columbus 
ante  docuisset  proponere  ;  causas  vero  sanguinis  mo- 
vendi  juxta  cum  ignarissimis  nescivisse;  motus  cordis 
atque  arteriarum  perturbasse  ;  sanguinem  e  dextro 
cordis  ventrieulo  per  pulmonem  in  sinistrum  ven- 
triculum  deferri,  nullo  experimento  sed  ingenii  com- 
nieuto  probabili  persuasum  credidisse.  De  venis  ab 
injecto  vinculo  intumescentibus  aliena  omnino  dix- 
isse ;  alimentum  auctivnm  e  venis  in  arterias,  per 
oscula  mutua  vasorum  sibi  invicem  commissorum,  eli- 
citum  invita  experientia  docuisse." 

Not  one  of  the  ingenious  pleaders  for  Csesalpinus 
has  yet,  in  my  judgment,  showD  cause  for  the  reversal 
of  the  verdict  thus  delivered  by  the  learned  biographer 
of  Harvey  in  the  edition  of  his  "  Opera  Omnia,"  which 
was  published  by  the  College  of  Physicians  in  1766. 


world  since  venesection  was  invented,  Ca?salpinus 
noticed  that  the  vein  swells  on  the  side  of  the 
ligature  away  from  the  heart;  and  he  observes 
that  this  is  inconsistent  with  the  received  views 
of  the  motion  of  the  blood  in  the  veins.  If  he 
had  followed  up  the  suggestion  thus  made  to 
him  by  the  needful  experimental  investigation,  he 
might  have  anticipated  Harvey ;  but  he  did  not. 

Again,  Cannani  discovered  the  existence  of 
valves  in  some  of  the  veins  in  1547;  and  Fabri- 
cius  rediscovered  them,  and  prominently  drew 
attention  to  their  mechanism,  in  15*74.  Never- 
theless, this  discovery,  important  as  it  was,  and 
widely  as  it  became  known,  had  absolutely  no 
effect  in  leading  either  the  discoverers  or  their 
contemporaries  to  a  correct  view  of  the  general 
circulation.  In  common  with  all  the  anatomists 
of  the  sixteenth  century,  Fabricius  believed  that 
the  blood  proceeded  from  the  main  trunk,  or  vena 
cava,  outward  to  the  smallest  ramifications  of  the 
veins,  in  order  to  subserve  the  nutrition  of  the 
parts  in  which  they  are  distributed ;  and,  instead 
of  being  led  by  the  mechanical  action  of  the 
valves  to  reverse  his  theory  of  the  course  of  the 
venous  blood,  he  was  led  by  the  dominant  theory 
of  the  course  of  the  blood  to  interpret  the  mean- 
ing of  the  valvular  mechanism.  Fabricius,  in 
fact,  considered  that  the  office  of  the  valves  was 
to  break  the  impetus  of  the  venous  blood,  and  to 
prevent  its  congestion  in  the  organs  to  which  it 
was  sent ;  and,  until  the  true  course  of  the  blood  , 
was  demonstrated,  this  was  as  likely  an  hypothe- 
sis as  any  other. 

The  best  evidence  of  the  state  of  knowledge 
respecting  the  motions  of  the  heart  and  blood  in 
Harvey's  time  is  afforded  by  those  works  of  his 
contemporaries  which  immediately  preceded  the 
publication  of  the  "Exercitatio  Anatomica,"  in 
1628. '  And  none  can  be  more  fitly  cited  for 
this  purpose  than  the  "De  Humani  Corporis 
Fabrica,  Libri  decern,"  of  Adrian  van  den  Spie- 
ghel,  who,  like  Harvey,  was  a  pupil  of  Fabricius 
of  Aquapendente,  and  was  of  such  distinguished 
ability  and  learning  that  he  succeeded  his  master 
in  the  chair  of  anatomy  of  Padua. 

1  The  whole  title  of  the  copy  of  the  rare  first  edition 
in  the  library  of  the  College  of  Physicians  runs  :  "  Ex- 
ercitatio Anatomica  de  motu  cordis  et  sanguinis  in 
animalibus.  Gulielmi  Harvaei,  Angli  Medici  Eegii  et 
Professoris  Anatomise  in  Collegio  Medicorum  Lon- 
dinensi.  Francofnrti,  sumptibus  Gulielmi  Fitzeri. 
Anno  MDCXXVIII."  The  dedications,  of  which  that 
to  Charles  I.  is  pasted  in,  as  if  it  had  been  an  after- 
thought, extend  to  p.  9 ;  the  Prooemium  to  p.  19  ;  while 
the  Exercitatio  itself  occupies  pp.  20  to  72  inclusively. 
There  are  two  plates  illustrative  of  experi  ments  on  the 
veins  of  the  arm. 


392 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


Van  den  Spieghel,  or  Spigelius,  as  he  called 
himself,  in  accordance  with  the  fashion  of  those 
days,  died  comparatively  young  in  1625,  and  his 
work  was  edited  by  his  friend  Daniel  Bucretius, 
whose  preface  is  dated  162*7.  The  accounts  of 
the  heart  and  vessels,  and  of  the  motion  of  the 
blood,  which  it  contains,  are  full  and  clear ;  but, 
beyond  matters  of  detail,  they  go  beyond  Galen 
in  only  two  points,  and,  with  respect  to  one  of 
these,  Spigelius  was  in  error. 

The  first  point  is  the  "pulmonary  circula- 
tion," which  is  taught  as  Columbus  taught  it 
nearly  eighty  years  before.  The  second  point  is, 
so  far  as  I  know,  peculiar  to  Spigelius  himself. 
He  thinks  that  the  pulsation  of  the  arteries  has 
an  effect  in  promoting  the  motion  of  the  blood 
contained  in  the  veins  which  accompany  them. 
Of  the  true  course  of  the  blood  as  a  whole,  Spi- 
gelius has  no  more  suspicion  than  had  any  other 
physiologist  of  that  age,  except  William  Harvey  ; 
no  rumor  of  whose  lectures  at  the  College  of  | 
Physicians,  commenced  six  years  before  Spieghel's 
death,  was  likely  in  those  days  of  slow  communi- 
cation, and  in  the  absence  of  periodical  publica- 
tions, to  have  reached  Italy. 

Now,  let  any  one  familiar  with  the  pages  of 
Spigelius  take  up  Harvey's  treatise  and  mark  the 
contrast. 

The  main  object  of  the  "  Exercitatio  "  is  to 
put  forth  and  demonstrate,  by  direct  experimental 
and  other  accessory  evidence,  a  proposition  which 
is  far  from  being  even  hinted  at,  either  by  Spi- 
gelius, or  by  any  of  his  contemporaries  or  prede- 
cessors ;  and  which  is  in  diametrical  contradiction 
to  the  views,  respecting  the  course  of  the  blood 
in  the  veins,  which  are  expounded  in  their  works. 

From  Galen  to  Spigelius,  they  one  and  all 
believed  that  the  blood  in  the  vena  cava  and  its 
branches  flows  from  the  main  trunk  toward  the 
smallest  ramifications.  There  is  a  similar  con- 
sensus in  the  doctrine,  that  the  greater  part,  if 
not  the  whole,  of  the  blood  thus  distributed  by 
the  veins  is  derived  from  the  liver ;  in  which 
organ  it  is  generated  out  of  the  materials  brought 
from  the  alimentary  canal  by  means  of  the  vena 
porta?.  And  all  Harvey's  predecessors  further 
agree  in  the  belief  that  only  a  small  fraction  of 
the  total  mass  of  the  venous  blood  is  conveyed  by 
the  vena  artcriosa  to  the  lungs  and  passes  by  the 
arteria  venosa  to  the  left  ventricle,  thence  to  be 
distributed  over  the  body  by  the  arteries.  Wheth- 
er some  portion  of  the  refined  and  "pneumatic" 
arterial  blood  traversed  the  anastomotic  chan- 
nels, the  existence  of  which  was  assumed,  and  so 
reached  the  systemic  veins,  or  whether,  on  the 


contrary,  some  portion  of  the  venous  blood  made 
its  entrance  by  the  same  passage  into  the  arteries, 
depended  upon  circumstances.  Sometimes  the 
current  might  set  one  way,  sometimes  the  other. 

In  direct  opposition  to  these  universally  re- 
ceived views,  Harvey  asserts  that  the  natural 
course  of  the  blood  in  the  veins  is  from  the  pe- 
ripheral ramifications  toward  the  main  trunk ; 
that  the  mass  of  the  blood  to  be  found  in  the 
veins  at  any  moment  was,  a  short  time  before, 
contained  in  the  arteries,  and  has  simply  flowed 
out  of  the  latter  into  the  veins ;  and,  finally,  that 
the  stream  of  blood  which  runs  from  the  arteries 
into  the  veins  is  constant,  continuous,  and  rapid. 

According  to  the  view  of  Harvey's  predeces- 
sors,1 the  veins  may  be  compared  to  larger  and 
smaller  canals,  fed  by  a  spring  which  trickles 
into  the  chief  canals,  whence  the  water  flows  to 
the  rest.  The  heart  and  lungs  represent  an  en- 
gine set  up  in  the  principal  canal  to  aerate  some 
of  the  water  and  scatter  it  all  over  the  garden. 
Whether  any  of  this  identical  water  came  back 
to  the  engine  or  not  would  be  a  matter  of  chance, 
and  it  would  certainly  have  no  sensible  effect  on 
the  motion  of  the  water  in  the  canals.  In  Har- 
vey's conception  of  the  matter,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  garden  is  watered  by  channels  so  ar- 
ranged as  to  form  a  circle,  two  points  of  which 
are  occupied  by  propulsive  engines.  The  water 
is  kept  moving  in  a  continual  round  within  its 
channels,  as  much  entering  the  engines  on  one 
side  as  leases  them  on  the  other ;  and  the  mo- 
tion of  the  water  is  entirely  due  to  the  engines. 

It  is  in  conceiving  the  motion  of  the  blood, 
as  a  whole,  to  be  circular,  and  in  ascribing  that 
circular  motion  simply  and  solely  to  the  contrac- 
tions of  the  walls  of  the  heart,  that  Harvey  is  so 
completely  original.  Before  him,  no  one,  that  I 
can  discover,  had  ever  so  much  as  dreamed  that 
a  given  portion  of  blood  contained,  for  example, 
in  the  right  ventricle  of  the  heart  may,  by  the 
mere  mechanical  operation  of  the  working  of  that 
organ,  be  made  to  return  to  the  very  place  from 
which  it  started,  after  a  long  journey  through 
the  lungs,  and  through  the  body  generally.  And 
it  should  be  remembered  that  it  is  to  this  com- 
plete circuit  of  the  blood,  alone,  that  the  term 
"  circulation  "  can,  in  strictness,  be  applied.  It 
is  of  the  essence  of  a  circular  motion  that  that 
which  moves  returns  to  the  place  whence  it 
started.  Hence,  the  discovery  of  the  course  of 
the  blood  from  the  right  ventricle,  through  the 

1  See  the  comparison  of  the  veins  to  the  canals 
for  irrigating:  a  garden,  in  Galen,  "  De  Naturalibus 
Facultatibus,"  vol.  iii.,  cap.  xv. 


WILLIAM  HARVEY. 


393 


lungs,  to  the  left  ventricle,  was  in  no  wise  an  an- 
ticipation of  the  discovery  of  the  circulation  of 
the  blood.  For  the  blood  which  traverses  this 
part  of  its  course  no  more  describes  a  circle  than 
the  dweller  in  a  street  who  goes  out  of  his  own 
house  and  enters  his  next-door  neighbor's  does  so. 
Although  there  may  be  nothing  but  a  party-wall 
between  him  and  the  room  he  has  just  left,  it 
constitutes  an  efficient  defense  de  circuler.  Thus, 
whatever  they  may  have  known  of  the  so-called 
pulmonary  circulation,  to  say  that  Servetus,  or 
Columbus,  or  Caesalpinus,  deserves  any  share  of 
the  credit  which  attaches  to  Harvey,  appears  to 
me  to  be  to  mistake  the  question  at  issue. 

It  must  further  be  borne  in  mind,  that  the  de- 
termination of  the  true  course  taken  by  the  whole 
mass  of  the  blood  is  only  the  most  conspicuous 
of  the  discoveries  of  Harvey;  and  that  his  analy- 
sis of  the  mechanism  by  which  the  circulation  is 
brought  about  is  far  in  advance  of  anything 
which  had  previously  been  published.  For  the 
first  time,  it  is  shown  that  the  walls  of  the  heart 
are  active  only  during  its  systole  or  contraction, 
and  that  the  dilatation  of  the  heart,  in  the  dias- 
tole, is  purely  passive.  Whence  it  follows,  that 
the  impulse  by  which  the  blood  is  propelled  is  a 
vis  a  lergo,  and  that  the  blood  is  not  drawn  into 
the  heart  by  any  such  inhalent  or  suctorial  action 
as  not  only  the  predecessors  but  many  of  the 
successors  of  Harvey  imagined  it  to  possess. 

Harvey  is  no  less  original  in  his  view  of  the 
cause  of  the  arterial  pulse.  In  contravention  of 
Galen  and  of  all  other  anatomists  up  to  his  own 
time,  he  affirms  that  the  stretching  of  the  arteries 
which  gives  rise  to  the  pulse  is  not  due  to  the 
active  dilatation  of  their  walls,  but  to  their  pas- 
sive distention  by  the  blood  which  is  forced  into 
them  at  each  beat  of  the  heart ;  reversing  Galen's 
dictum,  he  says  that  they  dilate  as  bags  and  not 
as  bellows.  This  point  of  fundamental,  practical 
as  well  as  theoretical,  importance  is  most  admi- 
rably demonstrated,  not  only  by  experiment,  but 
by  pathological  illustrations. 

One  of  the  weightiest  arguments  in  Harvey's 
demonstration  of  the  circulation  is  based  upon 
the  comparison  of  the  quantity  of  blood  driven 
out  of  the  heart,  at  each  beat,  with  the  total 
quantity  of  blood  in  the  body.  This,  so  far  as  I 
know,  is  the  first  time  that  quantitative  consid- 
erations are  taken  into  account  in  the  discussion 
of  a  physiological  problem.  But  one  of  the  most 
striking  differences  between  ancient  and  modern 
physiological  science,  and  one  of  the  chief  reasons 
of  the  rapid  progress  of  physiology  in  the  last 
half  -  century,  lies  in  the  introduction   of  exact 


quantitative  determinations  into  physiological  ex- 
perimentation and  observation.  The  moderns 
use  means  of  accurate  measurement,  which  their 
forefathers  neither  possessed  nor  could  conceive, 
inasmuch  as  they  are  products  of  mechanical 
skill  of  the  last  hundred  years,  and  of  the  advance 
of  branches  of  science  which  hardly  existed,  even 
in  germ,  in  the  seventeenth  century. 

Having  attained  to  a  knowledge  of  the  circu- 
lation of  the  blood,  and  of  the  conditions  on  which 
its  motion  depends,  Harvey  had  a  ready  deductive 
solution  for  problems  which  had  puzzled  the  older 
physiologists.  Thus  the  true  significance  of  the 
valves  in  the  veins  became  at  once  apparent.  Of 
no  importance  while  the  blood  is  flowing  in  its 
normal  course  toward  the  heart,  they  at  once  op- 
pose any  accidental  reversal  of  its  current,  which 
may  arise  from  the  pressure  of  adjacent  muscles, 
or  the  like.  And,  in  like  manner,  the  swelling 
of  the  veins  on  the  farther  side  of  the  ligature, 
which  so  much  troubled  Cassalpinus,  became  at 
once  intelligible,  as  the  natural  result  of  the  dam- 
ming up  of  the  returning  current. 

In  addition  to  the  great  positive  results  which 
are  contained  in  the  treatise  which  Harvey  mod- 
estly calls  an  "  Exercise  " — and  which  is,  in  truth, 
not  so  long  as  many  a  pamphlet  about  some 
wholly  insignificant  affair — its  pages  are  charac- 
terized by  such  precision  and  simplicity  of  state- 
ment, such  force  of  reasoning,  and  such  a  clear 
comprehension  of  the  methods  of  inquiry  and  of 
the  logic  of  physical  science,  that  it  holds  a  unique 
rank  among  physiological  monographs.  Under 
this  aspect,  I  think  I  may  fairly  say  that  it  has 
rarely  been  equaled  and  never  surpassed. 

Such  being  the  state  of  knowledge  among  his 
contemporaries,  and  such  the  immense  progress 
effected  by  Harvey,  it  is  not  wonderful  that  the 
publication  of  the  "Exercitatio  "  produced  a  pro- 
found sensation.  And  the  best  indirect  evidence 
of  the  originality  of  its  author,  and  of  the  revolu- 
tionary character  of  his  views,  is  to  be  found  in 
the  multiplicity  and  the  virulence  of  the  attacks 
to  which  they  were  at  once  subjected. 

Eiolan,  of  Faris,  had  the  greatest  reputation 
of  any  anatomist  of  those  days,  and  he  followed 
the  course  which  is  usually  adopted  by  the  men 
of  temporary  notoriety  toward  those  of  enduring 
fame.  According  to  Riolan,  Harvey's  theory  of 
the  circulation  was  not  true ;  and,  besides  that,  it 
was  not  new;  and,  furthermore,  he  invented  a 
mongrel  doctrine  of  his  own,  composed  of  the  old 
views  with  as  much  of  Harvey's  as  it  was  safe 
to  borrow,  and  tried  therewith  to  fish  credit  for 


su 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


himself  out  of  the  business.  In  fact,  in  wading 
through  these  forgotten  controversies,  I  felt  my- 
self quite  at  home.  Substitute  the  name  of  Dar- 
win for  that  of  Harvey,  and  the  truth  that  history 
repeats  itself  will  come  home  to  the  dullest  appre- 
hension. It  was  said  of  the  doctrine  of  the  cir- 
culation of  the  blood  that  nobody  over  forty  could 
be  got  to  adopt  it ;  and  I  think  I  remember  a 
passage  in  the  "Origin  of  Species,"  to  the  effect 
that  its  author  expects  to  convert  only  young  and 
flexible  minds. 

There  is  another  curious  point  of  resemblance 
in  the  fact  that  even  those  who  gave  Harvey 
their  general  approbation  and  support  sometimes 
failed  to  apprehend  the  value  of  some  of  those 
parts  of  his  doctrine  which  are,  indeed,  merely 
auxiliary  to  the  theory  of  the  circulation,  but  are 
only  a  little  less  important  than  it.  Harvey's  great 
friend  and"  champion,  Sir  George  Ent,  is  in  this 
case ;  and  I  am  sorry  to  be  obliged  to  admit  that 
Descartes  falls  under  the  same  reprehension. 

This  great  philosopher,  mathematician,  and 
physiologist,  whose  conception  of  the  phenomena 
of  life  as  the  results  of  mechanism  is  now  playing 
as  great  a  part  in  physiological  science  as  Har- 
vey's own  discovery,  never  fails  to  speak  with 
admiration,  as  Harvey  gratefully  acknowledges, 
of  the  new  theory  of  the  circulation.  And  it  is 
astonishing,  I  had  almost  said  humiliating,  to  find 
that  even  he  is  unable  to  grasp  Harvey's  pro- 
foundly true  view  of  the  nature  of  the  systole  and 
the  diastole,  or  to  see  the  force  of  the  quantita- 
tive argument.  He  adduces  experimental  evidence 
against  the  former  position,  and  is  even  further 
from  the  truth  than  Galen  was,  in  his  ideas  of 
the  physical  cause  of  the  circulation. 

Yet  one  more  and  a  last  parallel.  In  spite 
of  all  opposition,  the  doctrine  of  the  circulation 
propounded  by  Harvey  was,  in  its  essential  feat- 
ures, universally  adopted  within  thirty  years  of 
the  time  of  its  publication.  Harvey's  friend, 
Thomas  Hobbes,  remarked  that  he  was  the  only 
man,  in  his  experience,  who  had  the  good  fortune 
to  live  long  enough  to  see  a  new  doctrine  accept- 
ed by  the  world  at  large.  Mr.  Darwin  has  been 
even  more  fortunate,  for  not  twenty  years  have 
yet  elapsed  since  the  publication  of  the  "  Origin 
of  Species  ; "  and  yet  there  is  no  denying  the  fact 
that  the  doctrine  of  evolution,  ignored,  or  de- 
rided, and  vilified,  in  1859,  is  now  accepted,  in  one 
shape  or  other,  by  the  leaders  of  scientific  thought 
in  every  region  of  the  civilized  world. 

I  proposed  at  the  outset  of  this  essay  to  say 
something  about  the  method   of  inquiry  which 


Harvey  pursued,  and  which  guided  him  through- 
out his  successful  career  of  discovery. 

It  is,  I  believe,  a  cherished  belief  of  English- 
men, that  Francis  Bacon,  Viscount  St.  Albans, 
and  sometime  Lord  Chancellor  of  England,  in- 
vented that  "Inductive  Philosophy"  of  which 
they  speak  with  almost  as  much  respect  as  they 
do  of  church  and  state ;  and  that,  if  it  had  not 
been  for  this  "  Baconian  Induction,"  science 
would  never  have  extricated  itself  from  the  miser- 
able condition  in  which  it  was  left  by  a  set  of 
hair-splitting  folk,  known  as  the  ancient  Greek 
philosophers.  To  be  accused  of  departing  from 
the  canons  of  the  Baconian  philosophy  is  almost 
as  bad  as  to  be  charged  with  forgetting  your  as- 
pirates ;  it  is  understood  as  a  polite  way  of  saying 
that  you  are  an  entirely  absurd  speculator. 

Now  the  "  Novum  Organon  "  was  published  in 
1620,  while  Harvey  began  to  teach  the  doctrine 
of  the  circulation  in  his  public  lectures  in  1619. 
Acquaintance  with  the  "Baconian  Induction," 
therefore,  could  not  have  had  much  to  do  with 
Harvey's  investigations.  The  "  Exercitatio,"  how- 
ever, was  not  published  till  1628.  Do  we  find  in 
it  any  trace  of  the  influence  of  the  "  Novum  Orga- 
non ?  "  Absolutely  none.  So  far  from  indulging  in 
the  short-sighted  and  profoundly  unscientific  de- 
preciation of  the  ancients  in  which  Bacon  indulges, 
Harvey  invariably  spealss  of  them  with  that  re- 
spect which  the  faithful  and  intelligent  study  of 
the  fragments  of  their  labors  that  remain  to  us 
must  inspire  in  every  one  who  is  practically  ac- 
quainted with  the  difficulties  with  which  they  had 
to  contend,  and  which  they  so  often  mastered. 
And,  as  to  method,  Harvey's  method  is  the  method 
of  Galen,  the  method  of  Realdus  Columbus,  the 
method  of  Galileo,  the  method  of  every  genuine 
worker  in  science  either  in  the  past  or  the  present. 
On  the  other  hand,  judged  strictly  by  the  standard 
of  his  own  time,  Bacon's  ignorance  of  the  progress 
which  science  had  up  to  that  time  made,  is  only  to 
be  equaled  by  his  insolence  toward  men  in  com- 
parison with  whom  he  was  the  merest  sciolist. 
Even  when  he  has  some  hearsay  knowledge  of  what 
has  been  done,  his  want  of  acquaintance  with  the 
facts  and  his  abnormal  deficiency  in  what  I  may 
call  the  scientific  sense  prevent  him  from  divin- 
ing its  importance.  Bacon  could  see  nothing  re- 
markable in  the  chief  contributions  to  science  of 
Copernicus,  or  of  Kepler,  or  of  Galileo  ;  Gilbert, 
his  fellow-countryman,  is  the  subject  of  a  sneer; 
while  Galen  is  bespattered  with  a  shower  of  im- 
pertinences, which  reach  their  climax  in  the  epi- 
thets  "  puppy  "  and  "  plague."  ' 

1  "Video  Galenum,  virum  angustissimi  animi,  de- 


WILLIAM  HARVEY. 


395 


I  venture  to  think  that  if  Francis  Bacon,  in- 
stead of  spending  his  time  in  fabricating  fine 
phrases  about  the  advancement  of  learning,  in 
order  to  play,  with  due  pomp,  the  part  which  he 
assigned  to  himself  of  "trumpeter"  of  science, 
had  put  himself  under  Harvey's  instruction,  and 
had  applied  his  quick  wit  to  discover  and  method- 
ize the  logical  process  which  underlaid  the  work 
of  that  consummate  investigator,  he  would  have 
employed  his  time  to  better  purpose ;  aud,  at  any 
rate,  would  not  have  deserved  the  just  but  sharp 
judgment  which  follows:  "that  his  (Bacon's) 
method  is  impracticable,  cannot,  I  think,  be  de- 
nied, if  we  reflect,  not  only  that  it  never  has  pro- 
duced any  result,  but  also  that  the  process  by 
which  scientific  truths  have  been  established  can- 
not be  so  presented  as  even  to  appear  to  be  in 
accordance  with  it."  I  quote  from  one  of  Mr. 
Ellis's  contributions  to  the  great  work  of  Bacon's 
most  learned,  competent,  and  impartial  biogra- 
pher, Mr.  Spedding.1 

Few  of  Harvey's  sayings  are  recorded,  but  Au- 
brey2 tells  us  that  some  one  having  enlarged 
upon  the  merits  of  the  Baconian  philosophy  in  his 
presence,  "  Yes,"  said  Harvey,  "  he  writes  philos- 
ophy like  a  chancellor."  On  which  pithy  reply 
diverse  persons  will  put  diverse  interpretations. 
The  illumination  of  experience  may  possibly 
tempt  a  modern  follower  of  Harvey  to  expound 
the  dark  saying  thus :  "  So  this  servile  courtier, 
this  intriguing  politician,  this  unscrupulous  law- 
yer, this  witty  master  of  phrases,  proposes  to 
teach  me  my  business  in  the  intervals  of  his.  I 
have  borne  with  Riolan,  let  me  also  be  patient 
with  him  ; "  at  any  rate,  I  have  no  better  reading 
to  offer. 

In  the  latter  half  of  the  sixteenth  and  the  be- 
ginning of  the  seventeenth  centuries,  the  future 
of  physical  science  was  safe  enough  in  the  hands 

sertorem  experiential  et  vanissimum  causatorem.  .  .  . 
O  canicula  !   O  pestis  !— Temporis  Partus  Masculus  ! " 
"  Canicula "    has   even  a   coarser   meaning   than 
"puppy." 

1  General  Preface  to  the  Philosophical  Works,  vol. 
i.,p.38. 

2  Aubrey  says :  "  He  had  been  physitian  to  the  Lord 
Ch.  Bacon,  whom  he  esteemed  much  for  his  witt 
and  style,  but  would  not  allow  to  be  a  great  philos- 
opher. Said  he  to  me,  '  He  writes  philosophy  like  a 
IA  Chancellor,'  speaking  in  derision.  ...  He  was 
very  communicative,  and  willing  to  instruct  any  that 
were  modest  and  respectful  to  him.  And  in  order  to 
my  journey  dictated  to  me  what  to  see,  what  company 
to  keep,  what  bookes  to  read,  how  to  manage  my 
studyes;  in  short,  he  bid  me  go  to  the  fountaine  head, 
and  read  Aristotle,  Cicero,  Avicenna,  and  did  call  the 
Neoteriques  "—  something  almost  as  bad  as  "  cani- 
cula : "  the  little  swarthy,  black-eyed,  choleric  man. 


of  Gilbert,  Galileo,  Harvey,  Descartes,  and  the 
noble  army  of  investigators  who  flocked  to  their 
standard,  and  followed  up  the  advance  of  their 
leaders.  I  do  not  believe  that  their  wonderfully 
rapid  progress  would  have  been  one  whit  retarded 
if  the  "  Novum  Organon  "  had  never  seen  the  light ; 
while  if  Harvey's  little  "  Exercise  "  had  been  lost, 
physiology  would  have  stood  still  until  another 
Harvey  was  born  into  the  world. 

There  is  another  point  in  reference  to  method 
on  which  I  desire  to  contribute  my  mite  toward 
the  dissipation  of  a  wide-spread  popular  delusion. 
On  the  faith  of  a  conversation  reported  by  Robert 
Boyle,  Harvey  is  said  to  have  declared  that  he 
discovered  the  circulation  of  the  blood  by  rea- 
soning deductively  from  the  disposition  of  the 
valves  of  the  veins.  On  this  I  may  remark, 
firstly,  that  the  words  imputed  to  Harvey  by  no 
means  warrant  this  conclusion  ;  secondly,  that  if 
they  did,  the  statement  could  not  be  true,  be- 
cause we  have  Harvey's  own  evidence  to  the 
contrary  ;  and,  thirdly,  that  if  the  conclusion  were 
warranted  by  the  words  reported,  and  were  not 
contradicted  by  Harvey  himself,  it  would  still  be 
worthless,  because  it  is  impossible  to  prove  the 
circulation  of  the  blood  from  any  such  data. 
What  Robert  Boyle  says  is  this :  "  And  I  remem- 
ber, that  when  I  asked  our  famous  Harvey,  in  the 
only  discourse  I  had  with  him  (which  was  but  a 
while  before  he  died),  what  were  the  things  that 
induced  him  to  think  of  a  circulation  of  the 
blood  ?  he  answered  me  that  when  he  took  notice 
that  the  valves  in  the  veins  of  so  many  parts  of 
the  body  were  so  placed  that  they  gave  free 
passage  to  the  blood  toward  the  heart,  but  op- 
posed the  passage  of  the  venal  blood  the  con- 
trary way :  he  was  invited  to  imagine  that  so 
provident  a  cause  as  Nature  had  not  so  placed 
so  many  valves  without  design;  and  no  design 
seemed  more  probable,  than  that  since  the  blood 
could  not  well,  because  of  the  interposing  valves, 
be  sent  by  the  veins  to  the  limbs,  it  should  be 
sent  through  the  arteries  and  return  through  the 
veins,  whose  valves  did  not  oppose  its  course 
that  way."  ' 

I  have  no  doubt  that  it  may  be  quite  true  that 
Harvey  was  "  induced  "  to  "  think  of  a  circulation 
of  the  blood "  by  considering  the  disposition  of 
the  valves  of  the  veins  ;  just  as  Caesalpinus  might 
have  been  led  to  the  same  thought ;  and  then 
might  have  found  out  the  true  state  of  the  case 
if  he  had  taken  the  hints  which  Nature  gave  him 
and  had  used  the  proper  means  of  investigation 

1  "  A  Disquisition  about  the  Final  Causes  of  Natu- 
ral Things."— Boyle's  Works,  vol.  v.,  p.  437. 


396 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


in  order  to  discover  whether  thosehints  were  val- 
uable or  worthless.  Harvey  must  have  learned  the 
views  of  his  master  Fabricius ;  and  it  is  likely 
enough  that  to  his  acute  mind  Fabricius's  explana- 
tion of  the  functions  of  the  valves  seemed  rather 
lame.  But,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  Harvey  did  not 
reason  out  the  circulation  from  the  datum  of  the 
valves.  On  this  point  his  own  words,  in  the  pas- 
sage which  contains  the  fullest  account  of  the 
considerations  which  led  him  to  the  doctrine  of 
the  circulation,  leave  no  doubt  whatever : 

"Thus  far  I  have  spoken  of  the  passage  of  the 
blood  from  the  veins  into  the  arteries,1  and  of 
the  manner  in  which  it  is  transmitted  and  distrib- 
uted by  the  action  of  the  heart;  and  thus  far 
some,  perhaps,  moved  by  the  authority  of  Galen 
or  of  Columbus,  or  by  the  reasonings  of  other  au- 
thors, will  agree  with  me.  But  when  I  proceed 
to  what  remains  to  be  said  concerning  the  quanti- 
ty and  the  origin  of  the  blood  thus  transmitted 
(though  it  is  highly  worthy  of  consideration)  it 
will  seem  so  new  and  unheard  of,  that  I  not  only 
fear  injury  to  myself  from  the  envy  of  a  few,  but  I 
dread  lest  I  make  all  mankind  my  enemies.  So 
much  does  custom,  or  teaching  once  accepted  and 
fixed  by  deep  roots,  weigh  with  all ;  and  such  is 
the  influence  of  the  venerable  opinion  of  antiquity. 
However  this  may  be,  now  that  the  die  is  cast, 
my  hope  lies  in  the  candor  of  lovers  of  truth  and 
of  learned  minds.  Indeed,  when  I  thought  often 
and  seriously  upon  how  large  the  quantity  [of 
transmitted  blood]  is ;  upon  my  dissections  of 
living  animals  (for  the  purposes  of  experiment) 
and  the  opening  of  arteries  and  the  many  consid- 
erations arising  therefrom  ;  as  well  as  upon  the 
magnitude  and  the  symmetry  of  the  ventricles 
of  the  heart  and  of  the  vessels  which  enter  and 
leave  them  (since  Nature  makes  nothing  in  vain,  so 
great  a  size  proportionally  would  not  be  given  to 
these  vessels  without  an  ohject) ;  and  upon  the 
elaborate  mechanism  of  the  valves  and  fibres,  and 
of  the  rest  of  the  structure  of  the  heart ;  as  well  as 
of  many  other  things ;  and  when  I  long  turned  over 
in  my  mind,  what  might  be  the  quantity  of  the 
transmitted  blood,  in  how  short  a  time  its  trans- 
mission might  be  effected  ;  whether  that  quantity 
could  be  supplied  by  the  juices  of  the  food  in- 
gested :  I  came  at  length  to  the  conclusion  that 
the  veins  would  become  collapsed  and  empty, 
while  the  arteries,  on  the  other  hand,  would  he 
ruptured  by  the  excess  of  blood  poured  into  them  ; 

1  In  the  preceding  chapter  (vii.)  Harvey  has  been 
discussing  the  passage  of  the  blood  through  the  lungs, 
supporting  his  views,  among  other  arguments,  by  the 
authority  of  Galen  and  of  Columbus  ;  and  it  must  be  re- 
membered that,  he  termed  the  pulmonary  artery  vena 
arteriosa  and  the  pulmonary  vein  arteria  venosa. 
Wherefore  he  properly  speaks  of  the  passage  of  the 
blood  "  from  the  veins  into  the  arteries." 


unless  there  were  some  road  by  which  the  blood 
could  at  length  run  back  from  the  arteries  into 
the  veins,  and  return  to  the  right  ventricle  of  the 
heart.  So  I  began  to  think  whether  there  was  a 
kind  of  motion  as  it  were  in  a  circle ;  this  I  after- 
ward found  to  be  true."  l 

In  all  this  very  full  and  interesting  account 
of  the  course  of  Harvey's  inquiry,  it  will  be  ob- 
served that  not  one  word  is  said  about  the  valves 
of  the  veins.  The  valves  of  which  he  speaks  are 
those  of  the  heart,  which  had  been  known,  as  I 
have  pointed  out,  ever  since  the  days  of  Erasis- 
tratus. 

Finally,  I  venture  to  affirm  that  Harvey  did 
not  deduce  the  circulation  from  the  disposition 
of  the  valves  of  the  veins,  because  it  is  logically 
impossible  that  any  such  conclusion  should  be 
deduced  from  such  premises.  The  only  conclu- 
sion which  is  warranted  by  the  presence  of  valves 
in  the  veins  is,  that  such  valves  will  tend  to 
place  a  certain  amount  of  obstacle  in  the  way  of 
a  liquid  flowing  in  a  direction  opposite  to  that 
in  which  the  valves  are  inclined.  The  amount 
of  obstacle,  from  mere  impediment  to  absolute 
barring  of  the  way,  will  depend  upon  the  form 
and  disposition  of  the  valves ;  upon  their  inertia, 
or  stiffness  of  motion,  in  relation  to  the  force  of 
the  current  of  liquid ;  and,  above  all,  upon  the 
firmness  or  yieldingness  of  the  walls  of  the  tube 
to  which  they  are  attached.  The  valve  which 
hermetically  closes  the  passage  through  an  iron 
pipe  may  be  of  no  use  in  an  India-rubber  tube. 
Therefore,  unless  the  action  of  such  valves  as 
exist  in  the  veins  were  carefully  tested  by  experi- 
ment on  the  living  animal,  any  conclusions  that 
might  be  based  upon  their  presence  would  be  of 
doubtful  value,  and  might  be  interpreted  either 
in  the  sense  of  Fabricius,  or  in  that  of  Harvey. 

Moreover,  supposing  that  it  could  be  proved 
that  in  those  veins  in  which  valves  exist  the 
blood  can  move  only  in  one  way,  what  is  to  be 
said  about  the  numerous  veins  which  have  no 
valves  ?  And,  unless  we  already  know  upon  ex- 
perimental grounds  that  the  walls  of  the  cavities 
of  the  heart  contract  in  a  certain  definite  order; 
that  the  arteries  are  full  of  blood  and  not  of  air ; 
and  a  number  of  other  important  facts  which  can 
only  be  experimentally  determined — what  good  is 
it  to  know  that  there  are  valves  in  the  veins  ? 
There  are  valves  in  the  lymphatics  as  well  as  in 
the  veins,  and  yet  any  one  who  concluded  there- 
from that  the  lymph  circulates  after  the  manner 
of  the  blood  would  make  a  woful  mistake. 

1  "Guliclmi  Flarveji    Exercitationes  Anatomies." 
Exercitatio  I.,  cap.  viii.,  edition  1(J60. 


WILLIAM  HARVEY 


397 


The  fact  is,  that  neither  in  this  nor  in  any 
physiological  problem  can  mere  deductive  rea- 
soning from  dead  structure  tell  us  what  part  that 
structure  plays,  when  it  is  a  living  component  of 
a  living  body.  Physiology  attempts  to  discover 
the  laws  of  vital  activity,  and  these  laws  are  ob- 
viously ascertainable  only  by  observation  and 
experiment  upon  living  things. 

In  the  case  of  the  circulation  of  the  blood,  as 
in  that  of  all  other  great  physiological  doctrines, 
take  away  the  truths  which  have  been  learned  by 
observation  and  experiment  on  living  structures, 
and  the  whole  fabric  crumbles  away.  Galen, 
Columbus,  Harvey,  were  all  great  vivisectors. 
And  the  final  ocular  demonstration  of  the  circu- 
lation of  the  blood  by  Malpighi,  seven  years  after 
Harvey's  death — the  keystone  of  the  fabric  he 
raised — involved  an  experiment  on  a  living  frog. 

This  experiment  can  be  performed  on  a  de- 
monstrably insensible  animal.  Nevertheless,  any 
English  subject  who  repeats  it,  in  these  days, 
may  be  subjected  to  fine  or  imprisonment,  as  a 
common  malefactor,  whenever  the  chances  of 
political  strife  give  the  home  office  to  some  min- 
ister of  less  knowledge,  less  justice,  and,  above 
all,  less  firmness  in  resisting  open  and  underhand 
pressure,  than  the  present  Secretary  of  State  for  ' 
the  Home  Department. 

I  do  not  think  the  present  is  a  fitting  occasion  i 
for  the  discussion  of  the  burning  question  of  vivi-  i 
section.  My  opinions  on  the  subject  have  been 
formed  and  expressed  under  a  due  sense  of  re- 
sponsibility, and  they  have  not  been,  and  are  not 
likely  to  be,  affected  by  the  preposterous  misrep- 
resentations and  unseemly  abuse  which  they  have 
evoked.  The  good  Harvey,  in  one  of  his  fits  of 
choler,  I  suppose,  said  that  "  man  was  but  a 
great  mischievous  baboon,"  1  and  yet  for  twenty 
years  he  kept  silence,  and  at  the  end  answered 
Riolan  with  quite  angelic  mildness.  I  can  imi- 
tate his  silence,  if  not  his  mildness;  and  there- 
fore I  have  nothing  further  to  offer  on  this  subject. 
It  may  be?  that  those  are  right  who  say,  "  Perish 
the  human  race,  rather  than  let  a  dog  suffer."  It 
may  be  that  those  are  right  who  think  that  a 
man  is  worth  a  wilderness  of  apes,  and  that  he 
who  will  not  save  human  life  when  he  could  do 
so,  by  sacrificing  a  hecatomb  of  animals,  is  an 
accomplice  in  murder. 

But,  without  touching  upon  this  debatable 
ground,  I  may  be  of  some  use  in  cleansing  the 
ground  of  mere  rubbish.  I  submit  two  points 
for  your  consideration.     The  one  of  these  is  the 

1  Aubrey. 


unquestionable  fact  that  physiology  is  based 
upon  experiment,  and  can  only  grow  by  experi- 
ment ;  and  that  the  discovery  of  the  true  motion 
of  the  blood,  which  is  one  of  the  cardinal  doc- 
trines of  that  science,  and  a  doctrine  the  truth 
of  which  is  implied  in  the  diagnosis  and  the 
treatment  of  nine  diseases  out  of  ten,  has  been 
made  in  no  other  way  than  by  reasoning  on  the 
data  supplied  by  repeated  and  multiplied  vivisec- 
tions. 

The  other  is  a  mere  suggestion,  which,  per- 
haps, may  be  dictated  by  a  want  of  power  on  the 
part  of  a  man  who  is  growing  old,  to  adjust  him- 
self to  a  changing  world.  The  great  mark  of 
senility,  I  believe,  is  to  be  a  "  laudator  temporis 
acti."  But,  as  Harvey  says,  "the  die  is  cast, 
and  I  put  my  faith  in  the  candor  of  the  lovers 
of  truth  and  of  learned  minds." 

I  have  had  occasion  to  remark  that  the  sci- 
ence of  former  days  was  not  so  despicable  as 
some  think ;  and  that,  however  foolish  undue 
respect  for  the  wisdom  of  the  ancients  may  be, 
undue  disrespect  for  it  may  be  still  more  repre- 
hensible. Now  I  fancy  that  a  candid  mind  will 
admit  it  to  be  within  the  limits  of  possibility, 
that  the  like  may  apply  to  the  public  opinion 
and  the  moral  sense  of  former  ages. 

Harvey  was  the  favored  friend  of  his  sov- 
ereign, the  honored  Nestor  of  his  profession, 
the  pride  of  his  countrymen.  If  he  lived  now, 
and  were  guilty  of  serving  mankind  to  the  same 
extent  and  in  the  same  way,  so  far  from  any 
such  marks  of  favor  reaching  him,  he  would 
find  himself  to  be  a  mark  of  a  different  kind — a 
mark,  I  mean,  for  immeasurable  calumny  and 
scandalous  vituperation ;  and,  though  his  pro- 
fessional brethren  would  surely  pay  him  all 
honor,  so  far  from  being  the  pride  of  his  coun- 
trymen, a  goodly  number  of  them,  of  all  grades 
in  the  social  scale,  would  be  spending  a  world  of 
energy  in  the  endeavor  to  give  him  the  legal 
status  of  a  burglar. 

I  venture  to  ask  you  to  consider  seriously 
whether,  under  these  circumstances,  it  is  quite 
so  certain,  as  some  seem  to  believe,  that  the  pub- 
lic opinion  of  the  England  of  Harvey's  day — that 
time  when  Englishmen  could  hurl  back  a  world 
arrayed  in  arms  against  them,  because  they  feared 
neither  to  suffer,  nor  to  inflict,  pain  and  death  in 
a  good  cause ;  that  age  within  which  Shakespeare 
and  Milton,  Hobbes  and  Locke,  Harvey  and  New- 
ton, Drake  and  Raleigh,  Cromwell  and  Strafford, 
embodied  the  powers  of  our  race  for  good  and 
evil  in  a  fashion  which  has  had  no  parallel  before 
or  since — was  absolutely  contemptible  when  set 


398 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


against   that    of  this   present   enlightened    and 
softly-nurtured,  not  to  say  sentimental,  age. 

Maybe  it  is;  possibly  the  world  is  entering 
upon  a  phase  in  which  the  recognized  whole  duty 
of  man  will  be  to  avoid  the  endurance,  or  the  in- 
fliction, of  physical  pain,  whatever  future  allevia- 
tion of  misery  may  be  its  consequence,  however 
great  the  positive  benefit  to  mankind  which  may 
flow  thereupon.  If  so,  "Finis  Physiologiao." 
When  that  time  arrives,  there  will  be  an  end  to 
all  progress  in  our  knowledge  of  the  laws  of  life, 
to  all  advance  toward  rational  medicine.  And,  if 
I  do  not  greatly  err,  these  are  not  the  only  things 
which  the  logical  outcome  of  such  premises  will 
have  abolished.  Crime  must  go  unpunished — for 
what  justification  is  therefor  "torturing"  a  poor 
thief  or  murderer  except  the  general  good  of 
society  ?  The  "  voice  of  the  sluggard  "  will  not 
"  be  heard  to  complain,"  for  no  one  will  dare  to 
"  torture  "  him  by  disturbing  his  slumbers.  There 
will  be  no  means  of  transport,  and  nothing  to 
ride,  except  steam-engines  and  bicycles,  for  the 
"torture"  involved  in  the  training  and  in  the 
labor  of  beasts  of  draught  and  burden  will  be 
insufferable.  No  man  will  think  of  eating 
meat,  though  it  may  be  proper  for  him  to  serve 


as  meat  to  other  creatures ;  for  what  right  can 
men  have  to  "  torture  "  fleas  by  the  administra- 
tion of  insecticide  powder,  merely  for  the  benefit 
of  mankind  ?  Sport,  I  need  not  say,  will  have 
been  abolished,  and  war  will  have  followed  it ; 
not  so  much  because  war  is  fraught  with  evil  for 
men,  but  because  of  the  awful  "torture  "  which 
it  inflicts  directly  upon  horses  and  mules,  to  say 
nothing  of  the  indirect  dyspeptic  sufferings  of 
the  vultures  and  wolves,  which  are  tempted  by 
our  wickedness  to  overeat  themselves. 

As  I  have  confessed,  I  find  myself  to  be 
regrettably  out  of  harmony  with  many  worthy 
and  enthusiastic  people  among  my  contempora- 
ries ;  and  perhaps  the  prospect  of  the  coming  of 
the  new  era,  in  which  these  things  shall  be,  does 
not  affect  others  as  it  does  me.  To  say  truth,  I 
am  rather  glad  to  think  that  the  species  can 
hardly  be  perfected  thus  far,  in  my  time.  I  must 
distinctly  admit  that  I  should  be  loath  to  be 
obliged  to  exist  in  a  world  in  which  my  notions 
of  what  men  should  be  and  do  will  have  no  ap- 
plication. As  the  old  Norseman  said,  when  the 
choice  between  heaven  with  the  new  generation, 
and  hell  with  the  old,  was  offered  him,  "  I  prefer 
to  be  with  my  ancestors." — Fortnightly  Review. 


LEARXINCr  axd  health. 


By  BENJAMIN  TV.  EICHAKDSON. 


IN  this  day  the  cultivation  of  the  mental  facul- 
ties is  made  to  hold  the  first  place  in  educa- 
tion. There  be  some  who  still  maintain  the  su- 
periority of  physical  over  mental  culture,  and 
there  be  many  who  insist  on  the  necessity  of 
a  high  degree  of  physical  culture  of  a  certain 
extreme  and  artificial  kind.  But,  as  a  rule,  the 
favor  once  too  exclusively  tendered  to  a  purely 
physical  training  is  on  the  decline.  The  admira- 
tion which  once  was  bestowed  on  men  of  great 
strength  has  almost  ceased  in  civilized  circles. 
Physical  strength  may,  if  it  show  itself  in  some 
singular  and  abnormal  manner,  create  for  a  time 
an  excitement  and  noise,  but  the  excitement  ends 
in  the  silence  that  follows  clamor.  Men  who  per- 
form great  feats  of  strength  are  no  longer  heroes 
to  be  courted  and  immortalized.  Hercules  him- 
self would  be  a  nine  days'  wonder  in  these  days. 

1  Lecture  delivered  at  the  London  Institution,  on 
Monday,  January  14,  1S78. 


The  evidence  now  is  fairly  clear,  moreover,  that 
men  who  even  combine  heroism  with  physical 
power  are  not  the  demi-gods  they  were.  In  war, 
the  man,  in  these  days,  who  displays  the  deepest 
skill  and  cunning  in  the  management  of  troops 
is  the  great  general.  It  is  not  necessary  that  he 
should  lead  a  column  or  expose  himself  to  danger 
for  a  moment.  His  power  lies  in  his  knowledge, 
and  his  knowledge  in  his  power. 

To  attain  knowledge  is  one  of  the  most  desired 
objects,  and  so  much  of  admiration  of  man  for 
man  as  yet  remains  (it  is  not  really  very  much)  is 
expended  on  those  who  show  the  greatest  mental 
gifts  or  possessions.  The  admiration,  estimated 
at  its  true  value,  feeds  vanity  rather  than  venera- 
tion. Men  who  wish  to  be  honestly  admired  see 
no  mode  of  having  what  they  long  for  except  by 
the  acquisition  of  knowledge  and  the  toilsome 
display  of  it.  They  are  frequently  disappointed ; 
more  frequent!}',  I  fancy,  disappointed  than  satis- 


LEARXIXG  AXD  HEALTH. 


399 


fied,  when  they  even  attain  to  all  they  aspire  to 
as  scholars.  They  feel  themselves,  perhaps  justly 
know  themselves,  to  be  great  scholars ;  and  yet, 
how  little  are  they  recognized  above  the  common 
people  who  are  well-to-do  and  are  no  scholars  at 
all !  But  what  other  course  is  open  to  laudable 
ambition  ? 

There  is  in  this  way  induced,  therefore,  a  strain 
after  knowledge  as  a  means  of  getting  that  re- 
maining part,  that  skeleton  of  distinction,  which 
so  soon  will  he  put  up  as  a  curiosity  of  the  past. 

The  acquisition  of  much  knowledge  has,  how- 
ever, another  meaning  and  object  beyond  mere 
ambition.  In  this  so-called  practical  day  it  is 
imagined  that  knowledge  must  be  extended  with- 
out limitation  among  the  young,  in  order  that  it 
may  be  limited  without  extension  among  those 
who  have  passed  their  youth  and  have  become 
engaged  in  the  practical  affairs  of  life.  School- 
days and  student-days  must  be  given  up  to  the 
attainment  of  mastery  over  subjects  included  in 
the  whole  domain  of  the  human  understanding. 
The  days  of  active  life,  in  which  men  are  made  or 
marred,  must  be  devoted  to  the  perfect  mastery, 
or  supposed  perfect  mastery,  of  one  particular 
subject.  Branches  of  great  divisions,  and  in  time 
branches  of  divisions  of  great  divisions,  and  in 
time  again  branches  of  little  divisions  derived 
from  We  secondary  divisions,  must  be  made  the 
subjects  of  special  study  by  special  men. 

It  is  very  singular  to  observe  in  common  con- 
versation the  expression  of  these  two  lines  of 
mental  activity.  A  fond  parent,  speaking  in 
terms  of  admiration  of  his  son  at  school,  unfolds 
with  pride  the  school  report.  His  boy  has  been 
working  with  a  zeal  that  cannot  be  too  much  ap- 
plauded. In  that  monthly  report-sheet  the  lad 
has  the  highest  number  of  marks  in  Greek,  and 
the  same  in  Latin.  He  fails  only  one  mark  from 
the  highest  in  Latin  exercise,  he  is  equally  near 
to  the  top  in  French,  and  in  German  he  is  but 
one  lower  down.  In  what  is  called  English  he  is 
third,  in  Grecian  history  second,  in  Roman  history 
first,  in  English  fourth.  In  geography  he  is  first, 
in  chemistry  fifth,  in  natural  philosophy  second, 
in  mathematics  third,  in  algebra  third,  in  arith- 
metic first,  in  mental  arithmetic  second,  and  in 
writing  fifth.  Poor  boy  !  what  a  month  of  close 
work  has  been  spent  on  that  long  list !  Four 
hours  of  school  in  the  morning,  three  in  the 
afternoon.  Lessons  after  school,  assisted  by  an 
intelligent  and  active  tutor  devoted  to  the  prog- 
ress of  his  pupil,  and  very  determined,  though 
so  exceedingly  kind,  for  three  hours  and  some- 
times four  hours  more. 


The  father  is  delighted  with  the  progress  of 
the  son.  Suppose,  however,  you  take  the  father 
on  these  very  subjects,  and  see  his  position  in  re- 
spect to  them.  In  nine  cases  out  of  ten  you  find 
that  for  him  such  learnings  are  vanities.  He  tells 
you  he  has  no  time  for  the  gaining  of  any  infor- 
mation on  other  subjects  save  the  one  which  is 
the  matter  of  his  life.  You  may  hear  him  say  of 
men  placed  as  he  is,  that  they  must  keep  to  the 
single  calling.  Division  of  labor  is  the  soul  of 
success.  In  these  times,  to  master  one  subject 
is  to  do  all  that  is  required.  An  accomplished 
man  !  Where  is  there  such  a  man,  and  of  what 
use  is  he  if  he  do  exist,  which  is  improbable? 
An  accomplished  woman  !  Yes,  an  accomplished 
woman  is  now  and  then  met  with,  but  she,  too,  is 
rare,  and  not  of  much  use  either ;  but  women 
have  more  time,  and  may  be  excused  if  they  let 
their  minds  run  after  many  things  in  learning. 

This  picture  may  perhaps  be  thought  to  have 
a  mercantile  or  business  character  of  too  exclu- 
sive a  kind.  I  do  not  think  so.  In  science,  the 
same  kind  of  argument  is  not  wanting  in  respect 
to  the  young  and  to  middle-aged  men.  The  stu- 
dent of  science  must,  in  the  period  of  his  student- 
ship, go  through  the  whole  range  of  scientific 
learning.  He  must  struggle  for  his  degrees  and 
get  them.  Once  through  the  ordeal  necessary 
for  so  much  successful  winning,  he  must  settle 
down  into  minuteness ;  he  must  find  some  little 
point  in  the  great  world  he  has  tried  to  traverse, 
fix  on  that,  and  seek  to  live  on  it  in  competency 
and  reputation.  He  must  touch  no  one  else  in 
his  course,  and  let  no  one  touch  him.  His  magic 
circle,  his  ground  of  specialistic  thought,  is  to  be 
considered  sacred.  The  same  fashion,  for  I  can- 
not call  it  a  principle — nay,  I  cannot,  without 
abusing  the  word,  call  it  a  method — is  maintained 
in  the  professions ;  in  two  of  them,  the  medical 
and  the  legal,  in  the  most  marked  degree.  A 
modern  medical  student,  through  the  ordinary 
term  of  his  studies,  from  the  day  he  enters  school 
until  the  day  he  gets  his  diploma,  may  work  like 
a  galley-slave  at  the  whole  world  of  natural 
science,  and  then,  having  seized  his  envied  prize, 
may  settle  in  life  to  the  exclusive  study  and  prac- 
tice of  disease  of  some  section  of  the  animal 
body.  To  be  successful,  he  cannot  draw  the  line 
too  sharply  round  his  particular  pasture.  Into 
that  no  man  must  enter  unless  he  have  a  pasture 
somewhat  similar,  and  such  a  one  is  not  over- 
welcome.  In  deference  to  other  men  of  other  past- 
ures, our  man  of  men  must  not  go  out  of  his  own. 
If  he  knows  another  department  ever  so  well,  he 
must  not  profess  to  know  it — it  is  out  of  his  line. 


400 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


In  legal  pursuits  the  same  kind  of  exclusive- 
ness  obtains,  and  I  think  in  some  instances  in  a 
more  marked  degree  than  in  medicine. 

It  is  fortunate  for  the  Church  that,  with  all 
her  backslidings  and  troubles,  she  has  not  yet 
tumbled  down  to  so  low  a  position  as  her  sisters 
have.  It  is  of  happy  omen  for  the  clergy  that 
they  must  keep  up  their  learning  as  general  schol- 
ars. It  is  more  than  happy  that  in  their  case 
division  of  labor  is  not  recognized  as  profitable ; 
for  if  they  were  to  begin  to  specialize,  if  one 
clergyman  were  to  take  one  sin  for  special  study, 
and  keep  to  it  all  his  life,  and  another  a  different 
sin ;  if  one  took  up  the  cure  of  swearing,  for  in- 
stance, and  another  of  theft,  and  another  of  ly- 
ing, the  confusion  of  the  modern  learned  world 
would  be  complete  indeed. 

This  introduction  to  present  modes  of  learn- 
ing and  application  of  learning  would  well  befit 
an  essay  on  the  subject  of  learning,  as  a  practical 
development  of  civilization  not  altogether  in  ac- 
cord, as  it  is  now  carried  on,  with  the  welfare  of 
our  race.  I  trust  soon  some  scholar,  whose 
heart  is  on  education  as  mine  is  on  health,  will 
be  bold  enough  to  declare  the  unity  of  knowl- 
edge, the  connection  of  it  with  wisdom,  and  the 
utter  vacuity  that  must  soon  be  witnessed  if  the 
current  fashion  be  allowed  to  follow  its  fragmen- 
tary, self-repulsive,  and  self-destructive  course. 

To  me  it  falls  to  oppose  the  system  of  modern 
education  as  destructive  of  vital  activity,  and 
thereby  cf  strength  of  mental  growth.  It  is  my 
business  to  declare  that  at  this  time  health  and 
education  are  not  going  hand-in-hand  ;  that  the 
whole  head  is  sick,  and  the  whole  heart  is  faint. 

I  cannot  sit  day  by  day  to  see  failure  of 
young  brain,  and  of  brain  approaching  its  matu- 
rity, and  of  brain  that  is  matured,  and  tamely 
accept  the  phenomenon  as  necessary  and  there- 
fore to  be  endured.  To  see  the  errors  that  pre- 
vail and  not  to  speak  of  them  were  to  be  silent 
on  errors  which  would  lead  a  nation  into  trained 
feebleness,  which  shall  lead  to  new  generations 
springing  out  of  that  feebleness,  and  to  the  prop- 
agation of  a  community  that  should  no  more 
be  illuminated  by  those  greatnesses  of  the  past 
who,  in  less  learned  but  freer  times,  gave  forth 
the  noblest  of  noble  poetry,  the  most  wonderful 
of  wonderful  art,  and  a  science,  philosophy,  and 
literature,  that  have  been  hardly  mortal.  Such  a 
poetry  as  Shakespeare  has  poured  forth  ;  such  an 
art  as  Gainsborough,  and  Reynolds,  and  Turner, 
and  Herschel,  and  Siddons,  and  Kemble,  and 
Kean,  have  presented ;  such  a  science  as  Newton, 
and  Fricstley,  and  Davy,  and  Young,  and  Faraday, 


have  immortalized  ;  such  a  philosophy  as  Bacon 
and  Locke  have  contributed  ;  and  such  a  liter- 
ature as  Johnson,  and  Scott,  and  Dickens  have, 
in  the  freedom  of  their  intellectual  growths,  be- 
queathed forever.  To  me,  observing  as  a  phy- 
sician, the  appearance  and  development  of  these 
men,  under  the  circumstances  in  which  they  ap- 
peared, is  natural,  the  mere  course  of  nature  un- 
trammeled,  regular,  and  divinely  permitted ;  not 
forced  but  permitted,  Nature  being  left  to  her- 
self. To  me,  observing  as  a  physician,  the  ap- 
pearance of  such  men  in  similar  greatness  of 
form  is  at  this  time  an  all  but  impossible  phe- 
nomenon. The  men  truly  may  appear,  for  Na- 
ture is  always  reproducing  them,  and  the  divine 
permission  for  their  development  is  equally  good 
now  as  of  yore  ;  but  the  development  is  checked 
by  human  interference,  and  thereby  hangs  the 
reason  of  the  impossible.  Nature  produces  acorns 
for  future  oaks,  and  is  as  free  as  of  yore  that 
oaks  should  make  forests;  but  if  the  young  oaks 
be  forced  in  their  growth,  and  when  they  are 
approaching  to  maturity  be  barbarously  com- 
pressed, head  and  trunk,  into  narrow,  unyielding 
tubes,  there  will  be  no  forests,  nor  so  much  as 
spare  representatives  of  the  forest,  amid  the 
brushwood  of  commonplace  meadow  or  bare 
ploughed  field  of  mental  life. 

If  it  be  true  that  education  does  not  go  hand- 
in-hand  with  health,  it  is  vain  to  expect  that  edu- 
cation shall  bring  forth  the  first  fruits  of  knowl- 
edge, and,  what  is  more  important,  of  wisdom. 
My  argument  is,  that  the  present  modes  of  edu- 
cation for  the  younger  population,  and  for  the 
older,  are  not  compatible  with  healthy  life ;  and 
that  education,  therefore,  is  not  producing  the 
mental  product  that  is  required  for  the  steady 
and  powerful  progress  of  the  nation. 

There  are  many  faults  in  the  processes  of  edu- 
cation of  the  young  which  tell  upon  health  in  a 
direct  mode.  There  are  faults  in  the  construc- 
tion of  school-rooms  still :  there  are  faults  in  re- 
spect to  discipline  in  schools  :  there  are  faults  in 
respect  to  punishments  in  school-life.  I  do  not 
at  this  moment  dwell  on  these,  and  for  the 
simple  reason  that  they  are  departing  errors. 
No  one  who  has  watched  the  improvements 
which  have  been  made  in  schools  during  the  past 
twenty  years  can  fail  to  see  how  markedly  they 
have  advanced ;  what  care  is  taken  to  secure 
good  ventilation  ;  how  clean  and  warm  the  mod- 
ern school-room  has  become,  compared  with  the 
school-room  of  the  past  day. 

No  one,  again,  can  doubt  that  the  discipline 
of  the  modern  school  is  much  more  correct  than 


LEARNING  AND  HEALTH. 


401 


it  used  to  be,  and  that  the  manners  and  customs 
of  scholars  in  school,  aDd  out  of  school,  are  su- 
perior in  every  particular.  Scholars  are  cleanlier 
than  they  were,  less  brutal  than  they  were,  and 
less  subjected  to  those  painful  school  accidents 
which,  in  our  forefathers'  time,  were  wont  to 
leave  their  marks  for  life. 

Lastly,  it  must  be  obvious  to  all  that  the  law 
of  kindness  in  schools  is  fast  replacing  the  modes 
of  ruling  by  the  rod,  and  other  forms  of  punish- 
ment, which  once  stood  out  as  solemn  and  legal- 
ized barbarities — modes  which  hardened  many 
hearts  in  their  first  days,  and  broke  more  than 
they  hardened ;  modes  which  have  left  their  im- 
press even  yet  in  the  men  and  women  whom  they 
trained  into  transmissible  forms  of  character  and 
mind. 

I  may,  then,  leave  these  departing  shadows 
on  the  school-day  health,  that  I  may  touch  more 
definitely  on  the  shadows  that  are  now  deepening 
and  daily  falling. 

EDUCATION    IN   CHILDHOOD. 

The  first  serious  and  increasing  evil  bearing 
on  education,  and  its  relation  to  health,  lies  in 
too  early  subjection  of  pupils  to  study.  Children 
are  often  taught  lessons  from  books  before  they 
are  properly  taught  to  walk,  and  long  before  they 
are  taught  properly  to  play.  Play  is  held  out  to 
them,  not  as  a  natural  thing,  as  something  which 
the  parent  should  feel  it  a  duty  to  encourage,  but 
as  a  reward  for  so  much  work  done,  and  as  a  rest 
from  work  done ;  as  though,  forsooth,  play  were 
not  itself  a  form  of  work,  and  often  work  of  a 
most  fatiguing  nature.  Play,  therefore,  is  not 
used  as  it  ought  to  be  used — as  a  mode  of  work 
which  the  child  likes,  but  rather  as  a  set-off 
against  a  mode  of  work  which  the  child  does  not 
like,  and  which,  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten,  he  does 
not  like  because  it  is  altogether  unfitted  for  his 
powers ;  because  Nature  is  protesting,  as  loudly 
as  she  can  and  as  plainly  as  she  can,  that  the 
child  has  not  arrived  at  a  period  of  growth  when 
the  kind  of  mental  food  that  is  forced  on  it  is 
fitted  for  its  organization. 

For  children  under  seven  years  of  age  the 
whole  of  the  teaching  that  should  be  naturally 
conveyed  should  be  through  play,  if  the  body  is 
to  be  trained  up  healthily  as  the  bearer  of  the 
mind.  And  it  is  wonderful  what  an  amount  of 
learning  can  by  this  method  be  attained.  Let- 
ters of  languages  can  be  taught ;  conversation 
in  different  languages  can  be  carried  on ;  animal 
life  can  be  classified;  the  surface  of  the  earth 
can  be  made  clear ;  history  can  be  told  as  story  ; 
62 


and  a  number  of  other  and  most  useful  truths  can 
be  instilled  without  ever  forcing  the  child  to  touch 
a  book  or  read  a  formal  lesson. 

Under  such  a  system  the  child  grows  into 
knowledge,  makes  his  own  inventory  of  the  world 
that  surrounds  him  and  the  things  that  are  upon 
it,  and,  growing  up  free  to  learn,  learns  well,  and 
eats,  and  sleeps,  and  plays  well. 

In  a  child  trained  after  this  method,  not  only 
is  health  set  forth,  but  happiness  likewise  — 
a  most  important  item  in  this  period  of  life. 
Priestley,  who  was  as  good  an  observer  of  men 
as  he  was  of  inanimate  Nature,  was  accustomed 
to  say  of  himself,  with  much  gratitude,  that  he 
was  born  of  a  happy  disposition ;  that  he  was 
happy  by  heredity.  So,  in  all  his  great  trials — in 
his  failures  as  a  speaker  because  of  his  defective 
stammering  habit;  in  his  difficulties  as  a  theo- 
logian ;  in  his  persecution  as  a  presumed  politi- 
cian, flying  for  his  life,  having  his  house  burned 
to  the  ground,  and  all  the  treasures  he  valued 
most  flung  out  of  window  to  a  senseless,  drunken, 
groaning  mob ;  in  all  these  trials,  and  others  to 
come — the  cruel  cutting  of  his  colleagues  of  the 
Royal  Society,  and  the  final  parting  forever,  in 
his  old  age,  from  his  beloved  England  that  be  had 
served  so  well ;  in  all  these  trials,  I  say,  which  so 
few  could  have  borne,  he  sustained  the  full  share 
of  his  hereditary  gifts,  his  mental  happiness  and 
health — or,  I  should  rather  say,  his  health,  and 
therefore  his  happiness. 

But  this  blessed  health,  which  so  distinctly 
propagates  itself,  is  never  at  any  period  of  life  so 
tried  as  in  the  first  years.  Then  it  is  confirmed 
or  destroyed,  made  or  unmade. 

In  this  period,  in  which  so  many  die  from 
vaiious  causes,  Nature  herself,  at  first  sight,  seems 
to  set  up  continued  irritations.  It  is  only  that 
she  seems,  for  if  she  were  allowed  she  would  do 
all  her  spiriting  gently,  even  to  the  cutting  of 
teeth,  and  the  modification  of  digestion  to  modi- 
fication of  food. 

It  is  in  this  period  that  education  is  too  often 
made  for  the  first  time  to  stand  at  variance  with 
health.  It  is  in  this  period  that  the  enforced 
lesson  too  often  harasses,  wearies,  and  at  last 
darkens  the  mind.  It  is  in  this  period  that  the 
primary  fault  is  committed  of  making  play  a  set- 
off against  work,  and  a  promise  of  a  good  game 
an  inducement  for  the  persistence  in  hard  labor. 

"What  is  constantly  attempted  to  be  taught  in 
this  period  of  life  is  the  saddest  detail.  I  have 
known  a  regular  imposition  of  work  per  day  equal 
to  the  full  complement  of  natural  work  for  many 
a  man  or  woman.     There  are  schools  in  which 


402 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


children  of  eight,  nine,  and  ten  years  of  age,  and, 
it  may  be,  younger  children  still,  are  made  to 
study  from  nine  o'clock  until  noon,  and  again, 
after  a  hasty  meal  and  an  hour  for  play,  from  two 
to  five  in  the  afternoon,  aud  later  on  are  obliged 
to  go  to  lessons  once  more  preparatory  for  the 
following  day. 

The  bad  fact  is,  that  the  work  is  actually  done, 
and  as  the  brain  is  very  active  because  it  is  di- 
verted from  its  natural  course,  the  child  it  belongs 
to  is  rendered  so  unusually  precocious  that  it 
may  become  a  veritable  wonder.  Worse  than  all, 
this  precocity  and  wonderful  cleverness  too  often 
encourage  both  parents  and  teachers  to  press  the 
little  ability  to  some  further  stretch  of  ability,  so 
that  the  small  wonder  becomes  an  actual  exhibi- 
tion, a  receptacle  of  knowledge  that  can  turn  up 
a  date  like  the  chronological  table  of  the  "  En- 
cyclopajdia  Britannica,"  give  the  whole  history  of 
Cleopatra,  to  say  nothing  of  the  Needle,  carry  you 
through  a  Greek  verb  without  a  stop,  and  prob- 
ably recite  a  dozen  selections  from  the  best  poets. 

This  is  the  outside  of  the  marvelous  picture. 
Let  us  look  at  the  inside  of  it,  as  a  skilled  eye 
can  easily  look  and  read  too.  These  precocious 
coached-up  children  are  never  well.  Their  men- 
tal excitement  keeps  up  a  flush,  which,  like  the 
excitement  caused  by  strong  drink  in  older  chil- 
dren, looks  like  health,  but  has  no  relation  to  it. 
If  you  look  at  the  tongues  of  these  children,  you 
see  them  to  be  furred  or  covered  with  many  red 
points  like  a  strawberry,  or  to  be  too  red  and 
very  dry.  If  you  inquire  into  the  state  of  the 
appetite,  you  find  that  the  appetite  is  capricious ; 
that  all  kinds  of  strange  foods  are  asked  for,  and 
that  the  stomach  never  seems  to  be  in  order.  If 
you  watch  the  face  for  long,  you  note  that  the 
frequent  flush  gives  way  to  an  unearthly  paleness. 
If  you  watch  the  eyes,  you  observe  that  they 
gleam  with  light  at  one  time  and  are  dull,  de- 
pressed, and  sad  at  another,  while  they  never  are 
laughing  eyes.  Their  brightness  is  the  brightness 
of  thought  on  the  strain,  an  evanescent  and  dan- 
gerous phenomenon.  If  you  feel  the  muscles, 
they  are  thin  and  flabby,  though  in  some  instances 
they  may  be  fairly  covered  with  fat.  If  you  in- 
quire as  to  the  sleep  these  children  get,  you  hear 
that  it  is  disturbed,  restless,  and  sometimes  broken. 
In  a  healthy  child  the  sleep  comes  on  irresistibly 
at  an  early  hour,  and,  when  the  eyes  are  shut  and 
the  body  composed,  the  sleep  is  carried  out  till 
waking-time  without  a  movement  of  position  of 
the  body.  You  ask  the  healthy  child  about  his 
sleep,  and  he  says  that  he  is  simply  conscious  of 
having  closed  his  eyes  and  opened  them  again. 


But  these  unhealthy,  over-taught  children  have 
no  such  elysiura.  They  sleep,  perchance  to 
dream ;  to  dream  during  half  the  night,  and  to 
be  assailed  with  all  the  pressures  and  labors  of 
dreams ;  passing  through  strange  abodes  and  nar- 
row crevices  which  it  seems  impossible  to  squeeze 
into ;  and  waking  in  a  start,  with  the  body  cold, 
in  what  is  commonly  called  a  nightmare,  and 
sometimes  in  somnambulism,  or  sleep-walking. 
The  bad  sleep  naturally  leads  to  a  certain  over- 
wakeful  languor  the  next  day;  but,  strangely 
enough,  it  interferes  with  the  natural  advent  of 
sleep  the  next  night,  so  that  sleeplessness  at 
night  becomes  a  habit.  The  child  must  be  read 
to  sleep,  or  told  stories  until  it  is  off,  and  thus  it 
falls  into  slumber  fed  with  the  food  of  dreams, 
worries,  cares,  and  wonders. 

In  this  period  of  early  education,  first  state 
of  what  may  be  fairly  called  the  intemperance  of 
education,  the  recreations  that  are  adopted  for 
the  little  scholar  are  often  as  pernicious  as  any 
other  part  of  the  system  in  which  he  or  she  is 
trained.  During  the  day-pastimes,  a  want  of 
freshness  and  freedom  prevails,  almost  of  neces- 
sity, in  large  towns  ;  and  this  want  is  often  made 
worse  than  it  need  to  be  by  inattention  or  defi- 
ciency of  knowledge. 

In  a  town  like  London  there  are  three  classes 
of  children,  all  of  whom  present  different  aspects 
of  health. 

The  children  of  the  poorer  people,  the  chil- 
dren that  play  in  the  open  streets  and  round  the 
squares,  are  constantly  found  to  present  the  best 
specimens  of  health  in  the  whole  child  community. 
If  these  children  are  well  fed  at  home,  and  have 
moderately  comfortable  beds,  and  are  not  put  to 
work  for  hours  too  long,  they  are  singularly 
healthy  in  many  instances,  even  though  they  be 
the  denizens  of  courts,  mews,  and  alleys.  It  is 
true  that  numbers  of  them  inherit  sad  constitu- 
tional diseases ;  it  is  true  that  numbers  of  them 
exhibit  deformities  of  the  skeleton,  owing  to  the 
circumstance  that  during  their  infancy  they 
were  not  properly  fed  with  food  that  will  yield 
bone-forming  structure ;  still,  among  them  are 
the  ruddiest  and  healthiest  of  the  town  commu- 
nities. They  owe  their  health  to  the  free  and 
out-door  life. 

There  is  next  a  class  of  children  belonging  to 
the  well-to-do.  These  are  taken  out  for  walks  in 
the  public  parks  and  gardens,  or  are  driven  out, 
and  if  they  be  permitted  really  to  enjoy  the  out- 
ing, and  are  not  harassed  with  long  lessons  at 
home  or  at  school,  they  are  bright  and  healthy, 
though  it  is  rare  for  them  to  present  all  the  natu-- 


LEARNING  AND  HEALTH. 


403 


ral  ruddiness   and  strength  of  the  spring-time  of 
life. 

There  is  a  third  class  of  children  who,  least 
fortunate,  lie  between  the  rich  and  the  poor, 
and  who  belong  to  the  middle  trading-classes. 
The  parents  of  these  children  are  anxious,  for 
the  most  correct  of  motives,  that  their  young 
people  shall  not  run  wild  in  the  streets  to  mix 
with  children  who  are  of  a  different  class  and 
under  different  influences.  At  the  same  time, 
they  are  unable  to  send  their  children  out  to  the 
parks  or  suburbs,  as  their  wealthier  neighbors 
are.  The  consequence  is,  that  these  children  are 
kept  close  at  home  or  at  school.  They  have  to 
live  in  small  rooms  badly  ventilated  or  irregularly 
ventilated,  and,  albeit  they  are  well  clothed  and 
well  fed  and  comfortably  bedded,  they  grow  up 
all  but  universally  unhealthy. 

These  children  are  they  who  specially  suffer 
from  too  close  work  at  books  and  educational 
labor  generally.  They  are  usually  very  pale, 
muscularly  feeble,  and  depressed  in  mind.  They 
grow  up  irresolute,  and  yield  a  large — by  far  the 
largest — number  of  those  who  fill  up  the  death- 
roll  of  that  disease  of  fatal  diseases,  pulmonary 
consumption. 

For  fourteen  years  of  my  life  I  was  physician 
to  one  of  the  hospitals  in  this  metropolis,  to 
which  so  many  of  those  who  are  afflicted  with 
consumption  find  their  way.  Twice,  and  occa- 
sionally three  times  a  week,  the  duty  of  inquiry 
into  the  origin  of  this  disease  came  to  my  share 
of  professional  work.  The  field  of  observation 
was  extensive,  and  no  fact  was  yielded  in  it  so 
definitely  as  this  fact,  that  the  larger  proportion 
of  the  consumptive  population  have  been  brought 
up  under  the  conditions  I  have  named  above : 
in  close  school-rooms,  during  school-hours  far  too 
prolonged,  and  then  in  close  rooms  at  home, 
where  other  work,  in  confined  space,  filled  the 
remaining  lifetime. 

It  is  to  be  confessed  that  many  practical  diffi- 
culties lie  in  the  way  of  parents  of  children  of 
the  classes  I  have  just  named.  But  there  are  no 
insurmountable  difficulties  to  improvement.  An 
intelligent  public  demand  for  an  improvement 
would  very  soon  lead  to  an  extension  of  what  are 
called  garden-schools  for  the  young,  in  which 
teaching  by  amusing  lessons,  or  games  of  learn- 
ing, in  a  pure  air  and  in  ample  space,  would  se- 
cure all  the  advantages  which  are  now  so  much 
desired.  In  our  large  and  splendid  board-schools, 
which  are  becoming  distinct  and  beautiful  social 
features  of  the  age,  something  toward  this  sys- 
tem is  approached,  if  not  attained. 


EDUCATION   IN    BOYHOOD. 

In  the  education  which  is  bestowed  on  the 
young  in  the  next  stage  of  life — I  mean  on  those 
who  are  passing  from  the  eleventh  to  the  six- 
teenth or  seventeenth  year  of  life  —  the  errors 
committed  in  respect  to  health  are  often  as  pro- 
nounced as  in  the  earlier  stage. 

This  period  of  life  is  in  many  respects  ex- 
tremely critical.  The  rapid  growth  of  the  organs 
of  the  body,  the  still  imperfect  aud  imperfected 
condition  of  the  most  vital  organs :  the  quick 
changing,  and  yet  steadily  developing,  form  of 
mind,  which,  like  the  handwriting,  is  now  being 
constructed :  the  imitative  tendency  of  the  mind : 
and,  not  to  name  other  peculiarities,  the  intensity 
of  feelings  in  the  way  of  likes  and  hates — all  these 
conditions,  physical  and  mental,  make  this  stage 
of  a  human  career  singularly  liable  to  disorders 
of  a  functional  or  even  of  an  organic  kind.  For 
one  organ  of  the  body,  or  for  one  propensity  of 
the  mind,  to  .outgrow  or  out-develop  another  or 
others,  is  the  easiest  of  all  proceedings  in  this 
stage  of  life,  unless  care  be  taken  to  preserve  a 
correct  balance. 

The  lines  of  error  carried  out  in  this  period 
run  in  three  directions  at  least,  all  tending  to  im- 
pair the  healthy  and  natural  growth.  The  first 
of  these  errors  is  overwork.,  which  often  is  useless 
overwork.  The  second  is  deficient  skill  or  care 
in  detecting  the  natural  character  of  ability  ;  in 
other  words,  the  turn  of  mind,  and  it  may  be  said 
capability,  of  the  learner.  The  third  is  the  sys- 
tem of  forcing  the  mind  into  needless  competi- 
tions, by  which  passions  which  are  not  intellect- 
ual but  animal  feed  the  intellectual  soul  with  de- 
sire, and,  by  creating  an  over-development  of  the 
nervous-physical  seats  of  passion,  make  or  breed 
a  soul  of  passions  which  may  never  be  put  out  in 
after-life,  until  itself  puts  out  the  life  abruptly  by 
the  weariness  it  inflicts. 

I  have  sketched  from  a  trustworthy  record  the 
work  of  learning  imposed  on  a  pale  and  nervous 
boy  at  a  school  the  discipline  of  which  is  by  some 
felt  to  be  rather  light  than  heavy.  Any  four 
of  the  subjects  therein  named  were  really  suffi- 
cient to  occupy  all  the  natural  powers  for  work  of 
that  young  mind.  Five  of  the  subjects,  Latin  or 
Greek,  English,  arithmetic,  history,  and  French  or 
German  language,  with  writing  superadded  as  an 
exercise,  would  be  the  extreme  of  lesson-work  a 
prudent  care  would  suggest.  For  these  exercises 
of  the  mind  eight  hours  of  work  would  be  neces- 
sary, and  if  this  period  of  labor  were  enforced, 
with  two  hours  for  meals  and  ablutions,  and  four 


404 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


hours  for  play,  it  would  require  all  the  remaining 
ten  hours,  out  of  the  twenty-four,  for  sleep,  in 
order  to  supply  that  perfect  renovation  of  body, 
that  extra  nutrition  which  growth  of  the  develop- 
ing organs  of  the  body  so  rigorously  demands. 
But  it  seems  never  to  be  conceived,  in  respect  to 
the  human  animal,  that  growth  is  labor.  To  put 
a  horse  into  harness  at  too  early  a  time  of  its  life, 
and  to  make  it  work  hard  as  it  is  growing,  is  con- 
sidered the  most  ignorant  of  processes ;  while  to 
work  a  growing  child  harder  probably  now  than 
at  advanced  periods  of  life  is  often  considered 
the  most  correct  and  vigilant  of  processes. 

This  educational  training  has,  according  to 
my  experience,  only  one  result — a  reduced  stand- 
ard of  health  and  life.  Boys  and  girls  subjected 
to  it  are  rendered  pale,  thin,  irritable,  feverish, 
restless  at  night,  and  feeble.  A  thoroughly  good 
diet,  and  brisk  play,  and  kind  and  sympathetic 
encouragement,  may  diminish  the  evil,  and  I  am 
bound  to  say  often  do  diminish  it ;  but  these  aids, 
at  their  best,  do  no  more  than  diminish.  The 
root  of  the  danger  remains,  and  for  delicate  chil- 
dren the  aids  are  a  poor  shield  against  the  dis- 
eases of  lungs,  of  heart,  of  nervous  system,  that 
are  ever  threatening  and  giving  cause  for  alarm. 
How  easily  such  overworked  children  take  cold 
during  vicissitudes  of  season,  how  severely  they 
suffer  when  they  are  attacked  with  the  epidemic 
diseases — the  common  experience  of  every  prac- 
tising physician  proves.  For  these  diseases  are 
themselves  of  nervous  origin,  and  find  the  readiest 
place  in  exhausted  nervous  natures. 

So  the  brilliant  boy  or  girl  of  the  school, 
whose  intelligence  has  preilluminated  the  world, 
too  frequently  dies,  and  the  dull  boy  or  girl,  the 
hulk  of  the  school,  escapes  back  to  health  from 
variations  of  it.  And  alas !  say  the  admiring 
mourners  of  the  dead,  alas !  it  is  true,  "  whom 
the  gods  love  die  young."  Alas !  it  is  false,  I  say. 
Whom  the  gods  love  die  old ;  go  through  their 
appointed  course,  fulfill  their  appointed  duties, 
and  sink  into  their  rest,  knowing  no  more  of 
death  than  of  birth,  and  leaving  no  death-stricken 
mourners  at  their  tombs. 

The  breach  between  health  and  education  in 
the  period  of  studentship  now  under  considera- 
tion is  further  evidenced  by  the  method  that  ex- 
ists— and  as  a  necessity  exists  in  a  bad  system — 
of  making  no  practical  distinction  between  one 
learner  and  another  in  relation  to  physical  capaci- 
ty and  power.  It  is  one  of  the  faults  in  the  sys- 
tem of  punishments  for  those  unfortunates  who 
have  broken  the  laws  of  the  land,  that  the  same 
labor  is  inflicted  constantly  on  persons  of  entirely 


different  physical  power,  so  that  either  half  a 
punishment,  or  a  double  punishment,  may  be  im- 
posed for  the  same  offense.  This  is  most  unfair 
even  to  criminals.  It  is  not  a  bit  more  unfair 
than  the  system  in  school-classes  of  teaching 
every  one  the  same.  To  take  the  boy  who  has 
an  inherited  tendency  to  consumption,  or  to  heart- 
disease,  or  to  insanity,  and  to  place  him  under 
the  same  mental  regime  as  another  boy  who  has 
none  of  these  proclivities,  but  is  of  healthiest 
parentage,  is  almost  a  crime  in  ignorance.  And 
when  it  is  the  fact  that  the  healthiest  boy  in  a 
school  is,  in  all  probability,  himself  overworked 
it  is  not  difficult  to  detect  that,  in  respect  to  work 
imposed  on  pupils  passing  from  the  eleventh  to  the 
seventeenth  or  eighteenth  year,  it  is  impossible 
for  health  and  education  to  progress  side  by  side 
and  develop  lustily  together. 

I  said  there  was  a  second  course  of  error  in 
education  at  the  period  of  life  now  under  consid- 
eration. That  consists  in  failing  to  allow  for  dif- 
ference of  mental  capacity  and  turn  of  mind  in 
different  learners.  There  are  many  minds  of 
neutral  tendency ;  minds  that  can  take  in  a  cer- 
tain limited  amount  of  knowledge  on  almost  any 
and  every  subject,  but  which  can  never  master 
much  in  anything.  These  minds,  if  they  be  not 
unduly  pressed  and  rubbed  out,  or  flattened 
down,  become  in  time  respectable  in  learning, 
and  sometimes  imbued  with  the  plainest  common- 
sense.  These  minds  bear  at  school  much  work 
with  comparatively  small  injury,  for  they  are  ad- 
mittedly dull,  and  great  things  are  not  expected  of 
them,  and  great  things  are  not  attempted  by  them. 
These  minds  do  the  necessary  work  of  medioc- 
rity, in  this  world,  an  important  work  enough — 
the  work  of  the  crust  of  the  intellectual  sphere. 

There  are  two  other  very  different  orders  of 
minds.  There  is  the  mind  analytical,  that  looks 
into  details  in  business,  into  elements  in  science, 
into  figures  and  facts  in  civil  and  natural  history. 
In  the  school  such  a  mind  is  good  at  arithmetic  ; 
good  at  mathematics ;  good  at  facts  and  dates  ; 
good  at  niceties  of  language.  In  these  directions 
its  lessons  are  pleasures,  or,  at  the  worst,  are 
scarcely  labors.  There  is,  again,  the  mind  con- 
structive or  synthetic  ;  the  mind  that  builds ; 
that  uses  facts  and  figures,  only,  in  the  end,  for 
its  own  purposes  of  work ;  which  easily  learns 
principles  of  construction ;  which  grasps  poetry 
and  the  hidden  meaning  of  the  poet;  which  is 
wonderful  often  for  memory,  but  remembers  the 
whole,  rarely  the  parts  of  a  theme ;  and  which 
cannot  by  any  pressure  inflicted  on  it,  or  self-in- 
flicted, take  fast  hold  of  minute  distinctions. 


LEARNING  AFD  HEALTH. 


405 


The  true  intellect  of  the  world,  from  the  first 
dawn  of  it  until  now,  has  been  made  up  of  these 
two  distinct  forms.  They  seem  antagonistic; 
they  are  so ;  but  out  of  their  antagonism  has 
come  the  light  of  knowledge  and  wisdom.  They 
are  the  representative  poles  of  knowledge  and  of 
wisdom.  The  first  is  knowing,  the  second  wise 
— two  distinct  qualities,  though  commonly  con- 
founded as  one. 

In  the  small  school  of  the  youth,  as  in  the 
great  school  of  the  world,  these  representative 
orders  of  mind  are  ever  present.  The  mistake 
is,  that  they  are  so  commonly  confounded,  and 
that  no  change  is  made  in  the  mode  of  study  to 
fit  the  taste  of  the  one  or  the  other. 

The  consequence  is,  that  lessons  are  given  to 
the  analytical  student  which  he  cannot  possibly 
grasp,  and  to  the  synthetical  student  which  he 
cannot  possibly  master.  Under  these  conditions 
both  chafe,  and  worry,  and  weary,  and  still  do 
not  get  on.  Then  they  fall  into  bad  health,  grow 
fretful  and  feverish,  are  punished  or  slighted,  and 
otherwise  made  sad,  and,  it  may  be,  revengeful. 
And  so,  if  they  be  unduly  forced,  they  grow  up 
unhealthy  in  body  and  in  mind.  They  grow  up 
feeling  as  beings  who  have  in  some  manner  missed 
their  way  in  life.  The  occupation  into  which  they 
have  drifted,  and  in  which  they  have  become  fixed, 
is  not  congenial  to  them ;  at  last  they  fall  into 
listlessness,  and,  seeking  in  amusements  and  pleas-  ; 
ures  for  the  treasure  they  have  lost,  are  trodden 
into  the  crust  of  the  intellectual  sphere — the  great  : 
mediocrity. 

I  said  there  was  a  third  course  of  error  in 
educational  training  in  this  period  of  life,  and  I 
noted  that  as  the  prize  system,  the  forcing  of 
young  minds  to  extremes  of  competition  in  learn- 
ing. This  system  is  bad  fundamentally.  I  have 
been  assured  by  excellent  teachers  that  it  is  bad 
as  a  system  of  teaching,  and  that  nothing  but 
the  demand  for  it  on  the  part  of  ambitious  parents 
and  friends  could  make  them  permit  it  as  a  part 
of  their  work.  They  say  it  obliges  them,  as  prize- 
days  draw  near,  to  devote  excessive  time  to  the 
most  earnest  of  the  competitors.  They  say  that  the 
attention  of  the  whole  school  is  directed  toward 
the  competitors,  who  have  their  special  admirers, 
and  so  the  masses,  who,  from  fear  or  from  want 
of  ability,  do  not  compete,  are  doubly  neglected, 
are  neglected  by  their  teachers  to  some  extent, 
and  are  forgetful  of  their  own  prospects  in  the 
interest  they  take  as  to  the  success  of  their  idols. 
In  this  way,  those  that  are  weakest  are  least,  and 
those  that  are  strongest  are  most,  assisted — 
another  illustration  of  the  proverb,  "  To  him  that 


hath  shall  be  given ;  but  from  him  that  hath  not 
shall  be  taken  away  even  that  which  he  hath." 

I  cannot  undertake  to  confirm  this  judgment 
myself,  though  it  sounds  like  common-sense,  but  I 
can  affirm  that  in  matter  of  health,  in  interference 
with  that  blessing,  the  prize  system  stands  at  the 
bar  guilty  of  the  guilty.  You  have  but  to  go  to  a 
prize  distribution  to  see,  in  the  worn,  and  pale,  and 
languid  faces  of  the  successful,  the  effects  of  this 
system.  And,  when  you  have  seen  them,  you 
have  not  seen  a  tithe  of  the  evil.  You  have  not 
seen  the  anxious  young-old  boys  or  girls  at  the 
time  of  the  competition ;  you  have  not  seen  them 
immediately  after  it ;  you  have  not  seen  them  be- 
tween the  period  of  competition  and  the  announce- 
ment of  the  awards.  You  have  not  seen  the  in- 
jury inflicted  by  the  news  of  success  to  some, 
and  of  failure  to  others  who  have  contested  and 
lost.  If  you  could,  as  through  a  transparent  body, 
have  seen  all  the  changes  incident  to  these  events ; 
if  you  could  only  have  seen  one  set  of  phenom- 
ena alone,  the  violent  over-action  and  the  suc- 
ceeding depressed  action  of  the  beating  heart, 
you  would  have  seen  enough  to  tell  you  how  mad 
a  system  you  have  been  following  to  its  results, 
and  how  much  the  dull  and  neglected  scholars  are 
to  be  envied  by  the  side  of  the  bright  and,  for 
the  moment,  the  applauded,  and  flattered,  and  tri- 
umphant. 

These  bad  physical  results  the  physician  alone 
sees  as  a  rule,  and  he  not  readily,  since  the  evil 
does  not  of  necessity  appear  at  the  moment,  nor 
does  he,  nor  do  others,  see  the  remaining  evils 
from  the  physical  side.  It  requires  a  look  into 
the  mental  condition  produced  by  the  competi- 
tion, to  the  effect  of  that  condition  on  the  pas- 
sions, and  to  the  influence  of  the  passions  on  the 
nutrition  and  maintenance  of  the  body,  to  know 
or  surmise  the  secondary  mischiefs  to  health 
which  these  fierce  mental  struggles  in  girlhood 
and  boyhood  inflict  on  the  woman  and  the  man. 

While  this  lecture  has  been  in  preparation,  I 
have  received  from  Dr.  Holbrook,  the  editor  of 
the  Herald  of  Health  of  New  York,  one  of  his 
miniature  tracts  on  health,  in  which  he  records 
the  experiences  of  men  who  have  lived  long,  la- 
borious, and  successful  lives,  and  the  reasons 
they  assign  for  having  enjoyed  such  prolonged 
health  and  mental  activity.  The  tract  before  me 
contains  letters  from  two  men  of  great  eminence, 
namely,  William  Cullen  Bryant  and  William 
Howitt.  A  part  of  William  Howitt's  letter  so 
admirably  expresses  the  lesson  I  am  now  endeav- 
oring to  teach,  that  I  quote  it  in  full.  It  refers 
to  his  early  life,  and  its  perfect  freedom  of  learning : 


406 


TEE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


"  My  boyhood  and  youth  were,  for  the  most 
part,  spent  in  the  country ;  and  all  country  ob- 
jects, sports,  and  labors,  horse-racing  and  hunting 
excepted,  have  had  a  never-failing  charm  for  me. 
As  a  boy,  I  ranged  the  country  far  and  wide  in 
curious  quest  and  study  of  all  the  wild  creatures 
of  the  woods  and  fields,  in  great  delight  in  birds 
and  their  uests,  climbing  the  loftiest  trees,  rocks, 
and  buildings,  in  pursuit  of  them.  In  fact,  the  life 
described  in  the  '  Boys'  Country  Book '  was  my 
own  life.  No  hours  were  too  early  for  me,  and  in 
the  bright  sunny  fields  in  the  early  mornings, 
amid  dews  and  odors  of  flowers,  I  breathed  that 
pure  air  which  gave  a  life-long  tone  to  my  lungs 
that  I  still  reap  the  benefit  of.  All  these  daily 
habits  of  climbing,  running,  and  working,  devel- 
oped my  frame  to  perfection,  and  gave  a  vigor  to 
nerve  and  muscle  that  have  stood  well  the  wear 
and  tear  of  existence.  My  brain  was  not  dwarfed 
by  excessive  study  in  early  boyhood,  as  is  too 
much  the  case  with  children  of  to-day.  Nature 
says,  as  plainly  as  she  can  speak,  that  the  in- 
fancy of  all  creatures  is  sacred  to  play,  to  physical 
action,  and  the  joyousness  of  mind  that  give  life 
to  every  organ  of  the  system.  Lambs,  kittens, 
kids,  foals,  even  young  pigs  and  donkeys,  all 
teach  the  great  lesson  of  Nature,  that  to  have  a 
body  healthy  and  strong,  the  prompt  and  efficient 
vehicle  of  the  mind,  we  must  not  infringe  on  her 
ordinations  by  our  study  and  cramping  sedentari- 
ness in  life's  tender  years.  We  must  not  throw 
away  or  misappropriate  her  forces  destined  to  the 
corporeal  architecture  of  man,  by  tasks  that  be- 
long properly  to  an  after-time.  There  is  no  mis- 
take so  fatal  to  the  proper  development  of  man 
and  woman  as  to  pile  on  the  immature  brain,  and 
on  the  yet  unfinished  fabric  of  the  human  body, 
a  weight  of  premature,  and  therefore  unnatural, 
study.  In  most  of  those  cases  where  Nature  has 
intended  to  produce  a  first-class  intellect,  she  has 
guarded  her  embryo  genius  by  a  stubborn  slow- 
ness of  development.  Moderate  study  and  plenty 
of  play  and  exercise  in  early  youth  are  the  true 
requisites  for  a  noble  growth  of  intellectual  powers 
in  man,  and  for  its  continuance  to  old  age." 

EDUCATION    IN    ADOLESCENCE. 

In  the  education  that  is  bestowed  on  the 
young  in  the  period  of  their  adolescence,  namely, 
from  the  seventeenth  or  eighteenth  to  the  twenty- 
second  or  twenty-third  year,  there  is,  I  regret  to 
say,  no  redeeming  quality  in  regard  to  health  as 
an  attendant  consideration. 

Young  men  and  young  women,  who  are  now 
presenting  themselves  for  the  higher-class  exami- 
nations at  our  universities  and  public  boards,  are 
literally  crushed  by  the  insanity  of  the  effort.  It 
has  happened  to  me  within  the  past  year  to  have 


under  observation  four  of  these  victims  to  the 
inquisition  of  learning. 

In  one  of  these  examples,  where  success,  so 
called,  crowned  the  effort,  in  addition  to  many 
minor  injuries  inflicted  on  the  body,  an  absence 
of  memory  has  succeeded  the  cram,  so  that  names 
of  common  places  are  for  the  time  quite  forgot- 
ten; while  the  subjects  that  were  got  up  so  accu- 
rately have  become  a  mere  confused  dream,  in 
which  all  that  relates  to  useful  learning  is  inex- 
tricably bui'ied. 

In  another  of  these  competitors,  the  period 
of  competition  was  attended  with  an  entire  ab- 
sence of  sleep,  and  thereby  with  that  exhaustion 
which  leads  almost  to  delirious  wandering  of 
mind.  Here  failure  led  to  an  extreme  depres- 
sion, to  a  forgetfulness  of  the  reason  of  failure, 
and  to  a  listlessness  on  all  subjects  it  will  take 
months  to  cure. 

In  the  third  example  to  which  I  refer,  sleep- 
lessness, labor,  and  excitement,  brought  on  an 
hereditary  tendency  to  intermitting  action  of  the 
heart,  to  unsteadiness  of  power,  and  thereby  to 
uncertainty  of  effort,  which  almost  of  necessity 
led  to  failure  of  attempt.  Even  cram  in  an  in- 
stance of  this  nature,  backed  by  all  the  assiduity 
that  will,  and  patience,  and  industry,  could  sup- 
port, was  obliged  to  fail,  because  the  physical 
force  was  not  at  hand  to  keep  the  working  body 
in  accord  with  the  mental  power.  Ignorant  of 
what  they  were  after,  the  examiners  who  were 
putting  on  the  screw  were  not  examining  the 
mental  qualities  of  this  youth  at  all,  but  were 
really  trying  how  loDg  his  heart  would  hold  out 
under  their  manipulation. 

In  the  fourth  instance,  it  was  my  duty  to  de- 
cide whether  a  youth,  brought  up  just  to  the 
condition  for  going  into  the  inquisition,  should, 
worn  and  wearied  with  the  labor,  bloodless  and 
sleepless,  run  the  risk — being  quite  ready  for  it — 
or  should,  at  the  last  moment,  take  six  months' 
entire  rest,  and  then  be  got  up  to  the  same  pitch 
of  lifelessness  and  misery  again. 

Is  there  any  occasion  to  wonder  at  these 
phenomena  ?  One  of  the  members  of  my  pro- 
fession has  a  son  who  originally  was  a  lad  of 
good  parts,  and  who,  after  undergoing  the  in- 
quisition, had  to  wander  about  for  months  in 
travel,  helpless  in  mental  and  physical  state — 
"  more  like  an  idiot,"  said  his  father  to  me,  than 
anything  else.  Is  there  any  occasion  to  wonder 
at  these  phenomena,  I  repeat?  None.  In  some 
of  these  inquisitions  each  examiner  can  pluck 
from  his  own  paper,  and  there  are  several  ex- 
aminers.    Ask  one  of  those  examiners  to  answer 


LEARNING  AND  HEALTH. 


407 


the  paper  of  another  examiner,  and  see  what  he 
would  do.  The  unhappy  student  has  to  answer 
them  all. 

The  system  is  doing  sufficient  evil  to  men ; 
but  what  is  to  happen  to  the  world  if  women, 
anxious  to  emulate,  are  to  have  their  way,  and, 
like  moths,  follow  their  sterner  mates  into  the 
midnight  candle  of  learning  ?  Up  to  this  time 
the  stability  of  the  race  in  physical  and  mental 
qualities  has  greatly  rested  on  the  women.  Let 
the  fathers  do  what  they  might — in  this  age  dis- 
sipate and  duel  and  fight;  in  that  age  smoke, 
drink,  and  luxuriate;  in  another  age  run  after 
the  vain  shadows  of  competitive  exercises,  men- 
tal or  physical ;  still  the  women  remained  un- 
vitiated,  so  that  one-half  the  authorship  of  the 
race  was  kept  intact  as  reasonable  and  responsi- 
ble beings.  In  other  words,  there  were  mothers 
as  well  as  fathers.  But  if  in  these  days  women, 
catching  the  infection  of  the  present  system, 
succeed  in  their  clamor  for  admission  into  the 
inquisition,  and  mothers  thereupon  go  out,-  as 
they  certainly  will,  just  in  proportion  as  they  go 
in,  the  case  will  be  bad  indeed  for  the  succeeding 
generations. 

Some  wise  man  has  given  us,  if  we  would 
read  his  lesson  correctly,  the  moral  of  this  kind 
of  effort  in  the  wonderful  story  of  Babel. 

It  is  quite  true.  You  cannot  build  a  temple 
that  reaches  to  heaven,  though  all  the  world  try. 
It  is  not,  that  is  to  say,  by  forcing  the  minds  of 
men  to  learn,  that  man  can  penetrate  the  secrets 
of  Nature  and  know  them.  If  one  learned  man 
could  seize  and  hold  and  apply  the  knowledge  of 
two  learned  men,  there  might  be  a  progression 
of  knowledge  in  geometrical  ratio,  and  soon,  in 
truth — 

"Men  would  be  angels,  angels  would  be  gods." 

To  this  Nature  says  No  ;  and,  when  the  attempt 
is  made,  she  corrects  it  by  the  interruption  she 
sets  up,  through  the  corporeal  mechanism,  to 
the  mental  strife  and  contagion. 

To  let  this  struggle  against  Nature  progress 
up  to  confusion  of  tongues,  in  which  one  learned 
man  shall  not  understand  another,  is  a  far  easier 
thing  than  many  suppose:  for  Nature  is  un- 
swerving in  her  course,  and  the  struggle  now  is 
far  advanced  toward  its  natural  consummation. 

For  a  time  yet  it  may  be  necessary  to  subject 
men  who  are  to  take  part  in  responsible  profes- 
sional labors,  in  the  practice  of  which  life  or 
property  is  concerned,  to  certain  efficient  tests 
as  proofs  of  knowledge  and  skill.  Such  examina- 
tional tests  may  easily  be  conducted  without  be- 


ing made  in  any  sense  competitive,  and  without 
in  any  sense  doing  an  injury  to  health  and  life. 

At  best,  such  tests  are  arbitrary,  and  define 
no  more  than  the  capacity  of  a  man  at  the  period 
of  his  entry  into  manhood.  At  that  period  there 
is  presented  but  one  phase  of  mental  life  among 
many  varying  phases ;  and  to  let  the  brand  of 
superiority  stamped  at  that  age,  however  distin- 
guished the  superiority  then  may  be,  stand  forth 
as  the  all-sufficient  distinguishing  mark  for  a  life- 
time, would  indeed  be,  and  indeed  is,  unjust  fool- 
ishness. 

It  is  a  very  bad  system  that  suggests  such  a 
mode  of  obtaining  a  claim  to  permanent  superi- 
ority, and  the  effects  of  the  present  system  are 
shown  as  most  mischievous  in  this  very  partic- 
ular. 

The  man  who  succeeds  in  gaining  these  great 
competitive  honors  is  usually  content  to  rest  on 
them,  and  rarely  wins  other  distinctions  in  after- 
life. It  is  doubtful  whether  the  training  is  not 
fatal  to  the  after-distinction,  and  whether  the 
great  geniuses  of  the  world  would  ever  have  ap- 
peared at  all,  if,  in  their  early  days,  they  had 
been  oppressed  by  the  labor,  strain,  and  anxiety, 
of  the  competition  on  the  one  hand,  or  had  been 
bound  by  the  hard-and-fast  lines  of  dogmatic 
learning  on  the  other.  I  believe  myself  that 
great  after-distinction  is  impossible  with  early 
competitive  superiority  gained  by  the  struggles  I 
have  indicated,  and  that  the  evils  now  so  wide- 
spread among  our  better-class  communities  will 
find  their  full  correction  in  the  circumstance  that 
the  geniuses  of  the  nation  and  the  leaders  of  the 
nation  will  henceforth  be  derived,  unless  there  be 
a  reformation  of  system,  from  those  simple  pupils 
of  the  board-schools  who,  entering  into  the  con- 
flicts of  life  able  to  read,  write,  and  calculate, 
are  left  free  of  brain  for  the  acquirement  of  learn- 
ing of  any  and  every  kind  in  the  full  powers  of 
developed  manhood. 

Be  this  as  it  may,  I  am  sure  that  the  present 
plan,  which  strands  men  and  women  on  the  world 
of  active  life,  old  in  knowledge  before  their  time, 
and  ready  to  rest  from  acquirement  on  mere  de- 
votion of  an  automatic  kind  to  some  one  particu- 
lar pursuit,  is  directly  injurious  to  health  both  of 
body  and  mind. 

Continued  action  of  the  mind  and  varied  ac- 
tion of  the  mind  are  essentials  to  length  of  life 
and  health  of  life,  and  those  brain-workers  who 
have  shown  the  greatest  skill  in  varied  pursuits, 
even  when  their  works  have  been  laborious,  have 
lived  longest  and  happiest  and  best. 

The  truth  is  that,  when  men  do  not  die  of 


408 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


some  direct  accident  of  disease,  they  die,  in  nine 
cases  out  of  ten,  from  nervous  failure.  And  this 
is  the  peculiarity  of  nervous  failure — that  it  may 
be  fatal  from  one  point  of  tbe  nervous  organism, 
the  rest  being  sound.  A  man  may  therefore  wear 
himself  out  by  one  mental  exercise  too  exclusively 
followed,  while  he  may  live  through  many  exer- 
cises extended  over  far  greater  intervals  of  time 
and  involving  more  real  labor  if  they  be  distrib- 
uted over  many  seats  of  mental  faculty. 

Just  as  a  sheet  of  ice  will  bear  many  weights 
if  they  be  equally  distributed  upon  it,  but  will 
give  way  and  break  up  at  one  point  from  a  lesser 
weight,  so  the  brain  will  bear  an  equally  distrib- 
uted strain  of  work  for  many  years,  while  pressure 
not  more  severe  on  one  point  will  destroy  it  in  a 
limited  period,  and  with  it  the  body  it  animates. 

CONCLUSION. 

Let  health  and  education  go  hand-in-hand, 
and  the  progress  of  the  world,  physically  and 
mentally,  is  sound  and  sure. 

Let  the  brain,  in  the  first  stage  of  life,  make 
its  own  inventory :  distress  it  not  with  learning, 
or  sadness,  or  romance  of  passion.  Let  it  take 
Nature  as  a  second  mother  for  its  teacher. 

In  the  second  age,  instill  gently  and  learn  the 
order  of  mind  that  is  being  rendered  a  receiving 
agency:  allay  rather  than  encourage  ambition: 
do  not  push  on  the  strong,  but  help  the  feeble. 

In  adolescence,  let  the  studies,  taking  their 
natural  bent,  be  more  decisive  and  defined  as 
toward  some  particular  end  or  object,  but  never 
distressing,  anxious,  or  distractingly  ambitious. 
Let  this  be  an  age  for  probation  into  the  garden 
of  knowledge,  and  of  modest  claim  to  admission 
there ;  not  for  a  charge  by  assault  and  for  an 
entry  with  clarion  and  standard  and  claim  of  so 
much  conquered  possession. 

And  for  the  rest,  let  the  course  be  a  continued 
learning,  so  that  with  the  one  and  chief  pursuit  of 
life  other  pursuits  may  mingle  happily,  and  life 
be  not — 


".  .  .  .  a  dissonant  thing 
Amid  the  universal  harmony." 

My  task  is  done.  I  find  no  fault  with  any 
particular  class,  neither  of  teachers  nor  pastors 
nor  masters.  I  speak  only  against  a  prevailing 
error,  for  which  no  one  is  specially  at  fault,  but 
for  which  all  are  somewhat  at  fault,  however  good 
the  object  had  in  view  may  be. 

What  we  now  witness  in  the  way  of  mental 
competition  is  but  the  old  system  of  physical 
competitive  prowess  in  a  new  form;  and  when 
the  evils  of  it  are  seen,  and  when  the  worse  than 
uselessness  of  it  is  detected,  it  will  pass  away  as 
all  such  errors  do  when  the  universal  mind  which 
sustains  them  sees  and  appreciates  the  wrong 
that  is  being  done.  I  believe  sincerely  that  the 
errors  I  have  ventured  to  describe,  and  which  at 
this  present  separate  health  from  education,  will 
in  due  time  be  recognized  and  removed. 

In  a  leading  article  last  year  in  one  of  our 
powerful  and  widely-read  newspapers  on  a  lect- 
ure of  mine  delivered  in  this  place,  there  was  an 
expression  of  regret  that  I,  as  a  man  of  science, 
should  deal  so  earnestly  with  subjects  so  trivial 
as  these.  Suppose  the  subjects  to  be  trivial,  and 
then  in  answer  I  might  fairly  say  there  are  mites 
in  science  as  well  as  in  charity,  and  the  ultimate 
results  of  each  are  often  alike  important  and 
beneficial.  But  I  deny  the  triviality.  I  ask,  if 
these  subjects,  which  refer  to  the  very  life-blood 
of  the  nation,  be  trivial,  what  are  the  solemn 
subjects,  and  who  are  dealing  with  them  ? 

I  read  in  another  and  scientific  paper,  that  to 
state  facts  of  a  similar  order  to  those  I  have  now 
related,  to  a  public  as  distinct  from  a  strictly  pro- 
fessional audience,  is  a  sure  means  by  which  to 
hurt  tender  susceptibilities,  and  of  a  certainty  to 
give  to  some  a  cause  of  offense.  To  that  criticism 
I  reply,  as  I  conclude,  in  the  words  of  the  good 
St.  Jerome:  "If  an  offense  come  out  of  truth, 
better  is  it  the  offense  come  than  the  truth  be 
concealed." —  Gentleman's  Magazine. 


STANLEY'S   DISCOYEEIES  AKD   THE  FITTUKE   OF  AFKICA. 


THE  exploration  of  Africa  has  been  conducted 
of  late  on  a  new  system.  The  routes  of 
the  earlier  travelers  passed  either  through  parts 
of  the  continent  whore  the  population  is  sparse, 
as  in  Caffre  laud  or  in  the  Sahara,  or  in  those 


where  it  is  organized  into  large  kingdoms,  such 
as  lie  between  Ashanti  and  Wadai,  and  which  are 
much  too  powerful  to  admit  of  any  traveler  forc- 
ing his  way  against  the  will  of  their  rulers.  The 
older  explorers  were  therefore  content  to  travel 


STANLEY'S  DISCOVERIES  AND   TEE  FUTURE  OF  AFRICA.      409 


with  small  retinues,  conciliating  the  natives  of 
the  larger  kingdoms  by  patient  persistence  and 
feeling  their  way.  But  of  recent  years  all  this 
has  been  changed.  The  progress  of  discovery 
has  transferred  the  outposts  of  knowledge  and  the 
starting-points  of  exploration  to  places  where  the 
population  is  far  more  abundant  than  that  which 
is  met  with  in  either  the  northern  or  the  southern 
portions  of  Africa,  yet  where  it  is,  for  the  most 
part,  divided  into  tribes.  Hence  modern  explor- 
ers have  found  the  necessity  of  traveling  with 
large  and  strongly-armed  retinues.  This  new  meth- 
od has  been  frequently  adopted  in  the  upper 
basin  of  the  White  Nile,  which  has  also  been  the 
scene  of  many  military  expeditions  sent  by  the 
Egyptian  Government  to  force  a  way  into  the 
Soudan,  including  that  commanded  by  Sir  Samuel 
Baker.  So,  in  the  south,  Livingstone's  compara- 
tively small  band  of  determined  CafFres,  placed  at 
his  disposal  by  a  chief  whose  confidence  he  had 
gained,  enabled  him  to  cross  the  continent  in  the 
latitude  of  the  Zambesi.  Subsequently  other  trav- 
elers, like  Burton,  Speke,  Grant,  and  Cameron, 
starting  from  Zanzibar,  have  adopted  a  similar 
plan.  Their  forces  were  large  enough  to  enable 
them  to  pass  as  they  pleased  through  regions 
where  the  tribes  were  small,  they  were  sufficiently 
powerful  to  make  larger  tribes  fear  to  attack 
them,  and,  as  they  invariably  adopted  a  concilia- 
tory policy  with  the  latter,  they  never  came  into 
serious  collision  with  the  natives.  Mr.  Stanley 
has  adopted  the  plan  of  traveling  with  an  armed 
retinue  on  a  much  larger  scale  than  any  of  those 
whom  we  have  named,  and  he  has  certainly  car- 
ried, by  these  means,  a  great  expedition  suc- 
cessfully through  Africa.  Thus  he  states,  "  I  led 
2,280  men  across  hostile  Unyoro,"  on  an  expedi- 
tion intended  to  cross  the  Albert  Nyanza.  Again, 
when  he  leaves  Nyangwe  on  his  final  expedition 
down  the  Lualaba,  he  starts  with  a  body  of  500 
fighting-men.  Thus,  with  a  larger  military  force 
than  hitherto  employed,  and  making  a  deter- 
mined use  of  it,  Mr.  Stanley  has  conducted  a  ge- 
ographical raid  across  the  middle  of  Africa,  which 
has  led  him  into  scenes  of  bloodshed  and  slaugh- 
ter, beginning  at  the  Victoria  Nyanza,  and  not 
ending  until  he  arrived  in  the  neighborhood  of 
the  western  coast.  This  achievement  undoubt- 
edly places  Mr.  Stanley  in  the  foremost  rank  of 
African  discoverers,  and  insures  to  him  a  hardly- 
earned  and  lasting  fame. 

The  question  will  no  doubt  be  hotly  discussed 
how  far  a  private  individual,  traveling  as  a  news- 
paper correspondent,  has  a  right  to  assume  such 
a  warlike  attitude,  and  to  force  his  way  through 


native  tribes  regardless  of  their  rights,  whatever 
those  may  be.  A  man  who  does  so  acts  in  defi- 
ance of  the  laws  that  are  supposed  to  bind  private 
individuals.  He  assumes  sovereign  privileges, 
and  punishes  with  death  the  natives  who  oppose 
his  way.  He  voluntarily  puts  himself  into  a  po- 
sition from  which  there  is  no  escape,  except  by 
battle  and  bloodshed ;  and  it  is  a  question  which 
we  shall  not  argue  here,  whether  such  conduct 
does  not  come  under  the  head  of  filibustering:. 
Nations  are  above  laws,  and  may  do  and  decide 
what  expeditions  they  may  care  to  launch,  but 
the  assumption  of  such  a  right  by  private  indi- 
viduals is  certainly  open  to  abuse,  and  seems  hard 
to  defend.  It  is  impossible  to  speak  of  Mr.  Stan- 
ley's journey  without  noticing  this  exceptional 
characteristic  of  it.  At  the  same  time  it  is  not 
our  present  object  to  discuss  the  morality  of  his 
proceedings,  but  to  occupy  ourselves  with  his 
discoveries,  which  are  unquestionably  of  the 
highest  geographical  importance,  and  may  lead  to 
consequences  in  comparison  with  which  the  death 
of  a  few  hundred  barbarians,  ever  ready  to  fight 
and  kill,  and  many  of  whom  are  professed  canni- 
bals, will  perhaps  be  regarded  as  a  small  matter. 

The  results  of  Mr.  Stanley's  journey  at  the 
moment  of  writing  these  remarks  are  very  im- 
perfectly before  us ;  but  we  already  know  enough 
to  see  that  he  finds  the  course  of  the  Congo  to 
form  a  great  arc,  as  was  rudely  laid  down  in  the 
well-known  map  of  Duarte  Lopez,  published  by 
Pigafetta  at  Rome  in  1591,  and  that  his  route 
brings  him  into  quasi  connection  with  the  two 
farthest  points  reached  in  that  part  of  the  conti- 
nent by  explorers  from  the  north,  namely,  that 
reached  by  Schweinfurth,  who  received  the  gold 
medal  of  the  Royal  Geographical  Society  in  1874 
"  for  his  discovery  of  the  Uelle  River,  beyond  the 
southwestern  limits  of  the  Nile  Basin,"  and  that 
other  point  reached  by  the  literary  informant  of 
Dr.  Barth,  who,  traveling  southward  from  Dar- 
fur,  came  to  the  great  river  of  Kubanda,  flowing 
to  the  west. 

The  Uelle  was  reached  by  Schweinfurth1  in 
April,  the  time  when  its  waters  were  at  their 
lowest  level,  yet  it  was  then  800  feet  across,  with 
a  depth  of  from  12  to  15  feet;  its  volume  of  out- 
flow was  estimated  by  him  at  10,000  cubic  feet 
per  second.  All  the  Monbuttoo  and  the  Niam- 
niam  people  agreed  in  telling  him  that  the  Uelle 
held  on  its  course,  as  far  as  they  could  follow  it, 
for  days  and  days  together,  till  it  widened  so 
vastly  that  the  trees  on  its  banks  ceased  to  be 

1  Schweinfurth,  "  The  West  of  Africa,"  vol.  i.,  p. 
553,  English  translation. 


410 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


visible.  Schweinfurth  speaks  with  admiration  of 
the  peculiar  shape  and  size  of  the  canoes  that  he 
saw  on  the  Uelle,  which  curiously  correspond  with 
those  seen  by  Stanley  on  the  Aruwimi.  Schwein- 
furth says: 

"They  were  hewed  out  of  a  single  trunk  of 
a  tree,  and,  alike  in  shape  and  solidity,  were  su- 
perior to  what  we  had  hitherto  seen.  Some  of 
tueni  were  not  less  than  thirty  feet  long  and  four 
feet  broad,  and  sufficiently  spacious  to  convey  both 
horses  and  bullocks.  So  ample  are  their  dimen- 
sions that  there  is  no  risk  of  their  being  upset, 
nor  did  they  lurch  in  the  least  degree  as  we  got 
into  them.  They  were  made  with  both  ends  run- 
ning horizontally  out  into  a  beak,  and  the  border- 
lines were  ornamented  with  carved  figures. 

"  I  had  seen  the  teak  canoes  of  the  Red  Sea, 
which  are  called  '  hoory '  in  Arabic,  and  are  of 
a  build  imported  from  India,  and  many  of  the 
canoes  which  are  in  use  at  Saakim  and  Djidda; 
but  none  of  these  were  comparable,  either  with 
respect  to  size  or  elegance,  with  the  canoes  of  the 
Monbuttoo." 

Mr.  Stanley  speaks  of  similar  canoes  at  the 
mouth  of  the  Aruwimi,  which  he  places  some  250 
miles  to  the  southwest  of  Schweinfurth's  position, 
the  river  itself  being  obviously  either  the  Uelle  or 
a  larger  stream  to  which  the  latter  is  an  affluent, 
or  at  least  a  river  draining  the  same  country 
and  having  similar  characteristics  to  those  which 
Schweinfurth  has  so  ably  described.  Mr.  Stan- 
ley's words  are  as  follows  : 

"Down  the  natives  came,  fast  and  furious,  but 
in  magnificent  style.  Everything  about  them  was 
superb.  Their  canoes  were  enormous  things,  one 
especially,  a  monster  of  eighty  paddlers,  forty  on  a 
side,  with  paddles  eight  feet  long,  spear-headed, 
and  really  pointed  with  iron  blades— for  close 
quarters,  I  presume.  The  top  of  each  paddle- 
shaft  was  adorned  with  an  ivory  ball.  The  chiefs 
pranced  up  and  down  a  planking  that  ran  from 
stem  to  stern.  On  a  platform  near  the  bow  were 
ten  choice  young  fellows,  swaying  their  long  spears 
at  the  ready.  In  the  stern  of  this  great  war-canoe 
stood  eight  steersmen,  guiding  her  toward  us. 
There  were  about  twenty— three-fourths  of  her 
size— also  fine-looking ;  but  none  made  qnite  such 
an  imposing  show.  At  a  rough  guess  there  must 
have  been  from  1,500  to  2,000  savages  within  these 
fifty-four  canoes." 

Another  point  of  resemblance  between  the 
characteristics  of  Schweinfurth's  country  and 
those  at  the  mouth  of  the  Aruwimi  are  the  dwarf 
inhabitants.  We  find  the  words  "Region  of 
dwarfs  "  near  that  place  in  Mr.  Stanley's  map  that 
is  published  by  the  Daily  Telegraph,  and  we  are 
all  familiar  with  Schweinfurth's  description  of  the 


diminutive  race  that  fell  under  his  own  notice. 
When  fuller  reports  reach  us,  we  shall  no  doubt 
hear  much  of  extreme  interest  on  this  subject, 
which  throws  important  light  on  the  nature  of  the 
aboriginal  inhabitants  of  Africa,  or  at  least  of 
those  who  preceded  the  negro. 

The  point  of  contact  between  Stanley  and 
Barth's  informant  is  at  the  northernmost  part 
of  the  great  arc  of  the  Congo,  where  muskets 
were  seen  and  robes  were  worn  by  the  chiefs  of 
crimson  blanket-cloth,  bearing  witness  to  the  ex- 
istence of  a  native  trade  with  the  north.  Barth 
himself  was  never  within  600  miles  of  this  spot, 
but  he  was  a  great  collector  of  itineraries,  and 
there  was  one  in  particular  upon  which  he  laid 
the  greatest  stress.  He  did  so  with  such  good 
reason,  that  the  river  of  Kubanda,  of  which  we 
are  about  to  speak,  has  ever  since  been  regarded 
by  geographers  as  a  fact  to  be  accounted  for  in 
whatever  theory  might  on  other  grounds  be  ad- 
vanced as  to  the  hydrography  of  Central  Africa. 
This  river,  as  laid  down  by  Barth  in  his  map, 
coincides  very  fairly  with  the  part  of  the  Congo 
above  mentioned.  Such  distrust  attaches  itself 
to  all  native  information,  that  it  is  well  to  explain 
at  some  length  the  qualifications  of  Barth's  in- 
formant ;  and  in  doing  so  a  double  purpose  will 
be  served,  for  we  shall  have  further  on  to  lay 
much  stress  on  the  merits  of  the  Arab  civilization 
in  Africa,  of  which  the  man  in  question  is  an  ex- 
ceptionally high  example.  He  was !  the  Faki 
Sambo,  a  person  of  the  Fellatah  race,  and  of 
wide-spread  reputation,  with  whom  Barth  spent 
many  hours  of  conversation  at  Massena,  about 
100  miles  to  the  southeast  of  Lake  Tchad.  He 
says: 

"  I  could  hardly  have  expected  to  find  in  this 
out-of-the-way  place  a  man  not  only  versed  in  all 
the  branches  of  Arabic  literature,  but  who  had  even 
read  (nay,  possessed  a  manuscript  of)  those  por- 
tions of  Aristotle  and  Plato  which  had  been  trans- 
lated into,  or  rather  Mohammedanized  in,  Arabic, 
and  who  possessed  the  most  intimate  knowledge 
of  the  countries  he  had  visited.  .  .  .  When  he  was 
a  young  man,  his  father,  who  himself  possessed  a 
good  deal  of  learning,  and  who  had  written  a  work 
on  Hausa,  sent  him  to  Egypt,  where  he  had  studied 
many  years  in  the  mosque  of  El  Azhar.  It  had 
been  his  intention  to  go  to  the  town  of  Zebid  in 
Yemen,  which  is  famous  among  the  Arabs  on  ac- 
count of  the  science  of  logarithms,  or  el  hesab;  but, 
when  he  had  reached  Gunfiida,  the  war  which 
was  raging  between  the  Turks  and  the  Wahabiye 
had  thwarted  his  projects,  and  he  had  returned  to 
Darfur,  where  he  had  settled  down  some  time,  and 

1  Barth's  "  Travels  in  Central  Africa,"  vol.  iii.,  p.  373. 


STANLEY'S  DISCOVERIES  AND   TEE  FUTURE  OF  AFRICA.      4H 


had  accompanied  a  memorable  expedition  to  the 
southwest,  as  far  as  the  borders  of  a  large  river, 
of  which  I  shall  have  another  occasion  to  speak." 

A  short  account  of  the  expedition  that  he  ac- 
companied is  given  in  the  "  Journal  of  the  Royal 
Geographical  Society."  '  They  passed  through 
Bimberri,  a  pagan  country,  to  Kubanda,  a  large 
place  extending  ten  or  twelve  miles  along  the 
banks  of  a  river,  so  large  that  they  could  with 
difficulty  make  out  people  standing  on  the  south- 
ern bank,  and  which  was  not  fordable.  This 
river  ran  straight  from  east  to  west.  In  a  second 
expedition  a  little  to  the  west  of  this,  they  reached 
a  pagan  country,  Andoma,  inhabited  by  a  very 
warlike  race,  who  had  oxen  and  sheep.  Their 
country  was  covered  with  a  great  profusion  of 
trees,  of  which  the  native  names  are  given.  The 
king  sat  on  a  throne  constructed  of  elephants' 
tusks  laid  one  above  the  other.  This  latter  state- 
ment corresponds  with  Stanley's  account  of  the 
ivory  structure  of  solid  tusks  surrounding  an  idol; 
and  as  to  the  former  Schweinfurth  remarks  that 
among  the  trees  mentiond  by  the  Faki  Sambo  is 
the  "  Kumba  " — the  Kumba  being  the  name  in 
the  Niam-niam  language  for  the  abundant  Mala- 
ghetta  pepper  (Xylopia  JEthiopica),  which  has 
communicated  its  name  to  the  "  Pepper  Coast " 
of  Western  Africa.  This  gives  some  ground  for 
supposing  that  the  river  of  Kubanda  debouches 
on  the  coast  of  Western  Africa. 

Mr.  Stanley's  discoveries  come,  therefore, 
most  opportunely  in  the  present  state  of  geo- 
graphical science.  They  supply  central  threads 
in  the  network  of  routes  by  which,  through  his 
efforts,  Africa  is  now  finally  covered.  As  it  is, 
perhaps,  the  greatest  of  the  first-class  explora- 
tory achievements  in  Africa,  so  it  is  the  last  of 
those  which  the  world  now  admits  other  than  in 
the  barren  regions  of  either  pole.  It  has  dis- 
sected and  laid  bare  the  very  heart  of  the  great 
continent  of  Africa. 

It  is  not  proposed  in  the  following  remarks  to 
trace  the  steps  or  to  epitomize  the  discoveries  of 
Mr.  Stanley.  The  materials  are  not  before  us,  as 
we  pen  these  lines,  for  doing  so  with  any  ap- 
proach to  completeness  or  justice.  But  the  oc- 
casion is  a  good  one  to  make  some  general 
remarks  on  the  proximate  future  of  Africa,  based 
on  the  experiences  of  many  previous  travelers, 
and  confirmed  by  the  geographical  facts  in  their 
broad  outlines  as  now  made  known  to  us. 

What  is  the  extent  and  value  of  the  territory 
that  has  been  discovered  in  Equatorial  Africa  by 

1  "  Journal  of  Royal  Geographical  Society,"  1853, 
p.  120. 


Mr.  Stanley  and  his  immediate  predecessors,  and 
what  action  should  be  taken  by  ourselves  or 
others  to  turn  these  discoveries  to  the  best  ad- 
vantage to  themselves  and  to  the  world  at  large  ? 
In  short,  what  do  we  find  in  Central  Africa,  and 
what  should  we  do  with  it  ? 

The  first  consideration  is  that  of  mere  size  of 
territory,  comparing  the  area  of  the  regions  in 
question  with  those  situated  between  the  same 
latitudes  in  other  parts  of  the  world.  They  are 
essentially  equatorial  regions,  as  distinguished 
from  tropical  ones ;  that  is  to  say,  they  lie  within 
some  twelve  and  a  half  degrees  north  and  south 
of  the  equator,  where  the  climate  tends  to  be 
more  hot  and  damp  than  under  the  tropics,  and 
where  the  vegetation  is  peculiarly  luxuriant  and 
rank  in  regions  little  elevated  above  the  sea-level. 
There  cannot  be  a  greater  contrast  between  ad- 
jacent districts  than  that  which,  on  the  whole,  sub- 
sists between  the  equatorial  and  tropical  regions. 
We  find  in  the  latter  the  burning  deserts  and  the 
arid  plains  of  the  Sahara  and  Arabia,  of  those 
near  the  Indus,  of  Utah  and  Colorado,  in  the 
Northern  Hemisphere,  and  those  of  Kalahari, 
Central  Australia,  and  Atacama.  in  the  Southern. 
We  must,  therefore,  carefully  distinguish  between 
equatorial  and  tropical  lands,  in  making  compari- 
son between  the  area  with  which  we  are  now 
concerned  in  Africa  and  that  of  similar  districts  in 
other  parts  of  the  globe.  If  we  turn  to  a  map  of  the 
world,  and  reckon  the  amount  of  equatorial  land 
in  Africa  as  five,  we  shall  find  the  amount  of 
equatorial  land  in  South  and  Central  America  to 
be  as  four,  and  the  aggregate  of  the  remainder, 
elsewhere  on  the  globe,  to  be  as  one.  The  latter 
is  scattered  in  numerous  fragments  over  all  parts 
of  the  huge  equatorial  zone  that  encircles  the 
world — the  most  important  of  these  being  the 
southernmost  horn  of  India,  Ceylon,  the  Malay 
Peninsula,  Sumatra,  Borneo,  Celebes,  New  Guinea, 
the  northern  shoulder  of  Australia,  and  a  multi- 
tude of  islands  in  the  Pacific,  including  our  new 
colony  of  Fiji.  But  the  combined  area  of  all  this 
is  only  about  a  fourth  part  of  the  area  of  the 
corresponding  regions  of  South  America,  and, 
adding  all  together,  we  obtain  a  grand  total  of 
equatorial  land  that  is  just  equivalent  in  size  to 
that  in  Africa.  The  discoveries  of  Livingstone, 
Burton  and  Speke,  Cameron,  and  other  recent 
travelers,  in  addition  to  those  of  Stanley,  have 
made  us  acquainted  with  a  region  that  is  as  large 
as  the  whole  of  the  equatorial  lands  that  exist 
elsewhere  in  the  world. 

So  much  for  mere  size ;  next  as  regards  ele- 
vation above  the  sea-level.     The  equatorial  low- 


412 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


lands  are,  on  the  whole,  little  suited  to  support  a 
large  population.  They  are  mostly  choked  with 
rank  vegetation ;  they  are  damp,  and  reeking 
with  miasma.  But  a  large  part  of  Central  Africa 
is  much  more  favorably  situated.  It  consists  of 
elevated  basins,  one  containing  the  upper  waters 
of  the  Congo,  another  those  of  the  Nile,  another 
that  of  Lake  Tchad,  a  fourth  that  of  the  Benue 
and  Niger,  and  all  are  flanked  by  broad  ridges 
near  and  parallel  to  either  coast.  The  floors  of 
these  basins  are  more,  sometimes  much  more, 
than  one  thousand  feet  above  the  sea-level,  and, 
in  consequence  of  this  exceptional  altitude,  they 
are  subjected  to  a  climate  far  drier  and  lighter 
than  that  which  characterizes  the  larger  part  of 
the  equatorial  land  that  exists  elsewhere  in  the 
world.  A  considerable  part  of  Central  Africa 
maintains  a  teeming  population,  contrasting 
strongly  with  the  sparse  inhabitants  of  South 
America ;  and  the  capabilities  of  the  country  gen- 
erally appear  to  be  such  as  would  enable  it,  so 
far  as  they  alone  are  concerned,  to  be  as  populous 
as  any  part  of  the  world. 

The  very  causes  that  conduce  to  the  compar- 
ative salubrity  and  to  the  fertility  of  Central  Af- 
rica militate  against  its  easy  commercial  inter- 
course with  other  countries.  Its  rivers,  in  trav- 
ersing the  mountain-ridges  that  confine  its  ele- 
vated interior  basins,  descend  to  the  lower  lands 
near  the  sea-shore  through  a  succession  of  falls 
or  rapids,  and  are,  therefore,  impracticable  as 
continuous  water-ways  leading  from  the  interior 
to  the  ocean.  The  Congo  is  undoubtedly  the 
most  marked  of  all  these  instances,  being  at  the 
same  time  the  river  that  gives  the  principal  out- 
let to  the  waters  that  fall  in  the  equatorial  lands. 
The  rapids  begin  within  a  very  few  miles  of  the 
head  of  its  magnificent  estuary,  and  are  totally 
insurmountable  by  ship,  boat,  or  canoe.  The 
river  passes  through  gorges,  of  the  lowermost  of 
which  Tuckey  has  given  us  a  minute  description. 
Ascending  the  river  still  higher,  those  falls  and 
rapids  are  reached  down  which  Stanley's  party 
drifted  in  continual  danger,  and  in  one  of  which 
Francis  Pocock  was  drowned.  Such  is  the  nar- 
rowness and  depth  of  the  rift  through  which  the 
Congo  passes,  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  Yellala 
Falls,  that,  when  looked  down  upon  from  above, 
the  mighty  river  seemed  to  Tuckey's  party  as  if 
it  had  shrunk  to  the  size  of  a  Scottish  burn.  It 
was  strangely  contracted  in  width,  and  even  in 
that  reduced  water-way  its  course  was  further 
constricted  and  choked  by  masses  of  rock.  It 
was  difficult  to  believe  that  the  mighty  volume  of 
the  river  could  find  its  passage  through  so  nar- 


row a  channel,  and  the  hypothesis  was  freely  en- 
tertained by  members  of  the  party  that  the  bulk 
of  the  river  must  have  found  a  subterranean 
course.  They  supposed  that  the  greater  part  of 
its  waters  disappeared  at  the  point  where  the 
narrows  began,  and  rose  again  to  the  surface 
after  their  termination.  Here  a  succession  of 
violent  whirlpools  and  upheavals  disturb  the  cur- 
rent of  the  river ;  they  are  so  turbulent  that  no 
vessel  can  venture  to  approach  them,  and  it  was 
with  the  greatest  difficulty  that  the  boats  of  Cap- 
tain Tuckey's  party  were  extricated  even  from 
their  eddies.1  Stanley's  route  struck  overland  at 
the  point  where  these  narrows  began,  and,  there- 
fore, he  had  not  the  opportunity  of  seeing  this 
part  of  the  river ;  but  he  gives  a  graphic  descrip- 
tion of  the  gorges  higher  up-stream,  through 
which  he  and  his  party  struggled  for  nearly  half 
a  year : 

"  While  we  were  fighting  our  tragical  way  over 
the  long  series  of  falls  along  a  distance  of  more  than 
180  miles,  which  occupied  us  five  months,  we  lived 
as  though  we  were  in  a  tunnel,  subject  at  intervals 
to  the  thunderous  crash  of  passing  trains.  Ah  !  so 
different  it  was  from  that  soft,  glassy  flow  of  the 
river  by  the  black  forests  of  Uregga  and  Koruru, 
where  a  single  tremulous  wave  was  a  rarity,  when 
we  glided  day  after  day  through  the  eerie  wilds,  in 
sweet,  delicious  musings,  when  our  souls  were 
thrilled  at  sight  of  the  apparently  impenetrable  for- 
ests on  either  hand,  when  at  misty  morn,  or  humid 
eve,  or  fervid  noon,  wild  Nature  breathes  over  a 
soft  stillness.  .  .  .  But  there  is  no  fear  of  any  other 
explorer  attempting  to  imitate  our  work  here.  Nor 
would  we  have  ventured  upon  this  terrible  task  had 
we  the  slightest  idea  that  such  fearful  impediments 
were  before  us."  2 

None  of  the  other  rivers  of  Equatorial  Africa 
give  commercial  access  to  the  interior.  Thus  the 
Ogowai,  though  pursued  far  up-stream  by  recent 
explorers,  is  hardly  practicable  for  small  vessels 
even  up  to  its  falls,  some  250  miles  from  the  sea. 
The  navigation  of  the  Coanza  is  interrupted  by 
falls  140  miles  from  its  mouth. 

On  the  eastern  coast  the  rivers  are  small,  ex- 
cepting the  Zambesi,  whose  channel  is  full  of 
shifting  sand-banks,  and  whose  mouth  is  closed  by 
a  dangerous  bar.  Moreover,  its  upper  course  is 
broken  by  the  cataracts  of  Kebra-bassa  and 
Mosio-tunya.  Its  tributary,  the  Shire,  up  which 
small  vessels  might  otherwise  pass  from  the  sea 
to  Lake  Nyassa,  is  blocked  by  30  miles  of  rapids. 
The  other  rivers  on  the  same  coast  have  their 
sources  on  the  seaward  side  of  the  ridge  that  con- 

1  Tuckey's  "  Congo,"  p.  340,  etc. 

2  Daily  Telegraph,  November  22, 1877. 


STANLEY'S  DISCOVERIES  AND   TEE  FUTURE  OF  AFRICA.      413 


fines  the  central  basins,  and  therefore  cannot  give 
access  to  them.  Moreover,  they  are  but  narrow 
streams,  little  fitted  even  for  steamers  of  the 
smallest  size.  The  Juba  has  a  long  course,  but 
it  does  not  come  from  the  central  equatorial  re- 
gions. 

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

The  difficulties  that  beset  the  approach  to  the 


interior  of  Equatorial  Africa  by  means  of  its 
rivers,  contrast  most  remarkably  with  the  ease 
with  which  the  almost  equally  large  equatorial 
regions  of  South  America  are  reached  by  the 
Amazon  and  the  Orinoco.  The  natural  internal 
navigation  of  that  continent  is  magnificent,  and 
such  as  is  to  be  met  with  in  no  other  part  of  the 
world.  South  America  may  be  traversed  almost 
to  the  Andes  and  in  all  other  directions  by  a  sys- 
tem of  rivers,  whose  main  streams  are  capable  of 
bearing  large  sea-going  vessels  for  hundreds  of 
miles  from  their  mouths. 

The  interior  of  the  several  equatorial  lands 
that  are  dispersed  in  fragments  elsewhere  over 
the  globe,  is  necessarily  more  accessible,  so  far 
as  physical  difficulties  of  distance  are  alone  con- 
cerned, on  account  of  their  small  size.  They  lie 
on  the  ocean  highways,  and  whatever  produce 
they  may  yield  that  is  worth  exporting  can  be 
easily  made  into  an  article  of  commerce.  But 
Africa  is  comparatively  self-contained  and  se- 
cluded ;  a  vast  population  may  thrive  in  its  in- 
terior upon  the  produce  of  its  soil;  the  means 
they  have  of  internal  communication  by  lake  and 
river  are  excellent,  but  they  are  to  an  unusual 
degree  shut  out  from  foreign  trade.  The  easiest 
of  all  forms  of  communication  with  the  outside 
world  is  denied  them  by  the  physical  structure 
of  their  continent ;  they  are  geographically  doomed 
to  commercial  isolation  as  regards  the  more  bulky 
articles  of  traffic. 

What  does  the  interior  of  Africa  produce  that 
would  make  it  worth  the  trader's  while  to  fetch 
from  so  great  a  distance  ?  A  long  list  of  equa- 
torial products  has  often  been  suggested  as  the 
subjects  of  a  future  commerce ;  but  the  objection 
against  most  of  them  is,  that  the  same  products 
can  be  grown  with  equal  ease  in  other  countries 
much  easier  of  access,  or  on  the  seaboard  of 
Africa  itself.  There  is  far  more  equatorial  land 
in  the  world  than  suffices  for  the  commercial 
wants  of  non-equatorial  countries.  We  have  so 
great  a  glut  of  it  that  an  enormously  large  pro- 
portion of  the  long-known  parts  remains  unutil- 
ized. The  new  discovery  of  an  additional  amount 
of  similar  country  in  Africa  is  of  no  importance 
to  us  as  regards  the  products  of  which  we  have 
just  been  speaking.  It  is,  of  course,  impossible 
to  say  but  that  further  exploration  may  discover 
articles  of  commerce  that  Africa  alone  can  afford, 
and  of  which  we  have  as  yet  no  knowledge.  We 
have  seen  that  its  elevated  basins  under  an  equa- 
torial sun  are  a  peculiar  geographical  feature ; 
therefore  we  may  indulge  in  such  hopes,  though 
we  do  not  venture  to  build  upon  them. 


414 


TEE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTELY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


The  mineral  wealth  of  Africa  in  iron,  copper, 
and  other  metals,  has  been  often  spoken  of,  and 
is  no  doubt  of  great  importance  to  its  inhabitants. 
It  cannot,  however,  be  seriously  proposed  to  ex- 
port these  heavy  articles  from  the  far  interior  to 
the  coast.  It  so  happens  that  ores  of  malachite 
do  exist  in  large  quantities  in  Benguela,  at  not 
more  than  140  miles  from  the  sea,  and  that  their 
export  has  been  attempted  by  English  companies. 
But  though  the  mines  were  rich  the  cost  of  pro- 
duction and  carriage  exceeded  the  value  of  the 
ore ;  they  therefore  failed  to  repay  the  advent- 
urers. If  it  did  not  pay  to  work  these  mines,  so 
favorably  situated  for  the  purpose  in  many  re- 
spects, how  can  it  be  reasonably  hoped  that 
foreigners  will  be  able  to  work  mines  situated  in 
the  far  interior  to  an  advantage  ? 

There  is  certainly  one  peculiar  product  of 
Africa,  namely  ivory,  which  has  had,  and  which 
will  long  have,  a  large  influence  in  promoting  its 
commerce  and  consequent  civilization.  It  is 
gratifying  to  learn  from  Mr.  Stanley  that  ivory 
abounds  on  the  Upper  Congo.  Near  the  conflu- 
ence of  the  Aruwimi,  he  saw  a  village  where  the 
quantity  of  ivory  lying  useless  about  astonished 
him. 

"  There  was  an  ivory  '  temple ' — a  structure  of 
solid  tusks  surrounding  an  idol ;  ivory  logs,  which, 
by  the  marks  of  hatchets  visible  on  them,  must 
have  been  used  to  chop  wood  upon;  ivory  war- 
horns,  some  of  them  three  feet  long ;  ivory  mallets, 
ivory  wedges  to  split  wood,  ivory  pestles  to  grind 
their  cassava,  and  before  the  chiefs  house  was  a 
veranda,  or  burzah,  the  posts  of  which  were  long 
tusks  of  ivory.  We  picked  up  133  pieces  of  ivory 
which,  according  to  rough  calculation,  would  real- 
ize, or  ought  to  realize,  about  $18,000." 

Unfortunately,  so  soon  as  an  ivory  traffic  is 
established,  and  as  a  consequence  of  it,  guns  are 
freely  purchased,  and  the  export  of  the  ivory 
thenceforward  proceeds  far  more  rapidly  than 
the  ivory  can  be  reproduced.  Such  stores  of  it 
as  may  exist  are  soon  made  away  with,  while  the 
elephants  are  shot  down  in  such  large  numbers  that 
they  become  rapidly  exterminated.  When  the 
ivory-trade  shall  have  died  away  through  exhaus- 
tion of  these  animals,  one  of  the  agents  that  are 
best  suited  to  promote  the  civilization  of  Africa 
will  have  disappeared.  Leaving  aside  philan- 
thropic considerations  for  the  moment,  and  look- 
ing at  Africa  from  the  point  of  view  of  our  own 
ancestors,  and  of  the  modern  Arab,  and  of  a  very 
large  portion  of  the  remainder  of  the  human  race, 
there  was  a  singular  congruity  between  the  old- 
fashioned  ivory  and  slave  traffic  and  the  physical 


as  well  as  the  social  conditions  of  the  continent. 
Enslavement  of  a  weaker  neighbor  has  ever  been 
the  recognized  custom  of  the  country;  and  it 
was  a  charmingly  naive  device  of  turning  their 
superfluous  slaves  and  their  collections  of  ivory 
to  commercial  account,  to  put  a  tusk  on  the  back 
of  each  slave  and  march  him  with  his  burden  to 
the  coast,  selling  both  the  porter  and  the  ivory  on 
their  arrival  there.  But  we  may,  fortunately  for 
Africa,  with  much  commercial  advantage,  substi- 
tute the  labor  of  cattle  for  that  of  human  porters. 
The  tsetze-fly  is  not  so  widely  spread  as  had  been 
feared.  The  Cape  wagon  with  its  yokes  of  oxen 
has  already  been  driven  inland  from  the  coast 
opposite  Zanzibar,  and  one  wagon  will  carry  the 
loads  of  sixty  men.  Looked  at  merely  as  beasts 
of  burden,  negro  porters,  even  if  bought  for  noth- 
ing, and  sold  at  some  few  pounds  a  head  on  reach- 
ing the  coast,  are  not  so  cheap  and  effective  on 
an  established  route  as  a  wagon  and  its  team  of 
oxen. 

There  is  one  mineral  product  which  may  pos- 
sibly be  destined  to  transfigure  Africa,  and  that 
is  gold.  We  know  that  it  is  found  in  many  parts 
of  the  boundary  ridge  of  the  central  basin. 
There  is  the  gold  of  Abyssinia  and  Sennaar,  and 
on  the  opposite  side  of  the  continent,  gold  is  col- 
lected from  all  parts  of  the  high  land  parallel  to 
the  coast  between  the  mouths  of  the  Senegal  and 
the  Niger.  It  has  given  its  name  to  the  Gold 
Coast,  and  our  name  of  the  guinea  is  derived 
from  the  gulf  of  Guinea.  Moreover,  a  steady  ex- 
port of  gold  has  existed  from  apparently  the  most 
ancient  historical  times,  by  routes  leading  from 
the  landward  side  of  the  districts  in  which  it  is 
found  across  the  Sahara  to  the  Mediterranean. 
But  above  all  in  present  productiveness  are  the 
recently-discovered  gold-fields  in  Southeastern 
Africa.  Its  export  from  Sofala  and  the  Zambesi 
district  is  of  ancient  date,  but  within  the  last  few 
years  a  vast  extent  of  country  to  the  south- 
ward of  this  has  been  found  to  be  auriferous. 
Should  further  discoveries  of  gold  be  made,  they 
may  supply  the  inducement  that  at  present  is 
needed  for  men  of  other  races  than  the  negro, 
such  as  the  Chinese  coolie,  to  emigrate,  and,  by 
occupying  parts  of  the  continent,  to  introduce  a 
civilization  superior  to  that  which  at  present  ex- 
ists. 

Africa  affords  a  motive  for  settlements  of  a 
few  white  men  in  a  line  down  the  middle  of  its 
interior. for  the  establishment  of  an  overland 
telegraph  between  Alexandria  and  the  Cape,  in- 
stead of,  or  in  addition  to,  the  costly  and  precari- 
ous alternative  of  an  ocean-cable.    At  first  sight, 


STANLEY'S  DISCOVERIES  AND   TEE  FUTURE  OF  AFRICA.      415 


nothing  can  seem  more  absurd  than  the  serious 
proposal  to  carry  so  modern  and  refined  an  appli- 
ance of  European  civilization  as  the  electric  tele- 
graph through  the  heart  of  so  savage  a  region  as 
that  which  intervenes  between  Gondokoro  and 
the  Transvaal.  But  the  subject  has  been  much 
discussed  by  African  experts,  and  the  more  it  is 
considered  the  more  feasible  does  it  appear. 
Much  experience  already  exists  in  respect  to  the 
establishment  of  telegraph-wires  through  savage 
or  lawless  countries,  and  the  result  is  entirely 
favorable  to  the  possibility  of  their  maintenance 
in  Africa.  Savages  do  not  appear  to  take  alarm 
at  the  first  sight  of  the  pole  and  wires,  and  they 
become  both  accustomed  to  their  presence,  and 
to  comprehend  and  appreciate  their  object  as  the 
line  is  progressively  laid  down.  The  savage 
soon  learns  that  any  injury  to  the  line  is  at  once 
found  out,  and  its  locality  known,  in  a  way  that 
is  mysterious  to  him,  so  that  he  acquires  a  super- 
stitious respect  for  the  wire.  Again,  as  small 
subsidies  are  given  to  the  chiefs  through  whose 
territories  it  passes,  to  insure  its  security,  its  pres- 
ence  is  acceptable  to  them,  and  felt  to  be  advan- 
tageous ;  moreover,  it  is  often  of  local  service  be- 
tween neighboring  stations.  We  can  have  little 
doubt  that  the  establishment  of  a  line  of  tele- 
graphic depots,  with  their  European  residents, 
from  north  to  south  in  Africa,  would  have  con- 
siderable effect  in  maintaining  order  among  the 
tribes  through  which  it  passed. 

Africa  is  destitue  of  capitalized  wealth.  No 
rich  and  luxurious  civilization  has  existed  in  its 
equatorial  regions,  like  that  of  Peru  or  of  India, 
to  tempt  commercial  adventurers.  Excepting  in 
the  Arab  kingdoms  to  the  north,  it  is  a  land 
of  hovels,  or,  at  the  best,  of  thatched  houses,  and 
of  a  hand-to-mouth  existence.  The  negro  has  no 
instinct  to  build  solidly  and  for  perpetuity ;  he 
therefore  wants  the  most  important  of  the  ele- 
ments that  conduce  to  civilization,  for  without  a 
material  nucleus  of  solid  buildings  no  respectable 
civilization  can  exist. 

All  the  circumstances  we  have  adduced  point 
to  the  general  conclusion  that  the  existing  prod- 
uce of  Equatorial  Africa  is  insufficient  to  form  the 
basis  of  a  really  large  commercial  traffic.  We 
must  not  allow  ourselves  to  be  over-sanguine,  and 
fall  into  the  often-repeated  error  of  those  who 
have  interested  themselves  philanthropically  in 
Africa,  by  yielding  to  an  unjustifiable  enthusiasm, 
and  placing  too  much  confidence  in  the  speedy 
development  of  a  great  commerce  with  that  con- 
tinent. 

How  does  the  negro  rank  as  a  laborer  ?  There 


is  great  diversity  witnessed  in  Africa,  partly  de- 
pendent on  race  and  partly  on  the  temporary  na- 
tional mood,  which  may  at  one  time  be  inclined 
to  peaceful  pursuits  and  at  another  time  to  war, 
and  which  also  may  be  inspired  by  a  hopeful 
sense  of  success  in  life,  or  by  that  of  desponden- 
cy. It  will,  however,  be  of  much  use  to  us,  in 
endeavoring  to  answer  the  question  as  fairly  as 
possible,  to  consider  the  opinions  formed  of  the 
negro  when  he  is  working  side  by  side  with  men 
of  other  races.  Very  useful  testimony  upon  this 
is  given  in  the  "  Report  on  the  Treatment  of  Im- 
migrants in  British  Guiana,"  where  Africans,  East 
Indians,  and  Chinese,  are  all  to  be  found  as  cool- 
ies, and  where  their  respective  national  character- 
istics have  been  the  subject  of  direct  inquiry. 
They  work  in  gangs  ;  the  negro  gang  has  almost 
always  a  negro  for  a  driver,  though  sometimes  the 
driver  is  a  Portuguese ;  the  East  Indian  coolie 
has  commonly  a  negro  driver,  and  the  Chinaman 
has  always  a  Chinese.  The  African  can  do  the  best 
day's  work  at  field-labor  of  all,  and  he  despises  the 
East  Indian  for  his  want  of  strength.  The  East 
Indian  cannot  earn  half  as  much  as  the  African  in 
the  same  number  of  hours,  but  he  despises  him  for 
his  uncivilized  ways.  The  Chinese  is  the  most 
intelligent  of  the  three,  and  is  more  independent 
than  the  East  Indian,  but  he  is  always  ready  to 
leave  field-work  for  any  other  occupation.  If 
there  were  no  compulsion,  the  negro  would  have 
idled  more  than  the  other  two,  his  tale  of  work 
would  probably  have  fallen  below  theirs,  and  he 
would  have  become  a  sturdy  pauper.  Such,  for 
the  most  part,  is  the  condition  of  the  free  negro 
in  Africa. 

The  African  is  much  inferior  to  the  European, 
and  especially  to  the  East  Indian,  in  his  handi- 
craft ;  the  only  manual  work  in  which  negroes 
show  fair  dexterity  in  their  native  land  being  that 
of  blacksmiths.  Their  forge  and  tools  are  curi- 
ously rude,  but  as  their  iron  is  pure  owing  to  the 
use  of  charcoal-fuel,  and  as  they  take  much  pleas- 
ure in  working  it,  the  results  are  very  creditable. 
Their  spear-heads  are  frequently  shaped  with  ele- 
gance, and  they  are  light  and  strong — indeed 
they  are  such  as  a  second-rate  country  blacksmith 
in  England  would  find  difficulty  in  rivaling. 

The  negro,  taken  generally,  is  idle  and  clumsy, 
but  we  must  not  allow  ourselves  to  speak  of  him 
in  terms  of  universal  dispraise.  The  fact  is,  that 
while  his  average  pleasure  in  work  and  his  aver- 
age manual  dexterity  are  low  when  measured  by 
a  European  standard,  it  is  by  no  means  so  low  as 
to  make  it  impossible  for  a  few  exceptional  in- 
dividuals  and   even   communities  to  rise  to  an 


416 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


equality  with  average  Europeans.  By  picking  and 
choosing  the  best  individuals  out  of  a  multitude 
of  negroes,  we  could  obtain  a  very  decent  body 
of  laborers  and  artisans ;  but  if  we  took  the  same 
number  of  them  just  as  they  came,  without  any 
process  of  selection,  their  productive  power, 
whether  as  regards  the  results  of  toilsome  labor 
or  of  manual  dexterity,  would  be  very  small. 

The  indolence  of  the  African  is  partly  consti- 
tutional and  partly  due  to  the  paucity  of  his 
wants,  which  can  be  satisfied  in  his  own  country 
with  so  little  effort  that  the  stimulus  to  exertion 
is  wanting.  Leaving  for  the  moment  out  of  con- 
sideration the  combative,  marauding,  cruel,  and 
superstitious  parts  of  bis  nature,  and  all  that  is 
connected  with  the  satisfaction  of  his  grosser 
bodily  needs,  his  supreme  happiness  consists  in 
idling  and  in  gossip,  in  palavers  and  in  petty  mar- 
kets. He  has  no  high  aspirations.  Nothing  that 
the  produce  of  his  labor  can  purchase  for  him,  in 
addition  to  the  supply  of  primary  necessaries, 
equals  in  his  estimation  those  pleasures  of  idle- 
ness that  he  must  perforce  forego  by  the  very  act 
of  laboring.  His  natural  instincts  are  such,  that 
the  practice  of  hard  daily  labor  is  really  bad  po- 
litical economy  on  his  part.  He  loses  more  of 
that  which  is  of  value  to  him  in  consequence  of 
his  labor  than  he  gains  by  what  his  labor  pro- 
duces. He  has  little  care  for  those  objects  of 
luxury  or  for  that  aesthetic  life  which  men  of  a  more 
highly-endowed  race  labor  hard  to  attain.  His 
coarse  pleasure,  vigorous  physique,  and  indolent 
moods,  as  compared  with  those  of  Europeans, 
bear  some  analogy  to  the  corresponding  qualities 
in  the  African  buffalo,  long  since  acclimatized  in 
Italy,  as  compared  with  those  of  the  cattle  of  Eu- 
rope. Most  of  us  have  observed  in  the  Campa- 
gna  of  Rome  the  ways  of  that  ferocious,  powerful, 
and  yet  indolent  brute.  We  may  have  seen  him 
plunged  stationary  for  hours  in  mud  and  marsh, 
in  gross  contentment  under  a  blazing  sun ;  at 
other  times  we  may  have  noticed  some  outbreak 
of  stupid,  stubborn  ferocity ;  at  others  we  may 
have  seen  him  firmly  yoked  to  the  rudest  of  carts, 
doing  powerful  service  under  the  persistent  goad 
of  his  driver.  The  buffalo  is  of  value  for  coarse, 
heavy,  and  occasional  work,  being  of  strong  con- 
stitution, and  thriving  on  the  rankest  herbage; 
else  he  would  not  still  be  preserved  and  bred  in 
Italy.  But  he  must  be  treated  in  a  determined 
sort  of  way,  by  herdsmen  who  understand  his 
disposition,  or  no  work  will  be  got  out  of  him ; 
and  besides  that,  he  is  ferocious  and  sufficiently 
powerful  to  do  a  great  deal  of  mischief. 

The  capacity  of  the  negro  to  form  kingdoms  is 


an  important  factor  in  our  estimate  of  the  future 
development  of  Africa,  the  numerous  tribes  by 
which  a  great  part  of  the  continent  is  at  present 
occupied  being  a  great  hinderance  to  the  mainte- 
nance of  safe  thoroughfares  and  to  the  inexpen- 
sive transit  of  produce.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  con- 
siderable kingdoms  do  exist  in  Equatorial  Africa, 
though  a  notable  proportion  of  them  are  ruled  by 
sovereigns  who  are  not  of  pure  negro  blood.  It 
is  well  worth  while  to  collate  the  accounts  written 
by  various  travelers  on  the  social  and  political  life 
in  the  more  typical  of  these  kingdoms.  Thus  the 
following  extracts  relating  to  Kano  and  Uganda 
will  show,  the  first  the  effect  of  Arab  culture  and 
a  Hausa  race,  and  the  second  will  show  the  much 
lower  civilization  under  the  influence  of  Galla 
sovereigns,  which  nevertheless  is  less  coarse  than 
that  of  Dahomey  or  Cazembe. 

The  annexed  extract  is  from  Dr.  Barth.  It 
gives  an  interesting  picture  of  the  every-day  life 
in  Kano,  the  great  commercial  centre  of  north- 
ern Equatorial  Africa : 

"It  was  the  most  animated  picture  of  a  little 
world  in  itself,  so  different  in  external  form  from 
all  that  is  seen  in  European  towns,  yet  so  similar 
in  its  internal  principles.  Here  a  row  of  shops 
filled  with  articles  of  native  and  foreign  produce, 
with  buyers  and  sellers  in  every  variety  of  figure, 
complexion,  and  dress,  yet,  all  intent  upon  their 
little  gain,  endeavoring  to  cheat  each  other;  there 
a  large  shed,  like  a  hurdle,  full  of  half-naked, 
half-starved  slaves  torn  from  their  native  homes, 
from  their  wives  or  husbands,  from  their  children 
or  parents,  arranged  in  rows  like  cattle,  and  star- 
ing desperately  upon  the  buyers,  anxiously  'watch- 
ing into  whose  hands  it  should  be  their  destiny  to 
fall.  In  another  part  were  to  be  seen  all  the  neces- 
saries of  life ;  the  wealthy  buying  the  most  pala- 
table things  for  their  table,  the  poor  stopping  and 
looking  eagerly  upon  a  handful  of  grain ;  here  a 
rich  governor  dressed  in  silk  and  gaudy  clothes, 
mounted  upon  a  spirited  and  richly-caparisoned 
horse,  and  followed  by  a  host  of  idle,  insolent 
slaves ;  there  a  poor  blind  man  groping  his  way 
through  the  multitude,  and  fearing  at  every  step 
to  be  trodden  down ;  here  a  yard  neatly  fenced 
with  mats  of  reed,  and  provided  with  all  the  com- 
forts which  the  country  affords — a  clean,  snug- 
looking  cottage,  the  clay  walls  nicely  polished,  a 
shutter  of  reeds  placed  against  the  low,  well- 
rounded  door,  and  forbidding  intrusion  on  the 
privacy  of  life,  a  cool  shed  for  the  daily  household 
work,  a  fine,  spreading  alleluba-trec  affording  a 
pleasant  shade  during  the  hottest  hours  of  the 
day,  or  a  beautiful  gonda  or  papaya  unfolding  its 
large,  feather-like  leaves  above  a  slender,  smooth, 
and  undivided  stem,  or  the  tall  date-tree  waving 
over  the  whole  scene ;  the  matron  in  a  clean  black 


STANLEY'S  DISCOVERIES  AND   THE  FUTURE  OF  AFRICA.     417 


cotton  gown  wound  round  her  waist,  her  hair 
neatly-dressed  in  'ehokoli'  or  'bejaji,' husy  pre- 
paring the  meal  for  her  absent  husband,  or  spin- 
ning cotton,  and  at  the  same  time  urging  the  fe- 
male slaves  to  pound  the  corn ;  the  children  naked 
and  merry,  playing  about  in  the  sand  at  the  '  urgi- 
n-dawaki,'  or  the  <  da-n-ckacha,'  or  chasing  a 
straggling,  stubborn  goat;  earthenware  pots  and 
wooden  bowls,  all  cleanly  washed,  standing  in 
order.  Farther  on  a  dashing  Cyprian,  homeless, 
comfortless,  and  childless,  but  affecting  merriment 
or  forcing  a  wanton  laugh,  gaudily  ornamented 
with  numerous  strings  of  beads  round  her  neck, 
her  hair  fancifully  dressed  and  bound  with  a  dia- 
dem, her  gown  of  various  colors,  loosely  fastened 
under  her  luxuriant  breast,  and  trailing  behind  in 
the  sand ;  near  her  a  diseased  wretch  covered  with 
ulcers  or  with  elephantiasis."  1 

Speke  has  described  in  a  graphic  manner  the 
life  at  the  court  of  Uganda,  where  he  resided 
for  many  months.  Here  tbe  ruling  caste  are 
Gallas,  or  some  cognate  tribe,  totally  different  in 
race  from  the  people  whom  they  govern.  The 
moment  when  he  first  came  into  the  presence  of 
persons  of  this  caste,  he  says  that  he  felt  and 
saw  he  was  in  the  company  of  men  who  were  as 
unlike  as  they  could  be  to  the  common  order  of 
natives  in  the  surrounding  districts.  They  had 
fine  oval  faces,  large  eyes,  and  high  noses,  and  in 
their  deportment  and  intelligence  showed  them- 
selves to  be  far  the  superiors  of  the  negro.  Un- 
der the  rule  of  a  man,  Kimera  by  name,  of  this 
caste,  who  established  himself  in  the  country,  the 
kingdom  of  Uganda  was  formed  out  of  an  out- 
lying portion  of  a  much  larger  negro  state,  and 
it  was  organized  in  the  following  fashion.  Kime- 
ra formed  a  strong  clan,  apparently  of  his  im- 
migrant countrymen  around  him,  whom  he  ap- 
pointed to  be  his  immediate  officers ;  he  rewarded 
well,  punished  severely,  and  soon  became  mag- 
nificent. 

"Nothing  short  of  the  grandest  palace,  a  throne 
to  sit  upon,  the  largest  harem,  the  smartest  offi- 
cers, the  best-dressed  people,  even  a  menagerie 
for  pleasure— in  fact  only  the  best  of  everything — 
would  content  him.  .  .  .  The  system  of  govern- 
ment, according  to  barbarous  ideas,  was  perfect. 
Highways  were  cut  from  one  extremity  of  the 
country  to  the  other,  and  all  rivers  bridged.  No 
house  could  be  built  without  its  necessary  append- 
ages for  cleanliness;  no  person,  however  poor, 
could  expose  his  person ;  and  to  disobey  these 
laws  was  death."  - 

It  must,  however,  be  understood  that  the  grand 

1  Barth's  "  Travels  in  Central  Africa,"  vol.  ii.,  p. 


108. 


2  Speke,  "  The  Source  of  the  Nile,"  p.  253. 
63 


palace  is  only  a  structure  of  palisading  and 
thatch,  and  that  the  costume  of  the  best-dressed 
people  is  only  a  piece  of  bark  cloth. 

The  customs  of  Uganda  as  established  by 
their  founder  continued  in  full  force  at  the  time 
of  the  visit  of  Speke.  He  describes  how  persons 
at  court  are  on  the  watch  for  men  who  may  com- 
mit some  indiscretion,  to  confiscate  their  lands, 
wives,  children,  and  property. 

"  An  officer  observed  to  salute  informally  is 
ordered  for  execution,  when  everybody  near  him 
rises  in  an  instant ;  the  drums  beat,  drowning  his 
cries,  and  the  victim  of  carelessness  is  dragged 
off,  bound  by  cords,  by  a  dozen  men  at  once. 
Another  man,  perhaps,  exposes  an  inch  of  naked 
leg  while  squatting,  or  has  his  mbugu  (bark  cloth) 
tied  contrary  to  regulations,  and  is  condemned  to 
the  same  fate." 

In  short,  the  discipline  in  Uganda  is  much 
sharper  and  quite  as  prompt  as  that  in  a  kennel 
of  fox-hounds ;  and  such  is  the  character  of  the 
negro  that  he  likes  the  treatment  and  thrives 
under  it,  as  is  shown  by  the  smartness  and  strong 
national  feelings  of  the  people,  who  contrast  very 
favorably  with  their  more  barbarous  neighbors. 

We  will  now  consider  the  influence  that  has 
been  exerted  by  white  men  in  Africa.  Of  the 
Portuguese  there  is  nothing  good  to  say,  and  the 
least  said  the  soonest  mended.  Their  rule  in 
Africa  is  effete,  and  we  shall  not  further  allude 
to  it.  But  what  of  the  effect  of  the  English  and 
American  philanthropists  who  have  formed  sta- 
tions and  settlements  to  reclaim  the  negro  from 
his  barbarism  ? 

The  republic  of  Liberia  was  established  on 
African  soil,  with  more  than  500  miles  of  sea- 
board, to  serve  as  a  home  in  Africa  for  such  of 
the  freed  negroes  of  the  United  States  as  might 
choose  to  emigrate  there,  and  to  constitute  an 
independent  negro  community  whence  civilizing 
influences  might  spread  to  the  interior.  It  has 
been  in  existence,  either  as  a  colony  or  as  a  free 
state,  for  fifty-seven  years,  and  has  received  alto- 
gether upward  of  20,000  negro  emigrants,  whom 
the  Commissioner  of  the  Freedman's  Bureau  in 
the  United  States  describes,  in  metaphorical 
terms  that  are  not  altogether  happv,  as  "  the 
cream  of  the  colored  population  of  the  South." 
Since  the  war  the  emigrants  have  generally  been 
quite  poor,  but  they  are  spoken  of  as  an  intelli- 
gent, active,  industrious,  and  enterprising  set  of 
men.  There  appear  to  be  far  more  applicants 
than  the  philanthropists  who  keep  the  undertak- 
ing going  are  able  with  their  funds  to  convey 
across  the  Atlantic.      Thus  in  1872  there  were 


418 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


upward  of  3,000  applicants ;  but,  as  only  about 
400  can  be  dispatched  annually,  we  may  believe 
that  there  has  been  much  careful  selection, 
whereby  the  purport  of  the  phrase  just  quoted 
may  be  justified.  Notwithstanding  this,  Liberia 
cannot  be  called  a  success.  Its  promoters,  no 
doubt,  take  an  enthusiastic  view  of  its  affairs,  but 
there  seems  to  be  internal  evidence  in  the  official 
publications  of  the  colony  to  warrant  a  dispas- 
sionate by-stander  in  sharing  the  opposite  opin- 
ion, which  is  much  the  more  widely  prevalent. 
Thus  the  governor,  in  1872,  says:  "The  present 
condition  of  our  national  affairs  is  most  unsat- 
isfactory and  perplexing ; "  and  he  speaks  of 
"  shameful  peculations  and  misapplications." 
These  strong  words  seem  justified  by  a  recent 
transaction  that  shows  the  corrupt  political  life 
of  Liberia.  In  1871  a  shameful  loan  was  nego- 
tiated in  England  in  the  time  of  the  then  gov- 
ernor, Mr.  Roye.  The  sum  nominally  borrowed 
was  £100,000,  at  7  per  cent,  interest,  but  issued 
at  30  per  cent,  below  par,  and  with  an  additional 
deduction  of  three  years'  interest  (or  £21).  That 
is  to  say,  he  and  a  few  others  who  acted  with  him 
agreed  to  give  £7,000  annually  for  a  sum  of  only 
£49,000 ;  in  other  words,  they  borrowed  at  up- 
ward of  14  per  cent.,  but,  owing  to  their  own 
malversations,  they  do  not  seem  to  have  netted 
much  more  than  half  of  even  that  reduced  sum. 
Governor  Eoye  was  arrested,  tried,  and  found 
guilty.  He,  however,  escaped  out  of  prison, 
found  his  way  to  the  sea-shore,  and,  seeing  a  boat 
at  anchor,  plunged  into  the  water  and  swam  to  it, 
to  get  safe  away  out  of  the  country.  There  was 
no  one  on  board ;  he  ineffectually  endeavored  to 
climb  into  it,  and,  after  swimming  round  it  more 
than  once,  was  drowned,  being  hampered  in  his 
efforts  by  the  weight  of  a  bag  of  money  he  had 
tied  round  his  waist.  This  episode  in  the  politi- 
cal life  of  the  state  is  all  the  more  disgraceful,  as 
the  emigrants  pose  themselves  in  virtuous  atti- 
tudes. Thus  upward  of  a  third  of  the  adult  emi- 
grants are  described  as  "  professors  of  religion." 

The  experience  of  Liberia  appears  strongly 
to  show  that  the  negro  is  little  capable  of  forming 
a  state  similarly  organized  to  those  of  civilized 
nations.  If  a  band  of  selected  negroes  fail,  what 
can  be  expected  from  a  miscellaneous  multitude 
of  them  ? 

There  exists  a  belief  among  us  that  the  su- 
periority of  Western  ideas  and  civilization  is  so 
unquestionable  and  absolute  that  we  have  only  to 
educate  the  negro  in  our  ways,  and  he  will  adopt 
them  gladly.  We  have  such  confidence  in  our 
own  social  ideas  that  we  are  apt  to  think  that  a 


few  hundreds  of  intelligent  Britons  are  sufficient 
to  set  an  example  capable  of  spreading  among 
millions  in  Africa ;  that  by  these  means  a  widely- 
spread  industry  will  prevail,  and  lines  of  peaceful 
commerce  will  open,  and  a  negro  Arcadia  will 
easily  be  made  to  flourish  in  that  benighted  con- 
tinent. Past  experience  does  not  warrant  the 
conclusion  that  the  immediate  influence  of  the 
white  man  can  so  prevail  upon  the  black.  What  it 
does  show  cannot  be  more  clearly  and  justly  stated 
than  it  has  been  in  a  remarkable  article  written  in 
Eraser's  Magazine,  November,  1875,  by  a  negro 
of  pure  African  extraction,  Mr.  Blyden,  who  was 
then  the  principal  of  the  Presbyterian  High-School 
in  Liberia,  and  is  at  this  moment  the  minister  of 
Liberia  in  England.  It  is  entitled  "  Mohammedan- 
ism and  the  Negro  Race,"  and  shows  forcibly,  on 
the  one  hand,  the  civilizing  influence  of  the  Arab 
upon  the  negro,  and,  on  the  other,  the  harmful 
influence  of  the  white  man,  even  as  a  philanthro- 
pist.    Mr.  Blyden  says : 

"  West  Africa  has  been  in  contact  with  Christi- 
anity for  three  hundred  years,  and  not  one  single 
tribe,  as  a  tribe,  has  become  Christian.  Nor  has 
any  influential  chief  yet  adopted  the  religion 
brought  by  the  European  missionary.  From  Gam- 
bia to  Gaboon,  the  native  rulers,  in  constant  inter- 
course with  Christians  and  in  the  vicinity  of  Chris- 
tian settlements,  still  conduct  their  government 
according  to  the  customs  of  their  fathers,  where 
those  customs  have  not  been  altered  or  modified 
by  Mohammedan  influence.  The  Alkali  of  Port 
Loko,  and  the  chief  of  Bullom,  under  the  shadow 
of  Sierra  Leone,  are  quasi  Mohammedan.  The 
native  chiefs  of  Cape  Coast  and  Lagos  are  pagans. 
So  in  the  territory  ruled  by  Liberia  the  native 
chiefs  in  the  four  counties — Mesurado,  Bassa, 
Sinou,  and  Cape  Palmas — are  pagans.  There  is 
not  a  single  spot  along  the  whole  coast,  except, 
perhaps,  the  little  island  of  Corisco,  where  Chris- 
tianity has  taken  any  hold  among  large  numbers 
of  the  indigenous  tribes." 

Christianity,  often  of  a  very  emotional  and  of 
a  debased  kind,  has  had  great  hold  on  the  black 
population  of  the  Southern  States  of  America  ; 
but  it  has  not  increased  their  manliness  and  self- 
respect,  either  there  or  elsewhere.  On  the  con- 
trary, as  Mr.  Blyden  shows,  it  was  conveyed  to 
them  by  whites  who  socially  and  otherwise  made 
it  at  the  same  time  very  clear  to  them  that  they 
were  a  hopelessly  inferior  and  subordinate  race. 
They  therefore  accepted  Christianity  as  a  religion 
suitable  to  men  living  in  a  servile  condition,  since 
it  did  not  prompt  them  to  assert  themselves,  but 
told  them  to  acquiesce  in  their  yoke,  and  to  bear 
their  present  abject  state  with  meekness,  and  in 


STANLEY'S  DISCOVERIES  AND   TEE  FUTURE  OF  AFRICA.      419 


the  hope  of  happiness  in  a  future  life.     lie  re- 
marks : 

"  Wherever  the  negro  is  found  in  Christian 
lands,  his  leading  trait  is  not  docility,  as  has  been 
often  alleged,  but  servility.  He  is  slow  and  un- 
progressive.  Individuals  here  and  there  may  be 
found  of  extraordinary  intelligence,  enterprise,  and 
energy,  but  there  is  no  Christian  community  of 
negroes  anywhere  which  is  self-reliant  and  inde- 
pendent. Hayti  and  Liberia,  so-called  negro  re- 
publics, are  merely  struggling  for  existence,  and 
hold  their  own  by  the  tolerance  of  the  civilized 
powers." 

As  regards  the  aesthetic  side  of  the  influence 
of  the  white  races,  Mr.  Blyden  lays  much  stress 
on  the  incongruity  of  the  recognized  forms  of 
Caucasian  beauty  with  those  of  the  negro  feat- 
ures. He  speaks  of  the  masterpieces  of  Italian 
art,  and  says  that — 

"  To  the  negro  all  these  exquisite  representa- 
tions exhibited  only  the  physical  characteristics  of 
a  foreign  race  ;  and  while  they  tended  to  quicken 
the  tastes  and  refine  the  sensibilities  of  that  race, 
they  had  only  a  depressing  influence  upon  the 
negro,  who  felt  that  he  had  neither  part  nor  lot,  so 
far  as  his  physical  character  was  concerned,  in 
those  splendid  representations.  ...  To  him  the 
painting  and  sculpture  of  Europe,  as  instruments 
of  education,  have  been  worse  than  failures.  They 
have  really  raised  barriers  in  the  way  of  his  nor- 
mal development.  They  have  set  before  him 
models  for  imitation ;  and  his  very  effort  to  con- 
form to  the  canons  of  taste  thus  practically  sug- 
gested has  impaired,  if  not  destroyed,  his  self-re- 
spect." 

He  quotes  the  prayer  of  a  negro  preacher  to 
God  to  extend  "  his  lily-white  hands  "  over  the 
congregation,  and  the  sermon  of  another,  who, 
speaking  of  heaven,  said,  "Brethren,  imagine  a 
beautiful  white  man,  with  blue  eyes,  rosy  cheeks, 
and  flaxen  hair — and  ive  shall  be  like  him."  The 
negro,  when  Christianized  by  white  men,  is  edu- 
cated falsely  to  his  nature,  and  any  such  educa- 
tion must  prove  an  ultimate  failure. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  Arab  influence  in  the 
northern  parts  of  Equatorial  Africa,  whatever 
evil  it  may  have  wrought  there,  and  still  more  in 
the  south,  has  had  remarkable  influence  in  ele- 
vating the  negro.     Mr.  Blyden  says : 

"  Mohammedanism  in  Africa  counts  in  its  ranks 
the  most  energetic  and  enterprising  tribes.  It 
claims  as  adherents  the  only  people  who  have  any 
form  of  civil  polity  or  bond  of  social  organization. 
It  has  built  and  occupies  the  largest  cities  in  the 
heart  of  the  continent.  Its  laws  regulate  the  most 
powerful  kingdoms — Futah,  Masina,  Hausa,  Bor- 


nou,  Waday,  Darfur,  Kordofan,  Sennaar,  etc.  It 
produces  and  controls  the  most  valuable  com- 
merce between  Africa  and  foreign  countries ;  it  is 
daily  gathering  converts  from  the  ranks  of  pagan- 
ism ;  and  it  commands  respect  among  all  Africans 
wherever  it  is  known,  even  where  the  people  have 
not  submitted  to  the  sway  of  the  Koran. 

"  No  one  can  travel  any  distance  in  the  interior 
of  West  Africa  without  being  struck  by  the  differ- 
ent aspects  of  society  in  different  localities,  accord- 
ing as  the  population  is  pagan  or  Mohammedan. 
Not  only  is  there  a  difference  in  the  methods  of 
government,  but  in  the  general  regulations  of  so- 
ciety, and  even  in  the  amusements  of  the  people." 

He  adds  :• 

"In  traversing  the  region  of  country  between 
Sierra  Leone  and  Futah  Jallo  in  1873,  we  passed 
through  populous  pagan  towns,  but  the  transition 
from  these  to  Mohammedan  districts  was  striking. 
When  we  left  a  pagan  and  entered  a  Mohammedan 
community,  we  at  once  noticed  that  we  had  en- 
tered a  moral  atmosphere  widely  separated  from, 
and  loftier  far  than,  the  one  we  had  left.  We  dis- 
covered that  the  character,  feelings,  and  condi- 
tions of  the  people  were  profoundly  altered  and 
improved." 

The  Arabs  coalesce  with  the  natives,  they  in- 
termarry and  trade  in  large  numbers,  and  they 
do  not  look  upon  a  converted  negro  as  an  inferi- 
or. They  are  zealous  propagators  of  their  faith, 
and,  as  Mr.  Pope  Hennessy  pointed  out  in  a  re- 
markable report,  they  promote  with  much  suc- 
cess numerous  schools  for  elementary  education. 
Mr.  Blyden  says : 

"  In  Sierra  Leone,  the  Mohammedans,  without 
any  aid  from  Government — imperial  or  local — or 
any  contributions  from  Mecca  or  Constantinople, 
erect  their  mosques,  keep  up  their  religious  ser- 
vices, conduct  their  schools,  and  contribute  to  the 
support  of  missionaries  from  Arabia,  Morocco,  or 
Futah,  when  they  visit  them.  The  same  compli- 
ment cannot  be  paid  to  the  negro  Christians  of 
that  settlement." 

Of  Mohammedanism  and  Christianity — we  do 
not  speak  here  or  elsewhere  as  to  their  essential 
doctrines,  but  as  they  are  practically  conveyed 
by  example  and  precept  to  the  negro — the  former 
has  the  advantage  in  simplicity.  It  exacts  a  de- 
corous and  cleanly  ritual  that  pervades  the  daily 
life,  frequent  prayers,  ablutions  and  abstinence, 
reverence  toward  an  awful  name,  and  pilgrimage 
to  a  holy  shrine,  while  the  combative  instincts  of 
the  negro's  nature  are  allowed  free  play  in  war- 
ring against  the  paganism  and  idolatry  he  has 
learned  to  loathe  and  hate.  The  whole  of  this 
code  is  easily  intelligible,  and  is  obviously  self- 


420 


TEE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


consistent.  It  is  not  so  with  Christianity,  as 
practised  by  white  men  and  taught  by  example 
and  precept  to  the  negro.  The  most  prominent 
of  its  aggressions  against  his  every-day  customs 
are  those  against  polygamy  and  slavery.  The 
negro,  on  referring  to  the  sacred  book  of  the  Eu- 
ropean, to  which  appeal  is  made  for  the  truth  of 
all  doctrine,  finds  no  edict  against  either  the  one 
or  the  other,  but  he  reads  that  the  wisest  of  men 
had  a  larger  harem  than  any  modern  African 
potentate,  and  that  slave-holding  was  the  estab- 
lished custom  in  the  ancient  world.  The  next 
most  prominent  of  its  doctrines  are  social  equal- 
ity, submission  to  injury,  disregard  of  wealth,  and 
the  propriety  of  taking  no  thought  for  the  mor- 
row. He,  however,  finds  the  practice  of  the  white 
race  from  whom  his  instructions  come,  to  be  ex- 
ceedingly different  from  this.  He  discovers  very 
soon  that  they  absolutely  refuse  to  consider  him 
as  their  equal ;  that  they  are  by  no  means  tame 
under  insult,  but  very  much  the  reverse  of  it ; 
that  the  chief  aim  of  their  lives  is  to  acquire 
wealth  ;  and  that  one  of  the  most  despised  char- 
acteristics among  them  is  that  of  heedlessness 
and  want  of  thrift.  Far  be  it  from  us  to  say  that 
the  modern  practice  in  these  matters  may  not  be 
justified,  but  it  appears  to  require  more  subtlety 
of  reasoning  than  the  negro  can  comprehend,  or 
perhaps  even  than  the  missionary  can  command, 
to  show  their  conformity  with  Bible-teaching. 

The  influence  of  the  English  in  Africa  is  bare- 
ly felt  beyond  the  boundaries  of  their  colonies. 
We  have  held  Sierra  Leone,  and  many  points  of 
vantage  on  the  West  African  coast,  for  two  gen- 
erations. The  philanthropists  and  the  merchants 
have  both  been  busily  engaged  there  in  immediate 
relations  with  the  negro,  but  the  result  is  that, 
at  the  back  of  our  settlements,  paganism  begins 
and  our  influence  ceases.  We  cannot  even  keep 
open  the  roads  of  communication  with  the  neigh- 
boring interior.  They  are  closed  by  force,  by 
passive  obstruction,  or  by  prohibitive  dues.  The 
weight  of  barbarism  is  far  too  great  for  the  efforts 
of  our  few  travelers  to  remove.  We  might  go 
into  lengthy  details  in  evidence  of  this ;  two  or 
three  will  suffice.  First  as  regards  land-travel: 
it  is  now  only  eight  years  ago  that  an  English- 
man, Mr.  Winwood  Reade,  succeeded  in  penetrat- 
ing 250  miles  inland  from  Sierra  Leone,  and 
reaching  the  sources  of  the  Niger.  Another  fact 
is  the  savagery  among  the  people  about  the 
mouths  of  that  same  river,  notwithstanding  the 
persistent  and  costly  efforts  that  have  been  made 
to  turn  its  stream  into  a  frequented  and  commer- 
cial water-way.     For  a  third  fact  in  evidence  of 


the  flourishing  barbarism  in  the  neighborhood  of 
our  settlements,  we  may  point  to  the  existence  of 
such  a  kingdom  as  Ashanti. 

The  failure  of  our  influence  in  opening  safe 
lines  of  commerce  to  the  interior  is  due  to  three 
causes :  In  the  first  place,  we  do  not  travel  in 
sufficient  numbers  or  with  sufficient  frequency  to 
maintain  communications  ;  we  shall  probably 
never  do  so,  because  the  commercial  gains  prom- 
ise to  be  very  slight,  the  country  is  unhealthy, 
and  the  number  of  men  who  care  to  risk  the  fa- 
tigues and  expense  of  such  journeys  is  small.  In 
the  second  place,  our  free  trade  in  rum  and  mus- 
kets demoralizes  the  people.  In  the  third  place, 
a  large  part  of  the  bulky  produce  shipped  for  us 
by  negroes  from  the  coast  is  reared  and  gathered 
in  the  immediate  neighborhood  by  slave-labor, 
belonging  to  the  chief  who  sells  it ;  it  is  therefore 
an  advantage  to  him  to  possess  many  slaves,  so 
he  acquires  through  our  free  trade  the  necessary 
guns  and  ammunition  to  make  raids  upon  his 
neighbors  to  catch  as  many  slaves  as  he  requires. 
The  consequence  is,  that  adjacent  to  his  frontiers 
are  lands  whose  inhabitants  are  in  enmity  with 
him,  and  through  traffic  becomes  impossible. 

The  Arabs,  on  the  other  hand,  prohibit  all 
forms  of  alcohol ;  they  are  easily  acclimatized,  and 
they  settle  and  travel  in  multitudes;  they  have 
been  great  openers  of  routes,  being  urged  not 
only  by  the  commercial  stimulus,  but  also  by  the 
religious  one  of  making  the  pilgrimage  to  Mecca. 
Routes  have  been  established  by  them  across  the 
broadest  parts  of  the  Continent  of  Africa.  In  the 
south,  the  Arabs  had  penetrated  to  Nyangwe, 
from  either  coast,  earlier  than  our  explorers.  We 
have  already  shown  that  in  the  heart  of  Africa, 
in  that  part  of  the  Congo  most  removed  from 
Nyangwe  in  the  east,  and  the  Ycllala  Falls  on 
the  west,  which  had  been  the  previous  outposts 
of  exploration  by  the  white  man,  Mr.  Stanley  ap- 
pears to  have  passed  by  that  very  river-bank  on 
which  Barth's  literary  friend  stood  some  thirty 
years  ago,  with,  so  to  speak,  his  Arabic  trans- 
lations from  Plato  in  the  one  pocket  and  those 
from  Aristotle  in  the  other. 

The  Arab  traders  from  Zanzibar  are  unques- 
tionably the  apostles  of  a  lower  civilization  than 
their  fellows  in  Northern  Africa,  being  apparently 
more  demoralized  by  the  larger  proportions  of 
the  horrible  slave-trade  prevailing  there.  Never- 
theless, there  are  many  men  among  them  capable 
of  better  things,  and  their  race  is  probably  des- 
tined to  play  an  increasingly  important  part  in 
the  whole  of  Equatorial  Africa.  The  ideal  of  the 
Arab  is  far  lower  than  that  of  the  white  man,  but, 


STANLEY'S  DISCOVERIES  AND   TEE  FUTURE  OF  AFRICA.      421 


being  as  he  is  in  more  complete  sympathy  with 
the  negro,  he  has  succeeded  where  we  have  failed 
in  materially  raising  him  in  personal  dignity  and 
in  general  civilization. 

Africa  is  not  wholly  destitute  of  means  of  self- 
amelioration.  There  is,  perhaps,  no  part  of  the 
world  in  which  greater  differences  are  to  be  seen 
among  the  inhabitants  than  are  to  be  found  there 
among  the  negroes,  and  it  has  occurred  to  every 
traveler  to  occasionally  witness  specimens  of  black 
humanity  that  have  struck  him  with  some  admi- 
ration. By  perpetual  war  and  struggling  such 
as  have  gone  on  from  time  immemorial,  the  ten- 
dency of  the  ablest  to  prevail  will  necessarily  ad- 
vance the  average  of  the  negro  race.  Already 
those  who  appear  to  have  been  the  aborigines 
of  the  land,  namely,  the  dwarf  tribes  of  whom 
Schweinfurth  writes,  and  their  congeners  the 
Bushmen,  have  been  ousted  by  the  negro.  Again, 
the  negro  in  historical  times  inhabited  the  Sahara, 
to  the  north,  whence  he  has  been  driven  back  by 
the  Tuarek ;  he  inhabited  districts  in  the  south, 
whence  he  has  been  driven  back  by  the  Caffre  ; 
and  we  have  seen  how  a  Galla  stock  has  obtained 
the  ruling  power  in  certain  of  the  northeast  parts 
of  Equatorial  Africa.  The  negro  may  himself 
disappear  before  alien  races,  just  as  his  predeces- 
sors disappeared  before  him ;  or  the  better  negro 
races  may  prevail  and  form  nations  and  exclude 
the  rest.  It  certainly  appears  thus  far  that  those 
races  who  accept  the  Arab  are  more  likely  to 
succeed  in  the  struggle  for  supremacy  and  exist- 
ence than  the  others,  and  it  would  follow  that 
our  wisest  course  is  to  give  the  Arab  a  judicious 
and  discriminating  support. 

At  the  present  moment  three  Englishmen  are 
appointed  vicegerents  of  Arab  influence  in  the 
equatorial  dominions  of  the  Khedive  of  Egypt. 
First  and  foremost  among  men,  in  his  power  of 
quelling  disorder,  without  the  use  of  violent 
means,  stands  Gordon  Pasha,  a  real  hero  in  his 
unswerving  and  determined  pursuit  of  the  path 
of  duty,  who  is  the  Governor-General  of  the  Sou- 
dan, or  country  inhabited  by  the  black  races  of 
Egypt.  The  second  is  Burton,  the  well-known 
traveler  in  many  lands,  and  an  expert  in  all  that 
relates  to  Mohammedanism,  who  has  been  re- 
cently appointed  Governor  of  Darfur;  and  the 
third  is  Sir  Frederick  Goldsmith,  an  able  Indian 
officer,  newly  appointed  Governor  of  Massowah, 
on  the  Bed  Sea.  The  influence  of  the  British 
race  can  hardly  be  exerted  in  a  more  appropriate 
way  than  this:  that  is  to  say,  through  men  who 
have  the  sentiment  and  practice  of  statesmanship, 
knowing  what  are  the  traditions,  the  instincts, 


and  the  capabilities,  of  the  races  over  whom  they 
are  called  to  rule,  exacting  from  them  that  which 
they  are  confident  of  being  able  to  obtain,  and 
not  wrecking  their  venture  by  attempting  more. 
An  extension  of  some  such  method  of  governing 
as  this,  in  the  regions  over  which  the  Sultan  of 
Zanzibar  has  more  or  less  sovereign  control,  is 
urgently  needed.  The  foreign  export  of  slaves 
has  to  be  absolutely  stopped  to  put  an  end  to  the 
desolating  raids  and  horrible  cruelties  practised 
in  the  interior,  and  a  legitimate  Arab  commerce 
and  influence  has  to  be  legalized  and  furthered. 
Thus  much  we  may  perhaps  have  strength  and 
influence  to  effect,  but  the  white  man  can  never 
himself  become  the  itinerant  trader  in  Africa. 
The  climate  is  unsuitable,  the  gains  too  small,  the 
difference  of  race  and  civilization  between  the 
negro  and  himself  is  too  great.  The  Arabs  are 
needed  as  intelligent,  numerous,  and  enterprising 
intermediaries,  and  they  are  the  best  at  present 
to  be  obtained  ;  so  we  must  accept  them  with  all 
their  faults. 

The  remaining  duty  of  the  white  man  is  to 
explore  the  land,  partly  to  show  what  produce 
worthy  of  exportation  it  can  yield,  and  partly  to 
find  out  the  best  routes  by  which  it  can  be  con- 
veyed to  the  coast.  Let  the  white  man  originate, 
let  him  conduct  the  larger  commerce  from  the 
sea-coast,  let  him  crush  the  external  slave-trade, 
and  let  him  take  such  part  in  the  higher  politics 
of  the  continent  as  he  can  reasonably  hope  to  ex- 
ert ;  but  let  him,  if  possible,  abandon  all  thoughts 
of  annexing  large  districts  in  Eastern  Africa, 
which,  according  to  the  experience  of  the  West, 
will  exercise  no  influence  commensurate  to  the 
cost  in  lives  and  money  of  maintaining  them, 
while  they  would  impose  upon  England  the  un- 
congenial duty  of  miserable  wars  like  that  of 
Ashanti,  and  of  continual  petty  onslaughts  like 
those  we  continually  hear  of,  upon  the  pirates  at 
the  mouths  of  West  African  rivers.  Let  the 
missionaries  go  where  they  will  and  do  what 
good  they  can,  but  let  them  take  the  risks  on 
their  own  heads,  be  respectful  to  the  good  points 
of  Mohammedan  precept  and  example,  and  not 
entangle  us  in  a  system  of  national  interference. 
Equatorial  Africa  is  never  likely  to  become  a 
home  for  large  numbers  of  white  men,  certainly  not 
for  men  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race.  Let  us,  then, 
whether  as  a  nation  or  as  individuals,  whether  as 
cosmopolitan  philanthropists  or  as  men  of  com- 
merce, confine  our  efforts  to  the  more  feasible 
task  of  controlling  and  aiding  the  one  intelligent 
race,  who  already  permeate  it,  by  our  action  on 
the  sea-coast,  and  by  our  political  influence  at 


422 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


the  headquarters  of  the  Arab — Egypt  and  Zan- 
zibar. The  opinion  that  the  interior  of  Africa 
has  been  thrown  open  to  civilization  and  trade 
by  Mr.  Stanley's  daring  navigation  and  descent 


of  the  Congo  River,  is  one  which  requires  to  be 
supported  by  much  stronger  evidence  than  we  at 
present  possess  before  it  can  be  adopted. — Edin- 
burgh Review. 


ON  THE  NATUBE  OF  THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES. 

By  W.  KINGDON  CLIFFOED. 


I. — MEANING    OF    THE    INDIVIDUAL    OBJECT. 

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

II. — DISTINCTION    OF   OBJECT    AND    EJECT. 

There  are,  however,  some  inferences  which 
are  profoundly  different  from  those  of  physical 
science.    When  I  come  to  the  conclusion  that 


you  are  conscious,  and  that  there  are  objects  in 
your  consciousness  similar  to  those  in  mine,  I  am 
not  inferring  any  actual  or  possible  feelings  of 
my  own,  but  your  feelings,  which  are  not,  and 
cannot  by   any  possibility   become,   objects    in 
my  consciousness.     The   complicated  processes 
of  your  body  and  the  motions  of  your  brain  and 
nervous   system,  inferred  from  evidence  of  an- 
atomical researches,  are  all  inferred   as   things 
possibly  visible  to  me.     However  remote  the  in- 
ference of  physical  science,  the  thing  inferred  is 
always  a  part  of  me,  a  possible  set  of  changes  in 
my  consciousness  bound  up  in  the  objective  order 
with  other  known  changes.     But  the  inferred  ex- 
istence of  your  feelings,  of  objective  groupings 
among  them  similar  to  those  among  my  feelings, 
and    of    a    subjective    order   in   many   respects 
analogous   to  my  own — these  inferred  existences 
are  in  the  very  act  of  inference  thrown  out  of  my 
consciousness,  recognized  as  outside  of  it,  as  not 
being  a  part  of  me.     I  propose,  accordingly,  to 
call  those  inferred  existences  ejects,  things  thrown 
out  of  my  consciousness,   to   distinguish   them 
from  objects,  things  presented  in  my  conscious- 
ness, phenomena.     It  is  to  be  noticed  that  there 
is  a  set  of  changes  of  my  consciousness  symbolic 
of  the  eject,  which  may  be  called  my  conception  of 
you ;   it  is  (I  think)  a  rough  picture  of  the  whole 
aggregate  of  my  consciousness,  under  imagined 
circumstances  like  yours ;  qua  group  of  my  feel- 
ings, this  conception  is  like  the  object  in  sub- 
stance and  constitution,  but  differs  from  it  in  im- 
plying the  existence  of  something  that  is  not 
itself,  but  corresponds  to  it,  namely,  of  the  eject. 
The  existence  of  the  object,  whether  perceived 
or  inferred,  carries  with  it  a  group  of  beliefs ; 
these  are  always  beliefs  in  the  future  sequence  of 
certain  of  my  feelings.     The  existence  of  this 
table,  for  example,  as  an  object  in  my  conscious- 
ness, carries  with  it  the  belief  that  if  I  climb  up 
on  it  I  shall  be  able  to  walk  about  on  it  as  if  it 
But  the  existence  of  my  con- 


were  the  ground 


OX  THE  XATURE  OF  THIXG8-IX-THEMSELYES. 


423 


ception  of  you  in  my  consciousness  carries  with 
it  a  belief  in  the  existence  of  you  outside  of  my 
consciousness,  a  belief  which  can  never  be  ex- 
pressed in  terms  of  the  future  sequence  of  my 
feelings.  How  this  inference  is  justified,  how 
consciousness  can  testify  to  the  existence  of  any- 
thing outside  of  itself,  I  do  not  pretend  to  say ; 
I  need  not  untie  a  knot  which  the  world  has  cut 
for  me  long  ago.  It  may  very  well  be  that  I  my- 
self am  the  only  existence,  but  it  is  simply  ri- 
diculous to  suppose  that  anybody  else  is.  The 
position  of  absolute  idealism  may,  therefore,  be 
left  out  of  count,  although  each  individual  may 
be  unable  to  justify  his  dissent  from  it. 

III. FORMATION    OF   THE    SOCIAL    OBJECT. 

The  belief,  however,  in  the  existence  of  other 
men's  consciousness,  in  the  existence  of  ejects, 
dominates  every  thought  and  every  action  of  our 
lives.  In  the  first  place,  it  profoundly  modifies 
the  object.  This  room,  the  table,  the  chairs, 
your  bodies,  are  all  objects  in  my  consciousness ; 
as  simple  objects  they  are  parts  of  me.  But 
I,  somehow,  infer  the  existence  of  similar  objects 
in  your  consciousness,  and  these  are  not  objects 
to  me,  nor  can  they  ever  be  made  so;  they  are 
ejects.  This  being  so,  I  bind  up  with  each  object 
as  it  exists  in  my  mind  the  thought  of  similar  ob- 
jects existing  in  other  men's  minds ;  and,  I  thus 
form  the  complex  conception,  "this  table,  as  an 
object  in  the  minds  of  men " — or,  as  Mr.  Shad- 
worth  Hodgson  puts  it,  an  object  of  consciousness 
in  general.  This  conception  symbolizes  an  indefi- 
nite number  of  ejects,  together  with  one  object 
which  the  conception  of  each  eject  more  or  less 
resembles.  Its  character  is  therefore  mainly  ejec- 
tive  in  respect  of  what  it  symbolizes,  but  mainly 
objective  in  respect  of  its  nature.  I  shall  call 
this  complex  conception  the  social  object ;  it  is  a 
symbol  of  one  thing  (the  individual  object,  it  may 
be  called  for  distinction's  sake)  which  is  in  my 
consciousness,  and  of  an  indefinite  number  of 
other  things  which  are  ejects  and  out  of  my  con- 
sciousness. Now,  it  is  probable  that  the  indi- 
vidual object,  as  such,  never  exists  in  the  mind 
of  man.  For  there  is  every  reason  to  believe 
that  we  were  gregarious  animals  before  we  be- 
came men  properly  so  called.  And  a  belief  in 
the  eject — some  sort  of  recognition  of  a  kindred 
consciousness  in  one's  fellow-beings — is  clearly  a 
condition  of  gregarious  action  among  animals  so 
highly  developed  as  to  be  called  conscious  at  all. 
Language,  even  in  its  first  beginnings,  is  impos- 
sible without  that  belief;  and  any  sound  which, 
becoming  a  sign  to  my  neighbor,  becomes  there- 


by a  mark  to  myself,  must  by  the  nature  of  the 
case  be  a  mark  of  the  social  object,  and  not  of 
the  individual  object.  But  if  not  only  this  con- 
ception of  the  particular  social  object,  but  all 
those  that  have  been  built  up  out  of  it,  have 
been  formed  at  the  same  time  with,  and  under 
the  influence  of,  language,  it  seems  to  follow  that 
the  belief  in  the  existence  of  other  men's  minds 
like  our  own,  but  not  part  of  us,  must  be  insep- 
arably associated  with  every  process  whereby 
discrete  impressions  are  built  together  into  an 
object.  I  do  not,  of  course,  mean  that  it  presents 
itself  in  consciousness  as  distinct ;  but  I  mean 
that  as  an  object  is  formed  in  my  mind,  a  fixed 
habit  causes  it  to  be  formed  as  social  object,  and 
insensibly  embodies  in  it  a  reference  to  the  minds 
of  other  men.  And  this  sub-conscious  reference 
to  supposed  ejects  is  what  constitutes  the  im- 
pression of  externality  in  the  object,  whereby  it  is 
described  as  not-me.  At  any  rate,  the  formation 
of  the  social  object  supplies  an  account  of  this 
impression  of  outness,  without  requiring  me  to 
assume  any  ejects  or  things  outside  my  conscious- 
ness except  the  minds  of  other  men.  Conse- 
quently, it  cannot  be  argued  from  the  impres- 
sion of  outness  that  there  is  anything  outside 
of  my  consciousness  except  the  minds  of  other 
men.  I  shall  argue  presently  that  we  have 
grounds  for  believing  in  non-personal  ejects,  but 
these  grounds  are  not  in  any  way  dependent  on 
the  impression  of  outness,  and  they  are  not  in- 
cluded in  the  ordinary  or  common-sense  view  of 
things.  It  seems  to  me  that  the  prevailing  be- 
lief of  uninstructed  people  is  merely  a  belief  in 
the  social  object,  and  not  in  a  non-personal  eject, 
somehow  corresponding  to  it ;  and  that  the  ques- 
tion "  Whether  the  latter  exists  or  not  ?  "  is  one 
which  cannot  be  put  to  them  so  as  to  convey 
any  meaning  without  considerable  preliminary 
training.  On  this  point  I  agree  entirely  with 
Berkeley,  and  not  with  Mr.  Spencer. 

IV. — DIFFERENCE    BETWEEN    MIND    AND    BODY. 

I  do  not  pause  to  show  how  belief  in  the 
eject  underlies  the  whole  of  natural  ethic,  whose 
first  great  commandment,  evolved  in  the  light  of 
day  by  healthy  processes  wherever  men  have 
lived  together,  is,  "Put  yourself  in  his  place." 
It  is  more  to  my  present  purpose  to  point  out 
what  is  the  true  difference  between  body  and 
mind.  Your  body  is  an  object  in  my  conscious- 
ness ;  your  mind  is  not,  and  never  can  be.  Be- 
ing and  object,  your  body  follows  the  laws  of 
physical  science,  which  deals  with  the  objective 
order  of  my  feelings.     That  its  chemistry  is  or- 


424 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


dinary  chemistry,  its  physics  ordinary  physics, 
its  mechanics  ordinary  mechanics,  may  or  may 
not  be  true  ;  the  circumstances  are  exceptional, 
and  it  is  conceivable  (to  persons  ignorant  of  the 
facts)  that  allowance  may  have  to  be  made  for 
them,  even  in  the  expression  of  the  most  general 
laws  of  Nature.     But  in  any  case,  every  question 
about  your  body  is  a  question  about  the  physical 
laws  of  matter,  and  about  nothing  else.     To  say : 
"  Up  to  this  point  science  can  explain  ;  here  the 
soul  steps  in,"  is  not  to  say  what  is  untrue,  but 
to  talk  nonsense.     If  evidence  were  found  that 
the  matter  constituting  the  brain  behaved  other- 
wise than  ordinary  matter,  or  if  it  were  impos- 
sible to  describe  vital  actions  as  particular  ex- 
amples of  general  physical  rules,  this  would  be  a 
fact  in  physics,  a  fact  relating  to  the  motion  of 
matter ;  and  it  must  either  be  explained  by  fur- 
ther elaboration  of  physical  science,  or  else  our 
conception  of  the  objective  order  of  our  feelings 
would  have  to  be  changed.     The  question,  "  Is 
the  mind  a  force  ?  "  is  condemned  by  similar  con- 
siderations.    A  certain  variable  quality  of  mat- 
ter (the  rate  of  change  of  its  motion)  is  found  to 
be  invariably  connected  with  the  position  rela- 
tively to  it  of  other  matter ;  considered  as  ex- 
pressed in  terms  of  this  position,  the  quality  is 
called  force.     Force  is  thus  an  abstraction  re- 
lating to  objective  facts;  it  is  a  mode  of  grouping 
of  my  feelings,  and  cannot  possibly  be  the  same 
thing  as  an  eject,  another  man's  consciousness. 
But  the  question,   "  Do  the  changes  in  a  man's 
consciousness  run  parallel  with  the  changes  of 
motion,  and   therefore   with   the   forces   in   his 
brain?"  is  a  real  question,  and  not prima-facie 
nonsense.     Objections  of  like  character  may  be 
raised  against  the  language  of  some  writers,  who 
speak  of  changes  in  consciousness  as  caused  by 
actions  on  the  organism.     The  word  cause,  iroAAa- 
X<2s  \ty6fj.ei/ov  and  misleading  as  it  is,  having  no 
legitimate  place  in  science  or  philosophy,  may 
yet  be  of  some  use  in  conversation  or  literature, 
if  it  is  kept  to  denote  a  relation  between  objec- 
tive facts,  to  describe  certain  parts  of  the  phe- 
nomenal order.     But  only  confusion  can  arise  if 
it  is  used  to  express  the  relation  between  certain 
objective  facts  in  my  unconsciousness,  and   the 
ejective  facts  which  are  inferred  as  corresponding 
in  some  way  to  them  and  running  pai-allel  with 
them.     For  all  that  we  know  at  present,  this  re- 
lation does   not  in  any  way   resemble   that  ex- 
pressed by  the  word  cause. 

To  sum  up,  the  distinction  between  eject  and 
object,  properly  grasped,  forbids  us  to  regard 
the  eject,  another  man's  mind,  as  coming  into 


the  world  of  objects  in  any  way,  or  as  standing 
in  the  relation  of  cause  or  effect  to  any  changes 
in  that  world.  I  need  hardly  add  that  the  facts 
do  very  strongly  lead  us  to  regard  our  bodies  as 
merely  complicated  examples  of  practically  uni- 
versal physical  rules,  and  their  motions  as  deter- 
mined in  the  same  way  as  those  of  the  sun  and 
the  sea.  There  is  no  evidence  which  amounts  to 
a  pjrima-facie  case  against  the  dynamical  uni- 
formity of  Nature  ;  and  I  make  no  exception  in 
favor  of  that  slykick  force  which  fills  existing 
lunatic  asylums  and  makes  private  houses  into 
new  ones. 

V. CORRESPONDENCE    OF    ELEMENTS    OF    MIND    AND 

BRAIN-ACTION. 

I  have  already  spoken  of  certain  ejective  facts 
— the  changes  in  your  consciousness — as  running 
parallel  with  the  changes  in  your  brain,  which 
are  objective  facts.     The  parallelism  here  meant 
is  a  parallelism  of  complexity,   an   analogy  of 
structure.     A  spoken  sentence  and  the  same  sen- 
tence written  are  two  utterly  unlike  things,  but 
each  of  them  consists  of  elements ;  the  spoken 
sentence  of  the  elementary  sounds  of  the  lan- 
guage, the  written  sentence  of  its  alphabet.     Now 
the  relation  between  the  spoken  sentence  and  its 
elements  is  very  nearly  the  same  as  the  relation 
between  the  written  sentence  and  its  elements. 
There  is  a  correspondence  of  element  to  element ; 
although  an  elementary  sound  is  quite  a  different 
thing  from  a  letter  of  the  alphabet,  yet  each  ele- 
mentary sound  belongs  to  a  certain  letter  or  let- 
ters.    And  the  sounds  being  built  up  together 
to  form  a  spoken  sentence,  the  letters  are  built 
up  together,  in  nearly  the  same  way,  to  form  the 
written  sentence.     The  two  complex  products 
are  as  wholly  unlike  as  the  elements  are,  but  the 
manner  of  their  complication  is  the  same.     Or, 
as  we  should  say  in  the  mathematics,  a  sentence 
spoken  is  the  same  function  of  the  elementary 
sounds  as  the  same  sentence  written  is  of  the 
corresponding  letters. 

Of  such  a  nature  is  the  correspondence  or 
parallelism  between  mind  and  body.  The  funda- 
mental "deliverance"  of  consciousness  affirms 
its  own  complexity.  It  seems  to  me  impossible, 
as  I  am  at  present  constituted,  to  have  only  one 
absolutely  simple  feeling  at  a  time.  Not  only 
are  my  objective  perceptions,  as  of  a  man's  head 
or  a  candlestick,  formed  of  a  great  number  of 
parts  ordered  in  a  definite  manner,  but  they  are 
invariably  accompanied  by  an  endless  string  of 
memories,  all  equally  complex.  And  those  mas- 
sive organic  feelings  with  which,  from  their  ap- 


ON  TEE  NATURE  OF  TEINGS-IN-TEEMSELYES. 


425 


parent  want  of  connection  with  the  objective 
order,  the  notion  of  consciousness  has  been 
chiefly  associated — those  also  turn  out,  when 
attention  is  directed  to  them,  to  be  complex 
things.  In  reading  over  a  former  page  of  my 
manuscript,  for  instance,  I  found  suddenly,  on 
reflection,  that  although  I  had  been  conscious  of 
what  I  was  reading,  I  paid  no  attention  to  it ; 
but  had  been  mainly  occupied  in  debating  whether 
faint  red  lines  would  not  be  better  than  blue 
ones  to  write  upon,  in  picturing  the  scene  in  the 
shop  when  I  should  ask  for  such  lines  to  be 
ruled,  and  in  reflecting  on  the  lamentable  help- 
lessness of  nine  men  out  of  ten  when  you  ask 
them  to  do  anything  slightly  different  from  what 
they  have  been  accustomed  to  do.  This  debate 
had  been  started  by  the  observation  that  my 
handwriting  varied  in  size  according  to  the  na- 
ture of  the  argument,  being  larger  when  that 
was  diffuse  and  explanatory,  occupied  with  a 
supposed  audience ;  and  smaller  when  it  was 
close,  occupied  only  with  the  sequence  of  prop- 
ositions. Along  with  these  trains  of  thought 
went  the  sensation  of  noises  made  by  poultry, 
dogs,  children,  and  organ-grinders  ;  and  that 
vague,  diffused  feeling  in  the  side  of  the  face 
and  head  which  means  a  probable  toothache  in 
an  hour  or  two.  Under  these  circumstances,  it 
seems  to  me  that  consciousness  must  be  de- 
scribed as  a  succession  of  groups  of  changes,  as 
analogous  to  a  rope  made  of  a  great  number  of 
occasionally  interlacing  strands. 

This  being  so,  it  will  be  said  that  there  is  a 
unity  in  all  this  complexity,  that  in  all  these 
varied  feelings  it  is  I  who  am  conscious,  and  that 
this  sense  of  personality,  the  self-perception  of 
the  Ego,  is  one  and  indivisible.  It  seems  to  me 
(here  agreeing  with  Hume)  that  the  "unity  of 
apperception  "  does  not  exist  in  the  instantaneous 
consciousness  which  it  unites,  but  only  in  subse- 
quent reflection  upon  it ;  and  that  it  consists  in 
the  power  of  establishing  a  certain  connection 
between  the  memories  of  any  two  feelings  which 
we  had  at  the  same  instant.  A  feeling,  at  the 
instant  when  it  exists,  exists  an  undfur  sic7i,  and 
not  as  my  feeling ;  but  when  on  reflection  I  re- 
member it  as  my  feeling,  there  comes  up  not 
merely  a  faint  repetition  of  the  feeling,  but  inex- 
tricably connected  with  it  a  whole  set  of  connec- 
tions with  the  general  stream  of  my  conscious- 
ness. This  memory,  again,  qua  memory,  is  rela- 
tive to  the  past  feeling  which  it  partially  recalls  ; 
but  in  so  far  as  it  is  itself  a  feeling,  it  is  absolute, 
Ding-an-sich.  The  feeling  of  personality,  then, 
is  a  certain  fceliDg  of  connection  between  faint 


images  of  past  feelings ;  and  personality  itself  is 
the  fact  that  such  connections  are  set  up,  the 
property  of  the  stream  of  feelings  that  part  of  it 
consists  of  links  binding  together  faint  reproduc- 
tions of  previous  parts.  It  is  thus  a  relative 
thing,  a  mode  of  complication  of  certain  elements, 
and  a  property  of  the  complex  so  produced.  This 
complex  is  consciousness.  When  a  stream  of 
feelings  is  so  compacted  together  that  at  each 
instant  it  consists  of  (1)  new  feelings,  (2)  fainter 
repetitions  of  previous  ones,  and  (3)  links  con- 
necting these  repetitions,  the  stream  is  called  a 
consciousness.  A  far  more  complicated  group- 
ing than  is  necessarily  implied  here  is  established 
when  discrete  impressions  are  run  together  into 
the  perception  of  an  object.  The  conception  of  a 
particular  object,  as  object,  is  a  group  of  feelings, 
symbolic  of  many  different  perceptions,  and  of 
links  between  them  and  other  feelings.  The 
distinction  between  Subject  and  Object  is  two- 
fold :  first,  the  distinction  with  which  we  started 
between  the  subjective  and  objective  orders  which 
simultaneously  exist  in  my  feelings ;  and,  sec- 
ondly, the  distinction  between  me  and  the  social 
object,  which  involves  the  distinction  between 
me  and  you.  Either  of  these  distinctions  is  ex- 
ceedingly complex  and  abstract,  involving  a  highly- 
organized  experience.  It  l's  not,  I  think,  possible 
to  separate  one  from  the  other ;  for  it  is  just  the 
objective  order  which  I  do  suppose  to  be  com- 
mon to  me  and  to  other  minds. 

I  need  not  set  clown  here  the  evidence  which 
shows  that  the  complexity  of  consciousness  is 
paralleled  by  complexity  of  action  in  the  brain. 
It  is  only  necessary  to  point  out  what  appears 
to  me  to  be  a  consequence  of  the  discoveries  of 
Miiller  and  Helmholtz  in  regard  to  sensation : 
that  at  least  those  distinct  feelings  which  can  be 
remembered  and  examined  by  reflection  are  par- 
alleled by  changes  in  a  portion  of  the  brain  only. 
In  the  case  of  sight,  for  example,  there  is  a  mes- 
sage taken  from  things  outside  to  the  retina,  and 
therefrom  sent  in  somewhither  by  the  optic  nerve ; 
now  we  can  tap  this  telegraph  at  any  point  and 
produce  the  sensation  of  sight,  without  any  im- 
pression on  the  retina.  It  seems  to  follow  that 
what  is  known  directly  is  what  takes  place  at  the 
inner  end  of  this  nerve,  or  that  the  consciousness 
of  sight  is  simultaneous  and  parallel  in  complex- 
ity with  the  changes  in  the  gray  matter  at  the 
internal  extremity,  and  not  with  the  changes  in 
the  nerve  itself,  or  in  the  retina.  So  also  a  pain 
in  a  particular  part  of  the  body  may  be  mimicked 
by  neuralgia  due  to  lesion  of  another  part. 

We  come,  finally,  to  say  then  that,  as  your 


426 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


consciousness  is  made  up  of  elementary  feelings 
grouped  together  in  various  ways  (ejective  facts), 
so  a  part  of  the  action  in  your  brain  is  made  up 
of  more  elementary  actions  in  parts  of  it,  grouped 
together  in  the  same  ways  (objective  facts).  The 
knowledge  of  this  correspondence  is  a  help  to  the 
analysis  of  both  sets  of  facts  ;  but  it  teaches  us 
in  particular  that  any  feeling,  however  apparently 
simple,  which  can  be  retained  and  examined  by 
reflection,  is  already  itself  a  most  complex  struct- 
ure. We  may,  however,  conclude  that  this  cor- 
respondence extends  to  the  elements,  and  that 
each  simple  feeling  corresponds  to  a  special  com- 
paratively simple  change  of  nerve-matter. 

VI. — THE    ELEMENTARY   FEELING   IS    A    THING-IN- 
ITSELF. 

The  conclusion  that  elementary  feeling  co- 
exists with  elementary  brain-motion  in  the  same 
way  as  consciousness  coexists  with  complex  brain- 
motion,  involves  more  important  consequences 
than  might  at  first  sight  appear.  We  have  re- 
garded consciousness  as  a  complex  of  feelings, 
and  explained  the  fact  that  the  complex  is  con- 
scious, as  depending  on  the  mode  of  complication. 
But  does  not  the  elementary  feeling  itself  imply 
a  consciousness  in  which  alone  it  can  exist,  and 
of  which  it  is  a  modification  ?  Can  a  feeling  exist 
by  itself,  without  forming  part  of  a  consciousness  ? 
I  shall  say  no  to  the  first  question,  and  yes  t'o  the 
second,  and  it  seems  to  me  that  these  answers 
are  required  by  the  doctrine  of  evolution.  For 
if  that  doctrine  be  true,  we  shall  have  along  the 
line  of  the  human  pedigree  a  series  of  impercep- 
tible steps  connecting  inorganic  matter  with  our- 
selves. To  the  later  members  of  that  series  we 
must  undoubtedly  ascribe  consciousness,  although 
it  must,  of  course,  have  been  simpler  than  our  own. 
But  where  are  we  to  stop  ?  In  the  case  of  organ- 
isms of  a  certain  complexity,  consciousness  is  in- 
ferred. As  we  go  back  along  the  line,  the  com- 
plexity of  the  organism  and  of  its  nerve-action 
insensibly  diminishes ;  and  for  the  first  part  of 
our  course,  we  see  reason  to  think  that  the  com- 
plexity of  consciousness  insensibly  diminishes 
also.  But  if  we  make  a  jump,  say  to  the  tunicate 
mollusks,  we  see  no  reason  there  to  infer  the  ex- 
istence of  consciousness  at  all.  Yet  not  only  is 
it  impossible  to  point  out  a  place  where  any  sud- 
den break  takes  place,  but  it  is  contrary  to  all  the 
natural  training  of  our  minds  to  suppose  a  breach 
of  continuity  so  .great.  All  this  imagined  line  of 
organisms  is  a  series  of  objects  in  my  conscious- 
ness ;  they  form  an  insensible  gradation,  and  yet 


there  is  a  certain  unknown  point  at  which  I  am 
at  liberty  to  infer  facts  out  of  my  consciousness 
corresponding  to  them !  There  is  only  one  way 
out  of  the  difficulty,  and  to  that  we  are  driven. 
Consciousness  is  a  complex  of  ejective  facts — of 
elementary  feelings,  or  rather  of  those  remoter 
elements  which  cannot  even  be  felt,  but  of  which 
the  simplest  feeling  is  built  up.  Such  elementary 
ejective  facts  go  along  with  the  action  of  every 
organism,  however  simple ;  but  it  is  only  when 
the  material  organism  has  reached  a  certain  com- 
plexity of  nervous  structure  (not  now  to  be  speci- 
fied) that  the  complex  of  ejective  facts  reaches 
that  mode  of  complication  which  is  called  Con- 
sciousness. But  as  the  line  of  ascent  is  unbroken, 
and  must  end  at  last  in  inorganic  matter,  we  have 
no  choice  but  to  admit  that  every  motion  of  mat- 
ter is  simultaneous  with  some  ejective  fact  or 
event  which  might  be  part  of  a  consciousness. 
From  this  follow  two  important  corollaries : 

1.  A  feeling  can  exist  by  itself,  without  form- 
ing part  of  a  consciousness.  It  does  not  depend 
for  its  existence  on  the  consciousness  of  which 
it  may  form  a  part.  Hence  a  feeling  (or  an  eject- 
element)  is  Ding-an-sich,  an  absolute,  whose  exist- 
ence is  not  relative  to  anything  else.  Scntititr 
is  all  that  can  be  said. 

2.  These  eject-elements,  which  correspond  to 
motions  of  matter,  are  connected  together  in 
their  sequence  and  coexistence  by  counterparts 
of  the  physical  laws  of  matter.  For  otherwise 
the  correspondence  could  not  be  kept  up. 

VII. — MIND-STUFF    IS    THE    REALITY    WHICH    WE 
PERCEIVE    AS    MATTER. 

That  element  of  which,  as  we  have  seen,  even 
the  simplest  feeling  is  a  complex,  I  shall  call 
Mind-stuff.  A  moving  molecule  of  inorganic  mat- 
ter does  not  possess  mind,  or  consciousness  ;  but 
it  possesses  a  small  piece  of  mind-stuff.  When 
molecules  are  so  combined  together  as  to  form 
the  film  on  the  under-side  of  a  jelly-fish,  the  ele- 
ments of  mind-stuff  which  go  along  with  them 
are  so  combined  as  to  form  the  faint  beginnings 
of  sentience.  When  the  molecules  are  so  com- 
bined as  to  form  the  brain  and  nervous  system 
of  a  vertebrate,  the  corresponding  elements  of 
mind-stuff  are  so  combined  as  to  form  some  kind 
of  consciousness;  that  is  to  say,  changes  in  the 
complex  which  take  place  at  the  same  time  get  so 
linked  together  that  the  repetition  of  one  implies 
the  repetition  of  the  other.  When  matter  takes 
the  complex  form  of  a  living  human  brain,  the 
corresponding  mind-stuff  takes  the   form  of  a 


ON  THE  NATURE  OF  THINGS-IX-THEHSELYES. 


427 


human  consciousness,  having  intelligence  and  vo- 
lition. 

Suppose  that  I  see  a  man  looking  at  a  caudle- 
stick.  Both  of  these  are  objects,  or  phenomena, 
in  my  mind.  An  image  of  the  candlestick,  in  the 
optical  sense,  is  formed  upon  his  retina,  and  nerve- 
messages  go  from  all  parts  of  this  to  form  what 
we  may  call  a  cerebral  image  somewhere  in  the 
neighborhood  of  the  optic  thalami  in  the  inside 
of  his  brain.  This  cerebral  image  is  a  certain 
complex  of  disturbances  in  the  matter  of  these 
organs ;  it  is  a  material  or  physical  fact,  there- 
fore a  group  of  my  possible  sensations,  just  as 
the  candlestick  is.  The  cerebral  image  is  an  im- 
perfect representation  of  the  candlestick,  corre- 
sponding to  it  point  for  point  in  a  certain  way. 
Both  the  candlestick  and  the  cerebral  image  are 
matter ;  but  one  material  complex  represents  the 
other  material  complex  in  an  imperfect  way. 

Now  the  candlestick  is  not  the  external  real- 
ity whose  existence  is  represented  in  the  man's 
mind ;  for  the  candlestick  is  a  mere  perception 
in  my  mind.  Nor  is  the  cerebral  image  the  man's 
perception  of  the  candlestick ;  for  the  cerebral 
image  is  merely  an  idea  of  a  possible  perception 
in  my  mind.  But  there  is  a  perception  in  the 
man's  mind,  which  we  may  call  the  mental  image  ; 
and  this  corresponds  to  some  external  reality. 
The  external  reality  bears  the  same  relation  to  the 
mental  image  that  the  {phenomenal)  candlestick 
bears  to  the  cerebral  image.  Now  the  candlestick 
and  the  cerebral  image  are  both  matter ;  they  are 
made  of  the  same  stuff.  Therefore  the  external 
reality  is  made  of  the  same  stuff  as  the  man's 
perception  or  mental  image,  that  is,  it  is  made 
of  mind-stuff.  And  as  the  cerebral  image  repre- 
sents imperfectly  the  candlestick,  in  the  same  way 
and  to  the  same  extent  the  mental  image  repre- 
sents the  reality  external  to  his  consciousness. 
Thus,  in  order  to  find  the  thing  in  itself  which  is 
represented  by  any  object  in  my  consciousness 
such  as  a  candlestick,  I  have  to  solve  this  question 
in  proportion,  or  rule  of  three  : 

As  the  physical  configuration  of  my  cerebral 
image  of  the  object 

is  to  the  physical  configuration  of  the  object, 


so  is  my  perception  of  the  object  (the  object 

regarded  as  complex  of  my  feelings) 
to  the  thing  in  itself. 

Hence  we  are  obliged  to  identify  the  thing-in- 
itself  with  that  complex  of  elementary  mind-stuff 
which  on  other  grounds  we  have  seen  reason  to 
think  of  as  going  along  with  the  material  object. 
Or  to  say  the  same  thing  in  other  words,  the  real- 
ity external  to  our  minds  which  is  represented  in 
our  minds  as  matter,  is  in  itself  mind-stuff. 

The  universe,  then,  consists  entirely  of  mind- 
stuff.  Some  of  this  is  woven  into  the  complex 
form  of  human  minds  containing  imperfect  rep- 
resentations of  the  mind-stuff  outside  them,  and 
of  themselves  also,  as  a  mirror  reflects  its  own 
image  in  another  mirror,  ad  infinitum.  Such  an 
imperfect  representation  is  called  a  material  uni- 
verse. It  is  a  picture  in  a  man's  mind  of  the 
real  universe  of  mind-stuff. 

The  two  chief  points  of  this  doctrine  may  be 
thus  summed  up : 

Matter  is  a  mental  picture  in  which  mind-stuff 
is  the  thing  represented. 

Reason,  intelligence,  and  volition,  are  proper- 
ties of  a  complex  which  is  made  up  of  elements 
themselves  not  rational,  not  intelligent,  not  con- 
scious. 

Note.— The  doctrine  here  expounded  appears 
to  have  been  arrived  at  independently  by  many 
persons  ;  as  was  natural,  seeing  that  it  is  (or  seems 
to  me)  a  necessary  consequence  of  recent  advances 
in  the  theory  of  perception.  Kant  threw  out  a  sug- 
gestion that  the  Ding-an  sich  might  be  of  the  na- 
ture of  mind ;  but  the  first  statement  of  the  doctrine 
in  its  true  connection  that  I  know  of,  is  by  "Wundt. 
Since  it  dawned  on  me,  some  time  ago,  I  have  sup- 
posed myself  to  find  it  more  or  less  plainly  hinted 
in  many  writings ;  but  the  question  is  one  in  which 
it  is  peculiarly  difficult  to  make  out  precisely  what 
another  man  means,  and  even  what  one  means 
one's  self. 

Some  writers  (e.  g.,  Dr.  Tyndall)  have  used  the 
word  matter  to  mean  the  phenomenon  plus  the 
reality  represented ;  and  there  are  many  reasons 
in  favor  of  such  usage  in  general.  But  for  the 
purposes  of  the  present  discussion  I  have  thought 
it  clearer  to  use  the  word  for  the  phenomenon  as 
distinguished  from  the  thing- in-itself.  —Mind. 


428 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


THE  PEOPOSED  SUBSTITUTES  FOE  EELIGIOK 

By  Peofessor  GOLD  WIN  SMITH. 


THERE  appears  to  be  a  connection  between 
the  proposed  substitutes  for  religion  and 
the  special  training  of  their  several  authors.  His- 
torians tender  us  the  worship  of  Humanity,  pro- 
fessors of  physical  science  tender  us  Cosmic 
Emotion.  Theism  might  almost  retort  the  apo- 
logue of  the  spectre  of  the  Brocken. 

The  only  organized  cultus  without  a  God,  at 
present  before  us,  is  that  of  Comte.  This  in  all 
its  parts — its  high-priesthood,  its  hierarchy,  its 
sacraments,  its  calendar,  its  hagiology,  its  literary 
canon,  its  ritualism,  and  we  may  add  in  its  fun- 
damentally intolerant  and  inquisitorial  character 
— is  an  obvious  reproduction  of  the  Church  of 
Rome,  with  Humanity  in  place  of  God,  great  men 
in  place  of  the  saints,  the  Founder  of  Comtism 
in  place  of  the  Founder  of  Christianity,  and  even 
a  sort  of  substitute  for  the  Virgin  in  the  shape 
of  womanhood  typified  by  Clotilde  de  Vaux. 
There  is  only  just  the  amount  of  difference  which 
would  be  necessary  to  escape  from  servile  imita- 
tion. We  have  ourselves  witnessed  a  case  of  al- 
ternation between  the  two  systems  which  testified 
to  the  closeness  of  their  affinity.  The  Catholic 
Church  has  acted  on  the  imagination  of  Comte  at 
least  as  powerfully  as  Sparta  acted  on  that  of 
Plato.  Nor  is  Comtism,  any  more  than  Plato's 
"  Republic  "  and  other  Utopias,  exempt  from  the 
infirmity  of  claiming  finality  for  a  flight  of  the 
individual  imagination.  It  would  shut  up  man- 
kind forever  in  a  stereotyped  organization  which 
is  the  vision  of  a  particular  thinker.  In  this  re- 
spect it  seems  to  us  to  be  at  a  disadvantage  com- 
pared with  Christianity,  which,  as  presented  in 
the  Gospels,  does  not  pretend  to  organize  man- 
kind  ecclesiastically  or  politically,  but  simply 
supplies  a  new  type  of  character,  and  a  new  mo- 
tive power,  leaving  government,  ritual,  and  or- 
ganization of  every  kind  to  determine  themselves 
from  age  to  age.  Comte's  prohibition  of  inquiry 
into  the  composition  of  the  stars,  which  his  priest- 
hood, had  it  been  installed  in  power,  would  per- 
haps have  converted  into  a  compulsory  article  of 
faith,  is  only  a  specimen  of  his  general  tendency 
(the  common  tendency,  as  we  have  said,  of  all 
Utopias)  to  impose  on  human  progress  the  limits 
of  his  own  mind.  Let  his  hierarchy  become 
masters  of  the  world,  and  the  effect  would  prob- 
ably be  like  that  produced  by  the  ascendency  of 


a  hierarchy  (enlightened  no  doubt  for  its  time)  in 
Egypt,  a  brief  start  forward,  followed  by  conse- 
crated immobility  forever. 

Lareveillere  Lepaux,  the  member  of  the  French 
Directory,  invented  a  new  religion  of  Theophi- 
lanthropy,  which  seems,  in  fact,  to  have  been  an 
organized  Rousseauism.  He  wished  to  impose  it 
on  France,  but  finding  that,  in  spite  of  his  pas- 
sionate endeavors,  he  made  but  little  progress,  he 
sought  the  advice  of  Talleyrand.  "  I  am  not  sur- 
prised," said  Talleyrand,  "at  the  difficulty  you 
experience.  It  is  no  easy  matter  to  introduce  a 
new  religion.  But  I  will  tell  you  what  I  recom- 
mend you  to  do.  I  recommend  you  to  be  cruci- 
fied, and  to  rise  again  on  the  third  day."  We 
cannot  say  whether  Lareveillere  made  any  prose- 
lytes, but  if  he  did  their  number  cannot  have 
been  much  smaller  than  the  reputed  number  of 
the  religious  disciples  of  Comte.  As  a  philos- 
ophy, Comtism  has  found  its  place,  and  exer- 
cised its  share  of  influence  among  the  philoso- 
phies of  the  time ;  but  as  a  religious  system  it 
appears  to  make  little  way.  It  is  the  invention 
of  a  man,  not  the  spontaneous  expression  of  the 
beliefs  and  feelings  of  mankind.  Any  one  with 
a  tolerably  lively  imagination  might  produce  a 
rival  system  with  as  little  practical  effect.  Ro- 
man Catholicism  was,  at  all  events,  a  growth, 
not  an  invention. 

Cosmic  Emotion,  though  it  does  not  affect  to 
be  an  organized  system,  is  the  somewhat  sudden 
creation  of  individual  minds,  set  at  work  appar- 
ently by  the  exigencies  of  a  particular  situation, 
and  on  that  account  suggestive  prima  facie  of 
misgivings  similar  to  those  suggested  by  the  in- 
vention of  Comte. 

Now,  is  the  worship  of  Humanity  or  Cosmic 
Emotion  really  a  substitute  for  religion  ?  That 
is  the  only  question  which  we  wish,  in  these  few 
pages,  to  ask.  We  do  not  pretend  here  to  inquire 
what  is  or  what  is  not  true  in  itself. 

Religion  teaches  that  we  have  our  being  in  a 
Power  whose  character  and  purposes  are  indi- 
cated to  us  by  our  moral  nature,  in  whom  we  are 
united,  and  by  the  union  made  sacred  to  each 
other;  whose  voice  conscience,  however  gener- 
ated, is ;  whose  eye  is  always  upon  us,  sees  all 
our  acts,  and  sees  them  as  they  are  morally, 
without  reference  to  worldly  success,  or  to  the 


THE  PROPOSED  SUBSTITUTES  FOR  RELIGION. 


429 


opinion  of  the  world ;  to  whom  at  death  we  re- 
turn ;  and  our  relations  to  whom,  together  with 
his  own  nature,  are  an  assurance  that,  according 
as  we  promote  or  fail  to  promote  his  design  by 
self-improvement,  and  the  improvement  of  our 
kind,  it  will  be  well  or  ill  for  us  in  the  sum  of 
things.  This  is  an  hypothesis  evidently  separable 
from  belief  in  a  revelation,  and  from  any  special 
theory  respecting  the  next  world,  as  well  as  from 
all  dogma  and  ritual.  It  may  be  true  or  false 
in  itself,  capable  of  demonstration  or  incapable. 
We  are  concerned  here  solely  with  its  practical 
efficiency,  compared  with  that  of  the  proposed 
substitutes.  It  is  only  necessary  to  remark  that 
there  is  nothing  about  the  religious  hypothesis  as 
here  stated,  miraculous,  supernatural,  or  myste- 
rious, except  so  far  as  those  epithets  may  be  ap- 
plied to  anything  beyond  the  range  of  bodily 
sense,  say  the  influence  of  opinion  or  affection. 
A  universe  self-made,  and  without  a  God,  is  at 
least  as  great  a  mystery  as  a  universe  with  a 
God ;  in  fact,  the  very  attempt  to  conceive  it  in 
the  mind  produces  a  mortal  vertigo  which  is  a 
bad  omen  for  the  practical  success  of  Cosmic 
Emotion. 

For  this  religion  are  the  service  and  worship 
of  Humanity  likely  to  be  a  real  equivalent  in  any 
respect,  as  motive  power,  as  restraint,  or  as  com- 
fort ?  Will  the  idea  of  life  in  God  be  adequate- 
ly replaced  by  that  of  an  interest  in  the  condi- 
tion and  progress  of  Humanity,  as  they  may  af- 
fect us  and  be  influenced  by  our  conduct,  to- 
gether with  the  hope  of  human  gratitude  and 
fear  of  human  reprobation  after  death,  which 
the  Comtists  endeavor  to  organize  into  a  sort  of 
counterpart  of  the  day  of  judgment  ? 

It  will  probably  be  at  once  conceded  that  the 
answer  must  be  in  the  negative  as  regards  the 
immediate  future  and  the  mass  of  mankind.  The 
simple  truths  of  religion  are  intelligible  to  all, 
and  strike  all  minds  with  equal  force,  though 
they  may  not  have  the  same  influence  with  all 
moral  natures.  A  child  learns  them  perfectly  at 
its  mother's  knee.  Honest  ignorance  in  the  mine, 
on  the  sea,  at  the  forge,  striving  to  do  its  coarse 
and  perilous  duty,  performing  the  lowliest  func- 
tions of  humanity,  contributing  in  the  humblest 
way  to  human  progress,  itself  scarcely  sunned  by 
a  ray  of  what  more  cultivated  natures  would  deem 
happiness,  takes  in  as  fully  as  the  sublimest  phi- 
losopher the  idea  of  a  God  who  sees  and  cares  for 
all,  who  keeps  account  of  the  work  well  done  or 
the  kind  act,  marks  the  secret  fault,  and  will  here- 
after make  up  to  duty  for  the  hardness  of  its  pres- 
ent lot.     But  a  vivid  interest — such  an  interest  as 


will  act  both  as  a  restraint  and  as  a  comfort — in 
the  condition  and  future  of  humanity,  can  surely 
exist  only  in  those  who  have  a  knowledge  of  his- 
tory, sufficient  to  enable  them  to  embrace  the 
unity  of  the  past,  and  an  imagination  sufficiently 
cultivated  to  glow  with  anticipation  of  the  future. 
For  the  bulk  of  mankind  the  humanity-worship- 
er's point  of  view  seems  unattainable,  at  least 
within  any  calculable  time. 

As  to  posthumous  reputation,  good  or  evil,  it 
is,  and  always  must  be,  the  appanage  of  a  few 
marked  men.  The  plan  of  giving  it  substance  by 
instituting  separate  burial-places  for  the  virtuous 
and  the  wicked  is  perhaps  not  very  seriously  pro- 
posed. Any  such  plan  involves  the  fallacy  of  a 
sharp  division  where  there  is  no  clear  moral  line, 
besides  postulating,  not  only  an  unattainable 
knowledge  of  men's  actions,  but  a  knowledge, 
still  more  manifestly  unattainable,  of  their  hearts. 
Yet  we  cannot  help  thinking  that,  with  the  men 
of  intellect,  to  whose  teaching  the  world  is  lis- 
tening, this  hope  of  posthumous  reputation,  or, 
to  put  it  more  fairly,  of  living  in  the  gratitude  and 
affection  of  their  kind  by  means  of  their  scien- 
tific discoveries  and  literary  works,  exerts  an  in- 
fluence of  which  they  are  hardly  conscious  ;  it 
prevents  them  from  fully  feeling  the  void  which 
the  annihilation  of  the  hope  of  future  existence 
leaves  in  the  hearts  of  ordinary  men. 

Besides,  so  far  as  we  are  aware,  no  attempt 
has  yet  been  made  to  show  us  distinctly  what 
"  humanity  "  is,  and  wherein  its  "  holiness  "  con- 
sists. If  the  theological  hypothesis  is  true,  and 
all  men  are  united  in  God,  humanity  is  a  substan- 
tial reality ;  but  otherwise  we  fail  to  see  that  it  is 
anything  more  than  a  metaphysical  abstraction 
converted  into  an  actual  entity  by  philosophers 
who  are  not  generally  kind  to  metaphysics.  Even 
the  unity  of  the  species  is  far  from  settled ;  science 
still  debates  whether  there  is  one  race  of  men,  or 
whether  there  are  more  than  a  hundred.  Man 
acts  on  man,  no  doubt ;  but  he  also  acts  on  other 
animals,  and  other  animals  on  him.  Wherein  does 
the  special  unity  or  the  special  bond  consist? 
Above  all,  what  constitutes  the  "  holiness  ?  "  In- 
dividual men  are  not  holy ;  a  large  proportion  of 
them  are  very  much  the  reverse.  Why  is  the  ag- 
gregate holy?  Let  the  unit  be  a  "  complex  phe- 
nomenon," an  "organism,"  or  whatever  name 
science  may  give  it,  what  multiple  of  it  will  be  a 
rational  object  of  worship  ? 

For  our  own  part,  we  cannot  conceive  worship 
being  offered  by  a  sane  worshiper  to  any  but  a 
conscious  being,  in  other  words,  to  a  person.  The 
fetich-worshiper  himself  probably  invests  his  fe- 


430 


TEE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTELY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


tich  with  a  vague  personality,  such  as  would  ren- 
der it  capable  of  propitiation.  But  how  can  we 
invest  with  a  collective  personality  the  fleeting 
generations  of  mankind  ?  Even  the  sum  of  man- 
kind is  never  complete,  much  less  are  the  units 
blended  into  a  personal  whole,  or,  as  it  has  been 
called,  a  colossal  man. 

There  is  a  gulf  here,  as  it  seems  to  us,  which 
cannot  be  bridged,  and  can  barely  be  thatched 
over  by  the  retention  of  religious  phraseology. 
Tn  truth,  the  anxious  use  of  that  phraseology  be- 
trays weakness,  since  it  shows  that  you  cannot  do 
without  the  theological  associations  which  cling 
inseparably  to  religious  terms. 

You  look  forward  to  a  closer  union,  a  more 
complete  brotherhood  of  man,  an  increased  sa- 
credness  of  the  human  relation.  Some  things 
point  that  way :  some  things  point  the  other  way. 
Brotherhood  has  hardly  a  definite  meaning  with- 
out a  father ;  sacredness  can  hardly  be  predicated 
without  anything  to  consecrate.  We  can  point 
to  an  eminent  writer  who  tells  you  that  he  detests 
the  idea  of  brotherly  love  altogether;  that  there 
are  many  of  his  kind  whom,  so  far  from  loving, 
he  hates,  and  that  he  would  like  to  write  his  ha- 
tred with  a  lash  upon  their  backs.  Look  again  at 
the  inhuman  Prussianism  which  betrays  itself  in 
the  New  Creed  of  Strauss.  Look  at  the  oligarchy 
of  enlightenment  and  enjoyment  which  Renan,  in 
his  "  Moral  Reform  of  France,"  proposes  to  insti- 
tute for  the  benefit  of  his  own  circle,  with  sub- 
lime indifference  to  the  lot  of  the  vulgar,  who,  he 
says,  "  must  subsist  on  the  glory  and  happiness  of 
others."  This  does  not  look  much  like  a  nearer 
approach  to  a  brotherhood  of  man  than  is  made 
by  the  Gospel. 

In  an  article  on  "  The  Ascent  of  Man,"  we  re- 
ferred to  doctrines  broached  by  science  at  the 
time  of  the  Jamaica  massacre.  "We  neither  de- 
nied nor  had  forgotten,  but,  on  the  contrary,  most 
gratefully  remembered,  that  among  the  foremost 
champions  of  humanity  on  that  occasion  stood 
some  men  of  the  highest  eminence  who  are  gen- 
erally classed  with  the  ultra-scientific  school ;  but 
they  were  men  in  whose  philosophy  we  are  per- 
suaded an  essentially  theological  element  still  lin- 
gers, however  anti-theological  the  language  of 
some  of  them  may  be.1 

We  are  speaking,  of  course,  merely  of  the  com- 
parative moral  efficiency  of  religion  and  of  the 
proposed  substitutes  for  it,  apart  from  the  influ- 
ence exercised  over  individual   conduct  by  the 

1  We  are  not  aware  that  in  the  writings  of  Mr.  Dar- 
win there  is  anything  to  prove,  or  even  to  suggest, 
that  he  is  not  a  theist. 


material  needs  and  other  non-theological  forces  of 
society. 

For  the  immortality  of  the  individual  soul, 
with  the  influences  of  that  belief,  we  are  asked  to 
accept  the  immortality  of  the  race.  But  here,  in 
addition  to  the  difficulty  of  proving  the  union  and 
intercommunion  of  all  the  members,  we  are  met 
by  the  objection  that  unless  we  live  in  God,  the 
race,  in  all  probability,  is  not  immortal.  That 
our  planet  and  all  it  contains  will  come  to  an  end 
appears  to  be  the  decided  opinion  of  science.  This 
"  holy  "  being,  our  relation  to  which  is  to  take  the 
place  of  our  relation  to  an  eternal  Father,  by  the 
adoration  of  which  we  are  to  be  sustained  and 
controlled,  if  it  exists  at  all,  is  as  ephemeral  com- 
pared with  eternity,  as  a  fly.  We  shall  be  told 
that  we  ought  to  be  content  with  an  immortality 
extending  through  tens  of  thousands,  perhaps 
hundreds  of  thousands,  of  years.  To  the  argu- 
mentam  ad  verecundiam  there  is  no  reply.  But 
will  this  banish  the  thought  of  ultimate  annihila- 
tion ?  Will  it  prevent  a  man,  when  he  is  called 
upon  to  make  some  great  sacrifice  for  the  race, 
from  saying  to  himself,  that,  whether  he  makes  the 
sacrifice  or  not,  one  day  all  will  end  in  nothing  ? 

Evidently  these  are  points  which  must  be  made 
quite  clear  before  you  can,  with  any  prospect  of 
success,  call  upon  men  either  to  regard  Humanity 
with  the  same  feelings  with  which  they  have  re- 
garded God,  or  to  give  up  their  own  interest  or 
enjoyment  for  the  future  benefit  of  the  race.  The 
assurance  derived  from  the  fondness  felt  by  par- 
ents for  their  offspring,  and  the  self-denying  ef- 
forts made  for  the  good  of  children,  will  hardly 
carry  us  very  far,  even  supposing  it  certain  that 
parental  love  would  remain  unaffected  by  the  gen- 
eral change.  It  is  evidently  a  thing  apart  from 
the  general  love  of  Humanity.  Nobody  was  ever 
more  extravagantly  fond  of  his  children,  or  made 
greater  efforts  for  them,  than  Alexander  Borgia. 

It  has  been  attempted,  however,  with  all  the 
fervor  of  conviction,  and  with  all  the  force  of  a 
powerful  style,  to  make  us  see  not  only  that  we 
have  this  corporate  immortality  as  members  of 
the  "  colossal  man,"  but  that  Ave  may  look  for- 
ward to  an  actual,  though  impersonal,  existence 
in  the  shape  of  the  prolongation  through  all  fu- 
ture time  of  the  consequences  of  our  lives.  It 
might  with  equal  truth  be  said  that  we  have  en- 
joyed an  actual,  though  impersonal,  existence 
through  all  time  past  in  our  antecedents.  But 
neither  in  its  consequences  nor  in  its  antecedents 
can  anything  be  said  to  live  except  by  a  figure. 
The  characters  and  actions  of  men  surely  will 
never  be  influenced  by  such  a  fanciful  use  of  Ian- 


TEE  PROPOSED  SUBSTITUTES  FOR  RELIGION. 


431 


guage  as  this  !  Our  being  is  consciousness ;  with 
consciousness  our  being  ends,  though  our  physi- 
cal forces  may  be  conserved,  and  traces  of  our 
conduct — traces  utterly  undistinguishable — may 
remain.  That  with  which  we  are  not  concerned 
cannot  aifeet  us  either  presently  or  by  anticipa- 
tion ;  and,  with  that  of  which  we  shall  never  be 
conscious,  we  shall  never  feel  that  we  are  con- 
cerned. Perhaps,  if  the  authors  of  this  new  im- 
mortality would  tell  us  what  they  understand  by 
non-existence,  we  might  be  led  to  value  more 
highly  by  contrast  the  existence  which  they  pro- 
pose for  a  soul  when  it  has  ceased  to  think  or 
feel,  and  for  an  organism  when  it  has  been  scat- 
tered to  the  winds. 

They  would  persuade  us  that  their  impersonal 
and  unconscious  immortality  is  a  brighter  hope 
than  an  eternity  of  personal  and  conscious  exist- 
ence, the  very  thought  of  which  they  say  is  tort- 
ure. This  assumes,  what  there  seems  to  be  no 
ground  for  assuming,  that  eternity  is  a  boundless 
extension  of  time ;  and,  in  the  same  way,  that  in- 
finity is  an  endless  space.  It  is  more  natural  to 
conceive  of  them  as  emancipation  respectively 
from  time  and  space,  and  from  the  conditions 
which  time  and  space  involve;  and  among  the 
conditions  of  time  may  apparently  be  reckoned 
the  palling  of  pleasure  or  of  existence  by  mere 
temporal  protraction.  Even  as  we  are — sensual 
pleasure  palls ;  so  does  the  merely  intellectual : 
but  can  the  same  be  said  of  the  happiness  of  vir- 
tue and  affection  ?  It  is  urged  too  that  by  ex- 
changing the  theological  immortality  for  one  of 
physical  and  social  consequences,  we  get  rid  of 
the  burden  of  self,  which  otherwise  we  should 
drag  forever.  But  surely  in  this  there  is  a  con- 
fusion of  self  with  selfishness.  Selfishness  is  an- 
other name  for  vice.  Self  is  merely  conscious- 
ness. Without  a  self,  how  can  there  be  self- 
sacrifice  ?  How  can  the  most  unselfish  emotion 
exist  if  there  is  nothing  to  be  moved  ?  "  He  that 
findeth  his  life,  shall  lose  it ;  and  he  that  loseth 
his  life,  shall  find  it,"  is  not  a  doctrine  of  selfish- 
ness, but  it  implies  a  self.  We  have  been  rebuked 
in  the  words  of  Frederick  to  his  grenadiers,  "  Do 
you  want  to  live  forever  ?  "  The  grenadiers  might 
have  answered :  "  Yes ;  and  therefore  we  are  ready 
to  die." 

It  is  not  when  we  think  of  the  loss  of  anything 
to  which  a  taint  of  selfishness  can  adhere — it  is 
not  even  when  we  think  of  intellectual  effort  cut 
short  forever  by  death  just  as  the  intellect  has 
ripened  and  equipped  itself  with  the  necessary 
knowledge — that  the  nothingness  of  this  immor- 
tality of  conservated  forces  is  most  keenly  felt : 


it  is  when  we  think  of  the  miserable  end  of  affec- 
tion. How  much  comfort  would  it  afford  anyone 
bending  over  the  death-bed  of  his  wife  to  know 
that  forces  set  free  by  her  dissolution  will  con- 
tinue to  mingle  impersonally  and  indistinguish- 
ably  with  forces  set  free  by  the  general  mortality  ? 
Affection  at  all  events  requires  personality.  One 
cannot  love  a  group  of  consequences,  even  sup- 
posing that  the  filiation  could  be  distinctly  pre- 
sented to  the  mind.  Pressed  by  the  hand  of 
sorrow  craving  for  comfort,  this  Dead  Sea  fruit 
crumbles  into  ashes,  paint  it  with  eloquence  as 
you  will. 

Humanity,  it  seems  to  us,  is  a  fundamentally 
Christian  idea,  connected  with  the  Christian  view 
of  the  relations  of  men  to  their  common  Father 
and  of  their  spiritual  union  in  the  Church.  In 
the  same  way  the  idea  of  the  progress  of  Human- 
ity seems  to  us  to  have  been  derived  from  the 
Christian  belief  in  the  coming  of  the  kingdom  of 
God  through  the  extension  of  the  Church,  and  to 
that  final  triumph  of  good  over  evil  foretold  in 
the  imagery  of  the  Apocalypse.  At  least  the 
founders  of  the  Religion  of  Humanity  will  admit 
that  the  Christian  Church  is  the  matrix  of  theirs : 
so  much  their  very  nomenclature  proves ;  and  we 
would  fain  ask  them  to  review  the  process  of  dis- 
engagement, and  see  whether  the  essence  has  not 
been  left  behind. 

No  doubt  there  are  influences  at  work  in  mod- 
ern civilization  which  tend  to  the  strengthening 
of  the  sentiment  of  humanity  by  making  men 
more  distinctly  conscious  of  their  position  as 
members  of  a  race.  On  the  other  hand,  the  un- 
reflecting devotion  of  the  tribesman,  which  held 
together  primitive  societies,  dies.  Man  learns  to 
reason  and  calculate ;  and  when  he  is  called  upon 
to  immolate  himself  to  the  common  interest  of 
the  race  he  will  consider  what  the  common  in- 
terest of  the  race,  when  he  is  dead  and  gone,  will 
be  to  him,  and  whether  he  will  ever  be  repaid  for 
his  sacrifice. 

Of  Cosmic  Emotion  it  will  perhaps  be  more 
fair  to  say  that  it  is  proposed  as  a  substitute  for 
religious  emotion  rather  than  as  a  substitute  for 
religion,  since  nothing  has  been  said  about  em- 
bodying it  in  a  cult.  It  comes  to  us  commended 
by  glowing  quotations  from  Mr.  Swinburne  and 
Walt  Whitman,  and  we  cannot  help  saying  that, 
for  common  hearts,  it  stands  in  need  of  the  com- 
mendation. The  transfer  of  affection  from  an  all- 
loving  Father  to  an  adamantine  universe  is  a 
process  for  which  we  may  well  seek  all  the  aid 
that  the  witchery  of  poetry  can  supply.  Unluck- 
ily, we  are  haunted  by  the  consciousness  that 


432 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


the  poetry  itself  is  blindly  ground  out  by  the 
same  illimitable  mill  of  evolution  which  grinds  out 
virtue  and  affection.  We  are  by  no  means  sure 
that  we  understand  what  Cosmic  Emotion  is,  even 
after  reading  an  exposition  of  its  nature  by  no 
ungifted  hand.  Its  symbola,  so  to  speak,  are  the 
feelings  produced  by  the  two  objects  of  Kant's 
peculiar  reverence,  the  stars  of  heaven,  and  the 
moral  faculty  of  man.  But,  after  all,  these  are 
only  like  anything  else,  aggregations  of  molecules 
in  a  certain  stage  of  evolution.  To  the  unscien- 
tific eye  they  may  be  awful,  because  they  are 
mysterious  ;  but  let  science  analyze  them  and 
their  awfulness  disappears.  If  the  interaction  of 
all  parts  of  the  material  universe  is  complete,  we 
fail  to  see  why  one  object  or  one  feeling  is  more 
cosmic  than  another.  However,  we  will  not  dwell 
on  that  whicb,  as  we  have  already  confessed,  we 
do  not  feel  sure  that  we  rightly  apprehend.  What 
we  do  clearly  see  is  that  to  have  cosmic  emotion, 
or  cosmic  anything,  you  must  have  a  cosmos.  You 
must  be  assured  that  the  universe  is  a  cosmos 
and  not  a  chaos.  And  what  assurance  of  this  can 
materialism  or  any  non-theological  system  give  ? 
Law  is  a  theological  term :  it  implies  a  lawgiver, 
or  a  governing  intelligence  of  some  kind.  Science 
can  tell  us  nothing  but  facts,  single  or  accumu- 
lated as  experience,  which  would  not  make  a  law 
though  they  had  been  observed  through  myriads 
of  years.  Law  is  a  theological  term,  and  cosmos 
is  equally  so,  if  it  may  not  rather  be  said  to  be  a 
Greek  name  for  the  aggregate  of  laws.  For  or- 
der implies  intelligent  selection  and  arrangement. 
Our  idea  of  order  would  not  be  satisfied  by  a 
number  of  objects  falling  by  mere  chance  into  a 
particular  figure,  however  intricate  and  regular. 
All  the  arguments  which  have  been  used  against 
design  seem  to  tell  with  equal  force  against  order. 
We  have  no  other  universe  wherewith  to  compare 
this  so  as  by  the  comparison  to  assure  ourselves 
that  this  is  not  a  chaos  but  a  cosmos.  Both  on 
the  earth  and  in  the  heavens  we  see  much  that  is 
not  order  but  disorder,  not  cosmos  but  acosmia. 
If  we  divine,  nevertheless,  that  order  reigns,  and 
that  there  is  design  beneath  the  seemingly  unde- 
signed, and  good  beneath  the  appearance  of  evil, 
it  is  by  virtue  of  something  not  dreamed  of  in  the 
philosophy  of  materialism. 

Have  we  really  come  to  this,  that  the  world 
has  no  longer  any  good  reason  for  believing  in  a 
God  or  a  life  beyond  the  grave  ?  If  so,  it  is  diffi- 
cult to  deny  that  with  regard  to  the  great  mass 
of  mankind  up  to  this  time  Schopenhauer  and  the 
pessimists  are  right,  and  existence  has  been  a 
cruel  misadventure.     The  number  of  those  who 


have  suffered  life-long  oppression,  disease,  or 
want,  who  have  died  deaths  of  torture  or  perished 
miserably  by  war,  is  limited  though  enormous  ; 
but  probably  there  have  been  few  lives  in  which 
the  earthly  good  has  not  been  outweighed  by  the 
evil.  The  future  may  bring  increased  means  of 
happiness,  though  those  who  are  gone  will  not  be 
the  better  for  them  ;  but  it  will  bring  also  increase 
of  sensibility,  and  the  consciousness  of  hopeless 
imperfection  and  miserable  futility  will  probably 
become  a  distinct  and  growing  cause  of  pain.  It 
is  doubtful  even  whether,  after  such  a  raising  of 
Mokanna's  veil,  faith  in  everything  would  not  ex- 
pire and  human  effort  cease.  Still  we  must  face 
the  situation :  there  can  be  no  use  in  self-delusion. 
In  vain  we  shall  seek  to  cheat  our  souls  and  to 
fill  a  void  which  cannot  be  filled  by  the  manufact- 
ure of  artificial  religions  and  the  affectation  of  a 
spiritual  language  to  which,  however  persistently 
and  fervently  it  may  be  used,  no  realities  corre- 
spond. If  one  of  these  cults  could  get  itself 
established,  in  less  than  a  generation  it  would  be- 
come hollower  than  the  hollowest  of  ecclesiasti- 
cisms.  Probably  not  a  few  of  the  highest  na- 
tures would  withdraw  themselves  from  the  dreary 
round  of  self-mockery  by  suicide ;  and  if  a  scien- 
tific priesthood  attempted .  to  close  that  door  by 
sociological  dogma  or  posthumous  denunciation 
the  result  would  show  the  difference  between  the 
practical  efficacy  of  a  religion  with  a  God  and 
that  of  a  cult  of  "  Humanity  "  or  "  Space." 

Shadows  and  figments,  as  they  appear  to  us  to 
be  in  themselves,  these  attempts  to  provide  a  sub- 
stitute for  religion  are  of  the  highest  importance, 
as  showing  that  men  of  great  powers  of  mind, 
who  have  thoroughly  broken  loose  not  only  from 
Christianity  but  from  natural  religion,  and  in 
some  cases  placed  themselves  in  violent  antago- 
nism to  both,  are  still  unable  to  divest  themselves 
of  the  religious  sentiment,  or  to  appease  its  crav- 
ing for  satisfaction.  There  being  no  God,  they 
find  it  necessary,  as  Voltaire  predicted  it  would 
be,  to  invent  one  ;  not  for  the  purposes  of  police 
(they  are  far  above  such  sordid  Jesuitism),  but  as 
the  solution  of  the  otherwise  hopeless  enigma  of 
our  spiritual  nature.  Science  takes  cognizance 
of  all  phenomena;  and  this  apparently  ineradi- 
cable tendency  of  the  human  mind  is  a  phenom- 
enon like  the  rest.  The  thorough-going  material- 
ist, of  course,  escapes  all  these  philosophical 
exigencies ;  but  he  does  it  by  denying  Humanity 
as  well  as  God,  and  reducing  the  difference  be- 
tween the  organism  of  the  human  animal  and 
that  of  any  other  animal  to  a  mere  question  of 
complexity.     Still,  even  in  this  quarter,  there  has 


THE  PROPOSED  SUBSTITUTES  FOR  RELIGION. 


433 


appeared  of  late  a  disposition  to  make  conces- 
sions on  the  subject  of  human  volition  hardly  con- 
sistent with  materialism.  Nothing  can  be  more 
likely  than  that  the  impetus  of  great  discoveries 
has  carried  the  discoverers  too  far. 

Perhaps  with  the  promptings  of  the  religious 
sentiment  there  is  combined  a  sense  of  the  im- 
mediate danger  with  which  the  failure  of  the  re- 
ligious sanction  threatens  social  order  and  mo- 
rality.  As  we  have  said  already,  the  men  of  whom 
we  specially  speak  are  far  above  anything  like 
social  Jesuitism.  We  have  not  a  doubt  but  they 
would  regard  with  abhorrence  any  schemes  of 
oligarchic  illuminism  for  guarding  the  pleasures 
of  the  few  by  politic  deception  of  the  multitude. 
But  they  have  probably  begun  to  lay  to  heart  the 
fact  that  the  existing  morality,  though  not  de- 
pendent on  any  special  theology,  any  special  view 
of  the  relations  between  soul  and  body,  or  any 
special  theory  of  future  rewards  and  punish- 
ments, is  largely  dependent  on  a  belief  in  the  in- 
defeasible authority  of  conscience,  and  in  that 
without  which  conscience  can  have  no  indefeasible 
authority — the  presence  of  a  just  and  all-seeing 
God.  It  may  be  true  that  in  primeval  society 
these  beliefs  are  found  only  in  the  most  rudimen- 
tary form,  and,  as  social  sanctions,  are  very  in- 
ferior in  force  to  mere  gregarious  instincts  or  the 
pressure  of  tribal  need.  But  man  emerges  from 
the  primeval  state,  and,  when  he  does,  he  demands 
a  reason  for  his  submission  to  moral  law.  That 
the  leaders  of  the  anti-theological  movement  in 
the  present  day  are  immoral,  nobody  but  the 
most  besotted  fanatic  would  insinuate ;  no  candid 
antagonist  would  deny  that  some  of  them  are  in 
every  respect  the  very  best  of  men.  The  fearless 
love  of  truth  is  usually  accompanied  by  other 
high  qualities,  and  nothing  could  be  more  unlike- 
ly than  that  natures  disposed  to  virtue,  trained 
under  good  influences,  peculiarly  sensitive  to 
opinion  and  guarded  by  intellectual  tastes,  would 
lapse  into  vice  as  soon  as  the  traditional  sanction 
wa3  removed.  But  what  is  to  prevent  the  with- 
drawal of  the  traditional  sanction  from  producing 
its  natural  effect  upon  the  morality  of  the  mass  of 
mankind  ?  The  commercial  swindler  or  the  po- 
litical sharper,  when  the  divine  authority  of  con- 
science is  gone,  will  feel  that  he  has  only  the 
opinion  of  society  to  reckon  with,  and  he  knows 
how  to  reckon  with  the  opinion  of  society.  If 
Macbeth  is  ready,  provided  he  can  succeed  in  this 
world,  to  "jump  the  life  to  come,"  much  more 
ready  will  villainy  be  to  "jump  "  the  bad  conse- 
quences of  its  actions  to  humanity  when  its  own 
64 


conscious  existence  shall  have  closed.  Rate  the 
practical  effect  of  religious  beliefs  as  low  and  that 
of  social  influences  as  high  as  you  may,  there  can 
surely  be  no  doubt  that  morality  has  received 
some  support  from  the  authority  of  an  inward 
monitor  regarded  as  the  voice  of  God.  The 
worst  of  men  would  have  wished  to  die  the  death 
of  the  righteous  ;  he  would  have  been  glad,  if  he 
could,  when  death  approached,  to  cancel  his 
crimes ;  and  the  conviction,  or  misgiving,  which 
this  implied,  could  not  fail  to  have  some  influence 
upon  the  generality  of  mankind,  though  no  doubt 
the  influence  was  weakened  rather  than  strength- 
ened by  the  extravagant  and  incredible  form  in 
which  the  doctrine  of  future  retribution  was  pre- 
sented by  the  dominant  theology. 

The  denial  of  the  existence  of  God  and  of  a 
future  state,  in  a  word,  is  the  dethronement  of 
conscience  ;  and  society  will  pass,  to  say  the 
least,  through  a  dangerous  interval  before  social 
science  can  fill  the  vacant  throne.  Avowed  skep- 
ticism is  likely  to  be  disinterested  and  therefore 
to  be  moral ;  it  is  among  the  unavowed  skeptics 
and  conformists  to  political  religions  that  the 
consequences  of  the  change  maybe  expected  to 
appear.  But  more  than  this,  the  doctrines  of 
Natural  Selection  and  the  Survival  of  the  Fittest 
are  beginning  to  generate  a  morality  of  their 
own,  with  the  inevitable  corollary  that  the  proof 
of  superior  fitness  is  to  survive— to  survive  either 
by  force  or  cunning,  like  the  other  animals  which 
by  dint  of  force  or  cunning  have  come  out  vic- 
torious from  the  universal  war  and  asserted  for 
themselves  a  place  in  Nature.  The  "  irrepressible 
struggle  for  empire  "  is  formally  put  forward  by 
public  writers  of  the  highest  class  as  the  basis 
and  the  rule  of  the  conduct  of  thi3  country  tow- 
ard other  nations ;  and  we  may  be  sure  that 
there  is  not  an  entire  absence  of  connection  be- 
tween the  private  code  of  a  school  and  its  inter- 
national conceptions.  The  feeling  that  success 
covers  everything  seems  to  be  gaining  ground, 
and  to  be  overcoming,  not  merely  the  old  conven- 
tional rules  of  honor,  but  moral  principle  itself. 
Both  in  public  and  private  there  are  symptoms  of 
an  approaching  failure  of  the  motive  power  which 
has  hitherto  sustained  men  both  in  self-sacrificing 
effort  and  in  courageous  protest  against  wrong, 
though  as  yet  we  are  only  at  the  threshold  of  the 
great  change,  and  established  sentiment  long  sur- 
vives, in  the  masses,  that  which  originally  gave  it 
birth.  Renan  says,  probably  with  truth,  that 
had  the  Second  Empire  remained  at  peace,  it 
might  have  gone  on  forever ;  and  in  the  history 


434 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


of  this  country  the  connection  between  political 
effort  and  religion  has  been  so  close  that  its 
dissolution,  to  say  the  least,  can  hardly  fail  to 
produce  a  critical  change  in  the  character  of  the 
nation.  The  time  may  come,  when,  as  philoso- 
phers triumphantly  predict,  men,  under  the  as- 
cendency of  science,  will  act  for  the  common 
good,  with  the  same  mechanical  certainty  as 
bees ;  though  the  common  good  of  the  human 
hive  would  perhaps  not  be  easy  to  define.  But 
in  the  meantime  mankind,  or  some  portions  of  it, 
may  be  in  danger  of  an  anarchy  of  self-interest, 
compressed  for  the  purpose  of  political  order,  by 
a  despotism  of  force. 

That  science  and  criticism,  acting — thanks  to 
the  liberty  of  opinion  won  by  political  effort — 
with  a  freedom  never  known  before,  have  deliv- 
ered us  from  a  mass  of  dark  and  degrading  su- 
perstitions, we  own  with  heart-felt  thankfulness 
to  the  deliverers,  and  in  the  firm  conviction  that 
the  removal  of  false  beliefs,  and  of  the  authori- 
ties or  institutions  founded  on  them,  cannot  prove 
in  the  end  anything  but  a  blessing  to  mankind. 
But  at  the  same  time  the  foundations  of  general 
morality  have  inevitably  been  shaken,  and  a  crisis 
has  been  brought  on  the  gravity  of  which  nobody 
can  fail  to  see,  and  nobody  but  a  fanatic  of  ma- 


terialism can  see  without  the  most  serious  mis- 
giving. 

There  has  been  nothing  in  the  history  of  man 
like  the  present  situation.  The  decadence  of  the 
ancient  mythologies  is  very  far  from  affording  a 
parallel.  The  connection  of  those  mythologies 
with  morality  was  comparatively  slight.  Dull 
and  half-animal  minds  would  hardly  be  conscious 
of  the  change  which  was  partly  veiled  from  them 
by  the  continuance  of  ritual  and  state  creeds ; 
while  in  the  minds  of  Plato  and  Marcus  Aurelius 
it  made  place  for  the  development  of  a  moral  re- 
ligion. The  Reformation  was  a  tremendous  earth- 
quake; it  shook  down  the  fabric  of  mediaeval 
religion,  and  as  a  consequence  of  the  disturbance 
in  the  religious  sphere,  filled  the  world  with  revo- 
lutions and  wars.  But  it  left  the  authority  of  the 
Bible  unshaken,  and  men  might  feel  that  the  de- 
structive process  had  its  limit,  and  that  adamant 
was  still  beneath  their  feet.  But  a  world  which 
is  intellectual  and  keenly  alive  to  the  significance 
of  these  questions,  reading  all  that  is  written 
about  them  with  almost  passionate  avidity,  finds 
itself  brought  to  a  crisis,  the  character  of  which 
any  one  may  realize  by  distinctly  presenting  to 
himself  the  idea  of  existence  without  a  God. — 
Macmillan's  Magazine. 


SPONTANEOUS   GENEKATION:   A  EEPLY. 


By  H.  CHARLTON  BASTIAN,  M.  D.,  F.  R.  S. 


IN  my  capacity  as  teacher  of  an  important  sec- 
tion of  the  scientific  basis  of  medicine,  I  felt 
•constrained  in  1869  to  give  an  attentive  study  to 
the  evidence  adduced  by  M.  Pasteur  in  favor  of 
the  germ-theory  of  fermentation.  It  was  neces- 
sary for  me  to  do  this,  since  his  views  as  to  the 
essential  cause  of  fermentative  processes  were 
being  widely  adopted  by  many  medical  men  in 
illustration  of  the  pathology  of  a  most  important 
class  of  the  diseases  which  afflict  the  human  race 
— namely,  those  of  a  communicable  nature,  knit 
together  in  their  diversity  by  the  common  char- 
acteristic that  they  are  capable  of  spreading  by 
infection  from  person  to  person.  I  was  com- 
pelled to  endeavor  to  come  to  some  conclusion  as 
to  what  should  be  taught  in  reference  to  these 
new  doctrines,  which,  after  the  manner  of  the  dis- 
eases themselves,  were  beginning  to  spread  some- 
what rapidly. 


The  restoration  of  such  views,  in  their  modern 
form,  was  so  new  that  the  occasion  had  not  arisen 
for  my  own  teachers  to  impress  me  with  any  doc- 
trines in  regard  to  this  subject.  I  came,  there- 
fore, with  a  perfectly  open  mind  to  the  study  of 
the  question,  having  no  party  bias  in  either  direc- 
tion. If  I  had  any  bias  at  all  on  the  general 
question  in  regard  to  spontaneous  generation — 
which  was,  and  always  must  be,  that  upon  which 
the  derivative  problem  in  regard  to  the  pathology 
of  infectious  diseases  ultimately  rests — this  was 
to  be  found  in  favor  of  the  view  which  was  ad- 
verse to  the  present  occurrence  of  any  such  pro- 
cess. It  is  true  I  had  not  specially  concerned 
myself,  up  to  this  time,  with  the  evidence  bearing 
upon  the  question,  but  neither  had  I  seen  any 
reason  for  not  accepting  what  was  at  that  time 
the  general  undercurrent  of  scientific  teaching. 

But  my  scrutiny  of  the  evidence  in  favor  of 


SPONTANEO  US  GENERA  TION. 


435 


the  germ-theory  and  against  spontaneous  genera- 
tion, as  embodied  in  the  writings  of  M.  Pasteur, 
did  not  by  any  means  convince  me  as  to  the  irre- 
proachable nature  of  this  evidence,  notwithstand- 
ing all  the  skill  and  care  with  which  the  experi- 
ments had  evidently  been  conducted.  It  was  not, 
indeed,  the  experiments  themselves,  so  far  as  they 
went,  with  which  I  was  dissatisfied ;  but  rather 
that  I  could  not  assent  to  the  validity  of  the  in- 
ferences which  M.  Pasteur  had  drawn  from  them. 
An  experimentalist  may  be  ever  so  skilled  in  the 
art  of  manipulation,  and  even  of  devising  new 
experiments,  and  yet  his  judgment  may  not  be 
faultless,  his  reasonings  in  regard  to  his  experi- 
ments may  not  be  without  flaw.  It  is  only  by 
free  discussion  that  truth  can  be  eliminated  from 
error.  Yet  my  temerity  in  venturing  to  question 
the  validity  of  M.  Pasteur's  inductions  and  infer- 
ences has  many  times  been  commented  upon  in 
terras  of  severe  reprobation  by  Prof.  Tyndall. 

Notwithstanding  all  this,  the  fact  remains 
that  the  cardinal  inductions  and  inferences  of  M. 
Pasteur ' — those  on  which  he  based  his  germ- 
theory,  and  which  were  challenged  by  me  in  1870 
and  1871 — have  now  (as  I  have  recently  shown 
in  vol.  xiv.  of  the  Zoological  Section  of  the  Jour- 
nal of  the  Linncean  Society)  been  finally  over- 
turned. Yet  it  was  on  such  bases  that  the  germ- 
theory  was  also  proclaimed  by  Prof.  Huxley,2  as 
President  of  the  British  Association,  in  1870,  to 
be  "  victorious  along  the  whole  line." 

Whether  or  not  M.  Pasteur's  germ-theory  may 
ultimately  be  established  on  other  grounds,  it  is 
now  perfectly  obvious  that  it  was  not  tenable  on 
the  grounds  alleged  in  1870,  and  that  my  work, 
together  with  that  of  others  who  have  sought 
either  to  confirm  or  refute  me,  has  proved  to 
demonstration  that  his  original  positions  were 
erroneous.  This  assuredly  is  worthy  of  note,  as 
bringing  us  one  long  step  the  nearer  to  the  ulti- 
mate truth. 

My  experiments  have  from  the  first  met  with 
the  most  sturdy  opposition  and  denial,  a  fate  not 
unusually  crossing  the  labors  of  those  who  vent- 
ure to  attack  popular  and  deeply-rooted  doc- 
trines. Yet  on  several  notable  occasions  it  has 
happened  that  experimenters,  who  have  at  first 
repudiated  the  reality  of  my  results,  have  in  the 
end  been  compelled,  however  reluctantly,  to  ac- 
knowledge their  correctness.  This  was  the  case, 
for  instance,  in  regard  to  the  seemingly  simple, 
though  very  important,  question  whether  a  boiled 
fluid  inclosed  in  a  sealed  vessel,  from  which  the 

1  Annates  de  Chitnie  et  de  Physique,  t.  i.,  1862. 

2  Nature,  September  15, 1870. 


air  had  been  expelled  during  the  process  of  ebul- 
lition, could  or  could  not  subsequently  ferment 
and  swarm  with  living  organisms.  My  statement 
that  this  would  occur  was  at  first  again  and  again 
denied,  on  the  ground  that  the  process  of  boiling 
to  which  the  fluid  was  subjected  would  have  killed 
all  the  organisms  and  their  germs  within  the  nar- 
row-necked experimental  vessel,  and  that  a  gen- 
eration de  novo  of  living  matter  was  not  to  be 
thought  of. 

My  critics  did  not  at  that  time  suggest  that 
the  temperature  of  212°  Fahr.  was  not  adequate 
to  kill  all  preexisting  organisms  and  their  germs 
in  fluids :  this  was  taken  for  granted  ;  and  accord- 
ingly they  roundly  stated  that  I  had  grossly  de- 
ceived myself  in  supposing  that  living  organisms 
had  appeared  under  such  circumstances.  A  cou- 
ple of  quotations  from  important  reviews  by  well- 
known  men  of  science  will  afford  an  index  of  the 
extent  to  which  this  opinion  prevailed  among 
men  of  science  in  this  country. 

In  an  adverse  review  of  my  then  recently- 
published  work,  "The  Beginnings  of  Life,"  which 
appeared  in  the  Academy  of  November  1,  1872, 
signed  by  H.  N.  Moseley,  who  has  since  greatly 
distinguished  himself  by  his  investigations  as  one 
of  the  naturalists  of  the  Challenger  Expedition, 
the  reader  may  find  the  following  passage: 

"  Dr.  Bastian  seals  the  flasks  with  which  he  is 
experimenting  during  ebullition  of  the  contained 
fluid,  and  by  this  means,  when  the  apparatus  has 
become  cool,  a  partial  vacuum  is  formed  in  the 
vessel.  Experiments  were  made  in  this  way  with 
hay  and  turnip  infusions,  in  which  every  possible 
precaution  appears  to  have  been  taken  to  exclude 
or  destroy  germs.  In  nearly  all  cases,  after  the 
lapse  of  some  time,  the  solutions  became  turbid, 
or  exhibited  a  scum,  and  microscopic  examination 
showed  the  existence  of  organic  bodies  in  the 
fluids,  and  in  some  cases  of  bacteria  in  active 
motion. 

"  Now  the  only  possible  answer  to  be  made  to 
experiments  such  as  these  is  that  the  turbidity  or 
scum  in  the  solutions  was  not  caused  by  a  develop- 
ment of  organisms,  but  by  some  coagulation  or 
similar  alteration  in  the  fluid,  and  that  the  bodies 
seen  in  the  solutions  were  not  living,  but  dead, 
and  had  been  there  all  the  time.  .  .  . 

"  Considering,  on  the  one  hand,  the  a  priori 
improbability  of  the  formation  of  bacteria,  etc.,  de 
novo,  with  the  great  weight  and  high  value  of  the 
evidence  already  adduced  against  its  occurrence, 
and  estimating,  on  the  other,  the  value  of  the  evi- 
dence here  put  forth,  it  seems  very  unlikely  that 
Dr.  Bastian's  results  will  be  confirmed." 

Two  months  later,  on  the  1st   of  January, 


436 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


1873,  there  appeared  another  review  of  my  work 
in  the  Quarterly  Journal  of  Microscopical  Science. 
This  time  the  article  was  unsigned;  but  it  has 
since  become  known  to  many  persons  that  it 
was  written  by  a  now  distinguished  Professor  of 
Comparative  Anatomy.  After  referring  to  some 
unsuccessful  attempts  which  had  been  made  by 
Prof.  Burdon-Sanderson  to  obtain  such  results 
as  I  had  indicated,  and  after  dwelling  upon  other 
evidence  which  the  reviewer  considered  adverse 
to  the  recognition  of  the  truth  of  these  results, 
he  says :  "  This  evidence  is  overpowering ;  but 
still  Dr.  Bastian  does  not  yield."  He  then  con- 
tinues as  follows : 

"  We  set  ourselves  at  the  commencement  of 
this  notice  the  task  of  determining  whether  Dr. 
Bastian  had  made  out  a  prima-facie  case.  We 
cannot  say  that  the  various  considerations  adduced 
above  allow  us  to  hold  that  he  has.  .  .  .  Biolo- 
gists would,  we  hold,  be  perfectly  justified  in  re- 
fusing to  be  troubled  by  him  any  further.  Time 
and  skill  are  not  to  be  wasted  in  confuting  state- 
ments manifestly  uncritical.  .  .  .  Nevertheless, 
in  consequence  of  the  interest  which  Dr.  Bastian's 
work  has  excited,  we  have  made  the  experiment, 
and  that  repeatedly.  This  is  not  the  occasion  on 
which  to  give  the  details  of  the  experiments  in 
question.  It  will,  however,  perhaps  add  some 
value  to  the  remarks  which  it  has  been  our  duty 
to  make  when  we  state  that,  carefully  following 
Dr.  Bastian's  directions,  using  at  the  same  time 
great  care  as  to  cleanliness  and  due  boiling,  we 
have  obtained  results  which,  in  every  single  in- 
stance, out  of  more  than  forty  tubes  closed  on  four 
separate  occasions,  simply  contradict  Dr.  Bastian." 

But  in  the  intervening  month  of  December 
my  colleague,  Dr.  Burdon-Sanderson,  had  ac- 
cepted my  invitation  to  allow  me  to  show  him  the 
nature  of  my  method  and  the  reality  of  my  re- 
sults, with  the  understanding  that  he  should  sub- 
sequently publish  an  account  of  them.  His  de- 
scription of  these  experiments  bears  the  date  of 
the  1st  of  January,  1873,  viz.,  the  very  day  of 
the  publication  of  the  last-mentioned  review; 
and  it  is  to  be  fouud  in  Nature  of  January  8th. 
As  a  sequel  to  the  previous  quotations,  it  will  be 
useful  to  reproduce  its  closing  paragraph  : 

"  The  accuracy  of  Dr.  Bastian's  statements  of 
fact,  with  reference  to  the  particular  experiments 
now  under  consideration,  has  been  publicly  ques- 
tioned. I  myself  doubted  it,  and  expressed  my 
doubts,  if  not  publicly,  at  least  in  conversation.  I 
am  content  to  have  established — at  all  events  to 
my  own  satisfaction — that,  by  following  Dr.  Bas- 
tian's directions,  infusions  can  be  prepared  which 
are  not  deprived,  by  an  ebullition  of  from  five  to 
ten  minutes,  of  the  faculty  of  undergoing  those 


1  chemical  changes  which  are  characterized  by  the 
presence  of  swarms  of  bacteria,  and  that  the  de- 
velopment of  these  organisms  can  proceed  with 
the  greatest  activity  in  hermetically-sealed  glass 
vessels,  from  which  almost  the  whole  of  the  air 
has  been  expelled  by  boiling." 

Subsequently  these  results  were  also  con- 
firmed by  Prof.  Huizinga,  of  Groningen,  and  by 
two  or  three  most  competent  German  investiga- 
tors. The  matter  of  fact,  therefore,  was  at  last 
considered  to  be  definitely  established.1 

The  view  enunciated  by  Mr.  Moseley  in  the 
Academy  in  regard  to  my  experiments  was  sub- 
stantially similar  to  that  which  Prof.  Huxley  had 
started  at  one  of  the  sectional  meetings  of  the 
British  Association  in  1870;  and  although  in 
less  than  three  years  from  that  time  it  had  been, 
as  we  have  seen,  abundantly  refuted  both  in 
this  country  and  on  the  Continent,  Prof.  Tyndall 
three  years  later — that  is,  early  in  1876 — at- 
tempted to  deny  that  such  experimental  results 
as  mine  could  be  legitimately  obtained,  and 
sought  to  convince  the  Royal  Society  and  a 
crowded  audience  at  the  Royal  Institution  that 
I  had  fallen  into  error,  and  that  no  such  results 
could  be  obtained  by  a  skilled  experimentalist 
like  himself.  In  evidence  of  this  he  brought  for- 
ward a  "  cloud  of  witnesses,"  all  of  which,  if 
rightly  interpreted,  gave  very  different  testimony 
from  that  which  Prof.  Tyndall  imagined.  But, 
while  he  at  first  strenuously  denied  my  facts,  he 
is  now  able  only  to  demur  to  my  interpretation. 

All  this  opposition,  as  will  readily  be  seen,  is 
to  be  taken  as  the  measure  of  the  antecedent 
certainty  that  all  living  matter  is  killed  by  a 
brief  but  real  exposure  to  a  temperature  of  212° 
Fahr. 

The  modern  opponents  and  supporters  of  the 
doctrine  of  "  spontaneous  generation  "  have  al- 
ways been  principally  concerned  with  two  sets 
of  problems :  1.  As  to  the  nature  of  the  material 
in  the  air,  the  access  of  which  is  so  apt  to  induce 
fermentation  in  suitable  fluids ;  2.  As  to  whether 
some  degree  of  heat  below  212°  Fahr.  can  be 
proved  to  be  always  sufficient  to  destroy  the  life 
of  different  kinds  of  living  matter  in  the  moist 
state,  but  especially  that  of  bacteria  and  fungus 
germs. 

In  regard  to  the  first  set  of  problems,  it  has 
been  generally  agreed  for  some  time  that  the  air 

1  This,  of  course,  was  the  point  originally  in  dis- 
pute, and  concerning  which  it  was  of  most  importance 
that  there  should  be  no  discrepancy.  It  was  to  this 
matter  of  fact  only  that  Dr.  Burdon-Sanderson  testi- 
fied as  above. 


SPONTANEOUS  GENERATION. 


437 


contains  some  germs  of  living  organisms,  but 
that  what  proportion  these  bear  to  the  much 
more  bulky,  and  probably  more  numerous,  or- 
ganic particles  and  fragments  resulting  from  the 
breaking  up  of  previous  living  matter  of  various 
kinds,  is  uncertain.  It  has  been  also  generally 
admitted  that  any  living  organisms  or  germs 
which  chanced  to  fall  from  the  air  into  suitable 
fluids  would  initiate  fermentation  or  putrefac- 
tion therein.  The  question  really  requiring  to  be 
solved  has  always  been  (though  it  has  not  been 
uniformly  recognized)  whether  mere  organic  de- 
bris from  the  air,  either  in  the  form  of  particles 
or  of  larger  fragments,  could  or  could  not  also 
bring  about  such  changes  in  suitable  fluids. 

The  legitimacy  of  this  doubt  is  perfectly  ob- 
vious. The  doctrine  of  fermentation  generally 
adopted  anterior  to  that  of  M.  Pasteur  was  the 
one  promulgated  by  Baron  Liebig.  This  latter 
has  been  known  as  the  physical  or  the  chemico- 
physical  theory,  in  contradistinction  to  that  of  M. 
Pasteur,  which  is  commonly  spoken  of  as  the 
germ-theory,  or  the  vital  theory  of  fermentation. 
Now,  according  to  the  original  doctrine  of  Lie- 
big,  a  ferment  was  a  portion  of  organic  matter 
in  a  state  of  motor-decay.  The  molecular  move- 
ments communicated  to  a  suitable  liquid  by  such 
changing  organic  matter  were  supposed  by  him 
to  be  capable  of  initiating  fermentative  changes. 
In  short,  Liebig  attributed  to  decaying  organic 
matter  just  such  functions  as  Pasteur  has  striven 
to  concede  only  to  living  units  or  organisms. 

It  is  Liebig's  doctrine,  therefore,  which  legiti- 
mately suggests  the  doubt  above  mentioned  in 
regard  to  the  possible  potencies  of  atmospheric 
particles  other  than  actual  germs.  It  was  his 
view  which  from  the  first  made  it  desirable  that 
absolute  proof  should  be  looked  for  from  the 
germ- theorists  before  their  doctrine  was  ac- 
cepted, and  before  effects  referable,  it  is  true,  to 
the  influence  of  atmospheric  dust  are  declared  not 
to  be  in  part  accounted  for  by  the  fermentative 
agency  of  some  of  the  dead  organic  particles  and 
fragments  with  which  the  air  is  known  to  teem. 

This  is  a  view  which  is  not  peculiar  to  myself. 
It  is,  and  has  long  been,  held  by  others,  in  proof 
of  which  I  need  only  quote  the  following  brief 
passage  from  the  writings  of  another  celebrated 
German  chemist.  Speaking  of  experiments  which 
had  been  made  with  suitable  boiled  fluids,  ex- 
posed first  of  all  to  air  which  had  been  either 
calcined  or  filtered,  and  then  to  ordinary  air, 
Prof.  Gerhardt  ("  Chimie  Organique,"  t.  iv.,  p. 
545)  says  by  way  of  comment  upon  the  conclu- 
sions drawn  from  them  by  the  germ-theorists : 


"  Si  dans  les  premieres  experiences  l'air  calcine" 
ou  tamise  s'est  montre"  beaucoup  moins  actif  que 
l'air  non  sounds  a  ce  traitement,  c'est  que  la  cha- 
leur  rouge  ou  le  tamisage  enleve  a  l'air  non-seule- 
ment  les  germes  des  infusoires  et  des  moisissures, 
mais  encore  les  debris  des  matieres  en  decompo- 
sition qui  y  sont  suspendues,  c'est-a-dire  les  fer- 
ments dont  l'activite"  viendrait  s'ajouter  a  eelle  de 
l'oxygene  de  l'air." 

All  this  seems  to  me  perfectly  plain,  yet  Prof. 
Tyndall  is  pleased  to  find  fault  in  the  last  number 
of  this  Review,  because,  as  he  says,  the  name  of 
Baron  Liebig  has  been  unwarrantably  or  need- 
lessly introduced  into  these  discussions.  He  fur- 
ther accuses  me  of  speaking  in  "vague"  terms, 
because  I  have  not  quoted  Baron  Liebig  for  more 
than  that  to  which  he  has  given  his  testimony. 

The  correlation  of  organisms  with  the  major- 
ity of  fermentations  is  now  freely  admitted  on  all 
sides.  But  it  was  not  a  fact  so  well  known  to 
Liebig  when  he  originally  published  his  doctrine 
as  to  the  causes  of  fermentation.  Baron  Liebig 
lived,  however,  into  the  time  when  the  fact  of 
this  correlation  was  generally  known  and  ad- 
mitted, and  he  saw  nothing  therein  to  make  him 
renounce  his  previous  views.  On  the  contrary, 
he  slightly  widened  them  after  the  correlation  of 
organisms  with  fermentations  had  become  estab- 
lished, and  endeavored  to  show  that  the  admitted 
actions  of  living  units  in  initiating  fermentations 
were  but  other  exemplifications  of  his  general 
doctrine,  that  fermentations  are  induced  by  cer- 
tain communicated  molecular  movements,  some- 
times emanating  from  organic  matter  in  a  state 
of  decay,  and  sometimes  resulting  from  the  vital 
processes  of  living  units. 

I  quite  agree  with  Prof.  Tyndall  in  thinking 
that  Liebig's  was  a  truly  scientific  doctrine, 
founded,  as  the  former  tells  us,  on  "  profound 
conceptions  of  molecular  instability." 

If,  then,  as  Liebig  contended,  organic  matter 
in  a  state  of  decay  is  capable  of  acting  as  a  fer- 
ment, and  of  initiating  the  common  fermentations 
and  putrefactions,  there  surely  can  be  no  error  in 
quoting  him  in  support  of  such  views.  And  if  it 
has  also  been  shown  that  the  appearance  and  in- 
crease of  the  lowest  living  particles  are  always  a 
correlative  of  these  processes,  Liebig's  view,  if  it 
is  true  at  all,  must  be  true  for  the  whole  of  the 
processes  which  are  essentially  included  under 
the  term  fermentation. 

The  heterogenist  has,  therefore,  perfectly  good 
ground  for  demanding  proofs  of  error  from  the 
germ-theorist  rather  than  more  or  less  probable 
guesses   based   solely  upon  the   germ-theorist's 


438 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


way  of  thinking,  before  he  abandons  Liebig's 
fertile  idea,  supported  by  Gerhardt  and  others, 
that  the  mere  organic  matter  of  the  air  can  en- 
gender fermentative  changes  in  suitable  fluids, 
leading,  though  it  may,  among  other  phenomena, 
to  a  new  birth  of  living  particles.  This,  too,  the 
reader  will  observe,  is  a  very  different  notion 
concerning  the  mode  of  origin  of  such  new  living 
particles  from  that  which  Prof.  Tyndall  persists 
in  attributing  to  me — viz.,  the  absurd  idea  that 
mere  dead  particles  from  the  air  are  themselves 
"  miraculously  kindled  into  living  things." 

Now,  it  is  to  this  first  part  of  the  subject  that 
the  great  bulk  of  Prof.  Tyndall's  experiments 
belong.  He  has  sought  to  throw  light  upon  such 
problems  as  these :  what  ordinary  air  contains  in 
the  way  of  solid  matter,  what  air  subjected  to 
different  kinds  of  treatment  contains,  how  the 
contents  of  the  atmosphere  differ  in  various 
places,  how  in  these  different  conditions  and 
places  it  affects  previously-boiled  fluids ;  and,  by 
way  of  speculation  only,  as  to  the  exact  nature 
of  the  material  which,  falling  into  organic  fluids 
from  the  air,  incites  fermentation  therein.  He 
has  renewed  the  proofs  of  things  which  were  not 
before  doubted,  and  he  claims  in  addition  to 
have  shown  that  the  air  contains  invisible  or 
"ultra-microscopical  particles,"  which  by  their 
subsidence  are,  like  larger  particles  or  debris, 
also  capable  of  contaminating  organic  infusions. 
But  I  fail  to  find  in  this  latter  fact,  however  much 
it  may  be  confirmed,  and  however  frequently  it 
may  be  reiterated,  any  proof  that  such  particles 
are  "  germs  "  of  bacteria,  especially  when,  on  Prof. 
Tyndall's  own  testimony,  the  behavior  of  these 
invisible  particles  in  regard  to  heat  is  altogether 
opposed  to  that  of  all  known  visible  germs  of 
which  I  or  anybody  else  have  any  cognizance. 

Burdach  exhibited  much  sagacity  some  forty 
years  ago  when  he  said  in  reference  to  the  invis- 
ible germs  which  were  also  postulated  in  his 
time : 

"  Les  dit-on  trop  petits  pour  etre  apercus,  c'est 
avouer  qu'on  ne  peut  rien  savoir  de  leur  existence. 
.  .  .  Croire  que  partout  ou  l'on  rencontre  des  in- 
fusoires,  ils  ont  6t&  precedes  d'oeufs,  c'est  done 
admettre  une  pure  hypothese,  qui  n'a  d'autre  fon- 
dement  que  l'analogie.  ...  Si  c'est  seulement  par 
l'analogie  qu'on  suppose  des  ceufs  chez  eux,  il  faut 
accorder  a  ces  ceufs  des  propriety  semblables  a 
celles  de  tous  les  ceufs  connus :  car  ce  serait  jouer 
sur  les  mots  que  de  supposer  qu'ils  en  ont  de  par- 
ticulieres  a  eux  seuls."  l 

1  "  Traite  de  Physiologic"    Translation  by  Jour- 
dan,  1837,  t.  i.,  p.  22. 


All  this  discussion  about  the  nature  of  the 
atmospheric  dust,  visible  and  invisible,  together 
with  elaborate  and  ingenious  experimentation  to 
prove  its  infective  nature,  so  far  as  fermentations 
are  concerned,  has  not  really  advanced  the  main 
question  one  iota.  It  is,  as  we  have  seen,  impos- 
sible for  Prof.  Tyndall,  by  all  the  refinements 
which  he  has  introduced  into  the  study  of  this 
part  of  the  subject,  to  get  beyond  the  simple  con- 
clusion of  Schwann,  long  anterior  to  the  la- 
bors of  Pasteur,  that  the  air  contains  a  "  some- 
thing "  which  is  infective ;  but  we  are  no  more 
able  to  say  now  than  Schwann  was  in  183*1  what 
is  the  precise  nature  of  this  something.  In  this 
view  I  am,  as  I  shall  subsequently  show,  sup- 
ported by  high  authority. 

My  more  simple  experiments  with  glass  ves- 
sels, from  which  most  of  the  air  had  been  ex- 
pelled by  boiling,  and  in  which  heat  was  relied 
upon  as  the  scourge  of  all  antecedent  life,  had, 
moreover,  thoroughly  shown  that  the  essential 
question  does  not  lie  in  the  direction  of  Prof. 
Tyndall's  experiments.  The  verdict  in  connec- 
tion with  spontaneous  generation  essentially  de- 
pends on  the  answer  which  can  be  given  to 
another  problem.  As  the  late  Prof.  Jeffries 
Wyman  said, '  "  The  issue  between  the  advo- 
cates and  the  opponents  of  the  doctrine  in  ques- 
tion clearly  turns  on  the  extent  to  which  it  can 
be  proved  that  living  things  resist  the  action  of 
water  at  a  high  temperature." 

When  any  one  asks  what  explanation  can  be 
given  of  the  appearance  of  the  lowest  forms  of 
living  matter  in  previously-boiled  and  guarded 
infusions,  only  two  interpretations  are  possible. 
There  must  have  been  (1)  a  survival  of  organisms 
or  germs,  or  else  (2)  a  new  and  independent 
birth  of  living  particles.  Yet,  if  we  look  at  them 
merely  in  the  light  of  previous  experience,  each 
of  these  interpretations  seems  alike  at  variance 
with  our  actual  knowledge. 

Many  considerations  and  much  thought  will 
be  required  before  any  one  would  be  likely  to 
entertain  the  conclusion  that  the  forms  of  living 
matter  which  appear  in  the  previously-boiled 
fluids  are  primordial,  and  had  arisen  indepen- 
dently, in  a  mother  liquid,  somewhat  after  the 
fashion  of  incipient  crystals ;  and  similarly  we 
ought,  if  our  minds  are  free  and  unbiased,  to 
hesitate  much  and  long  before  we  conclude  that 
forms  of  living  matter  which  are  so  minute  as  to 
be  beyond  the  reach  of  present  microscopes  not 
only  exist,  but  have  properties  totally  different, 

1  American  Journal  of  Science  and  Art,  September,  1867. 


SP0XTA2TE0US  OEXERATIOX. 


439 


in  regard  to  their  amenability  to  the  destructive 
influence  of  heat,  from  all  visible  forms  of  living 
matter  of  similar  nature.  Yet  these  are  the  two 
alternatives  which  have  to  be  considered  by  those 
who  seek  to  interpret  the  experiments  above  re- 
ferred to.  It  is  not  safe  in  such  a  question  to  lean 
too  strongly  upon  analogy,  and  even  if  it  were,  it 
so  happeus,  as  I  have  elsewhere  shown,  that  the 
arguments  from  analogy  are  very  evenly  balanced 
in  their  bearing  upon  these  opposite  views.1 

Should  it  be  asked  what  warrant  there  is  for 
supposing  that  living  particles  ever  could  come 
into  being  by  an  independent  birth  from  fluids, 
somewhat  after  the  fashion  of  incipient  crystals, 
I  would  reply  that  the  general  kinship  between 
living  and  not-living  matter  is  freely  admitted  by 
men  of  science  at  the  present  day,  as  the  follow- 
ing quotation  may  suffice  to  indicate.  Prof.  Hux- 
ley says: 8  "  It  is  not  probable  that  there  is  any 
real  difference  in  the  nature  of  the  molecular 
forces  which  compel  the  carbonate  of  lime  to  as- 
sume and  retain  the  crystalline  form,  and  those 
which  cause  the  albuminoid  matter  to  move  and 
grow,  select  and  form,  and  maintain  its  particles 
in  a  state  of  incessant  motion.  The  property  of 
crystallizing  is  to  crystallizable  matter  what  the 
vital  property  is  to  albuminoid  matter  (proto- 
plasm). The  crystalline  form  corresponds  to  the 
organic  form,  and  its  internal  structure  to  tissue- 
structure.  Crystalline  force  being  a  property  of 
matter,  vital  force  is  but  a  property  of  matter." 

But  the  same  inquirer  may  ask,  Does  anybody 
go  so  far  as  to  say  that  living  matter  ever  has 
come  into  being  independently  ?  To  which  I  can 
only  answer,  It  is  the  belief  of  our  profoundest 
thinkers  and  foremost  men  of  science  that  such  a 
process  did  take  place  in  the  early  history  of  this 
planet.  This  is  the  declared  belief  of  many,  both 
at  home  and  abroad,  of  whom  I  will  only  men- 
tion among  ourselves  the  names  of  Herbert 
Spencer  and  G.  H.  Lewes,  together  with  those  of 
Charles  Darwin  and  Prof.  Huxley.  And  that  it 
maybe  seen  that  this  is  a  view  shared  in  even  by 
a  man  who  is  notable  for  great  caution  and  so- 
briety in  regard  to  the  acceptance  of  mere  fanci- 
ful hypotheses,  it  will  only  be  necessary  to  quote 
from  an  address  delivered  last  autumn  before  the 
German  Association  of  Naturalists  and  Physicians 
by  Prof.  Virchow.  After  demurring  to  the  pro- 
mulgation of  different  doctrines  which  he  re- 
garded as  unproved,  Virchow  says:3  "Never- 
theless,   I   admit    that    if    we  indeed    want    to 

1  "  Evolution  and  the  Origin  of  Life,"  1874,  pp.  50- 
57,  and  15-29. 

2  Fortnightly  Review,  February.  1669. 

3  See  Mature,  November  29, 1877,  p.  98. 


form  an  idea  how  the  first  organic  being  could 
have  originated  by  itself,  nothing  remains  but 
to  go  back  to  spontaneous  generation.  This  is 
clear.  If  I  do  not  want  to  suppose  a  creation- 
theory,  if  I  do  not  want  to  believe  that  a  special 
creator  existed,  who  took  the  clod  of  clay  and 
blew  his  living  breath  into  it,  if  I  want  to  form 
some  conception  in  my  own  way,  then  I  must 
form  it  in  the  sense  of  generatio  tequivoca."  1 

But  does  any  one,  other  than  Dr.  Bastian,  hold 
that  some  such  process  as  is  here  supposed 
could  have  taken  place  more  than  once — that  it 
does  take  place  even  now  ?  This  is  a  question 
which  an  ingenuous  reader  may  well  put  after 
reading  Prof.  Tyndall's  denunciation  of  my  views 
in  the  last  number  of  this  Review.  To  this, 
again,  I  can  only  reply  that  there  are  such  men — 
men,  too,  who  accupy  an  exalted  position  in  the 
world  of  science.  As  a  botanist  I  can  name  M. 
Trecul,  and  as  a  chemist  M.  Fremy,  both  of  them 
members  of  the  Institute  of  France ;  while  in  Italy 
I  can  cite  Prof.  Cantoni,  who  holds  the  chair  of 
Physics  at  Pavia,  as  well  as  Prof.  Oehl  and  Prof. 
Leopoldo  Maggi.  There  are  others  whom  I  might 
mention,  but  it  would  be  of  little  use,  and  instead 
I  will  subjoin  a  quotation  from  one  of  our  own 
most  eminent  thinkers.  As  this  is  taken  from  a 
work  published  only  last  summer,1  its  author  may 
be  presumed  to  have  been  fully  aware  of  the 
major  part  of  the  evidence  and  reasoning  of  an 
adverse  kind  which  Prof.  Tyndall  has  of  late  ad- 
duced. Mr.  G.  H.  Lewes  writes  (page  122) :  "  I 
cannot  see  the  evidence  which  would  warrant  the 
belief  that  life  originated  solely  in  one  micro- 
scopic lump  of  protoplasm  on  one  single  point  of 
our  earth's  surface ;  on  the  contrary,  it  is  more 
probable  that  from  innumerable  and  separate 
points  of  this  teeming  earth  myriads  of  proto- 
plasts sprang  into  existence  whenever  and  wher- 
ever the  conditions  of  the  formation  of  organized 
substance  were  present.  It  is  probable  that  this 
has  been  incessantly  going  on,  and  that  every  day 
new  protoplasts  appear,  struggle  for  existence,  and 
serve  as  food  for  more  highly-organized  rivals." 

Such  processes  could  not  come  within  the 
common  knowledge  of  mankind.  What  can  or- 
dinary persons  know  on  the  question  whether 
specks  of  living  matter  less  than  tttsWu  °f  an 
inch  in  diameter  are  constantly  coming  within 
visible  limits  after  an  independent  birth  from 
fluids  ?     Yet  this  supposition  has  been  spoken  of 

1  Virchow  distinctly  states,  however,  that  in  his* 
opinion  the  occurrence  of  any  such  process  at  the 
present  day  has  never  been  proved. 

a  "The  Physical  Basis  of  Mind,"  by  G.  H.  Lewes, 
1877. 


440 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


by  Prof.  Tyndall  as  an  interpretation  of  the  ap- 
pearance of  such  specks  which  "  violates  all  an- 
tecedent knowledge."  This  cannot  be  true;  it 
may  be  at  variance  with  a  favorite  argument  from 
analogy,  but,  as  regards  the  cause  of  the  phenom- 
enon itself,  this  is,  and  ever  has  been,  beyond  the 
reach  of  "antecedent  knowledge."  As  I  have 
elsewhere '  pointed  out,  living  matter,  like  crystal- 
line matter,  can  originate  or  come  into  being  only 
by  a  synthesis  of  its  elements ;  but  because  organ- 
isms (owing  to  the  intrinsic  properties  of  living 
matter)  have  well-known  powers  of  self-multipli- 
cation, the  obviousness  of  these  modes  of  repro- 
duction has  sufficed  to  cast  doubts  upon  the 
reality  of  the  independent  origin  of  the  lowest 
living  units,  by  supplying  material  for  the  build- 
ing up  of  a  plausible  but  one-sided  analogical 
argument  against  the  reality  of  that  which  must 
always  remain  beyond  the  sphere  of  actual  ob- 
servation. 

After  the  before-mentioned  confirmation  of 
my  experiment  by  others  in  1873,  and  after  wit- 
nessing the  ease  with  which  the  old  beliefs  as  to 
the  destructive  influence  of  fluids  at  212°  Fahr. 
upon  ferment  organisms  and  their  germs  were 
then  thrown  aside," I  immediately  instituted  new 
inquiries  concerning  the  death-point  of  such  or- 
ganisms in  fluids,  in  order  to  try  and  ascertain 
again  whether  there  was  or  was  not  any  justifi- 
cation for  this  procedure. 

This  new  series  of  experiments,  of  which  a 
record  is  to  be  found  in  the  "  Proceedings  of  the 
Royal  Society"  for  18Y3,  seems  to  show  conclu- 
sively that  the  bacteria  and  all  the  reproductive 
particles  which  they  may  possess,  which  were 
purposely  immersed  in  the  organic  infusions  with 
which  the  experiments  were  made,  were  killed,  as 
I  had  previously  ascertained,  at  a  temperature  of 
140°  Fahr.  Similar  experiments  were  made  very 
shortly  afterward,  in  the  same  manner,  by  Prof. 
Cohn,  of  Breslau,  assisted  by  Dr.  Horvath,  and 
they  also  arrived  at  the  conclusion  that  the  com- 
mon bacteria  were  killed  in  fluids  by  a  brief 
exposure  of  from  five  to  ten  minutes  to  a  temper- 
ature of  140°  Fahr.  Although  these  experiments 
were  made  after  mine,  they  seem  to  have  been 
executed  without  any  knowledge  of  my  results, 
so  that  the  independent  confirmation  which  they 
afford  is  all  the  more  satisfactory. 

The  method  of  procedure  employed  in  these 
experiments  was  of  such  a  nature  that  the  con- 
clusion arrived  at  was,  as  I  pointed  out  at  the 
time,  applicable  to  any  germs,  whether  visible  or 

1  "The  Beginnings  of  Life,"'  vol.  ii.,  p.  77 


invisible,  by  which  bacteria  may  multiply  in  fluids, 
as  much  as  to  the  parent  organisms  themselves. 

When  Prof.  Tyndall  was  at  last,  after  his  un- 
successful "  Combat  with  an  Infective  Atmos- 
phere," '  compelled  to  turn  his  attention  from 
this  side  of  the  subject  to  the  heat-resisting 
powers  of  living  matter,  in  order  to  find  some 
hypothesis  which  would  explain  the  very  contra- 
dictory results  of  his  first  and  of  his  second  series 
of  experiments,  the  public  generally  was  told 
through  the  Times  of  the  9th  of  June  last,  as 
his  audience  at  the  Royal  Institution  had  been 
on  the  previous  evening,  that  "  the  gravest  error 
ever  committed  by  biological  writers  on  this  ques- 
tion consists  in  the  confounding  of  the  germ  and 
its  offspring."  Though  the  parent  organisms 
were,  as  he  was  prepared  to  admit,  killed  at  140° 
Fahr.,  it  was  far  otherwise  with  the  "  germs," 
which,  though  invisible,  were  described  as  "  in- 
durated and  resistent." 

Now,  it  is  difficult  to  conceive  any  statement 
more  hopelessly  incorrect  than  this  of  Prof.  Tyn- 
dall with  respect  to  the  supposed  '"error"  of 
biological  writers.  As  above  indicated,  any  dis- 
tinction existing  between  germs  and  finished  or- 
ganisms in  regard  to  their  resistance  to  heat  had 
always  been  thoroughly  borne  in  mind  by  me, 
and  the  same  may  be  said  of  all  the  principal 
workers  from  the  Abbe  Spallanzani  downward. 
Moreover,  in  my  "  Evolution  and  the  Origin  of 
Life"  I  devoted  many  pages  (pp.  141-168)  to  a 
discussion  of  all  the  most  important  facts  which 
were  then  known  in  regard  to  this  question. 

But  again  our  attention  has  been  called  to  an- 
other thoroughly  familiar  fact,  as  though  it  were 
one  which  had  hitherto  escaped  attention.  In 
order  seemingly  to  explain  Prof.  Tyndall's  sup- 
position that  the  invisible  germs  whose  existence 
he  postulates  are  really  "  indurated  and  resistent," 
as  he  imagines,  we  have  been  more  than  once  re- 
minded that  the  (wholly  different)  desiccated  seeds 
of  many  plants  which  are  provided  with  thick 
and  horny  coats  can  resist  the  penetration  of 
water  for  a  very  long  time,  and  can  even  retain 
their  vitality  occasionally  after  they  have  been 
boiled  in  water  for  four  hours. 

But  Prof.  Tyndall  tries  to  make  even  a  more 
specific  use  of  this  fact.  In  this  Review  last 
month,  after  referring  to  some  statements  which 
I  have  made  in  reference  to  the  influence  of  boil- 
ing water  upon  living  matter,  he  adds  : 

"But  to  invalidate  the  foregoing  statements  it 
is  only  necessary  to  say  that  eight  years  before 
they  were  made  it  has  been  known  to  the  wool- 

1  British  Medical  Journal,  January  27, 1877. 


SP  OXTAXEO  US  GEXERA  TIOX. 


441 


staplers  of  Elbceuf,  and  Pouehet  had  published 
the  fact  in  the  Comptes  Hindus  of  the  Paris  Acad- 
emy of  Sciences,  that  the  desiccated  seeds  of  the 
Brazilian  plant  medkago  survived  fully  four  hours' 
boiling.  ...  So  much  for  the  heterogenist's  mis- 
take in  regard  to  ordinary  seeds." 

Now  mv  readers  will  be  surprised  to  learn  that 
this  particular  example,  which  is  to  invalidate  my 
statements,  had  been  discussed  by  me,  in  1872,  in 
my  "Beginnings  of  Life  "(vol  L,  p.  314),  as  may 
be  seen  from  the  following  quotation : 

"  Seeds  of  higher  plants,  provided  with  a  hard 
coat,  may — especially  after  prolonged  periods  of 
desiccation— germinate  even  after  they  have  been 
boiled  for  a  long  time  in  water.  This  was  ascer- 
tained by  AT.  Pouehet  to  be  the  case  with  an 
American  species  of  medicago.  Some  of  the  seeds 
were  completely  disorganized  by  this  boiling  tem- 
perature, while  a  few  remained  intact,  and  it  was 
these  latter  which  were  afterward  found  to  germi- 
nate. They  had  been  protected  from  the  influence 
of  the  hot  water  by  their  very  dry  and  hardened 
coats.  On  this  subject  Prof.  Jeffries  Wyman  says : 
'  Water  penetrates  the  seeds  of  many  plants,  and 
especially  of  some  of  the  Zeguminosce,  very  slow- 
ly; in  the  case  of  Gleditschia  and  Laburnum  we 
have  found  several  days  and  even  weeks  necessary 
for  the  penetration  of  cold  water,  though  when  the 
water  is  hot  it  penetrates  much  more  readily.  If, 
therefore,  the  seeds  are  dry  when  immersed,  and 
are  boiled  for  a  few  minutes  only,  they  may  still 
germinate.  If  they  are  moistened  beforehand,  the 
action  of  boiling  water  has  been  found  uniformly 
fatal.'  .  .  .  All  the  organisms  in  which  we  are 
interested  at  present,  however,  have  no  such  pro- 
tection. These  are  mere  specks  or  masses  of  pro- 
toplasm, which  are  either  naked  or  provided  only 
with  thin  coverings." 

Thus  it  will  be  seen  that  the  facts  newly  dis- 
covered by  Prof.  Tyndall,  which  were  to  invali- 
date my  views,  were  with  others  nearly  five  years 
ago  referred  to  by  me — and  their  value  was,  I 
trust,  duly  estimated.  But  upon  this  subject  I 
must  notice  another  instance  in  which  Prof.  Tyn- 
dall has  misinformed  the  public  in  regard  to  my 
mode  of  dealing  with  these  questions.  At  page 
43  of  the  last  number  of  this  Review,  he  says, 
"  Throughout  his  long  disquisitions  on  this  sub- 
ject, Dr.  Bastian  makes  special  kinds  of  living 
matter  do  duty  for  all  kinds."  But  the  real  fact 
is  wholly  different,  since  my  reference  to  the  ques- 
tion of  the  power  of  resisting  unaccustomed  heat 
which  is  possessed  by  living  matter  had  included 
a  reference  to  all  the  forms  of  it  with  which 
experiment  had  been  made  (so  far  as  I  had  been 
able  to  ascertain)  up  to  the  date  of  my  last  con- 


tribution to  this  subject,  in  1S74. 
were  thus  summarized : ' 


These  inquiries 


TEMPERATURES    AT   WHICH    DEATH    OCCURS. 

Are  killed  at 

Simple  aquatic  organisms  (Spallan- 

sani,  Max  Schultze,  and  Kuhne).  104°-113°  F. 

Tissue-elements  of  cold-blooded  ani 

mal — frog  (Kuhne)      .        .        .  104° 

Tissue-elements  of  warm-blooded  ani- 
mal— man  (Strieker  and  Kuhne)  111° 

Tissue  -  elements  of  plants— Urtica, 
Tradescantia,  and  Vallisneria 
(Max  Schultze  and  Kuhne)         .  116i°-llSi° 

Eggs,  fungus-spores,  and  bacteria- 
germs  (Spallanzani,  Ziebig,  Tar- 
nowski,  and  others)     .        .        .       122°-140° 

In  respect  to  such  results  of  independent 
investigation  I  made  the  following  comments : 
"We  have  only  to  bear  in  mind  two  or  three 
general  principles  in  order  to  be  able  to  har- 
monize the  several  experimental  results  arrived 
at  with  the  now  very  generally  admitted  doctrine 
as  to  the  oneness  or  generic  resemblance  existing 
between  all  forms  of  living  matter.  We  must 
bear  in  mind,  first  of  all,  the  consideration  en- 
forced by  Spallanzani,  that  there  are  different 
grades  of  vitality,  or,  in  other  words,  different 
kinds  of  living  matter,  exhibiting  more  or  less 
of  the  phenomena  known  as  vital ;  and  that  of 
these  kinds  those  which  would  exhibit  the  most 
active  life  are  those  which  would  be  most  easily 
killed  by  heat.  Thus  we  should  expect  the  latent 
life  of  the  germ,  egg,  or  seed,  to  be  less  easily 
extinguished  than  the  more  subtile  and,  at  the 
same  time,  more  active  life  of  the  fully-developed 
tissue-element  or  organism ;  and  we  should  also 
expect  that  the  vegetal  element  or  organism 
would,  as  a  rule,  be  less  readily  killed  than  the 
more  highly-vitalized  animal  organism.  These 
principles,  based  upon  the  relative  complexity  of 
life,  are,  however,  subject  to  the  influence  of  a 
disturbing  cause.  .  .  .  Custom  or  habitual  con- 
ditions may  tend  to  render  the  more  active  tissue- 
elements  of  warm-blooded  animals  better  able  to 
resist  the  influence  of  heat  than  similar  elements 
of  less  highly-vitalized  cold-blooded  animals." 

These  considerations  I  have  thought  it  best 
to  quote,  partly  because  they  throw  light  upon 
the  independent  results  above  tabulated,  and 
partly  because  they  illustrate  the  degree  of  truth 
contained  in  another  of  Prof.  Tyndall's  state- 
ments concerning  facts  or  views  which  I  have 
adduced.     But  even  if  I  had,  as  he  says,  made 

1  "  Evolution  and  the  Origin  of  Life,"  p.  166. 


4:42 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


"  special  kinds  of  living  matter  do  duty  for  all 
kinds,"  I  should  not  have  lacked  the  countenance 
of  high  authority  for  the  assumption  that  the 
fundamental  properties  of  all  living  matter  are 
similar.  I  may  perhaps  be  permitted  to  call  his 
attention  to  what  Prof.  Huxley  1  has  eloquent- 
ly said  on  this  subject:  "Beast  and  fowl,  reptile 
and  fish,  mollusk,  worm,  and  polyp,  are  all  com- 
posed  of  structural  units  of  the  same  charac- 
ter—namely, masses  of  protoplasm  with  a  nu- 
cleus. .  .  .  What  has  been  said  of  the  animal 
world  is  no  less  true  of  plants.  .  .  .  Protoplasm, 
simple  or  nucleated,  is  the  formal  basis  of  all 
life.  .  .  .  Thus  it  becomes  clear  that  all  livin<* 
powers  are  cognate,  and  all  living  forms  are  fun- 
damentally of  one  character." 

On  the  all-important  subject  of  the  death- 
point  of  living  matter,  therefore,  and  on  the  de- 
gree to  which  a  power  of  resisting  prolonged  and 
higher  temperatures  is  conferred  upon  bacteria 
or  their  germs  by  virtue  of  their  previous  desic- 
cation, I  am  quite  unable  to  accept  Prof.  Tyn- 
dall's  assumptions.  I  go  no  further  than  to  say 
that  in  the  present  state  of  the  evidence  bear- 
ing upon  the  subject  I  regard  the  hypothesis  of 
spontaneous  generation  as  the  most  logical  and 
consistent  interpretation  of  the  facts  which  are 
at  present  known.  I  am  far  from  asserting  that 
further  experiments  may  not  shift  the  balance  of 
evidence  in  the  opposite  direction,  but  in  order 
that  this  may  be  brought  about  something  more 
than  assumption  must  be  forthcoming. 

When  legitimate  evidence  is  adduced,  I  hope 
I  shall  not  be  unamenable  to  its  influence.     I 
shall,  however,  continue  quite  obdurate  in  face 
of  the  "  reasoning "  in  which  Prof.  Tyndall  in- 
dulges on  this  subject.     In  'the  early  part  of  his 
recent  communication  he  referred  to  the  mental 
bias  which  had  influenced  the  late  M.  Pouchet; 
but  he  has  himself  shown  an  even  more  obvious 
bias  in  the  contrary  direction.     Thus  he  has  in- 
formed me  through  the  columns  of  the  Times,  in 
one  of  those  replies  with  which  he  has  favored 
we  from  time  to  time,  that  only  one  interpreta- 
tion of  the  fermentation  of  superheated  fluids  is 
possible.     The  notion  of  the  survival  of  germs 
alone  finds  favor  with  him,  and  he  roundly  dis- 
misses the  interpretation    that   the   phenomena 
may  have  been  caused  by  a  new  birth  of  living 
particles  as  no  interpretation  at  all.     Thus,  in  a 
letter  which  appeared  on  the  18th  of  June,  1877, 
he  said : 

"  Dr.  Bastian  says  that  two  interpretations  of 
my  facts  are  equally  admissible.  He  is  again  wrong ; 

1  "  Lay  Sermons,"  pp.  126-129. 


there  is  but  one  interpretation  possible.  An  inter- 
pretation which  violates  all  antecedent  knowledge 
is  no  interpretation  at  all.  .  .  .  The  inference  that 
a  particle  which  when  sown  produces  a  thistle  is 
the  seed  of  a  thistle  is  not  surer  than  the  inference 
that  the  particles  described  in  the  Times  as  rising 
in  clouds  from  shaken  hay  are  the  seeds  of  bac- 
teria." 

Having  thus  set  his  seal  upon  Nature's  possi- 
bilities, a  corresponding  interpretation  of  his  ex- 
periments and   those  of  other  workers  is  freed 
from  all  difficulty.     Whenever  fermentation  oc- 
curs in  guarded  and  previously  superheated  flu- 
ids, the  interpretation  is,  to  Prof.  Tyndall,  always 
plain  and  simple.     He  says :  "  I  have  had  several 
cases  of  survival  after  four  and  five  hours'  boiling, 
some  survivals  after  six,  and  one  survival  after 
eight  hours'  boiling.     Thus  far  has  experiment 
actually  reached,  but  there  is  no  valid  warrant  for 
fixing  upon  even  eight  hours  as  the  extreme  limit 
of  vital  resistance."     He  holds  out  the  hope  that 
further  researches  "  might  reveal  germs  more  ob- 
stinate still."    Now,  one's  comment  upon  all  this 
is,  that  with  Prof.  Tyndall  it  is  not  a  question  of 
revelation  at  all,  but  rather  one  of  mere  assump- 
tion.    What  could  be  clearer  than  his  reasoning  ? 
He  argues  from  a  one-sided  analogy  that  bacteria 
must  spring  from  seeds,  and  then  uses  this  must 
as   the   ready  interpretation   of  all  his   experi- 
ments, shutting  his  eyes  apparently  to  all  other 
considerations,  even  though   this  interpretation 
"violates  all   antecedent  knowledge,"  as  it  cer- 
tainly does.     What  present  warrant  is  there  for 
supposing  that  a  naked,  or  almost  naked,  speck  of 
protoplasm  can  withstand  four,  six,  or  eight  hours' 
boiling  ?     To  which  I  can  only  answer,  none. 

Let  Prof.  Tyndall's  statements  in  regard  to  the 
existence  of  invisible  bacteria-germs  and  their 
properties  be  contrasted  with  those  which  other 
more  sober  believers  in  the  same  germ-theory, 
who  are  similarly  indisposed  to  admit  spontaneous 
generation,  feel  entitled  to  make. 

The  medical  profession  has  recently  been  told, 
through  the  Pathological  Society,  by  Prof.  Lis- 
ter,1 that  he  thinks  it  highly  improbable  that 
bacteria  have  any  germs  at  all,  and  that,  wheth- 
er they  have  or  not,  he  has  never  met  with  any 
whose  reproductive  elements  (in  whatsoever  stage 
or  condition  they  may  exist)  could  survive  an  im- 
mersion for  half  an  hour  to  a  temperature  2°  be- 
low the  boiling-point  of  water  (212°  Fahr.).  He 
says: 

"  I  am  aware  that  there  are  two  instances,  the 

1  See  British  Medical  Journal,  December  22,  1877, 
pp.  905  and  902. 


SPONTANEOUS  GENERATION. 


443 


Bacillus  anthracis  and  the  Bacillus  subtilis,  in 
■which  it  is  said  that  the  actual  germs  of  bacteria 
do  exist.  I  have  seen  nucleated  bacteria  myself. 
I  confess  I  have  never  seen  things  which  resisted 
such  treatment  as  these  germs  are  said  to  have  re- 
sisted in  the  hands  of  others.  But  even  these 
germs  are  not  ultra-microscopic.  They  are  bright 
points  that  are  seen,  bright  granules.  There  has 
never  been  evidence  of  any  ultra-microscopic  germ. 
.  .  .  For  my  own  part  I  think  it  extremely  improb- 
able that  bacteria  in  general  bave  germs.  They 
are  actual  reproductive  organs,  constantly  multi- 
plied by  segmentation  ;  and,  if  there  be  any  organ- 
ism in  existence  that  does  not  require  germs,  I 
should  say  it  is  the  bacterium.  ...  I  have  never 
yet  found  any  organism  which  resisted  the  temper- 
ature of  210°  continued  for  half  an  hour — I  mean  to 
say  in  the  moist  state.  I  have  seen  no  organism 
in  a  liquid  continue  fertile  after  exposure  to  210° 
Fahr.  for  half  an  hour." 

On  the  other  hand,  in  direct  reply  to  Prof. 
Tyndall,  Prof.  Burdon-Sanderson1  recently  made 
the  following  statements  before  the  Royal  Society  : 

"  Dr.  Tyndall  has  demonstrated,  by  the  experi- 
ments to  which  I  have  already  alluded,  that  the  or- 
dinary air  also  contains  germinal  particles  of  ultra- 
microscopic  minuteness.  .  .  .  That  such  particles 
exist  there  can  be  no  question  ;  but  of  their  size, 
structural  attributes,  or  mode  of  development,  we 
know  nothing.  ...  If,  for  the  sake  of  clearness, 
we  call  the  particle  a,  and  the  organism  to  which  it 
gives  rise  A.  then  what  is  known  about  this  matter 
amounts  to  no  more  than  this,  that  the  existence  of 
A  was  preceded  by  the  existence  of  a." a 

"While  at  the  meeting  of  the  Pathological  So- 
ciety, shortly  afterward,  to  which  I  have  above 
referred,  Prof.  Burdon-Sanderson  said  concerning 
the  question  whether  things  can  be  shown  to  ex- 
ist which  are  the  seeds  of  bacteria,  "  I  entirely 

1  See  Nature,  November  29,  1877. 

'  I  would  here  point  out  that  Dr.  Sanderson  does 
not  state  that  the  invisible  particle  (a)  grows  bodily 
into  the  visible  organism  ;  he  is,  of  course,  quite  un- 
able to  make  any  such  affirmation,  because  such  par- 
ticles may  give  rise  to  organisms  by  inciting  chemical 
changes  in  the  organic  fluid  of  such  a  nature  as  to  de- 
termine an  independent  development  of  the  particles 
of  living  matter  which  subsequently  show  themselves, 
and  develop  into  bacteria  (A).  His  use  of  the  epithet 
"germinal"  is,  therefore,  as  it  appears  to  me,  rather 
open  to  misconception.  It  carries  with  it  an  unproved 
implication. 


agree  with  Prof.  Lister  in  the  opinion  that  no 
proof  has  been  given  of  any  such  seed  with  ref- 
erence to  common  bacteria." 

Having  had  to  occupy  so  much  space  in  at- 
tempting to  correct  the  very  erroneous  impres- 
sions which  Prof.  Tyndall's  paper  in  the  last 
number  of  this  Review  was  calculated  to  spread 
abroad,  I  have  no  room,  even  if  it  were  desirable 
for  me,  to  add  anything  further  as  to  my  present 
views  on  this  question,  or  on  that  of  the  deriva- 
tive problems  concerning  the  origin  of  communi- 
cable diseases.  It  has  only  been  with  great  re- 
luctance and  inconvenience  to  myself  that  I  have 
been  compelled  to  come  forward  now  as  I  have 
done,  to  defend  my  views  from  the  misrepresenta- 
tions of  them  which  have  of  late  been  made  by 
Prof.  Tyndall.  I  felt  also  that  it  was  incumbent 
upon  me  to  endeavor  to  rescue  the  general  ques- 
tion from  the  confusion  in  which  it  is  fast  bein» 

o 

involved  by  so  many  contradictory  utterances  on 
all  sides.  All  scientific  readers  who  care  to  go 
further  in  regard  to  my  views,  will  find  that  I 
have  pretty  fully  considered  the  present  bearings 
of  the  evidence  in  relation  to  these  problems  in 
a  recent  paper  in  the  Zoological  Section  of  the 
Journal  of  the  Linncean  Society. 

What  I  have  said,  however,  in  these  pages 
will,  I  trust,  be  sufficient  to  make  it  clear  how 
much  the  weight  of  reason  is  on  my  side,  and  to 
show  that  the  doctrine  of  "  spontaneous  genera- 
tion," far  from  being  worthy  of  almost  universal 
repudiation,  as  it  was  thought  to  be  when  I  first 
wrote  on  the  subject  in  1870,  is  one  which  is  now 
well  supported  by  evidence.  Even  if  it  cannot  be 
considered  to  be  absolutely  proved,  I  hope  I  may 
have  made  it  perfectly  clear  that  those  who  would 
show  that  the  balance  of  evidence  is  against  its 
being  a  common  process  at  the  present  day  can 
only  do  so  by  bringing  forward  proofs  that  fer- 
ment organisms  are  really  able  to  withstand  a 
brief  exposure  to  212°  Fahr.  in  fluids — proofs  that 
are  stronger  than  the  evidence  which,  np  to  1870, 
had  engendered  the  almost  universal  belief  that 
nothing  of  the  kind  was  possible.  As  I  have  said, 
a  good  measure  of  the  intensity  of  this  previous 
belief  is  afforded  by  the  incredulity  with  which 
my  now  admitted  experiments  were  at  first  re- 
ceived— Nineteenth  Century. 


444 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


BENEDICT   DE   SPINOZA. 


By  FBEDEEICK  POLLOCK. 


IT  is  now  two  hundred  years  since  there  died,  in 
an  obscure  lodging  at  the  Hague,  Benedict  de 
Spinoza,  a  philosopher  appreciated  in  his  own 
time  only  by  a  very  few.  His  name  was  indeed 
widely  known,  but  it  was  for  the  most  part  known 
only  to  be  execrated.  For  some  time  after  his 
death  Spinozist  was  current  among  the  theo- 
logians of  Holland  as  a  term  of  opprobium. 
Spinoza's  thought,  however,  was  of  that  vital  kind 
which  sooner  or  later  cannot  fail  to  make  for  it- 
self a  way  into  its  due  place.  Some  three-quar- 
ters of  a  century  after  his  death  came  the  great 
awakening  of  letters  and  philosophy  in  Germany, 
and  the  leaders  of  that  movement,  among  whom 
the  name  of  Lessing  must  be  mentioned  first, 
were  not  slow  to  perceive  Spinoza's  importance. 
Ever  since  that  time  his  influence  has  been  a 
widening  and  increasing  one :  not  that  I  stop  to 
maintain  this  in  the  strictest  sense  which  can  be 
put  upon  the  words,  for  I  do  not  think  a  philoso- 
pher's influence  is  properly  measured  by  the 
number  of  persons  who  agree  with  his  doctrines. 
Philosophical  doctrines  have  been,  and  will  doubt- 
less continue  to  be,  matter  of  controversy,  but  it 
is  no  matter  of  controversy  that  the  life  of  a 
righteous  man  who  gives  up  all  else  that  he  may 
seek  the  truth  for  its  own  sake  is  a  sure  and 
priceless  possession  for  all  the  generations  ■  of 
men  who  come  after  him. 

Baruch  de  Spinoza  was  born  at  Amsterdam 
on  the  24th  of  November,  1632.  His  parents 
were  members  of  the  Portuguese  synagogue,  a 
community  established  toward  the  end  of  the 
sixteenth  century  by  Jewish  exiles  from  Spain 
and  Portugal,  who  had  turned  to  the  United 
Provinces  as  a  safe  asylum.  For  at  this  critical 
time  Holland,  it  should  be  remembered  to  her 
eternal  honor,  was  the  most  tolerant  common- 
wealth in  Europe.  Spinoza  was  brought  up  in 
the  course  of  Hebrew  learning  then  usual,  and  at 
the  age  of  fifteen  was  already  distinguished  for 
his  knowledge  of  the  Talmud.  He  was  also 
familiar  from  his  youth  up,  as  his  writings  bear 
witness,  with  the  masterpieces  of  the  golden  age 
of    modern  Jewish  literature.     From    the  tenth 

1  In  the  coarse  of  this  paper  I  shall  have  to  refer 
several  times  to  Dr.  A.  van  der  Linde's  "  Benedictus 
Spinoza :  Bibliografie  "  (the  Hague,  1871),  which  gives 
a  full  account  of  the  literature  of  the  subject. 


to  the  twelfth  centuries  there  flourished  at  the 
Mohammedan  courts  of  Spain  and  Africa  a  se- 
ries of  Arab  and  Hebrew  philosophers  who  held 
a  position  with  regard  to  the  societies  in  which 
they  lived  much  like  that  of  the  Catholic  school- 
men afterward  with  regard  to  Western  Christen- 
dom. Like  the  schoolmen,  they  set  themselves 
to  effect  a  fusion  of  the  Aristotelian  philosophy 
with  the  accepted  theology  of  their  churches ;  and 
the  schoolmen  were  in  fact  acquainted  with  their 
work  to  a  considerable  extent,  and  referred  to  it 
quite  openly,  and  in  general  with  respect.1 

The  Jewish  schoolmen,  if  we  may  so  call  them, 
cannot  be  said  to  have  founded  any  distinct  phil- 
osophical doctrine;  in  philosophy  they  were 
hardly  distinguishable,  if  at  all,  from  their  Mo- 
hammedan  compeers.  But  they  gave  a  distinct 
philosophical  cast  to  Jewish  theology,  and  there- 
by to  Jewish  education.  Two  names  stand  out 
foremost  among  them.  Ibn-Ezra  (1088-1166  a.  d.) 
was  a  traveler,  astronomer,  grammarian,  and 
poet,  in  addition  to  the  learning  in  theology  and 
philosophy  which  made  his  commentaries  on  the 
Scriptures  classical.  But  the  chief  of  all  is  Moses 
ben  Maimon  (1135-1205  a.  c),  who  became  known 
in  Europe  as  Maimonides,  the  father  of  modern 
Jewish  theology.  He  was  regarded  with  such 
veneration  as  to  be  compared  to  the  great  Law- 
giver himself,  so  that  it  passed  into  a  proverb, 
"From  Moses  until  Moses  there  arose  none  like 
unto  Moses." 2  The  Jewish  peripatetic  school  was 
also  represented  in  Provence,  where,  in  the  four- 
teenth century,  Levi  ben  Gerson,  the  most  daring 
of  all  the  Jewish  philosophers,  and  Moses  of  Nar- 

1  The  names  of  Ibn-Roshd  (Averroes)  and  Ibn-Sina 
(Avicenna)  were  familiar  in  Europe,  and  Dante  groups 
them  ("Inferno,"  iv,  143)  with  the  leaders  of  classical 
science  and  philosophy.  Dm-Gebirol  (Avicebron),  a 
Jewish  member  of  the  school,  broke  with  the  Aristo- 
telian tradition  to  take  up  Neo-Platonic  ideas.  His 
philosophical  work  was  discredited  and  fell  into  ob- 
livion among  his  own  people  ;  bnt  it  became  current 
in  Europe  in  a  Latin  form,  and  was  used  by  Giordano 
Bruno,  through  whom  it  may  have  thus  come  round  to 
Spinoza. 

2  In  later  times  the  proverb  received  an  extended 
application  in  honor  of  Moses  Mendelssohn,  the  grand- 
father of  the  musician,  himself  a  philosopher  and  the 
restorer  of  Jewish  culture  in  Germany.  Maimonides's 
reputation  was  not  established  without  conflict.  About 
1235  his  opinions  were  formally  condemned  by  the 
synagogue  of  Montpellier. 


BENEDICT  DE  SPINOZA. 


445 


bonne,  were  its  most  conspicuous  members.  This 
philosophical  treatment  of  theology  was  on  the 
whole  generally  accepted,  but  did  not  pass  without 
controversy :  in  particular  R.  Chasdai  Creskas,  of 
Barcelona  (flour.  1410  a.  d.),  whom  Spinoza  cites  by 
name,1  combated  the  peripatetics  with  great  zeal 
and  ability  from  an  independent  point  of  view. 
A  mind  like  Spinoza's  could  not  well  have  found 
anything  more  apt  to  stir  it  to  speculation  and 
inquiry  than  the  works  of  the  men  I  have  named. 
They  handled  their  subjects  with  extreme  inge- 
nuity, and  with  a  freedom  and  boldness  of  thought 
which  were  only  verbally  disguised  by  a  sort  of 
ostentatious  reserve.  Both  Maimonides  and  Ibn- 
Ezra  delighted  to  throw  out  hints  of  meanings 
which  could  not  or  must  not  be  expressly  re- 
vealed. Maimonides,  in  the  introduction  to  his 
principal  work,  entreats  the  reader  who  may  per- 
ceive such  meanings  not  to  divulge  them.  Ibn- 
Ezra  says  in  his  commentaries:  "Herein  is  a 
mystery  ;  and  whoso  understandeth  it,  let  him  hold 
his  peace."  4  The  mysteries  were,  however,  not  so 
carefully  concealed  but  that  an  open-eyed  reader 
like  Spinoza  might  easily  find  in  them  the  princi- 
ples of  rational  criticism  which  he  afterward  de- 
veloped in  the  "  Tractatus  Theologico-Politicus." 
At  the  same  time  Spinoza  was  far  from  neg- 
lecting secular  learning  and  even  accomplish- 
ments. His  master  in  Latin,  after  he  had  ac- 
quired the  rudiments  elsewhere,  was  Francis  van 
den  Ende,  a  physician  of  Amsterdam  who  had  a 
high  reputation  as  a  teacher,  and  was  also  well 
versed  in  the  natural  sciences.  It  is  highly  prob- 
able that  he  communicated  this  part  of  his  knowl- 
edge also  to  Spinoza,  who  certainly  had  very 
sound  instruction  of  that  kind  at  some  time  ;  for 
it  is  remarkable  (as  Mr.  G.  H.  Lewes  has  well 
pointed  out)  that  Spinoza  seldom  or  never  makes 
mistakes  in  physics.  The  references  and  allu- 
sions in  Spinoza's  writings  show  that  he  had  a 
fair  knowledge  of  Latin  literature ;  of  Greek  he 
knew  something,  but  not  much.3  He  wrote  a 
Latin  which,  though  not  classical,  was  a  very 
sufficient  instrument  for  his  purposes,  and  which 
he  handled  with  perfect  freedom.  He  seems  to 
have  been  also  familiar  with  Italian ;  and  Spanish 
and  Portuguese  must  have  been  almost  as  native 
to  him  as  Dutch.  About  this  time  the  philosophy 
of  Descartes  was  in  the  first  flush  of  its  renown, 
and,  like  most  new  and  brilliant  things,  was  ve- 

1  "  Judoenm  quendam,  Rab  Ghaedaivocatum."— Ep. 
XXIX.,  ad  fin. 

2  Ap.  Spinoza,  "  Tr.ict.  Theol.  Pol.,"  c.  8,  §  9.    The 
mystery  seems  innocent  enough  to  a  modern  reader. 

3  He  expressly   disclaims   anything   like   critical 
competence  in  it  (."  Tract.  Theol.  Pol.,"  cap.  10,  ad  Jin.). 


hemcntly  suspected  of  heresy.  Spinoza  made 
himself  thoroughly  familiar  with  it,  his  com- 
panions in  this  study  being  Henry  Oldenburg  and 
Dr.  Lewis  Meyer,  the  most  constant  of  his  friends 
in  after-life.  It  is  at  least  doubtful,  however, 
whether  he  was  at  any  time  a  Cartesian.  When 
he  published  a  short  exposition  of  the  system  in 
1663  (the  only  work  he  ever  set  his  name  to),  it 
was  with  an  express  warning  that  it  did  not 
represent  his  own  opinions.  At  the  same  time  it 
is  beyond  question  that  Descartes  exercised  a 
powerful  influence  upon  the  form  and  direction 
of  Spinoza's  speculations.  Until  of  late  years  his 
part  in  this  matter  has  been  unduly  exalted,  and 
that  of  the  Jewish  philosophers  underrated,  or 
rather  forgotten  ;  but  it  would  be  very  possible  to 
carry  the  reaction  to  excess.  In  Spinoza's  own 
time  it  is  pretty  certain  that  those  who  knew  him 
only  at  second  haud  looked  on  him  as  a  sort  of 
erratic  Cartesian.  We  know  what  Locke  thought 
of  the  Cartesians  as  a  body,  and  thus  Locke's 
entire  neglect  of  Spinoza  may  be  explained. 
Those  who  followed  Locke  in  England  seem  to 
have  taken  for  granted,  after  his  example  (though 
in  Berkeley  we  do  find  specific  references  to  Spi- 
noza), that  Spinoza's  philosophy  was  not  worth 
serious  attention. 

To  these  graver  studies  Spinoza  found  time  to 
add  no  small  skill  in  drawing.  He  filled  a  book 
with  sketches  of  distinguished  persons  of  his  ac- 
quaintance, as  we  are  told  by  his  biographer  Cole- 
rus,1  who  had  the  book  in  his  possession.  The 
same  writer  tells  us  that  Spinoza's  master,  Van 
den  Ende,  had  a  learned,  witty,  and  accomplished 
daughter,  who  took  part  in  teaching  his  pupils, 
and  Spinoza  among  them.  From  a  learner,  the 
tale  says,  he  became  a  lover,  but  was  supplanted 
by  a  fellow-pupil  named  Kerkering,  who  wooed 
and  won  the  lady,  not  unassisted  by  the  material 
persuasion  of  a  valuable  pearl  necklace.  The 
story  passed  current  until  it  was  rudely  called  in 
question  by  the  facts  which  Dr.  van  Vloten  dis- 
covered and  published  in  1862.  True  it  is  that 
Van  den  Ende  had  a  daughter,  but  she  was  only 
eleven  years  old  at  the  latest  time  when  Spinoza 
can  have  been  her  father's  pupil.  True  it  is  that 
she  married  Theodore  Kerkering,  but  not  till  sev- 
eral years  after,  in  16*71.  He  was,  like  her 
father,  a  physician,  and  earned  a  considerable 
scientific  reputation  by  his  work  in  medicine, 
chemistry,  and  anatomy.  The  match  appears  to 
have  been  a  very  natural  and  proper  one,  and  the 

1  The  name  is  a  Latinized  form  of  Kohler.  He  was 
the  minister  of  the  German  Lutheran  congregation  at 
the  Hague. 


446 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


rivalry  with  Spinoza  and  the  pearl  necklace 
must  be  dismissed  as  inventions.  It  does  not 
necessarily  follow,  however,  that  the  tale  of  Spi- 
noza's love  for  Clara  van  den  Ende  is  wholly 
without  foundation.  Van  den  Ende  probably 
continued  to  see  something  of  his  former  pupil 
until,  to  his  misfortune,  he  left  Holland  ; '  and 
we  know  that  Spinoza  was  from  time  to  time  at 
Amsterdam.  Besides  this,  nothing  forbids  us  to 
suppose  that  even  from  an  earlier  date  there  may 
have  sprung  up  a  half-romantic,  half-childish  af- 
fection between  Spinoza  and  Klaartje.  Beatrice 
was  only  nine  years  old,  and  Dante  himself  only 
ten,  when  the  "  glorious  lady  of  his  soul "  first 
showed  herself  to  his  eyes,  and  the  word  came  to 
him,  Ecce  deus  fortior  me,  qui  veniens  dominabitur 
mihi.  So  that  if  any  one  is  minded  to  cling  to 
this  one  piece  of  romance  in  Spinoza's  life,  I 
think  he  may  do  so  by  taking  the  story  with 
some  such  qualification  as  here  suggested.2  I 
must  confess,  however,  that  my  own  inclination 
is,  on  reflection,  toward  entire  unbelief.  The 
story  as  told  by  Colerus  is  not  credible,  and  any 
credible  story  we  may  devise  in  its  stead  must  be 
so  different  from  that  given  by  Colerus  as  to  rest 
in  turth  on  no  evidence  at  all.  Besides,  the  tes- 
timony of  Colerus  is  here  at  its  weakest ;  he  does 
not  report  this  matter,  as  he  does  many  others, 
as  being  within  the  actual  knowledge  of  himself 
or  his  informants,  but  refers  for  confirmation  to 
authorities  which  are  all  but  worthless.3 

1  Van  den  Ende  migrated  to  France,  where  he  in- 
volved himself  in  a  political  conspiracy,  hoping  that  it 
might  turn  to  the  profit  of  his  own  country,  and  was 
hanged  at  Paris  in  1674. 

s  Most  recent  writers,  including  Auerbach,  to 
whom  it  must  have  given  a  pang  to  cast  away  the 
foundation  of  his  charming  novel,  treat  the  whole 
story  as  a  fable.  Dr.  van  Vloten  himself  ("  Benedic- 
tus  de  Spinoza,"  second  edition,  1871,  p.  21),  and  Dr. 
H.J.  Betz,  of  the  Hague  ("Levensschets  van  Baruch 
de  Spinoza,"  1876),  take  a  line  not  unlike  what  I  have 
given  in  the  text.  Dr.  Rothschild  ("Spinoza:  zur 
Rechtfertigung  seiner  Philosophie  n.  Zeit,"  Leipsic, 
1877)  boldly  maintains  Colerus's  account  as  historical, 
and  dismisses  the  objection  as  to  dates  with  the  re- 
mark, "  Es  giebt  friihreife  Naturen." 

3  Kortholt  ("Detribus  Impostoribus  Magma,"  No. 
82  in  Van  der  Linde,  cf.  No.  287),  and  the  article  on 
Spinoza  in  Bayle's  Dictionary.  Kortholt's  "three 
impostors"  are  Hobbes,  Lord  Herbert  of  Cherbury, 
and  Spinoza.  The  book  has  nothing  to  do  (beyond 
the  studied  similarity  of  title)  with  the  famous,  per- 
haps mythical,  "Detribus  Impostoribus,"  which  is  a 
standing  riddle  of  bibliography.  Of  this,  however,  a 
spurious  French  version  circulated  in  manuscript  in 
the  eighteenth  century,  under  the  name  of  "  L'Esprit " 
—or,  bound  up  with  Lucas's  biography,  "La  Vie  et 
TEsprit— de  M.  Benoit  de  Spinoza."  {See  Van  der 
Linde,  Nos.  99-102.) 


So  much  we  know  of  Spinoza  for  the  first 
twenty-three  years  of  his  life.  We  may  well  be- 
lieve that  he  had  not  long  attained  man's  estate 
before  the  freedom  of  his  thought  and  discourse, 
and  perhaps  also  laxity  in  ceremonial  observ- 
ances, began  to  excite  attention  among  the 
elders  of  his  people;  but,  whatever  suspicions 
may  have  been  conceived,  and  whatever  informal 
warnings  may  have  been  given,  no  action  was 
taken  till  1656.  A  community  which  owed  its 
existence  to  flight  from  repeated  persecutions 
might  be  expected  by  a  hasty  observer  of  human 
nature  to  practise  toleration  itself;  but  experi- 
ence is  far  from  warranting  such  an  inference. 
Witness  the  example  of  the  settlers  of  New  Eng- 
land, whose  first  use  of  their  freedom  from  the 
yoke  of  Episcopacy  was  to  set  up  a  new  ecclesi- 
astical tyranny  after  their  own  patterns,  of  a  kind 
not  less  oppressive  and  infinitely  more  vexatious. 
There  is  too  much  reason  to  fear  that  the  Jewish 
exiles  from  Spain  and  Portugal  had  learned  some 
of  the  evil  lessons  of  the  Inquisition.1  Apart 
from  this,  the  synagogue  of  Amsterdam  had 
good  reasons  of  secular  policy  for  being  scrupu- 
lous, even  to  excess,  in  its  appearance  to  the 
outer  world.  Holland  was  indeed  the  land  of 
toleration ;  but  toleration  was  not  such  as  we  are 
nowadays  accustomed  to,  and  at  this  very  time 
theological  controversy  ran  high.  The  battle  of 
Remonstrants  and  Contra-remonstrants  was  yet 
fresh  in  men's  minds;  and  it  behooved  a  society 
of  men  foreign  in  religion,  language,  and  man- 
ners, which  had  been  at  first  received  with  suspi- 
cion, and  which  existed  only  on  sufferance,  to  let 
nothing  pass  among  them  which  could  lay  them 
open  to  a  charge  of  promoting  new  heresies  or 
being  indifferent  to  the  general  interests  of  reli- 
gion. Hence  we  can  understand  the  extreme 
anxiety  to  avoid  an  open  schism,  which  marked 
the  first  proceedings  in  Spinoza's  case.  The 
ciders  would  have  preferred  to  retain  Spinoza 
in  apparent  conformity,  and  offered  him  as  the 
price  of  this  a  pension  of  a  thousand  florins. 
This  being  declined,  it  was  probably  considered 
that  the  only  safe  course  remaining,  though  not 
a  desirable  one  in  itself,  was  for  the  congregation 
to  renounce  its  freethinking  member  as  com- 
pletely as  possible.  Meanwhile,  some  obscure 
fanatic,  thinking  himself,  no  doubt,  a  messenger 

1  Dr.  Gr&tz  ("Geschichte  der  Juden,-'  x.,  14)  says: 
"They  had  brought  with  them  from  Spain  the  fatal 
passion  for  maintaining  the  purity  of  the  faith  and  ex- 
terminating heresy.  The  rabbis  of  Amsterdam  in- 
troduced the  new  practice  of  sitting  in  judgment  on 
religious  opinions  and  beliefs,  setting  themselves  up 
as  a  kind  of  Inquisition." 


BENEDICT  DE  SPIXOZA. 


M7 


of  divine  justice,  outran  the  zeal  of  his  masters. 
One  evening  an  unknown  assailant  set  upon  Spi- 
noza with  a  dagger ; 1  but  he  was  on  his  guard 
in  time,  and  the  blow  pierced  only  his  coat, 
which  he  kept  afterward  as  a  memorial.  This 
was  a  sufficient  warning  that  Amsterdam  was  no 
safe  place  for  him,  and  he  left  the  city  without 
waiting  for  the  final  decision  of  the  congregation 
upon  the  charge  of  heresy  against  him.  This  was 
given  on  the  2Tth  of  July,  1656,  to  the  following 
effect: 

"  The  chiefs  of  the  council  do  you  to  wit,  that 
having  long  known  the  evil  opinions  and  works 
of  Baruch  de  Espinoza,  they  have  endeavored  by 
divers  ways  and  promises  to  withdraw  him  from 
his  evil  ways,  and  they  are  unable  to  find  a  remedy, 
but  on  the  contrary  have  had  every  day  more 
knowledge  of  the  abominable  heresies  practised 
and  taught  by  him,  and  of  other  enormities  *  com- 
mitted by  him,  and  have  of  this  many  trustworthy 
witnesses,  who  have  deposed  and  borne  witness  in 
the  presence  of  the  said  Espinoza,  and  by  whom  he 
stood  convicted ;  all  which  having  been  examined 
in  the  presence  of  the  elders,  it  has  been  deter- 
mined with  their  assent  that  the  said  Espinoza 
should  be  excommunicated  and  cut  off  from  the 
nation  of  Israel ;  and  now  he  is  hereby  excommu- 
nicated with  the  following  anathema : 

"With  the  judgment  of  the  angels  and  of  the 
saints  we  excommunicate,  cut  off,  curse,  and  anath- 
ematize Baruch  de  Espinoza,  with  the  consent  of 
the  elders  and  of  all  this  holy  congregation,  in  the 
presence  of  the  holy  books:  by  the  613  precepts 
which  are  written  therein,  with  the  anathema 
wherewith  Joshua  cursed  Jericho,  with  the  curse 
which  Elisha  laid  upon  the  children,  and  with  all 
the  curses  which  are  written  in  the  law.  Cursed 
be  he  by  day  and  cursed  be  he  by  night.  Cursed 
be  he  in  sleeping  and  cursed  be  he  in  waking,  cursed 
in  going  out  and  cursed  in  coming  in.  The  Lord 
shall  not  pardon  him,  the  wrath  and.  fury  of  the 
Lord  shall  henceforth  be  kindled  against  this  man, 
and  shall  lay  upon  him  all  the  curses  which  are 
written  in  the  book  of  the  law.  The  Lord  shall 
destroy  his  name  under  the  sun,  and  cut  him  off 
for  his  undoing  from  all  the  tribes  of  Israel,  with 
all  the  curses  of  the  firmament  which  are  written 
in  the  book  of  the  law.  But  ye  that  cleave  unto 
the  Lord  your  God,  live  all  of  you  this  day. 

"  And  we  warn  you,  that  none  may  speak  with 

1  The  exact  place  and  circumstances,  which,  how- 
ever, are  not  material,  are  variously  related. 

2  "  Ynormes  obras  que  obrava."  This  I  had  sup- 
posed to  be  a  piece  of  "common  form"  with  no  deli- 
nice  meaning;  but  I  learn  from  a  friend  possessing 
special  knowledge  that  it  probably  refers  to  distinct 
breaches  of  the  ceremonial  law;  some  such  overt  act, 
beyond  mere  speculative  opinions,  being  required  to 
justify  the  excommunication—  Cf.  Gratz,  op.  cit.,  172,. 
175. 


him  by  word  of  mouth  nor  by  writing,  nor  show 
any  favor  to  him,  nor  be  under  one  roof  with  him, 
nor  come  within  four  cubits  of  him,  nor  read  any 
paper  composed  or  written  by  him." 

Thus  was  Baruch  de  Spinoza  cut  off  from  his 
own  people  and  from  his  father's  house.  Not  only 
was  he  an  outcast  from  Israel  and  deprived  of  all 
fellowship  of  his  nation  and  kindred — and  the 
ties  of  kindred  are  with  his  people  of  exceeding 
strength  and  sanctity — but  he  became  as  it  were  a 
masterless  man,  a  member  of  no  recognized  com- 
munity, having  none  to  stand  up  by  him  or  answer 
for  him.  Such  a  position  might  well  seem  a  grave 
one  in  itself  apart  from  the  shock  to  his  personal 
feelings.1  Altogether  the  blow  must  have  been 
such  as  it  is  at  this  time  hard  for  us  to  under- 
stand. Spinoza,  however,  received  the  news  of 
the  excommunication  with  perfect  equanimity. 
"  This  compels  me,"  he  said,  "  to  nothing  which 
I  should  not  otherwise  have  done."  Henceforth 
he  disused  his  Hebrew  name  Baruch,  and  adopted 
the  Latin  form  Benedict,  which  has  the  same 
meaning,  and  by  which  he  is  generally  known. 
He  now  had  to  depend  on  his  own  work  for  a 
livelihood.  It  was  a  rabbinical  precept  that  every 
one  should  learn  a  handicraft;  and,  in  compliance 
with  this,  Spinoza  had  learned  the  trade  of  mak- 
ing lenses  for  optical  instruments,  which  was,  no 
doubt,  chosen  as  congenial  to  his  philosophical 
and  scientific  studies.  He  became  so  skillful  in 
this  art  that  the  lenses  of  his  make  were  much 
sought  after,  and  some  which  were  left  undisposed 
of  at  his  death  fetched  a  high  price.  By  this 
means  he  earned  an  income  sufficient  for  his  lim- 
ited wants,  and  also  a  reputation  for  a  thorough 
knowledge  of  optics,  which  appears  to  have  spread 
more  quickly  than  his  fame  as  a  philosopher.  In 
this  manner  he  was  brought  into  correspondence 
with  Huygens  and  Leibnitz.  We  find  Leibnitz, 
for  instance,  writing  to  him  in  1671  to  ask  his 
opinion  on  certain  optical  questions,  and  treating 
him  as  a  person  of.  recognized  authority.  Leib- 
nitz's behavior  to  Spinoza,  some  years  later,  can 
only  be  called  shabby.  He  professed  great  inter- 
est in  Spinoza's  philosophy,  and  endeavored  to  get 
a  sight  of  the  unpublished  MS.  of  the  "  Ethics," 
which  Spinoza's  prudence  did  not  allow  him.  On 
his  return  from  a  stay  in  Paris,  Leibnitz  visited 
Spinoza  in  person.  In  later  years  he  joined  the 
vulgar  cry  against  him,  and  borrowed  a  funda- 

1  It  is  said  that  the  Jewish  elders  represented  to 
the  civil  authorities  of  Amsterdam  that  Spinoza  was  a 
dangerous  person,  that  the  Reformed  clergy  supported 
their  request,  and  that  Spinoza  was  actually  banished 
from  Amsterdam  for  a  time.  But  Colerus  knows  noth- 
ing of  this,  nor  is  it  in  itself  probable. 


us 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


mental  idea  from  his  philosophy — which  he  also 
marred  in  the  borrowing — without  the  slightest 
acknowledgment.  The  letter  now  in  question 
begins  thus : 

"Among  your  other  titles  to  fame,"  he  says,  "  I 
understand  that  you  have  excellent  skill  in  optics. 
To  you,  therefore,  I  have  chosen  to  send  this  at- 
tempt of  mine  for  what  it  may  be  worth,  as  on  this 
subject  it  would  be  difficult  to  find  abetter  critic." 

The  friends  who  were  best  acquainted  with 
his  work  believe  that  if  he  had  lived  longer  he 
would  have  made  some  important  addition  to  the 
science.1  As  it  was,  Spinoza's  "  excellent  skill  in 
optics  "  was  only  indirectly  useful  for  the  advance- 
ment of  knowledge  by  affording  him  the  means  of 
cultivating  philosophy.  On  the  death  of  his  father, 
indeed,  he  became  entitled  to  share  with  his  two 
sisters  an  inheritance  of  some  value.  The  sisters» 
imagining,  as  it  is  conjectured,  that  the  excom- 
munication had  deprived  him  of  civil  rights,  en- 
deavored to  exclude  him  from  his  share.  Spinoza 
was  of  opinion,  as  we  know  from  his  writings,  that 
in  a  country  where  just  laws  prevail  it  is  every 
citizen's  duty  to  resist  injustice  to  himself  for  the 
sake  of  the  common  weal,  lest,  peradventure,  evil 
men  find  profit  in  their  evil-doing.  He  now  acted 
on  this  principle,  and  asserted  his  rights  before 
the  law  with  success.  Having  done  this,  however, 
he  declined  to  profit  by  them,  and  when  the  divis- 
ion came  to  be  effected  he  gave  up  everything  to 
his  sisters  but  one  bed,  which  he  kept  as  a  visible 
symbol  of  the  established  justice  of  his  claim. 

We  know  little  of  Spinoza's  movements  with 
certainty  till  the  end  of  1660  or  beginning  of  1661, 
when  we  find  him  at  Rhijnsburg,  a  village  near 
the  mouth  of  the  Rhine  not  far  from  Leyden. 
Thence  he  paid  frequent  visits  to  the  Hague, 
where  he  increased  his  acquaintance  with  men  of 
learning  and  eminence.  This  society  must  have 
had  growing  attractions  for  him  as  time  went  on, 
for  in  1664  he  moved  to  Voorburg,  which  is  al- 
most a  suburb  of  the  Hague,  and  finally  about 
1670  to  the  Hague  itself.  The  greater  part  of 
what  we  know  of  his  doings  in  after-years  is  de- 
rived from  the  selection  of  his  letters  which  was 
made — with  a  far  too  sparing  hand,  unfortunately 
— by  the  editors  of  his  posthumous  works.  The 
series  of  letters  begins  in  1661 :  the  most  impor- 
tant of  Spinoza's  correspondents,  and  also  the 
most  interesting  to  Englishmen,  is  nenry  Olden- 

1  The  only  scientific  work  left  by  him  was  a  small 
treatise  on  the  rainbow.  It  was  supposed  to  have  been 
lost,  but  it  was,  in  fact,  published  at  the  Hague  in  1687 
(Van  der  Linde.  BiMiogrqfie,  No.  36),  and  has  recently 
been  discovered  and  republished  in  Van  Vloten-s 
"  Supplement." 


burg.  Oldenburg  spent  the  best  part  of  his  time 
in  this  country,  where  he  settled  in  1653.  He 
was  acquainted  with  Milton,  and  was  the  intimate 
friend  of  Robert  Boyle  ;  he  shared  Boyle's  scien- 
tific tastes,  and  was  the  first  secretary  to  the 
Royal  Society  (1662),  and  editor  of  its  "  Trans- 
actions." His  friendship  with  Spinoza  was  al- 
ready of  long  standing  at  the  time  now  in  ques- 
tion ;  he  had  lately  visited  Spinoza  at  Rhijnsburg, 
and  the  letters  are  a  sort  of  continuation  of  the 
philosophical  conversation  they  had  then  held. 
The  first  of  Spinoza's  answers  to  him  contains  a 
characteristic  point :  "  It  is  not  my  way,"  he  says, 
"  to  expose  the  mistakes  of  others."  A  thorough- 
ly constructive  habit  of  mind,  an  almost  insuper- 
able aversion  to  enter  on  criticism  for  criticism's 
sake,  runs  through  the  whole  of  Spinoza's  philo- 
sophical work. 

In  1662  Oldenburg  strongly  advises  Spinoza 
not  to  hesitate  about  publishing  some  work  re- 
lating partly  to  theology,  partly  to  philosophy, 
which  means  presumably  the  "  Tractatus  Theo- 
logico-Politicus." 

"I  would  by  all  means  advise  you  not  to  be- 
grudge to  men  of  letters  the  ripe  fruits  of  your  in- 
genuity and  learning  in  philosophy  and  theology, 
but  let  them  go  forth  into  the  world,  notwithstand- 
ing any  possible  grumbling  from  petty  theologians. 
Your  commonwealth  is  most  free  [Oldenburg  was 
writing  from  England] ;  and  therein  the  philoso- 
pher should  work  most  freely.  .  .  .  Come  then, 
my  friend,  cast  out  all  fear  of  stirring  up  the  feebler 
folk  of  our  time  against  you ;  we  have  sacrificed 
enough  to  their  ignorance  and  trifling  scruples ;  let 
us  spread  our  sails  to  the  wind  of  true  knowledge, 
and  search  out  the  secrets  of  Nature  more  thor- 
oughly than  has  yet  been  done.  In  Holland  I 
should  think  it  will  be  quite  safe  to  print  your 
treatise,  and  there  is  no  reason  to  fear  its  giving 
the  least  offense,  among  men  of  learning  at  any 
rate.  If  such  are  your  promoters  and  patrons — and 
such,  I  answer  for  it,  you  will  find — why  should 
you  fear  the  detraction  of  the  ignorant  ? "  > 

In  the  following  year  Oldenburg  was  again 
pressing  Spinoza  to  finish  and  publish  a  little 
book  on  "The  Amendment  of  the  Understand- 
ing," of  which  we  now  have  only  a  fragment, 
published  among  the  "  Opera  Posthuma." 

"  Surely,  my  excellent  friend,  I  believe  nothing 
can  be  published  more  pleasant  or  acceptable  to 
men  of  true  learning  and  discernment  than  a  trea- 
tise such  as  yours.  This  is  what  a  man  of  your 
wit  and  genius  should  regard,  more  than  what 
pleases  theologians,  as  their  manner  now  is ;  they 
care  less  for  truth  than  for  their  own  advantage." 

'»  EP.  vn 


BENEDICT  DE  SPINOZA. 


449 


And  he  conjures  Spinoza  by  the  bond  of  their 
friendship,  by  every  duty  of  increasing  and 
spreading  abroad  the  truth,  not  to  withhold  the 
publication,  or,  if  he  indeed  has  grave  reasons  for 
withholding  it,  at  least  to  write  and  explain  them.1 
Oldenburg  was  a  sincere  friend  to  Spinoza,  and  a 
person  worthy  of  all  respect ;  but  one  cannot 
help  observing  that  it  is  extremely  easy  for  a 
man  to  be  thus  valiant  in  counsel  when  he  does 
not  risk  anything  on  his  own  part.  When  Olden- 
burg in  later  years  became  better  acquainted  with 
Spinoza's  results,  he  was  himself  not  a  little  taken 
aback.  Now,  in  spite  of  answers  which  were  not 
encouraging,  Oldenburg  returned  again  and  again 
to  the  charge;  he  would  never  desist  till  his  re- 
quest was  satisfied ;  meanwhile  it  would  be  the 
the  greatest  possible  favor  if  Spinoza  would  give 
him  some  summary  of  the  contents  of  the  treatise. 
All  this  while  Spinoza  and  Boyle  were  holding  a 
scientific  correspondence  on  chemistry  and  pneu- 
matics in  the  form  of  long  messages  contained  in 
the  letters  between  Spinoza  and  Oldenburg,  though 
they  seem  to  have  exchanged  nothing  directly. 
There  is  no  doubt  that  Boyle  knew  a  good  deal 
of  Spinoza,  and  took  much  interest  in  his  work. 
In  1665  Oldenburg  writes,  "Mr.  Boyle  and  I 
often  talk  of  you  and  of  your  learning  and  phi- 
losophy." Boyle  is  also  mentioned  as  joining  in 
Oldenburg's  exhortations  to  Spinoza  to  persevere 
in  philosophical  research.  We  find  allusions  in 
Oldenburg's  letters  of  this  time  to  the  miseries  of 
the  plague  and  of  the  war  between  England  and 
Holland.  A  certain  book  about  which  Spinoza 
had  asked  has  not  yet  reached  England  "  because 
the  plague  has  almost  put  an  end  to  all  communi- 
cation, besides  which  this  fearful  war  brings  a 
very  Iliad  of  mischiefs  (nonnisi  malorum  Iliada) 
in  its  train,  and  is  like  to  leave  but  little  civility 
in  the  world.''  He  adds  that,  though  the  meetings 
of  the  Royal  Society  are  suspended,  Boyle  and 
others  go  on  working  in  private. 

After  1665  there  is  an  unexplained  break  of 
ten  years  in  this  correspondence,  which  is  but 
imperfectly  supplied  by  letters  between  Spinoza 
and  other  persons. 

The  most  interesting  of  Spinoza's  other  cor- 
respondents is  Simon  de  Vries.  He  was  a  man 
younger  than  Spinoza,  his  pupil  in  philosophy, 
and  of  much  promise.  He  died  in  his  master's 
lifetime,  having  shown  his  gratitude  by  material 
benefactions,  so  far  as  he  was  allowed.  Once  he 
offered  Spinoza  a  present  of  2,000  florins;  this 
was  declined.  He  was  unmarried,  and  it  was  his 
intention  to  make  +  vill  leaving  the  bulk  of  his 
ip.  VIII. 

65 


property  to  Spinoza.  But  Spinoza,  knowing  that 
Simon  de  Vries  had  a  brother  living,  pressed  on 
him  the  duty  of  thinking  first  of  his  own  kindred, 
so  that  De  Vries  finally  made  the  brother  his 
heir,  and  charged  his  estate  with  an  annuity  of 
500  florins  to  Spinoza.  After  his  death  Spinoza 
would  not  entirely  accept  even  this ;  when  the 
annuity  came  to  be  paid  in  due  course,  he  refused 
to  take  more  than  300  florins,  which  he  said  was 
quite  enough  for  him.  The  letters  between  Spi- 
noza and  his  young  friend  belong  to  the  year 
1663,  and  throw  light  both  on  Spinoza's  manner 
of  life  and  on  the  growth  of  his  philosophical 
system.  They  show  that  the  leading  definitions 
and  propositions  of  the  first  part  of  the  "  Ethics  " 
were  already  sketched  out  in  MS.,  and  were  in 
the  hands  of  several  of  Spinoza's  friends,  who  had 
formed  a  kind  of  philosophical  club  at  Amster- 
dam, and  held  regular  meetings  for  the  study  and 
discussion  of  the  work.  De  Vries  was  commis- 
sioned, it  seems,  to  write  to  Spinoza  for  the  expla- 
nation of  such  points  as  remained  obscure  to  the 
company.     He  says,  in  the  same  letter : 

"At  times  I  complain  of  my  fate  in  being  so  far 
from  you.  Happy,  most  happy  is  the  companion 
who  dwells  with  you  under  the  same  roof,  and  who 
can  at  all  times,  dining,  supping,  or  walking,  hold 
discourse  witb  you  of  the  most  excellent  mat- 
ters ! "  » 

Spinoza  willingly  gave  the  desired  explanations, 
and  replied  thus  to  the  complaint : 

"  You  need  not  envy  my  fellow-lodger.  There 
is  no  one  I  like  less,  or  witb  whom  I  have  been 
more  cautious ;  so  that  I  must  warn  you  and  all  our 
friends  not  to  communicate  my  doctrines  to  him 
till  he  has  come  to  riper  years.  He  is  still  too 
childish  and  inconstant,  and  cares  more  for  nov- 
elty than  truth.  Still  I  hope  he  will  amend  these 
youthful  failings  some  years  bence ;  indeed,  so  far 
as  I  can  guess  from  his  disposition,  I  am  pretty 
sure  of  it ;  and  so  his  general  character  moves  me 
to  be  friendly  with  him."  s 

It  is  worth  observing  that  these  and  other  let- 
ters of  the  same  time,  such  as  the  very  impor- 
tant one  to  Dr.  Meyer,  in  which  the  notions  of 
space,  time,  and  infinity,  are  discussed,  show  that 
as  early  as  1663  Spinoza's  philosophy  was  fully 
formed  as  to  its  main  features.  This  at  once 
fixes  the  permissible  limits  of  any  speculation 
upon  the  growth  of  Spinoza's  ideas,  which  may 
be  founded  on  a  comparison  of  his  earlier  and 

1  Ep.  XXVI.,  a.  I  use  Anerbach's  notation  for 
references  to  the  lately-discovered  letters  and  parts 
of  letters. 

2  Ep.  XXVII.,  a.     These  two  letters  are  for  the 
ime  given  in  full  in  Van  Vlotou's  "  Supplement." 


450 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


later  works.  For  instance,  the  avoidance  of  pure- 
ly metaphysical  discussion  in  the  "  Tractatus  The- 
ologico-Politicus,"  published  in  1670,  must  be  set 
down  not  to  uncertainty  or  immaturity  of  thought, 
but  to  deliberate  reserve  dictated  by  reasons  of 
policy. 

At  this  time  (1663)  Spinoza  published  the 
"  Principles  of  Cartesian  Philosophy."  It  has 
already  been  mentioned  that  in  this  book  he  was 
not  speaking  for  himself,  and  he  attached  no 
value  to  it  (as  he  informed  Oldenburg),  save  as  a 
means  of  attracting  attention  and  patronage  in 
certain  places  (alluding,  probably,  to  the  De 
Witts),  such  as  might  encourage  him  to  publish 
something  more  substantial  of  his  own.  The 
book  seems  to  have  done  its  work  in  assuring  the 
author's  reputation.  In  1664  we  find  William 
van  Blyenbergh,  a  worthy  merchant  of  Dort,  and 
a  man  of  good  family,  introducing  himself  to  Spi- 
noza by  letter  in  these  terms : 

"  Dear  Sir  and  Unknown  Friend  :  I  have  al- 
ready several  times  carefully  read  over  your  trea- 
tise lately  published  with  its  appendix.  It  will  be 
more  proper  for  me  to  speak  to  others  than  to 
yourself  of  the  instruction  I  found  in  it  and  the 
pleasure  I  derived  from  it.  This  much  I  cannot 
forbear  saying,  that  the  oftener  I  go  over  it  with 
attention,  the  more  I  am  pleased  with  it,  and  I 
constantly  find  something  which  I  had  not  marked 
before." 

He  proceeds  to  ask  several  metaphysical  ques- 
tions.1 Spinoza  received  his  unknown  corre- 
spondent with  a  warm  welcome. 

"  Unknown  Friend  :  From  your  letter  I  under- 
stand your  exceeding  love  of  truth,  and  how  that 
only  is  the  aim  of  all  your  desires ;  and,  since  I 
direct  my  mind  upon  naught  else,  this  constrains 
me  to  determine,  not  only  fully  to  grant  your  re- 
quest, which  is  to  answer  to  the  best  of  my  skill 
the  questions  which  you  now  send  or  shall  send 
hereafter,  but  to  perform  all  else  on  my  part  which 
may  avail  for  our  better  acquaintance  and  sincere 
friendship.  For  myself,  there  is,  among  things  out 
of  my  own  control,  none  I  prize  more  than  enter- 
ing into  the  bond  of  friendship  with  men  who  are 
sincere  lovers  of  truth.  For  I  believe  that  nothing 
in  the  world,  not  being  under  our  control,  can  be 
so  securely  taken  for  the  object  of  our  love  as  men 
of  this  temper ;  since  'tis  no  more  possible  to  dis- 
solve that  love  they  have  for  one  another  (seeing 
it  is  founded  on  the  love  each  of  them  hath  for  the 
'  knowledge  of  truth)  than  not  to  embrace  the  truth 
itself  when  once  perceived." 

Blyenbergh  sent  to  this  a  very  long  reply,  from 
which  Spinoza  discovered  that  their  notions  of 
philosophical  inquiry  did  not  agree  so  well  as  he 
>  Ep.  XXXI. 


had  supposed.  "  So  that,"  he  says,  "  I  fear  we 
shall  get  little  mutual  instruction  by  our  corre- 
spondence. For  I  perceive  that  no  proof,  how- 
ever firm  it  may  be  as  a  proof,  may  have  weight 
with  you  unless  it  agrees  with  the  construction 
which  you  or  certain  other  theologians  may  put 
upon  the  Scriptures."  For  my  part,  he  continues 
in  effect,  I  confess  I  find  the  Scriptures  obscure, 
though  I  have  studied  them  several  years ;  and 
on  the  other  hand,  when  I  obtain  sufficient  proof 
of  anything,  I  know  not  how  to  refuse  assent  to 
it.  And  he  goes  on  to  show  that  Blyenbergh  has 
completely  misunderstood  his  position.  This, 
however,  did  not  put  an  end  to  the  correspond- 
ence, and  sundry  other  letters  passed.  In  one  of 
these,  Van  Blyenbergh  throws  in,  by  way  of  post- 
script, the  sage  question  "  whether  we  cannot 
avoid,  by  the  exercise  of  prudence,  that  which 
otherwise  would  happen  to  us  ; "  to  which  Spinoza 
could  only  say,  "As  to  the  question  added  to 
the  end  of  your  letter,  since  we  might  put  a 
hundred  like  it  in  an  hour,  and  never  settle  one  of 
them,  and  you  hardly  press  for  an  answer  your- 
self, I  shall  not  answer  it."  Soon  after  this  they 
met,  and  had  a  friendly  conversation.  Blyen- 
bergh attempted  to  renew  the  correspondence, 
but  this  time  Spinoza  distinctly  declined  it. 

We  have  also  letters  to  various  persons, 
chiefly  on  scientific  topics,  which  approximately 
cover  the  next  few  years.  Mr.  Lewes  has  called 
attention  to  the  interest  shown  by  Spinoza  in  an 
experiment  in  alchemy,  to  which  he  was  at  the 
time  disposed  to  give  credit.1  And  at  the  time 
there  was  nothing  surprising  or  absurd  in  this  ; 
we  have  evidence,  however,  that  some  years  later 
Spinoza  had  become  more  skeptical.  For  in  1675, 
when  his  friend  Dr.  Schaller  had  written  to  him 
from  Paris,  describing  some  similar  process, 
Spinoza  replied  almost  bluntly  that  he  had  no 
mind  to  repeat  the  experiment,  and  felt  quite 
sure  that  no  gold  had  been  produced  which  was 
not  there  before.* 

In  1670  was  published  the  "  Tractatus  Theo- 
logico-Politicus,"  of  which  I  give  the  title  from  an 
early  English  translation  (London,  1689) : 

"A  Treatise  partly  theological  and  partly  politi- 
cal, containing  some  few  discourses  to  prove  that 
the  Liberty  of  Philosophizing  (that  is,  making 
use  of  Natural  Keason)  may  be  allowed  without 
any  prejudice  to  Piety,  or  to  the  Peace  of  any 
Commonwealth  ;  and  that  the  Loss  of  Public  Peace 
and  Religion  itself  must  necessarily  follow,  when 
such  a  Liberty  of  Reasoning  is  taken  away." 

1  Ep.  XL V.,  Lewes,"  Hist.  Phil.,"  ii.,  180  (3d  edition). 

2  Ep.  LXV.,  b.  (Van  Vloten,  "  Supp.,"  p.  318). 


BENEDICT  DE  SPIXOZA. 


451 


The  final  thesis  of  the  book  is,  that  "  in  a  free 
commonwealth  it  should  be  lawful  for  every  man 
to  think  what  he  will,  and  speak  what  he  thinks." 
And  little  more  than  two  centuries  ago,  in  the  freest 
country  in  Europe,  this  opinion  was  put  forth 
without  the  name  of  the  author,  and  with  the 
name  of  an  imaginary  printer  at  Hamburg,  and 
had  to  be  gradually  led  up  to  by  an  investigation  of 
the  principles  of  Scriptural  interpretation  and  the 
true  provinces  of  theology  and  philosophy.  To 
modern  eyes  the  introduction  looks  much  bolder 
than  the  conclusion.  I  forbear  to  say  more  of 
the  contents  and  character  of  the  work,  as  Mr. 
Matthew  Arnold  has  already  given  an  admirable 
account  of  it  in  his  essay  on  "  Spinoza  and  the 
Bible." 

The  opposition  which  Spinoza,  doubtless,  ex- 
pected was  not  long  iu  showing  itself.  Early  in 
1671  Spinoza  writes  to  a  friend  not  named  : 

"  "When  Prof.  N.  N.»  lately  saw  me,  he  told 
me,  among  other  things,  he  had  heard  that  my 
'  Theologico-Political  Treatise  '  was  translated  into 
Dutch,  and  that  a  person,  whose  name  he  did  not 
know,  was  on  the  point  of  printing  the  translation. 
I  therefore  earnestly  entreat  you  to  inquire  dili- 
gently into  this  matter  and  stop  the  printing,  if  it 
can  be  done.  The  request  is  not  from  me  alone, 
but  also  from  many  friends  and  acquaintances,  who 
would  be  sorry  to  see  the  book  prohibited,  as  it 
certainly  will  be  if  it  appears  in  Dutch."  2 

The  book  was,  in  fact,  formally  condemned 
some  time  after ;  it  does  not  appear  exactly  when, 
but  it  must  have  been  before  1673,  in  which  year 
no  less  than  three  editions  appeared  at  Amster- 
dam, with  entirely  false  titles,  purporting  to  be 
works  on  medicine  or  history.  It  is  hardly  need- 
ful to  say  that  it  was  also  put  on  the  Roman 
Index,  and  in  that  catalogue  it  may  still  be  seen 
in  a  very  mixed  company. 

In  the  same  year  a  Doctor  Lambert  van  Velt- 
huysensent  to  Spinoza,  through  a  common  friend, 
a  long  letter,  which  repeated  in  violent  language 
all  the  current  topics  against  the  "  Tractatus  Theo- 
logieo-Politieus,"  and  finally  charged  the  writer 
with  covertly  teaching  atheism.  This  fashion  of 
controversy  survives  to  our  own  day,  and  has 
been  improved  upon.  We  have  invented  the  term 
materialist,  which  makes  a  fine  gradation  possible. 
When  we  want  to  say  in  a  short  and  decided 
form  that  we  disagree  with  a  man's  philosophical 
opinions,  we  call  him  a  materialist.  If  we  wish 
to  add  to  this  that  the  disagreement  rests  on  theo- 
logical grounds  also,  we  call  him  an  atheist. 

1  The  name  is  deliberately  suppressed  by  the  edi- 
tors of  the  "  Opera  Postbuma." 

2  Ep.  XLVII. 


Spinoza,  having  a  fancy  for  the  exact  use  of 
words,  did  not  like  these  controversial  amenities, 
and  replied  (though  it  was  unwillingly  that  he  re- 
plied at  all)  more  sharply  than  was  usual  with 
him  ;  he  obviously  thought  the  criticism  almost 
too  perverse  to  have  been  made  in  good  faith. 
But  here,  too,  we  may  note  his  even  temper  and 
peaceable  disposition.     The  letter  ends  thus : 

"  I  do  not  think  you  will  find  anything  in  this 
which  can  be  considered  too  harsh  in  manner  tow- 
ard my  critic.  But,  if  anything  does  so  appear 
to  you,  pray  strike  it  out,  or  alter  it,  if  you  think 
fit.  Whoever  he  may  be,  I  have  no  wish  to  ex- 
asperate him  and  make  enemies  by  my  work ;  in 
fact,  since  this  is  a  common  result  of  discussions 
like  the  present,  I  could  hardly  prevail  on  myself 
to  write  this  answer ;  nor  should  I  have  prevailed 
on  myself,  unless  I  had  promised  you."  l 

Nevertheless,  Van  Velthuysen  and  Spinoza 
were  afterward  on  friendly  terms.  One  of  the 
latest  of  Spinoza's  letters  is  addressed  to  Van 
Velthuysen,  and  relates  to  a  project  of  publishing 
some  notes  and  explanations  to  the  "  Tractatus 
Theologico-Politicus,"  including,  it  seems,  this 
very  correspondence,  or  something  founded  on  it. 
The  letter  is  a  model  of  literary  courtesy  and 
good  feeling,  and  as  such  is  worth  giving  : 

"I  am  surprised  at  our  friend  Neustadt  having 
told  you  that  I  thought  of  replying  to  the  various 
writings  against  my  treatise  which  have  been 
published,  and  intended  to  include  your  MS.  in 
the  number.  I  am  sure  I  never  intended  to  refute 
any  of  my  opponents,  for  none  of  them  have 
seemed  to  me  worth  answering.  All  I  remember 
to  have  said  to  Mr.  Neustadt  is,  that  I  purposed  to 
publish  some  notes  explaining  the  more  difficult 
passages  of  the  treatise,  and  to  add  to  these  your 
MS.  and  my  answer,  if  I  hadyour  leave  for  so  doing. 
This  I  desired  him  to  ask  of  you,  and  added  that 
in  case  you  should  be  unwilling  to  grant  it  on  the 
score  of  certain  expressions  in  the  answer  being 
rather  severe,  you  should  be  at  full  liberty  to  strike 
out  or  alter  them.  Meanwhile  I  have  no  cause  of 
offense  against  Mr.  N.  ;  but  I  thought  it  well  to 
show  you  the  real  state  of  the  case,  so  that,  if  I 
cannot  obtain  your  leave,  I  might  at  any  rate  make 
it  clear  that  I  had  no  intention  of  publishing 
your  MS.  against  your  will.  I  believe,  indeed,  it 
may  be  done  without  any  risk  to  your  reputation, 
if  your  name  is  not  affixed  to  it ;  but  I  will  do  noth- 
ing unless  you  grant  me  leave  and  license  to  pub- 
lish it.  But  I  am  free  to  confess  you  would  do  me 
a  far  greater  favor  if  you  would  set  down  the  ar- 
guments with  which  you  think  you  can  attack  my 
treatise  ;  and  this  I  most  heartily  beseech  you  to 
do.    There  is  no  one  whose  arguments  I  should  be 

1  Epp.  XLVni.,  XLIX. 


452 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


more  glad  to  consider ;  for  I  am  aware  that  your 
only  motive  is  affection  for  the  truth,  and  I  know 
the  candor  of  your  mind;  in  the  name  of  which  I 
again  entreat  you  not  to  decline  giving  yourself 
this  trouble. " 

Van  Velthuysen  afterward  expanded  his  letter 
into  one  of  the  many  answers  to  Spinoza's  treatise 
that  were  published  in  the  next  few  years.  In 
1674  Spinoza  mentions  that  he  had  seen  an  answer 
to  the  "  Tractatus  Theologico-Politicus,"  written 
by  a  professor  at  Utrecht,  in  a  bookseller's  win- 
dow, but  on  looking  into  it  found  it  not  worth 
reading,  much  less  answering.  "  So  there  I  left 
the  book  and  its  author.  I  smiled  inwardly  as  I 
considered  how  the  most  ignorant  of  men  are 
everywhere  the  boldest  and  the  most  ready  to 
write  books." 

In  1672  occurred  the  one  striking  incident 
of  Spinoza's  life  after  his  excommunication.  The 
public  misfortunes  of  that  year,  the  French  in- 
vasion of  the  Netherlands,  the  outbreak  of  popu- 
lar discontent,  and  the  massacre  of  the  brothers 
De  Witt  by  the  infuriated  mob  of  the  Hague,  be- 
long to  general  history.  Spinoza  was  a  personal 
friend  of  John  De  Witt's,  had  accepted  a  small 
pension  from  him,  and  may  through  his  means 
have  taken  some  part  in  politics.  He  was  moved 
by  this  event,  it  is  said,  so  much  beyond  his  wont, 
that  be  could  hardly  be  restrained  from  express- 
ing his  indignation  in  public  at  the  risk  of  his 
life.  Shortly  afterward  the  Prince  of  Conde, 
being  then  in  command  of  the  French  army,  in- 
vited Spinoza  to  his  headquarters  at  Utrecht. 
His  only  motive  appears  to  have  been  a  genuine 
desire  to  make  the  philosopher's  acquaintance. 
The  invitation  was  accepted,  and  Spinoza  betook 
himself  to  Utrecht  with  a  safe-conduct.  Cond6, 
however,  had  in  the  mean  time  been  called  away, 
and  Spinoza  went  home  without  seeing  him,  hav- 
ing turned  a  deaf  ear  to  the  suggestion  of  the 
French  officers  who  entertained  him  that  he 
might  probably  insure  a  pension  from  their  king 
if  he  would  dedicate  some  work  to  him.  On  Spi- 
noza's return  to  the  Hague  sinister  rumors  got 
abroad  concerning  his  journey,  and  Spinoza's 
landlord  was  for  a  time  in  fear  that  the  mob 
would  attack  and  storm  the  house  for  the  pur- 
pose of  seizing  him  as  a  spy. 

Spinoza,  however,  comforted  his  host  with 
these  words : 

"  Fear  nothing  on  my  account,  I  can  easily  justi- 
fy myself;  there  are  people  enough,  and  of  chief 
men  in  the  country  too,  who  well  know  the  motives 
of  my  journey.  But,  whatever  come  of  it,  so  soon  as 
the  crowd  make  the  least  ncise  at  your  door,  I  will 


'  go  out  and  make  straight  for  them,  though  they 
|  should  serve  me  as  they  have  done  the  unhappy 
\  De  Witts.  I  am  a  good  republican,  and  have  nev- 
er had  any  aim  but  the  honor  and  welfare  of  the 
!  state." 

The  danger  passed  off,  but  Spinoza's  conduct 
under  it  is  none  the  less  worthy  of  admiration  ; 
and  the  incident  has  its  value  in  the  light  it  throws 
on  the  general  esteem  in  which  he  then  stood. 
For  the  consciousness,  not  merely  of  an  innocent 
purpose,  but  of  a  character  above  the  possibility 
of  rational  suspicion,  was  necessary  to  make  Spi- 
noza's visit  to  the  French  headquarters  prudent  or 
justifiable ;  and  the  authorities  of  his  own  country 
would  assuredly  never  have  consented  to  it  had 
they  not  felt  absolute  confidence  that  the  public 
good  would  in  no  way  suffer  by  it. 

In  1673  Spinoza  received  a  courteous  letter 
from  Prof.  Fabritius,  of  Heidelberg,  who  was  com- 
manded by  Charles  Lewis,  the  elector  palatine, 
to  offer  him  the  chair  of  Philosophy  at  that  uni- 
versity. This  letter  contained  the  following  sen- 
tence :  "  You  will  have  the  largest  freedom  of 
speech  in  philosophy,  which  the  prince  is  confi- 
dent you  will  not  misuse  to  disturb  the  established 
religion."  It  seems  by  no  means  unlikely  that 
this  condition  was  inserted  merely  as  a  matter  of 
form.  The  elector  probably  knew  the  "  Tractatus 
Theologico-Politicus ;  "  and  if  he  seriously  meant 
to  impose  restrictions,  he  would  have  laid  down 
something  much  more  definite.  Spinoza,  how- 
ever, answered  thus: 

"  Had  it  ever  been  my  desire  to  occupy  a  chair  in 
any  faculty,  I  could  have  wished  for  no  other  than 
that  which  the  Most  Serene  Elector  Palatine  offers 
me  by  your  bands :  and  especially  on  account  of 
that  freedom  in  philosophy  which  the  prince  is 
pleased  to  grant,  to  say  nothing  of  the  desire  I 
have  long  entertained  to  live  under  the  rule  of  a 
prince  whose  wisdom  is  the  admiration  of  all  men. 
But  since  I  have  never  been  minded  to  give  public 
lectures,  I  cannot  persuade  myself  to  accept  even 
this  splendid  opportunity,  though  I  have  given  long 
consideration  to  it.    For  I  reflect  in  the  first  place 
that  I  must  give  up  philosophical  research,  if  I  am 
to  find  time  for  teaching  a  class.    I  reflect,  more- 
over, that  I  cannot  tell  within  what  bounds  I  ought 
to  confine  that  philosophical  freedom  you  mention, 
in  order  to  escape  any  charge  of  attempting  to  dis- 
turb  the  established  religion.     Keligious  dissen- 
sions arise  not  so  much  from  the  ardor  of  men's 
zeal  for  religion  itself,  as  from  their  various  dis- 
positions and  love  of  contradiction,  which  leads 
them   into  a  habit  of  decrying  and  condemning 
everything,  however  justly  it  be  said.     Of  this  I 
have  already  had   experience  in  my  private  and 
solitary  life ;   much  more  then  should  I  have  to 


BENEDICT  DE  SPINOZA. 


453 


fear  it  after  mounting  to  this  honorable  condition. 
You  see,  therefore,  that  I  am  not  holding  back  in 
the  hope  of  some  better  post,  but  for  mere  love  of 
quietness,  which  I  think  I  can  in  some  measure  se- 
cure if  I  abstain  from  lecturing  in  public.  Where- 
fore I  heartily  beseech  you  to  desire  the  Most  Se- 
rene Elector  that  I  may  be  allowed  to  consider 
further  of  this  matter."  ' 

In  1674  Spinoza  had  an  amusing  discussion 
with  a  person  whose  name  is  withheld  on  the  ex- 
istence of  ghosts.  In  his  first  answer  Spinoza 
gives  an  exquisite  turn  of  politeness  to  his  in- 
credulity. He  was  delighted,  he  says,  to  get  his 
friend's  letter  and  have  news  of  him : 

"  Some  people  might  think  it  a  bad  omen  that 
ghosts  should  be  the  occasion  of  your  writing  to 
me ;  but  I  find  something  much  better  in  it  when  I 
consider  that  not  only  real  things,  but  even  trifles 
of  the  imagination,  may  thus  do  me  good  service." 

The  correspondence  continues,  on  Spinoza's 
part,  iu  a  tone  of  courteous  banter.  At  last  his 
friend  attempts  to  overpower  him  with  the  au- 
thority of  ancient  philosophers.  The  reply  to 
this  last  argument  has  a  distinct  importance,  as 
showing  what  were  Spinoza's  notions  about  the 
philosophical  systems  of  Greece : 

"  The  authority  of  Plato,  Aristotle,  and  Socra- 
tes, has  not  much  weight  with  me.  I  should  have 
been  surprised,  indeed,  if  you  had  brought  for- 
ward Epicurus,  Democritus,  Lucretius,  or  any  of 
the  supporters  of  the  doctrine  of  atoms.  It  is  no 
wonder  that  those  who  devised  occult  qualities, 
intentional  species,  substantial  forms,  and  a  thou- 
sand other  fond  things,  should  have  imagined 
ghosts  and  apparitions,  and  given  ear  to  old  wives 
to  diminish  the  authority  of  Democritus,  whose 
fame  they  so  envied  that  they  burned  all  his  books. 
If  you  choose  to  believe  these,  how  can  you  deny 
the  miracles  of  the  Virgin  and  all  the  saints,  re- 
corded by  so  many  renowned  philosophers,  his- 
torians, and  theologians,  of  whom  one  hundred 
can  be  produced  for  one  that  has  recorded  a 
ghost?"  2 

It  is  obvious  that  Spinoza's  knowledge  of 
Greek  philosophy  was  slight  and  at  second 
hand ;  but  it  is  significant  that  his  sympathy,  so 
far  as  his  knowledge  went, was  all  with  Democ- 
ritus and  the  atomic  school.  The  sort  of  meta- 
physic  which  in  our  own  time  is  always  clamor- 
ing against  supposed  encroachments  by  physical 
science  would  have  found  no  favor  in  his  eyes. 

In  1674  he  wrote  an  important  letter  explain- 
ing the  difference  between  his  view  and  Des- 
cartes's  on  free-will : 

"  I  call  a  thing  free  if  it  exists  and  acts  merely 
1  Ep.  LIV.  i  Ep.  LX. 


from  the  necessary  laws  of  its  own  nature,  but  con- 
strained if  it  is  determined  by  something  else  to 
exist  and  act  in  a  certain  determinate  way.  Thus 
God  exists  necessarily,  and  yet  freely,  because  he 
exists  by  the  necessity  of  his  own  nature  alone. 
So  God  freely  understands  himself  and  everything 
else,  because  it  follows  solely  from  the  necessity  of 
his  own  nature  that  he  must  understand  every- 
thing. You  see,  then,  that  I  make  freedom  consist 
not  in  a  free  decision  of  the  will,  but  in  free  ne- 
cessity. .  .  . 

"  Imagine,  if  you  can,  that  a  stone,  while  its 
motion  continues,  is  conscious,  and  knows  that  so 
far  as  it  can  it  endeavors  to  persist  in  its  motion. 
This  stone,  since  it  is  conscious  only  of  its  own 
endeavor  and  deeply  interested  therein  (minime 
indiff'erens),  will  believe  that  it  is  perfectly  free 
and  continues  in  motion  for  no  other  reason  than 
that  it  so  wills.  Now,  such  is  this  freedom  of 
man's  will  which  every  one  boasts  of  possessing, 
and  which  consists  only  in  this,  that  men  are 
aware  of  their  own  desires  and  ignorant  of  the 
causes  by  which  those  desires  are  determined.  So 
an  infant  thinks  his  appetite  for  milk  is  free ;  so  a 
child  in  anger  thinks  his  will  is  for  revenge,  in 
fear  that  it  is  for  flight.  Again,  a  drunkard  thinks 
he  speaks  of  his  free-will  things  which,  when 
sober,  he  would  fain  not  have  spoken."  ' 

In  1675  the  correspondence  with  Oldenburg 
is  resumed.9  By  this  time  the  "  Ethics  "  were 
completely  written,  and  Oldenburg  exhorts  him  to 
publish  the  book,  though  not  with  such  pressing 
earnestness  as  he  used  in  former  years.  He 
wishes  to  have  some  copies  sent  over  to  England, 
and  will  undertake  to  dispose  of  them ;  yet  he 
wishes  their  consignment  to  him  not  to  be  talked 
of.  His  temper  had  probably  become  less  val- 
iant since  he  read  the  "  Tractatus  Theologico- 
Politicus." 

Spinoza  writes,  in  answer  to  Oldenburg,3  that 
he  did  go  to  Amsterdam  to  see  about  printing  the 
"  Ethics."  But  the  rumor  had  gone  before  him 
that  he  had  in  the  press  an  utterly  atheistic  book ; 
and  certain  theologians  had  actually  commenced 
proceedings  against  him.  The  Cartesians,  who 
had  by  this  time  a  respectable  reputation  to  pre- 
serve, were  only  too  glad  to  find  a  convenient 
and  edifying  occasion  for  disclaiming  Spinoza, 
and  joined  eagerly  in  the  cry  against  him.  He 
determined  accordingly  to  put  off  the  publica- 
tion ;  and  the  result  was  that  the  "  Ethics  "  did  not 

1  Ep.  LXEL,  §§  2-4.  The  latest  editor  of  the  Letters 
objects  toBrurler's  division  into  paragraphs  as  pedan- 
tic :  a  principle  which,  if  consistently  carried  out, 
would  make  it  impossible  to  give  a  reference  to  aDy 
passage  in  most  of  the  classics,  to  say  nothing  of  the 
chapters  and  verses  in  the  Bible. 

3  Ep.  XVTI,  et  seq.  =>  Ep.  XIX. 


454 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


appear  in  his  lifetime.  The  work  had  a  certain 
private  circulation,  however,  among  Spinoza's 
friends.  In  the  same  year,  16*75,  we  have  a 
series  of  letters  raising  sundry  questions  on  the 
most  abstruse  points  in  the  system.  The  objec- 
tions here  stated  are  by  far  the  most  acute  of 
those  which  Spinoza  had  to  encounter  from  his 
various  correspondents,  and  it  gave  him  no  small 
trouble  to  answer  them.  He  does  not,  indeed, 
give  a  complete  answer,  and  all  but  admits  that 
he  cannot.  The  chief  part  in  these  letters  is  now 
assigned  to  Ehrenfried  Walter  von  Tschimhausen, 
a  young  German  nobleman,  who  was  intimate 
with  both  Leibnitz  and  Spinoza,  and  afterward 
became  a  member  of  the  French  Academy  of  Sci- 
ences, and  was  distinguished  in  mathematics  and 
physics,  and  most  chiefly  by  advances  in  optics. 
In  the  construction  of  lenses,  in  particular,  he 
arrived  at  brilliant  results ;  and  one  may  guess 
that  this  special  study  was  the  common  ground 
on  which  his  acquaintance  with  Spinoza  was  first 
formed.1 

In  16*76  Spinoza  received  an  extraordinary 
letter  dated  from  Florence,  and  written  by  one 
Albert  Burgh,  identified  by  Van  Vloten's  plausi- 
ble conjecture  with  the  fellow-lodger  whose  facil- 
ities of  intercourse  with  Spinoza  Simon  de  Vries 
had  envied,  and  of  whose  temper  and  capacities 
Spinoza  had  expressed  the  doubtful  opinion  al- 
ready quoted.  He  now  informed  Spinoza  that  he 
had  been  received  into  the  Church  of  Rome,  and 
proceeded  to  denounce  with  all  the  zeal  of  a 
proselyte  the  profane  philosophy  he  had  aban- 
doned. He  tells  Spinoza  that  all  his  learning  is 
merely  chimerical,  and  laments  that  he  should 
suffer  himself  to  be  so  deceived  by  the  devil.  He 
asks,  with  delightful  simplicity : 

"  How  do  you  know  that  your  philosophy  is  the 
best  of  all  that  are,  or  have  been,  or  will  be  taught 
in  the  world  ?  Have  you  examined  all  the  ancient 
and  modern  systems  of  philosophy  which  are 
taught  here,  in  India,  and  all  over  the  face  of  the 
earth  ?  And  even  if  you  have,  how  do  you  know 
you  have  chosen  the  right  one  ?  " 
Spinoza  framed  the  obvious  retort  in  the  easiest 

1  Tschimhausen  has  received,  I  think,  hard  measure 
from  Van  Vloten  and  others  for  the  unacknowledged 
use  of  Spinoza's  work  in  his  "Medicina  Mentis." 
Not  only  was  it  the  hahit  of  the  time  to  be  careless  in 
this  duty,  hut  Tschimhausen  may  not  unreasonahly 
have  been  of  opinion  that  his  only  way  to  secure  a  fair 
hearing  for  Spinoza's  ideas  was  to  conceal  their  true 
authorship.  It  is  certain,  however,  that  he  gave  of- 
fense tobothHuygens  and  Leibnitz  by  appropriating, 
without  acknowledgment,  unpublished  ideas  which 
they  had  communicated  to  him  (Van  Vloten,  "Bene- 
dictus  de  Spinoza,"  App.  III.). 


and  most  effective  manner  by  repeating  the  con- 
vert's own  words : 

"  How  do  you  know  that  your  teachers  are  the 
best  of  all  those  who  teach,  or  have  taught,  or  will 
teach,  other  systems  of  religion  \  Have  you  exam- 
ined all  the  ancient  and  modern  systems  of  reli- 
gion which  are  taught  here,  in  India,  and  all  over 
the  face  of  the  earth  'I  And  even  if  you  nave,  how 
do  you  know  you  have  chosen  the  right  one  ? " 

Burgh's  letter  runs  to  a  great  length,  and  is  a 
curious  specimen  of  unrefined  theological  amen- 
ity. I  can  give  only  a  condensed  extract  as  a 
specimen : 

"  Do  not  flatter  yourself,"  he  cries, "  with  the  re- 
flection that  the  Calvinists,  or  so-called  Eeformers, 
the  Lutherans,  the  Mennonites,  the  Socinians,  etc., 
cannot  refute  your  doctrine.  All  those  poor  creat- 
ures, as  I  have  already  said,  are  in  as  wretched  a 
state  as  you,  and  are  sitting  along  with  you  in  the 
shadow  of  death. 

"  Worm  and  ashes  and  food  for  worms  that  you 
are,  how  dare  you  set  up  for  knowing  better  than 
all  the  Church  ?  What  foundation  have  you  for 
this  rash,  insane,  deplorable,  accursed  arrogance  ? 
What  business  have  you  to  judge  of  mysteries 
which  Catholics  themselves  declare  to  be  incom- 
prehensible ?" 

One  of  his  arguments  is,  that  it  is  presump- 
tuous to  disbelieve  in  alchemy  and  ghosts  because 
Julius  Csesar  would  probably  not  have  believed 
a  prophecy  of  gunpowder.  Finally,  he  threatens 
Spinoza  with  eternal  damnation  if  he  is  not 
convinced.  The  immortal  discourse  delivered  by 
Brother  Peter  in  the  "  Tale  of  a  Tub,"  which  ends 
with  invoking  similar  consequences  on  those  who 
offer  to  believe  otherwise,  is  hardly  a  caricature 
of  this  effusion. 

Spinoza's  answer,1  which  I  have  anticipated 
in  part,  was  much  the  sharpest  he  ever  wrote. 
As  far  as  argument  went  he  had  no  serious  task  ; 
the  letter  contains,  however,  some  striking  pas- 
sages. "  As  for  your  argument  about  the  com- 
mon consent  of  multitudes,  the  unbroken  succes- 
sion of  the  Church,  etc.,  that  is  just  the  story  I 
know  of  old  from  the  Pharisees  :  for  they  pro- 
duce their  multitudes  of  witnesses  with  no  less 
confidence  than  the  adherents  of  Rome."  They 
are  the  most  ancient,  the  most  persistent,  the 
most  obstinate  of  all  the  Churches  ;  and  if  mar- 
tyrs are  evidence,  they  have  more  to  show  than 
any  other.  Even  in  ecclesiastical  discipline,  he 
says,  Rome  is  surpassed  by  the  Mohammedans, 
for  they  have  had  no  schisms.  This  seems  a 
rash   statement   for   a  writer  versed    in   Jewish 

«  Ep.  LXXIV. 


BENEDICT  DE  SPINOZA. 


455 


philosophy,  which  abounds  in  allusions  to  the 
different  Mohammedan  sects.  It  is,  however,  true 
in  the  sense  that  there  has  been  in  Islam  no  great 
visible  rupture  like  the  Reformation  in  Europe. 

Of  Spinoza's  habits  in  daily  life  we  know  just 
so  much   as  to  make  us  regret  that  we  do  not 
know  more.     In  outward  appearance  he  was  un- 
pretending, but  not  careless.     His  way  of  living 
was  exceedingly  modest  and  retired ;  often  he  did 
not  leave  his  room  for  many  days  together.     He 
was  likewise   almost  incredibly  frugal ;   his  ex- 
penses sometimes  amounted  only  to  a  few  pence 
a  day.     But  it   must  not   be  supposed  that  be 
shared  the  opinion  of  those  who  profess  to  de- 
spise man  and   the  world.    There  was  nothing 
ascetic  in  his  frugality,  nothing  misanthropic  in 
his  solitude.     He  kept  down  his  expenses  sim- 
ply in  order  to  keep  them  within  his  means  ;  and 
his  means  remained  slender  because  he  did  not 
choose  to  live  at  other  people's  charges.     He 
used  to  say  of  himself  that  he  was  like  a  snake 
with  its  tail  in  its  mouth,  just  making  both  ends 
meet.     Doubtless  he  was  indifferent  as  to  money 
and  the  world's  goods,  but  with  the  genuine  in- 
difference which  is  utterly  removed  from  the  af- 
fected indifference  of  the  cynic.     A  man  to  whom 
he   had   lent  two   hundred  florins — which  must 
have  been  a  considerable  sum  in  proportion  to 
Spinoza's  income — became  bankrupt.     Spinoza's 
remark  on  hearing  of  it  was  this:  "  Then  I  must 
lessen  my  expenses  to  make  up  the  loss  ;  that  is 
the  price  I  pay  for  equanimity."     In  like  manner 
he  kept  himself  retired  not  because  he  was  unso- 
ciable, but  because   he   found  retirement  neces- 
sary for  his  work.     There  is  ample  evidence  that 
he  was  none  of  those  who  hate  or  disdain  the  in- 
tercourse of  mankind.     He  kept  up,  as  we  have 
seen,  an  extensive  correspondence,  of  which  we 
must  regret  that  so  little  has  been  preserved. 
He  was  free  and  pleasant  in  familiar  conversa- 
tion with  the  people  of  his  house.     On  Sundays 
he  would  talk  with  them  of  the  sermon  they  had 
heard,  and  would  praise  the  sound  learning  and 
morality  of  their  worthy  Lutheran  pastor,  a  cer- 
tain Dr.  Cordes,  who  was  succeeded  in  his  office 
by  Spinoza's  biographer  Colerus.     Thus  he  won 
the  esteem  and  affection  not  only  of  his  philo- 
sophic friends,  but  of  the  simple  folk  among  whom 
he  lived ;  and  such  affection,  as  M.  Renan  has 
well  said,  is  in  truth  the  most  precious  of  all. 

Thus  he  showed  in  action  the  ideal  of  life  set 
forth  in  those  writings  which  he  could  not  vent- 
ure to  publish  in  his  lifetime,  and  which  were 
supposed  to  strike  at  the  foundations  of  religion 
and  morality.     And  what  is  the  rule  proposed 


for  the  guidance  of  conduct  by  this  man  whose 
opinions  have  been  called  abominable,  execrable, 
and  atheistic  ?  In  one  word,  it  is  this :  to  use 
the  world  with  cheerfulness  and  content,  not 
abusing  it,  and  remembering  that  the  good  of 
mankind  consists  in  doing  good  to  one  another. 
Here  are  some  of  his  precepts : 

"  Nothing  is  more  useful  to  man  than  man ;  men 
can  desire  nothing  more  excellent  for  their  welfare 
than  that  all  should  so  agree  in  all  things  that  the 
minds  and  bodies  of  all  should  make  up  as  it  were 
one  mind  and  one  body,  and  all  together  strive  to 
maintain  their  welfare  to  the  best  of  their  power, 
and  all  together  seek  the  common  good  of  all. 
Therefore  reasonable  men  desire  no  good  for  them- 
selves which  they  do  not  also  desire  for  other  men, 
and  so  they  are  righteous,  faithful,  and  honorable." » 

Again  he  says  that  discontent  and  melancholy 
are  good  for  no  man  :  that  it  is  the  part  of  a  wise 
man  to  use  the  world  and  take  all  reasonable 
pleasure  in  it.  It  is  good  to  refresh  one's  self 
not  only  with  moderate  food  and  drink,  but  with 
pleasant  prospects,  music,  the  theatre,  and  other 
things  which  every  man  may  enjoy  without  harm 
to  his  neighbor.2  In  the  same  way,  though  his 
own  life,  was  most  quiet  and  sedentary,  he  strongly 
points  out  the  advantage  of  being  many-sided  (as 
we  should  now  say)  in  both  mind  and  body,  and 
thereby  being  apt  to  receive  new  impressions  and 
put  forth  new  activities.3  This  is  one  of  the 
points  in  which  he  curiously  anticipates  modern 
ideas  about  development  and  adaptation  to  one's 
environment. 

He  insists  in  the  strongest  terms  on  the  im- 
portance of  society  to  man's  well-being : 

"  Society  is  imperfect "  (he  says), "  but  even  as 
it  is  men  get  far  more  good  than  harm  by  it.  There- 
fore let  satirists  laugh  at  men's  affairs  as  much  as 
they  please,  let  theologians  decry  them,  let  misan- 
thropes do  their  utmost  to  extol  a  rude  and  brutish 
life ;  but  men  will  still  find  that  their  needs  are 
best  satisfied  by  each  other's  help,  and  that  the 
dangers  which  surround  them  can  be  avoided  only 
by  joining  their  strength."  « 

Again  he  says : 

"  He  who  chooses  to  avenge  wrong  by  returning 
hatred  for  it  is  assuredly  miserable.  But  if  a  man 
strives  to  cast  out  hatred  by  love,  he  fights  his 
fight  in  all  joy  and  confidence,  being  able  to  with- 
stand many  foes  as  easily  as  one,  and  having  no 
need  to  call  on  Fortune  for  aid.  As  for  those  he 
conquers,  they  yield  to  him  joyfully,  and  that  not 
from  failing  strength,  but  because  they  are  made 
stronger." 5 

1  "  Ethics,"  iv.,  18,  echol.        "■  lb. ,  45,  schol.  2. 
3  lb.,  38.      4  lb.,  35,  schol.       5  lb.,  46,  schoL 


45G 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


Again : 

"  The  spirit  of  men  is  overcome,  not  by  force 
of  arms,  but  by  love  and  high-miudedness."  l 

The  following  maxim  contains  a  lofty  refine- 
ment of  morality,  if  one  may  so  speak,  to  which 
it  would  be  difficult  to  find  a  parallel  even  in 
Marcus  Aurelius : 

"  If  a  man  wishes  to  help  others  by  word  or 
deed  to  the  common  enjoyment  of  the  highest 
good,  he  shall  first  of  all  endeavor  himself  to  win 
their  love  to  him ;  but  not  to  draw  them  into  ad- 
miration of  him,  that  a  doctrine  may  be  called 
after  his  name,  nor  in  any  manner  to  give  cause 
for  offense.  Also  in  common  talk  he  will  avoid 
telling  of  men's  faults,  and  will  speak  but  sparing- 
ly of  human  weakness.  But  he  will  speak  largely 
of  man's  excellence  and  power,  and  the  means 
whereby  it  may  be  perfected;  that  so  men  may 
strive  to  live  after  the  commandment  of  reason,  so 
far  as  in  them  lies,  being  moved  thereto  not  by 
fear  or  disgust,  but  in  pure  joyfulness."  s 

The  mention  of  M.  Aurelius  suggests  a  paral- 
lel which  I  must  note  in  passing,  though  I  have 
not  room  to  work  it  out.  There  is  a  singular 
coincidence  between  the  ethical  theory  of  Spi- 
noza and  that  of  the  Stoics :  I  say  coincidence, 
for  Spinoza's  slender  acquaintance  with  Greek 
philosophy  precludes  the  supposition  of  borrow- 
ing. The  effort  or  impulse  of  self-preservation, 
which  in  his  system  is  the  mainspring  of  action, 
is  really  involved  in  the  Stoic  conception  of  "  fol- 
lowing Nature."  He  holds  that  right  action  for 
man  lies  in  the  preservation — taken  in  the  largest 
sense — of  mankind ;  not  of  the  individual  merely, 
because,  as  a  matter  of  fact  shown  by  experience, 
man  is  a  social  animal,  and  the  welfare  of  the  in- 
dividual can  be  found  only  in  society.  He  like- 
wise constantly  speaks  of  a  moral  life  as  equiva- 
lent to  a  life  which  is  reasonable  or  according  to 
reason.  Both  these  positions  are  thoroughly 
Stoic.     Nor  are  these  the  only  resemblances. 

Spinoza's  health  had  been  failing  for  some 
years  before  his  death,  and  he  was  attacked  by 
consumption,  which  possibly  was  aggravated  by 
his  work  of  glass-polishing.  The  last  illness  was 
short  and  almost  sudden.  It  came  on  the  21st 
of  February,  1677.  The  day  was  a  Sunday,  and 
in  the  morning  Spinoza  had  been  talking  to  his 
hosts,  Van  der  Spyck  and  his  wife,  as  was  his 
custom.  His  friend  and  physician,  Lewis  Meyer, 
came  from  Amsterdam  at  his  request,  and  was 
alone  with  him  at  the  last.  When  the  people  of 
the  house  came  home  in  the  afternoon,  they  found 
Spinoza  dead. 
1 "  Ethics,"  Append.,  cap.  11.    2  lb.,  Append.,  cap.  25. 


Some  time  before  this  Spinoza  had  committed 
to  Van  der  Spyck  the  trust  of  sending  his  unpub- 
lished papers  to  a  bookseller  at  Amsterdam. 
This  was  duly  fulfilled,  and  in  the  course  of  the 
same  year  the  philosopher's  posthumous  works, 
including  the  "  Ethics,"  appeared.  They  were 
received  with  even  more  violent  opposition  than 
the  "  Theologico-Political  Treatise,"  and  were 
forbidden  by  the  States-General  of  Holland.1 

Spinoza's  first  biographer  Colerus,'  whose 
frank  and  honest  admiration  of  Spinoza's  per- 
sonal character  went  along  with  a  no  less  frank 
detestation  of  his  philosophy,  calls  the  "Opera 
Posthuma  "  abominable  productions,  and  states 
that  divers  champions  were  providentially  raised 
up  to  confute  them,  who  had  all  the  success  they 
could  desire.  At  this  day  there  is  probably  no 
man  living  who  has  read  these  refutations,  while 
the  fame  of  Spinoza  stands  higher  than  ever. 

He  was  an  outcast  from  the  synagogue,  a 
stranger  to  the  Church,  a  solitary  thinker  who 
cast  his  thought  in  difficult  and  startling  forms- 
Notwithstanding  all  this,  men  of  divers  nations 
and  of  widely  different  opinions  have  joined  to- 
gether to  do  honor  to  the  memory  of  Benedict  de 
Spinoza,  the  philosopher,  whose  genius  has  made 
him  in  some  sort  the  founder  of  modern  specula- 
tion, and  the  man  who  in  modern  times  has  given 
us  the  highest  example  of  a  true  and  perfect  phil- 
osophic life. 

It  is  impossible  to  attempt  in  this  place  any 
account  of  Spinoza's  philosophy  ;  and  I  may  add 
that  he  is  eminently  one  of  those  writers  whose 
thought  cannot  be  learned  at  second  hand.  It 
may  be  worth  while,  however,  to  give  a  very  brief 
sketch  of  the  manner  in  which  his  influence  has 
risen  and  spread  in  modern  times. 

Spinoza  very  soon  had  eccentric  followers  as 
well  as  bitter  enemies  in  his  own  country ; 3  but 
in  the  European  world  of  letters  he  was  entirely 
misunderstood  and  neglected  for  the  best  part  of 

1  June  20,  1678.  The  full  text  of  the  'ordinance  is 
given  in  Van  der  Linde's  Bibliografie,  No.  24. 

2  The  Dutch  original  of  his  book  (No.  88  in  Biblio- 
grafle)  is  extremely  scarce.  There  is  one  copy  in  the 
Royal  Library  at  the  Hague :  the  only  other  known 
one  is,  according  to  Dr.  Van  der  Linde,  at  Halle.  The 
French  version,  by  which  it  is  commonly  known,  and 
which  Is  often  taken  for  the  original,  is  also  scarce, 
but  has  been  several  times  reprinted.  The  last  re- 
print is  in  Dr.  Ginsberg's  edition  of  Spinoza's  corre- 
spondence (Leipsic,  1876). 

3  See  Van  der  Linde's  "Spinoza,  seine  Lehre  nnd 
deseen  erste  Nachwirkungen  in  Holland"  (GOttingen, 
1862),  and  M.  Paul  Janet's  article  in  the  Revue  des 
Deux  Mondes  for  July  16, 1867. 


BENEDICT  DE  SPINOZA.  457 

TABLE  SHOWING  SPINOZA'S  POSITION  IN  THE  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 
ARISTOTLE. 


Arabic  and  Jewish  Schools  (I0th-12lh  Centuries). 
Ibn-Sina  (Avicenna).  Ibn-Gebirol  (Avicebron)." 

Ibn-Roshd  (Averroes),       Ibn-Ezra. 

etc.                        Moses  ben  Maimon  (Maimonides), 
etc. 


English  School. 

Hobbes 
Locke,  b.  1632 
Berkeley 
HUME 


Neo-Platonists. 


Chasdai  Creskas      Giordano  Bruno, 
(fl.  1410). 


Knew  little  of  Spinoza. 


DESCARTES. 

SPINOZA,  b.  1632. 


Leibnitz. 


German  School. 


Darwin.-, 


Lessing.       Jacobi.       Moses  Mendelssohn. 

KANT— |  | 

Coleridge.  Fichte.        Hegel.        Schelling. 


Huxley. 


G.  H.  Lewes,        etc. 


a  century.  Leibnitz,  the  man  most  capable  of 
doing  him  justice,  preferred  to  take  the  opposite 
course,  and  he  was  ill-treated  even  by  the  people 
who  might  have  been  expected  to  take  him  up  if 
only  for  the  reason  that  he  was  hateful  to  the 
theologians.  He  fared  little  better  at  the  hands 
of  Bayle  and  Voltaire  than  at  the  hands  of  ortho- 
dox apologists.  To  Lessing,  the  founder  in  some 
sort  of  German  literature  and  criticism,  belongs  the 
credit  of  having  seen  and  announced  Spinoza's 
real  worth.  In  a  certain  memorable  conversation 
with  Jacobi  he  said,  in  so  many  words,  "  There 
is  no  philosophy  but  the  philosophy  of  Spinoza." 
This  and  much  more  came  out  after  Lessing's 
death  in  a  long  correspondence  between  Jacobi 
and  Moses  Mendelssohn,  which  finally  degener- 
ated into  a  controversy.  After  the  report  of  that 
one  conversation,  the  record  of  all  this  is  now  of 
little  interest ;  from  these,  however,  and  from 
other  letters  preserved  among  Lessing's  works, 
the  fact  comes  out  that  Lessing  thoroughly  un- 
derstood Spinoza,  and  had  grasped  the  leading 
points  more  firmly  than  many  of  Spinoza's  later 
critics. 

Meanwhile  Goethe  too  had  found  out  Spinoza 


for  himself,  and  he  has  recorded  how  the  study 
of  the  "  Ethics  "  had  a  critical  effect  on  the  de- 
velopment of  his  character.1  And  his  statement 
is  fully  borne  out  by  the  witness  of  his  mature 
work.  Goethe's  poems  are  full  of  the  spirit  of 
Spinoza ;  not  that  you  can  often  lay  your  finger 
on  this  or  that  idea  and  give  a  reference  to  this 
or  that  proposition  in  the  "Ethics,"  but  there  is 
a  Spinozistic  atmosphere  about  all  his  deeper 
thoughts.  There  is  a  set  of  speculative  poems, 
"  Gott  und  Welt,"  which  gives  the  most  striking 
instances  ;  but  the  same  ideas  are  woven  into  all 
parts  of  Goethe's  work,  and  may  be  found  alike 
in  romance,  tragedy,  lyrics,  and  epigrams. 

The  influence  thus  started  in  philosophy  and 
literature  spread  rapidly.  Kant's  great  work  in 
philosophy  was  independent  of  it ;  but  a  strong 
current  of  Spinozism  set  in  immediately  after 
Kant,  and  acted  powerfully  on  his  successors. 
Fichte,  though  his  system  widely  departs  from 
Spinoza's,  had  obviously  mastered  his  philosophy 
and  felt  the  intellectual  fascination  of  it ;  and 
many  of  his  metaphysical  ideas  are  simply  taken 
from  Spinoza.  Hegel  said,  "  You  are  much  of  a 
1  "  Aub  meinem  Leben,"  book  xiv. 


458 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


Spinozist  or  no  philosopher  at  all."  In  like  man- 
ner Schelling  said  that  no  one  could  arrive  at 
philosophical  truth  who  had  not  once  at  least 
plunged  into  the  depths  of  Spinozism.  Novalis, 
Schleiermacher,  Heine,  and  many  others  have 
spoken  of  Spinoza  in  words  of  enthusiastic  praise. 
There  is  in  Germany  a  whole  recent  literature  of 
exposition  and  discussion  about  him,  which  is 
fast  increasing,  and  to  give  an  account  of  which 
would  itself  need  a  monograph. 

In  France  the  prevailing  tone  of  philosophy 
has  not  been  one  that  accords  well  with  Spi- 
noza ;  but  he  has  met  there  with  keen  and  intel- 
ligent criticism,  which  is  the  next  best  thing  to 
intelligent  admiration ;  and  the  beautiful  address 
lately  delivered  by  M.  Renan  at  the  Hague  (be- 
sides the  serious  attention  given  to  the  subject 
by  M.  Paul  Janet  and  others)  is  a  sufficient  proof 
that  Spinoza  has  now  at  least  found  a  response  in 
the  highest  thought  of  France. 

In  England  Coleridge,  in  this  as  in  other 
things  the  advanced  guard  of  the  peaceful  inva- 
sion of  German  culture  and  philosophy,  spread 
the  name  of  Spinoza,  and  much  of  his  ideas, 
among  the  friends  whom  he  delighted  by  his  con- 
versation. He  used  to  say  that  the  three  great 
works  since  the  introduction  of  Christianity  were 
Bacon's  "Novum  Organum,"  Spinoza's  "  Ethics," 
and  Kant's  "Kritik."  Coleridge's  own  position 
as  to  Spinoza  was  something  like  Jacobi's ;  he 
admired  and  honored  him  without  accepting  his 
teaching.  It  may  well  be  that  some  part  of  the 
Nature-worship  of  Wordsworth's  poetry,  which 
has  been  a  most  important  element  in  our  later 
English  literature,  was  derived  through  Coleridge 
from  Spinoza.  But  we  must  come  down  many 
years  later  before  we  find  any  certain  manifesta- 
tion of  this  part  of  Coleridge's  influence.  Those 
who  have  spoken  of  Spinoza  to  English  readers  as 


he  deserves  to  be  spoken  of  are  still  among  us 
and  working  for  us.  We  have  Mr.  G.  H.  Lewes's 
various  articles  and  writings  on  Spinoza,  to  which 
he  has  given  a  finished  form  in  his  "  History  of 
Philosophy."  We  have  Mr.  Froude's  essay  on 
Spinoza,  perhaps  the  best  general  account  of  his 
doctrine  which  has  been  given  in  our  language  for 
those  who  do  not  make  philosophy  their  special 
study.  There  is  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold's  admirable 
monograph  on  the  "  Tractatus  Theologico-Politi- 
cus,"  whose  only  fault  is  that  he  has  not  com- 
pleted it  by  a  companion-piece  on  the  "  Ethics." 
There  are  Mr.  Huxley's  contributions  to  pure 
philosophy,  which  do  not  treat  of  Spinoza  direct- 
ly, but  have  done  much  to  put  Spinoza's  funda- 
mental ideas  into  shapes  adapted  to  the  present 
state  of  our  knowledge.  The  same  may  be  said 
of  Mr.  G.  H.  Lewes's  most  recent  work  in  "  Prob- 
lems of  Life  and  Mind."  Nor  are  other  signs 
wanting  of  an  active  and  increasing  interest  in 
Spinoza  both  at  home  and  abroad. 

It  has  been  said  of  Spinoza  by  an  able  and  not 
unfair  critic  (M.  Saisset),  that  his  theory  was  after 
all  but  a  system,  which  has  passed  away  like  all 
other  systems,  never  to  come  back.  It  is  true 
that  Spinoza  did  not  found  a  school,  and  had  few 
or  no  disciples  in  the  proper  sense.  It  would  be 
difficult  to  name  any  one  who  ever  formally  ac- 
cepted his  system  as  a  whole.  But  the  worth  of 
a  philosopher  to  the  world  is  measured  not  by  the 
number  of  people  who  accept  his  system,  or  by 
the  failure  of  criticism  to  detect  logical  flaws  in 
it,  but  by  the  life  and  strength  of  the  ideas  he 
sets  stirring  in  men's  minds.  Systems  are  the 
perishable  body  of  philosophy,  ideas  are  the  liv- 
ing soul.  Judged  by  this  test,  Spinoza  stands  on 
a  height  of  eminence  such  as  very  few  other  think- 
ers have  attained. 

— Nineteenth  Century. 


SOME  KEMAEKS  ON  THE  LIBERTY  OF  SCIENCE.1 


Bt  FEIEDEICH  VON  HELLWALD. 


r)EPEATEDLY,  during  the  last  few  years, 
^  have  we  made  the  curious  observation 
that  the  bitterest  and  most  formidable  opponents 
of  the  monistic  conception  of  the  cosmos,  as 
based  on  the  theory  of  evolution,  are  to  be  found 
not  at  all  in  that  camp  which  is  commonly  sup- 

J  Translated  from  the  German  by  J.  Fitzgerald, 
A.M. 


posed  to  be  most  hostile  to  progress  and  free 
thought,  and  which  in  political  life  we  are  wont 
to  designate  as  orthodox  and  ultramontane ;  but 
rather  in  the  camp  of  those  whose  boast  it  is  that 
they  uphold  the  banner  of  political  liberalism,  of 
progress,  and  of  free  thought.  These  "obscu- 
rantists in  the  liberal  camp,"  as  I  am  wont  to 
call  them,  are  far  more  dangerous  foes  of  the 


SOME  REMARKS  ON  THE  LIBERTY  OF  SCIENCE. 


459 


development  of  science  than  are  its  professed 
adversaries,  who,  almost  without  an  exception, 
can  oppose  to  the  teachings  of  modern  science 
only  their  unproved  and  indemonstrable  church 
dogmas.  The  others,  on  the  contrary,  wrap 
themselves  in  the  mantle  of  strict  science,  whose 
most  zealous  followers  they  pretend  to  be,  in 
order  under  the  name  of  science,  and  with  the  aid 
of  ostensibly  scientific  arguments,  to  check,  as  far 
as  they  may,  the  propagation  of  the  new  and  more 
matured  conception  of  the  universe.  For  these 
scientific  "  reactionists,"  for  such  they  are  in  the 
strictest  sense  of  the  term,  Darwinism,  together 
with,  or  rather  on  account  of,  its  consequences, 
is  simply  an  abomination,  against  which  they 
strive  with  might  and  main.  And  often  they 
meet  with  success.  Thus  they  have  contrived  to 
win  over  to  their  views  the  majority  of  the  or- 
gans of  the  Liberal  party  in  Germany.  Centuries 
hence,  the  historian  will  note  it  as  a  singular 
and  hardly  credible  thing  that,  nearly  two  decen- 
niums  after  the  appearance  of  Darwin's  famous 
work,  influential  organs  of  established  reputa- 
tion, as  for  instance  the  Scientific  Supplement  of 
the  Allgcmeine  Zeitwng,  could  sail  in  the  current 
of  this  reaction.  The  tactics  of  these  reactionists 
consists  in  representing  the  evolution  theory,  and 
consequently  monism,  as  an  hypothesis  the  ac- 
ceptance of  which  is  unscientific,  so  long  as  it  is 
not  demonstrated — as  if  an  hypothesis  could  still 
be  an  hypothesis  after  it  had  been  demonstrated. 
Every  argument  that  can  be  with  justice  brought 
to  bear  against  it  from  the  scientific  point  of  view, 
all  new  facts  discovered  by  research  that  appear 
to  contradict  the  theory  of  evolution,  are  sedu- 
lously brought  to  the  knowledge  of  the  public — 
the  Bathybius  affair  is  an  instance  of  this ;  every 
new  publication,  in  so  far  as  it  opposes  Darwinian 
ideas,  is  fully  and  favorably  reviewed ;  while, 
on  the  other  hand,  researches  and  publications 
which  favor  Darwinism  either  are  not  noticed  at 
all,  or  but  briefly,  and  even  then,  as  far  as  pos- 
sible, in  a  tone  of  condemnation.  Men  who  day 
after  day  are  thundering  against  Roman  Jesuitry 
seem  to  be  quite  unconscious  that  they  them- 
selves practise  scientific  Jesuitry  in  permitting 
to  appear  only  those  doctrines  which  are  pleasing 
to  themselves.  Alongside  of  these  there  are  other 
and  more  honorable  men,  who,  in  their  no  less 
energetic  opposition  to  Darwinism,  are  actuated 
only  by  scientific  considerations ;  but  they  are 
ever  in  danger  of  being  regarded  by  the  less 
scrupulous  opponents  as  colleagues  and  confed- 
erates, those  people  being  always  glad  when  a 
man  of  distinguished  name  is  found  fighting  on 


their  side.  An  illustration  of  this  we  have  in  what 
took  place  at  the  fiftieth  Congress  of  German 
Naturalists  and  Physicians  last  September  at  Mu- 
nich, when  Prof.  Virchow  opposed  Ernst  Hae- 
ckel's  teaching  in  a  fashion  which  calls  for  some 
remark  in  this  place. 

Haeckel,  at  the  first  public  session  of  Septem- 
ber 18th,  delivered  an  address  on  "The  Evolution 
Theory  in  its  Relation  to  the  Philosophy  of  Na- 
ture." l  He  there  explained  the  idea  of  the  His- 
tory of  Evolution,  by  which  term  we  are  to  under- 
stand not  only  embryology  or  ontogeny,  but  also 
phylogeny  or  genealogy.  This  evolution  theory 
is  an  historical  science,  of  which  we  can  never 
have  exact  or  even  experimental  demonstration. 
Whoever  looks  for  such  demonstration,  thereby 
simply  betrays  his  ignorance  of  what  constitutes 
an  historical  science.  Haeckel  very  ingeniously 
compares  phylogeny  to  geology,  both  having  the 
same  method  of  research.  In  both  of  these 
sciences,  by  minute  comparison  of  multitudinous 
individual  facts,  by  critical  appreciation  of  their 
historical  significance,  and  by  speculative  and 
conjectural  filling  up  of  the  actual  gaps,  we  re- 
construct the  historic  course  of  development, 
whether  of  the  earth  or  of  its  inhabitants.  Who- 
ever regards  phylogeny  or  lineage-history  as  a 
mythical  science,  must  hold  the  same  opinion  as 
to  geology  and  paleontology,  and  this  no  reason- 
able man  is  prepared  to  do.  The  influential  posi- 
tion now  held  by  the  doctrine  of  evolution  is  due 
entirely  to  the  application  to  man  of  the  theory 
of  descent.  "  If  the  doctrine  of  evolution  is  true 
in  general,"  says  Haeckel,  "  if  there  is,  indeed,  a 
natural  and  historic  genealogy  of  living  beings, 
then  man,  too,  the  lord  of  creation,  is  descended 
from  the  sub-kingdon  Vertebrata,  the  class  Mam- 
malia, the  sub-class  Placentalia,  and  the  order 
Monkeys."  Haeckel  then  meets  the  objection  so 
frequently  made — that  in  this  theory  only  the  ori- 
gin of  man's  body  is  explained,  and  not  that  of 
his  mental  faculties — by  saying  that  on  the  theory 
of  evolution  all  organized  matter  at  least  is,  in  some 
sense,  possessed  of  psychic  properties.  "  This 
view  rests  upon  the  study  of  Infusoria,  Amcebse, 
and  other  one-celled  organisms.  .  .  .  Further,  we 
know  that  in  moneres  and  other  rudimentary  or- 
ganisms, mere  detached  bits  of  protoplasm  pos- 
sess sensation  and  the  power  of  movement,  just 
as  does  the  entire  .cell.  From  this  we  should  con- 
clude that  the  cell-soul,  which  is  the  basis  of  sci- 
entific psychology,  is  itself  only  a  compound,  i.  e., 
the  sum  of  the  psychic  properties  of  the  proto- 
plasmic molecules,  called  also  plastidules.  Thus 
1  See  Supplement  No.  X.,  p.  289. 


460 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


the  soul  of  the  plastidule  would  be  the  ultimate 
factor  to  which  could  be  reduced  the  psychic  life 
of  living  things."  l  And  inasmuch  as  the  theory 
of  evolution  shows  itself  to  be  a  unifying  and 
monistic  bond  between  the  most  diverse  sciences, 
it  must  also  be,  in  Haeckel's  opinion,  the  most 
powerful  instrument  in  education,  and  should  find 
a  place  in  the  schools.  A  reform  of  our  educa- 
tional systems  in  this  sense  he  declares  to  be  in- 
evitable, and  destined  to  lead  to  the  happiest  re- 
sults. True,  we  have  at  the  same  time  to  meet 
the  requirements  of  practical  philosophy,  and  to 
construct  a  new  doctrine  of  morals;  but  this  may 
be  confidently  expected  to  spring  forth  from  the 
germ  of  natural  religion  that  lives  in  the  breast 
of  every  man.  As  for  the  sense  of  duty,  it  is 
simply  a  social  instinct.  The  ethics  of  the  evolu- 
tion theory  does  not  need  to  go  in  search  of  new 
principles,  but  has  only  to  trace  back  to  their 
scientific  basis  the  immemorial  precepts  of  the 
moral  law. 

Such  is  the  substance  of  Haeckel's  thoughtful 
address.  For  those  who  are  acquainted  with  his 
writings,  his  conclusions  contain  nothing  that  is 
surprising,  though  we  must  confess  that  to  us  the 
fulfillment  of  Haeckel's  hopes  appears  still  to  lie 
in  the  distant  future.  Haeckel  speaks  with  all 
confidence  in  the  correctness  of  his  views,  which 
are  based  on  the  Darwinian  theory.  That  many 
points  connected  with  that  theory  are  still  hypo- 
thetical is  not  to  be  denied ;  nevertheless  we  must 
not,  as  does  Karl  Griin,  in  the  Allgemeine  Zcitung, 
represent  the  theory  itself  as  pure  hypothesis,  for 
the  firm  ground  on  which  it  rests,  namely,  pale- 
ontology, is  a  vast  science  of  experience  admitting 
only  of  one  or  other  of  just  two  theories,  the  theory 
of  evolution  and  the  theory  of  supernatural  cre- 
ation. Perhaps  Herr  Griin  can  imagine  a  third. 
Again,  granting  that  Haeckel's  doctrine  of  the  de- 
velopment of  the  plastidule  soul  into  the  human 
mind  is,  in  the  eyes  of  "  exact  science,"  nothing 
but  a  "  grand  hypothesis,"  we  must  bear  in  mind 
that  all  the  other  explanations  with  which  hith- 
erto we  fain  would  have  contented  ourselves  are 
also,  when  tried  by  "  exact  science,"  simply  hy- 
potheses, only  less  grand,  less  ingenious,  less 
conformable  to  demonstrated  facts.  Again,  we 
may  differ  with  Haeckel  about  that  true  "  rational 
religion"  which  he  contrasts  with  the  dogmatic, 
mythological  religion  of  the  churches,  but  we  do 
the  latter  no  service  by  pronouncing  monism  to 
be  "  religionless."    However,  I  entirely  agree  with 

1  Supplement  No.  X.,  p.  293,  where  a  faulty 
punctuation  materially  alters  the  sense  of  the  6econd 
sentence  in  this  passage. 


Haeckel  where  he  represents  the  natural  moral  law 
as  resulting  from  the  social  instincts  of  animals, 
and  hence  as  far  more  ancient  than  any  church 
religion.  To  the  philosophical  historian  and  the 
ethnologist  it  appears  a  perfectly  obvious  idea  to 
trace  ethics  up  back  from  man  ;  in  other  words,  to 
trace  the  natural  moral  law,  which  was  common 
to  primitive  man  with  social  animals,  from  that 
early  period  down  through  the  course  of  history 
to  the  present  time,  and  among  every  race  of 
mankind.  Such  an  investigation  would  infallibly 
prove  that  in  the  ethics  of  the  most  advanced  na- 
tions— aside  from  the  refinements  and  polish  of 
the  more  recent  periods  of  civilization — that  only 
can  lay  claim  to  legitimacy  which  is  in  agreement 
with  the  natural  law  of  morals  spoken  of  by 
Haeckel.  The  moral  ideas  of  mankind  vary  ac- 
cording to  latitude,  race,  and  time ;  but  it  were  im- 
possible to  name,  in  any  age,  a  race  of  people, 
however  rude  or  however  civilized,  who  are  en- 
tirely without  the  natural  moral  law  of  love  and 
sense  of  duty  which  appears  in  the  social  life  of 
animals.  Hence,  in  my  judgment,  Haeckel's  prop- 
osition is  perfectly  correct,  that  ethics  does  not 
have  to  offer  any  new  laws.  Other  laws  than  those 
just  mentioned  it  never  has  had.  And  if  once  we 
come  to  understand  that  only  those  moral  rules 
which  are  ours  in  common  with  all  social  animals 
constitute  the  sole  permanent  contents  of  an  ethi- 
cal code  for  all  men  without  exception,  while  all 
that  is  outside  of  this,  being  variable  according 
to  time  and  place,  must  be  regarded  as  non-es- 
sential and  accessory — in  other  words,  that  only 
the  former  class  of  rules  constitute  the  inalterable 
"  moral  law  " — it  is  clear  that  we  have  the  pri- 
mordial precepts  of  duty  referred  to  their  scientif.c 
basis.  It  cannot  be  denied  that  this  moral  code 
existed  long  before  the  advent  of  any  church  re- 
ligion whatever.  Those  systems  of  morals  which 
from  time  to  time  have  crystallized  around  the 
main  stem  of  the  natural  moral  law  found  ex- 
pression in  the  divers  church  religions,  and  so  ex- 
isted prior  to  them.  Does  any  one  suppose  that, 
for  instance,  Christianity,  as  a  popular  religion, 
could  have  won  adherents  as  it  did,  had  not  a 
mighty  revolution  in  the  morality  of  the  heathen 
world  preceded  it — a  revolution  which  needed 
for  its  sanction  a  new  edifice  of  religion  ?  .Besides, 
how  are  we  to  explain  the  unquestioned  existence 
of  systems  of  morality — crude  though  they  be — 
among  savage  tribes  who  never  have  heard  of  a 
church  religion  ? 

As  may  be  seen  from  the  foregoing,  Haeckel's 
discourse  gives  occasion  to  the  expression  of 
very  diverse  opinions.     But  it  was  not  upon  these 


SOME  REMARKS  ON  TEE  LIBERTY  OF  SCIENCE. 


4G1 


really  debatable  topics  of  the  discourse  that  Ru- 
dolph Virehow  '  thought  it  incumbent  on  him  to 
remark  in  his  one  hour's  speech  on  the  closing 
day  of  the  Congress  of  Naturalists.  The  distin- 
guished scholar  of  Berlin  had,  from  the  begin- 
ning,  announced  his  intention  of  addressing  the 
meeting,  but  the  subject  of  his  discourse  was, 
as  the  programme  had  it,  "not  yet  decided 
upon."  No  one  acquainted  with  the  method  of 
Virchow's  speeches  would  expect  to  find  in  his 
address  an  orderly  discussion  of  a  clearly-defined 
theme,  but  rather  a  sprightly  "  talk  "  (causerie) 
about  this,  that,  and  the  other  thing.  There  is 
no  preparation,  but  the  orator  brusquely  attacks 
whatever  subject  he  chooses,  and  talks  ex  tempore. 
Therefore,  no  one  was  very  much  surprised  on 
learning  that  Virehow  was  to  speak  of  "  The  Lib- 
erty of  Science  in  the  Modern  State."  He  remind- 
ed his  hearers  how  large  is  the  measure  of  liberty 
now  acceded  to  science,  and  said  that  more  could 
hardly  be  asked,  citing  the  addresses  delivered  in 
the  Congress  as  proofs  of  this.  A  few  years  ago, 
such  discourses,  he  said,  would  not  have  been 
allowed,  whether  in  Munich  or  anywhere  else.  He 
told  of  how  Oken,  the  founder  of  the  Naturalists' 
Congresses,  had  been  doomed  to  perish  in  exile  in 
that  same  canton  in  which  Hutten  had  found  his 
last  permanent  resting-place ;  and  how  the  first 
meeting  at  Leipsic  had,  of  necessity,  to  be  held 
in  secret.  In  our  joy  over  the  possession  of  en- 
tire liberty,  it  must  be  our  care,  he  said,  to  retain 
it,  and  to  guard  scrupulously  against  all  abuse 
of  it,  for,  in  that  way,  we  might  cause  restrictions 
to  be  imposed  again.  Lest  the  liberty  of  science 
should  be  again  taken  away,  nothing  but  demon- 
strated facts  must  be  put  forward  as  "  science." 
Schoolmasters  must  not  be  allowed  to  decide  be- 
tween the  problems  they  are  to  teach  and  those 
they  are  not  to  teach :  the  man  of  science  himself 
must  tell  them  what  is  demonstrated  truth  and 
what  is  still  under  investigation.  Such  doctrines 
as  those  of  the  plastidule  soul,  the  genesis  of  soul 
by  the  combination  of  carbon,  hydrogen,  and  nitro- 
gen, are  simply  statements  of  problems.  To  lay 
them  down  as  propositions,  or  even  to  permit  the 
schoolmaster  to  import  them  into  his  instruction, 
would  be  to  imperil  the  liberty  of  science  and  to 
compromise  science  itself. 

The  attentive  reader  will  have  noticed  that,  in 
i  this  discourse,  Virehow  mainly  opposed  the  ped- 
agogical value  of  the  evolution  theory  on  which 
Haeckel  lays  much  stress.  I  freely  admit  that  I 
am  a  hearty  admirer  of  the  learned  Berlin  pro- 
fessor (Virehow),  and  that  I  fully  recognize  the  im- 
1  See  this  discourse  in  No.  X.  of  the  Supplement. 


portance  of  being  on  our  guard  against  accepting, 
too  readily,  hypotheses  not  yet  fully  confirmed. 
But,  on  the  other  hand,  I  cannot  but  deeply  re- 
gret that  Prof.  Virehow  should  not  have  spared 
the  shafts  of  his  irony,  and  the  skill  of  his  dialec- 
tics, for  a  more  fitting  occasion;  for  we  are  com- 
pelled, in  the  name  of  scientific  research,  to  enter 
our  strongest  protest  against  the  whole  tone 
and  tenor  of  his  speech.  The  aim  of  that  dis- 
course is  simply  a  restriction  of  research — a 
restriction  that  never  can  be  of  benefit  to 
science.  A  few  years  ago,  at  a  meeting  of  the 
Naturalists'  Association,  we  heard,  this  time  also 
from  the  lips  of  a  Berlin  professor,  the  sen- 
tence Ignorabimus ;  '  and  now,  from  Munich, 
there  comes  to  us  a  sentence  which  goes  much 
further  than  that — Restringamur.  True,  Vir- 
ehow was  right  when  he  declared  that  an  hypoth- 
esis is,  after  all,  only  an  hypothesis.  But  here- 
in he  said  nothing  new  ;  we  all  were  aware  of 
that  long  ago ;  and,  what  is  more,  there  was  at 
the  time  no  occasion  which  called  for  special  in- 
sistence on  this  old  truth.  For,  when  Virehow 
protests  against  the  introduction  into  the  schools 
of  the  "  plastidule  soul,"  he  attributes  to  Haeckel 
a  purpose  he  never  has  entertained.  Haeckel 
laid  special  stress  upon  the  introduction  into  the 
schools  of  the  genetic  method  ;  and,  among  think- 
ing men,  there  can  be  no  question  that  this 
would  be  an  enormous  gain  as  compared  with  the 
now  dominant  authoritative  method.  In  the  em- 
ployment of  this  genetic  method,  Haeckel  has  in 
view  the  reform  of  education  which  he  desires 
to  see  brought  about,  and,  in  the  interest  of 
science,  it  must  be  the  wish  of  every  one  that  his 
scheme  may  not  be  an  empty  dream.  But  I 
must  go  further,  and  say  that,  in  my  opinion,  the 
doctrine  of  evolution  may  be  introduced  into  the 
schools  without  the  slightest  hesitation,  so  long 
as  it  is  offered,  by  the  teacher,  simply  as  the  hy- 
pothesis which  it  is,  and  which  can  be  very  well 
harmonized  with  current  religious  ideas,  as  we 
see  from  the  example  of  Wallace  and  other  very 
devout  Darwinists.  Or  must  we  say  that  pupils, 
even  in  our  high-schools,  should  learn  nothing 
about  the  problems  which  occupy  the  minda  of 
all  mankind?  What  harm  is  it,  what  damage 
does  it  do  to  the  liberty  of  scientific  research,  if 
the  pupil  (who  is  sufficiently  advanced  in  age  and 
in  his  studies)  is  told  how  men  endeavor  to  ex- 
plain the  relations  between  phenomena  ?  Then, 
if  we  are  to  be  so  extremely  scrupulous  about  ex- 
cluding all  hypotheses  from  the  schools,  we  must 

1  See  Du  Bois-Keymond's  address,  in  The  Popular 
Science  Monthly  for  May,  1ST4. 


462 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


reflect  that  at  the  same  time  we  exclude  from 
the  school  programme  a  whole  series  of  sciences. 
Are  there  not  still  hypotheses  without  number 
in  astronomy  ?  lias  not  the  nebular  hypoth- 
esis of  Kant  and  Laplace  for  a  long  time  been 
taught  everywhere  ?  Do  we  hesitate  to  acquaint 
pupils  in  the  schools  with  the  principles  and  the 
conclusions  of  geology  ?  In  fact,  is  it  not  usual 
to  give  to  them  as  their  first  history-lesson  a  lot 
of  fables  which  in  so  far  are  much  worse 
than  scientific  hypotheses  as  they  cannot  stand 
scientific  criticism  ?  Do  we  not  know  that  the 
current  accounts  of  Jewish,  Greek,  and  Roman 
history  are  false,  and  that  the  pupils  have  in 
later  years  laboriously  to  disencumber  their 
minds  of  the  lessons  learned  by  them  in  child- 
hood ?  In  short,  is  not  the  human  soul  itself — 
though  in  the  school  held  to  be  an  undisputed  fact 
— an  hypothesis,  a  simple  postulate,  incapable  of 
exact  demonstration  ?  Of  the  doctrines  of  re- 
ligion, which  are  so  zealously  taught  in  our 
schools,  I  say  nothing,  as  they  are  not  matters  of 
scientific  instruction;  but  yet  one  who  makes 
such  resistance  to  the  "  dogmatic  stream  which 
tumultously  makes  its  way  through  the  fields  of 
the  sciences  of  observation,"  and  who  strives  to 
protect  the  schools  against  the  same,  should  first 
of  all  labor  to  exclude  this  kind  of  instruction,  the 
dogmatic  character  of  which  is  unquestioned. 

I,  on  the  whole,  agree  with  Virchow  when  he 
says  that  it  is  incumbent  on  the  investigator  loy- 
ally to  declare — 1 .  What  is  established  fact  (though 
from  the  Kantian  point  of  view  this  would  not 
come  to  much) ;  2.  What  is  an  hypothesis  of  in- 
finite probability — for  instance,  the  earth's  revo- 
lution round  the  sun,  and  the  greater  part  of  what 
we  call  positive  science ;  3.  What  is  probable 
hypothesis,  though  still  needing  further  confir- 
mation— as,  for  instance,  the  hypotheses  upon 
which  the  Darwinian  theory  is  based ;  4.  What 
is  simple  and  entirely  undemonstrable  hypothe- 
sis— for  instance,  the  hypothesis  of  atoms,  of 
light-ether,  of  universal  gravitation,  and  the  like, 
which  are  taught  in  schools  with  impunity,  albeit 
some  of  them,  for  instance  the  hypothesis  of 
universal  gravitation,  are  simply  a  cloak  for  our 
ignorance.  But  these  distinctions  can  only  be 
drawn  by  the  individual  himself,  since  we  cannot 
demand  of  one  who  is  convinced  of  the  entire 
correctness  of  the  results  of  his  own  researches 
that  he  shall  represent  them  as  only  probable. 
Hence  the  line  of  demarkation  postulated  by 
Virchow,  and  which  I  myself  hold  to  be  desirable, 
between  facts  and  problems,  never  will  and  never 
can  be  drawn  by  the  man  of  research,  but  will  and 


must  in  the  future,  as  in  the  past,  continue  to  be  a 
matter  to  be  settled  by  the  schoolmaster.  Only  he 
who  stands  outside  of  the  domain  of  research 
can,  by  impartial  comparison  and  unprejudiced 
criticism  of  the  different  opinions,  form  for  him- 
self an  approximately  objective  judgment  as  to 
whether  a  proposition  is  to  pass  for  a  doctrine  of 
science  or  not;  the  investigator  himself  cannot 
do  this.  Nor  will  Virchow's  address  make  any 
change.  Every  investigator  must  be  absolutely 
free  to  teach  what  he  in  his  inmost  scientific 
convictions  holds  to  be  true ;  and  to  require  him 
to  formulate  the  positive  and  the  problematic  is 
simply  to  restrict  his  scientific  liberty.  Now,  we 
cannot  make  any  such  concession  as  that  to  the 
illustrious  Berlin  professor.  With  great  truth 
does  Karl  Griin  observe:  "Science  either  enjoys 
perfect  liberty,  or  she  is  not  free  at  all.  Setting 
up  hypotheses,  and  tracing  their  ultimate  conse- 
quences, are  part  and  parcel  of  science,  and  of 
the  liberty  of  science." 

I  do  not  class  Virchow's  strictures  with  those 
which  I  characterized  at  the  opening  of  these 
few  observations.  While  the  latter,  systemati- 
cally practised,  are  the  utterances  of  certain  par- 
ties, and  designed  to  serve  certain  partisan  ends, 
and  hence,  as  being  of  a  political  nature,  are  ut- 
terly void  of  scientific  weight,  on  the  other  hand, 
Virchow's  motives  were,  at  bottom,  purely  scien- 
tific. Unfortunately,  he  let  slip  a  momentous  ex- 
pression,  on  the  strength  of  which  many  political 
partisans  have  accounted  him  as  one  of  them- 
selves ;  and,  indeed,  they  have  not  failed,  out  of 
the  professor's  utterances  at  Munich,  to  straight- 
way make  political  capital — a  thing  deeply  to  be 
regretted  in  the  interest  of  science  as  well  as  of 
the  orator  himself.  Inasmuch  as  Virchow  called 
attention  to  the  fact  that  socialism  already  sym- 
pathizes with  the  evolution  theory,  it  is  high  time 
for  us,  in  the  most  solemn  and  impressive  way, 
to  declare  that  scientific  specidalion  cannot  have 
anything  whatever  in  common  with  political  move- 
ments of  any  kind,  and  that  they  must  not  be  gov- 
erned by  any  considerations  of  their  effects  upon 
political  questions.  Where  is  the  doctrine  that  is 
exempt  from  misuse?  Is  it  that  of  the  Bible — 
the  very  text-book  of  socialism ;  or  is  it  the  Chris- 
tian religion,  in  whose  name  hecatombs  have  been 
sacrificed  ?  Is  it  medicine  or  philosophy  ?  Nay, 
even  cellular  pathology,  as  Virchow  himself  ad- 1 
mits,  is  not  safe  from  misuse  and  misapplication. 

Scientific  research  aims  at  the  discovery  of 
truth,  never  inquiring  who  is  to  be   benefited 
thereby.    The  question  Cuiprodest  ? '  is  fortunate- 
1  Who  is  benefited  ? 


CARPENTER,   WALLACE,  AND  SPIRITUALISM. 


463 


ly  of  as  little  account  in  science  as  the  other  ques- 
tion, Cuinocet?1  Hence  whether  the  evolution 
doctrine  favors  the  Socialists  or  the  Ultramon- 
tanes,  the  high  and  dry  Conservatives,  the  Mod- 
erates, the  Liberals,  the  Radicals,  or  any  other 
party,  must  be  a  matter  of  entire  indifference  to 
the  earnest  investigator,  and  must  not  be  per- 
mitted for  a  moment  to  lead  him  astray  in  his  re- 
searches. The  truth  must  be  established  for  its 
own  sake,  and  for  no  other  purpose.  Any  other 
consideration,  even  though  it  were  'urged  by  a 
Virchow,  must  be  absolutely  rejected. 

Ever  since  science  first  began  there  have  been 
heard  authoritative  voices  calling  "  Halt ! "  to  the 
restless  spirit  of  speculation,  and  it  were  a  grave 
injustice  not  to  recognize  the  value  of  such  ad- 
monitions. They  who  warn  against  danger,  and 
they  who  engage  in  scientific  speculation,  are 
both  indispensable  for  the  development  of  science ; 
but  we  must  ever  bear  in  mind  that  scientific 
progress  always,  almost  without  an  exception, 


has  come  from  the  labors  of  those  who  dared 
to  give  expression  to  thoughts  which  were  as  a 
leaven  to  the  minds  of  their  contemporaries,  and 
who  were  persecuted  for  heresy  and  laid  under  a 
ban  by  the  authorities.  The  most  splendid  tri- 
umphs of  science  are  the  fruit  of  the  empiric 
demonstration  of  ingenious  hypotheses.  Even  in 
cases  where  these  hypotheses  have  proved  un- 
tenable, they  have  caused  men  to  think,  and  that 
in  itself  constitutes  a  new  advance  of  science.  We 
could  as  little  dispense  with  them  as  with  the 
leaven  in  bread.  All  honor,  then,  first  of  all  to 
the  men  to  whom  we  are  indebted  for  hypotheses 
which  have  given  a  stimulus  to  research ;  which, 
so  to  speak,  constitute  a  landmark  in  the  history 
of  science ;  finally,  in  the  mastering  of  which,  in 
the  one  sense  or  in  the  other,  a  full  generation  or 
more  has  been  employed  !  Honor,  again,  to  those 
intellectual  princes  of  whom  the  German  proverb 
is  true  that,  "  when  kings  build,  there  is  work  for 
cartmen ! " — Kosmos. 


CARPENTER,  WALLACE,  AND  SPIRITUALISM. 


LETTER    FROM    MR.    WALLACE. 

OWIXG  to  absence  from  home  I  have  only 
just  seen  Dr.  Carpenter's  letter  in  the 
Athenceum  of  December  22d,  to  which  I  now  beg 
leave  very  briefly  to  reply. 

I  must  first  remark  on  the  extreme  inconven- 
ience of  Dr.  Carpenter's  erratic  mode  of  carrying 
on  a  discussion.  As  soon  as  his  lectures  on 
"  Mesmerism,  Spiritualism,  etc.,"  were  published, 
I  wrote  a  review  of  them  in  the  Quarterly  Jour- 
nal of  Science  of  July  last.  To  this  Dr.  Carpenter 
replied  in  Frasers  Magazine  of  November,  prom- 
ising a  fuller  reply  to  certain  points  in  the  new 
edition  of  his  "  Lectures,"  then  in  the  press.  As 
the  article  in  Fraser  was  of  a  very  personal  char- 
acter, I  issued  a  rejoinder  in  the  same  periodical 
the  following  month.  A  discussion  has  also  been 
carried  on  in  Nature,  and  the  scene  of  the  con- 
test is  now  removed  to  the  Athenceum,  many  of 
whose  readers  are  probably  ignorant  of  its  pre- 
vious phases. 

Dr.  Carpenter  comes  before  a  fresh  audience 
in  order  to  reply  to  a  specific  charge  of  misstate- 
ment which  I  made  against  him  in  the  Quarterly 

1  Who  is  hurt  ? 


Journal  of  Science  (July,  1877,  p.  398),  which 
charge,  as  I  will  proceed  to  show,  he  endeavors 
to  evade  by  a  wordy  defense,  which  really  amounts 
to  an  admission  of  it.  In  his  "Lectures"  (p.  71) 
is  the  following  passage : 

"  It  was  in  France  that  the  pretensions  of 
mesmeric  clairvoyance  were  first  advanced  ;  and 
it  was  by  the  French  Academy  of  Medicine,  in 
which  the  mesmeric  state  had  been  previously 
discussed  with  reference  to  the  performance  of 
surgical  operations,  that  this  new  and  more  ex- 
traordinary claim  was  first  carefully  sifted,  in  con- 
sequence of  the  offer  made  in  1837  by  M.  Burdin 
(himself  a  member  of  that  Academy)  of  a  prize 
of  3,000  francs  to  any  one  who  should  be  found 
capable  of  reading  through  opaque  substances. 
The  money  was  deposited  in  the  hands  of  a 
notary  for  a  period  of  two  years,  afterward  ex- 
tended to  three;  the  announcement  was  exten- 
sively published  ;  numerous  cases  were  offered  for 
examination  ;  every  imaginable  concession  was 
made  to  the  competitors  that  was  compatible 
with  a  thorough  testing  of  the  asserted  power; 
and  not  one  was  found  to  stand  the  trial." 

My  readers  will  observe  that  this  is  deliber- 
ately stated  to  be  the  first  time  that  clairvoyance 


46± 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


was  carefully  sifted  in  France ;  yet  it  now  appears 
that  Dr.  Carpenter  perfectly  well  knew  of  the 
commission  of  the  same  Academy  about  ten  years 
earlier,  which,  after  five  years  of  most  careful 
and  elaborate  experiments,  gave  a  unanimous  re- 
port positively  in  favor  of  the  reality  of  clair- 
voyance. 

But  Dr.  Carpenter  would  have  us  believe  that 
he  studiously  avoided  all  mention  of  this  report 
because  it  had  been  proved  to  be  wholly  founded 
on  imposture  or  error;  and  he  endeavors  to  es- 
tablish this  by  giving  a  single  hearsay  case  of  a 
confession  of  imposture  on  another  person  not 
even  a  member  of  the  commission  !  I  feel  sure 
that  the  impression  conveyed  to  the  readers  of 
Dr.  Carpenter's  letters  would  be  that  the  case  of 
alleged  imposture  by  one  of  the  mesmeric  patients 
of  MM.  Gcorget  and  Rostan  occurred  to  members 
of  the  commission,  and  that  the  case  had  been 
examined  by  them  and  reported  on  as  genuine. 
But  this  impression  would  be  entirely  erroneous. 
The  members  of  the  commission,  whose  names 
are  appended  to  the  report,  are  as  follows:  1. 
Bourdeois  de  la  Motte  (president) ;  2.  Fouquier ; 
3.  Gueneau  de  Mussy ;  4.  Guersent ;  5.  Itard ; 
6.  Leroux ;  *7.  Marc ;  8.  Thillaye ;  9.  Husson  (re- 
porter). Against  the  voluminous  and  interesting 
details  of  this  report,  its  carefully-repeated  ex- 
periments, its  cautious  deductions,  its  amazing 
facts,  not  one  particle  of  rebutting  evidence  is 
adduced.  Yet  Dr.  Carpenter  thought  himself 
justified  not  only  in  ignoring  its  existence,  but  in 
giving  his  readers  to  understand,  by  an  express 
form  of  words,  that  no  such  inquiry  was  ever 
made!  This  was  the  accusation  I  made  against 
him,  and  the  readers  of  the  Athenaeum  can  now 
judge  as  to  the  candor  and  sufficiency  of  the 
reply. 

I  must  add  a  few  words  on  the  way  in  which 
Dr.  Carpenter  treats  M.  Rostan,  "  one  of  the  ablest 
medical  psychologists  of  his  day."  Dr.  Carpen- 
ter states,  as  a  fact,  that,  "when  a  second  edition 
of  the  '  Dictionnaire  de  Medecine '  came  out  in 
1838,  he  (M.  Rostan)  withdrew  the  article  he  had 
contributed  to  the  first ; "  and  then,  further  on, 
it  is  stated  that  "  M.  Rostan,  by  his  own  confes- 
sion," had  been  led  away  by  cunning  cheats  in 
the  matter  of  clairvoyance.  Now  I  have  always 
understood  that  M.  Rostan  was  much  annoyed  at 
his  article  being  superseded  in  the  second  edition 
of  the  Dictionnaire ;  and,  as  this  is  a  priori  prob- 
able, I  require  some  direct  evidence  of  Dr.  Car- 
penter's assertion  that  he  voluntarily  withdrew  it. 
This  is  the  more  necessary  because  the  still  more 
important  and  damaging  statement — that  M.  Ros- 


tan made  a  "confession"  that  he  had  been  led 
away  by  cunning  cheats — is  also  given  as  a  hear- 
say report  without  any  reference  or  authority ; 
and  it  looks  very  much  as  if  Dr.  Carpenter's 
logic  had  deduced  the  "  confession "  as  an  in- 
ference from  the  "withdrawal,"  no  evidence 
whatever  being  offered  for  either  of  them.  If 
this  should  really  be  the  case,  then  the  severest 
things  I  have  said  as  to  Dr.  Carpenter's  mode  of 
carrying  on  this  discussion  will  be  more  than 
justified. 

Throughout  my  discussion  of  this  subject 
with  Dr.  Carpenter  I  have  strictly  confined  my- 
self to  questions  of  fact  and  of  evidence,  and 
have  maintained  that  these  are  of  more  value 
than  opinions,  however  numerous  or  weighty. 
My  criticisms  have,  for  the  most  part,  been  di- 
rected to  misrepresentations  of  facts  and  sup- 
pressions of  evidence  on  the  part  of  my  oppo- 
nent. The  readers  of  the  Athenceum  will  now 
be  able  to  judge,  as  regards  one  case,  whether 
that  criticism  is  sound ;  and  for  numerous  other 
cases  I  refer  them  to  my  articles  in  the  Quarterly 
Journal  of  Science  and  in  Eraser's  Magazine.  If 
they  read  these,  they  will,  I  think,  agree  with  me 
that  the  cause  of  truth  will  not  be  advanced  by 
the  further  continuance  of  a  discussion  in  which 
one  of  the  parties  perpetually  evades  or  obscures 
the  most  important  points  at  issue,  and  at  every 
step  introduces  fresh  misstatements  to  be  cor- 
rected and  fresh  insinuations  to  be  rebutted,  as 
I  have  shown  that  Dr.  Carpenter  has  done  in  his 
numerous  writings  on  this  subjeet. 

Alfred  R.  Wallace. 

DR.    CARPENTER'S   REJOINDER. 

As  Mr.  Wallace,  without  invalidating  any  one 
of  my  facts,  has  now  reaffirmed  yet  more  strong- 
ly the  charge  which  he  brought  against  me  in  Mr. 
Crookes's  journal,  I  beg  to  be  allowed  very  briefly 
to  restate  my  defense. 

The  evidence  in  favor  of  clairvoyance  (con- 
tained in  the  Academic  report  of  1830),  in 
which  Mr.  Wallace  not  only  has  himself  full 
faith,  but  requires  me  and  every  one  else  to  have 
the  same,  was  condemned  as  untrustworthy  by 
the  two  contemporary  tribunals  to  which  it  was 
submitted — the  French  Academy  of  Medicine, 
and  the  redacteurs  of  the  "  Dictionnaire  de  Mede- 
cine. The  former,  after  full  investigation  by  a 
second  and  a  third  commission  (1837-'40),  de- 
liberately reversed  the  judgment  of  its  first,  as 
having  been  obtained  by  fraud  and  chicanery ; 
and  formally  pronounced  the  evidence  for  the 
"higher  phenomena"  of  mesmerism  to  be  "null 


TIIE  LAST  OF  THE   GASES. 


465 


and  void."  The  latter,  on  the  same  grounds,  sub- 
stituted for  the  article  written  by  one  of  their 
most  distinguished  contributors  for  the  first  edi- 
tion of  their  Dictionary  another  in  the  precisely 
opposite  sense. 

My  crime,  in  Mr.  Wallace's  eyes,  is  that  I 
stated  that  the  subject  of  clairvoyance  was  "  first 
thoroughly  sifted "  by  those  later  investigations 
on  which  the  Academy  itself  relied ;  and  that  I 


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

William  B.  Carpenter. 
— Athencmm. 


THE  LAST  OF  THE  GASES. 


THE  year  1817  will  ever  be  memorable  in  the 
history  of  scientific  progress,  its  close  hav- 
ing been  marked  by  a  brilliant  series  of  researches 
which  have  ended  in  an  absolute  demonstration 
of  the  fact  that  molecular  cohesion  is  a  property 
of  all  bodies  without  any  exception  whatever. 

This  magnificent  work  divides  itself  into  two 
stages,  which  we  shall  refer  to  separately :  first, 
the  liquefaction  of  oxygen;  and  then,  following 
close  upon  this,  the  liquefaction  of  hydrogen, 
nitrogen,  and  atmospheric  air. 

In  the  liquefaction  of  oxygen,  which  we  an- 
nounced last  week  as  having  been  accomplished 
by  M:  Pictet,  of  Geneva,  we  have  not  only  an  in- 
stance of  the  long  time  we  may  have  to  wait,  and 
of  the  great  difficulties  which  have  to  be  overcome, 
before  a  theoretical  conclusion  is  changed  into  a 
concrete  fact — something  definite  acquired  to  sci- 
ence ;  but  also  another  instance  of  a  double  dis- 
covery, showing  that,  along  all  the  great  lines  of 
thought  opened  up  by  modern  investigation  and 
modern  methods,  students  of  science  are  march- 
ing at  least  two  abreast. 

It  appears  that  as  early  as  December  2d 
M.  Cailletet  had  succeeded  in  liquefying  oxygen 
and  carbonic  oxide  at  a  pressure  of  300  atmos- 
pheres and  at  a  temperature  of  —29°  C.  This 
result  was  not  communicated  to  the  Academy 
at  once,  but  was  consigned  to  a  sealed  packet 
on  account  of  M.  Cailletet  being  then  a  candi- 
date for  a  seat  in  the  Section  of  Mineralogy. 
Hence,  then,  the  question  of  priority  has  been 
raised,  but  it  is  certain  that  in  the  future  the 
work  will  be  credited  to  both,  on  the  ground  that 
the  researches  of  each  were  absolutely  indepen- 
dent, both  pursuing  the  same  object,  creating 
methods  and  instruments  of  great  complexity. 
We  regret,  therefore,  that  M.  Jamin,  at  the  sit- 
ting of  the  Academy  to  which  we  have  referred, 

66 


seemed  to  strain  the  claims  of  M.  Cailletet  by 
stating  that  to  obtain  the  gas  non-transparent 
was  the  same  as  to  obtain  it  liquefied.  We  are 
beginning  to  know  -enough  of  the  various  states 
of  vapor  now  not  to  hazard  such  an  assertion  as 
this.  This  remark,  however,  rather  anticipates 
matters ;  and  indeed,  as  we  shall  show  afterward, 
M.  Cailletet  need  not  himself  be  very  careful  of 
the  question  of  priority — even  if  it  were  ever 
worth  caring  for  except  to  keep  other  people 
honest. 

Owing  to  the  double  discovery  and  the  cu- 
rious incident  to  which  we  have  referred,  the 
meeting  of  the  Academy  on  the  24th  ult.  was  a 
very  lively  one,  as  not  only  was  the  sealed  packet 
and  a  subsequent  communication  from  M.  Cail- 
letet read,  but  M.  Pictet  had  sent  a  long  letter 
to  M.  Dumas  giving  full  details  of  his  arrange- 
ments. MM.  Dumas,  H.  St.-Claire-Deville,  Jamin, 
Regnault,  and  Berthelot,  all  took  part  in  the  dis- 
cussion, the  former  admirably  putting  the  work 
in  its  proper  place  by  the  following  quotation 
from  Lavoisier: 

"...  Considerons  un  moment  ce  qui  arriverait 
aux  differentes  substances  qui  composent  le  globe, 
si  la  temperature  en  £tait  brusquement  changee. 
Supposons,  par  exemple,  que  la  terre  se  trouvat 
transportee  tout  a  coup  dans  une  region  heaucoup 
plus  chaude  du  systeme  solaire,  dans  une  region, 
par  exemple,  ou  la  chaleur  habituelle  serait  fort 
superieure  a  celle  de  l'eau  bouillante :  bientot  l'eau, 
tous  les  liquides  susceptibles  de  se  vaporiser  a  des 
degres  voisins  de  l'eau  bouillante,  et  plusieurs  sub- 
stances metalliques  meme,  entreraient  en  expan- 
sion et  se  transformeraient  en  fluides  aeriformes, 
qui  deviendraient  parties  de  l'atmosphere. 

"  Par  un  effet  contraire,  si  la  terre  se  trouvait 
tout  a  coup  placee  dans  des  regions  tres-froides, 
par  exemple  de  Jupiter  et  de  Saturne,  l'eau  qui 
forme  aujourd'hui  nos  fleuves  et  nos  mers,  et  pro- 


466 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


bablement  le  plus  grand  nombre  de  liquides  que 
nous  connaissons,  se  transformeraient  en  montagnes 
solides. 

"  L'air  dans  eette  supposition,  ou  du  moins  une 
partie  des  substances  aeriformes  qui  le  composent, 
cesserait,  sans  doute,  d'exister  dans  l'etat  de  fluide 
invisible,  faute  d'un  degre  de  chaleur  suffisant ;  il 
reviendrait  done  a,  l'etat  de  liquidity,  et  ce  chauge- 
ment  produirait  de  nouveaux  liquides  dont  nous 
n'avons  aucune  id£e." 

When  Faraday  in  the  year  1823  (at  the  age 
of  thirty-one)  began  the  researches  indicated  in 
the  last  paragraph  quoted  by  M.  Dumas,  and  first 
liquefied  chlorine  and  then  several  other  gases, 
he  had  no  idea  that  he  had  been  anticipated,  as 
he  had  been,  by  Monge  and  Clouet,  who  condensed 
sulphurous  acid  before  the  year  1800,  and  by 
Northmore,  who  liquefied  chlorine  in  1805.  If 
the  great  experimenter  were  among  us  now,  how 
delighted  he  would  be  to  see  one  of  the  greatest 
iron-masters  of  France  employing  the  enormous 
resources  at  his  disposal  at  Ch&tillon-sur-Seine, 
and  a  descendant  of  the  Pictet,  the  firm  friend 
of  his  great  friend  De  la  Rive  (who  was  the  first 
to  whom  he  communicated  his  liquefaction  of 
chlorine),  thus  engaged  in  carrying  on  the  work 
which  he  made  his  own ! 

The  methods  employed  by  MM.  Pictet  and 
Cailletet  are  quite  distinct,  and  are  the  result  of 
many  years'  preparatory  study,  as  testified  by 
M.  H.  St.-Claire-Deville  and  M.  Regnault.  It  is 
difficult  to  know  which  to  admire  most,  the  sci- 
entific perfection  of  Pictet's  method  or  the  won- 
derful simplicity  of  Cailletet's.  It  is  quite  certain 
that  the  one  employed  by  the  latter  will  find  fre- 
quent use  in  future  experiments.  We  may  briefly 
refer  to  both  these  methods. 

M.  Cailletet's  apparatus  has  already  been 
briefly  alluded  to  in  these  columns.  It  consists 
essentially  of  a  massive  steel  cylinder  with  two 
openings  ;  through  one  hydraulic  pressure  is  com- 
municated. A  small  tube  passes  through  the 
other,  the  sides  of  which  are  strong  enough  to 
withstand  a  pressure  of  several  hundred  atmos- 
pheres, and  which  can  be  inclosed  in  a  freezing 
mixture.  It  opens  within  the  cylinder  into  a 
second  smaller  cylinder  serving  as  a  reservoir 
for  the  gas  to  be  compressed.  The  remainder 
of  the  space  in  the  large  cylinder  is  occupied  by 
mercury.  M.  Cailletet's  process  consists  in  com- 
pressing a  gas  into  the  small  tube,  and  then,  by 
suddenly  placing  it  in  communication  with  the 
outer  air,  producing  such  a  degree  of  cold  by  the 
sudden  distention  of  the  confined  gas  that  a  large 
portion  of  it  is  condensed,  a  process  perfectly 
analogous  to  that  used  to  prepare  solid  carbonic 


[  acid  by  the  rapid  evaporation  of  the  liquefied 
gas.  In  M.  Cailletet's  experiment  with  oxygen  it 
was  brought  to  a  temperature  of —29°  C.  by  the 
employment  of  sulphurous  acid,  and  a  pressure 
of  300  atmospheres  ;  the  gas  was  still  a  gas.  But 
when  allowed  to  expand  suddenly,  which,  accord- 
ing to  Poisson's  formula,  brings  it  down  to  200° 
below  its  starting-point,  a  cloud  was  at  once 
formed.  The  same  result  has  since  been  obtained 
without  the  employment  of  sulphurous  acid,  by 
giving  the  gas  time  to  cool  after  compression. 
M.  Cailletet  has  not  yet  obtained,  at  all  events, 
so  far  as  we  yet  know,  oxygen  in  a  liquid  form, 
as  M.  Pictet  has  done  ;  on  being  separated  from 
its  enormous  pressure  it  has  merely  put  on  the 
appearance  of  a  cloud. 

M.  Pictet's  arrangements  are  more  elaborate. 
He  uses  four  vacuum  and  force  pumps,  similar  to 
those  which  were  recently  exhibited  in  the  Loan 
Collection  of  Scientific  Apparatus  for  making  ice, 
driven  by  an  engine  of  15-horse  power.  Two  of 
these  are  employed  in  procuring  a  reduction  of 
temperature  in  a  tube  about  four  feet  long  con- 
taining sulphurous  add.  This  is  done  in  the  fol- 
lowing way:  The  vacuum-pump  withdraws  the 
vapor  from  above  the  surface  of  the  liquid  sul- 
phurous acid  in  the  tube,  which,  like  all  the  others 
subsequently  to  be  mentioned,  is  slightly  inclined 
so  as  to  give  the  maximum  of  evaporating  sur- 
face. The  force-pump  then  compresses  this  va- 
por, and  sends  it  into  a  separate  reservoir,  where  it 
is  again  cooled  and  liquefied;  the  freshly-formed 
liquid  is  allowed  to  return  under  control  to  the 
tube  first  referred  to,  so  that  a  complete  circula- 
tion is  maintained.  •  With  the  pumps  at  full  work 
there  is  a  nearly  perfect  vacuum  over  the  liquid 
and  the  temperature  falls  to  —  65°  or  —  70°  C. 

M.  Pictet  uses  this  sulphurous  acid  as  a  cold- 
water  jacket,  as  we  shall  see.  It  is  used  to  cool  the 
carbonic  acid  after  compression,  as  water  is  used 
to  cool  the  sulphurous  acid  after  compression. 

This  is  managed  as  follows :  In  the  tube  thus 
filled  with  liquid  sulphurous  acid  at  a  tempera- 
ture of  —  60°  C.  there  is  another  central  one  of 
the  same  length  but  naturally  of  smaller  diame- 
ter. This  central  tube  M.  Pictet  fills  with  liquid 
carbonic  acid  at  a  pressure  of  four  or  six  atmos- 
pheres. This  is  then  let  into  another  tube  four 
metres  long  and  four  centimetres  in  diameter. 
When  thus  filled  the  liquid  is  next  reduced  to 
the  solid  form  and  a  temperature  of  — 140°  C, 
the  extraction  of  heat  being  effected  as  before  by 
the  pump,  which  extracts  three  litres  of  gas  per 
stroke,  and  makes  100  strokes  a  minute. 
Now  it  is  the  turn  of  the  oxygen. 


THE  LAST  OF  TEE  GASES. 


467 


Just  as  the  tube  containing  carbonic  acid  was 
placed  in  the  tube  containing  sulphurous  acid,  so 
is  a  tube  containing  oxygen  inserted  in  the  long 
tube  containing  the  now  solidified  carbonic  acid. 
This  tube  is  five  metres  long,  fourteen  millime- 
tres in  exterior  diameter,  and  only  four  in  in- 
terior diameter  —  the  glass  is  very  thick.  The 
whole  surface  of  this  tube,  except  the  ends  which 
project  beyond  the  ends  of  the  carbonic-acid  tube, 
is  surrounded  by  the  frozen  carbonic  acid. 

One  end  of  this  tube  is  connected  with  a 
strong  shell  containing  chlorate  of  potash,  the 
other  end  is  furnished  with  a  stopcock. 

When  the  tube  was  as  cold  as  its  surroundings, 
heat  was  applied  to  the  chlorate,  and  a  pressure  of 
500  atmospheres  was  registered  ;  this  descended 
to  320.  The  stopcock  was  then  opened,  and  a 
liquid  shot  out  with  such  violence  that  none  could 
be  secured,  though  we  shall  hear  of  this  soon. 

Pieces  of  lighted  wood  held  in  this  stream 
spontaneously  inflamed  with  tremendous  violence. 
In  this  way,  then,  has  oxygen  been  liquefied  at  last. 
But  this  result  has  no  sooner  filled  us  with  sur- 
prise than  it  has  been  completely  eclipsed.  On 
the  last  day  of  December,  a  week  after  the  meet- 
ing of  the  Academy  to  which  we  have  referred, 
M.  Cailletet  performed  a  series  of  experiments 
in  the  laboratory  of  the  Ecole  Normale  at  Paris,  in 
the  presence  of  Berthelot,  Boussingault,  St.-Claire- 
Deville,  Mascart,  and  other  leading  French  chem- 
ists and  physicists,  using  the  same  method  as 
that  formerly  employed  for  oxygen,  and  he  then 
and  there  liquefied  hydrogen,  nitrogen,  and  air ! 

M.  Cailletet  first  introduced  pure  nitrogen  gas 
into  the  apparatus.  Under  a  pressure  of  200  at- 
mospheres the  tube  was  opened,  and  a  number 
of  drops  of  liquid  nitrogen  were  formed.  Hydro- 
gen was  next  experimented  with,  and  this,  the 
lightest  and  most  difficult  of  all  gases,  was  re- 
duced to  the  form  of  a  mist  at  280  atmospheres. 
The  degree  of  cold  attained  by  the  sudden  release 
of  these  compressed  gases  is  scarcely  conceivable. 
The  physicists  present  at  the  experiment  estimated 
it  at  —300°  C. 


Although  oxygen  and  nitrogen  had  both  been 
liquefied,  it  was  deemed  of  interest  to  carry  out 
the  process  with  air,  and  the  apparatus  was  filled 
with  the  latter,  carefully  dried  and  freed  from 
carbonic  acid.  The  experiment  yielded  the  same 
result.  On  opening  the  tube  a  stream  of  liquid 
air  issued  from  it  resembling  the  fine  jets  forced 
from  our  modern  perfume-bottles. 

These  more  recent  results  are  all  the  more 
surprising  as,  at  an  earlier  stage,  hydrogen,  at  a 
pressure  of  300  atmospheres,  has  shown  no  signs 
of  giving  way. 

These  brilliant  and  important  results,  though, 
as  we  have  said,  they  give  us  no  new  idea  on  the 
constitution  of  matter,  open  out  a  magnificent 
vista  for  future  experiment.  First,  we  shall 
doubtless  be  able  to  study  solid  oxygen,  hydro- 
gen, and  air,  and  if  MM.  Pictet  and  Cailletet  suc- 
ceed in  this  there  will  then  be  the  history  to 
write  of  the  changes  of  molecular  state,  probably 
accompanied  by  changes  of  color,  through  which 
these  elemental  substances  pass  in  their  new 
transformations. 

There  is  a  distinct  lesson  to  be  learned  from 
the  sources  whence  these  startling  tours  deforce 
have  originated.  The  means  at  the  command  of 
both  MM.  Cailletet  and  Pictet  arise  from  the  in- 
dustrial requirements  of  these  gentlemen,  one  for 
making  iron,  the  other  for  making  ice. 

Why,  then,  in  England,  the  land  of  practical 
science,  have  we  not  more  men  like  MM.  Cailletet 
and  Pictet  to  utilize  for  purposes  of  research  the 
vast  means  at  their  disposal,  or  at  all  events  to 
allow  others  to  use  them  ? 

It  is  also  clear  thjit-to  cope  with  modern  re- 
quirements our  laboratories  must  no  longer  con- 
tain merely  an  antiquated  air-pump,  a  Leyden 
jar,  and  a  few  bottles,  as  many  of  them  do.  The 
professor  should  be  in  charge  of  a  work  instead 
of  an  old  curiosity  shop,  and  the  scale  of  his  op- 
erations must  be  large  if  he  is  to  march  with  the 
times — times  which,  with  the  liquefaction  of  the 
most  refractory  gases,  mark  an  epoch  in  the  his- 
torv  of  science. — Nature. 


468 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


A  EING  OF  WOKLDS. 


THREE  hundred  years  ago,  when  what  was 
called  the  Copernican  Paradox  was  strug- 
gling for  existence  against  the  then  orthodox 
Ptolemaic  astronomy,  the  solar  system  was  sup- 
posed to  consist  of  eight  bodies.  The  followers 
of  Copernicus  believed  in  a  central  sun,  round 
which  six  orbs  revolved,  while  around  one  of 
these — our  earth — traveled  one  other  orb — mak- 
ing (with  the  central  sun)  eight  bodies  in  all.  The 
followers  of  the  old  astronomy,  including  at  that 
time  nine-tenths  of  the  astronomers  of  repute, 
believed  in  a  central  earth,  round  which  traveled 
seven  planets,  the  sun  and  moon  being  two  of 
these,  only  distinguished  from  the  rest  (as  plan- 
ets) by  the  comparative  simplicity  of  their  move- 
ments. During  last  year  the  number  of  bodies 
forming  the  solar  system,  without  including  com- 
ets or  meteorites,  or  the  multitudinous  satellites 
which  compose  the  ring  of  Saturn,  has  been 
raised  to  200 — so  that  for  every  orb  known  in 
the  days  of  Copernicus  and  his  first  followers, 
twenty-five  are  now  recognized  by  astronomers. 
Year  after  year  more  are  becoming  known  to  us. 
In  fact,  planets  are  being  discovered  so  fast,  that, 
after  an  effort  (by  dividing  the  watch  upon  them 
among  the  leading  observatories)  to  keep  them 
well  under  survey,  the  task  has  become  regarded 
as  almost  hopeless.  One  or  two  of  the  flock  are 
already  missing ;  and  it  seems  not  improbable 
that,  before  many  years  have  passed,  twenty  or 
thirty  planets  will  have  to  be  described  as  miss- 
ing, while  endless  controversies  may  possibly 
arise,  respecting  those  newly  discovered  each 
year,  on  the  delicate  question  whether  a  dis- 
covery or  a  rediscovery  has  been  effected. 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  say,  perhaps,  that 
we  refer  to  that  strange  ring  of  small  planets 
which  travels  between  the  paths  of  Mars,  the 
miniature  of  our  earth,  and  Jupiter,  the  giant  of 
the  solar  system,  as  far  surpassing  our  earth  in 
size  as  it  is  surpassed  by  the  sun.  In  the  wide 
space  between  these  two  planets  wander  thou- 
sands of  tiny  planets.  They  form  a  zone  of  di- 
vision not  only  between  Mars  and  Jupiter,  thus 
unlike  each  other,  but  between  the  family  of 
small  planets  of  which  our  earth  is  the  principal 
member,  and  the  family  of  large  planets — Jupiter, 
Saturn,  Uranus,  and  Neptune.  It  is  a  strange 
thought  that  for  ages  these  bodies  have  been 
circling  round  the  sun  unknown  to  men,  though 


so  near  to  us,  compared  with  the  fixed  stars,  that 
from  the  nearest  of  these  the  whole  ring,  far 
within  which,  be  it  remembered,  the  earth  trav- 
els, would  appear  as  the  merest  point  in  space. 
Still  stranger  is  the  thought  that,  among  the 
members  of  this  system  or  ring  of  worlds  utterly 
invisible  to  ordinary  eyesight,  there  must  be  pre- 
sented at  times,  if  living  creatures  are  there  to 
see,  some  of  the  most  remarkable  celestial  scenery 
visible  from  any  part  of  the  solar  system.  For 
the  orbits  of  these  bodies  interlace  in  a  strangely 
complex  manner.  At  times,  from  one  or  other  of 
the  set,  several  of  the  rest  must  be  seen  at  so 
short  a  distance  as  to  appear  larger  and  more 
conspicuous  than  Jupiter  or  Venus  appears  to 
ourselves,  while  occasionally  an  even  nearer  ap- 
proach must  be  made.  In  fact,  in  this  part  of 
the  solar  system,  and  in  this  part  alone,  colli- 
sions between  planets  are  possible  catastrophes ; 
though,  fortunately,  the  motions  of  these  bodies 
being  always  in  the  same  direction,  they  cannot 
encounter  each  other  full  tilt,  but  can  only  come 
into  collision  by  the  swifter  overtaking  the  slower. 
Even  of  this  there  is  little  risk,  so  small  are  those 
planets,  and  so  enormous  the  ring  of  space  in 
which  they  travel. 

For  many  years  the  idea  had  been  gaining 
ground  that  those  astronomers  who  were  using 
their  telescopes  in  the  search  for  small  planets, 
were  wasting  time  which  might  be  better  em- 
ployed. "  Of  what  use,"  many  asked,  "  can  it  be, 
now  that  we  know  these  bodies  may  be  counted 
by  thousands,  to  search  night  after  night  for 
hours  on  the  chance  of  discovering  a  few  each 
year?"  But  recently  it  has  %een  seen  that  the 
small  planets  may  give  us  very  useful  infor- 
mation. They  have,  in  fact,  already  told  us  how 
much  their  giant  neighbor,  Jupiter,  would  weigh 
if  he  could  be  put  in  a  scale  against  the  earth — 
or,  rather  (for  that  was  already  known),  they 
have  shown  us  that  Jupiter  had  been  rightly 
weighed  in  another  way.  And  now  it  seems 
likely  that  we  shall  learn  from  this  despised 
family  the  true  measure  of  the  sun's  distance,  | 
and  with  that  the  scale  of  the  solar  system,  the 
quantity  of  matter  contained  by  the  sun,  and 
many  other  matters  of  great  importance  in  as- 
tronomy. 

As  one  of  the  longest  known  among  the  minor 
planets  has  already  given  a  very  fair  answer  to 


A  RIXG   OF  WORLDS. 


4GU 


the  questions  of  astronomers  on  such  points, 
while  two  others  have  recently  been  put  under 
examination,  the  occasion  seems  a  suitable  one 
for  giving  a  brief  account  of  this  ring  of  worlds, 
of  the  manner  of  their  discovery,  and  of  the 
ideas  which  have  been  suggested  as  to  their 
origin. 

If  the  solar  system  could  be  seen  at  a  single 
view,  its  appearance  at  any  moment  would  give 
no  idea  of  regularity  in  its  construction.  The 
pictures  of  the  solar  system  in  our  books  present 
a  certain  symmetry  even  when  the  paths  of  the 
planets  are  shown  with  their  true  eccentricity 
of  position  (which  is,  unfortunately,  but  seldom 
done).  The  symmetry  is  like  that  of  a  leaf  or 
flower,  not  perfect,  not  geometrical  or  rigid,  but 
still  it  is  sufficiently  striking.  But  if  from  a 
picture  of  the  orbits,  presenting  this  symmetry 
of  appearance,  we  prick  off  the  positions  of  the 
central  sun  and  of  the  planets  in  various  parts 
of  their  paths  around  him,  we  can  see  no  sym- 
metry at  all  in  the  resulting  set  of  points.  The 
solar  system  thus  shows  how  there  may  be  real 
symmetry  of  arrangement  among  bodies  apparent- 
ly scattered  without  law  or  order.  And  it  shows 
us  also  the  part  which  time  plays  in  educing  sym- 
metry from  apparent  disorder.  Conceive  a  being 
so  constituted  that  the  circuit  even  of  the  planet 
Neptune  around  the  sun,  though  lasting  more  than 
a  hundred  and  sixty  of  our  years,  would  seem  to 
last  but  a  single  instant,  so  that  to  his  vision  the 
planet  would  be  visible  during  its  entire  circuit 
even  as  a  spark  swiftly  whirled  round  appears 
as  a  circle  of  light.  To  such  a  being  the  solar 
system'would  present  a  symmetrical  and  doubt- 
less a  most  beautiful  appearance.  At  its  centre 
would  be  the  glowing  orb  of  the  sun,  round  which 
would  appear  four  rings  of  light,  representing  the 
paths  of  Mercury,  Venus,  the  Earth,  and  Mars ; 
far  outside  these  again  four  other  rings  of  light, 
much  brighter  and  with  much  wider  spaces  be- 
tween them,  showing  where  Jupiter  and  Saturn, 
Uranus  and  Neptune,  traverse  their  wide  courses ; 
and  between  these  families  will  be  seen  the  multi- 
tudinous intertwining  paths  of  the  small  planets, 
scarcely  discernible  separately,  but  forming,  as  a 
whole,  a  faintly-luminous  ring  between  the  well- 
defined  sets  of  bright  rings  marking  the  paths  of 
the  eight  planets.  We  need  not  here  consider  ! 
how  the  beauty  of  this  scene  would  be  enhanced 
by  the  rings  of  light  which  the  moons  of  the 
giant  planets  and  of  our  earth  would  produce. 
Let  it  suffice  to  note  that  the  symmetry  of  the  \ 
solar  system,  as  thus  seen,  would  be  altogether  j 
marred  if  the  rings  of  asteroids  were  removed,  j 


It  is  not  given  to  man,  whose  span  of  life  is  less 
than  half  the  orbital  period  of  the  outermost 
planet,  to  witness,  scarcely  even  to  conceive 
rightly,  the  scene  we  have  described.  But  the 
mathematician  can  perceive  what  is  necessary  to 
its  completeness.  Accordingly,  the  astronomer 
Kepler,  inquiring  into  the  harmonies  of  the  solar 
system,  perceived  that  one  note  was  wanting ;  or, 
returning  to  our  ideal  description  of  the  system 
as  it  would  be  seen  if  centuries  were  fractions 
only  of  seconds,  he  perceived  that  the  absence  of 
a  certain  feature  impaired  the  symmetry  of  the 
picture.  He  saw  that  though  the  distance  sepa- 
rating the  path  of  Mars  from  that  of  Jupiter  is  in 
reality  much  less  than  that  which  separates  the 
path  of  Jupiter  from  that  of  Saturn,  the  next 
planet  beyond  him,  yet  there  is  a  certain  regular- 
ity in  the  progression  of  the  distances  which  re- 
quires that  the  space  between  Mars  and  Jupiter 
should  not  be  untenanted,  as,  according  to  the 
astronomy  of  his  day,  it  was  supposed  to  be.  In 
his  youth  Kepler  had  noted  the  want,  and  had 
suggested  certain  fanciful  relations  which  might 
be  fulfilled  by  a  planet  occupying  the  gap.  He 
had  written  to  Galileo  on  the  subject,  who  had 
advised  him  to  base  his  theories  on  observed  facts 
only.  Later,  when  unwearying  researches  for 
nineteen  years  had  revealed  to  him  the  laws  of 
the  solar  system,  Kepler  suggested  as  the  relation 
which  connects  the  distances  of  the  planets  that 
which  is  now  commonly  called  Bode's  law.  It 
may  be  thus  simply  expressed  :  Calling  Mercury's 
distance  from  the  sun  4,  the  distances  of  the  other 
planets'  orbits  from  Mercury's  orbit  are  in  order 
as  the  numbers  3,  6,  12,  and  so  on,  doubling  as 
we  proceed.  According  to  this  law,  the  distance 
of  Mars  from  Mercury's  orbit  should  be  12,  and 
the  distance  of  the  next  planet  24.  But  there 
was  no  known  planet  at  that  distance.  Jupiter, 
the  planet  next  beyond  Mars,  travels  at  a  distance 
from  Mercury's  orbit  represented  on  this  scale  by 
48,  and  Saturn — the  most  distant  known  planet — 
at  a  distance  of  91,  the  former  corresponding  ex- 
actly, the  latter  fairly  enough,  with  the  law  we 
have  indicated.  But  the  planet  which,  according 
to  the  law,  should  have  traveled  between  Mars 
and  Jupiter  at  a  distance  of  24  from  Mercury's 
orbit,  or  28  from  the  sun,  either  did  not  exist,  or 
was  invisible. 

In  Kepler's  day  it  was  thought  by  many  a  suf- 
ficient solution  of  the  difficulty  to  conclude  that  a 
planet  formerly  traveling  along  this  seemingly  va- 
cant track  had  been  destroyed  on  account  of  the 
wickedness  of  its  inhabitants.  And  we  are  told 
that  there  were  not  wanting  preachers  who  used 


470 


TEE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


the  destruction  of  this  hypothetical  planet  as  a 
warning  to  evil-doers.  If  they  continued  in  their 
sins,  they  might  not  only  bring  destruction  on 
themselves,  but  on  the  world,  which  might  burst, 
as  had  that  other  world,  and  reduce  the  sun's 
family  by  yet  another  planet.1 

It  was  not  until  the  discovery  of  Uranus  by 
Sir  W.  Herschel,  in  1*781,  that  the  speculations  of 
Kepler  attracted  scientific  attention.  Astrono- 
mers had  seen  the  three  laws  of  Kepler  inter- 
preted physically  by  Newton,  and  had  come  to 
regard  those  relations  which  admitted  of  no  such 
interpretation  as  mere  coincidences.  But  when 
the  empirical  law  of  distances,  for  which,  as  it 
appeared,  no  reason  in  Nature  could  be  assigned, 
was  found  to  be  fulfilled  by  the  new  planet,  as- 
tronomers could  not  but  regard  the  circumstance 
as  somewhat  more  than  a  mere  coincidence.  It 
is  strange  to  consider  that  had  Neptune  instead 
of  Uranus  been  discovered  by  Sir  W.  Herschel, 
the  very  reverse  would  have  been  inferred.  Mer- 
cury's orbit,  by  Bode's  law,  should  be  96,  but 
is  really  91 ;  that  of  Saturn's  distance  from  Ura- 
nus should  be  192,  but  is  really  188,  so  that 
Bode's  law  is  satisfactorily  fulfilled  by  Uranus  ; 
but  Neptune's  distance  from  Mercury's  orbit 
should  be  384,  and  is  really  but  296,  which  can- 
not in  any  way  be  reconciled  with  the  law.  Sup- 
posing Uranus  unknown  when  Neptune  was  dis- 
covered, the  distance  of  Neptune  would  have 
seemed  too  great  by  104  for  Saturn's  next  neigh- 
bor (being  296  instead  of  192),  and  too  little  by 
88  for  Saturn's  next  neighbor  but  one,  according 
to  Bode's  law  of  distances.  Thus  astronomers 
would  have  inferred  that  Bode's  law  was  errone- 
ous (as  indeed  it  is),  and  would  not  have  thought 
of  looking  for  a  planet  between  Mars  and  Jupiter. 
As,  however,  by  good  fortune,  Uranus  was  found 
first,  they  inferred  (mistakenly)  that  Bode's  law 
represents  a  real  relation  existing,  no  one  could 
say  why,  among  the  planetary  orbits,  and  thence 
concluded  (rightly)  that  the  space  between  Mars 
and  Jupiter  is  not  vacant. 

A  society  was  therefore  formed  —  chiefly 
through  the  active  exertions  of  De  Zach,  of  Gotha 

1  "We  do  not  learn  whether  the  warning  was  effec- 
tive or  not;  but  probably  the  evil-doers  were  not  more 
troubled  by  a  danger  affecting  the  whole  of  the  human 
race  than  by  that  which  had  long  been  described  as 
hanging  over  themselves  in  particular.  The  logical  ef- 
fect of  the  warning,  one  would  suppose,  must  have 
been  to  encourage  that  particular  form  of  godliness 
which  is  shown  by  anxiety  about  the  sins  of  others. 
For  it  was  clearly  very  much  to  the  interest  of  those 
who  did  well  to  see  that  the  evil-doers  did  not  bring 
about  a  catastrophe  from  which  good  and  bad  alike 
could  not  fail  to  suffer. 


— to  search  for  the  missing  planet.  It  consisted 
of  twenty-four  astronomers  under  the  presidency 
of  Schroeter.  The  zodiac,  the  highway  of  the 
planets,  was  divided  into  twenty-four  zones,  one 
of  which  was  assigned  to  each  member  of  this 
Society  for  the  Detection  of  a  Missing  World. 
The  twenty-four  commenced  their  labors  with 
great  zeal.  When  we  consider  that  over  the 
region  of  the  heavens  which  they  were  to  ex- 
amine at  least  a  hundred  planets,  well  within  the 
range  of  their  telescopes,  were  traveling,  we  may 
fairly  wonder  that  they  discovered  nothing.  Such, 
however,  was  the  result  of  their  labors.  After 
they  had  been  at  work  a  considerable  time,  acci- 
dent revealed  to  an  astronomer  outside  their  so- 
ciety a  body  which  was  regarded  for  a  long  time 
as  the  missing  planet. 

Prof.  Piazzi,  while  observing  stars  for  his 
catalogue,  was  led  to  examine  very  carefully  a 
part  of  the  constellation  Taurus,  where  Wollaston 
had  marked  in  a  star  which  Piazzi  could  not  find. 
On  the  first  day  of  the  present  century  he  ob- 
served in  this  part  of  the  heavens  a  small  star, 
which  he  suspected  of  variability,  seeing  that  it 
appeared  where  before  no  star  of  equal  brightness 
had  been  mapped.  On  January  3d  he  found  that 
the  star  had  disappeared  from  that  place,  but  an- 
other, much  like  it,  lay  at  a  short  distance  to  the 
west  of  the  place  which  it  had  occupied.  The 
actual  distance  between  the  two  positions  was 
nearly  a  third  of  the  moon's  apparent  diameter. 
On  January  24th  (our  observer  was  not  too  im- 
patient, it  will  be  seen)  he  transmitted  to  Oriani 
and  Bode,  members  of  the  Missing  World  Detec- 
tion Society,  an  account  of  the  movements  of  this 
star,  which  had  traveled  toward  the  west  till 
January  11th  or  12th,  and  had  then  begun  to  ad- 
vance. He  continued  his  labors  till  February 
11th,  when  he  was  seized  with  serious  illness. 
Unfortunately,  his  letters  to  Oriani  and  Bode  did 
not  reach  those  astronomers  until  nearly  the  end 
of  March,  by  which  time  the  planet  (for  such  it 
was)  had  become  invisible,  owing  to  the  approach 
of  the  sun  to  the  part  of  the  heavens  along  which 
the  planet  was  traveling. 

But  the  planet  was  not  lost.  The  sun  passed 
on  his  way  through  the  region  occupied  by  the 
planet,  and  in  September  that  region  was  again 
visible  at  night.  In  the  mean  time  the  great 
mathematician  Gauss  had  calculated  from  Piaz- 
zi's  observations  the  real  path  of  the  planet. 
Throughout  September,  October,  November,  and 
December,  search  was  made  for  the  missing  star. 
At  length,  on  the  last  day  of  the  year  1801,  De 
Zach  detected  the  planet,  Olbers  independently 


A  MXG   OF  WORLDS. 


471 


effecting  the  rediscovery  on  January  1,  1802. 
Thus,  the  first  night  of  the  present  century  was 
distinguished  by  the  discovery  of  a  new  planet, 
and,  before  the  first  year  of  the  century  had 
passed,  the  planet  was  fairly  secured. 

Piazzi,  the  discoverer  of  the  planet,  assigned 
to  it  the  name  of  the  titular  goddess  of  Sicily, 
where  the  discovery  was  made — Ceres. 

Ceres  was  found  to  be  traveling  in  an  orbit 
corresponding  in  the  most  satisfactory  manner 
with  Bode's  law.  According  to  that  law  the 
missing  planet's  distance  from  the  orbit  of  Mer- 
cury should  have  been  24 ;  calling  Mercury's  dis- 
tance from  the  sun  4,  the  actual  distance  of  Ceres 
is  23J. 

Yet  astronomers  were  not  satisfied  with  the 
new  planet.  It  traveled  at  the  right  mean  dis- 
tance from  the  sun;  but,  passing  over  its  infe- 
riority to  its  neighbors,  Mars  and  Jupiter,  in  size 
and  splendor,  it  moved  in  most  unplanetary 
fashion.  Instead  of  traveling  nearly  in  the  same 
plane  as  the  earth,  like  its  neighbors  Mars  and 
Jupiter,  its  path  was  inclined  to  that  plane  in  an 
angle  of  more  than  10° — a  thing  as  yet  unheard 
of  among  planets.  As  to  its  size,  Sir  W.  Uer- 
schel,  from  measurements  made  with  his  power- 
ful telescopes,  estimated  the  new  planet's  diame- 
ter at  about  160  miles,  so  that,  supposing  it  of 
the  same  density  as  our  earth,  its  mass  is  less 
than  x^s'uoo  part  of  hers.  Thus,  it  would  take 
more  than  1,560  such  planets  to  make  a  globe  as 
massive  as  our  moon.  And  even  this  probably 
falls  far  short  of  the  truth.  For  our  earth  owes 
no  small  part  of  her  density  to  the  compression 
produced  by  the  attractive  energy  of  her  own 
substance.  The  moon,  which  is  less  compressed, 
has  jnuch  smaller  density ;  in  fact,  little  more 
than  half  the  earth's.  Mars,  again,  being  smaller, 
and  having  less  attractive  energy,  has  less  densi- 
ty than  the  earth  (his  density  is  about  -fo  of  hers).1 
The  tiny  Ceres  would  be  very  much  less  com- 
pressed, and,  if  made  of  the  same  substances, 
as  we  may  well  believe,  would  probably  have  a 
density  less  than  half  the  moon's,  or  not  very 
much  exceeding  that  of  water.  Thus,  it  would 
probably  take  some  half-million  of  worlds  like 
Ceres  to  make  such  a  globe  as  our  earth,  while 

1  Of  course,  the  giant  planets  Jupiter,  Saturn,  Ura- 
nus, and  Neptune,  seem  to  present  exceptions  to  the 
rule  we  have  here  indicated.  But  there  can  be  no 
doubt  that  in  their  case  intense  heat  expands  the 
planets'  substance,  while  in  reality  we  have  no  means 
of  forming  an  opinion  respecting  their  real  density, 
since  the  surfaces  we  measure  are  not  the  real  sur- 
faces, but  layers  of  clouds  enwrapping  these  planets, 
and  lying  who  shall  say  how  far  from  the  solid  surface  ? 


from  our  moon  six  thousand  such  worlds  as  Ceres 
might  be  made.  It  was  natural  that  astronomers 
should  regard  with  some  suspicion  a  planet  falling 
so  far  short  of  every  known  planet,  and  even  of 
a  mere  moon,  in  size  and  mass. 

But  presently  a  discovery  was  made  which 
still  more  markedly  separated  Ceres  from  the 
rest  of  the  planetary  family.  Olbers,  during  his 
search  for  Ceres,  had  had  occasion  to  study  very 
closely  the  arrangement  of  the  groups  of  small 
stars  scattered  along  the  track  which  Ceres  might 
be  expected  to  follow.  What  reason  he  had  for 
continuing  his  examination  of  these  groups  after 
Ceres  was  found  does  not  appear.  Possibly  he 
may  have  had  some  hope  of  what  actually  oc- 
curred. Certain  it  is  that  in  March,  1802,  or 
nearly  three  months  after  Ceres  had  been  redis- 
covered, he  was  examining  a  part  of  the  constel- 
lation Virgo,  close  by  the  spot  where  he  had 
found  Ceres  on  January.  1st,  in  the  same  year. 
While  thus  at  work,  he  noticed  a  small  star 
forming  with  two  others,  known  by  him,  an  equi- 
lateral triangle.  He  felt  sure  this  star  had  not 
been  there  three  months  before,  and  bis  first  idea 
was  that  it  was  a  variable  star.  At  the  end  of 
two  hours,  however,  he  perceived  that  it  had 
moved  slightly  toward  the  northwest.  On  the 
next  evening  it  had  moved  still  farther  toward 
the  northwest.  It  was,  in  fact,  a  planet,  and,  to 
the  amazement  of  astronomers,  the  study  of  this 
planet's  motion  showed  that  its  mean  distance 
from  the  sun  differed  very  little  from  that  of  Ce- 
res. We  speak  of  the  amazement  of  astrono- 
mers, because  the  fact  thus  discovered  was,  in 
reality,  the  most  surprising  of  any  which  had  been 
made  known  to  them  since  the  nature  of  Saturn's 
ring  was  discovered  by  Iluygens  in  1656.  We 
have  become  so  accustomed  of  late  to  the  dis- 
covery of  planets  traveling  along  the  region  of 
space  between  the  paths  of  Mars  and  Jupiter, 
that  we  are  apt  to  forget  how  strange  the  circum- 
stance must  have  appeared  to  astronomers  at  the 
beginning  of  the  present  century,  that  the  old 
views  respecting  the  solar  system  were  errone- 
ous, and  that,  in  addition  to  the  planets  traveling 
singly  around  the  sun,  the  existence  of  a  ring  of 
planets  must  be  admitted.  It  is  true  that  the 
discovery  of  this  second  planet  (to  which  the 
name  Pallas  was  given)  did  not  fully  demonstrate 
this.  Still  it  showed  that  Ceres  was  not  traveling 
alone  in  the  region  which  had  so  long  been  sup- 
posed untenanted.  And  as  it  seemed  in  some  de- 
gree to  explain  the  smallness  of  Ceres,  suggesting 
the  idea  that  possibly  the  combined  mass  of 
bodies  traveling  in  this  space  might  not  be  great- 


472 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


ly  inferior  to  the  mass  of  a  primary  planet,  the 
notion  of  a  ring  of  worlds  traveling  between 
Mars  and  Jupiter  was  presently  entertained  as 
according  fairly  with  the  facts  already  discovered. 

Olbers  himself  was  fully  satisfied  that  other 
planets  travel  in  the  region  between  Mars  and 
Jupiter.  He  was  struck  by  the  remarkable  feat- 
ures of  the  orbit  of  the  planet  he  had  discovered. 
It  was  inclined  more  than  three  times  as  much  as 
that  of  Ceres  to  the  plane  in  which  the  earth 
travels,  or  to  that  medial  plane  near  which  lie  the 
tracks  of  all  the  single  planets.  So  greatly  is  the 
path  of  Pallas  inclined  to  this  track  that,  even  as 
seen  from  the  sun,  its  range  on  either  side  gave 
to  the  planetary  highway  a  width  of  69°,  or 
nearly  four  times  the  width  of  the  zodiac  (the 
conventional  highway  assigned  by  the  ancients  to 
the  planets)  as  determined  by  the  range  of  Venus, 
viewed  from  the  earth,  on  either  side  of  the  me- 
dial track.  The  range  of  Pallas,  as  seen  from 
the  earth,  is  still  greater ;  so  great,  indeed,  that 
this  planet  may  actually  be  seen  at  times  among 
the  polar  constellations.  Moreover,  the  path  of 
Pallas  is  markedly  eccentric,  insomuch  that  her 
greatest  distance  from  the  sun  exceeds  her  least 
in  the  proportion  of  about  5  to  3.  Olbers  was 
led  by  these  peculiarities  to  the  belief  that 
Ceres  and  Pallas  are  the  fragments  of  a  planet 
which  formerly  traveled  between  the  paths  of 
Mars  and  Jupiter,  but  had  been  shattered  to 
pieces  by  a  tremendous  explosion.  If  our  earth, 
as  she  travels  along  her  present  path,  could  by 
some  violent  internal  action  be  shattered  into 
fragments,  the  greater  number  of  these  would  no 
longer  travel  in  the  plane  in  which  lies  the  earth's 
present  path.  Those  which  chanced  to  be  driven 
outward  in  that  plane  would  continue  to  travel  in 
it,  though  on  a  changed  path  ;  for  their  original 
motion  and  their  imparted  motion  both  lying  in 
that  plane,  so  also  of  necessity  would  that  motion 
which  would  result  from  the  combination  of  these. 
But  fragments  which  were  driven  away  at  an 
angle  to  that  plane  would  no  longer  travel  in  it. 
Hence  the  great  inclination  of  the  path  of  Ceres 
and  the  monstrous  inclination  of  the  path  of  Pal- 
las might  be  explained  by  supposing  that  the 
former  was  a  fragment  which  had  been  driven 
away  at  a  considerable  angle  to  the  ecliptic,  while 
Pallas  was  a  fragment  driven  away  on  a  path 
nearly  square  to  that  plane. 

To  show  more  clearly  how  Olbers  accounted 
for  the  peculiar  motions  of  the  new  planets,  sup- 
pose our  earth  to  explode  on  or  about  March 
20th,  at  noon,  Greenwich  time.  Then  the  greater 
part  of  South  America  would  be  driven  forward  ; 


it  would  therefore  travel  on  a  course  not  far  from 
the  original  track  of  the  earth,  but  more  quickly ; 
our  Indian  Empire  would  be  driven  backward ; 
and  though  the  advancing  motion  previously  pos- 
sessed by  this  part  of  the  earth,  in  common  with 
the  rest,  would  still  carry  it  forward,  this  motion 
would  be  greatly  reduced.  The  central  parts  of 
Africa  aud  the  Atlantic  around  Ascension  Island 
and  St.  Helena  would  be  driven  sunward — an  im- 
pulse which,  combined  with  the  previous  advan- 
cing motion  of  this  region,  would  cause  this  part 
of  their  new  track  to  cross  their  former  nearly 
circular  track  at  a  sharp  angle,  passing  athwart 
that  track  inward.  The  part  opposite  to  the  last- 
named,  that  is,  in  the  middle  of  the  Pacific,  would 
be  driven  directly  from  the  sun  ;  and  this  impulse, 
combined  with  advance,  would  cause  this  part  of 
the  new  track  of  the  scattered  fragments  from 
the  Pacific  to  cross  the  original  track  at  a  sharp 
angle,  passing  outward.  All  these  regions,  and 
all  lying  on  the  zone  passing  through  them,  would 
continue  to  move  in  or  near  the  former  plane  of 
the  earth's  motion  ;  some  more  quickly  than  be- 
fore, some  more  slowly,  some  passing  outward  at 
that  portion  of  their  course  to  return  eventually 
inward  till  they  came  to  it  again,  and  some  pass- 
ing inward  for  awhile,  to  return,  however,  after  a 
complete  circuit,  to  the  scene  of  the  catastrophe. 
But  England  and  other  European  countries  would 
be  impelled  partly  sunward,  partly  upward  and 
northward,  from  the  plane  of  their  former  mo- 
tion, and  would  therefore  travel  on  a  track  large- 
ly inclined  to  their  former  course ;  that  is,  to  the 
earth's  present  track.  The  same  would  happen, 
so  far  as  upward  motion  was  concerned,  to  the 
United  States,  and  to  all  the  northern  parts  of 
Asia.  The  fragments  from  all  these  regions  would 
thenceforward  travel  on  inclined  paths  crossing 
their  original  track  ascendingly  at  the  place  where 
the  explosion  occurred.  On  the  other  hand,  Aus- 
tralia and  New  Zealand,  South  Africa,  and  the 
southern  parts  of  South  America,  would  be  driven 
somewhat  downward  or  southward,  and  the  frag- 
ments of  this  zone  of  the  earth  would  according- 
ly travel  on  paths  crossing  the  original  track  of 
the  earth  descendingly  at  the  place  of  the  ex- 
plosion. The  north-polar  regions,  especially  the 
parts  north  of  the  American  Continent,  would  be 
driven  more  directly  upward  by  the  explosion ; 
while  the  south-polar  regions,  especially  the  parts 
south  of  the  Indian  Ocean,  would  be  driven  di- 
rectly downward  ;  the  fragments  from  these  re- 
gions then  would  travel  on  paths  most  largely  in- 
clined to  the  original  track  of  the  earth. 

Regarding  the  two  planets  hitherto  discovered 


A  RWG   OF  WORLDS. 


473 


as  fragments  of  one  which  had  burst,  Olbers  per- 
ceived that  there  was  a  certain  region  of  the 
heavens  where  he  would  have  a  better  chance  of 
discovering  other  fragments  than  anywhere  else. 
Every  fragment  after  the  explosion  would  have  a 
path  passing  through  the  place  where  the  explo- 
sion occurred.  For  the  place  of  explosion,  being 
the  spot  from  which  each  fragment  started,  would 
of  necessity  be  a  point  along  each  fragment's 
future  track.  The  fragments,  be  it  understood, 
would  not  return  simultaneously  to  that  spot. 
Those  which  had  been  driven  forward  (more  or 
less)  would  have  their  period  of  circulation  length- 
ened, those  which  had  been  driven  backward 
would  have  their  period  shortened  ;  these  last 
then  would  return  to  the  scene  of  the  outburst 
sooner  than  the  former,  and  in  point  of  fact  no 
two  would  return  simultaneously  to  that  place 
unless,  by  some  utterly  improbable  chance,  they 
had  been  hastened  or  retarded  in  exactly  the  same 
degree.  But  all  would  pass  through  that  spot 
for  many  centuries  after  the  terrible  catastrophe 
which  had  scattered  them  on  their  various  paths. 
If  the  region  of  the  heavens  toward  which  that 
spot  lay  could  be  determined,  then,  the  careful 
observation  of  that  region  probably  would  soon 
be  rewarded  by  the  discovery  of  other  fragments. 
Moreover,  the  region  exactly  opposite  to  it  would 
be  similarly  suitable  for  the  search  after  these 
small  bodies ;  for  though  their  paths  would  not 
all  pass  through  a  point  exactly  opposite  the  scene 
of  the  explosion,  these  paths  would  all  pass 
through  the  prolongation  of  a  line  drawn  through 
the  sun  from  that  place.  This  is  easily  seen. 
Every  planet  has  its  own  plane  of  motion,  in 
which  plane  the  sun  necessarily  lies  ;  if,  then,  we 
know  any  one  point  of  a  planet's  path,  we  know 
that  the  line  joining  the  sun  and  that  point  lies  in 
the  plane  of  the  planet's  motion,  and  if  extended 
beyond  the  sun  must  cross  the  planet's  track. 

Olbers  then  set  himself  the  task  of  carefully 
observing  two  parts  of  the  heavens,  one  being  the 
place  where  the  tracks  of  Ceres  and  Pallas  ap- 
proached each  other  nearest,  the  other  being  the 
place  directly  opposite  to  this.  One  point  is  to 
be  noticed  as  essential  to  Olbers's  faith  in  the 
success  of  his  method  of  search.  In  his  day  it 
was  generally  believed  that  many  centuries  had 
not  passed  since  the  planets  had  been  set  moving 
on  their  respective  paths.  According  to  this  view 
the  catastrophe  by  which  Ceres  and  Pallas  and 
the  fragments  yet  to  be  discovered  had  been  sent 
on  their  new  courses,  could  not  have  occurred  so 
long  ago  that  the  paths  of  the  fragments  had  been 
materially  displaced  from  their  original  position. 


If,  on  the  other  hand,  millions  of  years  might 
have  elapsed  since  the  catastrophe  happened, 
there  would  have  been  little  room  for  hoping  that 
the  actual  paths  of  the  fragments  would  have  re- 
tained any  trace  of  the  peculiarity  we  have  de- 
scribed. It  was  somewhat  fortunate  for  science 
that  Olbers  had  full  faith  in  the  doctrine  that 
the  date  of  the  catastrophe  could  not  be  more 
than  four  or  five  thousand  years  before  his  time, 
and  that  therefore  he  observed  the  two  regions 
of  the  heavens  indicated  by  the  explosion  theory 
with  unwearying  assiduity  for  many  months.  He 
also  persuaded  Harding,  of  Lilienthal,  to  pay  spe- 
cial attention  to  these  two  regions  ;  one  near  the 
northern  wing  of  the  Virgin,  the  other  in  the 
constellation  of  the  Whale. 

At  length,  on  September  4,  1S04,  the  search 
was  rewarded  with  success ;  the  planet  called 
Juno  being  discovered  by  Harding  in  that  part  of 
the  Whale  which  Olbers  had  indicated.  Olbers 
did  not  cease  from  the  search,  however,  but  con- 
tinued it  for  thirty  months  after  Harding's  success, 
and  five  years  after  his  own  discovery  of  Pallas. 
At  length,  on  March  28th,  the  fifth  anniversary  of 
this  discovery,  Olbers  detected  Vesta,  the  only 
member  of  the  family  of  asteroids  which  has  ever 
(we  believe)  been  seen  with  the  naked  eye. 

For  some  reason  astronomers  seem  to  have 
been  satisfied  with  this  fourth  fragment  of  Ol- 
bers's hypothetical  planet.  The  search  was  not 
resumed  for  twenty-three  years.  Then  Hencke, 
an  amateur  astronomer  of  Driessen,  in  Germany, 
commenced  a  search  destined  to  meet  with  no 
success  until  more  than  fifteen  years  had  elapsed. 
We  shall  return  presently  to  the  discovery  of  the 
fifth  asteroid  by  Hencke.  We  must  first,  how- 
ever, consider  the  interesting  questions  raised  by 
astronomers,  after  the  discovery  of  Vesta,  upon 
the  theory  of  Olbers  that  the  asteroids  are  frag- 
ments of  an  exploded  planet. 

Lagrange,  in  1814,  examined  the  theory  mathe- 
matically, inquiring  what  degree  of  explosive  force 
would  be  necessary  to  detach  a  fragment  of  a 
planet  in  such  sort  that  it  would  not  return,  but 
travel  thereafter  on  an  orbit  of  its  own  around 
the  sun.  We  have  not  by  us  the  result  of  his 
researches  except  as  they  are  given  in  Grant's 
"  Physical  Astronomy,"  as  follows  : 

"  Applying  his  results  to  the  earth,  Lagrange 
found  that  if  the  velocity  exceeded  that  of  a  can- 
non-ball in  the  proportion  of  121  to  1,  the  fragment 
would  become  a  comet  with  a  direct  motion  ;  but 
if  the  velocity  rose  in  the  proportion  of  156  to  1, 
the  motion  of  the  comet  would  be  retrograde.  If 
the  velocity  were  less  than  in  either  of  these  cases, 


474 


THE  POPULAR  SCIEKCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMEXT. 


the  fragment  would  revolve  as  a  planet  in  an  ellip- 
tic orbit." 

This  statement  is  not  very  satisfactory,  because 
the  velocity  of  a  cannon-ball,  depending  consider- 
ably on  circumstances,  is  not  a  definite  unit  of 
measurement.  The  assertion,  too,  that  the  frag- 
ment would  become  a  comet  is  open  to  exception, 
and  nothing  is  said  about  the  least  velocity  neces- 
sary to  free  the  expelled  body  from  the  earth. 
Probably  the  velocity  of  a  cannon-ball  was  taken 
by  Lagrange  at  about  500  yards  per  second,  that 
being  a  fair  velocity  for  a  68-pounder  at  the  date 
of  his  paper.  A  velocity,  then,  exceeding  a  can- 
non-ball in  the  proportion  of  156  to.  1,  would  be 
about  44  miles  a  second.  Now,  for  a  body  ex- 
pelled from  the  earth  to  travel  as  a  retrograde 
comet,  it  must  be  sent  backward  with  a  velocity 
equal  to  the  earth's  in  her  orbit  (about  18^  miles 
per  second),  increased  by  the  proper  velocity  for 
a  retrograde  comet,  about  25£  miles  per  second, 
or  44  miles  per  second  in  all.  This  agrees,  then, 
with  Lagrange's  result.  But  he  seems  to  have 
been  led  from  the  real  subject  of  inquiry  to  prob- 
lems which  are  only  matters  of  curiosity.  The 
fragmentary  planets  of  Olbers's  theory  move  nei- 
ther as  advancing  nor  as  retrograde  comets. 
Leaving,  then,  Lagrange's  paper,  as  not  very  much 
to  the  point,  if  rightly  represented  by  Grant,  we 
note  simply  that  the  velocity  necessary  to  expel 
from  the  earth  a  fragment  of  her  mass,  in  such 
6ort  that  it  would  not  be  drawn  back,  would 
amount  to  about  Y  miles  per  second,  or,  say,  about 
twenty-five  times  the  velocity  of  a  cannon-ball. 

But  again,  the  expulsion  of  a  fragment,  and 
the  explosion  of  an  entire  planet,  are  processes 
very  different  in  their  nature.  If  a  fragment 
were  expelled,  the  entire  mass  of  the  earth  would 
recoil  with  a  motion  bearing  the  same  kind  of 
relation  to  that  of  the  fragment  which  the  recoil 
of  a  very  heavy  cannon  bears  to  the  motion  of 
the  ball.  If  a  cannon  were  not  heavier  than  the 
ball,  the  cannon  would  be  driven  back  as  rapidly 
as  the  ball  would  be  expelled,  though  frictional 
resistance  would  bring  it  sooner  to  rest.  Again, 
when  a  shell  at  rest  bursts,  the  fragments  are 
driven  outward  on  all  sides,  with  much  smaller 
velocities  than  any  one  of  them  would  have  if  the 
entire  charge  of  powder  acted  upon  it,  the  rest  of 
the  shell  being  in  some  way  restrained  from  mov- 
ing. We  see,  then,  that  for  a  planet  to  explode 
into  fragments  which  thereafter  should  be  free 
to  travel  independently  around  the  sun,  the  ex- 
plosive force  must  enormously  exceed  what  would 
be  necessary  in  the  case  of  a  single  fragment  ex- 
pelled as  a  projectile  is  expelled  from  a  gun. 


When  we  consider,  further,  that  the  frame  of 
the  earth  is  demonstrably  not  the  hollow  shell 
formerly  imagined,  but  even  denser  at  its  core 
than  near  its  surface ;  that,  moreover,  it  is  not 
formed  of  rigid  materials,  but  of  materials  which 
under  the  forces  to  which  they  are  subject  are 
perfectly  plastic  and  ductile,  it  seems  incredible 
that  under  any  conditions  which  appear  possible 
our  earth  could  be  shattered  by  an  explosion. 
Prof.  Newcomb,  of  Washington,  in  an  able  paper 
on  this  subject,  remarks  on  this  objection  that, 
"  since  the  limits  of  our  knowledge  are  not  ne- 
cessarily the  limit  of  possibility,  the  objection  is 
not  fatal,  and  it  is  difficult  to  say  what  weight 
ought  to  be  attached  to  it ; "  and,  as  many  of 
our  readers  will  remember,  Sir  W.  Thomson,  one 
of  the  greatest  mathematicians  living,  has  not 
thought  the  arguments  against  the  possible  or 
probable  shattering  of  a  planet  sufficiently  weighty 
to  prevent  the  theory  from  being  entertained 
that  one  world  may  be  peopled  from  the  seeds  of 
life  brought  to  it  by  the  fragments  of  another 
which  had  exploded.  Yet  it  may  fairly  be  said 
that  if  the  destructive  explosion  of  a  planet  is  pos- 
sible, it  is  utterly  improbable  ;  and  that  absolute- 
ly nothing  is  at  present  known  to  us  which  sug- 
gests even  the  bare  possibility  of  such  a  catas- 
trophe. 

Yet  the  theory  that  a  planet  which  had  been 
traveling  between  Mars  and  Jupiter  had  burst 
into  fragments,  had  a  much  more  probable  ap- 
pearance in  Olbers's  time  than  it  has  at  present ; 
for  the  four  asteroids  first  discovered  traveled  on 
orbits  not  differing  greatly  as  to  their  mean  dis- 
tances, which  are  as  the  numbers  236  (Vesta), 
267  (Juno),  211  (Ceres  and  Pallas).  When  as- 
teroids began  to  be  discovered  which  traveled 
nearer  to  the  sun  than  Vesta,  and  much  farther 
away  than  Ceres  and  Pallas,  the  explosion  theory 
was  shown  to  be  improbable.  When,  further, 
the  actual  paths  of  these  multitudinous  worlds 
came  to  be  examined,  the  theory  was  found  to  be 
utterly  untenable.  More  recently  still  a  circum- 
stance noted  by  the  ingenious  American  astrono- 
mer, Kirkwood,  has  pointed  to  another  theory  as 
extremely  probable. 

The  history  of  the  successive  discovery  of  the 
various  members  of  the  asteroidal  family,  though 
not  without  interest,  would  be  little  suited  to 
these  pages.  A  few  details,  however,  may  be 
mentioned  here  as  illustrating  the  general  char- 
acter of  the  search. 

We  have  seen  that  Hencke  engaged  in  1830 
in  the  search  for  a  fifth  asteroid.  On  the  even- 
ins  of  December  8th  he  observed  a  star  of  the 


A  RI2TG   OF  WORLDS. 


475 


ninth  magnitude  in  the  constellation  Taurus,  in  a 
place  where  he  felt  sure,  from  his  recollection  of 
the  region,  that  there  had  previously  been  no 
star  of  that  degree  of  brightness.  He  communi- 
cated the  observation  to  Encke,  of  Berlin ;  and 
on  December  14th  they  rediscovered  it  in  the 
place  to  which  by  that  time  it  had  removed.  It 
was  found  to  be  an  asteroid  traveling  at  a  dis- 
tance almost  midway  between  that  of  Vesta  and 
that  of  Ceres.  Hencke  requested  Encke  to  name 
the  new  planet,  and  that  astronomer  selected  for 
it  the  name  of  Astrsea. 

On  July  1st,  Hencke  discovered  a  sixth  aste- 
roid, which  Gauss  named  at  his  request,  calling 
it  Hebe.  In  the  same  year,  and  only  six  weeks 
later,  our  English  astronomer  Hind  discovered 
the  asteroid  Iris;  and  on  October  18th  he  dis- 
covered another,  to  which  Sir  J.  Herschel,  at  his 
request,  assigned  a  name,  selecting  (somewhat 
unsuitably,  perhaps,  for  an  October  discovery) 
the  name  Flora. 

Since  that  date,  not  a  year  has  passed  with- 
out the  discovery  of  at  least  one  asteroid,  as  in 
1848,  1849,  and  1859.  Two  were  discovered  in 
1851,  1863,  and  1869;  three  in  1850, 1864,  1865, 
and  1870;  four  in  1853,  1855,  and  1867;  five  in 
1856,  1860,  1862,  and  1871 ;  six  in  1854,  1858, 
1866,  1873,  and  1874 ;  eight  in  1852  and  1857 ; 
ten  in  1861 ;  eleven  in  1872  ;  twelve  in  1868  and 
1876;  and  seventeen  in  1875.  During  last  year 
six  were  discovered.  The  astronomer  who  has 
hitherto  been  most  successful  in  the  search  for 
asteroids  is  Peters,  of  Clinton,  United  States  (Prof. 
Peters  is  a  German  by  birth,  however),  with 
twenty-seven ;  next  Luther,  of  Bilk,  with  twenty  ; 
and  third,  Watson,  of  Ann  Arbor,  Michigan,  with 
twenty.  Goldschmidt,  a  French  painter,  discov- 
ered fourteen;  Borelly  and  our  Hind,  ten.  These 
six  have  thus  discovered  101  of  the  175  asteroids 
at  present  known.  After  them  come  De  Gasparis 
and  Palisa,  with  nine  each ;  Pogson,  of  Madras, 
with  seven  ;  Chacornac  and  Paul  Henry,  with  six 
each  ;  Prosper  Henry  and  Tempel,  with  five ;  and 
Perrotin,  with  four,  bringing  up  the  total  to  149. 
Of  the  remaining  twenty-three,  three  were  discov- 
ered by  Ferguson ;  two  by  Olbers,  Hencke,  and 
Tuttle ;  and  Piazzi,  Harding,  Graham,  Marth, 
Laurent,  Searle,  Forster  d' Arrest,  Tietjen,  Ste- 
phan,  Coggia,  Schulhof,  Schiaparelli,  and  Knorre, 
have  each  discovered  one. 

Some  coincidences  which  would  seem  curious, 
but  for  the  great  number  of  asteroids  already 
known,  have  naturally  occurred  during  the  prog- 
ress of  discovery.  Thus  the  asteroid  Irene  was 
discovered  by  De  Gasparis,  independently,  a  few 


days  after  Hind  had  marked  it  for  his  own  (May 
19,  1851).  En  revanche,  De  Gasparis  discovered 
Psyche  on  March  19,  1852,  while  Hind,  who  had 
seen  the  planet  on  January  18th,  but  had  been  pre- 
vented by  bad  weather  from  reobserving  it,  satis- 
fied himself  on  March  18th  of  its  planetary  charac- 
ter. While  Hind  was  planning  a  vigorous  search 
after  the  planet,  news  reached  him  that  De  Gas- 
paris had  discovered  it.  Goldschmidt,  on  Sep- 
tember 19,  1857,  discovered  two  asteroids,  which 
chanced  that  night  to  be  within  a  distance  from 
each  other  equal  to  about  one-third  of  the  ap- 
parent diameter  of  the  moon.  No  other  astron- 
omer has  ever  had  the  good  fortune  to  capture 
two  of  these  wandering  bodies  on  the  same  night 
and  within  the  same  telescopic  field  of  view. 
But  the  planet  Alexandra  was  discovered  by 
Goldschmidt,  at  Paris,  on  September  10,  1858, 
and  the  planet  Pandora  by  Mr.  Searle,  of  Albany, 
New  York,  on  the  same  night,  only  a  few  hours 
later.  The  asteroid  Melete,  really  discovered  on 
September  9,  1857,  was  not  recognized  as  a  new 
planet  till  1858,  having  been  for  a  long  time  mis- 
taken for  the  asteroid  Daphne.  The  latter  had 
been  lost  since  May,  1856,  and  Goldschmidt,  its 
discoverer,  was  looking  for  it  in  September,  1857, 
when  he  found  Melete.  When  Melete  was  proved 
by  Schubert's  calculations  to  be  a  different  body, 
fresh  search  had  to  be  made  for  Daphne ;  but 
she  was  not  found  till  August  31,  1862,  having 
been  thus  lost  more  than  six  years. 

One  feature  of  M.  Goldschmidt's  labors  in  this 
field  of  research  is  worthy  of  mention.  Most  of 
the  astronomers  who  have  added  to  the  list  of 
known  asteroids  were  professional  observers, 
employed  in  well-provided  observatories.  Gold- 
schmidt was  a  painter  by  profession,  and  the 
telescopes  with  which  he  observed  were  succes- 
sively, as  he  could  afford  to  extend  his  observa- 
tional resources,  of  two  inches',  2|  inches',  and 
four  inches'  aperture  only.  "  None  of  M.  Gold- 
schmidt's telescopes,"  says  Mr.  Main,  of  the  Bad- 
cliffe  Observatory,  "  were  mounted  equatorially  " 
(that  is,  so  as  to  follow  any  star  to  which  they 
might  be  directed  by  a  single  motion),  "  but  in 
the  greater  number  of  instances  were  pointed  out 
of  a  window  which  did  not  command  the  whole 
of  the  sky." 

Having  now  nearly  two  hundred  of  these 
bodies  to  deal  with,  we  can  form  a  safer  opinion, 
than  in  Olbers's  time,  of  the  theory  whether  they 
are  fragments  of  an  exploded  planet.  The  an- 
swer to  this  question  comes  in  no  doubtful  terms. 
One  fact  alone  suffices  to  show  clearly  that  they 
cannot  have  had  a  common  origin.     The  least 


476 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


distances  of  some  of  the  more  remote  of  these 
bodies  from  the  sun  exceed  the  greatest  distances 
of  some  of  the  nearer.  Thus  Harmonia,  at  her 
greatest  distance  from  the  sun,  is  about  217,- 
000,000  miles  from  him;  Nemansa,  231,000,000; 
Feronia,  233,000,000,  and  so  on;  while  Cybele, 
at  her  nearest,  is  276,000,000  miles  from  the 
sun;  Doris,  262,000,000;  Hygeia,  259,000,000, 
and  so  on.  So  that  Cybele,  at  her  nearest  to  the 
sun,  is  farther  from  him  by  nearly  80,000,000 
miles  than  Harmonia  at  her  nearest.  The  two 
orbits  do  not  even  approach  each  other  within 
this  distance,  enormous  though  it  is,  for  the  place 
of  Cybele's  nearest  approach  is  not  nearly  in  the 
same  direction  from  the  sun  as  the  place  of  Har- 
monia's  greatest  recession.  The  two  orbits  no- 
where approach  within  a  distance  less  than  that 
which  separates  our  earth  from  the  sun.  If  the 
two  planets  were  originally  parts  of  a  single  one, 
their  orbits  after  the  explosion  would  have  inter- 
sected. It  is  utterly  impossible  that,  if  this  had 
been  so,  subsequent  perturbations  could  have 
separated  the  paths  by  so  enormous  a  distance 
as  90,000,000  miles  at  the  place  even  of  nearest 
approach. 

But  while  the  discovery  of  multitudinous 
members  of  this  ring  of  worlds  has  rendered  01- 
bers's  theory  of  the  explosion  of  a  single  planet 
between  Mars  and  Jupiter  utterly  untenable,  it 
has  brought  to  our  knowledge  a  remarkable  rela- 
tion which  points  very  clearly  to  the  real  origin 
of  the  ring  system  of  planets. 

When  as  yet  only  half  as  many  asteroids  had 
been  discovered  as  are  now  known,  Prof.  Kirk- 
wood,  of  Bloomington,  Indiana,  arranging  these 
bodies  in  the  order  of  their  mean  distances  from 
the  sun,  noticed  that  certain  gaps  exist,  in  such 
sort  that  no  asteroids  travel  at  or  nearly  at  cer- 
tain mean  distances  from  the  sun.  And  looking 
more  closely  into  these  missing  distances,  he  ob- 
served that  they  correspond  to  the  distance  of 
the  giant  planet  Jupiter  in  this  way,  that  a  planet 
traveling  at  any  one  of  these  missing  distances 
would  have  motions  synchronizing  with  those  of 
Jupiter,  in  the  same  sense  in  which  the  vibrations 
of  one  note  synchronize  with  the  vibrations  of 
another  in  harmony  with  it.  For  instance,  there 
is  a  well-marked  gap  at  a  distance  from  the  sun 
exceeding  our  earth's  in  the  proportion  of  5  to 
2  ;  now  a  planet  traveling  at  this  distance  would 
make  three  circuits  while  Jupiter  makes  one. 
There  is  another  gap  at  a  distance  somewhat  ex- 
ceeding three  and  a  quarter  times  the  earth's ; 
and  a  planet  at  this  distance  would  travel  twice 
round  the  sun  while  Jupiter  travels  once  round 


him.  Still  more  remarkable,  because  occurring 
in  the  very  heart  of  the  ring,  is  the  gap  corre- 
sponding to  the  distance  of  a  planet  which  would 
travel  five  times  round  the  sun  while  Jupiter 
travels  twice  round  him.  There  are  two  gaps, 
also,  where  a  planet  would  travel  seven  times 
round — 1.  During  two  circuits;  and,  2.  During 
three  circuits,  of  Jupiter. 

Before  inquiring  into  the  meaning  of  this  pe- 
culiarity, we  note  that  now,  when  twice  as  many 
asteroids  have  been  discovered,  the  peculiarity  is 
better  marked  even  than  when  Kirkwood  first 
noticed  it.  He  was  justified  in  saying,  as  he  did 
in  1S68,  that  the  coincidences  are  not  accidental ; 
for  the  odds  were  enormously  against  the  observed 
arrangement,  and  its  accidental  occurrence  so  un- 
likely as  to  be  practically  impossible.  But  had 
the  arrangement  been  accidental  with  the  eighty- 
seven  asteroids  known  to  Kirkwood,  it  could  not 
but  have  happened  that  some  of  the  eighty-nine 
since  discovered  would  have  had  mean  distances 
corresponding  to  those  gaps  or  lacunce.  This, 
however,  has  not  only  not  happened,  but  the  ag- 
gregation of  asteroids  at  distances  where  Kirk- 
wood had  already  noticed  that  they  were  most 
numerous,  has  become  still  more  decided. 

"We  are  led  back,  in  our  inquiry  into  the  sig- 
nificance of  this  singular  relation,  to  the  time 
when  our  solar  system  was  gradually  forming 
from  its  former  nebulous  condition.  Imagine  a 
ring  of  nebulous  fragments,  not  as  yet  gathered 
into  a  single  mass.  The  process  of  aggregation 
would  depend  in  considerable  degree  on  the  dis- 
turbances to  which  the  fragments  were  exposed. 
If  they  were  all  moving  in  concentric  orbits,  and 
were  not  disturbed  at  all,  there  would  be  no  col- 
lisions, and  they  would  remain  as  a  ring  of  frag- 
ments. It  might  seem,  then,  at  a  first  view,  that 
the  zone  of  asteroids  was  most  favorably  placed 
for  aggregation  into  planet  form,  being  under  the 
special  perturbing  influence  of  Jupiter,  the  migh- 
tiest of  all  the  planets.  But  excessive  disturbance 
would  be  by  no  means  favorable  to  the  formation 
of  a  single  planet.  The  nebulous  matter  must  be 
churned  by  perturbations,  but  it  must  not  be 
scattered  by  them  ;  and  this  is  what  Jupiter's 
action  on  the  planetoidal  ring  has  done.  Quan- 
tity of  matter,  again,  would  be  a  very  important 
point  in  the  process  of  aggregation.  A  region 
crowded  with  nebulous  fragments  would  soon 
teem  with  aggregations,  which  would  before  long 
gather  into  a  few  large  masses,  which  in  turn 
would  aggregate  into  one.  But  in  a  region  where 
nebulous  matter  was  very  sparsely  strewed,  ag- 
gregations would  not  readily  form,  however  migh- 


A  RIXG    OF  WORLDS. 


i  . 


tily  the  region  might  be  disturbed.     The  very  ac- 
tivity of  the  disturbing  forces  might,  in  this  case, 
check  the  process  of  aggregation.  .  The  two  bod- 
ies which  had  once  come  into   collision  would 
travel  on  intersecting  orbits,  and  would  therefore 
before  long  come  into  collision,  if  not  perturbed ; 
but  if  perturbed,  their   orbits  would   cease   to 
coalesce ;  so  that  the  action  of  a  great  disturb- 
ing planet  might  prevent  a  process  of  aggrega- 
tion which  had  already  commenced.     Now,  we 
know  that  the  quantity  of  matter  in  the  region 
where  the  asteroids  travel  is  less  than  in  any 
other  zone  of  the  solar  system.      We  do   not 
know  how  many  asteroids  there  are,  but  we  do 
know  how  much  they  all  weigh ;    at  least,  we 
know  that  altogether  their  weight  is  not  more 
than  a  fourth  of  our  earth's,  and  is  probably  a 
great  deal  less.     And  the  zone  over  which  they 
range  is  very  much  larger  than  the  zone  over 
which  our  earth  may  be  regarded  as   bearing 
sway.     Their  zone  being  thus  poverty-stricken, 
and  Jupiter's  mighty  mass  in  their  neighborhood 
perturbing  them  too  actively  to  allow  of  their 
aggregation,  they  remain  as  a  ring  of  fragments. 
And  now  let  the  signs  of  Jupiter's  influence 
in  this  respect  be  noticed.     He  would  perturb  all 
these  fragments  pretty  equally  in  a  single  revo- 
lution of  his.     But   those   whose   periods   syn- 
chronized with  his  own  would  be  more  seriously 
perturbed.     For  the  disturbance  produced  in  one 
set  of  revolutions  which  brought  any  asteroid 
and  Jupiter  back  to  the  position  they  had  before 
those  revolutions  began,  would  be  renewed  in  the 
next  similar  set,  and  in  the  next,  and  so  on,  un- 
til one  of  two  things  happened.    Either  the  as- 
teroid would  be  thrown  entirely  out  of  that  peri- 
odic motion  which  had  brought  it  thus  under 
Jupiter's  effectively  disturbing  influence,  or,  being 
set  traveling  on  a  markedly  eccentric  path,  it 
would  be  brought  into  collision  with  some  of  the 
neighboring  asteroids,  and  would  cease  to  have 
separate  existence,  or  at  least  move  thencefor- 
ward on  a  changed  orbit.     Thus  those  asteroids 
having  a  period  synchronizing  with  that  of  Jupi- 
ter would  be  gradually  eliminated,  and  we  should 
find  gaps  in  the  ring  of  worlds  precisely  where 
gaps  actually  exist. 

There  can  be  no  reasonable  doubt  that  these 
marked  gaps  were  produced  in  the  manner  here 
described.  Their  existence  can  indeed  be  ex- 
plained in  no  other  way,  and  can  be  so  satisfac- 
torily explained  in  this  way  that  assurance  is 
made  doubly  sure. 

But  now  consider  the  significance  of  this  re- 
sult.    Imagine  the  asteroidal  ring  as  it  now  ex- 


ists to  be  redistributed,  the  gaps  being  filled  up. 
The  process  we  have  described  would  immedi- 
ately come  into  operation.     But  many  millions 
of  years  would  be  required  before  it  could  elimi- 
nate even   a   few   among  the   asteroids  having 
those  synchronous  periods  which  expose  them  to 
accumulating  perturbations.    Only  one  of  the  two 
processes  above  described  would  really  be  effec- 
tive.    Mere  change  of  period  would  be  oscilla- 
tory.    We  have  an  instance  of  the  kind  in  the 
motions  of  Jupiter  and  Saturn,  which  very  nearly 
synchronize,  Saturn  going  almost  exactly  twice 
round    the   sun  while   Jupiter   goes   five  times 
round.     But,  though  for  a  long  period  of  time 
accumulating    perturbations    lengthen    Saturn's 
period  (and  shorten  Jupiter's),  after  a  while  the 
time  comes  when  these  changes  are  reversed ; 
then  Saturn's  period  begins  to  shorten  (and  Ju- 
piter's to  lengthen).     The  changes  carry  these 
periods  on  either  side  of  their  mean  value,  just 
as  the  swinging  of  a   pendulum  carries   it  on 
either  side  of  its  mean  position.    So  it  would  be 
with  an  asteroid  mightily  perturbed  by  Jupiter : 
its  period  would  oscillate  more  widely,  but  still 
it  would  oscillate ;  and  during  the  middle  of  the 
oscillation  (just  as  a  pendulum  at  the  middle  of 
its  swing  is  in  its  mean  position)  the   asteroid 
would  have  that  synchronous  period  which,  as 
we  have  seen,  none  of  the  asteroids  in  point  of 
fact  possess.     We  must  look,  then,  to  collisions 
to  cause  the  gaps  in  the  ring  of  worlds.      But 
how  rare  must  such  collisions  be  among  minute 
bodies  like  the  asteroids,  even  though  they  be 
hundreds  of  thousands  in  number,  occupying  a 
domain  in  space  so  vast  as  that  which  belongs  to 
this  system  !     The  width  of  the  ring  greatly  ex- 
ceeds the  earth's  distance  from  the  sun,  amount- 
ing in  fact  to  more  than  120,000,000  miles.     Its 
innermost  edge  is  more  than  200,000,000  miles 
from  the  sun.     It  is  not  a  flat  ring,  but  shaped 
like  an  anchor-ring  (or  a  wedding-ring),  and  is 
as  thick  as  it  is  wide — insomuch  that  a  cross- 
section  of  the  ring  would  be  a  mighty  circle, 
more  than  120,000,000  miles  in  diameter.     Amid 
this   enormous  space   1,000,000  asteroids,  each 
five  hundred  miles  in  diameter  (and  none  of  the 
asteroids  are  so  large,  while  the  number  even 
of  those  exceeding  one  hundred  miles  in  diam- 
eter scarcely  amounts  to  a  hundred),  would  be 
as  widely  scattered  as  1,000,000  grains  of  sand 
would  be  in  such  a  space  as  the  interior  of  St. 
Peter's,  at  Rome.     Take  a  cubical  block  of  sand- 
stone, one  inch  in  length,  breadth,  and  thick- 
ness, crumble  it  into  finest  sand-dust,  and  imagine 
this  dust  scattered  in  the  interior  of  that  great 


478 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


building.  How  small  would  be  the  chance  that 
any  two  particles  from  that  tiny  heap  would 
come  into  collision  during  months  of  their  aerial 
wanderings  !  Very  much  smaller  would  be  the 
risk  of  a  single  collision  between  asteroids  dur- 
ing millions  of  years  as  they  travel  (all  the  same 
way  round,  be  it  noticed)  on  their  wide  orbits, 
even  though  their  number  were  a  hundred-fold 
greater  than  it  is,  and  their  volumes  increased  a 
million-fold. 

Either,  then,  we  must  imagine  innumerable 
millions  of  years  to  have  elapsed  since  the  ring 
of  asteroids  first  existed,  and  that  very  gradually 
the  synchronous  asteroids  have  been  eliminated 
by  collisions,  or  else  we  are  forced  to  the  con- 
clusion that  the  formation  of  this  ring  of  worlds, 
or  rather  this  series  of  rings,  belongs  to  an  ear- 
lier era  of  our  solar  system's  history,  when  the 
matter  whence  the  rings  were  one  day  to  be 
formed  was  in  the  nebulous  condition.  It  ap- 
pears to  us  that  the  latter  conclusion  is  alto- 
gether the  more  probable.  We  escape  none  of 
the  difficulties  of  the  problem  by  adopting  the 
former  conclusion,  while  many  other  difficulties 
are  introduced.  By  the  latter,  we  simply  have 
the  same  difficulties  to  encounter  which  apper- 
tain to  all  forms  of  the  nebular  hypothesis  re- 
specting the  origin  of  the  solar  system.  These 
difficulties  are  great,  because  the  distance  over 
which  we  endeavor  to  look  back  is  great ;  but 
they  are  not  insuperable.  The  positive  evidence 
for  the  general  theory  becomes  stronger  and 
stronger  as  astronomical  research  advances ;  and 
the  mere  circumstance  that  it  is  surrounded  by 
difficulties  can  in  no  sense  lead  us  to  abandon 
it,  although  compelling  us  to  admit  that  as  yet 
we  have  not  thoroughly  mastered  its  details. 
The  asteroids  themselves  supply  an  argument  in 
favor  of  the  nebular  theory,  rendering  its  proba- 
bility so  strong  as  practically  to  amount  to  cer- 
tainty ;  for  the  antecedent  probability  against  the 
observed  uniformity  of  direction  of  the  175  aste- 
roids by  chance,  or  in  any  conceivable  way  ex- 
cept as  the  result  of  some  process  of  evolution, 
is  equal  to  that  of  tossing  either  "head"  or 
"tail"  175  times  running,  or  about 
23,945,290,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,- 
000,000,000,000,000,000  to  1. 

Adopting  the  nebular  theory,  we  must  of 
course  adopt  with  it  the  conclusion  respecting 
the  origin  of  the  asteroids,  to  which,  as  we  have 
seen  above,  we  are  led  by  the  examination  of  the 
relations  presented  by  this  system — viz.,  that 
while  still  existing  as  a  great  ring  of  nebulous 
masses,  they  were  to  such  degree  perturbed  by 


Jupiter's  mighty  attraction  upon  them,  as  on  the 
one  hand  to  be  prevented  from  forming  into  a 
single  planet,  and  on  the  other  to  be  sorted  out, 
if  one  may  so  speak,  into  several  rings  with  well- 
marked  gaps  between  them,  these  gaps  corre- 
sponding exactly  with  the  distances  at  which 
planets  would  be  most  effectively  disturbed  by 
Jupiter.  The  close  accordance  between  the  re- 
sults to  which  we  are  lpd  by  a  posteriori  and  a 
priori  considerations  affords  strong  evidence  in 
favor  of  both  lines  of  reasoning.  But  it  is  very 
noteworthy,  also,  that  when  seeing  the  proba- 
bility of  the  conclusions  toward  which  we  have 
been  led,  we  inquire  whether  any  similar  case 
exists  within  our  solar  system,  and,  if  so,  whether 
|  the  evidence  in  that  case  corresponds  with  that 
which  we  have  obtained  in  the  case  we  have 
been  considering,  we  find  the  most  striking  evi- 
dence of  all.  The  ring  system  of  Saturn  has 
long  been  regarded  as  consisting  of  multitudes  of 
minute  satellites.  Thus  it  resembles  the  zone  of 
asteroids,  only  it  is  relatively  much  more  crowded. 
Now,  in  the  ring  system  of  Saturn  there  are  caps 
or  relatively  vacant  divisions  separating  rings  of 
closely-clustering  satellites.  Distinguished  among 
all  these  gaps  by  superior  breadth  and  darkness 
is  the  great  division  separating  what  were  for- 
merly called  the  two  rings  from  each  other. 
Here,  for  a  breadth  of  nearly  2,000  miles,  so  few 
satellites  travel,  that  to  ordinary  observation  the 
great  division  looks  black,  though,  closely  scruti- 
nized, it  is  found  to  be  simply  very  dark.  Now 
when  we  inquire  whether  satellites  moving  round 
this  open  space  would  have  periods  synchronizing 
with  that  of  the  innermost  (and  therefore  most 
effectively  disturbing)  of  his  moons,  we  discover 
these  remarkable  facts — that  a  satellite  would 
travel  in  the  very  middle  of  the  dark  division  or 
open  space  if  its  period  were  one-half  that  of  the 
innermost  of  Saturn's  moons,  and  almost  on  the 
same  track,  if  its  period  were  one-fourth  that  of 
the  innermost  moon  but  two,  while  it  would  be 
well  within  the  open  space,  but  nearer  its  inner 
edge,  if  its  period  were  one-third  that  of  the  in- 
nermost moon  but  one,  or  one-sixth  that  of  the 
innermost  moon  but  three.  It  follows  unmistak- 
ably from  these  relations,  first  noted  by  Prof. 
Kirkwood,  that  the  great  division  in  Saturn's 
rings  has  been  swept  and  garnished  by  the  action 
of  the  four  innermost  of  Saturn's  moons,  but 
especially  by  the  innermost  of  all.  This  fact 
corresponds  so  well  with  the  nebular  hypothesis, 
and  is  so  utterly  inexplicable  on  any  other,  as 
strongly  to  corroborate  an  opinion,  expressed  by 
the  present  writer  twelve  years   ago,  that  the 


TAME  BEARS  12?  SWEDEN. 


479 


peculiarities  of  the  Saturaian  ring  system  would 
one  day  be  found  to  afford  "  a  key  to  the  law  of 
development  under  which  the  solar  system  has 
reached  its  present  development."  The  same 
may  now  confidently  be  said  respecting  the  ring 
of  worlds  traveling  between  the  orbits  of  Mars 
and  Jupiter.  It  has  already  enabled  us  to  weigh 
the  giant  Jupiter  afresh ;  it  has  given  excellent 
measures,  and  promises  to  give  yet  better  meas- 


ures, of  the  dimensions  of  the  solar  system ;  and 
we  venture  to  predict  that  before  long  this  zone 
of  worlds  will  have  placed  beyond  shadow  of 
doubt  or  question  the  general  theory  of  the  de- 
velopment of  our  solar  system  of  which  La- 
place's nebular  hypothesis  presents  only  a  few 
details,  or  rather  suggests  only  a  few  possibil- 
ities. 

—  Cornhill  Magazine. 


TAME  BEAES  IN  SWEDEN. 


Br   JOHN   WAGEK. 


IT  is  well  known  that  the  bear,  by  a  course  of 
severe  discipline,  can  be  taught  to  carry  a 
long  pole  in  his  paws  or  a  pert  monkey  upon  his 
back,  to  dance  to  the  music  of  pipe  and  drum, 
and  to  perform  tricks  which  the  solemn  gravity 
of  his  demeanor,  his  clumsy  motions,  and  shaggy 
hide,  render  the  more  amusingly  grotesque.  He 
may  also  be  seen,  in  the  den  of  a  menagerie,  to 
leap  through  a  comparatively  small  ring  encir- 
cled with  flame,  associated,  during  the  perform- 
ance only,  with  leopards  and  a  hyena;  though 
the  uncouthness  and  reluctance  with  which  he 
accomplishes  the  feat,  contrasted  with  the  grace- 
ful and  ready  spring  of  the  leopards,  is  enough  to 
make  the  hyena  laugh;  while,  of  all  the  perform- 
ers, he  has  evidently  the  most  intractable  temper, 
and  is  least  trusted  by  the  spangled  damsel  who 
presides  with  the  whip. 

Yet,  when  young,  the  bear  is  not  altogether 
devoid  of  amiable  qualities,  as  the  following  nar- 
rative will  prove.  The  account  was  communi- 
cated to  the  present  writer  in  1867,  by  a  Swedish 
acquaintance  residing  at  Mora,  in  Dalecarlia,  the 
bear  being  then  living,  and  the  property  of  a 
gentleman  at  Siknas,  in  Venjan,  an  adjoining 
parish,  having  been  taken  when  about  three 
weeks  old,  from  the  adjacent  forest,  in  February, 
1865.  Being  fed  with  warm  milk,  young  Bruin 
throve  satisfactorily,  and,  when  large  enough  to 
enjoy  liberty,  he  usually  sojourned  in  the  yard 
with  the  bear-dog  "  Jeppe,"  playing  and  spring- 
ing about  his  companion  like  a  cat.  He  was 
also  much  attached  to  his  master,  delighting  to 
accompany  him,  not  only  to  the  forest,  where  he 
often  clambered  up  trees,  but  also  into  the  house, 
where  removing  chairs  and  tables  from  one  room 
into  another  appeared  to  be  his  favorite  occupa- 


tion. Strangers  who  visited  Siknas  always  re- 
ceived his  attentions ;  but  as  these  were  some- 
what brusque,  and  expressed  in  a  surly  tone,  they 
tended  rather  to  repel  than  attract. 

To  Swedish  punch  (a  luscious  compound  of 
arrack  and  sugar)  he  was  extremely  partial,  and 
partook  of  it,  whenever  invited,  out  of  a  glass, 
like  a  well-bred  gentleman,  but  afterward  show- 
ing his  loutish  and  lumpish  nature  in  a  drunken 
fit,  concluding  with  heavy  sleep  and  loud  snores. 

One  day,  while  Bruin  was  yet  of  tender  years, 
a  kitten  came  into  the  yard  and  immediately  drew 
his  surprised  attention  upon  herself;  but  young 
Puss,  not  admiring  his  looks,  first  cast  upon  him 
an  angry  glance,  and  then  sprang  up  and  fixed 
her  claws  in  his  head,  exciting  such  alarm  that 
he  trotted  off  in  a  nervous  perspiration,  and  en- 
sconced himself  in  an  out-house.  Subsequently 
he  always  fled  at  the  sight  of  this  cat,  though 
she  was  the  only  one  of  which  he  showed  fear. 

Bruin  took  a  daily  bath  in  the  river,  which 
flows  within  a  stone's-throw  of  the  house ;  swim- 
ming across  and  back  again.  He  then  trotted  to 
an  ice-cellar,  the  roof  of  which  was  easily  acces- 
sible and  covered  with  deal  boards,  one  of  which 
projected  considerably  beyond  the  rest :  toward 
the  end  of  this  he  used  to  creep  warily,  to  enjoy 
the  swinging  motion  that  resulted.  It  was  a  mode 
of  recreation  of  which  he  frequently  availed  him- 
self. 

Whenever  he  could  intrude  into  the  kitchen 
he  bemeaned  himself  like  an  officious  and  med- 
dlesome husband,  disordering  affairs,  greatly  to 
the  vexation  of  the  domestics,  to  whose  castiga- 
tions  with  a  stout  knob-stick  he  payed  little  re- 
gard. One  day  he  laid  hold  of  a  coffee-pan  that 
stood  on  the  hearth,  and  was  conveying  it  in  his 


480 


TEE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTELY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


paws  to  the  yard,  when  the  hot  contents,  over- 
flowing on  his  bosom,  provoked  him  to  cast  it  on 
the  ground  and  flatten  it  with  a  stroke  of  his  paw. 
He  would  also,  when  opportunity  occurred,  smug- 
gle himself  into  the  larder  (a  detached  building), 
looking  round  first  to  see  that  he  was  not  ob- 
served, then  bring  out  some  article,  especially  a 
cheese,  which  he  found  convenient  to  carry ;  but 
on  one  occasion  he  made  free  with  a  tub  of  clouted 
milk  and  cream,  handling  it,  however,  so  awk- 
wardly that  the  ropy  tenacious  contents  streamed 
down  the  front  of  his  erected  corpus,  and,  as  in 
the  case  of  the  coffee-pan,  brought  vengeance  on 
the  tub.  After  fruitless  endeavors,  with  tongue 
and  claws,  to  clear  the  viscous  mass  from  his  best 
fur  coat,  he  betook  himself  to  the  river,  and  then 
solaced  himself  with  a  swing. 

This  partiality  for  swinging  or  rocking  ren- 
dered him  an  undesirable  companion  in  a  boat ; 
yet  he  constantly  followed  his  owner  to  the  river- 
side, and,  if  not  admitted  as  a  passenger,  would 
swim  after  the  boat,  grunting  like  a  hog.  During 
one  river-excursion  which  he  had  been  allowed 
to  share  he  enjoyed  as  usual  his  rocking,  till  the 
boat,  gliding  down  the  river,  entered  a  stormy 
rapid,  when  he  became  quite  agitated  with  fear, 
trembling  in  every  limb,  and  holding  on  each  side 
of  the  boat  so  long  as  it  remained  in  the  welter- 
ing force.  When  indulged  with  a  ride  by  land, 
he  would  sometimes  leap  on  the  shafts  of  the 
vehicle,  and,  placing  a  hind-leg  on  each,  rest  his 
fore-paws  on  the  horse's  back. 

As  he  grew  older  it  was  found  necessary  to 
impose  some  check  upon  his  movements,  and  for 
this  purpose  a  chain,  with  a  log  at  the  end  of  it, 
was  attached  to  a  collar  round  his  neck.  Such 
badge  of  servitude  and  interference  with  the  lib- 
erty of  a  free-born  bear  was  not  to  be  borne.  At 
first  he  tried  to  strike  off  the  log  with  his  paws  ; 
then  he  dragged  it  to  the  river,  but  was  vastly 
irritated  to  find  that,  after  every  attempt  to  sink 
it,  the  audacious  log  came  to  the  surface  again. 
Finally  he  dug  a  hole,  put  the  log  into  it,  and  re- 


placed the  earth,  stamping  or  pressing  it  down ; 
then,  apparently  satisfied  with  his  work,  he  at- 
tempted to  move  off,  but  found  himself  in  a  worse 
fix  than  before ;  however,  after  sundry  curvets 
and  angry  jerks,  the  chain  broke,  and  he  re- 
gained his  freedom,  leaving  his  incumbrance  in 
the  grave. 

In  concluding  his  ursine  anecdotes  my  Swed- 
ish friend  remarked :  "  These  are  but  a  few  of 
Bruin's  traits  and  droll  tricks,  which  must  be 
seen  to  be  fully  enjoyed.  At  present  he  lies 
quietly  in  his  winter  lair,  but  imagine  his  humor 
when  he  leaves  it  in  spring ;  he  is  then  no  agree- 
able companion,  especially  for  the  kitchen-maids, 
toward  whom,  and  the  fair  sex  in  general,  he 
shows  the  greatest  disregard." 

Poor  Bruin !  he  must  indeed  have  got  up  on 
the  wrong  side  of  the  bed,  for  he  became  so  un- 
bearably troublesome  and  subject  to  such  angry 
moods,  that,  as  I  afterward  learned,  at  the  early 
age  of  about  three  years  he  was  doomed  to  death 
and  executed  accordingly. 

Another  young  bear,  captured  in  the  winter 
of  1869,  was  kept  for  about  two  years  at  Eksha- 
rad,  in  Wermland  ;  but  as  it  grew  older  it  became 
dangerously  ferocious,  and  consequently  was  also 
shot.  A  tame  bear,  kept  at  Sno-an,  had  acciden- 
tally one  Saturday  evening  got  locked  up  in  the 
smithy,  and,  not  liking  to  remain  in  a  workshop 
on  a  Sunday,  attempted  to  escape  through  an 
opening  in  the  roof.  But  to  reach  this  Bruin 
had  to  clamber  upon  a  lever,  which,  under  the 
pressure  of  his  weight,  opened  the  sluice-gate, 
and,  turning  the  water  upon  the  wheel,  set  the 
great  hammer  to  work.  Evidently  annoyed  by 
its  persistent  motion  and  noise,  he  appears  to 
have  grasped  the  hammer  in  his  paws  with  in- 
tent to  stop  it;  but  the  contest  proved  beyond 
his  strength,  for  the  neighbors,  hearing  loud  roars, 
hastened  to  the  smithy  and  found  him  lying  upon 
the  anvil,  having  received  a  death-blow  before 

their  arrival. 

— Science  Gossip. 


EQUALITY. 


481 


EQUALITY.1 

By  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 


THERE  is  a  maxim  which  we  all  know,  which 
occurs  in  our  copy-books,  which  occurs  in 
that  solemn  and  beautiful  formulary  against  which 
the  Nonconformist  genius  is  just  now  so  angrily 
chafing — the  burial-service.  The  maxim  is  this  : 
"  Evil  communications  corrupt  good  manners." 
It  is  taken  from  one  of  the  chapters  of  the  Epis- 
tles to  the  Corinthians  ;  but  originally  it  is  a  line 
of  poetry,  of  Greek  poetry.  Quid  Athenis  et 
Hierosolymis  ?  asks  a  Father  ;  what  have  Athens 
and  Jerusalem  to  do  with  one  another?  Well, 
at  any  rate,  the  Jerusalemite  Paul,  exhorting  his 
converts,  enforces  what  he  is  saying  by  a  verse 
of  Athenian  comedy,  a  verse,  probably,  from  the 
great  master  of  that  comedy,  a  man  unsurpassed 
for  fine  and  just  observation  of  human  life,  Menan- 
der.  QQtipovffiv  tfdri  xP^ff^  ofii\lai  naKai — "  Evil 
communications  corrupt  good  manners." 

In  that  collection  of  single,  sententious  lines, 
printed  at  the  end  of  Menander's  fragments, 
where  we  now  find  the  maxim  quoted  by  St. 
Paul,  there  is  another  striking  maxim,  not  alien 
certainly  to  the  language  of  the  Christian  reli- 
gion, but  which  has  not  passed  into  our  copy- 
books :  "  Choose  equality  and  flee  greed."  The 
same  profound  observer,  who  laid  down  the  max- 
im so  universally  accepted  by  us  that  it  has  be- 
come commonplace,  the  maxim  that  evil  com- 
munications corrupt  good  manners,  laid  down 
too,  as  a  no  less  sure  result  of  the  accurate  study 
of  human  life,  this  other  maxim  also  :  "  Choose 
equality  and  flee  greed " — 'Io-oV^ra  S'alpov  Kal 
irXtove^iav  (pvye. 

PleonerAa,  or  greed,  the  wishing  and  trying 
for  the  bigger  share,  we  know  under  the  name  of 
covetousness.  We  understand  by  covetousness 
something  different  from  what  pleonexia  really 
means:  we  understand  by  it  the  longing  for  other 
people's  goods ;  and  covetousness,  so  understood, 
it  is  a  commonplace  of  morals  and  of  religion 
with  us  that  we  should  shun.  As  to  the  duty 
of  pursuing  equality,  there  is  no  such  consent 
among  us.  Indeed,  the  consent  is  the  other  way, 
the  consent  is  against  equality.  Equality  before 
the  law  we  all  take  as  a  matter  of  course ;  that 
is  not  the  equality  which  we  mean  when  we  talk 
of  equality.  When  we  talk  of  equality  we  un- 
derstand social  equality ;  and  for  equality  in  this 
1  Address  delivered  at  the  Royal  Institution. 

67 


Frenchified  sense  of  the  term  almost  everybody 
in  England  has  a  hard  word.  About  four  years 
ago  Lord  Beaconsfield  held  it  up  to  reprobation 
in  a  speech  to  the  students  at  Glasgow — a  speech 
so  interesting,  that  being  asked  soon  afterward 
to  hold  a  discourse  at  Glasgow,  I  said  that  if  one 
spoke  there  at  all  at  that  time,  it  would  be  impos- 
sible to  speak  on  any  other  subject  than  equal- 
ity. However,  it  is  a  great  way  to  Glasgow, 
and  I  never  yet  have  been  able  to  go  and  speak 
there.  But  the  testimonies  against  equality  have 
been  steadily  accumulating  from  the  date  of 
Lord  Beaconsfield's  Glasgow  speech  down  to  the 
present  hour,  when  Sir  Eiskine  May  winds  up 
his- new  and  important  "History  of  Democracy" 
by  saying :  "  France  has  aimed  at  social  equal- 
ity. The  fearful  troubles  through  which  she  has 
passed  have  checked  her  prosperity,  demoralized 
her  society,  and  arrested  the  intellectual  growth 
of  her  people."  Mr.  Froude  is  more  his  own 
master  than  I  am,  and  he  has  been  able  to  go  to 
Edinburgh  and  to  speak  there  upon  equality. 
Mr.  Froude  told  his  hearers  that  equality  splits  a 
nation  into  "'  a  multitude  of  disconnected  units," 
that  "the  masses  require  leaders  whom  they  can 
trust,"  and  that  "  the  natural  leaders  in  a  healthy 
country  are  the  gentry."  And  only  just  before 
"  The  History  of  Democracy  "  came  out,  we  had 
that  exciting  passage  of  arms  between  Mr.  Lowe 
and  Mr.  Gladstone,  where  equality,  poor  thing, 
received  blows  from  them  both.  Mr.  Lowe  de- 
clared that  "  no  concession  should  be  made  to 
the  cry  for  equality,  unless  it  appears  that  the 
state  is  menaced  with  more  danger  by  its  refusal 
than  by  its  admission.  No  such  case  exists  now 
or  ever  has  existed  in  this  country."  And  Mr. 
Gladstone  replied  that  equality  was  so  utterly 
unattractive  to  the  people  of  this  country,  ine- 
quality was  so  dear  to  their  hearts,  that  to  talk 
of  concessions  being  made  to  the  cry  for  equality 
was  absurd.  "  There  is  no  broad  political  idea," 
says  Mr.  Gladstone,  quite  truly,  "  which  has  en- 
tered less  into  the  formation  of  the  political  sys- 
tem of  this  country  than  the  love  of  equality.' 
And  he  adds:  "It  is  not  the  love  of  equality 
which  has  carried  into  every  corner  of  the  coun- 
try the  distinct,  undeniable  popular  preference, 
wherever  other  things  are  equal,  for  a  man  who 
is  a  lord  over  a  man  who  is  not.     The  love  of 


482 


THE  POPULAR  SCIEXCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


freedom  itself  is  hardly  stronger  in  England  than 
the  love  of  aristocracy."  Mr.  Gladstone  goes  on 
to  quote  a  saying  of  Sir  William  Molesworth, 
that  with  our  people  the  love  of  aristocracy  "is 
a  religion."  And  he  concludes  in  his  copious 
and  eloquent  way  :  "  Call  this  love  of  inequality 
by  what  name  you  please — the  complement  of  the 
love  of  freedom,  or  its  negative  pole,  or  the  shad- 
ow which  the  love  of  freedom  casts,  or  the  re- 
verberation of  its  voice  in  the  halls  of  the  con- 
stitution— it  is  an  active,  living,  and  life-giving 
power,  which  forms  an  inseparable  essential  ele- 
ment in  our  political  habits  of  mind,  and  asserts 
itself  at  every  step  in  the  processes  of  our  sys- 
tem." 

And  yet,  on  the  other  side,  we  have  a  consum- 
mate critic  of  life  like  Menander,  delivering,  as  if 
there  were  no  doubt  at  all  about  the  matter,  the 
maxim,  "  Choose  equality ! "  An  Englishman 
with  any  curiosity  must  surely  be  inclined  to  ask 
himself  how  such  a  maxim  can  ever  have  got  es- 
tablished, and  taken  rank  along  with  "Evil  com- 
munications corrupt  good  manners."  Moreover, 
we  see  that  among  the  French,  who  have  suffered 
so  grievously,  as  we  hear,  from  choosing  equal- 
ity, the  most  gifted  spirits  continue  to  believe 
passionately  in  it  nevertheless.  "  The  human 
ideal,  as  well  as  the  social  ideal,  is,"  says  George 
Sand,  "  to  achieve  equality."  She  calls  equality 
"  the  goal  of  man  and  the  law  of  the  future." 
She  asserts  that  France  is  the  most  civilized  of 
nations,  and  that  its  preeminence  in  civilization 
it  owes  to  equality. 

But  Menander  lived  a  long  while  ago,  and 
George  Sand  was  an  enthusiast.  Perhaps  their 
differing  from  us  about  equality  need  not  trouble 
us  much.  France,  too,  counts  for  but  one  nation, 
as  England  counts  for  one,  also.  Equality  may 
be  a  religion  with  the  people  of  France,  as  in- 
equality, we  are  told,  is  a  religion  with  the  people 
of  England.  But  what  do  other  nations  seem  to 
think  about  the  matter  ?  Now  this  is  most  cer- 
tainly not  a  lecture  on  law  and  the  rules  of  be- 
quest. But  it  is  evident  that  in  the  societies  of 
Europe,  with  a  constitution  of  property  such  as 
that  which  the  feudal  middle  age  left  them  with 
— a  constitution  of  property  full  of  inequality — 
the  state  of  the  law  of  bequest  shows  us  how  far 
each  society  wishes  the  inequality  to  continue. 
The  families  in  possession  of  great  estates  will 
not  break  them  up  if  they  can  help  it.  The  own- 
ers will  do  all  they  can,  by  entail  and  settlement, 
to  prevent  their  successors  from  breaking  them 
up.  They  will  preserve  inequality.  Freedom  of 
bequest,  then,  the  power  of  making  entails  and 


settlements,  is  sure,  in  an  old  European  country 
like  ours,  to  maintain  inequality.  And  with  us, 
who  have  the  religion  of  inequality,  the  power  of 
entailing  and  settling,  and  of  willing  property  as 
one  likes,  exists,  as  is  well  known,  in  singular  full- 
ness— greater  fullness  than  in  any  country  of  the 
Continent.  The  proposal  of  a  measure  such  as 
the  Real  Estates  Intestacy  Bill  is,  in  a  country 
like  ours,  perfectly  puerile.  A  European  country 
like  ours,  wishing  not  to  preserve  inequality  but 
to  abate  it,  can  only  do  so  by  interfering  with  the 
freedom  of  bequest.  This  is  what  Turgot,  the 
wisest  of  French  statesmen,  pronounced  before 
the  Revolution  to  be  necessary,  and  what  was 
done  in  France  at  the  great  Revolution.  The 
Code  Napoleon,  the  actual  law  of  Fiance,  forbids 
entails  altogether,  and  leaves  a  man  free  to  dis- 
pose of  but  one-fourth  of  his  property,  of  what- 
ever kind,  if  he  have  three  children  or  more,  of 
one-third  if  he  have  two  children,  of  one-half  if 
he  have  but  one  child.  Only  in  the  rare  case, 
therefore,  of  a  man's  having  but  one  child,  can 
that  child  take  the  whole  of  his  father's  property. 
If  there  are  two  children,  two-thirds  of  the  prop- 
eity  must  be  equally  divided  between  them;  if 
there  are  more  than  two,  three-fourths.  In  this 
way  has  France,  desiring  equality,  sought  to  bring 
equality  about. 

Now  the  interesting  point  for  us  is,  I  say,  to 
know  how  far  other  European  communities,  left 
in  the  same  situation  with  us  and  France,  having 
immense  inequalities  of  class  and  property  created 
for  them  by  the  middle  age,  have  dealt  with  these 
inequalities  by  means  of  the  law  of  bequest.  Do 
they  leave  bequest  free,  as  we  do  ?  then,  like  us, 
they  are  for  inequality.  Do  they  interfere  with 
the  freedom  of  bequest,  as  France  does  ?  then, 
like  France,  they  are  for  equality.  And  we  shall 
be  most  interested,  surely,  by  what  the  most  civil- 
ized European  communities  do  in  this  matter — 
communities  such  as  those  of  Germany,  Italy, 
Belgium,  Holland,  Switzerland.  And  among  those 
communities  we  are  most  concerned,  I  think,  with 
such  as,  in  the  conditions  of  freedom  and  of  self- 
government  which  they  demand  for  their  life,  are 
most  like  ourselves.  Germany,  for  instance,  we 
shall  less  regard,  because  the  conditions  which 
the  Germans  seem  to  accept  for  their  life  are  so 
unlike  what  we  demand  for  ours ;  there  is  so  much 
personal  government  there,  so  much  junJcerism, 
militarism,  officialism  ;  the  community  is  so  much 
more  trained  to  submission  than  we  could  bear, 
so  much  more  used  to  be,  as  the  popular  phrase 
is,  sat  upon.  Countries  where  the  community  has 
more  a  will  of  its  own,  or  can  more  show  it,  are 


EQUALITY 


483 


the  most  important  for  our  present  purpose — such 
countries  as  Belgium,  Holland,  Italy,  Switzerland. 
Well,  Belgium  adopts  purely  and  simply,  as  to 
bequest  and  inheritance,  the  provisions  of  the 
Code  Xapoleon.  Holland  adopts  them  purely  and 
simply.  Italy  lias  adopted  them  substantially. 
Switzerland  is  a  republic,  where  the  general  feel- 
ing against  inequality  is  strong,  and  where  it 
might  seem  less  necessary,  therefore,  to  guard 
against  inequality  by  interfering  with  the  power 
of  bequest.  Each  canton  has  its  own  law  of  be- 
quest. In  Geneva,  Vaud,  and  Zurich — perhaps 
the  three  most  distinguished  cantons — it  is  iden- 
tical with  that  of  France.  In  Berne,  one-third  is 
the  fixed  proportion  which  a  man  is  free  to  dis- 
pose of  by  will ;  the  rest  of  his  property  must  go 
among  his  children  equally.  In  all  the  other  can- 
tons there  are  regulations  of  a  like  kind.  Ger- 
many, I  was  saying,  will  interest  us  less  than 
these  freer  countries.  In  Germany — though  there 
is  not  the  English  freedom  of  bequest,  but  the 
rule  of  the  Roman  law  prevails,  the  rule  obliging 
the  parent  to  assign  a  certain  portion  to  each 
child — in  Germany  entails  and  settlements  in  fa- 
vor of  an  eldest  son  are  generally  permitted.  But 
there  is  a  remarkable  exception.  The  Rhine  coun- 
tries, which  in  the  early  part  of  this  century  were 
under  French  rule,  and  which  then  received  the 
Code  Xapoleon,  these  countries  refused  to  part 
with  it  when  they  wrere  restored  to  Germany  ;  and 
to  this  day  Rhenish  Prussia,  Rhenish  Hesse,  and 
Baden,  have  the  French  law  of  bequest,  forbid- 
ding entails,  and  dividing  property  in  the  way  we 
have  seen. 

The  United  States  of  America  have  the  Eng- 
lish liberty  of  bequest.  But  the  United  States 
are,  like  Switzerland,  a  republic,  with  the  repub- 
lican sentiment  for  equality.  Theirs  is,  besides, 
a  new  society ;  it  did  not  inherit  the  system  of 
classes  and  of  property  which  feudalism  formed 
in  Europe.  The  class  by  which  they  were  set- 
tled was  not  a  class  with  feudal  habits  and  ideas. 
It  is  notorious  that  to  hold  great  landed  estates 
and  to  entail  them  upon  an  eldest  son,  is  neither 
the  practice  nor  the  desire  of  any  class  in  Amer- 
ica. I  remember  hearing  it  said  to  an  American 
in  England,  "  But,  after  all,  you  have  the  same 
freedom  of  bequest  and  inheritance  as  we  have, 
and  if  a  man  to-morrow  chose  in  your  country  to 
entail  a  great  landed  estate  rigorously,  what  could 
you  do?"  The  American  answered,  "Set  aside 
the  will  on  the  ground  of  insanity." 

You  see  we  are  in  a  manner  taking  the  votes 
for  and  against  equality.  We  ought  not  to  leave 
out  our  own  colonies.     In  general  they  are,  of 


course,  like  the  United  States  of  America,  new 
societies.  They  have  the  English  liberty  of  be- 
quest. But  they  have  no  feudal  past,  and  were 
not  settled  by  a  class  with  feudal  habits  and  ideas. 
Nevertheless  it  happens  that  there  have  arisen, 
in  Australia,  exceedingly  large  estates,  and  that 
the  proprietors  seek  to  keep  them  together.  And 
what  have  we  seen  happen  lately  ?  An  act  has 
been  passed  which  in  effect  inflicts  a  fine  upon 
every  proprietor  who  holds  a  landed  estate  of 
more  than  a  certain  value.  The  measure  has 
been  severely  blamed  in  England ;  to  Mr.  Lowe 
such  a  "  concession  to  the  cry  for  equality  "  ap- 
pears, as  we  might  expect,  pregnant  with  warn- 
ings. At  present  I  neither  praise  it  nor  blame  it ; 
I  simply  take  it  as  one  of  the  votes  for  equality. 
And  is  it  not  a  singular  thing,  I  ask  you,  that  while 
we  have  the  religion  of  inequality,  and  can  hard- 
ly bear  to  hear  equality  spoken  of,  there  should 
be,  among  the  nations  of  Europe  which  have  po- 
litically most  in  common  with  us,  and  in  the 
United  States  of  America,  and  in  our  own  colo- 
nies, this  diseased  appetite,  as  we  must  think  it, 
for  equality  ?  Perhaps  Lord  Beaconsfield  may 
not  have  turned  your  minds  to  this  subject  as  he 
turned  mine,  and  what  Menander  or  George  Sand 
happen  to  have  said  may  not  interest  you  much  ; 
yet  surely,  when  you  think  of  it,  when  you  see 
what  a  practical  revolt  against  inequality  there  is 
among  so  many  people  not  so  very  unlike  to  our- 
selves, you  must  feel  some  curiosity  to  sift  the 
matter  a  little  further,  and  may  be  not  ill-disposed 
to  follow  me  while  I  try  to  do  so. 

I  have  received  a  letter  from  Clerkenwell,  in 
which  the  writer  reproaches  me  for  lecturing 
about  equality  at  this  which  he  calls  "the  most 
aristocratic  and  exclusive  place  out."  I  am  here 
because  your  secretary  invited  me.  But  I  am 
glad  to  treat  the  subject  of  equality  before  such 
an  audience  as  this.  Some  of  you  may  remember 
that  I  have  roughly  divided  our  English  society 
into  Barbarians,  Philistines,  Populace,  each  of 
them  with  their  prepossessions,  and  loving  to 
hear  what  gratifies  them.  But  I  remarked,  at 
the  same  time,  that  scattered  throughout  all  these 
three  classes  were  a  certain  number  of  generous 
and  humane  souls,  lovers  of  man's  perfection, 
detached  from  the  prepossessions  of  the  class  to 
which  they  might  naturally  belong,  and  desirous 
that  he  who  speaks  to  them  should,  as  Plato 
says,  not  try  to  please  his  fellow-servants,  but 
his  true  and  legitimate  masters,  the  heavenly 
gods.  I  feel  sure  that,  among  the  members  and 
frequenters  of  an  institution  like  this,  such  hu- 
mane souls  are  apt  to  congregate  in  numbers. 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY. -SUPPLEMENT. 


Even  from  the  reproach  which  my  Clerkenwell 
friend  brings  against  you  of  being  too  aristocratic, 
I  derive  some  comfort.  Only  I  give  to  the  term 
aristocratic  a  rather  wide  extension.  An  accom- 
plished American,  much  known  and  much  es- 
teemed in  this  country,  the  late  Mr.  Charles  Sum- 
ner, says  that  what  particularly  struck  him  in 
England  was  the  large  class  of  gentlemen  as  dis- 
tinct from  the  nobility,  and  the  abundance  among 
them  of  serious  knowledge,  high  accomplishment, 
and  refined  taste — taste  fastidious  perhaps,  says 
Mr.  Sumner,  to  excess,  but  erring  on  virtue's  side. 
And  he  goes  on  :  "I  do  not  know  that  there  is 
much  difference  between  the  manners  and  social 
observances  of  the  highest  classes  of  England  and 
those  of  the  corresponding  classes  of  France  and 
Germany;  but  in  the  rank  immediately  below  the 
highest — as  among  the  professions,  or  military 
men,  or  literary  men — there  you  will  find  that 
the  Englishmen  have  the  advantage.  They  are 
better  educated  and  better  bred,  more  careful  in 
their  personal  habits  and  in  social  conventions, 
more  refined."  Mr.  Sumner's  remark  is  just  and 
important ;  this  large  class  of  gentlemen  in  the 
professions,  the  services,  literature,  politics — and 
a  good  contingent  is  now  added  from  business 
also — this  large  class,  not  of  the  nobility  but 
with  the  accomplishments  and  tastes  of  an  upper 
class,  is  something  peculiar  to  England.  Of  this 
class  I  may  probably  assume  that  my  present 
audience  is  in  large  measure  composed.  It  is 
aristocratic  in  this  sense,  that  it  has  the  tastes 
of  a  cultivated  class,  a  certain  high  standard  of 
civilization.  Well,  it  is  in  its  effects  upon  civili- 
zation that  equality  interests  me.  And  I  speak  to 
an  audience  with  a  high  standard  of  civilization. 
If  I  say,  certain  things  in  certain  classes  do  not 
come  up  to  a  high  standard  of  civilization,  I 
need  not  prove  how  and  why  they  do  not ;  you 
will  feel  whether  they  do  or  not.  If  they  do 
not,  I  need  not  prove  that  this  is  a  bad  thing, 
that  a  high  standard  of  civilization  is  desirable; 
you  will  instinctively  feel  that  it  is.  Instead  of 
calling  this  "  the  most  aristocratic  and  exclusive 
place  out,"  I  conceive  of  it  as  a  civilized  place ; 
and  in  speaking  about  civilization  half  one's  labor 
is  saved  when  one  speaks  about  it  among  those 
who  are  civilized. 

Politics  are  forbidden  here ;  but  equality  is 
not  a  question  of  English  politics.  The  abstract 
right  to  equality  may,  indeed,  be  a  question  of 
speculative  politics.  French  equality  appeals  to 
this  abstract  natural  right  as  its  support.  It 
goes  back  to  a  state  of  Nature  where  all  were 
equal,  and  supposes  that  "the  poor  consented," 


as  Rousseau  says,  "  to  the  existence  of  rich  peo- 
ple," reserving  always  a  natural  right  to  return 
to  the  state  of  Nature.  It  supposes  that  a  child 
has  a  natural  right  to  his  equal  share  in  his 
father's  goods.  The  principle  of  abstract  right, 
says  Mr.  Lowe,  has  never  been  admitted  in  Eng- 
land, and  is  false.  I  so  entirely  agree  with  him, 
that  I  run  no  risk  of  offending  by  discussing 
equality  upon  the  basis  of  this  principle.  So  far 
as  I  can  sound  human  consciousness,  I  cannot, 
as  I  have  often  said,  perceive  that  man  is  really 
conscious  of  any  abstract  natural  rights  at  all. 
The  natural  right  to  have  work  found  for  one  to 
do,  the  natural  right  to  have  food  found  for  one 
to  eat,  rights  sometimes  so  confidently  and  so  in- 
dignantly asserted,  seem  to  me  quite  baseless. 
It  cannot  be  too  often  repeated — peasants  and 
workmen  have  no  natural  rights,  not  one.  Only 
we  ought  instantly  to  add,  that  kings  and  nobles 
have  none  either.  If  it  is  the  sound  English  doc- 
trine that  all  rights  are  created  by  law  and  are 
based  on  expediency,  and  are  alterable  as  the 
public  advantage  may  require,  certainly  that  or- 
thodox doctrine  is  mine.  Property  is  created 
and  maintained  by  law.  It  would  disappear  in 
that  state  of  private  war  and  scramble  which 
legal  society  supersedes.  Legal  society  creates, 
for  the  common  good,  the  right  of  property,  and 
for  the  common  good  that  right  is  by  legal  socie- 
ty limitable.  That  property  should  exist,  and 
that  it  should  be  held  with  a  sense  of  security 
and  with  a  power  of  disposal,  may  be  taken,  by 
us  here  at  any  rate,  as  a  settled  matter  of  expe- 
diency. "With  these  conditions  a  good  deal  of 
inequality  is  inevitable.  But  that  the  power  of 
disposal  should  be  practically  unlimited,  that  the 
inequality  should  be  enormous,  or  that  the  degree 
of  inequality  admitted  at  one  time  should  be  ad- 
mitted always — this  is  by  no  means  so  certain. 
The  right  of  bequest  was  in  early  times,  as  Sir 
Henry  Maine  and  Mr.  Mill  have  pointed  out,  sel- 
dom recognized.  In  later  times  it  has  been  lim- 
ited in  many  countries  in  the  way  that  we  have 
seen ;  even  in  England  itself  it  is  not  formally 
quite  unlimited.  The  question  is  one  of  expe- 
diency. It  is  assumed,  I  grant,  with  great  una- 
nimity among  us,  that  our  signal  inequality  of 
classes  and  property  is  expedient  for  our  civiliza- 
tion and  welfare.  But  this  assumption,  of  which 
the  distinguished  personages  who  adopt  it  seem 
so  sure  that  they  think  it  needless  to  produce 
grounds  for  it,  is  just  what  we  have  to  examine. 

Now,  there  is  a  sentence  of  Sir  Erskine  May, 
whom  I  have  already  quoted,  which  will  bring  us 
straight  to  the  very  point  that  I  wish  to  raise. 


EQUALITY. 


485 


Sir  Erskine  May,  after  saying,  as  you  have  heard, 
that  France  has  pursued  social  equality,  and  has 
come  to  fearful  troubles,  demoralization,  and  in- 
tellectual stoppage,  by  doing  so,  continues  thus : 
"  Yet  is  she  high,  if  not  the  first,  in  the  scale  of 
civilized  nations."  Why,  here  is  a  curious  thing, 
surely!  A  nation  pursues  social  equality,  sup- 
posed to  be  an  utterly  false  and  baneful  ideal ;  it 
arrives,  as  might  have  been  expected,  at  fearful 
misery  and  deterioration  by  doing  so ;  and  yet, 
at  the  same  time,  it  is  high,  if  not  the  first,  in  the 
scale  of  civilized  nations.  What  do  we  mean  by 
civilized?  Sir  Erskine  May  does  not  seem  to 
have  asked  himself  the  question.  So  we  will  try 
to  answer  it  for  ourselves.  Civilization  is  the 
humanization  of  man  in  society.  To  be  human- 
ized is  to  comply  with  the  true  law  of  our  human 
nature:  servare  modum,  Jinemque  tenere,  Natu- 
ramque  sequi,  says  Lucan ;  "  to  keep  our  meas- 
ure, and  to  hold  fast  our  end,  and  to  follow  Na- 
ture." To  be  humanized  is  to  make  progress 
toward  this,  our  true  and  full  humanity.  And  to 
be  civilized  is  to  make  progress  toward  this  in 
civil  society;  in  that  civil  society  "without 
which,"  says  Burke,  "man  could  not  by  any  pos- 
sibility arrive  at  the  perfection  of  which  his  na- 
ture is  capable,  nor  even  make  a  remote  and 
faint  approach  to  it."  To  be  the  most  civilized 
of  nations,  therefore,  is  to  be  the  nation  which 
comes  nearest  to  human  perfection,  in  the  state 
which  that  perfection  essentially  demands.  And 
a  nation  which  has  been  brought  by  the  pursuit 
of  social  equality  to  moral  deterioration,  intel- 
lectual stoppage,  and  fearful  troubles,  is  perhaps 
the  nation  which  has  come  nearest  to  human  per- 
fection in  that  state  which  such  perfection  essen- 
tially demands  !  M.  Michelet  himself,  who  would 
deny  the  demoralization  and  the  stoppage,  and 
call  the  fearful  troubles  a  sublime  expiation  for 
the  sins  of  the  whole  world,  could  hardly  say 
more  for  France  than  this.  Certainly  Sir  Erskine 
May  never  intended  to  say  so  much.  But  into 
what  a  difficulty  has  he  somehow  run  himself, 
and  what  a  good  action  would  it  be  to  extricate 
him  from  it !  Let  us  see  whether  the  perform- 
ance of  that  good  action  may  not  also  be  a  way 
of  clearing  our  minds  as  to  the  uses  of  equality. 
When  we  talk  of  man's  advance  toward  his 
full  humanity,  we  think  of  an  advance,  not  along 
one  line  only,  but  several.  Certain  races  and  na- 
tions, as  we  know,  are  on  certain  lines  preemi- 
nent and  representative.  The  Hebrew  nation 
was  preeminent  on  one  great  line.'  "What  na- 
tion," it  was  justly  said  by  their  lawgiver,  "  hath 
statutes  and  judgments  so  righteous  as  the  law 


which  I  set  before  you  this  day  ?  Keep  there- 
fore and  do  them  ;  for  this  is  your  wisdom  and 
your  understanding  in  the  sight  of  the  nations 
which  shall  hear  all  these  statutes  and  say,  Sure- 
ly this  great  nation  is  a  wise  and  understanding 
people  ! "  The  Hellenic  race  was  preeminent  on 
other  lines.  Isocrates  could  say  of  Athens :  "  Our 
city  has  left  the  rest  of  the  world  so  far  behind 
in  philosophy  and  eloquence,  that  those  educated 
by  Athens  have  become  the  teachers  of  the  rest 
of  mankind  ;  and  so  well  has  she  done  her  part, 
that  the  name  of  Greeks  seems  no  longer  to  stand 
for  a  race,  but  to  stand  for  intelligence  itself, 
and  they  who  share  in  our  culture  are  called 
Greeks  even  before  those  who  are  merely  of  our 
own  blood."  The  power  of  intellect  and  science, 
the  power  of  beauty,  the  power  of  social  life  and 
manners — these  are  what  Greece  so  felt,  and 
fixed,  and  may  stand  for.  They  are  great  ele- 
ments in  our  humanization.  The  power  of  con- 
duct is  another  great  element ;  and  this  was  so 
felt  and  fixed  by  Israel  that  we  can  never  with 
justice  refuse  to  allow  Israel,  in  spite  of  all  his 
shortcomings,  to  stand  for  it. 

So  you  see  that  in  being  humanized  we  have 
to  move  along  several  lines,  and  that  on  certain 
lines  certain  nations  find  their  strength,  and  take 
a  lead.  We  may  elucidate  the  thing  yet  further. 
Nations  now  existing  may  be  said  to  feel,  or  to 
have  felt,  the  power  of  this  or  that  element  in  our 
humanization  so  signally  that  they  are  character- 
ized by  it.  No  one  who  knows'this  country  would 
deny  that  it  is  characterized,  in  a  remarkable  de- 
gree, by  a  sense  of  the  power  of  conduct.  Our 
feeling  for  religion  is  one  part  of  this ;  our  indus- 
try is  another.  What  foreigners  so  much  remark 
in  us — our  public  spirit,  our  love,  amid  all  our 
liberty,  for  public  order  and  for  stability — are 
parts  of  it,  too.  The  power  of  beauty  was  so  felt 
by  the  Italians  that  their  art  revived,  as  we  know, 
the  almost  lost  idea  of  beauty,  and  the  serious  and 
successful  pursuit  of  it.  Cardinal  Antonelli,  speak- 
ing to  me  about  the  education  of  the  common  peo- 
ple in  Rome,  said  that  they  were  illiterate,  indeed, 
but  whoever  mingled  with  them  at  any  public  show, 
and  heard  them  pass  judgment  on  the  beauty  or 
ugliness  of  what  came  before  them — "  e  brutio" 
"e  hello'1'' — would  find  that  their  judgment  agreed 
admirably,  in  general,  with  just  what  the  most 
cultivated  people  would  say.  Even  at  the  present 
time,  then,  the  Italians  are  preeminent  in  feeling 
the  power  of  beauty.  The  power  of  knowledge, 
in  the  same  way,  is  eminently  an  influence  with  the 
Germans.  This  by  no  means  implies,  as  is  some- 
times supposed,  a  high  and  fine  general  culture. 


486 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


What  it  implies  is  a  strong  sense  of  the  necessi- 
ty of  knowing  scientifically,  as  the  expression  is, 
the  things  which  have  to  be  known  by  us — of 
knowing  them  systematically,  by  the  regular  and 
right  process,  and  in  the  only  real  way.  And  this 
sense  the  Germans  especially  have.  Finally,  there 
is  the  power  of  social  life  and  manners.  And  even 
the  Athenians  themselves,  perhaps,  have  hardly 
felt  this  power  so  much  as  the  French. 

Voltaire,  in  a  famous  passage,  where  he  extols 
the  age  of  Louis  XIV.,  and  ranks  it  with  the  chief 
epochs  in  the  civilization  of  our  race,  has  to  spe- 
cify the  gift  bestowed  on  us  by  the  age  of  Louis 
XIV.,  as  the  age  of  Pericles,  for  instance,  bestowed 
on  us  its  art  and  literature,  and  the  Italian  Re- 
nascence its  revival  of  art  and  literature.  And 
Voltaire  shows  all  his  acuteness  in  fixing  on  the 
gift  to  name.  It  is  not  the  sort  of  gift  which  we 
expect  to  see  named.  The  great  gilt  of  the  age 
of  Louis  XIV.  to  the  world,  says  Voltaire,  was 
this  :  V esprit  de  societe — the  spirit  of  society,  the 
social  spirit.  And  another  French  writer,  looking 
for  the  good  points  in  the  old  French  nobility, 
says  that  this,  at  any  rate,  is  to  be  said  in  their 
favor :  they  established  a  high  and  charming  ideal 
of  social  intercourse  and  manners,  for  a  nation 
formed  to  profit  by  such  an  ideal,  and  which  has 
profited  by  it  ever  since.  And  in  America,  per- 
haps, we  see  the  disadvantages  of  having  social 
equality  before  there  has  been  any  such  high 
standard  of  social  life  and  manners  formed.  We 
are  not  disposed  iff  England,  most  of  us,  to  attach 
all  this  importance  to  social  intercourse  and  man- 
ners. Yet  Burke  says,  "  There  ought  to  be  a 
system  of  manners  in  every  nation  which  a  well- 
formed  mind  would  be  disposed  to  relish."  And 
the  power  of  social  life  and  manners  is  truly,  as 
we  have  seen,  one  of  the  great  elements  in  our 
humanization.  L'nless  we  have  cultivated  it  we 
are  incomplete.  The  impulse  for  cultivating  it  is 
not,  indeed,  a  moral  impulse.  It  is  by  no  means 
identical  with  the  moral  impulse  to  help  our  neigh- 
bor and  to  do  him  good.  Yet,  in  many  ways,  it 
works  to  a  like  end.  It  brings  men  together, 
makes  them  feel  the  need  of  one  another,  be  con- 
siderate of  one  another,  understand  one  another. 
But,  above  all  things,  it  is  a  promoter  of  equality. 
It  is  by  the  humanity  of  their  manners  that  men 
are  made  equal.  "  A  man  thinks  to  show  himself 
my  equal,"  says  Goethe,  "by  being  grob — that  is 
to  say,  coarse  and  rude ;  he  does  not  show  him- 
self my  equal,  he  shows  himself  grob."  But  a 
community  having  humane  manners  is  a  commu- 
nity of  equals,  and,  in  such  a  community,  great 
social  inequalities  have  really  no  meaning,  while 


they  are,  at  the  same  time,  a  menace  and  an  em- 
barrassment to  perfect  ease  of  social  intercourse. 
A  community  with  the  spirit  of  society  is  emi- 
nently, therefore,  a  community  with  the  spirit  of 
equality.  A  nation  with  a  genius  for  society,  like 
the  French  or  the  Athenians,  is  irresistibly  drawn 
toward  equality.  From  the  first  moment  when  the 
French  people,  with  its  congenital  sense  for  the 
power  of  social  intercourse  and  manners,  came 
into  existence,  it  was  on  its  road  to  equality. 
When  it  had  once  got  a  high  standard  of  social 
manners  abundantly  established,  and,  at  the  same 
time,  the  natural,  material  necessity  for  the  feudal 
inequality  of  classes  and  property  pressed  upon  it 
no  longer,  the  French  people  introduced  equality 
and  made  the  French  Revolution.  It  was  not  the 
spirit  of  philanthropy  which  mainly  caused  that 
Revolution,  neither  was  it  the  spirit  of  envy ;  it 
was  the  spirit  of  society.  • 

The  well-being  of  the  many  comes  out  more 
and  more  distinctly,  as  time  goes  on,  as  the  ob- 
ject we  must  pursue.  An  individual  or  a  class, 
concentrating  their  efforts  upon  their  own  well- 
being  exclusively,  do  but  beget  troubles  both  for 
others  and  for  themselves  also.  No  individual 
life  can  be  truly  prosperous,  passed,  as  Obermann 
says,  in  the  midst  of  men  who  suffer — passee 
au  milieu  des  generations  qui  sovffrent.  To  the 
noble  soul,  it  cannot  be  happy  ;  to  the  ignoble,  it 
cannot  be  secure.  Socialistic  and  communistic 
schemes  have  generally,  however,  a  fatal  defect ; 
they  are  content  with  too  low  and  material  a 
standard  of  well-being.  That  instinct  of  perfec- 
tion, which  is  the  master-power  in  humanity,  al- 
ways rebels  at  this,  and  frustrates  the  work. 
Many  are  to  be  made  partakers  of  well-being, 
true ;  but  the  ideal  of  well-being  is  not  to  be,  on 
that  account,  lowered  and  coarsened.  M.  de  La- 
veleye,  the  political  economist,  who  is  a  Belgian 
and  a  Protestant,  and  whose  testimony,  therefore, 
we  may  the  more  readily  take  about  France,  says 
that  Fiance,  being  the  country  of  Europe  where 
the  soil  is  more  divided  than  anywhere  except  in 
Switzerland  and  Norway,  is  at  the  same  time  the 
country  where  material  well-being  is  most  widely 
spread,  where  wealth  has  of  late  years  increased 
most,  and  where  population  is  least  outrunning 
the  limits  which,  for  the  comfort  and  progress  of 
the  working-classes  themselves,  seem  necessary. 
This  may  go  for  a  good  deal.  It  supplies  an  an- 
swer to  what  Sir  Erskine  May  says  about  the  bad 
effects  of  equality  upon  French  prosperity.  But 
I  will  quote  to  you,  from  Mr.  Hamerton,  what 
goes,  I  think,  for  yet  more.  Mr.  Hamerton  is  an 
excellent  observer  and  reporter,  and  has  lived  for 


EQUALITY. 


4S7 


many  years  in  France.  lie  says  of  the  Freneb 
peasantry  that  they  are  exceedingly  ignorant. 
So  they  are.  But  he  adds:  "They  are  at  the 
same  time  full  of  intelligence ;  their  manners  are 
excellent,  they  have  delicate  perceptions,  they 
have  tact,  they  have  a  certain  refinement  which 
a  brutalized  peasantry  could  not  possibly  have. 
If  you  talk  to  one  of  them  at  his  own  home,  or  in 
his  field,  he  will  enter  into  conversation  with  you 
quite  easily,  and  sustain  his  part  in  a  perfectly 
becoming  way,  with  a  pleasant  combination  of 
dignity  and  quiet  humor.  The  interval  between 
him  and  a  Kentish  laborer  is  enormous."  This 
is  indeed  worth  your  attention.  Of  course,  all 
mankind  are,  as  Mr.  Gladstone  says,  of  our  own 
flesh  and  blood.  But  you  know  how  often  it  hap- 
pens in  England  that  a  cultivated  person,  a  per- 
son of  the  sort  that  Mr.  Charles  Sumner  describes, 
talking  to  one  of  the  lower  class,  or  even  of  the 
middle  class,  feels,  and  cannot  but  feel,  that  there 
is  somehow  a  wall  of  partition  between  himself 
and  the  other,  that  they  seem  to  belong  to  two 
different  worlds.  Thoughts,  feelings,  perception, 
susceptibilities,  language,  manners — everything 
— are  different.  Whereas,  with  a  French  peas- 
ant, the  most  cultivated  man  may  find  himself  in 
sympathy,  feel  that  he  is  talking  to  an  equal. 
This  is  an  experience  which  has  been  made  a 
thousand  times,  and  which  may  be  made  again 
any  day.  And  it  may  be  carried  beyond  the 
range  of  mere  conversation,  it  may  be  extended 
to  things  like  pleasures,  recreations,  eating  and 
drinking,  and  so  on.  In  general  the  pleasures, 
recreations,  eating  and  drinking  of  English  peo- 
ple, when  once  you  get  below  that  class  which  Mr. 
Charles  Sumner  calls  the  class  of  gentlemen,  are 
to  one  of  that  class  unpalatable  and  impossible. 
In  France  there  is  not  this  incompatibility.  The 
gentleman  feels  himself  in  a  world,  not  alien 
or  repulsive,  but  a  world  where  people  make  the 
same  sort  of  demands  upon  life,  in  things  of  this 
sort,  which  he  himself  does.  In  all  these  respects 
France  is  the  country  where  the  people,  as  dis- 
tinguished from  a  wealthy,  refined  class,  most 
lives  what  we  call  a  humane  life,  the  life  of  civil- 
ized man.  Of  course,  fastidious  persons  can  and 
do  pick  holes  in  it.  There  is  just  now,  in  France, 
a  noblesse  newly  revived,  full  of  pretension,  full  of 
airs  and  graces  and  disdains ;  but  its  sphere  is 
narrow,  and  out  of  its  own  sphere  no  one  cares 
very  much  for  it.  There  is  a  general  equality  in 
a  humane  kind  of  life.  This  is  the  secret  of  the 
passionate  attachment  with  which  France  inspires 
all  Frenchmen,  in  spite  of  her  fearful  troubles, 
her  checked  prosperity,  her  disconnected  units, 


and  the  rest  of  it.  There  is  so  much  of  the 
goodness  and  agreeableness  of  life  there,  and  for 
so  many.  It  is  the  secret  of  her  having  been  able 
to  attach  so  ardently  to  her  the  German  and  Prot- 
estant people  of  Alsace,  while  we  have  been  so 
little  able  to  attach  the  Celtic  and  Catholic  peo- 
ple of  Ireland.  France  brings  the  Alsatians  into 
a  social  system  so  full  of  the  goodness  and  agree- 
ableness of  life ;  we  offer  to  the  Irish  no  such  at- 
traction. It  is  the  secret,  finally,  of  the  preva- 
lence which  we  have  remarked  in  other  Conti- 
nental countries  of  a  legislation  tending,  like  that 
of  France,  to  social  equality.  The  social  system 
which  equality  creates  in  France  is,  in  the  eyes  of 
others,  such  a  giver  of  the  goodness  and  agree- 
ableness of  life,  that  they  seek  to  get  the  good- 
ness by  getting  the  equality. 

Yet  France  has  had  her  fearful  troubles,  as 
Sir  Erskine  May  justly  says.  She  suffers,  too,  he 
adds,  from  demoralization  and  intellectual  stop- 
page. Let  us  admit,  if  he  likes,  this  to  be  true 
also.  His  error  is,  that  he  attributes  all  this  to 
equality.  Equality,  as  we  have  seen,  has  brought 
France  to  a  really  admirable  and  enviable  pitch 
of  humanization  in  one  important  line.  And  this, 
the  work  of  equality,  is  so  much  a  good  in  Sir 
Erskine  May's  eyes,  that  he  has  mistaken  it  for 
the  whole  of  which  it  is  a  part,  frankly  identifies 
it  with  civilization,  and  is  inclined  to  pronounce 
France  the  most  civilized  of  nations.  But  we 
have  seen  how  much  goes  to  full  humanization, 
to  true  civilization,  besides  the  power  of  social 
life  and  manners.  There  is  the  power  of  con- 
duct, the  power  of  intellect  and  knowledge,  the 
power  of  beauty.  The  power  of  conduct  is  the 
greatest  of  all.  And  without  in  the  least  wishing 
to  preach,  I  must  observe,  as  a  mere  matter  of 
natural  fact  and  experience,  that  for  the  power  of 
conduct  France  has  never  had  anything  like  the 
same  sense  which  she  has  had  for  the  power  of 
social  life  and  manners.  Michelet,  himself  a 
Frenchman,  gives  us  the  reason  why  the  Refor- 
mation did  not  succeed  in  France.  It  did  not 
succeed,  he  says,  because  la  France  ne  voulait  pas 
de  reforme  morale — moral  reform  France  would 
not  have,  and  the  Reformation  was  above  all  a 
moral  movement.  The  sense  in,  France  for  the 
power  of  conduct  has  not  greatly  deepened,  I 
think,  since.  The  sense  for  the  power  of  in- 
tellect and  knowledge  has  not  been  adequate 
either.  The  sense  for  beauty  has  not  been  ad- 
equate. Intelligence  and  beauty  have  been,  in 
general,  but  so  far  reached  as  they  can  be  and 
are  reached  by  men  who,  of  the  elements  of  per- 
fect humanization,  lay  thorough  hold  upon  one 


488 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


only — the  power  of  social  intercourse  and  man- 
ners. I  speak  of  France  in  general ;  she  has  had, 
and  she  has,  individuals  who  stand  out  and  who 
form  exceptions.  Well,  then,  if  a  nation  laying 
no  true  hold  upon  the  powers  of  beauty  and 
knowledge,  and  a  most  failing  and  feeble  hold 
upon  the  power  of  conduct,  comes  to  demoral- 
ization and  intellectual  stoppage  and  fearful 
troubles,  we  need  not  be  inordinately  surprised. 
What  we  should  rather  marvel  at  is  the  healing 
and  bountiful  operation  of  Nature,  whereby  the 
laying  firm  hold  on  one  real  element  in  our 
humanization  has  had  for  France  results  so  be- 
neficent. 

And  thus,  when  Sir  Erskine  May  gets  bewil-' 
dered  between  France's  equality  and  fearful  trou- 
bles on  the  one  hand,  and  the  civilization  of 
France  on  the  other,  let  us  suggest  to  him  that 
perhaps  he  is  bewildered  by  his  data  because  he 
combines  them  ill.  France  has  not  exemplary 
disaster  and  ruin  as  the  fruits  of  equality,  and  at 
the  same  time,  and  independently  of  this,  an  ex- 
emplary civilization.  She  has  a  large  measure  of 
happiness  and  success  as  the  fruits  of  equality, 
and  she  has  a  very  large  measure  of  dangers  and 
troubles  as  the  fruits  of  something  else. 

We  have  more  to  do,  however,  than  to  help 
Sir  Erskine  May  out  of  his  scrape  about  France. 
We  have  to  see  whether  the  considerations  which 
we  have  been  employing  may  not  be  of  use  to  us 
about  England. 

We  shall  not  have  much  difficulty  in  admit- 
ting whatever  good  is  to  be  said  of  ourselves,  and 
we  will  try  not  to  be  unfair  by  excluding  all  that 
is  not  so  favorable.  Indeed,  our  less  favorable 
side  is  the  one  which  we  should  be  the  most 
anxious  to  note,  in  order  that  we  may  mend  it. 
But  we  will  begin  with  the  good.  Our  people 
has  energy  and  honesty  as  its  good  characteris- 
tics. We  have  a  strong  sense  for  the  chief  power 
in  the  life  and  progress  of  man — the  power  of 
conduct.  So  far  we  speak  of  the  English  people 
as  a  whole.  Then  we  have  a  rich,  refined,  and 
splendid  aristocracy.  And  we  have,  according 
to  Mr.  Charles  Sumner's  acute  and  true  remark, 
a  class  of  gentlemen,  not  of  the  nobility,  but 
well-bred,  cultivated,  and  refined,  larger  than  is 
to  be  found  in  any  other  country.  For  these 
last  we  have  Mr.  Sumner's  testimony.  As  to 
the  splendor  of  our  aristorcacy,  all  the  world  is 
agreed.  Then  we  have  a  middle  class  and  a  low- 
er class ;  and  they,  after  all,  are  the  immense 
bulk  of  the  nation. 

Let  us  see  how  the  civilization  of  these  classes 


appears  to  a  Frenchman,  who  has  witnessed,  in 
his  own  country,  the  considerable  humanization 
of  these  classes  by  equality.  To  such  an  observer 
our  middle  class  divides  itself  into  a  serious  por- 
tion, and  a  gay  or  rowdy  portion ;  both  are  a 
marvel  to  him.  With  the  gay  or  rowdy  portion 
we  need  not  much  concern  ourselves  ;  we  shall 
figure  it  to  our  minds  sufficiently  if  we  conceive 
it  as  the  source  of  that  war-song  produced  in 
these  recent  days  of  excitement : 

"  We  don't  want  to  fight,  but,  by  jingo,  if  we  do, 
We've  got  the  ships,  we've  got  the  men,  and  we've 
got  the  money  too." 

We  may  also  partly  judge  its  standard  of  life,  and 
the  needs  of  its  nature,  by  the  modern  English 
theatre,  perhaps  the  most  contemptible  in  Eu- 
rope. But  the  real  strength  of  the  English  mid- 
dle class  is  in  its  serious  portion.  And  of  this  a 
Frenchman,  who  was  here  some  little  time  ago  as 
the  correspondent,  I  think,  of  the  Steele  newspa- 
per, and  whose  letters  were  afterward  published 
in  a  volume,  writes  as  follows.  He  had  been  at- 
tending some  of  the  Moody  and  Sankey  meetings, 
and  he  says :  "  To  understand  the  success  of 
Messrs.  Moody  and  Sankey,  one  must  be  familiar 
with  English  manners,  one  must  known  the  mind- 
deadening  influence  of  a  narrow  Biblism,  one 
must  have  experienced  the  sense  of  acute  ennui 
which  the  aspect  and  the  frequentation  of  this 
great  division  of  English  society  produce  in  oth- 
ers, the  want  of  elasticity,  and  the  chronic  ennui 
which  characterize  this  class  itself,  petrified  in  a 
narrow  Protestantism  and  in  a  perpetual  reading 
of  the  Bible."  You  know  the  French — a  little 
more  Biblism,  one  may  take  leave  to  say,  would 
do  them  no  harm.  But  an  audience  like  this — 
and  here,  as  I  said,  is  the  advantage  of  an  au- 
dience like  this — will  have  no  difficulty  in  admit- 
ting the  amount  of  truth  which  there  is  in  the 
Frenchman's  picture.  It  is  the  picture  of  a  class 
which,  driven  by  its  sense  for  the  power  of  con- 
duct, in  the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury, entered — as  I  have  more  than  once  said, 
and  as  I  may  more  than  once  have  occasion  in 
future  to  say — entered  the  prison  of  Puritanism, 
and  had  the  key  turned  upon  its  spirit  there  for 
two  hundred  years.  They  did  not  know,  good  and 
earnest  people  as  they  were,  that  to  the  building 
up  of  human  life  there  belong  all  those  other 
powers  also — the  power  of  intellect  and  knowl- 
edge, the  power  of  beauty,  the  power  of  social 
life  and  manners.  And  something,  by  what  they 
became,  they  gained,  and  the  whole  nation  with 
them ;  they  deepened  and  fixed  for  this  nation 
the  sense  of  conduct.     But  they  created  a  type 


EQUALITY. 


489' 


of  life  and  manners,  of  which  they  themselves 
indeed  are  slow  to  recognize  the  faults,  but  which 
is  fatally  condemned  by  its  hideousness,  its  im- 
mense ennui,  and  against  which  the  instinct  of 
self-preservation  in  humanity  rebels. 

Partisans  fight  against  facts  in  vain.  Mr. 
Goldwin  Smith,  a  writer  of  eloquence  and  power, 
although  too  prone  to  acerbity,  is  a  partisan  of 
the  Puritans,  and  of  the  Nonconformists,  who  are 
the  special  inheritors  of  the  Puritan  tradition. 
He  angrily  resents  the  imputation  upon  that  Puri- 
tan type  of  life,  on  which  the  life  of  our  serious 
middle  class  has  been  formed,  that  it  was  doomed 
to  hideousness,  to  immense  ennui.  He  protests 
that  it  had  beauty,  amenity,  accomplishment.  Let 
us  go  to  facts.  Charles  I.,  who,  with  all  his  faults, 
had  the  just  idea  that  art  and  letters  are  great 
civilizers,  made,  as  you  know,  a  famous  collection 
of  pictures — our  first  National  Gallery.  It  was, 
I  suppose,  the  best  collection  at  that  time  north 
of  the  Alps.  It  contained  nine  Raphaels,  eleven 
Correggios,  twenty-eight  Titians.  What  became 
of  that  collection  ?  The  journals  of  the  House 
of  Commons  will  tell  you.  There  you  may  see 
the  Puritan  Parliament  disposing  of  this  White- 
hall, or  York  House,  collection,  as  follows :  "  Or- 
dered, that  all  such  pictures  and  statues  there  as 
are  without  any  superstition,  shall  be  forthwith 
sold.  .  .  .  Ordered,  that  all  such  pictures  there 
as  have  the  representation  of  the  Second  Person 
in  Trinity  upon  them,  shall  be  forthwith  burned. 
Ordered,  that  all  such  pictures  there  as  have  the 
representation  of  the  Virgin  Mary  upon  them, 
shall  be  forthwith  burned."  There  we  have  the 
weak  side  of  our  parliamentary  government,  and 
our  serious  middle  class.  We  are  incapable  of 
sending  Mr.  Gladstone  to  be  tried  at  the  Old 
Bailey  because  he  proclaims  his  antipathy  to  Lord 
Beaconsfield ;  a  majority  in  our  House  of  Com- 
mons is  incapable  of  hailing,  with  frantic  laughter 
and  applause,  a  string  of  indecent  jests  against 
Christianity  and  its  founder ;  but  we  are  not,  or 
were  not,  incapable  of  producing  a  Parliament 
which  burns  or  sells  the  masterpieces  of  Italian 
art.  And  one  may  surely  say  of  such  a  Puritan 
Parliament,  and  of  those  who  determine  its  line 
for  it,  that  they  had  not  the  spirit  of  beauty. 

What  shall  we  say  of  amenity  ?  Milton  was 
born  a  humanist,  but  the  Puritan  temper,  as  we 
know,  mastered  him.  There  is  nothing  more  un- 
lovely and  unamiable  than  Milton,  the  Puritan  dis- 
putant. Some  one  answers  his  "Doctrine  and 
Discipline  of  Divorce."  "  I  mean  not,"  rejoins 
Milton,  "to  dispute  philosophy  with  this  pork, 
who  never  read  any."     However,  he  does  reply  to 


him,  and  throughout  the  reply  Milton's  great  joke 
is,  that  his  adversary,  who  was  anonymous,  is  a 
serving-man.  "  Finally,  he  winds  up  his  text  with 
much  doubt  and  trepidation;  for,  it  may  be,  his 
trenchers  were  not  scraped,  and  that  which  never 
yet  afforded  corn  of  favor  to  his  noddle — the  salt- 
cellar— was  not  rubbed ;  and,  therefore,  in  this 
haste,  easily  granting  that  his  answers  fall  foul 
upon  each  other,  and  praying  you  would  not 
think  he  writes  as  a  prophet,  but  as  a  man,  he 
runs  to  the  black  jack,  fills  his  flagon,  spreads 
the  table,  and  serves  up  dinner."  There  you 
have  the  same  spirit  of  urbanity  and  amenity,  as 
much  of  it  and  as  little,  as  generally  informs  the 
religious  controversies  of  our  Puritan  middle 
class  to  this  day. 

But  Mr.  Goldwin  Smith  insists,  and  picks  out 
his  own  exemplar  of  the  Puritan  type  of  life  and 
manners,  and  even  here  let  us  follow  him.  He 
picks  out  the  most  favorable  specimen  he  can 
find,  Colonel  Hutchinson,  whose  well-known  me- 
moirs, written  by  his  widow,  we  have  all  read  with 
interest.  "  Lucy  Hutchinson,"  says  Mr.  Goldwin 
Smith,  "  is  painting  what  she  thought  a  perfect 
Puritan  would  be ;  and  her  picture  presents  to  us 
not  a  coarse,  crop-eared,  and  snuffling  fanatic, 
but  a  highly-accomplished,  refined,  gallant,  and 
most  amiable,  though  religious  and  seriously- 
minded  gentleman."  Let  us,  I  say,  in  this  exam- 
ple of  Mr.  Goldwin  Smith's  own  choosing,  lay  our 
finger  upon  the  points  where  this  type  deflects 
from  the  truly  humane  ideal.  Mrs.  Hutchinson 
relates  a  story  which  gives  us  a  good  notion  of 
what  the  amiable  and  accomplished  social  inter- 
course, even  of  a  picked  Puritan  family,  was. 
Her  husband  was  Governor  of  Nottingham.  He 
had  occasion,  she  says,  "to  go  and  break  up  a 
private  meeting  in  the  cannoneer's  chamber ; " 
and  in  the  cannoneer's  chamber  "  were  found 
some  notes  concerning  paedobaptism,  which,  be- 
ing brought  into  the  governor's  lodgings,  his  wife 
having  perused  them  and  compared  them  with  the 
Scriptures,  found  not  what  to  say  against  the 
truths  they  asserted  concerning  the  misapplica- 
tion of  that  ordinance  to  infants."  Soon  after- 
ward she  expectl  her  confinement,  and  communi- 
cates the  cannoneer's  doubts  about  paedobaptism 
to  her  husband.  The  fatal  cannoneer  makes  a 
breach  in  him  too.  "  Then  he  bought  and  read 
all  the  eminent  treatises  on  both  sides,  which,  at 
that  time,  came  thick  from  the  presses,  and  still 
was  cleared  in  the  error  of  the  pasdobaptists." 
Finally,  Mrs.  Hutchinson  is  confined.  Then  the 
governor  "invited  all  the  ministers  to  dinner,  and 
propounded  his  doubt,  and  the  ground  thereof, 


490 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


to  them.  None  of  them  could  defend  their  prac- 
tice with  any  satisfactory  reason,  but  the  tradition 
of  the  Church  from  the  primitive  times,  and  their 
main  buckler  of  federal  holiness,  which  Tombs 
and  Denne  had  excellently  overthrown.  He  and 
his  wife  then,  professing  themselves  unsatisfied, 
desired  their  opinions."  With  the  opinions  I 
will  not  trouble  you,  but  hasten  to  the  result — 
"  Whereupon  that  infant  was  not  baptized." 

No  doubt,  to  a  large  division  of  English  soci- 
ety at  this  very  day,  that  sort  of  dinner  and  dis- 
cussion, and,  indeed,  the  whole  manner  of  life  and 
conversation  here  suggested  by  Mrs.  Hutchinson's 
narrative,  will  seem  both  natural  and  amiable, 
and  such  as  to  meet  the  needs  of  man  both  as 
a  religious  and  as  a  social  creature.  You  know 
the  conversation  which  reigns  in  thousands  of 
•  middle-class  families  at  this  hour  about  nunne- 
ries, teetotalism,  the  confessional,  eternal  punish- 
ment, ritualism,  disestablishment.  It  goes  wher- 
ever the  class  goes  which  is  moulded  on  the  Puri- 
tan type  of  life.  In  the  long  winter  evenings  of 
Toronto,  Mr.  Goldwin  Smith  has  had,  probably, 
abundant  experience  of  it.  What  is  its  enemy  ? 
The  instinct  of  self-preservation  in  humanity. 
Men.  make,  crude  types  and  try  to  impose  them, 
but  to  no  purpose.  "  Hhomme  tfagite,  JDieii  le 
mene"  says  Bossuet.  "  There  are  many  devices 
in  a  man's  heart ;  nevertheless,  the  counsel  of 
the  Eternal,  that  shall  stand."  Those  who  offer 
us  the  Puritan  type  of  life,  offer  us  a  religion  not 
true,  the  claims  of  intellect  and  knowledge  not 
satisfied,  the  claim  of  beauty  not  satisfied,  the 
claim  of  manners  not  satisfied.  In  its  strong 
sense  for  conduct  that  life  touches  truth  ;  but  its 
other  imperfections  hinder  it  from  employing 
even  this  sense  aright.  The  type  mastered  our 
nation  for  a  time.  Then  came  the  reaction.  The 
nation  said  :  "  This  type,  at  any  rate,  is  amiss  ; 
we  are  not  going  to  be  all  like  that."  The  type 
retired  into  our  middle  class,  and  fortified  itself 
there.  It  seeks  to  endure,  to  emerge,  to  deny  its 
own  imperfections,  to  impose  itself  again ;  im- 
possible !  If  we  continue  to  live  we  mvist  out- 
grow it.  The  very  class  in  which  it  is  rooted, 
our  middle  class,  will  have  to  acknowledge  the 
type's  inadequacy ;  will  have  to  acknowledge  the 
hideousness,  the  immense  ennui  of  the  life  which 
this  type  has  created  ;  will  have  to  transform  it- 
self thoroughly.  It  will  have  to  admit  the  large 
part  of  truth  which  there  is  in  the  criticisms  of 
our  Frenchman,  whom  we  have  too  long  forgotten. 

After  our  middle  class,  he  turns  his  attention 
to  our  lower  class.  And  of  the  lower  and  larger 
portion  of  this  —  the  portion  not  bordering  on 


the  middle  class  and  sharing  its  faults — he  says  : 
"  I  consider  this  multitude  to  be  absolutely  de- 
void, not  only  of  political  principles,  but  even  of 
the  most  simple  notions  of  good  and  evil.  Cer- 
tainly, it  does  not  appeal,  this  mob,  to  the  prin- 
ciples of  '89,  which  you  English  make  game  of; 
it  does  not  insist  on  the  rights  of  man  ;  what  it 
wants  is  beer,  gin,  and  fun."  1 

That  is  a  description  of  what  Mr.  Bright 
would  call  the  residuum,  only  our  author  seems 
to  think  the  residuum  a  very  large  body.  And 
its  condition  strikes  him  with  amazement  and 
horror.  And  surely  well  it  may.  Let  us  recall 
Mr.  Hamerton's  account  of  the  most  illiterate 
class  in  France  ;  what  an  amount  of  civilization 
they  have,  notwithstanding '.  And  this  is  always 
to  be  understood,  in  hearing  or  reading  a  French- 
man's praise  of  England.  He  envies  our  liberty, 
our  public  spirit,  our  trade,  our  stability.  But 
there  is  always  reserve  in  his  mind.  He  never 
means  for  a  moment  that  he  would  like  to  change 
with  us.  Life  seems  to  him  so  much  better  a 
thing  in  France  for  so  many  more  people,  that, 
in  spite  of  the  fearful  troubles  of  France,  it  is  far 
best  to  be  a  Frenchman.  A  Frenchman  might 
agree  with  Mr.  Cobden,  that  life  is  good  in  Eng- 
land for  those  people  who  have  at  least  £5,000  a 
year.  But  the  civilization  of  that  immense  ma- 
jority who  have  not  £5,000  a  year,  or  £500,  or 
even  £100,  of  our  middle  and  lower  class,  seems 
to  him  too  deplorable. 

And  now,  what  has  this  condition  of  our  mid- 
dle and  lower  class  to  tell  us  about  equality  ? 
How  is  it,  must  we  not  ask,  how  is  it  that,  being 
without  fearful  troubles,  having,  as  a  nation,  a 
deep  sense  for  conduct,  having  signal  energy  and 
honesty,  having  a  splendid  aristocracy,  having  an 
exceptionally  large  class  of  gentlemen,  we  are 
yet  so  little  civilized  ?  How  is  it  that  our  middle 
and  lower  class,  in  spite  of  the  individuals  among 
them  who  are  raised  by  happy  gifts  of  Nature  to 
a  more  humane  life,  in  spite  of  the  seriousness  of 
the  middle  class,  in  spite  of  the  general  honesty 
and  power  of  true  work,  verus  labor,  which  pre- 
vail throughout  the  lower,  do  yet  present,  as  a 
whole,  the  characters  which  we  have  seen  ? 

And,  really,  it  seems  as  if  the  current  of  our 
discourse  carried  us  of  itself  to  but  one  conclu- 
sion. It  seems  as  if  we  could  not  avoid  conclud- 
ing that,  just  as  France  owes  her  fearful  troubles 
to  other  things  and  her  civilizedness  to  equality, 
so  we  owe  our  immunity  from  fearful  troubles  to 
other  things,  and  our  uncivilizedness  to  inequal- 
ity. "  Knowledge  is  easy,"  says  the  wise  man, 
1  So  in  the  orijrinal. 


EQUALITY. 


491 


''  to  him  that  understandeth  ;  "  easy,  he  means, 
to  him  who  will  use  his  mind  simply  and  ration- 
ally, and  not  to  make  him  think  he  can  know 
what  he  cannot,  or  to  maintain,  per  fas  et  nefas, 
a  false  thesis  with  which  he  fancies  his  interests 
to  be  bound  up.  And  to  him  who  will  use  his 
mind  as  the  wise  man  recommends,  surely  it  is 
easy  to  see  that  our  shortcomings  in  civilization 
are  due  to  our  inequality — or,  in  other  words, 
that  the  inequality  of  classes  and  property,  which 
came  to  us  from  the  middle  age,  and  which  we 
maintain  because  we  have  the  religion  of  inequal- 
ity, that  this  constitution  of  things,  I  say,  has 
the  natural  and  necessary  effect,  under  present 
circumstances,  of  materializing  our  upper  class, 
vulgarizing  our  middle  class,  and  brutalizing  our 
lower  class.     And  this  is  to  fail  in  civilization. 

For,  only  just  look  how  the  facts  combine 
themselves.  I  have  said  little  as  yet  about  our 
aristocratic  class,  except  that  it  is  splendid.  Yet 
these,  "  our  often  very  unhappy  brethren,"  as 
Burke  calls  them,  are  by  no  means  matter  for 
nothing  but  ecstasy.  Our  charity  ought  certain- 
ly, as  he  says,  to  extend  "  a  due  and  anxious  sen- 
sation of  pity  to  the  distresses  of  the  miserable 
great."  Burke's  extremely  strong  language  about 
their  miseries  and  defects  I  will  not  quote.  For 
my  part,  I  am  always  disposed  to  marvel  that 
human  beings,  in  a  position  so  false,  should  be 
so  good  as  these  are.  Their  reason  for  existing 
was  to  serve  as  a  number  of  centres  in  a  world 
disintegrated  after  the  ruin  of  the  Roman  Em- 
pire, and  slowly  reconstituting  itself.  Numerous 
centres  of  material  force  were  needed,  and  these 
a  feudal  aristocracy  supplied.  Their  large  and 
hereditary  estates  served  this  public  end.  The 
owners  had  a  positive  function,  for  which  their 
estates  were  essential.  In  our  modern  world  the 
function  is  gone ;  and  the  great  estates,  with  an 
infinitely  multiplied  power  of  ministering  to  mere 
pleasure  and  indulgence,  remain.  The  energy  and 
honesty  of  our  race  does  not  leave  itself  without 
witness,  and  in  no  class  are  there  more  conspicu- 
ous examples  of  individuals  raised  by  happy  gifts 
of  Nature  far  above  their  fellows  and  their  cir- 
cumstances. But  on  the  whole,  with  no  necessary 
function  to  fulfill,  never  conversant  with  life  as  it 
really  is,  tempted,  flattered,  and  spoiled  from 
childhood  to  old  age,  our  aristocratic  class  is 
inevitably  materialized,  and  the  more  so  the  more 
the  development  of  industry  and  ingenuity  aug- 
ments the  means  of  luxury.  Every  one  can  see 
how  bad  is  the  action  of  such  an  aristocracy  upon 
the  class  of  newly-enriched  people,  whose  great 
danger  is  a  materialistic  ideal,  just  because  it  is 


the  ideal  they  can  easiest  comprehend.  The  effect 
on  society  at  large,  and  on  national  progress,  is 
what  we  must  regard.  Turn  even  to  that  sphere 
which  aristocracies  think  specially  their  own,  and 
where  they  have  under  other  circumstances  been 
really  effective — the  sphere  of  politics.  When 
there  is  need  for  any  large  forecast  of  the  course 
of  human  affairs,  for  an  acquaintance  with  the 
ideas  which  in  the  end  sway  mankind,  and  for  an 
estimate  of  their  power,  aristocracies  are  out  of 
their  element,  and  materialist  aristocracies  most 
of  all.  In  the  immense  spiritual  movement  of  our 
day,  the  English  aristocracy,  as  I  have  said,  al- 
ways reminds  me  of  Pilate  confronting  the  phe- 
nomenon of  Christianity.  Nor  can  a  materialized 
class  have  a  serious  and  fruitful  sense  for  the 
power  of  beauty.  They  may  imagine  themselves 
in  pursuit  of  beauty ;  but  how  often,  alas,  does 
the  pursuit  come  to  little  more  than  dabbling  a 
little  in  what  they  are  pleased  to  call  art,  and 
making  a  great  deal  of  what  they  are  pleased  to 
call  love !  For  the  power  of  manners,  on  the 
other  baud,  an  aristocratic  class,  whether  mate- 
rialized or  not,  will  always  from  its  circumstances 
have  a  strong  sense.  And  although  for  this 
power  of  social  life  and  manners,  so  important  to 
civilization,  our  race  has  no  special  natural  turn, 
in  our  aristocracy  this  power  emerges,  and  mark 3 
them.  When  the  day  of  general  humanization 
comes,  they  will  have  fixed  the  standard  of  man- 
ners. The  English  simplicity,  too,  makes  the  best 
of  the  English  aristocracy  more  frank  and  natural 
than  the  best  of  the  like  class  anywhere  else,  and 
even  the  worst  of  them  it  makes  free  from  the 
incredible  fatuities  and  absurdities  of  the  worst. 
Then  the  sense  of  conduct  they  share  with  their 
countrymen  at  large.  In  no  class  has  it  such 
trials  to  undergo ;  in  none  is  it  more  often  and 
more  grievously  overborne.  But  really  the  right 
comment  on  this  is  the  comment  of  Pepys  upon 
the  evil  'courses  of  Charles  II.  and  the  Duke  of 
York,  and  the  court  of  that  day  :  "  At  all  which 
I  am  sorry;  but  it  is  the  effect  of  idleness,  and 
having  nothing  else  to  employ  their  great  spirits 
upon." 

Heaven  forbid  that  I  should  speak  in  dispraise 
of  that  unique  and  most  English  class  which  Mr. 
Charles  Sumner  extols — the  large  class  of  gentle- 
men, not  of  the  landed  class  or  the  nobility,  but 
cultivated  and  refined.  They  are  a  seemly  prod- 
uct of  the  energy  and  of  the  power  to  rise  in 
our  race.  Without,  in  general,  rank  and  splendor, 
and  wealth  and  luxury  to  polish  them,  they  have 
made  their  own  the  high  standard  of  life  and  man- 
ners of  an  aristocratic  and  refined  class.     Not 


492 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


having  all  the  dissipations  and  distractions  of  this 
class,  they  are  much  more  seriously  alive  to  the 
power  of  intellect  and  knowledge,  to  the  power 
of  beauty.  The  sense  of  conduct,  too,  meets 
with  fewer  temptations.  To  some  extent,  how- 
ever, their  contiguousness  to  the  aristocratic  class 
materializes  them,  as  it  does  the  class  of  newly- 
enriched  people.  The  most  palpable  action  is  on 
the  young,  and  on  their  standard  of  life  and  en- 
joyment. But  in  general,  for  this  whole  class, 
established  facts,  the  materialism  they  see  reg- 
nant, too  much  block  their  mental  horizon,  and 
limit  the  possibilities  of  things  to  them.  They  are 
deficient  in  openness  and  flexibility  of  mind,  in  free 
play  of  ideas,  in  faith  and  ardor.  Civilized  they 
are,  but  they  are  not  much  of  a  civilizing  force ; 
they  are  somehow  bounded  and  ineffective. 

So  on  the  middle  class  they  produce  singularly 
little  effect.  What  the  middle  class  sees  is  that 
splendid  piece  of  materialism,  the  aristocratic 
class,  with  a  wealth  and  luxury  utterly  out  of 
their  reach,  with  a  standard  of  social  life  and 
manners,  the  offspring  of  that  wealth  and  luxury 
seeming  utterly  out  of  their  reach  also ;  and  thus 
they  are  thrown  back  upon  themselves — upon  a 
defective  type  of  religion,  a  narrow  range  of  in- 
tellect and  knowledge,  a  stunted  sense  of  beauty, 
a  low  standard  of  manners.  And  the  lower  class 
see  before  them  the  aristocratic  class,  and  its 
civilization,  such  as  it  is,  even  infinitely  more  out 
of  their  reach  than  out  of  that  of  the  middle  class  ; 
while  the  life  of  the  middle  class,  with  its  un- 
lovely types  of  religion,  thought,  beauty,  and 
manners,  has  naturally,  in  general,  no  great  at- 
tractions for  them  either ;  and  so  they  too  are 
thrown  back  upon  themselves ;  upon  their  beer, 
their  gin,  and  their  fun.  Now,  then,  you  will 
understand  what  I  meant  by  saying  that  our  ine- 
quality materializes  our  upper  class,  vulgarizes 
our  middle,  brutalizes  our  lower.  And  the  greater 
the  inequality  the  more  marked  is  its  bad  action 
upon  the  middle  and  lower  classes.  In  Scotland 
the  landed  aristocracy  fills  the  scene,  as  is  well 
known,  still  more  than  in  England ;  the  other 
classes  are  more  squeezed  back  and  effaced,  and 
the  social  civilization  of  the  lower  middle  class, 
and  of  the  poorest  class,  in  Scotland,  is  an  exam- 
ple of  the  consequences.  Compared  with  the 
same  class  even  in  England,  the  Scottish  lower 
middle  class  is  most  visibly,  to  vary  Mr.  Charles 
Sumner's  phrase,  less  well-bred,  less  careful  in 
personal  habits  and  in  social  conventions,  less 
refined.  Let  any  one  who  doubts  it  go,  after  is- 
suing from  the  aristocratic  solitudes  which  pos- 
sess Loch  Lomond,  let  him  go  and  observe  the 


shopkeepers  and  the  middle  class  in  Dumbarton, 
and  Greenock,  and  Gourock,  and  the  places  alonj.; 
the  mouth  of  the  Clyde.  And  for  the  poorest 
class,  who  that  has  seen  it  can  ever  forget  the 
hardly  human  horror,  the  abjection  and  uncivil- 
izedness  of  Glasgow  ? 

What  a  strange  religion,  then,  is  our  religion 
of  inequality  !  Romance  is  good  in  its  way,  but 
ours  is  not  even  a  romantic  religion.  No  doubt 
our  aristocracy  is  an  object  of  strong  public  in- 
terest. The  Times  itself  bestows  a  leading  arti- 
cle, by  way  of  epithalamium,  on  the  Duke  of  Nor- 
folk's marriage.  And  those  journals  of  a  new 
type,  full  of  talent,  and  which  interest  me  particu- 
larly because  they  seem  as  if  they  were  written 
by  the  young  lion  of  our  youth — the  young  lion 
grown  mellow  and,  as  the  French  say,  viveur,  ar- 
rived at  his  full  and  ripe  knowledge  of  the  world, 
and  minded  to  enjoy  the  smooth  evening  of  his 
days — those  journals,  in  the  main  a  sort  of  social 
gazette  of  the  aristocracy,  are  apparently  not 
read  by  that  class  only  which  they  most  concern, 
but  are  read  with  avidity  by  other  classes  also. 
And  the  common  people,  too,  have  undoubtedly, 
as  Mr.  Gladstone  says,  a  wonderful  preference  for 
a  lord.  Yet  our  aristocracy,  from  the  action  upon 
it  of  the  Wars  of  the  Roses,  the  Tudors,  and  the 
political  necessities  of  George  III.,  is  for  the  im- 
agination a  singularly  modern  and  uninterest- 
ing one.  Its  splendor  of  station,  wealth,  show, 
and  luxury,  is  then  what  the  other  classes  really 
admire  in  it ;  and  this  is  not  an  elevating  admira- 
tion. So  that  when  Mr.  Gladstone  invites  us  to 
call  our  love  of  inequality  "the  complement  of 
the  love  of  freedom  or  its  negative  pole,  or  the 
shadow  which  the  love  of  freedom  casts,  or  the 
reverberation  of  its  voice  in  the  halls  of  the  con- 
stitution," we  must  surely  answer  that  all  this 
mystical  eloquence  is  not  in  the  least  necessary  to 
explain  so  simple  a  matter ;  that  our  love  of  in- 
equality is  really  the  vulgarity  in  us,  and  the 
brutality,  admiring  and  worshiping  the  splendid 
materiality. 

Our  present  social  organization,  however,  will 
and  must  endure  until  our  middle  class  is  pro- 
vided with  some  better  ideal  of  life  than  it  has 
now.  That  organization  has  been  an  appointed 
stage  in  our  growth  ;  it  has  been  of  good  use,  and 
has  enabled  us  to  do  great  things.  But  the  use 
is  at  an  end,  and  the  stage  is  over.  Ask  yourselves 
if  you  do  not  often  feel  in  yourselves  a  sense 
that,  in  spite  of  the  strenuous  efforts  for  good  of 
so  many  excellent  persons  among  us,  we  begin 
somehow  to  flounder  and  to  beat  the  air ;  that  we 
seem  to  be  finding  ourselves  stopped  on  this  line 


HELL  AXD   THE  DIVINE    VERACITY. 


493 


of  advance  and  on  that,  and  to  be  threatened  with 
a  standstill.  It  is  that  we  are  trying  to  live  on 
with  a  social  organization  of  which  the  day  is  over. 
Certainly  equality  will  never  of  itself  alone  give  us 
a  perfect  civilization.  But,  with  such  inequality  as 
ours,  a  perfect  civilization  is  impossible.  To  that 
conclusion,  facts,  and  the  stream  itself  of  this  dis- 
course, do  seem,  I  think,  to  carry  us  irresistibly. 
We  arrive  at  it  because  they  so  choose,  not  be- 
cause we  so  choose.  Our  tendencies  are  all  the 
other  way.  We  are  most  of  us  politicians,  and  in 
one  of  two  camps,  the  Liberal  or  the  Conserva- 
tive ;  and  Liberals  tend  to  accept  the  middle  class 
as  it  is  and  to  praise  the  nonconformists,  while 
the  Conservatives  tend  to  accept  the  upper  class 
as  it  is,  aud  to  praise  the  aristocracy.  And  yet 
here  we  are  at  the  conclusion,  that  one  of  the 
great  obstacles  to  our  civilization  is  British  non- 
conformity, and  the  other,  British  aristocracy  ! — 
and  this  while  we  are  yet  forced  to  recognize  ex- 
cellent special  qualities,  as  well  as  the  general 
English  energy  and  honesty,  and  a  number  of 
emergent  humane  individuals,  in  both  of  them. 
Clearly  such  a  conclusion  can  be  none  of  our  own 
seeking.  Then,  again,  to  remedy  our  inequality, 
there  must  be  a  change  in  the  law  of  bequest,  as 
in  France ;  and  the  faults  and  inconveniences  of 
the  French  law  of  bequest  are  obvious.  It  tends 
to  over-divide  property ;  it  is  unequal  in  opera- 
tion, and  can  be  eluded  by  people  limiting  their 
families  ;  it  makes  the  children,  however  ill  they 
choose  to  behave,  independent  of  the  parent.  To 
be  sure,  Mr.  Mill  and  others  have  shown  that  a 


law  of  bequest,  fixing  the  maximum,  whether  of 
land  or  money,  which  any  one  individual  may  take 
by  bequest  or  inheritance,  but  in  other  respects 
leaving  the  testator  quite  free,  has  none  of  the  in- 
conveniences of  the  French  law,  and  is  in  every 
way  preferable.  But  evidently  these  are  not  ques- 
tions of  practical  politics.  Imagine  Lord  Hart- 
ington  going  down  to  Glasgow,  and  meeting  his 
Scotch  Liberals  there,  and  saying  to  them  :  "  You 
are  ill  at  ease,  and  you  are  calling  for  change,  and 
very  justly.  But  the  cause  of  your  being  ill  at 
ease  is  not  what  you  suppose.  The  cause  of  your 
being  ill  at  ease  is  the  profound  imperfectness  of 
your  social  civilization.  Your  social  civilization 
is  indeed  such  as  I  forbear  to  characterize.  But 
the  remedy  is  not  disestablishment.  The  remedy 
is  social  equality.  Let  me  direct  your  attention 
to  a  reform  in  the  law  of  bequest  and  entail." 
One  can  hardly  speak  of  such  a  thing  without 
laughing.  No,  the  matter  is  one  for  the  thoughts 
of  those  who  think.  It  is  a  thing  to  be  turned 
over  in  the  minds  of  those  who,  on  the  one  hand, 
have  the  spirit  of  scientific  inquirers,  bent  on  see- 
ing things  as  they  really  are ;  and,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  spirit  of  friends  of  the  humane  life, 
lovers  of  perfection.  To  your  thoughts  I  commit 
it.  And,  perhaps,  the  more  you  think  of  it,  the 
more  you  will  be  persuaded  that  Menander  showed 
his  wisdom  quite  as  much  when  he  said,  " Choose 
equality"  as  when  he  assured  us  that  "evil  co7n- 
munieations  corrupt  good  manners." 

— Fortnightly  Review. 


HELL  AXD   THE  DIVINE  VEEACITY. 


&j  juii)  Vti  hpwvri  rdpfios,  ou5'  tiros  fo$u. — Sophocles,  0.  T.  296. 
Br  LIONEL  A.   TOLLEMACHE. 


"  Q  UPPOSE,"  says  Mr.  Mill,  "that  certain  un- 
^-^  known  attributes  are  ascribed  to  the  Deity 
in  a  religion  the  external  evidences  of  which  are  so 
conclusive  to  my  mind  as  effectually  to  convince 
me  that  it  comes  from  God.  Unless  I  believe 
God  to  possess  the  same  moral  attributes  which  I 
find,  in  however  inferior  a  degree,  in  a  good  man, 
what  ground  of  assurance  have  I  of  God's  veraci- 
ty ?  "  In  other  words,  if  God's  justice  and  mercy 
are  not  as  our  justice  and  mercy,  what  guarantee 
have  we  that  his  truth  is  as  our  truth  ?  And, 
conversely,  are  not  orthodox  reasoners,  who  start 
with  the  assumption  that  God's  truth  is  as  our 


truth,  likewise  bound  to  assume  that  his  justice 
and  mercy  are  as  our  justice  and  mercy  ?  We 
propose  to  discuss  this  question  at  some  length  ; 
for  it  seems  to  suggest  the  most  easily  stated  and, 
J  so  to  say,  handiest  reply  to  the  familiar  platitude 
that  the  only  legitimate  exercise  of  reason  in  these 
matters  is  to  convince  us  of  the  reality  of  the 
Christian  miracles,  and  that,  being  once  convinced, 
we  ought  straightway  to  accept  any  doctrines, 
however  seemingly  immoral,  which  the  recorders 
of  those  miracles  have  preached. 

This  subject  has  lately  been  brought  under 
my  notice  by  Father  Oxenham's  work  on  "  Catho- 


494 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


lie  Eschatology  and  Universalism."  In  that  work 
the  doctrine  of  eternal  punishment  is  upheld ; 
and  it  is  not  thought  blasphemous  to  represent 
God  as  the  author  of  hell.  Yet  the  same  work, 
referring  to  some  one  who  has  suggested  that 
the  accounts  of  eternal  punishment  in  the  Gos- 
pels may  have  been  exaggerated  for  a  moral  end, 
pronounces  that  suggestion  to  be  "  little  short  of 
blasphemous."  In  short,  God  is  too  good  to  de- 
ceive, but  not  too  good  to  condemn.  .Now,  if 
Mr.  Oxenham  were  alone  in  maintaining  this 
paradox,  I  should  not  be  at  the  pains  to  contro- 
vert it ;  for,  differing  from  him  Mo  ccelo  (totague, 
let  me  add,  gehenna),  I  feel  that  between  him 
and  me,  except  on  some  minor  topics,  there  is  no 
common  ground  for  argument. 

But,  unfortunately,  there  are  many  Protes- 
tants and  even  nibblers  at  liberalism  who  hold 
vaguely,  and  perhaps  unwittingly,  what  this  able 
writer  has  stated  clearly  and  forcibly.  It  is 
mainly  with  these,  and  wholly  for  their  sake,  that 
my  present  discussion  is  set  on  foot.  In  fact, 
my  article  is  a  plea  for  that  generally  valuable, 
yet  generally  unvalued,  body,  the  Neochristians — 
those  transformed  and  regenerate  Ishmaels  whose 
hand  is  against  no  man,  though  every  man's 
hand  is  against  them.  And  the  motive  of  this 
plea  is  an  earnest  desire  that  the  religious  reform 
which  is  inevitable  should  be  kept  as  far  as  pos- 
sible within  the  Christian  lines.  Still,  a  measure 
of  reform  which  is  to  avail  against  revolution, 
has  often  to  be  somewhat  drastic ;  and  the  first 
advice  which  should  be  offered  to  our  Neochris- 
tian  friends  is,  that  they  should  at  once  give  up 
the  old  foundation,  for  which  their  modest  struct- 
ure is  unfitted,  and  on  which  pandemonium  may 
so  easily  be  built.  But,  before  entering  on  their 
defense,  a  word  of  personal  explanation  is  re- 
quired. Mr.  Mill  certainly  held  that  a  Being  who 
could  create  hell  would  be,  strictly  speaking,  not 
a  God,  but  the  very  reverse.  Yet,  in  the  chapter 
by  him  from  which  I  have  quoted,  the  popular 
language  is  repeatedly  adopted  for  the  sake  of 
clearness ;  and  to  the  supposed  author  of  hell, 
the  name  "  God  "  is  applied.  In  the  present  ar- 
ticle that  example  will  be  followed.  It  will  also 
be  found  convenient  to  assume,  unless  when  the 
contrary  is  specified,  that  the  Church  is  right  in 
pronouncing  certain  writings  to  be  genuine  and 
certain  marvels  to  be  historical.  But  it  must  be 
understood  that  I  am  not  bound  by  these  assump- 
tions. It  should,  moreover,  be  explained  that, 
zealous  though  I  am  on  behalf  of  the  Neochris- 
tians,  I  in  no  wise  commit  myself  to  either  of  the 
recognized  forms   of  Jseochristianity,  either  to 


Mr.  Tennyson's  Christianity  without  hell,  or  to  Mr. 
Arnold's  Christianity  without  God.  My  position 
will  be  rendered  yet  clearer  by  my  adding  that  I 
expect  the  various  orthodox  sects,  with  their 
chronic  civil  war,  to  continue  in  a  state  of  heed- 
lessness not  wholly  unlike  that  which  the  gos- 
pel attributes  to  the  antediluvian  world :  they  will 
preach,  they  will  write,  they  will  cavil,  they  will 
give  in  to  cavils,  till  science  comes  and  destroys 
them  all.  Wherefore,  of  the  Catholic  and  the 
orthodox  Protestant  it  may  be  said,  as  of  Lausus 
and  Pallas,  that  neither  is  destined  to  overwhelm 
the  other,  but  that  rnox  illos  sua  fata  manent  ma- 
jore  sub  hoste. 

Doubtless,  to  satisfy  Mr.  Oxenham  personally, 
the  foregoing  explanation  was  not  needed ;  for  he 
clearly  thinks  me  an  honest  (if  somewhat  raven- 
ous) wolf  in  wolf's  clothing,  and  has  even  singled 
me  out  as  the  representative  of  the  common  ene- 
my into  whose  hand  timid  or  treacherous  friends 
(seemingly  Broad  Churchmen)  are  playing.  It  is 
possible  that  the  simplest  way  of  opening  our  in- 
quiry will  be  to  quote  and  expand  from  a  former 
article  a  passage  from  which  he  has  made  an  ex- 
tract. "The  wiser  among  us,"  I  said,  "  are  seek- 
ing to  drop  hell  out  of  the  Bible  as  quietly,  and 
about  as  logically,  as  we  already  contrive  to  disre- 
gard the  plain  texts  forbidding  Christians  to  go  to 
law,  and  Christian  women  to  plait  their  hair,"  '  or, 
it  might  have  been  added,  to  be  unveiled  in  church ; 
bidding  all  Christians  work  miracles  on  pain  of 
damnation ; 2  bidding  them  choose  psalms  and 
spiritual  songs  as  a  vent  for  their  mirth  ;  forbid- 
ding them  to  jest;3  to  take  judicial  oaths;  to 
hope  for  exemption  from  "  persecution  "  4  (in  the 
plain  sense  which  the  early  Christians  attached 
to  that  world) ;  to  receive  interest  for  loans,  or 
even  to  receive  back  the  principal; 5  to  be  rich, 
or  to  ask  rich  people  to  dinner ; 6  to  receive  an 
unorthodox  person  into  their  house,  or  even  to 
wish  him  "  God  speed."  That  this  last  prohibi- 
tion was  meant  literally  is  proved  by  the  tradition 
about  St.  John  and  Cerinthus ;  and  I  have  heard 
an  Evangelical  divine,  only  too  plausibly,  adduce 
the  passage  to  prove  the  sinfulness  of  entertain- 
ing Catholics.  That  some  of  the  other  texts  I 
have  referred  to  were  not  meant  literally,  is  com- 
monly and  conveniently  assumed.     Personally,  I 

1  Fortnightly  Review,  January,  1876,  p.  125. 

2  Mark  xvi.  16-18. 

3  Ephesians  v.  4.    Cf.  Matthew  xii.  36. 
*  2  Timothy  iii.  12. 

B  Luke  vi.  34,  35.  These  and  the  other  texts  against 
usury  were  taken  literally,  until  the  needs  of  civiliza- 
tion refuted  them. 

«  Luke  xiv.  12.  13. 


HELL  AND    THE  DIVINE   VERACITY. 


495 


could  never  take  this  view — not  even  in  my  or- 
thodox boyhood,  when  such  texts  made  life  a 
burden  to  me;   so  that  my  judgment  was  then 
vehemently  biased  not  against,  but  in  favor  of, 
the  traditional  interpretation  of  them.     That  the 
literal  meaning  of  each  of  those  passages  is  the 
true  one,  still  seems  to  me  probable.     At  any 
rate,  it  is  certain  that,  taken  collectively,  they 
breathe  an  ascetic  spirit  which  is  in  glaring  con- 
trast to  the  smooth  and  polished  Christianity  of 
our  day.     A  popular  preacher,  complaining  of 
rationalists    that  they  had   no   moral   standard, 
once  said  to  me,  "  When  I  am  in  doubt,  I  refer 
to  my  Bible  :  "  almost  as  if  his  Bible  was  unlike 
other  Bibles  ;  certainly  as  if  the  Bible  was  a  lucid 
encyclopasdia  of  doctrine  and  morals.      Nor  did 
my  friend  herein  go  far  beyond  what  is  held  by 
most  orthodox  Protestants.     They  have  forged  a 
vast  shield  of  texts,  which  they  use  to  their  own 
satisfaction  against  Romanists  (Ingentem  clipeum 
informant,  unum  omnia  contra  Tela  Latinorum) ; 
and  therewith  they  hope  to  quench  the  fiery  darts 
of  the  combined  wicked — of  Romanists  and  ra- 
tionalists  together.      Our   object,  on   the   other 
hand,  has  been  to  show  that  the  Bible  is  not 
such  a  handbook  as  they  suppose ;  and  that,  in 
fact,  if  the  way  of  doctrinal  transgressors  is  hard, 
that  of  Bibliolaters  is  not  easy.      And  if,  con- 
sciously or  unconsciously,  orthodox  Christians  ex- 
ercise the  rbht  of  dropping  inconvenient  texts 
out  of  the  Bible,  they  should  not  be  wroth  with 
their  liberal  brethren  who  do  likewise;  for  the 
game,  in  very  truth,  is  one  at  which  two  can  play. 
Here,  then,  is  our  point.     If  the  Bible  contains 
plain  commands  which  we  have  a  right  to  dis- 
obey, may  it  not  contain  plain  assertions  which 
we  have  a  right  to  disbelieve  ?  1     Thus  the  Neo- 
christian  would  be  in  no  lack  of  orthodox  prece- 
dents, if  he  contended  that  the  statements  about 
hell  were  Oriental  hyperboles  ;  or  that  they  were 
an  extra  deterrent  mercifully  given  to  the  Jews 
in  their  low  state  of  piety,  or  rather  of  culture 
and  civilization — an  adaptation  to  the  hardness 
of  their  hearts,  or  perhaps  to  the  softness   of 
their  brains  ;  or  that  they  were  a  needful  conces- 
sion to  a  prevailing  superstition:  for  the  Bible 
was  written  a  Judceis,  ad  Judaios,  apud  Judceos  ; 

1  Sir  J.  Fitzjames  StepheD  says  ("  Liberty,  Equal- 
ity, and  Fraternity ,"  p.  315)  that  some  Scriptural  com- 
mands are  "  understood  by  those  who  believe  in  the 
supernatural  authority  of  Christ  as  a  pathetic  overstate- 
ment of  duties,  .  .  .  peculiarly  liable  to  be  neglected." 
Every  argument  that  can  be  used  to  justify  such  a 
"pathetic  overstatement"  of  duties  will  serve  to  jasti- 
fy  a  pathetic  overstatement  of  the  penalties  whereby 
those  duties  were  enforced. 


and  superstition,  like  nature,  non  nisi  parendo  vin- 
citur.  Perhaps,  indeed,  it  will  be  objected  that 
our  analogy  between  disobeying  Divine  commands 
and  disbelieving  Divine  assertions  does  not  hold. 
Let  us,  then,  give  an  example  of  each  kind.  It  is 
plainly  declared  that  the  observance  of  the  Sab- 
bath— an  observance  binding  in  regard  to  the 
day,  the  obligations,  and  the  penalties — was  to 
be  perpetual,  and  forever.1  And  this  perpetual 
ordinance,  originally  imposed  on  Israel,  extends 
to  all  who  have  adopted  Israel's  law.'2  It  is  also 
affirmed  that  the  house,  kingdom,  and  throne  of 
David  should  be  established  forever.  Compare 
these  two  statements  with  the  statement  that  hell 
is  to  be  perpetual.  If,  by  a  prophetic  license, 
perpetual  means  transitory  in  regard  to  the  Sab- 
bath and  the  house  of  David,  why  not  in  regard 
to  hell  ?  Or  (what  is  much  the  same  thing),  if 
we  may  give  a  non-natural  interpretation  to  two 
of  these  propositions,3  why  not  to  the  third  ? 

Impartial  readers  will  probably  think  that  I 
have  already  made  out  my  case ;  but,  as  the  sub- 
ject is  very  important,  and  as  the  prejudice  about 
it  is  inveterate,  I  will  carry  the  inquiry  somewhat 
deeper.  To  reasonings  like  the  above  it  is  com- 
monly objected  that  (according  to  the  Bible) 
God  can  neither  lie  nor  repent.  Now,  it  is  ob- 
vious that  this  objection  is  at  once  refuted  by 
the  fact  that  it  proves  the  biblical  veracity  from 
the  Bible,  making  the  Bible  arbiter  in  its  own 
cause.  But  I  will  let  this  pass,  as  I  wish  as  far 
as  possible  to  meet  orthodoxy  on  its  own  ground : 
e/c  rod  o-rSfiaros  o~ov  Kpivw  ere.  The  Bible,  then, 
asserts  that  God  neither  lies  nor  repents.  But, 
in  the  very  same  chapter,4  God  is  described  as 

1  Exodus  xxxi.  16,  17. 

2  Matthew  v.  18.    Cf.  Matthew  xxiv.  20. 

3  Thus,  it  is  commonly  maintained  that  the  throne 
of  David  spiritually  survives  in  Christianity.  To  test 
this  interpretation,  let  us  put  a  parallel  case,  which 
we  can  consider  impartially.  One  was  told  at.  school 
that  Virgil's  Bnperium  sine  fine  dedi  is  a  signal  in- 
stance of  an  uninspired  prophecy  failing.  Yet  it  might 
be  at  least  as  plausibly  urged  that  the  Roman  domin- 
ion survives  in  the  papary,  as  that  the  Davirlic  throne 
survives  in  Christianity.  But  to  any  such  pitiful  mis- 
interpretation of  Virgil's  words  a  sufficient  answer 
would  be  that,  before  the  Roman  Empire  ceased,  no 
one  dreamed  of  so  explaining  the  poet's  meaning. 
Even  so  we  may  ask,  Did  the  Jews,  before  the  time 
of  Nebuchadnezzar,  dream  of  spiritually  evaporating 
the  plain  prediction  about  David? 

4  1  Samuel  xv.  11,  29.  In  this  singular  chapter  a 
still  more  startling  contrast  occurs:  Samuel  (verse 
22)  expresses  the  noble  sentiment  that  "  to  obey  is 
better  than  sacrifice  ;  "  yet,  at  that  very  moment,  he 
was  meditating  the  most  hideous  of  all  sacrifices— a 
human  sacrifice  (verse  33). 


490 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


repenting;  hence  it  might  be  argued  that  the 
biblical  statement  on  this  head,  so  far  from  prov- 
ing that  there  are  no  biblical  misstatements,  adds 
to  their  list  one  misstatement  the  more.  But  this 
difficulty  also  I  will  not  press.  An  orthodox  per- 
son would  probably  meet  it  by  saying  that  the 
Divine  word,  like  Nature,  half  reveals  and  half 
conceals  the  soul  within ;  we  can  see  God  only 
through  a  glass  darkly,  or  rather  through  a 
pseudoscope  —  immorlalia  mortali  sermone  no- 
famus  ;  hence  there  is  no  inconsistency  in  suppos- 
ing that  God  does  not  really  repent,  but  that  to 
our  finite  reason  he  can  only  be  revealed  as  re- 
penting. Well,  let  this  explanation  stand,  only 
let  us  observe  that  in  the  Hebrew  verse — that 
rime  cle  pensees,  as  M.  Renan  calls  it — lying  and 
repenting  are  coupled  together.  The  Divine  in- 
capacity of  misrepresentation  is  announced  in  the 
same  breath,  and  placed  in  the  same  category, 
with  the  Divine  incapacity  of  repentance.  And 
yet,  humanly  speaking,  God  does  repent.  Is  it, 
then,  impious  to  inquire  whether,  humanly  speak- 
ing, God  may  not  misrepresent?  Nay,  further, 
according  to  the  only  notion  that  we  can  form  of 
repentance,  a  repentant  man  must  either  err  when 
he  repents,  or  have  erred  in  doing  that  for  which 
he  repents.  Surely  this  reasoning  mutatis  mutan- 
dis applies  to  a  repentant  Deity.  Perhaps  an  il- 
lustration will  best  set  forth  our  meaning.  We 
are  told  that  God  repented  of  the  good  work  of 
creating  man.  Therefore,  his  beneficent  decrees 
do  not  resemble  the  laws  of  the  Medes  and  Per- 
sians. Why,  then,  must  we  assume  that  his 
maleficent  decrees  resemble  those  laws  ?  If  it 
repented  God  of  creation,  may  it  not  repent  him 
of  the  intention  of  damnation  ? 

But  it  is  not  only  out  of  the  Bible  that  eternal 
punishment  is  defended.  The  burden  of  proof  is 
attempted  to  be  thrown  on  the  assailants  of  that 
doctrine.  The  doctrine,  it  is  said,  is  rendered 
antecedently  probable  by  the  analogy  of  Nature. 
In  Nature  the  wages  of  sin  accumulate  till  death  ; 
a  sinful  act  never  ceases  injuriously  to  affect  the 
sinner ;  but  whatever  occurs  in  Nature  must  be 
permitted,  if  not  ordained,  by  God  ;  and  the  pre- 
sumption is  that  his  supernatural  government 
bears  some  analogy  to  his  natural;  and,  there- 
fore, that  the  punishment  of  sin,  which  has  no 
end  in  this  world,  will  likewise  have  no  end  in 
the  next.  Now,  this  reasoning,  which  is  sub- 
stantially that  of  Butler,  could  not  be  fully  ex- 
amined without  discussing  the  argument  of  the 
first  chapter  of  the  analogy,  and  even  the  funda- 
mental assumption  on  which  the  analogy  rests. 
This  is  not  the  place  for  such  a  discussion ;  so  I 


will  merely  remark  that  natural  forces  are  in  them- 
selves neither  moral  nor  immoral,  but  outside  mo- 
rality ;  but,  when  they  are  personified  and  judged 
by  a  moral  standard,  they  are  found  to  be  reck- 
lessly immoral.  Hence,  if  we  start  with  the  as- 
sumption that  the  course  of  Nature  is  in  harmony 
with  God's  direct  and  deliberate  action,  we  may 
go  on  to  defend  the  foulest  superstition  that  ever 
cursed  mankind.  If  whatever  exists  (including 
Nero's  government ')  is  "  ordained  of  God,"  theft 
and  adultery  must  be  so  ordained.  If,  then,  God's 
natural  procedure  is  a  sample  of  his  supernatural, 
what  right  have  Christians  to  condemn  the  actions 
attributed  to  Jupiter,  which  were,  humanly  speak- 
ing, immoral  ?  Nor  is  it  only  civilized  Jupiters, 
ancient  or  modern,  that  may  claim  the  benefit  of 
such  a  plea.  The  plea  is  equally  applicable  to 
those  "  puny  godlings  of  inferior  race  " 2  whom 
savages  worship,  nay,  even  to  Bhowanee,  the  god- 
dess of  murder.  Hence,  when  Shelley  indignantly 
denied  that 

"  The  God  of  Nature  and  benevolence  had  given 
A  special  sanction  to  the  trade  of  blood," 

his  indignation  was  partly  reasonable,  partly  not. 
That  the  god  of  benevolence  should  have  sanc- 
tioned such  a  trade  is,  of  course,  impossible;  but 
that  the  god  of  Nature,  the  ordainer  of  all  the 
abominations  that  occur  in  Nature,  should  have 
done  so,  is  in  no  wise  impossible,  but  just  what  we 
might  have  expected.  Nor,  again,  are  we  left  to 
conjecture  as  to  the  employment  of  the  analogical 
aid  to  faith  in  support  of  religious  systems  which 
we  now  justly  condemn.  On  the  contrary,  we 
know  that,  when  pagan  orthodoxy  was  giving 
way,  such  pagans  as  Plutarch  and  some  of  Luci- 
an's  interlocutors  propped  it  up  with  arguments 
not  unlike  those  wherewith  the  disciples  of  But- 
ler now  prop  up  Christian  orthodoxy.  So  that, 
after  all,  Butler's  and  Mansel's  sanctuary  is  a  too 
catholic  Pantheon  —  a  veritable  "  shrine  of  all 
saints  and  temple  of  all  gods  " — where  mutually 
destructive  theologies  seek  a  common  refuge.  It 
is,  however,  with  such  attributes  as  those  of 
Hermes  Dolios,  that  we  are  specially  concerned. 
If  it  was  God  who  hardened  Pharaoh's  heart,  we 
may  assume  that  it  is  often,  if  not  always,  God  who 
hardens  the  liar's  heart;  in  every  such  case  Dcus 
fallil  per  alium  ;  analogy,  therefore,  points  to  the 
presumption  that  sometimes  Peus  fallit  -per  sc. 
But  this  is  net  all.  That  the  sun  travels  from 
east  to  west,  that  the  earth  is  approximately  a 
fiat  surface,  that  the  blue  sky  is  a  solid  vault 

1  Romans  xiii.  1. 

2  Dryden's  "  Persius." 


HELL  AND   TEE  DIVINE   VERACITY. 


497 


(orepe'&jjua) — these  are  delusions  which  the  plan  of 
universe  has  done  its  very  best  to  foster,  which 
are  common  to  primitive  races,  and  which  primi- 
tive writers,  inspired  as  well  as  uninspired,  have 
emphatically  shared.  In  the  face  of  these  delu- 
sions, will  the  paradox  that  the  course  of  Nature 
is  a  representation,  however  imperfect,  of  the 
Deity,  a  not  inglorious  "mirror  where  the  Al- 
mighty's form  glasses  itself  in  "  moral  tempests, 
be  seriously  maintained  ?  If  so,  we  are  driven  to 
the  monstrous  conclusion  that  there  are  qualities 
in  the  First  Cause  little  akin  to  those  of  Nathanael. 
Arid  hence  would  arise  the  analogical  presumption 
that,  in  revelation,  God,  according  to  St.  Paul's 
happy  euphemism,  "  calleth  those  things  that  be 
not  as  though  they  were." 

Xenophanes  blames  Homer  for  attributing  to 
the  gods — 

otrtra.  nap'  6n/9puiiT0i<Tiv  bveiSea  <a\  if/oyos  £<ttCv  .  .   . 
KkenTeiv  /jLOixeveiv  re  Kal  a\\rj\ovi  airaTeveiv. 

In  this  strikingly  modern  passage  two  things  may 
be  noted.  First,  divine  deceit  is  not  put  in  a 
class  by  itself;  it  is  merely  ranked  with  other 
forms  of  divine  guilt.  Secondly,  the  various  forms 
of  divine  guilt  are  pronounced  to  be  such,  only 
on  the  assumption  that  the  gods  are  bound  by 
human  morality ;  the  acts  are  condemned  because 
they  would  be  deemed  wrong  and  disgraceful 
among  men.  Now,  it  must  be  owned  that  to  cre- 
ate millions  of  sentient  beings,  foreknowing  that 
most  of  them  were  doomed  to  eternal  tortures, 
compared  with  which  the  perpetual  extraction  of 
a  sensitive  tooth  would  be  hailed  as  a  relief1 — 
such  an  act  is  unlike  those  which  are  thought 
praiseworthy  among  men.  Are  we  not,  then, 
bound  to  blame  this  act  when  imputed  to  God  ? 
For,  in  truth,  there  are  two  standards,  and  only 
two,  whereby  acts  so  imputed  can  be  judged : 
there  is  the  standard  of  human  morality,  and  there 
is  the  immoral  standard  of  natural  analogy.  Al- 
most always,  in  weighing  Christian  and  non-Chris- 
tian theologies,  we  play  fast  and  loose  with  these 
two  standards.  Will  it  be  said  that  Christianity 
is  in  itself  superior  to  the  best  non-Christian  the- 
ology ?  It  is  ;  but  we  vastly  exaggerate  the  su- 
periority by  applying  to  the  different  theologies 

1 1  give  this  realistic  comparison  in  order  to  bring 
home  to  my  readers  what  the  popular  doctrine  is. 
People  who  talk  glihly  about  glad  tidings  should  read 
(in  Wall's  "  History  of  Infant  Baptism")  Augustine's 
and  Falgentias's  expressions  about  the  fate  of  unbap- 
tized  (including  still-born)  infants.  It  is,  however, 
satisfactory  to  know  that,  although  Augustine  (once  at 
least)  explicitly  declared  that  all  unbaptized  children 
would  be  damned,  yet  he  trusted  that  "  this  fire  would 
be  to  them  the  most  moderate  of  all  "  (Wall). 

68 


different  tables  of  weights  and  measures.  The 
divergence  between  these  tables  far  exceeds  what 
is  commonly  supposed.  Weighed  in  the  balance 
of  natural  analogy,  no  historic  gods  are  found 
wanting ;  weighed  in  the  balance  of  human  moral- 
ity, all.  The  like  may  be  said  of  the  comparison 
between  damning  and  deceiving.  If  God  is  wholly 
beyond  the  pale  of  human  morality,  we  cannot 
guess  whether  he  ought  to  damn  or  not  to  damn 
— to  deceive  or  not  to  deceive.  If,  however,  be 
is  within  that  pale,  we  may  conclude  that  (if  om- 
nipotent) he  ought  neither  to  damn  nor  to  deceive ; 
but  that  the  guilt  of  deceiving  is  as  dust  in  the 
balance  when  compared  with  the  guilt  of  damn- 
ing. I  say  "  if  omnipotent,"  for  the  following 
reason :  That  a  good  spirit  of  limited  powers 
might,  in  extreme  cases,  have  to  deceive  his  creat- 
ures, is  just  conceivable.  In  those  extreme  cases 
we  might  agree  with  J^schylus,  that  airaTris  Siicatas 
ovk  dTro<TTaT€?  6e6s.  But  that  such  a  spirit  should 
be  one 

"  Wha,  as  it  pleases  best  bissel, 
Sends  ane  to  heaven,  and  ten  to  hell, 
A'  for  his  glory," 

is  utterly  inconceivable  and  revolting.  The  or- 
thodox, however,  take  a  view  the  opposite  of 
ours ;  they  virtually  assume  that  the  text,  "  Let 
God  be  true,  but  every  man  a  liar,"  is  itself  true 
in  a  more  literal  sense  than  the  text,  "  God  is 
love."  Indeed,  to  their  apotheosis  of  veracity  may 
be  due  some  of  the  exaggerated  commonplaces 
that  are  current  as  to  the  absolute  universality  of 
the  duty  of  truth-telling.  I  remember,  when  a 
boy,  being  told  that  it  was  sinful  in  Napoleon  to 
encourage  the  Guard  at  Waterloo  with  the  mis- 
statement that  their  comrades,  having  crushed 
Bliicher,  were  in  sight  coming  to  help  them.  Yet 
it  certainly  seemed  that  to  tell  the  Guard  a  lie  for 
which,  if  it  had  succeeded,  they  would  have  been 
grateful,  was,  at  worst,  what  Sophocles  would  have 
called  6'<na  Travovpye?v,  and  Shakespeare  would 
have  called  "a  virtuous  sin;"  and  that,  at  all 
events — in  judging  of  that  long  crime,  Napoleon's 
career — to  single  out  this  peccadillo  for  reproba- 
tion showed  a  want  of  moral  perspective.  But 
what  should  I  have  answered  if  my  teacher  had 
gone  on  to  ask  whether  it  was  not  uncharitable 
to  suspect  a  man  like  Napoleon  of  telling  such  a 
lie  ?  My  answer  would,  or  should,  have  been  in 
words  of  (Edipus.  When  (Edipus  had  adjured 
the  unknown  murderer  of  Laius  to  give  himself 
up,  the  chorus  was  so  sanguine  as  to  suggest  that 
further  efforts  at  detection  would  be  needless; 
without  doubt,  the  criminal,  on  hearing  the  im- 
precation, would  make  haste  to  confess  his  guilt. 


498 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


Whereunto  the  king  rejoined,  "  Not  he  who 
dared  the  deed  will  shrink  at  words."  We  have 
prefixed  this  reply  as  motto  to  our  article  ;  for  it 
happily  exposes  the  delusion  which  prevails  about 
the  Divine  morality.  Whoever,  in  conceiving  of 
that  morality,  strains  at  the  gnat  of  even  benefi- 
cent misrepresentation,  while  he  swallows  the 
camel  of  eternal  punishment,  should  bind  the 
motto  about  his  neck,  and  write  it  on  the  table 
of  his  heart.  But  our  popular  teachers  are  deaf 
to  such  advice.  They  scorn  to  depict  God  as  an 
idealized  Edward  III.,  pardoning  those  whom  he 
had  doomed  to  destruction ;  but  they  scruple  not 
to  depict  him  as  a  Torquemada  in  excelsis. 

But,  after  all,  it  is  superfluous  to  show  that, 
assuming  orthodoxy,  Divine  deceptions  may  oc- 
cur :  orthodoxy  herself  practically  admits  that 
they  have  occurred.  How  does  she  account  for 
the  scientific  statements  in  the  Bible,  which  are, 
to  say  the  least,  calculated  to  mislead  ?  She  af- 
firms that  those  statements  were  needful  accom- 
modations :  which  being  interpreted  is,  that  God, 
to  teach  a  great  truth,  had  to  teach  a  little  error. 
But  there  are  graver  forms  of  Divine  deception 
to  which  the  Bible  directly  bears  witness.  Lu- 
cian  justly  complains  that  Zeus,  in  the  "Iliad," 
"  deceived  Agamemnon  by  sending  him  a  lying 
dream,  so  as  to  cause  the  death  of  many  Greeks." 
In  exactly  the  same  way,  Jehovah,  in  the  book  of 
Kings,  deceived  Ahab  by  sending  him  a  lying 
spirit,  so  as  to  cause  the  death  of  many  Hebrews 
(Deus  fallit  per  alium).  At  another  time,  he 
"  gave  them  also  statutes  that  were  not  good,  and 
judgments  whereby  they  should  not  live ; "  and 
"  if  the  prophet  be  deceived  when  he  hath  spoken 
a  thing,  I  the  Lord  have  deceived  that  prophet  " 
(Deus  fallit  per  se).1 

Nor  is  it  only  in  the  Old  Testament  that  such 
•deceptions  are  mentioned  :  they  are  attested  also 
in  the  New.2  I  am  careful  to  notice  this  latter 
testimony,  inasmuch  as  it  is  on  the  earliest  Chris- 
tian traditions  and  sentiments — those  recorded 
in  the  Synoptical  writings  and  the  Apocalypse — 
that  the  case  for  eternal  torture  chiefly  rests. 
St.  Paul,  on  the  other  hand,  inclined  toward  Uni- 
versalism  : 3  and  it  does  not  lie  with  the  Church 
to  neglect  his  authority ;  for  ecclesiastical  Chris- 
tianity is  based  far  more  on  the  Pauline  Epistles 
and  the  Fourth  Gospel  than  on  the  genuine  say- 
ings of  Jesus.  But  St.  Paul  himself  would  have 
been  the  first  to  disclaim  any  such  preeminence, 
and  to  admit  that  the  servant  is  less  than  his 

1  Compare  Deuteronomy  xiii.  3;  Jeremiah  xx.  7. 

2  2  Thessalonians  ii.  11. 

3  Romans  xi.  32. 


Lord.  Numquid  Paulus  crucifixus  est  pro  vobis  ? 
Aut  in  nomine  Pauli  baptizati  estis  ?  It  is,  there- 
fore, with  especial  interest  that  we  inquire  wheth- 
er a  strong  case  for  eternal  torture  can  be  made 
out  of  the  language  of  the  Synoptical  records. 
To  me  their  expressions  seem  very  strong :  inso- 
much that,  when  Mr.  Oxenham  holds  up  their 
damnatory  phraseology  and  virtually  asks  with 
Hubert  de  Burgh :  "  Can  you  not  read  it  ?  Is  it 
not  fair  writ  ?  "  I  most  reluctantly  echo  Prince 
Arthur's  answer : 

"  Too  fairly,  Hubert,  for  so  foul  effect." 
Not  only  is  this  concession  in  itself  painful : 
it  also  involves  a  painful  inquiry.  For  it  be- 
hooves us  to  prove,  not  merely  that  there  are  er- 
rors in  the  Bible — thus  much  all  rational  Chris- 
tians now  admit — but  that  there  are  errors  even 
in  the  words  ascribed  to  the  Master.  Yet,  in 
this  thankless  demonstration,  it  is  a  comfort  to 
feel  that  we  are  only  affirming  a  principle  which 
all  Neochristians  practically  assume,  and  which 
is  indeed  the  corner-stone  of  their  system ;  for 
it  is  certain  that  what  may  be  termed  the  non- 
populousness  and  the  non-eternity  of  hell  are 
staked  on  the  fallibility  of  Christ.  From  this 
point  of  view,  then,  all  Christians,  even  those 
who  believe  our  conclusions  to  be  false,  ought  to 
wish  them  to  be  true.  If  a  great  physician  told 
us  that  we  were  going  to  die  of  a  lingering  and 
loathsome  disease,  we  should  wish—he  would  ex- 
pect us  to  wish,  and  would  himself  wish — that 
he  might  be  mistaken ;  and  so,  when  the  Object 
of  our  deepest  reverence  has  proclaimed  sad  tid- 
ings of  great  sorrow  which  are  unto  all  people, 
common  humanity  bids  us  hope  that  even  he  was 
liable  to  error. 

Before  proceeding  further,  I  must  guard 
against  a  misconception.  Some  readers  may  be 
estranged  from  this  inquiry,  through  supposing 
that  I  am  about  to  assail  the  doctrine  of  the  In- 
carnation. Such,  however,  is  not  my  intention ; 
for,  having  a  clear  case  before  me,  I  mean  to 
avoid  all  disputable  matter.  I  will,  therefore, 
remark  that  those  who  deny  the  infallibility  of 
Christ  do  not  necessarily  deny  his  Divinity ;  they 
need  only  subject  that  Divinity  to  limitations 
which,  in  theory,  are  hardly  greater  than  those 
to  which  it  is  subjected  already.  To  make  my 
meaning  clear,  I  will  first  observe  that  in  differ- 
ent ages  the  word  God  has  been  held  to  con- 
note very  different  sets  of  attributes.  Thus, 
Mr.  Oxenham  assumes  that  God  is  infallible; 
and,  as  we  have  seen,  he  thinks  it  blasphemous 
to  suggest  that  the  Incarnate  God  could  deceive. 
Xenophanes,  on  the  other  hand,  deemed  it  bias- 


HELL  AXD   TEE  DIVIDE   VERACITY. 


499 


phemous  to  suppose  that  God  could  be  incarnate 
at  all ; 1  whereas  Hesiod  saw  nothing  amiss  in 
saying  that  the  heavenly  Muses  are  skilled  to  tell 
many  lies.2  But  it  is  not  only  in  pagan  authors 
that  such  representations  as  this  last  are  to  be 
found.  The  Bible,  we  have  shown,  speaks  of 
God  as  deceiving.  In  another  place  God  de- 
clares himself  to  be  fallible,  and  even  provides 
against  the  contingency  of  his  having  been  mis- 
informed.3 Either  this  divine  statement  is  true, 
or  it  is  not.  If  it  is,  cadit  qucestio :  if  it  is  not, 
the  speaker  is  convicted  of  misrepresentation  in 
this  case,  and  capable  of  it  in  others.  Of  course 
it  may  be  contended  that  God  is  infallible  in 
himself,  but  that,  when  speaking  down  to  our 
faculties,  he  has  to  depict  himself  as  fallible. 
I  do  not  mean  to  contest  this  explanation  ;  for, 
in  conceding  that  God  as  revealed  to  us  is  fallible, 
it  concedes  all  that  ray  argument  requires. 

A  different  class  of  objectors  may  urge  that 
God  did  not  declare  himself  to  be  fallible,  but 
was  misrepresented  by  the  author  of  Genesis. 
This  solution,  however,  only  throws  the  difficulty 
further  back  ;  for  the  founders  of  Christianity 
asserted,  or  rather  assumed,  the  divine  authority 
of  the  Pentateuch  ; 4  so  that,  if  the  author  of 
Genesis  was  mistaken,  they  were  mistaken  also. 
And  this  brings  us  to  a  remark  about  verbal  in- 
spiration. St.  Paul  believed  in  the  verbal  inspi- 
ration of  the  Old  Testament.5  Nor  can  there  be 
any  reasonable  doubt  that  Jesus  held  the  same 
view.  Also,  he  promised  his  disciples  that  his 
teaching  should  be  supernaturally  brought  to 
their  remembrance ;  and  that,  when  taken  before 
judges,  they  should  be  verbally  inspired.8  These 
and  similar  passages  serve  to  explain  the  desper- 
ate efforts  that  were  made  to  defend  verbal  in- 
spiration. In  a  work  whose  perfect  accuracy  is 
divinely  guaranteed,  even  a  minute  error  in  fact 
involves  a  grave  error  in  doctrine  ;  for  it  proves 
that  inspiration  did  not  know  its  own  limits. 
Extremes  in  theology  sometimes  meet ;  and  I  am 
glad  to  find  that  the  views  here  enunciated  may 

1  6/u.oi'tot  aaef&ovaiv  oi  yev iuffat.  <f>d(TKOi'Tes  tous  fleoii? 
TOis  airoBavciv  Kiyovtrcv* 

2  ISfiev  xj/evSea.  jro\Aa  Ae-yeiK. 

3  Genesis  xviii.  21.  In  1  Kines  xxii.  20-22,  God  is 
represented  as  at  a  loss  for  an  expedient  and  as  seek- 
ing counsel— in  the  art  of  deception. 

4  See  Mark  xii.  26.  It  is  clear  that  the  general  state 
of  opinion — the  suppressed  major  premise,  as  we  may 
call  it — which  is  involved  in  the  assumption  that  the 
divine  words  spoken  in  the  hurning  hush  were  genu- 
ine, will  cover  the  assumption  that  the  Divine  words 
confessing  fallibility  were  genuine. 

5  Galatians  iii.  16. 
*  Mark  xiii.  11. 


be  confirmed  by  a  quotation  from  Pr.  Words- 
worth. After  rightly  premising  that  the  promise 
of  verbal  inspiration  must  be  regarded  as  extend- 
ing to  St.  Stephen,  he  goes  on  to  comment  on 
allegations  that  the  proto-martyr's  speech  con- 
tains errors  :  "  The  allegations  in  question,  when 
reduced  to  their  plain  meaning,  involve  the  as- 
sumption that  the  Holy  Ghost  speaking  by  St. 
Stephen  (who  was  '  full  of  the  Holy  Spirit ')  forgot 
what  he  himself  had  written  in  the  book  of  Gen- 
esis, and  that  his  memory  is  to  be  refreshed  by 
biblical  commentators  of  the  nineteenth  century." 
This  trenchant  logic  may  be  fitly  coupled  with 
Cowper's  sneer  at  geologists,  who 

" .  .  .  .  drill  and  hore 
The  solid  earth,  and  from  the  strata  there 
Extract  a  register,  by  which  we  learn 
That  He  who  made  it,  and  revealed  its  date 
To  Moses,  was  mistaken  in  its  age  1 " 

One  has  only  to  confront  Dr.  Wordsworth's  logic 
with  Alford's  correct  statment  that  St.  Stephen's 
speech  contains  "at  least  two  demonstrable  his- 
torical inaccuracies;"  and  to  confront  Cowper's 
sneer  with  the  first  principles  of  modern  geology ; 
and  one  perceives  what  an  edged  tool  every  such 
reductio  ad  anti-Christianum  is.  But  what  con- 
cerns us  is,  to  note  that,  as  we  have  said,  rational 
Christians  nowadays  admit  that  the  Scriptures 
contain  mistakes.  Whence  it  follows  that  the 
founders,  who  believed  that  the  Scriptures  (or 
large  portions  of  them)  were  free  from  mistakes, 
were  in  that  very  belief  themselves  mistaken. 

Moreover,  the  fallibility  of  Christ  may  be  dis- 
tinctly inferred  from  the  Gospels.  He  is  repre- 
sented "  as  growing "  (and  therefore  as  at  one 
time  deficient)  "  in  wisdom."  He  sought  theo- 
logical instruction  from  the  Jewish  doctors.  Un- 
less this  instruction  was  a  mere  farce,  he  was, 
then,  if  not  fallible,  at  least  inferior  in  knowledge 
to  his  fallible  teachers.  Also,  in  mature  man- 
hood, he  knew  not  the  day  or  the  hour  of  his 
coming.1     Hence  his  knowledge  on  some  subjects 

1  Mark  xiii.  32.  This  and  similar  passages  are 
explained  away  by  some  Catholics.  Thus  the  pope 
(quoted  by  Mr.  Gladstone)  has  pronounced  that 
Christ's  increase  in  wisdom  was  "only  apparent;" 
whereunto  a  Neochristian  might  respond  that  future 
punishment  will  be  "only  apparent."  So,  again,  the 
Dublin  Review  (September,  1865)  says  that "  the  Church 
imperatively  requires  her  children  to  understand  Mark 
xiii.  32  in  some  very  unobvious  sense."  If  the  Church 
may  take  this  liberty  with  plain  texts  in  the  New 
Testament,  the  Scribes  and  Pharisees  (who  sat  in 
Moses's  seat)  must  have  had  a  like  authority  over 
plain  texts  in  the  Old  Testament.  Why,  then,  were 
the  Jews  blamed  for  giving  a  "  very  unobvious  sense" 
to  the  fifth  commandment  (Mark  vii.  9-13)  ? 


500 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


was  imperfect.  And  from  imperfect  knowledge 
to  fallibility  the  step  is  a  slight  one  ;  for,  when  a 
Being  has  imperfect  knowledge,  how  can  we  be 
sure  that  his  knowledge  is  perfect  as  to  the  limits 
of  its  own  imperfection  ?  But,  as  regards  the 
fallibility  of  Christ,  we  are  not  left  to  mere  con- 
jecture. He  "  marveled  at  the  centurion's  faith." 
Now,  it  is  obvious  that  an  infallible  being  could 
not  marvel.  When  we  say  that  a  man  marvels, 
we  imply  that  his  expectation  fell  short  of  the 
reality,  and  was  therefore  erroneous.  And  thus, 
when  we  are  told  that  Jesus  marveled  at  the  cen- 
turion's faith,  we  infer  that  his  previous  estimate 
of  that  faith  had  been  unduly  low.  Again,  a  be- 
ing conscious  of  infallibility  would  be  free  from 
doubt  and  misgiving.  Yet,  Jesus  was  uncertain 
respecting  his  death  ;  and,  when  dying,  he  feared 
that  God  had  forsaken  him.1  In  case  this  dem- 
onstration (for  such  it  is)  should  be  painful  to 
any  reader,  I  would  fain  offer  a  word  of  comfort. 
The  great  Catholic  Commentary  of  Cornelius  a 
Lapide  states  that  "  esto  Christus  non  creverit 
sapientia  et  gratia  habituali,  crevit  tamen  actuali 
et  practica."  This  reasoning  is  just  as  applicable 
to  Christ's  infallibiltiy  as  to  his  youthful  defi- 
ciency in  knowledge  ;  and  hence  a  liberal  Chris- 
tian who  clings  to  the  belief  in  his  Lord's  Divin- 
ity may  plausibly  urge  that  the  Saviour  (as  wai 
inevitable)  held  some  errors  of  his  time,  but  that 
in  respect  of  those  errors  it  was  only  his  "  actual 
and  practical  wisdom,"  not  his  "  habitual  wis- 
dom," that  failed  him. 

Having  thus  sought  to  disarm  prejudice,  we 
can  more  freely  comment  on  a  few  out  of  the 
many  erroneous  statements  reported  in  the  Gos- 
pel— statements  that  may,  as  it  were,  keep  in 
countenance  the  reported  statements  about  hell  > 
and,  in  making  the  selection,  we  will  mainly 
confine  our  view  to  errors  that  have  been  prac- 
tically acknowledged  by  Christians  of  note.  We 
will  begin  with  an  example  that  perplexed  Mr. 
Maurice.  The  Master  is  said  to  have  prophe- 
sied that  he  would  "  be  three  days  and  three 
nights  in  the  heart  of  the  earth."  Now,  the  in- 
terval from  Friday  evening  to  Sunday  morning 
is  only  one  day  and  two  nights.  Hence,  in  the 
prophecy  as  reported  by  St.  Matthew,  there  is  as 
open  a  breach  with  arithmetic  as  in  the  three 
fourteens  in  the  same  Evangelist's  genealogy  ; 
and,  we  may  add,  as  in  his  strange  narrative 
(evolved  out  of  a  misunderstood  prophecy)  con- 
cerning the  ass  and  the  colt,  on  both  of  which 
(avTwv)  Jesus  rode  to  Jerusalem.2     Again,  Jesus 

1  Matthew  xxvi.  39  ;  xxvii.  46. 

2  By  the  ether  three  Evangelist*  the  supernumerary 


said  that  David  ate  the  shewbread  "  in  the  high- 
priesthood  of  Abiathar  : "  '  the  event  really  oc- 
curred in  the  high-priesthood  of  Ahinielech. 
Once  more  :  an  excellent  religious  journal  has 
courageously  proposed  "  to  explain,  once  for  all, 
that  the  theological  and  historical  library  popu- 
larly called  the  '  Bible '  contains  some  errors."  * 
Now,  the  "error"  that  is  chiefly  referred  to  oc- 
curs in  the  Fourth  Commandment.  Did  God 
give  the  Ten  Commandments  or  did  he  not?  If 
he  did,  the  "  error "  was  a  Divine  one,  and  the 
thunders  on  Sinai  were  so  many  seals  to  that 
error.  If  he  did  not,  the  Master,  who  clearly  be- 
lieved the  Decalogue  to  be  from  God,  was  himself 
in  error  on  a  fundamental  point.  The  gravity  of 
such  an  error  may  be  best  shown  by  an  illustra- 
tion. In  the  parable  of  Dives  and  Lazarus — that 
tremendous  parable,  as  Charles  Austin  called  it, 
which  implies  that  all  who  receive  their  good 
things  on  earth,  all  whom  a  Jew  of  the  Christian 
era  would  have  counted  rich,  will  be  tormented  3 
— greater  value  is  attached  to  the  testimony  of 
Moses  and  the  prophets  than  to  that  of  one  risen 
from  the  dead.4  Now,  if  one  of  the  by-standers 
had  suggested  that  one  risen  from  the  dead  would 
appeal  directly  to  the  senses,  whereas  the  pas- 
sages in  Moses  and  the  prophets  (even  assuming 
those  passages  to  be  genuine  and  rightly  inter- 
preted) might  figure  among  the  errors  in  the  theo- 
logical and  historical  library  popularly  called  the 
Bible — if  one  of  the  by-standers,  say  the  virtuous 
and  enlightened  St.  Thomas,  had  suggested  this, 
would  not  the  remonstrance,  "Be  not  faithless, 
but  believing,"  have  been  the  very  mildest  that 

ass  is  suppressed.  St.  Matthew  and  the  fourth  Evan- 
gelist quote  Zechariah  ix.  9  differently,  so  as  to  make 
it  support  their  differing  accounts.  The  Fourth  Gospel 
elsewhere  furnishes  a  striking  example  of  a  myth  de- 
posited from  a  misunderstood  text  (xix.  23,  24). 

1  Mark  ii.  26.  I  adopt  Alford's  translation,  as  the 
difficulty  is  slurred  over  in  the  authorized  version. 
Alford  comments  on  the  instructive  fact  that  a  good 
and  learned  divine  has  persuaded  himself  that  this  text 
"  rather  suggests  that  he  (Ahiathar)  was  not  the  high- 
priest  then :  "  nanum  Atlanta  vocavit,  JEtJtiopem  cya- 
num.  As  for  me,  I  forhear  to  waste  words  on  the  in- 
genious disingenuonsness  of  harmonists  :  for  I  cannot 
even  understand  the  notion  that  it  is  honest  to  apply 
to  the  Bihle  a  mode  of  interpretation  which  would  be 
dishonest  if  applied  to  any  other  hook;  aDd  that  ortho- 
doxy, like  Sigismund,  is  sujrra  grammaticam. 

2  Spectator,  August  28,  1875,  p.  1091. 

3  Luke  xvi.  25. 

4  In  like  manner,  the  writer  calling  himself  St.  Pe- 
ter attributes  greater  probative  force  to  the  enigmati- 
cal prophecies  of  the  Old  Testament  than  to  the  evi- 
dence of  St.  Peter's  own  eyes  and  ears  (2  Peter  i.  18, 
19).     This  tendency  of  the  early  Christian  mind  is 


HELL  AND    THE  DIVINE   VERACITY. 


501 


would  have  been  addressed  to  him  ?  Again,  not 
only  did  Jesus  accept  the  entire  narrative  of  the 
Pentateuch,  but  on  the  details  of  that  narrative 
he  founded  important  rules  of  conduct.  In  treat- 
ing of  the  right  of  divorce,  he  appealed  to  the  in- 
stitution that  was  "from  the  beginning;  "  primi- 
tive institutions  he  assumed  to  be  ideally  the  best. 
His  reasoning  suggests  two  reflections  :  1.  W hat- 
ever  the  primitive  form  of  marriage  was,  strict 
monogamy  it  was  not.  2.  The  question  as  to 
primitive  marriage,  though  indirectly  full  of  in- 
struction, has  no  direct  bearing  on  conduct.  As 
soon  as  science  shall  have  determined  whether 
primitive  societies  were  endogamous  or  exoga- 
mous,  modern  communities  will  not  be  constrained 
to  adapt  their  marriage  laws  to  the  primitive  mod- 
el :  any  more  than  those  of  us  who  believe  slavery 
and  cannibalism  to  have  been  primitive  institu- 
tions are  therewithal  bound  to  become  slavehold- 
ers and  cannibals. 

These  illustrations  are  given  in  no  captious 
spirit,  but  in  order  to  show  how  hollow  is  the 
truce  that  has  been  patched  up  between  ortho- 
doxy and  modern  research.  Especially  hollow  is 
the  truce  between  orthodoxy  and  biblical  criti- 
cism. For  example:  Jesus  ascribed  the  110th 
Psalm  to  David ; '  and  the  context  shows  that,  in 
so  ascribing  it,  he  was  not  adapting  himself  to 
conventional  phraseology,  but  that  he  thought 
that  it  was  verily  and  indeed  spoken  by  David. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  "Four  Friends"  deny 
that  it  was  by  David  ;  indeed,  it  was  manifestly 
spoken  not  bi/,  but  to  a  Hebrew  ruler.2  The  "  Four 
Friends,"  who  write  in  a  thoroughly  Christian 
spirit,  forbear  to  point  the  moral  of  their  state- 
ment; but  they  can  hardly  have  been  ignorant 
that,  in  making  the  statement  at  all,  they  were 
charging  their  Master  with  error.  It  is  yet  more 
obvious  that  their  interpretation  of  the  contempt- 
uous apostrophe,  "  Ye  are  gods,"  is  at  variance 
with  the  amazing  interpretation  reported  in  the 
Fourth  Gospel.  Indeed,  according  to  modern 
criticism,  hardly  one  of  the  texts  quoted  from 
the  Old  Testament  is  rightly  interpreted  in  the 
New.  "  Of  prophecies  in  the  sense  of  prognos- 
tication" says  Coleridge,  "  I  utterly  deny  that 
there  is  any  instance  delivered  by  one  of  the 
illustrious  Diadoche  whom  the  Jewish  Church 
comprised  in  the  name  Prophets — and  I  shall  re- 
gard Cyrus  as  an  exception,  when  I  believe  the 

1  Matthew  xxii.  43,  44;  compare  Acts  ii.  34,  35. 

4  I  say  "  ruler  "  (not  "  king  "),  since  there  is  a  great 
difference  of  opinion  as  to  when  this  psalm  was  writ- 
ten. The  "Four  Friends"  place  it  during  the  mon- 
archy; while  our  best  biblical  critic,  Dr  Davidson,  is 
inclined  to  relegate  it  to  the  time  of  the  Maccabees. 


137th  Psalm  to  have  been  composed  by  David." 
In  effect,  this  remarkable  passage  denies  that  the 
so-called  Hebrew  prophecies  were  predictions. 
On  the  other  hand,  Jesus  believed  them  to  be,  not 
merely  predictions,  but  predictions  so  plain  that 
the  Jewish  nation  was  held  guilty  for  not  dis- 
cerning their  fulfillment.  Thus,  on  so  vital  a 
question  as  prophecy,  the  opinion  of  the  chief 
Christian  philosopher  of  our  century  was  dia- 
metrically opposed  to  the  opinion  of  Christ. 
Other  Christian  writers  follow  Coleridge's  lead. 
For  instance :  the  Master  is  alleged  to  have  fore- 
told that  a  prophecy  of  Daniel  was  about  to  be 
fulfilled  in  the  fall  of  Jerusalem,  which  was  to 
be  "  immediately  "  followed  by  the  end  of  the 
world.1  Yet,  not  only  has  a  certain  interval  al- 
ready elapsed  between  the  destruction  of  Jeru- 
salem and  that  of  the  world,  but  we  learn,  even 
from  Christian  authorities,  that  the  passage  at- 
tributed to  Daniel  had  no  reference  to  the  sack 
of  Jerusalem  by  Titus — that  it  was  not  by  Dan- 
iel— that  it  was  not  a  prophecy,  but  a  forgery. 
Hence,  the  book  of  Daniel  furnishes  a  crucial 
test  of  rationalism.  Laodicean  liberals  some- 
times boast  that  they  have  given  up  their  ortho- 
doxy concerning  the  Old  Testament,  but  that 
their  orthodoxy  concerning  the  New  remains  un- 
impaired. Now,  if  there  is  a  point  whereon  ra- 
tional critics  from  Porphyry  to  Zelkr  are  agreed, 
it  is  that  the  prophecy  in  Daniel  is  unauthentic. 
If  there  is  a  point  which  lukewarm  liberals  are 
loath  to  give  up,  it  is  that  every  word  of  Christ 
came  from  God.  To  what,  then,  does  their 
theory  amount  ?  Even  to  this  shocking  result : 
that  God  professed  to  have  inspired  the  pseudo- 
Daniel,  and  thus  became  accessory  after  the  fact. 
A  similar  mode  of  reasoning  applies  yet  more 
directly  to  the  theory  of  "  inspired  personation," 
a  theory  which  seems  to  find  favor  with  the  ac- 
complished divine  who  has  written  the  article 
Bible  in  the  "  Encyclopaedia  Britannica,"  and  who 
has  justly  been  described  in  a  religious  journal  as 
the  most  orthodox  of  biblical  critics.  That  theory 
practically  is,  that  the  author  of  Deuteronomy, 
who  was  not  Moses,  was  inspired  to  say  that  he 
was  Moses  {Deo  per  mendacium  gratijicari).  Yet, 
peradventure,  for  this  theory  something  may  be 
said.  We  have  seen  that,  on  the  orthodox  hy- 
pothesis, St.  Stephen's  speech  was  verbally  in- 
spired. Yet,  when  professing  to  give  the  very 
words  of  Amos,  he  quietly  substituted  Babylon 
for  Damascus  ;  in  fact,  he  manipulated  the  proph- 
ecy, so  as  to  make  it  seem  to  have  been  fulfilled 

J  Matthew  xsiv.  15,  29. 


502 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


by  the  captivity.1  It  follows,  then,  that  he  was 
verbally  inspired  to  misquote.  If  St.  Stephen 
was  inspired  to  misquote,  why  may  not  the  Deu- 
teronomist  have  been  inspired  to  misreport? 

But  this  is  not  all.  A  distinguished  living 
clergyman  told  me  that  he  considered  the  strong- 
est passage  in  the  Bible  to  be  one  where  God,  by 
the  mouth  of  Jeremiah,  disowned  the  entire  cere- 
monial law.2  The  explanation  of  this  passage 
probably  is,  that  Jeremiah,  like  Ezekiel,  felt  that 
the  Mosaic  law  contained  statutes  which,  accord- 
ing to  the  moral  standard  of  his  own  age,  "  were 
not  good;"  but  that,  whereas  Ezekiel  concluded 
that  those  unworthy  statutes  were  given  by  God 
penally,  Jeremiah  more  rationally  concluded  that 
they  were  not  given  by  God  at  all.  At  any  rate, 
Jeremiah's  statement  is  incompatible  with  the 
divine  authorship  of  the  Pentateuch.  How,  then, 
is  it  to  be  reconciled  with  Christ's  observance  of 
the  Passover,  and  his  injunction  to  "  offer  the 
gift  that  Moses  commanded  ?  "  I  refrain  from 
pressing  this  difficulty.  Enough  has  been  said  to 
explain  why  it  is  that,  on  the  approach  of  sound 
criticism,  the  orthodox  landmarks,  which  but  late- 
ly seemed  so  steadfast,  are  one  by  one  being  re- 
moved. 

A  Greek  sage  once  laid  down  three  rather 
sweeping  propositions :  1.  Nothing  exists.  2. 
If  anything  exists,  it  may  not  be  known.  3.  If 
anything  exists  and  may  be  known,  the  knowl- 
edge may  not  be  communicated.  Now,  if  in 
these  propositions  for  "  thing "  be  substituted 
"  good  argument  against  orthodoxy,"  they  will  be 
found  to  correspond  with  three  objections  com- 
monly urged  against  inquiries  like  the  present. 
With  the  first  class  of  objectors — those  who  de- 
ny the  existence  of  plausible  arguments  for  ra- 
tionalism— we  have  already  dealt.  There  remain 
the  other  two  sets  of  objectors.  There  are  those 
who  maintain  that  such  plausible  arguments  ex- 
ist indeed,  but  exist  only  to  try  our  faith  ;  the 
fruit  of  this  tree  of  knowledge  should  be  es- 
chewed on  pain  of  death.  And  there  are  those 
who  complain  that,  in  imparting  to  them  this 
fruit,  we  have  made  them  unhappy,  and  have 
driven  them,  as  it  were,  out  of  paradise :  we 
have  taken  away  their  Lord,  and  they  know  not 
where  we  have  laid  him.      This  last  objection 

1  Acts  vii.  43.  This  practice  was  after  the  manner 
of  the  age.  In  Isaiah  ix.  12,  the  LXX.  did  not  scruple 
to  render  "Philistines"  by^'EXA^ey,  their  object  being, 
according  to  a  high  authority,  to  make  the  prophecy 
refer  to  the  Ptolemies  and  Seleucidje.  (See  Mackay's 
"  Progress  of  the  Intellect.") 

*  Jeremiah  vii.  22. 


shall  be  discussed  first,  and  very  briefly.  That 
the  popular  creed  is  in  itself  not  a  happy  one,  we 
have  shown.  Indeed,  the  application  of  the 
name  "  Gospel "  to  a  system  containing  such 
doctrines  as  the  imputation  of  Adam's  guilt — 
"th'  enormous  faith  of  many"  damned  "for 
one  " — may  be  called  the  irpwrov  iJ/eGSos  of  or- 
thodoxy :  insomuch  that  it  is  the  Christian  Uni- 
versalists  who  are  on  the  side  of  the  angels  ;  and  this 
time  it  is  the  popular  theology  which,  in  repre- 
senting itself  as  having  received  from  the  angels 
the  glaring  misnomer  of  good  tidings  of  great 
joy,  suggests  what  is  little  short  of  blasphemous. 
Still,  although  that  theology  is  in  itself  a  very 
Kakangel,  there  is  no  doubt  that  by  many  the 
KaKayyeXros  &XV  is  unfelt.  Our  "  sister  while 
she  prays  "  is  generally  able  to  enjoy  "  her  early 
heaven,  her  happy  views,"  and  blissfully  to  ignore 
her  early  hell  and  most  depressing  views.  And 
this  is  a  reason  against  heedlessly  airing  modern 
opinions  in  general  conversation,  when  one's 
hearer  is  almost  at  one's  mercy.  But  it  is  not 
a  reason  against  putting  forth  those  opinions  in 
writings,  which  no  one  is  compelled  to  read. 
Moreover,  the  orthodox,  who  practise  self-decep- 
tion as  to  the  unsound  portions  of  their  creed, 
will  find  their  task  daily  more  difficult,  and  there- 
fore more  demoralizing.  As  was  said  in  a  former 
article,  "the  bracing  intellectual  air  that  we  now 
breathe  will  bring  the  latent  diseases  of  our  re- 
ligion out ;  "  and  perchance,  if  we  limit  overmuch 
the  action  of  that  bracing  air,  it  will  work  un- 
mixed harm — it  will  have  time  to  bring  the  dis- 
eases out,  but  not  time  to  cure  them.  It  is  on  this 
account  that  too  mild  a  treatment  of  those  dis- 
eases may  be  perilous  to  the  entire  body  of  Chris- 
tian sentiment  and  practice — not  merely  to  the 
letter  that  killeth,  but  to  the  spirit  that  giveth 
life:  if  thine  hand  or  thy  foot  offend  thee,  says 
the  Scripture,  cut  it  off.  And  thus,  when  we  ex- 
horted Christians  manfully  to  renounce  the  devil 
and  all  his  angels,  and  to  drop  hell  out  of  the 
Bible,  we  acted  under  a  conservative  impulse : 
for  we  doubted  whether  to  Christianity  itself  the 
presence  of  those  nether  flames,  if  they  are  suf- 
fered to  go  on  smouldering,  will  be  wholly  free 
from  risk.  Behold,  how  great  a  matter  a  little  fire 
kindleth  ! 

The  other  objection  is,  in  effect,  that  "  man 
is  not  made  to  question,  but  adore:"  it  is  safer 
to  accept  undoubtingly  whatever  our  Bible  or 
Church  tells  us  of  God,  even  if  the  evidence  for 
those  statements  be  inconclusive;  nay,  had  the 
evidence  been  conclusive,  where  would  be  the 
room  for  our  faith  ?     Of  this  faith  unfaithful  we 


HELL  AND   THE  DIVINE   VERACITY 


503 


might  summarily  dispose,  by  observing  that  its 
possessors  are  liable  to  Coleridge's  censure — 
they  prefer  Christianity  to  truth.  But  it  will 
serve  our  purpose  to  meet  these  objections  on 
their  own  ground,  and  to  fight  them  with  their 
own  weapons.  Is  it,  then,  quite  certain  tliat  a 
good  Being,  who  on  one  or  more  occasions  af- 
firmed himself  to  have  ordained  Tophet,  would 
wish  his  affirmation  to  be  always  believed  ?  The 
answer  to  this  question  may  be  sought  in  human 
analogies.  Malcolm,  in  order  to  test  the  fidelity 
of  Macduff,  charged  himself  with  grievous  faults. 
It  was  with  hearty  satisfaction  that  Macduff  at 
length  discovered  that  Malcolm  had  been  deceiv- 
ing him.  Nor  can  we  doubt  that,  when  the  dis- 
covery was  made,  his  satisfaction  was  shared  by 
Malcolm  himself;  for  the  latter  would  prefer  that 
his  friend  should  regard  him  as  an  occasional 
liar,  rather  than  as  a  perpetual  villain.1  A  yet 
closer  parallel  may  be  drawn  from  classical  my- 
thology. Mr.  Symonds  has  well  observed  that 
an  enlightened  pagan  would  feel  about  the  can- 
nibal repasts  attributed  to  his  gods  much  as  an 
enlightened  Christian  feels  about  eternal  punish- 
ment. This  parallel  (Mr.  Symonds's  critics  not- 
withstanding) holds  perfectly ;  for  the  analogical 
device  which  is  used  to  defend,  and  the  allegori- 
cal device  which  is  used  to  explain  away,  the  be- 
lief in  a  divine  torture-house,  may  just  as  readily 
be  applied  to  the  belief  in  divine  cannibalism. 
It  is,  therefore,  worth  while  to  consider  the  sort 
of  language  which  devout  but  enlightened  pa- 
gans— pagan  Broad  Churchmen,  in  fact — held 
concerning  this  unsavory  dogma  of  pagan  ortho- 
doxy. In  a  passage  translated  and  justly  praised 
by  Bacon,  Plutarch  observes:  "Surely,  I  had 
rather  a  great  deal  men  should  say  there  was  no 
such  man  at  all  as  Plutarch,  than  that  they  should 
say  that  there  was  one  Plutarch  that  would  eat 
his  children  as  soon  as  they  were  born ;  as  the 
poets  speak  of  Saturn;"  the  gods,  he  infers, 
have  a  similar  preference,  and  hate  superstition 
worse  than  atheism.  This  principle  is  fruitful  of 
consequences.      Let   us   suppose   that  Plutarch 

1  Perhaps  a  similar  lesson  may  be  gathered  from 
the  Gospels.  We  may  be  sure  that  the  father  whose 
son  refused  to  go  into  the  vineyard,  but  afterward 
repented  and  went,  was  better  pleased  than  if  the  son 
had  kept  his  word  and  not  gone— had  been  more 
truthful,  but  less  obedient.  The  moral  of  Jephthah's 
story  is  less  satisfactory  ;  and  the  frantic  efforts  that 
are  nowadays  made  to  explain  away  this  simple  nar- 
rative—to make  believe  that  Jephthah  broke  his  vow 
and  did  not  commit  murder— are  among  the  many 
proofs  that  the  religious  instinct  of  modern  times  is 
in  some  respects  healthier  than  that  of  the  Old,  and 
seemingly  of  the  New,  Testament  (Hebrews  xi.  32). 


would  have  accepted  them :  in  that  case,  if  Kro- 
nos  or  Zeus  could  have  been  shown  to  have 
pleaded  guilty  to  revolting  cruelty,  Plutarch 
would  have  judged  it  right  to  disbelieve  the 
divine  confession.  And  he  might  fairly  have 
hoped  that  such  a  judgment  would  find  an  echo 
amid  the  peaks  of  Olympus ;  for  would  not  the 
Olympian  father  more  bitterly  resent  the  charge 
of  murdering  his  own  children  than  that  of,  hu- 
manly speaking,  either  deceiving  or  being  de- 
ceived (KpelTTov  8'i\ecr9ai  i|/«C5oj,  $  aXrjdes  Kaii6v)  ? 
Nay,  further,  Zeus  was  the  father  "  of  men "  as 
well  as  "  of  gods,"  the  father  whose  "  offspring 
we  are ;"  x  and  the  foregoing  argument  would  as 
clearly  apply  to  his  treatment  of  his  human,  as 
to  his  treatment  of  his  divine,  children.  Where- 
fore Plutarch  might  have  thought  it  not  merely 
unscientific,  but  irreligious,  to  doubt  that — 

"  As  for  the  dog,  the  furies,  and  their  snakes, 
The  gloomy  caverns,  and  the  burning  lakes, 
And  all  the  vain  infernal  trumpery, 
They  neither  are,  nor  were,  nor  e'er  can  be."  2 

In  other  words,  he  might  have  clung  to  his  belief 
in  the  divine  mercy,  even  though  the  divine  mer- 
cy had  to  be  upheld  at  the  cost  of  lesser  divine 
attributes ;  even  though,  with  the  voracity  of 
Tartarus,  he  gave  up  the  veracity  of  Zeus. 

Another  Neopagan  has  dealt  with  divine  can- 
nibalism in  a  manner  whereon  Neochristians 
would  do  well  to  meditate.  To  Pindar  it  seemed 
hardly  credible  that  the  gods  should  have  eaten 
up  Pelops.  He  granted,  indeed,  that  very  strange 
things  sometimes  happened  ;  and  he  thought  that, 
in  this  particular  case,  the  final  decision  might 
be  reserved  for  posterity ;  but,  provisionally,  he 
deemed  it  safer  to  reject  the  story.  It  is  remark- 
able that  here  the  poet  uses  the  same  sort  of  pru- 
dential weapons  that  orthodox  Christians  use ;  but 
he  uses  it  on  the  opposite  side — he  employs  it  in 
defense,  not  of  faith,  but  of  skepticism.  And  this 
should  show  us  what  a  two-edged  weapon  it  is. 
Pindar,  indeed,  probably  regarded  the  gods  as 
having  been  misrepresented,  not  as  mirepresent- 
ing  themselves.  But  we  have  shown  that,  for  prac- 
tical purposes,  these  two  forms  of  misrepresen- 
tation differ  less  than  at  first  sight  appears ;  and, 
indeed,  that  the  distinction  between  gods  who  mis- 
report  themselves,  and  gods  who  are  misreported 
by  verbally  inspired  reporters,  is  a  distinction 
without  a  difference.  But  Pindar  haply  did  not  re- 
gard the  misreporters  as  verbally  inspired.  If  so, 
his  view  exactly  foreshadowed  that  of  the  Neo- 
christians ;  and  the  state  of  mind  common  to  both 
bears  so  closely  on  our  inquiry  that  we  propose  to 

1  Menander.     s  Lucretius  translated  by  Dryden. 


504 


TEE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTELY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


consider  it  further,  and  for  that  purpose  to  resort 
yet  once  again  to  to  a  classical  illustration.  The 
Kymaeans  being  commanded  by  an  oracle  to  de- 
liver up  a  suppliant,  one  of  their  citizens,  Aristo- 
dikus,  suspected  that  the  divine  words  had  been 
tampered  with,1  and  consulted  the  oracle  himself. 
The  god,  however,  gave  the  same  answer  as  be- 
fore. Thereupon  Aristodikus  bethought  him  of  a 
device :  he  robbed  the  nests  of  the  sacred  birds 
that  were  in  the  precincts  of  the  temple.  Pres- 
ently he  heard  a  voice  from  the  sanctuary,  saying, 
"  Wretch,  how  dare  you  strip  the  temple  of  my 
suppliants  ?  "  "0  king !  "  replied  he,  nothing 
abashed,  "you,  indeed,  protect  your  suppliants; 
and  do  you  bid  the  Kymasans  deliver  up  theirs  ?  "  2 
"  Yea,  verily,"  said  the  god,  "  that  for  such  im- 
piety ye  may  perish  speedily;  and  may  never 
again  ask  the  oracle  ahout  giving  up  suppliants." 
Thus,  then,  was  Aristodikus  rewarded  for  disre- 
garding an  injunction  strikingly  analogous  to  Je- 
hovah's "  statutes  that  were  not  good."  His  bear- 
ing in  face  of  such  an  injunction  differed  from 
that  of  Abraham  and  Hosea,3just  as  Hellenism 
differed  from  Hebraism.  It  is,  therefore,  impor- 
tant that  his  precise  moral  attitude  should  be 
noted.  He  first  cherished  the  hope  that  the  wick- 
ed command  was  not  from  God ;  and,  afterward, 
when  convinced  that  it  was  from  God,  he  still  held 
that  God  was  less  dishonored  by  its  breach  than 
by  its  observance ;  for  it  seemed  less  incredible 
that,  for  some  inscrutable  reason,  God  should  have 
deceived  his  worshipers,  than  that  he  should  have 
sanctioned  what  was  unjust  and  cruel. 

Aristodikus,  in  so  judging,  was  a  model  of 
pious  discrimination.  He  deserves  our  respect, 
both  for  regarding  the  divine  untruthfulness  as 
one  of  the  solutions  of  the  problem  that  lay  be- 
fore him,  and  also  for  regarding  it  as  an  unsatis- 


1  &OKe<i>v  roils  0eo7rpdi7ovs  ou  Ac'yeiv  a\i)6etot.  Herod- 
otus,  i.,  158. 

5  These  words  are  closely  parallel  to  passages  in  the 
Gospel :  Matthew  vi.  14, 15  ;  xviii.  33.  Observe  that 
in  all  such  passages  the  identity  of  the  divine  and  the 
human  morrlity  is  assumed. 

3  Genesis  xxii.;  Hosea  i.  2. 


factory  solution— a  solution  not  to  be  adopted  till 
a  happier  one  had  failed.  And,  in  thus  express- 
ing our  concurrence  with  his  estimate  of  divine 
deceptions,  we  have  shown  what  we  think  of  Mr. 
Oxenham's  estimate.  It  is  in  a  certain  sense  true 
that  the  belief  in  such  deceptions  is  "little  short 
of  blasphemous."  But  this  is  a  one-sided  truth, 
unless  supplemented  by  the  more  obvious  and 
momentous  truth  that  the  belief  in  hell  is,  in  the 
words  of  the  first  of  living  bishops,  "  blasphemous 
and  revolting."  Orthodoxy,  therefore,  is  in  a 
strait  between  two  blasphemies;  and  of  those 
blasphemies  she  should  choose  the  less. 

Briefly,  then,  we  concede  to  Suarez  and  Prof. 
Huxley  that  "  incredibile  est,  Deum  illis  verbis  ad 
populum  fuisse  locutum  quibus  deciperetur."  But 
we  guard  this  concession  by  adding,  "  Incredibi- 
lius  est,  Deum  illis  pamis  in  populum  esse  usurum 
quibus  crucietur."  We  should  hate,  not  the  be- 
lief in  divine  untruthfulness  less,  but  the  belief  in 
divine  cruelty  more.  Only,  in  holding  our  brief 
for  Neochristianity,  we  assumed  that  it  was  be- 
tween these  two  beliefs  that  the  alternative  lay. 
And,  starting  with  this  assumption,  we  maintained 
that  those  who  hang  the  belief  in  hell  on  the  divine 
veracity  represent  the  chain  of  evidence  for  hell 
as  stronger  than  its  weakest  link ;  or,  to  employ 
a  yet  bolder  metaphor,  they  make  the  burning 
lake  rise  above  its  own  level.  To  prove  this  has 
been  the  design  of  our  article.  We  have  been  en- 
deavoring to  show  the  universal  application  of  a 
plain  rule  of  human  jurisprudence,  by  establishing 
a  proposition  which  may  be  called  a  counterpart, 
if  not  a  corollary,  of  Hume's  famous  proposition 
about  miracles.  Our  proposition  is:  That  no  per- 
son (whether  in  heaven  or  on  earth)  should  stand 
convicted,  on  his  own  testimony,  of  an  immoral 
or  unlikely  act,  unless  it  be  less  antecedently  un- 
likely that  he  should  do  the  act  than  that  his  tes- 
timony should  be  false;  "and"  (to  apply  Hume's 
very  words)  "  even  in  that  case  there  is  a  mutual 
destruction  of  arguments,  and  the  superior  only 
gives  us  an  assurance  suitable  to  that  degree  of 
force  which  remains  after  deducting  the  inferior." 
— Fortnightly  Review. 


SPONTANEOUS  GENERATION :   A  LAST   WORD. 


505 


SPONTANEOUS  GENERATION :  A  LAST  WORD. 

Br    Professor    TYNDALL. 


THE  results  of  some  years  of  labor,  on  my 
part,  in  connection  with  the  subject  of  spon- 
taneous generation  are  set  forth  in  the  two  me- 
moirs published  in  the  "  Philosophical  Transac- 
tions of  the  Royal  Society  "  for  1876  and  1877. 
But  by  conversation  and  correspondence  with 
various  physicians  and  surgeons  of  eminence  I 
was  made  aware  that  the  further  exposition  and 
elucidation  of  two  or  three  leading  points  was 
desirable,  and  to  this  task  I  addressed  myself  in 
the  January  number  of  this  review.  This  has 
drawn  forth  in  the  February  number  a  "reply," 
in  which  it  is  intimated  that  my  article  deals  in 
"  denunciation."  Of  that  the  reader  will  judge 
for  himself,  my  desire  being  that  demonstration, 
rather  than  denunciation,  should  form  the  staple 
of  the  article.  I  am  also  spoken  of  as  comment- 
ing in  terms  of  severe  reprobation  on  the  writer's 
temerity  in  differing  from  M.  Pasteur.  On  this 
point  I  take  the  opportunity  of  remarking  that 
had  the  "  temerity  "  referred  to  been  the  outcome 
of  true  courage,  and  fidelity  to  scientific  convic- 
tion, I  should  have  been  the  first  to  applaud  the 
writer's  dissent  from  Pasteur,  Huxley,  and  the 
other  able  men  with  whom  he  has  come  into  col- 
lision; but  I  could  not  applaud  the  turning  of 
a  momentous  discussion  into  a  mere  dialectic 
wrangle,  nor  could  I  approve  of  the  systematic 
abandonment  of  that  courtesy  of  language  which 
befits  the  neophyte  in  the  presence  of  the  master. 
Science,  as  a  moral  agent,  is  affected  by  the 
spirit  in  which  it  is  pursued,  and  the  man  who, 
at  the  entrance  of  his  career,  discharges  from  his 
mind  all  reverence  for  those  whose  reputations 
have  been  established  by  the  successful  disci- 
plines of  laborious  lives,  is  not  likely  to  win  ap- 
plause from  me. 

To  justice,  however,  my  respondent  is  entitled, 
and  I  begin  these  remarks  by  an  act  of  justice 
toward  him.  He  complains  that  I  speak  of  the 
vital  resistance  of  the  seeds  of  Medicago  as  if  he 
had  not  been  aware  of  the  fact,  and  points  out,  to 
use  his  own  words,  that  "the  facts  newly  dis- 
covered by  Prof.  Tyndall,  which  were  to  invali- 
date my  views,  were,  with  others,  nearly  five  years 
ago,  referred  to  by  me."  I  turn  to  vol.  i.,  page 
314,  of  his  "  Beginnings  of  Life,"  and  there,  it 
must  be  admitted,  is  a  reference  to  Pouchet's 
experiment.     The  observation  referred  to  aston- 


ished Pouchet  himself.  At  first  he  would  not 
believe  the  statements  of  those  who  informed 
him  that  the  seeds  of  Medicago  could  resist  four 
hours'  boiling.  "  Ce  fait  extraordinaire  etait  telle- 
ment  en  opposition  avec  ce  que  professent  les 
physiologistes  les  plus  emiuents  de  notre  epoque, 
que  je  n'y  pouvais  croire."  Spallanzani  had  dis- 
tinctly declared  that  vegetable  seeds  were  de- 
stroyed by  boiling  water,  those  with  the  hardest 
integuments  not  excepted.  But  Pouchet  made 
the  experiment  for  himself,  and  in  twenty  different 
repetitions  of  it  found  that  some  of  the  seeds  ger- 
minated after  four  hours'  boiling.  "  Les  senten- 
ces," he  says,  "  de  ce  medicago  du  Bresil  re- 
sistaient  a  une  ebullition  de  quatre  heures  de 
duree.  Ou  cela  s'arrete-t-il?  Je  n'en  sais  rien, 
n'ayant  pas  experimente  an  dela." 

This  observation,  which  excited  great  atten- 
tion at  the  time,  which  afterward  formed  the 
subject  of  discussions  in  the  Academy,  and  which 
certainly  is  the  most  important  observation  of  the 
kind  ever  made,  is  briefly  spoken  of  in  a  foot- 
note on  the  page  above  referred  to.  I  had  read 
the  note  and  forgotten  it,  my  lapse  of  memory 
being  confirmed  by  the  fact  that  in  my  respon- 
dent's later  volume,  "  Evolution,  or  the  Origin  of 
Life,"  where  he  treats  very  fully  of  "  the  destruc- 
tive influence  of  heat  upon  living  matter,"  the 
observation  of  Pouchet  is  not,  to  my  knowledge, 
once  mentioned. 

My  respondent  refers  to  Mr.  Moseley  in  the 
Academy,  and  to  Prof.  Huxley  at  Liverpool,  as 
enunciating  views  which  were  afterward  "abun- 
dantly refuted "  both  in  this  country  and  on 
the  Continent.  Notwithstanding  such  refutation, 
"  Prof.  Tyndall,"  continues  my  respondent — 

"  three  years  later— that  is,  early  in  1876— at- 
tempted to  deny  that  such  experimental  results  as 
mine  could  be  legitimately  obtained,  and  sought  to 
convince  the  Royal  Society  and  a  crowded  audi- 
ence at  the  Royal  Institution  that  I  had  fallen  into 
error,  and  that  no  such  results  could  be  obtained 
by  a  skilled  experimentalist  like  himself.  In  evi- 
dence of  this  he  brought  forward  a  '  cloud  of  wit- 
nesses,' all  of  which,  if  rightly  interpreted,  gave 
very  different  testimony  from  that  which  Prof. 
Tyndall  imagined.  But  while  he  at  first  strenu- 
ously denied  my  facts,  he  is  now  only  able  to  de- 
mur to  my  interpretation." 


506 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


What  the  "  different  testimony  "  here  spoken  of 
is  I  do  not  know,  but  I  do  know  that  the  "  cloud 
of  witnesses  "  confront  this  writer  now,  as  they 
did  in  1876.  Save  by  such  intimations  as  the 
above,  which  seem  to  point  to  a  reserve  of  wis- 
dom in  the  writer's  private  mind,  he  has  never, 
to  my  knowledge,  attempted  to  shake  their  evi- 
dence. The  birth  of  the  "  witnesses  "  was  on  this 
wise:  At  a  meeting  of  the  Pathological  Society, 
especially  convened  for  the  discussion  of  the 
"  germ-theory "  of  contagious  disease,  my  re- 
spondent thus  addressed  his  medical  colleagues : 

"With  the  view  of  settling  these  questions, 
therefore,  we  may  carefully  prepare  an  infusion 
from  some  animal  tissue,  be  it  muscle,  kidney,  or 
liver ;  we  may  place  it  in  a  flask,  whose  neck  is 
drawn  out  and  narrowed  in  the  blowpipe-flame ; 
we  may  boil  the  fluid,  seal  the  vessel  during  ebul- 
lition, and  await  the  result,  as  I  have  often  done. 
After  a  variable  time,  the  previously-heated  fluid 
■within  the  hermetically-sealed  flask  swarms  more 
or  less  plentifully  with  bacteria  and  allied  organ- 
isms." 

The  speaker  had  already  informed  his  au- 
dience that  he  was  discussing  "  a  question  lying 
at  the  root  of  the  most  fatal  class  of  diseases  to 
which  the  human  race  is  liable."  Special  care,  I 
thought,  was  needed  in  the  performance  of  ex- 
periments which  lay  at  the  basis  of  a  subject  of 
this  importance.  I  was  not  sure  that  the  speaker 
had  observed  this  care.  I  therefore  took  him  at 
his  word,  prepared  infusions  of  animal  tissues, 
comprising  mutton,  beef,  fowl,  wild-duck,  par- 
tridge, plover,  pheasant,  snipe,  rabbit,  hare,  had- 
dock, mullet,  codfish,  sole,  and  other  substances. 
I  placed  them  in  flasks,  "  with  necks  narrowed 
and  drawn  out  in  the  blowpipe-flame."  I  boiled 
the  fluids,  sealed  the  vessels  during  ebullition, 
and  awaited  the  result.  These  are  the  "wit- 
nesses" of  whose  evidence  my  respondent  pos- 
sesses an  "  interpretation  "  known,  as  far  as  I  am 
aware,  only  to  himself.  The  fact,  as  known  to 
me  and  others,  is  that  the  witnesses  contradicted 
his  assertion.  He  had  affirmed  that  they  would 
swarm  with  bacteria  and  allied  organisms.  They 
distinctly  refused  to  do  so.  This  thing  was  not 
done  in  a  corner.  One  hundred  and  thirty  such 
flasks  were  submitted  to  the  scrutiny  of  the  Royal 
Society  in  January,  1876,  while  thirty  of  them 
were  critically  examined  by  the  biological  secre- 
tary of  the  Society,  Prof.  Huxley.  In  one  flask, 
and  in  one  only,  a  small  mycelium  was  discovered,, 
and  it,  as  Prof.  Huxley  remarked  at  the  time, 
afforded  a  "  dramatic  confirmation  "  of  the  over- 
whelming evidence  otherwise  adduced.     In  this 


flask,  and  in  it  only,  a  small  orifice  was  discov- 
ered, through  which  the  infusion  could  be  pro- 
jected, and  by  which  the  germinal  matter  of  the 
air  had  had  access  to  the  flask. 

My  respondent  next  deals  with  Liebig's  doc- 
trine of  fermentation,  regarding  which,  after  some 
preliminary  remarks,  he  says:  "If,  then,  as  Lie- 
big  contended,  organic  matter  in  a  state  of  decay 
is  capable  of  acting  as  a  ferment,  and  of  initiat- 
ing the  common  fermentations  and  putrefactions, 
there  surely  can  be  no  error  in  quoting  him  in 
support  of  such  views."  Certainly  not.  Whether 
organic  matter  in  a  state  of  decay  possess  the 
power  ascribed  to  it  or  not,  the  writer  was  per- 
fectly justified  in  quoting  Liebig;  but  his  justifi- 
cation ceases  when  by  a  twist  of  logic  he  seeks  to 
make  Liebig's  views  answerable  for  his  own.  He 
goes  on  to  say :  "  And  if  it  has  also  been  shown 
that  the  appearance  and  increase  of  the  lowest 
living  particles  are  always  correlative  of  these  pro- 
cesses, Liebig's  view,  if  it  is  true  at  all,  must  be 
true  for  the  whole  of  the  processes  which  are  es- 
sentially included  under  the  term  fermentation." 

Such  logic  is  best  met  by  the  direct  and  sim- 
ple statement  of  the  truth.  Matter  in  decay  was, 
in  Liebig's  view,  matter  in  a  state  of  molecular 
disturbance.  His  vision  was  concentrated  on 
groups  of  atoms,  or  molecules — not  on  organisms. 
He  pictured,  in  perfect  consistency  with  his  theo- 
retic sight,  the  propagation  of  the  disturbance  of 
these  groups  to  other  groups  of  unstable  consti- 
tution. These  he  figured  as  shaken  asunder  by 
the  motion  of  their  agitated  neighbors ;  the  visible 
concomitant  of  this  molecular  breaking  up  being 
what  we  call  fermentation.  Liebig's  idea  of  a 
ferment  had  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  the 
doctrine  of  spontaneous  generation.  He  gave 
that  doctrine  no  countenance ;  he  derived  from  it 
no  aid ;  and  the  attempt  of  the  heterogenist  to 
strengthen  his  position  by  amalgamation  with 
Liebig  is  an  attempt  to  mix  together  wholly  im- 
miscible things.  My  respondent  quotes  not  only 
one,  but  two  celebrated  German  chemists  in  his 
favor.  I  ventured,  a  few  days  ago,  to  place  the 
foregoing  extract  from  the  "  reply  "  before  a  third 
distinguished  German  chemist,  who  is  intimately 
acquainted  with  Liebig's  views.  He  had  two  al- 
ternative hypotheses  to  account  for  it.  The  first 
need  not  be  mentioned  ;  the  second  ascribed  the 
reasoning  of  the  extract  to  "mere  confusion  of 
mind." 

My  respondent  continues : 

"  The  heterogenist,  therefore,  has  perfectly 
good  ground  for  demanding  proofs  of  error  from 
the  germ-theorist,  rather  than  more  or  less  po3- 


SPONTANEOUS  GENERATION:   A   LAST   WORD. 


507 


sible  guesses  based  solely  on  the  germ-theorists' 
way  of  thinking,  before  he  abandons  Liebig's  fer- 
tile idea,  supported  by  Gerhardt  and  others,  that 
tbe  mere  organic  matter  of  the  air  can  engender 
fermentative  changes  in  suitable  fluids,  leading 
though  it  may,  among  other  phenomena,  to  a  new 
birth  of  living  particles.  This,  too,  the  reader 
will  observe,  is  a  very  different  notion  concerning 
the  origin  of  such  new  living  particles  from  that 
which  Prof.  Tyndall  persists  in  attributing  to  me, 
viz.,  the  absurd  idea  that  mere  dead  particles  from 
the  air  are  themselves  'miraculously  kindled  into 
living  things.'  " 

It  is  to  be  hoped  that  the  reader  will  be  able 
to  observe  the  difference  to  which  his  attention 
is  here  directed.  For  my  own  part  I  am  grateful 
for  the  explanation,  such  as  it  is,  which,  in  view 
of  the  writer's  previous  utterances,  was  by  no 
means  unnecessary.  It  does  not,  it  is  true,  quite 
abolish  the  "  miracle,"  but  it  changes  the  form 
thereof.  It  is  not,  we  now  learn,  the  dead  at- 
mospheric particles  themselves  that  are  kindled 
into  life;  it  is,  on  the  contrary,  the  dead  particles 
of  the  liquid  that  are  kindled  into  life  by  the  dead 
particles  of  the  air.  The  former,  we  are  told,  is 
an  "  absurd  idea,"  while  the  latter,  I  suppose,  is 
thought  a  sweetly  reasonable  one.  Thus,  the  dis- 
cord persistently  raised  by  me  is  finally  resolved. 
The  "reader,"  if  I  might  claim  his  attention  for 
a  moment,  will  observe  the  frictionless  way  in 
which  this  "  new  birth  of  living  particles  "  in  the 
liquid,  begotten,  be  it  remembered,  by  the  dead 
particles  of  the  air,  glides  in  as  a  small  corollary 
to  Liebig's  "  fertile  idea."  There  are  people 
among  us  who,  it  is  alleged,  can  produce  effects, 
before  which  the  discoveries  of  Newton  pale. 
There  are  men  of  science  who  would  sell  all  that 
they  have,  and  give  the  proceeds  to  the  poor,  for 
a  glimpse  of  phenomena  which  are  mere  trifles 
to  the  "  spiritualist."  In  like  manner,  while  no 
discovery  of  the  age  would  bear  comparisoH  with 
this  "new  birth  of  living  particles,"  it  is  a  mere 
commonplace  occurrence  to  our  fortunate  hete- 
rogenist. 

My  respondent  scatters  through  his  article 
words  and  phrases  which  he  intends  to  have  an 
effect,  if  not  a  meaning.  He  labels  proofs  as 
"  assumptions,"  ocular  demonstrations  as  "  pos- 
sible guesses,"  and  propositions  backed  by  all 
the  knowledge  of  Nature  which  we  possess  as 
the  outcome  of  arbitrary  prejudice.  He  speaks 
of  my  "setting  the  seal  upon  Nature's  possibili- 
ties "  when  I  am  merely  setting  it  upon  his  own 
illicit  wanderings.  Indeed,  he  plainly  shows  him- 
self to  be  unacquainted  with  the  real  basis  of 
scientific  inference.     Let   us   consider  a  special 


case,  over  which  he  has  loudly  sounded  the  argu- 
mentative timbrel.  In  my  January  article  I  refer 
to  Pouchet,  fairly,  I  trust,  appreciating  his  learn- 
ing and  his  strength,  but  quoting  his  own  words 
to  indicate  the  leaning  of  his  mind  when  he  be- 
gan his  researches  on  heterogeny.  My  respon- 
dent retorts  that  I  show  "  an  even  more  obvious 
bias  in  the  contrary  direction  ; "  and,  to  make 
his  point  good,  he  publishes  a  mutilated  para- 
graph from  one  of  my  letters.  The  full  text  of 
the  paragraph  I  here  restore : 

"  Dr.  Bastian  says  that  two  interpretations  of  my 
facts  are  equally  admissible.  He  is  again  wrong ; 
there  is  but  one  interpretation  possible.  An  inter- 
pretation which  violates  all  antecedent  knowledge 
is  undeserving  of  the  name.  All  our  experience 
of  the  method  of  Nature  goes  to  show  that,  if  a 
sown  particle  sprout  into  a  plant,  the  particle  is 
proved  thereby  to  be  the  seed  of  that  plant.  The 
inference  that  a  particle  which,  when  sown,  pro- 
duces a  thistle  is  the  seed  of  the  thistle,  is  not 
surer  than  the  inference  that  the  particles  described 
in  the  Times  as  rising  in  clouds  from  shaken  hay 
embrace  the  seeds  of  bacteria ;  while,  to  infer  that 
the  thistle  is  the  offspring,  not  of  a  living  seed,  but 
of  dead,  unrelated  organic  matter,  is  not  more  re- 
pugnant to  right  reason  than  the  so-called  second 
interpretation  of  Dr.  Bastian,  which  ascribes  such 
definite  organisms  as  hay-bacillus  to  dead  dust." 

This,  I  submit,  is  reasoning  of  a  perfectly 
sound  and  wholesome  kind.  My  respondent,  how- 
ever, italicizes  one  obnoxious  line  of  the  para- 
graph, omits  some  others,  and  deduces  from  the 
whole  that  I  have  set  my  presumptuous  seal  upon 
the  "  possibilities  of  Nature,"  and  done  other 
foolish  things.  I  think  it  will  not  be  difficult  to 
make  this  matter  plain  to  the  readers  of  the 
Nineteenth  Century.  The  smallest  organisms 
which  the  microscope  has  hitherto  revealed  are 
grouped  together  under  the  common  name  of 
bacteria.  They  differ  from  each  other  both  in 
size  and  shape,  some  being  globular,  some  staff- 
like (whence  the  name),  some  having  the  form  of 
fine  filaments,  some  mobile,  and  some  still.  In 
the  staff-like  bacteria,  the  usual  mode  of  prop- 
agation and  multiplication  is  bisection.  The 
"  staff"  is  nipped  at  its  centre,  the  nip  deepens, 
and  finally  the  bacterium  is  divided  into  two 
halves,  which  lengthen  and  are  bisected  in  their 
turn.  According  to  a  calculation  of  Dr.  Bur- 
don-Sanderson,  this  process  enables  17,000,000 
individuals  to  proceed  in  twenty -four  hours 
from  a  single  ancestor.  In  the  case,  however,  of 
certain  large  bacteria,  which,  because  they  are 
large,  have  been  more  thoroughly  examined  than 
the  others,  the  rods  or  filaments  are  observed  to 


508 


TEE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTELY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


resolve  themselves  iuto  spores.  This  resolution, 
as  proved  by  Cohn  and  Koch,  is  conspicuously 
illustrated  by  the  Bacilhcs  subtilis  of  hay,  and  the 
Bacillus  anlhracis  of  splenic  fever.  Both  these 
organisms  propagate  themselves  by  spores  which 
may  be  rendered  as  plain  to  the  eye  of  the  micro, 
scopist  as  peas  in  a  pod.1 

This  premised,  let  the  reader  place  before  his 
mind  one  of  the  sealed  chambers  described  in  the 
January  number  of  this  review;  let  him  figure 
its  series  of  test-tubes,  charged  with  infusions 
which,  exposed  to  optically  pure  air,  have  re- 
mained sweet  and  clear  for  six  months  in  a  warm 
room.  Let  the  reader  now  suppose  the  door  of 
the  sealed  chamber  to  be  opened,  and  a  bunch  of 
dry  hay  to  be  shaken  in  the  moteless  air  of  the 
chamber.  A  beam  sent  through  that  air  now 
shows  it  to  be  laden  with  dust.  Forty-eight  hours 
after  this  dust  has  been  let  loose,  the  infusions 
are  found  to  have  a  fatty,  corrugated  scum  upon 
their  surfaces,  it  may  be  with  a  clear  or  it  may 
be  with  a  turbid  liquid  underneath.  When  this 
scum  is  examined,  it  is  found  to  consist  of  count- 
less multitudes  of  the  hay-bacillus  matted  to- 
gether. What  are  we  to  conclude?  Whence 
have  these  organisms  come  ?  I  say  there  is  but 
one  interpretation  possible,  and  this  is  the  par- 
ticularly obnoxious  phrase  that  my  respondent 
has  italicized  as  marking  my  scientific  bigotry  and 
narrowness  of  view.  The  interpretation  is  that 
the  organisms  have  come  from  the  germs  of  Ba- 
cillus subtilis,  which  have  been  shaken  from  the 
hay.  In  giving  this  interpretation,  and  in  assert- 
ing it  to  be  the  only  one,  I  am  not,  I  submit, 
arbitrarily  setting  my  seal  upon  the  possibilities 
of  Nature,  but  loyally  and  dutifully  following  her 
teachings  as  an  obedient  son.  But,  my  respon- 
dent might  urge,  you  forget  the  other  interpreta- 
tion, that  I  made  so  clear  to  the  reader  at  page 
267  of  my  "  reply  " — the  interpretation,  namely, 
that  the  dust  of  the  hay  is  dead  organic  matter  in 
a  state  of  motor  decay.  This  dead  dust  falls  into 
the  infusions,  and,  although  it  does  not  commit  the 
"absurdity"  of  becoming  "itself"  alive,  it  does 
go  through  the  perfectly  reasonable  process  of 
making  the  dead  infusions  alive.  The  value  of 
logic  leading  to  this  issue  has  been  duly  appraised 
by  our  highest  scientific  authorities ;  its  survival 
among  the  general  public  cannot,  I  think,  be 
long. 

"  What  present  warrant,"  asks  my  respondent, 

1  A  few  days  ago  I  had  an  opportunity  of  seeing 
matted  together  and  dotted  with  spores  some  magnifi- 
cent examples  of  Bacillus  anthracis,  which  had  been 
cultivated  by  Mr.  Ewart,  of  University  College. 


"  is  there  for  supposing  that  a  naked,  or  almost 
naked,  speck  of  protoplasm  can  withstand  four, 
six,  or  eight  hours'  boiling?"  To  which  he 
adds,  "I  can  only  answer  none."  Regarding 
naked  specks  of  protoplasm  I  make  no  asser- 
tion. I  know  nothing  about  them  save  as  the 
creatures  of  my  respondent's  fancy  put  into  words. 
But  I  do  affirm,  not  as  a  "  supposition,"  nor  an 
"assumption,"  nor  a  "probable  guess,"  nor,  to 
use  a  more  strenuous  stigma  of  my  respondent, 
"a  wild  hypothesis,"  but  as  a  matter  of  the  most 
undoubted  fact,  that  the  spores  of  the  hay-bacil- 
lus, when  thoroughly  desiccated  by  age,  have,  in 
special  cases,  withstood  the  ordeal  mentioned. 
And  I  further  affirm  that  these  obdurate  germs, 
under  the  guidance  of  the  knowledge  that  they 
are  germs,  can  be  destroyed  by  five  minutes'  boil- 
ing, or  even  less.  This  needs  explanation.  The 
finished  bacterium,  as  the  reader  of  my  January 
article  knows,  perishes  at  a  temperature  far  below 
that  of  boiling  water,  and  it  is  fair  to  assume  that 
the  nearer  the  germ  is  to  its  final  sensitive  con- 
dition the  more  readily  will  it  succumb  to  heat. 
Reeds  soften  before  and  during  germination. 
This  premised,  the  simple  description  of  the  fol- 
lowing process  will  suffice  to  make  its  meaning 
understood : 

An  infusion  infected  with  the  most  powerfully 
resistent  germs,  but  otherwise  protected  against 
the  floating  matters  of  the  air,  is  gradually  raised 
to  its  boiling-point.  Such  germs  as  have  reached 
the  soft  and  plastic  state  immediately  preceding 
their  development  into  bacteria  are  thus  destroyed. 
The  infusion  is  then  put  aside  in  a  warm  room 
for  ten  or  twelve  hours.  If  for  twenty-four,  we 
might  have  the  liquid  charged  with  well-developed 
bacteria.  To  anticipate  this,  at  the  end  of  ten  or 
twelve  hours  we  raise  the  infusion  a  second  time 
to  the  boiling  temperature,  which,  as  before,  de- 
stroys all  germs  then  approaching  their  point  of 
final  development.  The  infusion  is  again  put  aside 
for  ten  or  twelve  hours,  and  the  process  of  heat- 
ing is  repeated.  We  thus  kill  the  germs  in  the 
order  of  their  resistance,  and  finally  kill  the  last  of 
them.  No  infusion  can  withstand  this  process  if 
it  be  repeated  a  sufficient  number  of  times.  Arti- 
choke, cucumber,  and  turnip  infusions,  which  had 
proved  specially  obstinate  when  infected  with  the 
germs  of  desiccated  hay,  were  completely  broken 
down  by  this  method  of  discontinuous  heating, 
three  minutes  being  found  sufficient  to  accomplish 
what  three  hundred  minutes'  continuous  boiling 
failed  to  accomplish.  I  applied  the  method, 
moreover,  to  infusions  of  various  kinds  of  hay, 
including  those  most  tenacious  of  life.    Not  one 


SPONTANEOUS  GENERATION-:  A  LAST  WORD. 


509 


of  them  bore  the  ordeal.  These  results  were 
clearly  foreseen  before  they  were  realized,  so  that 
the  germ-theory  fulfills  the  test  of  every  true 
theory,  that  test  being  the  power  of  prevision. 

When  my  respondent  speaks  of  "naked  or 
almost  naked  specks  of  protoplasm,"  he  draws,  as 
I  have  intimated,  upon  his  own  imagination,  not 
upon  the  objective  truth  of  Nature.  His  words 
seem  the  words  of  knowledge,  but  his  knowledge 
is  really  nil.  He  concedes  the  possibility  of  a 
"thin  covering."  Such  a  covering  may,  how- 
ever, exercise  a  powerful  protective  influence.  A 
thin  pellicle  of  India-rubber,  for  example,  sur- 
rounding a  pea,  keeps  it  hard  in  boiling  water  for 
a  time  sufficient  to  reduce  an  uncovered  pea  to  a 
pulp.  The  pellicle  prevents  imbibition,  diffusion, 
and  the  consequent  disintegration.  A  greasy  or 
oily  surface,  or  even  the  layer  of  air  which  clings 
to  certain  bodies,  would  act  to  some  extent  in  a 
similar  way.  "  The  singular  resistance  of  green 
vegetables  to  sterilization,"  says  Dr.  William 
Roberts,  "  appears  to  be  due  to  some  peculiarity 
of  the  surface,  perhaps  their  smooth,  glistening 
epidermis  which  prevented  complete  wetting  of 
their  surfaces."  I  pointed  out  in  1876  that  the 
process  by  which  an  atmospheric  germ  is  wetted 
would  be  an  interesting  subject  of  investigation. 
A  dry  microscope  covering-glass  may  be  caused 
to  float  on  water  for  a  year.  A  sewing-needle 
may  be  similarly  kept  floating,  though  its  specific 
gravity  is  nearly  eight  times  that  of  water.  Were 
it  not  for  some  specific  relation  between  the  mat- 
ter of  the  germ  and  that  of  the  liquid  into  which 
it  falls,  wetting  would  be  simply  impossible.  An- 
tecedent to  all  development  there  must  be  an  in- 
terchange of  matter  between  the  germ  and  its 
environment ;  and  this  interchange  must  obvious- 
ly depend  upon  the  relation  of  the  germ  to  its  en- 
compassing liquid.  Anything  that  hinders  this 
interchange  retards  the  destruction  of  the  germ 
in  boiling  water.  In  1877  I  add  the  following 
remark : 

"  It  is  not  difficult  to  see  that  the  surface  of  a 
seed  or  germ  may  be  so  affected  by  desiccation  and 
other  causes  as  practically  to  prevent  contact  be- 
tween it  and  the  surrounding  liquid.    The  body  of 
a  germ,  moreover,  may  be  so  indurated  by  time  and 
dryness  as  to  resist  powerfully  the  insinuation  of  , 
water  between  its  constituent  molecules.    It  would  j 
be  difficult  to  cause  such  a  germ  to  imbibe  the  I 
moisture   necessary  to  produce  the  swelling  and  j 
softening  which  precede  its  destruction  in  a  liquid  | 
of  high  temperature." 

However  this  may  be — whatever  be  the  state  ' 
of  the  surface,  or  of  the  body,  of  the  spores  of  J 


Bacillus  subtilis,  they  do  as  a  matter  of  certainty 
resist,  under  some  circumstances,  exposure  for 
hours  to  the  heat  of  boiling  water.  No  theoretic 
skepticism  can  successfully  stand  in  the  way  of 
this  fact,  established  as  it  has  been  by  hundreds, 
if  not  thousands,  of  rigidly-conducted  experi- 
ments. 

My  respondent  calls  Lis  article  a  "  reply."  It 
is  the  reply  which  antecedent  knowledge  would 
have  led  me  to  expect ;  but  it  is  not,  I  submit, 
the  reply  which  the  English  public,  including  the 
medical  profession  of  England,  had  a  right  to 
expect.  It  is  a  reply  upon  side  issues  which  do 
not  touch  the  core  of  the  question  at  all.  Let 
me  point  out  something  which  demanded  a  reply, 
but  to  which  none  has  been  given.  Reference  has 
been  already  made  to  my  "  cloud  of  witnesses," 
for  the  interpretation  of  whose  testimony  my  re- 
spondent seemed  to  intimate  that  he  possessed  a 
private  key.  The  true  inference  from  that  tes- 
timony is  that  it  refutes  my  respondent.  But 
were  it  not  that  I  wished  to  follow  his  instruc- 
tions formally  and  scrupulously,  and  thus  deprive 
him  of  all  opportunity  of  cavil  or  complaint,  the 
refutation  was  unnecessary.  The  evidence  al- 
ready recorded  against  him  in  the  industrial  arts 
was  simply  overwhelming.  Not  by  hundreds, 
nor  by  thousands,  but  by  millions,  the  witnesses 
might  be  counted  which  contradict  him.  For, 
what  are  most  of  our  preserved  meats  and  vege- 
tables but  the  results  of  experiments  in  which  his 
instructions  have  been  carried  out  and  his  state- 
ments disproved  ?  Animal  and  vegetable  tissues 
are  placed  in  tin  vessels,  each  with  a  small  hole 
in  its  lid.  The  tins  are  boiled,  steam  issues 
through  the  hole,  and,  after  some  minutes'  boil- 
ing, the  tin  is  hermetically  sealed.  This  is  to 
all  intents  and  purposes  the  process  described  by 
my  respondent  before  the  Pathological  Society. 
Every  sound  tin  thus  prepared  is  therefore  a  wit- 
ness against  him.  I  am  aware  that  he  has  met 
what  he  is  pleased  to  call  Mr.  Huxley's  "  empty 
generalities  "  by  stating  that  the  tins  of  a  certain 
establishment  which  he  visited  were  boiled  for 
an  hour  and  a  half,  and,  after  sealing,  were  sub- 
jected to  a  temperature  of  25S°  for  half  an  hour. 
But  this  is  not  the  universal  practice,  and  mill- 
ions of  tins  have  been  prepared  without  this  sub- 
sequent superheating.  It  is  idle,  moreover,  to  lay 
any  stress  upon  this  point ;  for  the  substances 
after  having  been  superheated  remain  putrescible, 
though  they  do  not  putrefy,  or  show  the  slightest 
tendency  or  power  to  generate  life. 

To  meet  this  crushing  demonstration,  my  re- 


510 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


spondent  invented  the  theory  referred  to  in  my 
January  article,  according  to  which  sound  tins 
do,  in  the  first  instance,  ferment,  the  associated 
organisms  committing  suicide  by  the  pressure  of 
the  gases  developed  by  their  own  vital  actions. 
This  is  the  very  first  point  to  which  his  "  reply," 
if  he  meant  it,  to  be  a  real  one,  ought  to  have 
been  directed.  Why  did  he,  when  dealing  with  a 
question  described  by  himself  as  "  lying  at  the 
root  of  the  most  fatal  class  of  diseases  to  which 
the  human  race  is  liable,"  commit  the  levity  of 
enunciating  so  easily  tested  a  theory  without  hav- 
ing carefully  verified  it  experimentally  ?  Why, 
after  its  character  has  been  exposed,  does  he  still 
leave  his  medical  brethren  in  the  dark  regarding 
his  views  by  neglecting  to  confess  his  error,  and 
to  retract  it  ?  The  reply  that  we  have  a  right 
to  demand  of  him  ought  to  direct  itself  to  such 
points  as  this. 

In  my  January  article  I  also  refer  to  sixty 
flasks  prepared  in  the  .Royal  Institution,  and 
transported  in  warm  July  weather  to  the  Alps. 
On  their  arrival  fifty-four  of  these  flasks  were 
found  transparent  and  void  of  life.  Six  of 
them  were  charged  with  organisms,  and  these 
particular  six  were  found  on  examination  to 
have  had  their  fragile  sealed  ends  broken  off. 
Here  is  a  question  for  my  respondent  which  he 
does  not  attempt  to  answer.  I  described  accu- 
rately the  way  in  which  the  flasks  were  charged 
and  sealed,  and  gave  him,  moreover,  a  represent- 
ative drawing  of  one  of  them.  He  does  not  of- 
fer a  word  of  explanation  of  the  sterility  of  the 
fifty-four  flasks,  prepared  according  to  his  own 
prescription,  and  which  ought,  according  to  his 
prediction,  to  have  "  swarmed  with  bacteria  and 
allied  organisms."  With  reference  to  his  press- 
ure-theory, which  he  has  also  applied  to  explain 
Gruithuisen's  experiments,  he  was,  moreover,  in- 
formed that  animal  and  vegetable  infusions  had 
been  subjected  by  me  to  mechanical  pressures  far 
more  than  sufficient  to  produce  the  bactericidal 
effects  which  his  theory  ascribes  to  pressure,  and 
that  bacteria  nevertheless  grew  and  multiplied  to 
countless  swarms  under  such  pressure,  but  he  has 
not  a  word  of  answer  to  the  fact,  or  of  acknowl- 
edgment of  what  it  involves.  He  had  claimed  a 
power  for  the  "  actinic  rays  "  as  aiding  in  the  de- 
velopment of  organisms.  By  observations  con- 
ducted in  the  powerful  sunlight  of  the  Alps,  and 
at  the  temperatures  which  my  respondent  declared 
to  be  most  efficient,  the  alleged  power  was  proved 
to  be  a  delusion.  I  pointed  out  the  fundamental 
mistake  contained  in  his  communication  to  the 
Royal  Society,  where  an  observation  made  with  a 


mineral  solution  is  unwarrantably  extended  to  an 
organic  infusion,  a  demonstration  of  the  de  novo 
generation  of  living  organisms  being  founded  on 
this  illegitimate  process;  but  the  "  reply "  does 
not  contain  an  allusion,  much  less  an  answer,  to 
my  counter-demonstration.  He  passes  without 
notice  my  remarks  about  positive  and  negative 
results,  his  "  misunderstanding  "  of  which,  to  use 
the  words  of  Dr.  William  Roberts,  "  makes  him 
blind  to  the  overwhelming  cogency  of  the  case 
against  him."  In  reply  to  one  of  his  arguments, 
I  ask :  "  Why,  when  your  sterilized  organic  in- 
fusion is  exposed  to  optically  pure  air,  should 
this  generation  of  life  de  novo  utterly  cease  ? 
Why  should  I  be  able  to  preserve  my  turnip-juice 
side  by  side  with  your  saline  solution  for  three 
hundred  and  sixty-five  days  of  the  year  in  free 
connection  with  the  general  atmosphere,  on  the 
sole  condition  that  the  portion  of  that  atmosphere 
in  contact  with  the  juice  shall  be  visibly  free  from 
floating  dust,  while  three  days'  exposure  to  that 
dust  fills  it  with  bacteria  ?  "  There  is  no  answer. 
These  are  but  a  fraction,  and  by  no  means  the 
weightiest  fraction,  of  the  points  urged  upon  his 
attention,  but  which  he  systematically  avoids. 
He  expands,  with  a  "  wonderful  efflueuce  of 
words,"  on  Medkago  and  such  like  things.  He 
deflects  the  discussion  from  the  question  of  spon- 
taneous generation  to  the  totally  different  ques- 
tion whether  the  bacterial  matter  of  the  air  exists 
there  as  germs  or  as  finished  organisms.  But  he 
leaves  absolutely  untouched  the  main  facts  and 
the  most  conclusive  arguments  of  my  article. 

As  to  any  bias,  or  prejudice,  or  foregone  con- 
clusion, that  may  beset  me  in  this  matter,  I  have 
only  to  remind  the  reader  that  few  persons  at  the 
present  day  have  more  distinctly  avowed  belief 
in  the  "  potency  of  matter,"  and  that  few  have 
paid  more  dearly  for  the  avowal,  than  myself. 
The  criticism  of  high-minded  scholars  and  cul- 
tivated gentlemen,  as  well  as  the  vituperation  of 
individuals  who  have  not  yet  reached  that  "  place 
in  Nature  "  where  gentlemanly  feeling  comes  into 
play,  have  been  liberally  bestowed  upon  me.  In 
a  letter  recently  received  from  my  excellent  friend 
Mr.  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  he  justly  remarks 
that  I  should  probably  have  been  well  satisfied 
had  my  inquiries  in  relation  to  the  present  ques- 
tion justified  Pouchet  instead  of  Pasteur.  With 
the  views,  indeed,  which  I  entertain  upon  this 
subject,  it  specially  behooves  me  to  take  care  that 
no  theoretic  leaning  shall  taint  my  judgment  of 
experimental  evidence.  I  have  always  kept  apart 
the  speculative  and  the  proved.  Before  Virchow 
laid  down  his  canons  I  had  reduced  them  to  prac- 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  LIFE. 


511 


tice.  My  sole  care  has  been  that  the  potency  of 
truth  should  be  vindicated ;  and  no  denier  of  the 
potency  of  matter  could  labor  more  strenuously 
than  I  have  done  to  demonstrate  its  impotence  as 
regards  spontaneous  generation.  While  express- 
ing, therefore,  unshaken  "  belief"  in  that  form  of 
"  materialism  "  to  which  I  have  already  given  ut- 
terance, I  here  affirm  that  no  shred  of  trustworthy 
experimental  testimony  exists  to  prove  that  life, 
in  our  day,  has  ever  appeared  independently  of 
antecedent  life. 

The  present  condition  of  this  question  is  such 
.'.iat  no  medical  man,  seeking  clearly  to  realize 
and  effectually  to  remove  the  causes  of  epidemic 
disease,  need  have  his  mind  troubled  by  a  doubt 
as  to  the  derivation  of  those  organisms  to  which 
modern  physiology,  with  ever-increasing  empha- 


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

— Nineteenth  Century. 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  LIFE.1 


By  CLAUDE  BEBNAKD. 


SINCE  the  earliest  days  of  antiquity,  famous 
philosophers  or  physicians  have  viewed  those 
phenomena  which  pass  through  their  phases  in 
living  beings  as  resulting  from  the  action  of  some 
higher  and  immaterial  principle  upon  passive  and 
yielding  matter.  This  is  the  conception  of  Py- 
thagoras, Plato,  Aristotle,  and  Hippocrates,  the 
received  belief,  at  a  later  time,  among  the  philos- 
ophers and  learned  mystics  of  the  middle  ages, 
held  by  Paracelsus  and  Van  Helmont,  and  by  the 
scholastic  doctors.  In  the  course  of  the  eighteenth 
century  this  idea  reached  its  highest  point  of  ac- 
ceptance and  control  in  that  eminent  physician, 
Stahl,  who  added  to  its  distinctness  of  form  by 
the  conception  of  animism.  The  spirituality  of 
life  found  its  extravagant  expression  in  animism. 
Stahl  was  the  resolute  and  most  positive  sup- 
porter of  those  conceptions  which  had  prevailed 
since  Aristotle's  time.  It  may  be  said,  too,  that 
he  was  their  last  representative ;  the  modern  mind 
refused  to  welcome  a  doctrine  that  had  grown 
into  too  glaring  an  opposition  to  science. 

On  the  other  hand,  in  contradiction  to  the 
ideas  just  noted,  even  before  physics  and  chem- 
istry had  gained  an  organized  form,  before  the 

1  Translated  from  the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,  by 
A.  R.  Macdonough. 


phenomena  of  dead  matter  were  understood,  we 
perceive  that,  in  anticipation  of  the  facts,  the 
movement  of  philosophy  tended  toward  the  at- 
tempt at  proving  the  identity  of  phenomena  in 
inorganic  substance  with  those  of  living  bodies. 
This  notion  is  the  basis  of  atomism,  as  held  by 
Democritus  and  Epicurus.  The  atomists  admit 
no  governing  intelligence;  for  them  the  world 
from  everlasting  moves  of  its  own  force.  They 
conceive  of  one  kind  of  matter  only,  the  elements 
of  which  possess,  by  means  of  their  forms,  the 
property  of  entering  into  combinations  in  endless 
diversity,  through  their  mutual  connections,  and 
of  composing  inorganic  and  lifeless  bodies,  as 
well  as  organized  living  and  feeling  beings  like 
animals,  or  rational  and  volitional  ones  such  as 
man. 

The  latter  hypothesis  thus  assumed,  at  its  ori- 
gin, an  exclusively  materialistic  shape ;  but  it 
must  be  noted  as  singular  that  those  philosophers 
most  profoundly  convinced  of  the  spirituality  of 
the  soul,  as  Descartes  and  Leibnitz,  for  instance, 
did  not  hesitate  to  adopt  a  view  of  a  very  similar 
kind  which  accounted  for  all  those  manifestations 
of  life  in  action  which  are  presented  to  the  senses 
by  the  operation  of  unintelligent  forces.  The 
ground  of  this  seeming  contradiction  is  to  be 
found  in  the  almost  absolute  severance  between 
the  body  and  the  soul  which  they  insisted  on. 


512 


TEE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


Descartes  gives  a  metaphysical  definition  of  the 
soul  and  a  physical  definition  of  life.  The  soul  is 
that  higher  principle  which  makes  itself  known 
by  thought ;  life  is  merely  a  higher  result  from 
mechanical  laws.  The  human  body  is  a  machine, 
made  up  of  springs,  levers,  pipes,  filters,  sieves, 
and  squeezers.  This  machine  is  made  only  for 
itself;  the  soul  unites  with  it  only  for  the  con- 
templation of  whatever  takes  place  in  the  body 
as  a  mere  spectator,  but  it  takes  no  part  what- 
ever in  the  discharge  of  vital  functions.  The 
ideas  entertained  by  Leibnitz,  as  regards  their 
physiological  character,  are  closely  analogous  to 
those  of  Descartes.  He,  too,  like  Descartes,  sev- 
ers the  soul  from  the  body,  and,  though  he  admits 
a  harmony  preestablished  between  them  by  divine 
power,  he  denies  that  they  have  any  sort  of  re- 
ciprocal influence.  "  The  body  " — these  are  his 
words — "  goes  on  in  its  development  mechanical- 
ly, and  the  laws  of  mechanics  are  never  trans- 
gressed in  its  natural  motions ;  everything  takes 
place  in  souls  as  though  there  were  no  body,  and 
in  the  body  everything  takes  place  as  though 
there  were  no  soul." 

Stahl's  conceptions  of  the  nature  of  vital  phe- 
nomena and  the  relations  between  soul  and  body 
were  totally  unlike  these.  In  considering  the  ac- 
tion of  life,  he  throws  aside  all  explanations  which 
would  apply  alike  to  such  action  and  to  the  me- 
chanical, physical,  and  chemical  phenomena  of 
inert  matter.  An  eminent  chemist  himself,  he 
assails  with  great  power  and  peculiar  authority 
the  extravagances  of  the  chemist-doctors,  or  iatro- 
chemists,  men  like  Sylvius  de  Le  Boe,  Willis,  and 
others,  who  resolved  all  the  phenomena  of  life 
into  chemical  action,  fermentations,  alkalinities, 
acidities,  and  effervescences.  He  goes  further  than 
to  maintain  that  chemical  forces  are  different 
from  the  forces  that  rule  the  manifestations  of 
life,  and  even  asserts  that  the  former  are  hostile 
to  the  latter,  and  that  they  tend  to  the  destruc- 
tion instead  of  the  preservation  of  the  living  body. 
We  must  have,  as  Stahl  teaches,  a  vital  force  that 
protects  the  body  against  the  action  of  external 
chemical  forces  which  press  incessantly  toward 
its  attack  and  destruction ;  life  is  the  triumph  of 
such  vital  forces  over  the  others.  Stahl  was  led 
by  these  ideas  to  his  theory  of  vitalimi ;  but  he 
did  not  stop  at  that  stage :  it  was  but  a  first  step 
in  the  path  that  led  him  at  last  to  animism.  This 
vital  force,  he  says,  struggling  without  rest  against 
physical  forces,  acts  intelligently,  upon  a  definite 
plan,  for  the  preservation  of  the  organism.  But 
if  vital  force  is  intelligent,  why  make  any  distinc- 
tion between  it  and  the  rational  soul?     Basil  Va- 


lentin and  Paracelsus,  his  disciple,  had  imagined 
the  existence  in  infinite  number  of  immaterial  in- 
telligent principles,  the  archcea,  which  governed 
the  phenomena  in  the  living  body.  Van  Helmont, 
the  most  famous  representative  of  these  archceic 
teachings,  who  joined  a  genius  for  experiment  to 
an  imagination  wholly  ungoverned  in  its  starts 
and  sallies,  dreamed  out  a  whole  hierarchy  of 
these  immaterial  principles.  Highest  of  all  was 
placed  the  rational  and  immortal  soul,  undis- 
tinguished from  God ;  next  the  sentient  and  mor- 
tal soul,  using  as  its  agent  another  chief  of  the 
archcea,  which  in  its  turn  controlled  a  multitude 
of  subordinate  archcea,  styled  the  bias.  Stahl, 
following  Van  Helmont  a  century  later,  and  car- 
rying on  his  ideas,  reduces  all  these  notions  of 
intelligent  principles,  governing  or  archceic  spirits, 
to  some  simplicity.  He  acknowledges  but  one 
soul,  the  soul  immortal,  charged  also  with  the 
control  of  the  body.  He  regards  the  soul  as  the 
very  principle  of  life.  Life  is  one  of  the  soul's 
modes  of  action,  it  is  the  soul's  vivific  act.  The 
immortal  soul,  an  intelligent  and  rational  force, 
rules  directly  the  matter  of  the  body,  sets  it  at 
work,  guides  it  to  its  end.  It  is  this  soul  which 
not  merely  commands  our  voluntary  acts,  but 
which,  moreover,  sets  the  heart  beating,  sends  the 
blood  on  its  course,  lifts  the  lungs  in  breathing, 
makes  the  glands  secrete.  If  the  unison  of  these 
phenomena  is  disturbed,  if  disease  occurs,  it  is 
because  the  soul  has  failed  to  discharge  its  func- 
tions, or  has  not  succeeded  in  effectual  resistance 
to  external  causes  of  destruction.  A  doctrine 
like  this  contained  singular  contradictions,  since 
the  influence  of  a  rational  soul  upon  vital  pro- 
cesses seems  to  imply  conscious  direction,  while 
the  simplest  observation  teaches  us  that  all  the 
functions  of  nutrition,  circulation,  digestion,  se- 
cretions, etc.,  are  unconscious  and  involuntary,  as 
if,  to  borrow  the  phrase  of  a  physiological  phi- 
losopher, Nature  had  chosen,  out  of  caution,  to 
withdraw  these  important  processes  from  the  con- 
trol of  a  capricious  and  ignorant  will.  So  that 
the  animism  of  Stahl  was  stamped  by  an  extrav- 
agance that  induced  his  successors,  if  not  to  give 
it  up,  at  least  to  subject  it  to  very  grave  modifica- 
tions. 

Descartes's  ideas,  and  those  of  Stahl,  left  a 
deep  impression  on  science,  and  set  two  currents 
in  motion,  which  have  continued  flowing  even  to 
our  own  day.  Descartes  laid  down  first  princi- 
ples, and  applied  mechanical  laws  to  the  action 
of  that  machine,  the  human  body.  His  pupils 
gave  breadth  and  precision  to  mechanical  expla- 
nations of  the  various  vital  phenomena.     Among 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  LIFE. 


513 


the  most  famous  of  these  iatro-meehanicians  must 
be  named,  in  the  first  rank,  Borelli ;  and,  next, 
Pitcairn,  Hales,  Keil,  and  Boerhaave  particularly, 
whose  influence  prevailed  strongly.  On  its  side, 
iatro-chemistry,  which  is  but  another  face  of  the 
doctrine  of  Descartes,  pursued  its  course,  and  had 
become  definitely  established,  when  modern  chem- 
istry appeared.  Descartes  and  Leibnitz  had  laid 
it  down  as  a  principle  that  the  laws  of  mechanics 
are  everywhere  the  same ;  that  there  is  no  such 
thing  as  two  mechanics,  one  for  inert  bodies,  an- 
other for  living  bodies.  At  the  close  of  the  last 
century,  Lavoisier  and  Laplace  added  the  demon- 
stration that  there  are  not  two  chemistries  either, 
one  for  inert  bodies  and  another  for  living  bodies. 
They  proved,  by  course  of  experiment,  that  res- 
piration and  the  production  of  heat  take  place  in 
the  bodies  of  men  and  of  animals,  through  phe- 
nomena of  combustion  precisely  similar  to  those 
that  occur  in  the  calcination  of  metals. 

Nearly  at  the  same  time,  Borden,  Barthez,  and 
Grimaud,  were  famous  in  the  school  of  Montpel- 
,  lier.  They  were  Stahl's  successors,  yet  they  re- 
tained only  the  first  part  of  their  master's  teach- 
ing, vitalism,  and  rejected  its  second  portion,  ani- 
mism. In  contradiction  to  Stahl,  they  conceive 
that  the  principle  of  life  is  distinct  from  the  soul, 
but  they  agree  with  him  in  acknowledging  a  vital 
force,  a  ruling  vital  principle,  a  unity  such  that  it 
explains  the  harmony  in  the  manifestations  of  life, 
and  one  that  acts  apart  from  the  laws  of  mechan- 
ics, physics,  and  chemistry. 

Still,  vitalism  underwent  gradual  modifications 
of  its  form  ;  the  docUine  of  vital  ■properties  marked 
an  important  epoch  in  the  history  of  physiology. 
In  place  of  the  metaphysical  notions  which  had 
prevailed  up  to  that  time,  we  have  here  a  physio- 
logical idea  which  endeavors  to  explain  manifes- 
tations of  life  by  the  properties  themselves  of  the 
substance  of  the  tissues  or  organs.  As  long  ago 
as  at  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century,  Glisson 
had  pointed  out  irritability  as  the  immediate 
cause  of  movement  in  living  fibre.  Borden,  Gri- 
maud, and  Barthez,  caught  a  more  or  less  uncer- 
tain glimpse  of  the  same  idea.  Haller  connected 
his  name  with  the  discovery  of  that  mode  of  mo- 
tion, by  bringing  to  our  knowledge  his  memorable 
experiments  on  the  irritability  and  sensibility  of 
the  different  parts  of  the  body.  It  is,  however, 
not  before  the  beginning  of  this  century  that  Xa- 
vier  Bichat,  by  a  sudden  flash  of  genius,  perceived 
that  the  solution  of  vital  phenomena  must  be 
sought  for  not  in  an  immaterial  principle  of  a 
higher  order,  but,  on  the  contrary,  in  the  proper- 
ties of  matter,  in  the  depths  of  which  these  phe- 

69 


nomena  have  their  rise  and  course.  Doubtless 
Bichat  did  not  define  the  vital  properties,  but 
gave  them  uncertain  and  obscure  characteristics. 
His  genius,  as  is  often  the  case,  consists  not  in 
having  discovered  the  facts,  but  in  having  under- 
stood their  meaning,  by  being  the  first  to  announce 
that  general,  luminous,  and  fertile  idea,  that  in 
physiology,  as  in  physics,  phenomena  must  be 
connected  with  properties  as  with  their  cause. 
"  The  relations  of  properties,  as  causes,  to  phe- 
nomena as  effects,"  he  says,  in  the  preface  to  his 
"  General  Anatomy,"  "form  an  axiom  almost  too 
familiar  to  need  repetition  at  this  day,  in  physics 
and  chemistry  ;  if  my  book  establishes  a  similar 
axiom  in  the  physiological  sciences,  it  will  have 
gained  its  end."  Then  he  adds,  in  continuation  : 
"  There  are  in  Nature  two  classes  of  beings,  two 
classes  of  properties,  two  classes  of  sciences.  Be- 
ings are  organic  or  inorganic,  properties  are  vital 
or  non-vital,  sciences  are  physical  or  physiologi- 
cal." 

Here,  and  at  the  outset,  it  is  of  consequence 
to  understand  Bichat's  idea  thoroughly.  It  might 
be  supposed  that  he  means  to  side  with  the  phys- 
icists and  chemists,  because  he  agrees  with  them 
in  placing  the  causes  of  phenomena  in  the  proper- 
ties of  matter;  but  the  result  is  the  opposite  one, 
and  Bichat  abandons  and  separates  himself  from 
them  in  as  thorough  a  way  as  possible.  In  truth, 
the  object  pursued  at  all  times  by  the  iatro-mech- 
anicians,  physicists,  ©r  chemists,  has  been  to 
prove  a  similarity — an  identity — between  the  phe- 
nomena of  living  bodies  and  those  of  inorganic 
bodies.  Bichat,  in  direct  opposition  to  them,  lays 
down  as  a  principle  that  vital  properties  are  ab- 
solutely opposed  to  physical  properties,  so  that, 
instead  of  going  over  into  the  camp  of  the  physi- 
cists and  chemists,  he  remains  a  vitalist,  with 
Stahl  and  the  school  of  Montpellier.  With  them, 
he  conceives  that  life  is  a  conflict  between  con- 
tending activities ;  he  admits  that  the  vital  prop- 
erties preserve  the  living  body,  by  counteracting 
the  physical  properties  that  tend  to  destroy  it. 
When  death  occurs,  it  is  nothing  but  the  triumph 
of  physical  properties  over  their  opponents. 
Moreover,  Bichat  summarizes  his  ideas  complete- 
ly in  the  definition  he  gives  of  life :  "  Life  is  the 
group  of  functions  that  resist  death ; "  which 
means,  in  other  words,  life  is  the  group  of  vital 
properties  which  resist  physical  properties. 

This  view,  which  consists  in  regarding  vital 
properties  as  a  sort  of  metaphysical  entities,  not 
capable  of  clear  definition,  except  as  opposed  to 
common  physical  properties,  no  doubt  led  inves- 
tigators into  the  same  mistakes  that  the  other 


514 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


vitalist  theories  induced.  Yet  Bichat's  concep- 
tion, freed  from  those  errors  which  at  his  time 
were  hardly  to  be  avoided,  remains,  nevertheless, 
a  conception  of  genius,  on  which  modern  physiol- 
ogy is  founded.  Before  his  day,  the  doctrines  of 
philosophers,  animist  or  vitalist,  soared  to  a  point 
too  lofty  and  too  remote  from  reality  to  permit 
their  entering  with  force  and  growth  into  the 
science  of  life ;  they  could  have  no  other  action 
upon  it  than  that  paralyzing  effect  shared  with 
the  inert  sophisms  then  prevalent  in  that  school. 
Bichat,  on  the  other  hand,  by  diffusing  life  away 
from  a  centre,  by  showing  it  dwelling  in  the  tis- 
sues, and  connecting  its  manifestations  with  the 
properties  of  these  very  tissues,  still  makes  them 
dependent,  it  is  true,  on  a  metaphysical  principle, 
but  that  principle  is  one  of  a  less  lofty  philosophic 
dignity,  one  that  may  be  used  with  far  greater 
convenience  as  a  scientific  basis  by  the  spirit  of 
research  and  progress.  In  a  word,  Bichat,  like 
his  predecessors,  the  vitalists,  fell  into  errors  upon 
the  theory  of  life,  but  he  made  no  mistakes  as  to 
the  methods  of  physiology.  It  is  his  glory  to  have 
founded  that  science,  by  placing  in  the  properties 
of  tissues  and  of  organs  the  immediate  causes  of 
the  phenomena  of  life. 

The  ideas  of  Bichat  effected  a  deep  and  gen- 
eral revolution  in  physiology  and  medicine.  The 
anatomical  school  issued  from  them,  seeking  ea- 
gerly in  the  vital  properties  of  healthy  and  un- 
sound tissues  the  explanation  of  the  appearances 
of  health  and  disease.  In  another  direction  the 
advance  of  physical  methods,  the  splendid  dis- 
coveries of  modern  chemistry,  with  the  broad 
light  they  threw  upon  the  vital  functions,  added 
every  day  a  new  protest  against  the  view  main- 
tained by  Bichat,  as  well  as  by  the  vitalists,  of  a 
necessary  separation  and  opposition  between  the 
organic  and  the  inorganic  phenomena  of  Nature. 

We  thus  find  Bichat  and  Lavoisier,  very  near 
our  own  day,  standing  as  representing  those  two 
great  distinct  tendencies  of  philosophy,  antago- 
nistic as  we  have  discerned  them  from  the  earli- 
est times,  in  the  very  beginning  of  knowledge, 
one  attempting  to  reduce  the  phenomena  of  life 
to  the  laws  of  chemistry,  physics,  and  mechan- 
ics ;  the  other,  on  the  contrary,  seeking  to  set 
them  apart  and  place  them  under  the  government 
of  a  special  principle,  a  peculiar  power,  what 
name  soever  be  given  it,  whether  soul,  or  archce- 
on,  or  pv/che,  or  plastic  intermediary,  or  guiding 
spirit,  vital  force,  or  vital  properties.  This  con- 
test, so  ancient  already,  is  still,  as  we  show,  not 
ended  ;  but  how  must  it  end  ?  Will  one  of  these 
doctrines  at  the  last  win  the  day  over  the  other, 


and  have  undivided  sway  ?  I  do  not  so  believe. 
Advances  in  sciences  result  in  weakening  by  slow 
degrees,  and  in  equal  measure,  those  earlier  ex- 
clusive ideas  sprung  from  our  little  knowledge. 
As  it  is  the  unknown  that  gives  all  their  strength, 
in  proportion  as  it  vanishes  disputes  must  end, 
conflicting  theories  disappear,  and  the  scientific 
truth  that  takes  their  place  must  rule  without  a 
rival. 


II. 


« 


We  may  say  of  Bichat,  as  of  most  of  the 
great  promoters  of  science,  that  he  had  the  mer- 
it of  inventing  a  formula  for  the  indefinite  con- 
ceptions of  his  day.  All  the  notions  as  to  life  of 
his  contemporaries,  all  their  efforts  to  shape  them 
in  a  phrase,  are  in  a  manner  little  else  than  an 
echo  or  paraphrase  of  his  teaching.  A  surgeon 
of  the  Paris  school,  Pelletan,  says  that  life  is 
the  resistance  opposed  by  organized  matter  to 
the  causes  which  incessantly  tend  to  destroy  it. 
Cuvier  himself  unfolds  the  same  thought,  that 
life  is  a  force  which  resists  the  laws  that  rule 
inert  matter  ;  death  can  be  only  the  return  of  liv- 
ing matter  to  the  control  of  those  laws.  What  dis- 
tinguishes the  corpse  from  the  living  body  is  that 
principle  of  resistance  which  upholds  or  deserts 
organized  matter  ;  and  to  clothe  his  thought  in  a 
more  striking  and  attractive  form,  Cuvier  paints 
for  us  the  figure  of  a  woman  in  the  splendor  of 
youth  and  health,  suddenly  seized  on  by  death. 
"  See,"  he  says,  "  those  voluptuously  rounded 
forms,  that  pliant  grace  of  motion,  that  soft 
warmth,  the  rose-hued  cheeks,  the  countenance 
brightened  by  the  flash  of  wit,  or  kindled  with 
the  fire  of  passion  ;  nothing  is  wanting  to  com- 
plete the  enchantment  of  her  presence.  A  mo- 
ment is  enough  to  destroy  that  charm;  often 
without  a  visible  cause,  motion  and  feeling  cease 
suddenly,  the  body  loses  its  warmth,  the  muscles 
relax  and  reveal  the  angular,  bony  projections  ; 
the  eyes  grow  dim,  the  lips  and  cheeks  livid. 
This  is  but  the  beginning  of  more  frightful 
changes ;  the  flesh  discolors  into  blue,  green, 
and  black ;  it  draws  in  moisture,  and  while  part 
of  it  goes  into  evaporation  and  exhales  infection, 
part  drips  away  in  putrid  matter,  which  soon  in 
turn  dissolves  in  air ;  in  brief,  at  the  end  of  a  few 
days,  nothing  is  left  but  a  few  earthy  and  saline 
principles ;  the  other  elements  are  scattered  in 
air  and  water,  to  unite  in  new  combinations.  It 
is  plain,"  Cuvier  adds,  "  that  this  separation  is 
the  natural  result  from  the  action  of  air,  warmth, 
and  moisture,  in  short,  of  all  outward  agents 
upon  the  dead  body,  and  it  is  occasioned  by  the 
elective  attraction  of  these  various    agents  for 


TEE  DEFINITION  OF  LIFE. 


515 


the  elements  that  made  its  structure.  Yet  that 
body  was  just  as  much  surrounded  by  them  dur- 
ing its  life ;  their  affinities  for  its  particles  were 
the  same,  and  the  latter  would  have  yielded  to 
the  power  in  the  same  way,  had  they  not  been 
kept  combined  by  a  force  stronger  than  those 
affinities,  which  ceased  to  act  on  them  only  at 
the  moment  of  death." 

These  ideas  of  contrariety  and  conflict  be- 
tween the  vital  forces  and  the  outward  physico- 
chemical  forces,  which  we  find  repeated  in  the 
doctrine  of  vital  properties,  had  been  before  ex- 
pressed by  Stahl,  though  in  obscure  and  almost 
barbarous  terms ;  when  set  forth  by  Bichat  with 
lucid  clearness  and  great  charm  of  style,  the 
same  ideas  won  and  carried  away  all  minds.  Bi- 
chat does  not  think  it  enough  to  assert  oppo- 
sition between  the  two  orders  of  properties  that 
share  Nature ;  but,  in  the  very  description  of 
either  order,  he  brings  them  strikingly  into  con- 
trast. "  The  physical  properties  of  bodies,"  he 
says,  "  are  eternal.  At  creation,  these  proper- 
ties seized  upon  matter,  which  must  continue  for 
the  endless  course  of  ages  possessed  by  them. 
Vital  properties,  on  the  other  hand,  are  tempo- 
rary in  their  very  nature ;  inert  matter,  coming 
into  combination  through  living  bodies,  imbibes 
those  vital  properties,  which  thus  become  united 
with  physical  properties ;  but  the  connection 
cannot  be  lasting,  because  it  is  part  of  the  na- 
ture of  vital  properties  to  waste  away;  time 
wears  them  out  in  any  one  body.  Vigorously 
active  in  early  age,  they  remain  stationary,  as  it 
were,  in  adult  life  ;  they  grow  feeble  and  waste  to 
nothing  in  the  later  years.  Prometheus  is  said 
to  have  stolen  fire  from  heaven  to  give  life  to 
statues  of  men  made  by  his  art.  That  fire  is 
an  emblem  of  vital  properties ;  so  long  as  it 
burns,  life  is  kept  up ;  whenever  it  goes  out,  life 
drops  into  nothing." 

It  is  from  this  single  point  of  the  contrast  in 
kind  and  in  duration  between  physical  proper- 
ties and  vital  properties  that  Bichat  draws  by 
inference  all  the  distinctive  characters  of  living 
beings  and  lifeless  substances,  all  the  differences 
between  the  sciences  devoted  to  their  respective 
study.  Physical  properties  being  eternal,  he 
says,  lifeless  bodies  have  no  necessary  begin- 
ning nor  end,  no  age  nor  evolution ;  they  have 
no  other  limits  than  such  as  chance  assigns. 
Vital  properties,  on  the  contrary,  being  change- 
able and  of  fixed  term  of  duration,  living  bodies 
are  fluctuating  and  perishable  ;  they  have  a  be- 
ginning, a  birth,  a  death,  ages — in  brief,  a  course 
of  evolution  which  they  must  go  through.     Vital 


properties  being  in  a  state  of  constant  conflict 
with  physical  properties,  the  living  body,  the 
arena  of  that  strife,  must  suffer  its  alternations. 
Health  and  disease  are  simply  the  vicissitudes 
of  that  strife  ;  if  physical  properties  gain  a  pos- 
itive triumph,  death  is  its  consequence ;  if,  on 
the  other  hand,  the  vital  properties  regain  their 
control,  the  living  being  recovers  from  its  mal- 
ady, its  wounds  scar  over,  its  organism  heals, 
and  it  resumes  the  harmony  of  its  functions.  In 
lifeless  bodies  nothing  like  this  is  remarked ; 
those  bodies  remain  as  unchanging  as  the  death  of 
which  they  are  the  image.  Thence  arises  a  marked 
distinction  between  the  sciences  which  he  calls 
vital  and  those  he  styles  non-vital.  The  physico- 
chemical  properties  being  steady  and  uniform, 
the  laws  of  those  sciences  that  treat  of  them  are 
not  less  constant  and  unchanging ;  they  may  be 
foreseen  and  counted  on  with  certainty.  As  the 
vital  properties  have  instability  for  their  distin- 
guishing note,  as  all  the  vital  functions  may  be 
impressed  with  a  multitude  of  variations,  noth- 
ing in  their  phenomena  can  be  calculated  or 
foreseen.  Therefore,  Bichat  holds,  it  must  be 
concluded  that  "  absolutely  diverse  laws  con- 
trol each  one  of  these  classes  of  phenomena." 

Such,  in  its  main  features  and  with  its  infer- 
ences, is  the  doctrine  of  vital  properties,  which 
long  prevailed  in  the  schools,  spite  of  the  just 
objections  to  which  it  is  open.  We  will  briefly 
inquire  whether  that  separation  of  phenomena 
into  two  great  groups,  demanded  by  the  doctrine 
of  which  Bichat  stood  forth  as  the  eloquent 
champion,  is  sound  in  its  foundation,  or  whether 
it  should  not  be  thought  rather  a  theoretical  sys- 
tem than  the  expression  of  the  truth.  Is  it  true, 
to  begin  with,  that  substances  in  inorganic  Na- 
ture are  eternal,  and  that  living  bodies  are  the 
only  perishable  ones  ?  May  not  the  differences 
between  them  in  this  respect  be  merely  one  of 
degree,  which  deceive  us  by  the  greatness  of 
their  disproportion  ?  For  instance,  it  is  plain 
that  the  life  of  an  elephant  may  seem  an  eter- 
nity, compared  with  the  life  of  an  ephemeron; 
and,  if  we  regard  the  life  of  man  in  relation  to 
the  continuance  of  the  cosmical  medium  he 
dwells  in,  it  must  seem  to  us  but  an  instant  in 
the  infinity  of  Time.  The  ancients  thought  in 
the  same  way  :  they  viewed  the  living  world,  in 
which  everything  is  subject  to  change  and  death, 
in  contrast  with  the  sidereal  world,  changeless 
and  incorruptible.  This  notion  of  the  incorrup- 
tibility of  the  heavens  prevailed  down  to  the  sev- 
enteenth century.  The  earliest  telescopes  then 
made  it  possible  to  observe  the  appearance  of  a 


516 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


new  star  in  the  constellation  Serpentarius  ;  this 
change  in  the  heavens,  taking  place,  we  may  say, 
under  the  observer's  very  eyes,  began  to  shake 
the  belief  of  the  ancients  that  "  the  substance  of 
the  heavens  is  unalterable."  At  the  present 
day  the  minds  of  astronomers  have  grown  famil- 
iar with  the  idea  of  constant  mobility  and  evolu- 
tion in  the  starry  world.  "  The  stars  have  not 
existed  forever,"  says  Faye ;  "  they  have  had  a 
period  of  formation ;  they  will  similarly  have  a 
period  of  decline,  followed  by  final  extinction." 
Therefore,  that  eternity  of  the  heavenly  bodies 
to  which  Bichat  appeals  is  not  real ;  they  go 
through  an  evolution,  as  living  bodies  do — an 
evolution  which  is  slow  when  compared  with  our 
hasty  life,  and  which  ranges  over  an  extent  of 
time  out  of  all  proportion  to  that  we  are  wont  to 
think  of  in  our  own  surroundings.  In  another 
view,  before  astronomers  understood  the  laws 
of  movement  of  the  heavenly  bodies,  they  had 
formed  the  notion  of  sidereal  powers  and  forces, 
as  physiologists  recognize  vital  powers  and  forces. 
Even  Kepler  admitted  a  "  governing  sidereal 
spirit,"  under  whose  influence  "  the  planets  fol- 
low calculated  curves  in  space,  without  disturb- 
ing the  stars  that  roll  in  other  orbits,  or  derang- 
ing the  harmony  established  by  the  divine  geom- 
eter." 

If  living  bodies  are  not  the  only  ones  subject 
to  the  law  of  evolution,  neither  is  the  power  of 
self-restoration,  of  scarring  over  their  wounds,  ex- 
clusively theirs,  although  its  more  active  mani- 
festations take  place  in  them.  We  all  know  that 
when  a  living  organism  has  been  mutilated,  it 
tends  to  its  own  restoration  in  accordance  with 
the  laws  of  its  special  morphology  ;  the  hurt 
heals  over  in  the  plant  and  animal,  the  lost  sub- 
stance is  renewed,  and  the  being  repairs  itself  in 
its  form  and  unity.  This  phenomenon  of  re- 
construction, of  redintegration,  has  made  a  deep 
impression  on  philosophic  naturalists,  and  they 
dwell  earnestly  on  that  striving  of  life  for  indi- 
viduality which  moulds  the  living  creature  to  an 
harmonious  whole,  a  kind  of  little  world  within 
the  great  one.  Whenever  the  concord  of  the 
organic  structure  is  disturbed,  it  strives  for  re- 
establishment,  but  these  facts  do  not  require  for 
their  explanation  any  appeal  to  a  force,  a  vital 
property  in  opposition  to  physical  ones.  Indeed, 
mineral  substances  show  the  possession  of  a  like 
morphological  unity,  and  of  the  same  tendency 
to  self-repair.  Crystals,  as  well  as  living  beings, 
have  their  shapes  and  special  plan,  and  are  capa- 
ble of  influence  from  perturbing  actions  by  the 
surrounding  medium.    That  physical  force  which 


sets  the  crystalline  atoms  in  order  accordant  with 
the  laws  of  reasoned  geometry,  works  similar  re- 
sults with  that  which  arranges  organized  matter 
in  the  form  of  an  animal  or  a  plant.  Pasteur 
has  noted  certain  facts  of  crystalline  cicatriza- 
tion and  restoration  well  worthy  of  our  study. 
He  examined  several  crystals,  and  subjected  them 
to  mutilations,  which  he  observed  to  be  repaired 
with  great  regularity  and  rapidity.  The  result  of 
his  researches  is  that,  "when  a  crystal  is  broken 
on  any  one  of  its  faces,  and  replaced  in  the  fluid 
of  crystallization,  we  remark  that  while  the  crys- 
tal increases  in  all  directions  by  the  deposit  of 
crystalline  particles,  a  very  decided  simultaneous 
action  takes  place  at  the  broken  or  injured  part, 
and  this  action  suffices  in  a  few  hours,  not  mere- 
ly for  the  general,  regular  formation  of  increase 
over  all  parts  of  the  crystal,  but  also  for  the  res- 
toration of  regularity  in  the  injured  part."  These 
singular  facts  of  crystalline  reparation  are  exact- 
ly comparable  with  those  that  living  beings  pre- 
sent to  view  when  a  wound,  more  or  less  deep,  is 
inflicted  on  them.  In  the  crystal,  as  in  the  ani- 
mal, the  injured  part  scars  over,  regains  by  de- 
grees its  original  shape,  and  in  either  case  the 
work  of  reformation  of  the  tissues  at  that  point 
is  much  more  energetic  than  it  is  under  the  usual 
conditions  of  development. 

The  considerations  thus  briefly  set  forth,  which 
might  be  enlarged  on  without  end,  seem  to  ns  to 
prove  convincingly  that  the  deep  line  of  repara- 
tion which  the  vitalists  propose  to  draw  between 
living  bodies  and  lifeless  substances  in  regard  to 
their  continuance,  their  development,  and  their 
faculty  of  formative  restoration,  is  not  author- 
ized by  facts.  As  regards  the  conflict  they  ima- 
gine between  physical  forces  or  properties  and 
vital  forces  or  properties,  it  is  the  expression  of  a 
serious  mistake. 

This  theory  of  vital  properties  maintains  that 
in  inert  substances  there  is  to  be  found  only  a 
single  order  of  properties,  and  that  in  living 
bodies  two  kinds  are  to  be  found — physical  and 
vital — which  are  in  a  state  of  constant  conflict 
and  opposition,  each  striving  to  prevail  over  the 
other.  "  While  life  lasts,"  Bichat  says,  "  the 
physical  properties,  fettered  by  the  vital  proper- 
ties, are  perpetually  checked  in  the  phenomena 
they  would  tend  to  produce."  The  logical  result 
of  this  opposition  must  be,  that  the  stronger  the 
influence  and  control  the  vital  properties  gain  in 
a  living  organism,  the  more  feeble  and  subordi- 
nate the  physico-chemical  properties  will  be- 
come ;  and  that  reciprocally  the  vital  properties 
will  droop  and  fail  in  proportion  to  the  greater 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  LIFE. 


517 


power  acquired  by  the  physical  properties.  In 
reality,  the  exact  opposite  of  this  proposition 
expresses  the  truth,  and  that  truth  has  been 
proved  over  and  over  again  by  the  labors  of  La- 
voisier and  his  successors.  Life  does  in  the  last 
result  represent  a  combustion,  and  combustion 
itself  is  nothing  more  than  a  series  of  chemical 
'  phenomena,  with  which  there  are  directly  con- 
nected certain  calorific,  luminous,  and  vital  mani- 
festations. Exclude  oxygen,  the  agent  in  com- 
bustion, from  the  atmosphere,  and  instantly  the 
flame  dies,  instantly  life  stops.  If  we  proceed  to 
lessen  or  increase  the  quantity  of  burning  gas, 
vital  phenomena,  as  well  as  the  chemical  phe- 
nomena of  combustion,  will  be  heightened  or 
weakened  in  like  proportion.  Therefore,  we  can- 
not view  the  relation  between  chemical  phenome- 
na and  vital  manifestations  as  au  antagonistic 
one;  on  the  contrary,  there  exists  perfect  par- 
allelism, harmonious  and  essential  connection. 
Throughout  the  series  of  organized  beings,  their 
intensity  of  vital  manifestations  is  in  direct  ac- 
cord with  the  activity  of  their  organic  chemical 
manifestations.  Proofs  of  this  press  forward  in 
every  quarter.  When  a  man  or  animal  is  seized 
on  by  cold,  the  chemical  phenomena  of  organic 
combustion  at  first  decline ;  then  motion  grows 
slower,  sensibility  and  intelligence  droop  and  be- 
come dull,  a  complete  benumbing  comes  on.  On 
reviving  from  that  lethargy,  the  vital  functions 
resume  their  play,  but  always  parallel  with  the 
reappearance  of  chemical  phenomena.  When 
life  is  suspended  in  a  dried  specimen  of  infusoria, 
and  is  restored  by  the  action  of  a  few  drops  of 
water,  it  is  not  because  desiccation  assailed  life 
or  the  vital  properties,  but  because  the  fluid  in- 
dispensable for  the  production  of  the  physical 
and  chemical  phenomena  was  withdrawn  from 
the  organism.  When  Spallanzani  revived  roti- 
fers, that  had  been  dried  for  thirty  years,  by 
moistening  them,  he  merely  produced  in  their 
bodies  a  reappearance  of  the  physical  and  chemi- 
cal phenomena  which  had  been  checked  in  them 
for  thirty  years.  Water  contributed  nothing  else 
whatever,  neither  a  force  nor  a  principle. 

How  could  we  possibly  understand  an  oppo- 
sition or  antagonism  between  the  properties  of 
living  bodies  and  those  of  inert  substances,  since 
the  elements  that  make  up  these  two  orders  of 
bodies  are  the  same  ?  Buffon,  seeking  a  reason 
for  the  difference  between  organized  and  inorganic 
beings,  was  logical  in  imagining  the  former  pos- 
sessed of  a  special  elementary  organic  substance, 
with  which  the  latter  were  unprovided.  Chemis- 
try entirely  upset  that  hypothesis  by  the  proof 


that  all    living  bodies  are  wholly  formed  from 
mineral  elements  borrowed  from  the  cosmic  me- 
!  dium.     The  human  body,  the  most  complex  of 
'  living  bodies,  is  made  of  material  yielded  by  four- 
teen of  these  elements.     We  can  easily  under- 
stand that  these  fourteen  simple  bodies  might,  by 
uniting  and  coalescing  in  all  ways,  produce  infi- 
.  nite  combinations,  and  form  compounds  endowed 
with  the  most  various  properties ;  but  what  we 
cannot  possibly  conceive  is  that  such  properties 
I  could  be  of  a  different  order  or  a  different  essence 
1  from  the  combinations  themselves. 

To  state  conclusions,  the  opposition,  antago- 
j  nism,  or  conflict,  between  vital  phenomena  and 
|  physico-chemical  phenomena,  allowed  by  the  vi- 
|  talist  school,  is  an  error  winch  the  discoveries  of 
I  modern  physics  and  chemistry  have  thoroughly 
exploded. 

More  than  this,  the  vitalist  theory  does  not 
j  merely  rest  on  false  suppositions  and  mistaken 
,  facts ;  it  contradicts  the  scientific  spirit  by  its 
!  very  nature.     By  insisting  on  the  creation  of  two 
,  orders  of  sciences,  oue  for  lifeless  substances,  the 
other  for  living  bodies,  that  theory  ends  in  a  pure 
,  and  simple  denial  of  all  science  whatever.    Bichat, 
I  we  have  seen,  lays  it  down  as  a  principle  that  the 
j  laws  of  the  physical  sciences  are  in  absolute  op- 
'  position  to  the  laws  of  the  vital  sciences.     In  the 
former,  everything  must  be  steady  and  unchang- 
ing; in  the  latter,  everything  must  be  unsettled 
and  variable.     The  divergence  between  these  two 
orders  of  sciences  must  leave  them  strangers  to 
each  other,  and  disable  them  from  furnishing  any 
mutual  aid.     This  is  the  conclusion  which  Bichat 
inevitably  reaches.    "  As  the  physical  and  chemi- 
I  cal  sciences,"  he  says,  "  were  highly  cultivated 
before  the  physiological  ones,  it  was  supposed 
\  that  the  latter  would  gain  clearness  by  connection 
\  with  the  former,  but  the  result  was  confusion. 
It  could  not  be  otherwise,  since  applying  physical 
:  sciences  to  physiology  is  explaining  the  phenom- 
'  ena  of  living  bodies  by  the  laws  of  lifeless  sub- 
;  stances.     Now,  this  is  a  false  principle ;  there- 
fore, all  its  consequences  must  be  marked  with 
the  same  stamp."     Were  we  to  ask  what   the 
special  notes  are  of  this  science  of  living  beings, 
Bichat  answers,  "It  is  a  science  which  is  like 
the  vital  functions  themselves,  in  being  capable 
of  infinite  variations,  one  which  eludes  every  sort 
of  calculation,  in  which  nothing  can  be  foreseen 
or  foretold,  and  mere  approximations,  oftenest 
vague  ones,  are  presented  to  us."    These  are  her- 
|  esies  in  science  so  enormous  that  it  would  be 
;  difficult  to  understand  them  did  we  not  see  how 
logically  such  a  system  must  needs  lead  to  them. 


518 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


It  is  a  strange  abuse  of  the  term  science  to  ad- 
mit that  vital  phenomena  cannot  be  brought 
under  any  exact  law,  any  constant  and  settled 
condition,  and  to  allow  that  such  phenomena  so 
defined  compose  a  vital  science  that  has  the  pe- 
culiarity of  being  vague  and  uncertain.  There 
seems  to  be  no  reply  to  be  made  to  such  reason- 
ings, for  their  very  meaning  is  the  want  and  de- 
nial of  all  scientific  sense. 

And  yet  how  often  has  not  the  same  kind  of 
argument  been  brought  forward ;  how  many  doc- 
tors have  maintained  that  physiology  and  medi- 
cine could  never  be  more  than  half-sciences,  sci- 
ences of  conjecture,  because  we  shall  never  grasp 
the  principle  of  life,  or  the  hidden  character  of 
disease !     These  assertions,  still  echoing  in  our 
ears,  like  the  far-off  voices  of  obsolete  teachings, 
have  no  power  to  make  us  pause.     Descartes, 
Leibnitz,  and  Lavoisier,  have  taught  us  that  mat- 
ter and  its  laws  are  alike  in  living  bodies  and  in 
lifeless  substances  ;  they  have  shown  us  that  in 
the  world  there  is  but  one  mechanism,  one  phys- 
ics, one  chemistry,  common  to  all  natural  beings. 
There    are    not,  then,  two    orders  of    sciences. 
Any  science  worthy  to  be  called  so  is  one  which, 
understanding  the  exact  laws  of  phenomena,  fore- 
tells them  with  certainty,  and  controls  them  when 
within  its  reach.     Anything  that  is  wanting  in 
this  character  is  merely  quackery  or  ignorance, 
for  there  can  be  no  such  thing  as  half-sciences 
or  conjectural  sciences.     It  is  a  grave  mistake  to 
suppose  that  in  living  bodies  we  have  to  concern 
ourselves  with  the  very  essence  and  principle  of 
life.     We  cannot  attain  to  the  principle  of  any- 
thing, and  the  physiologist  has  nothing  more  to 
do  with  the   principle  of   life   than  the  chemist 
has  with  the  principle  of  the  affinity  of  bodies. 
First  causes   elude   us   everywhere,  and  every- 
where alike   we  can    reach  only  the  immediate 
causes  of  phenomena.     Now,   these   immediate 
causes,  which   are   nothing  else    than  the   very 
conditions  of  phenomena,  are  capable  of  as  rig- 
orous  ascertainment   in   the  sciences  of   living 
bodies  as  in  those  of  lifeless  ones.     There  is  no 
scientific  difference  among  all  natural  phenome- 
na other  than  that  in  the  complexity  or  delicacy 
of  the  conditions  under  which  they  appear,  mak- 
ing it  more  or  less  difficult   to  distinguish  and 
define  them.    Such  are  the  principles  that  should 
guide  us.    Thus,  we  must  unhesitatingly  conclude 
that  the  duality  set  up  by  the  vitalist  school  in 
the  sciences  of  living  and  of  lifeless    bodies  is 
totally  opposed  to  science  itself.     Unity  reigns 
throughout  its  domain.     The  sciences  of  living 
bodies  and  those  of  inert  substance  rest  upon 


the   same   principles   and   must  be  pursued  in 
study  by  the  same  methods  of  investigation. 

III. 

If  vitalist  doctrines  have  come  to  nothing 
through  the  capital  error  of  their  principle  of 
dualism  or  opposition  between  living  Nature  and 
inorganic  Nature,  the  problem  always  exists.  We 
have  to  make  answer  to  this  eternal  question, 
"  What  is  life  ?  "  or  else  to  the  other  one,  "  What 
is  death  ? "  for  the  two  questions  are  closely 
bound  together,  and  cannot  be  parted. 

The  living  being  has  for  its  essential  charac- 
teristic nutrition.  The  organic  structure  is  the 
seat  of  an  unceasing  nutritive  movement,  a  secret 
inward  action  which  leaves  no  rest  for  any  part ; 
each,  without  pause  or  cessation,  feeding  itself  in 
the  medium  that  surrounds  it,  and  throwing  off 
into  that  medium  its  products  and  its  refuse. 
This  molecular  renewal  is  invisible  to  direct  sight ; 
but,  as  we  see  the  beginning  and  the  end,  the  en- 
trance and  the  exit  of  substances,  we  imagine 
their  intermediate  changes,  and  we  represent  to 
ourselves  a  flow  of  matter  that  perpetually  trav- 
els through  the  organism,  and  renews  its  sub- 
stance while  preserving  its  form.  This  move- 
ment, which  has  been  called  the  vital  torrent,  the 
material  circulation  between  the  organic  and  the 
inorganic  world,  exists  in  the  plant  as  well  as  in 
the  animal,  is  never  interrupted,  and  becomes 
the  condition  and  the  immediate  cause  at  once  of 
all  other  vital  manifestations.  The  universality 
of  such  a  phenomenon,  the  constancy  it  shows, 
its  necessity,  make  it  the  fundamental  character- 
istic of  the  living  being,  the  most  general  sign  of 
life.  There  will  be  no  reason  for  surprise,  then, 
that  some  physiologists  have  bean  tempted  to 
take  it  as  a  definition  of  life  itself. 

This  phenomenon,  however,  is  not  a  simple 
one ;  it  is  of  consequence  to  analyze  it,  and  pen- 
etrate more  deeply  into  its  mechanism,  so  as  to 
give  exactness  to  the  idea  of  life  we  may  gain 
from  its  superficial  observation.  The  movement 
of  nutrition  involves  two  operations,  which  are  dis- 
tinct, though  inseparably  connected  :  one,  that  by 
which  inorganic  matter  is  fixed  or  incorporated 
into  living  tissues  as  an  integral  part  of  them ; 
the  other,  that  by  which  it  releases  itself  from 
and  quits  them.  This  unceasing  twofold  move- 
ment is  actually  only  a  perpetual  alternation  of 
life  and  death ;  that  is,  of  waste  and  repair  of  the 
component  parts  of  the  organism.  The  vitalists 
misunderstood  nutrition.  Some  of  them,  filled 
with  the  idea  that  the  essence  of  life  is  resist- 
ance to  death — in  other  words,  to  physical  and 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  LIFE. 


519 


chemical  forces — could  not  but  necessarily  believe 
that  the  living  being,  having  reached  its  full  de- 
velopment, had  only  thenceforth  to  keep  itself  in 
the  most  stable  possible  equilibrium,  by  counter- 
acting the  destructive  effect  of  outward  agents. 
Others  among  them,  better  informed  as  to  the 
phenomenon,  and  seeing  the  meaning  of  the  in- 
cessant change  in  the  organism,  would  not  admit 
that  this  movement  of  molecular  repair  could 
be  produced  by  general  natural  forces,  but  re- 
ferred it  to  a  vital  force.  None  of  them  per- 
ceived that  this  destruction  of  the  organism, 
effected  under  the  influence  of  general  physical 
and  chemical  forces,  is  exactly  that  which  pro- 
duces the  constant  movement  of  exchange,  and 
thus  becomes  the  cause  of  reorganization. 

Acts  of  organic  destruction  or  disorganization 
are  directly  visible  to  us,  their  signs  are  obvious, 
they  are  renewed  and  clearly  displayed  upon  each 
vital  manifestation.  On  the  contrary,  acts  of  as- 
similation or  organization  remain  wholly  inward, 
and  give  hardly  any  apparent  expression ;  they 
control  an  organic  synthesis  which  groups  to- 
gether in  a  mute  and  hidden  way  the  materials 
that  are  afterward  to  be  consumed  in  the  striking 
manifestations  of  life.  It  is  a  very  singular  truth, 
and  one  most  important  to  be  understood,  that 
these  two  phases  of  the  circuit  of  nutrition  take 
expression  in  ways  so  contrasted,  organization 
remaining  latent,  and  disorganization  impressing 
itself  on  the  senses  by  all  the  phenomena  of  life. 
In  this  case,  as  in  most  others,  appearances  mis- 
lead :  that  which  we  call  phenomenon  of  life  is  at 
bottom  a  phenomenon  of  organic  death. 

Thus  the  two  factors  of  nutrition  are  assimi- 
lation and  disassimilation,  otherwise  called  or- 
ganization and  disorganization.  Disassimilation 
always  attends  on  vital  manifestation.  When  mo- 
tion occurs  in  man  or  an  animal,  a  part  of  the 
active  substance  of  the  muscle  is  wasted  and 
burned  up ;  when  will  and  sensibility  are  dis- 
played, the  nerves  are  consumed  ;  when  thought 
is  exerted,  the  brain  is  used  up,  etc.  Thus  we 
may  say  that  the  self-same  matter  is  never  used 
twice  for  the  purposes  of  life.  When  an  act  is 
through  with,  the  little  portion  of  living  matter 
that  served  to  produce  it  is  gone.  If  the  phe- 
nomenon appears  a  second  time,  it  is  by  borrow- 
ing the  aid  of  new  matter.  Molecular  waste  is 
always  proportioned  to  the  intensity  of  vital  man- 
ifestations. The  more  actively  life  is  displayed, 
the  deeper  and  more  considerable  is  the  material 
change.  The  substances  thrown  off  in  the  depths 
of  the  organism  by  disassimilation  are  oxidized  by 
vital  combustion  in  proportion  to  the  energy  with 


wThich  the  organs  have  acted.  These  oxidations 
or  combustions  produce  animal  warmth,  occasion 
the  carbonic  acid  breathed  out  from  the  lungs, 
and  the  different  products  carried  off  by  the  oth- 
er emunctories  of  the  system.  The  body  wastes, 
and  suffers  a  consumption  and  loss  of  weight  that 
express  and  measure  the  intensity  of  its  func- 
tions. In  brief,  in  all  cases,  physico-chemical 
destruction  is  joined  with  functional  activity,  and 
we  may  hold  the  following  proposition  as  an 
axiom  in  physiology :  Every  .manifestation  of  a 
phenomenon  in  the  living  being  is  of  necessity  con- 
nected with  organic  destruction. 

A  law  like  this,  that  links  the  phenomenon 
produced  with  the  matter  wasted,  or,  more  cor- 
rectly, with  the  substance  transformed,  is  in  no 
respect  special  to  the  living  world  ;  physical  Na- 
ture obeys  the  same  rule. 

So,  then,  a  living  being  in  the  fullness  of  its 
functional  activity  does  not  show  us  the  increased 
power  of  some  mysterious  vital  force  ;  it  simply 
exhibits  the  intense  activity  in  its  organism  of 
the  chemical  phenomena  of  combustion  and  or- 
ganic destruction.  When  Cuvier  paints  life  in 
its  bloom  and  beauty  in  the  person  of  a  young 
woman,  he  errs  in  supposing  with  the  vitalists 
that  physical  and  chemical  forces  or  properties 
are  then  subdued  or  sustained  by  vital  force. 
On  the  contrary,  all  the  physical  forces  are  set 
free,  the  organism  burns  and  consumes  itself 
more  vividly,  and  for  that  very  reason  life  glows 
with  its  full  splendor. 

Stahl  was  right  in  saying  that  physical  and 
chemical  phenomena  destroy  the  living  body,  and 
lead  it  to  death ;  but  the  truth  escaped  him  be- 
cause he  failed  to  see  that  the  phenomena  of  vital 
destruction  are  of  themselves  the  stimulants  and 
forerunners  of  that  repair  of  substance  hidden 
from  our  sight,  that  lurks  in  the  depths  of  the 
tissues.  All  the  time  that  the  phenomena  of  com- 
bustion are  strikingly  displayed  by  external  vital 
manifestations,  the  formative  process  is  going  on 
in  the  stillness  of  the  vegetative  life.  It  has  no 
other  expression  than  itself,  meaning  that  it  is  be- 
trayed in  no  other  way  than  by  the  organization 
and  renovation  of  the  living  structure.  The  com- 
parison of  life  to  a  torch  is  very  old.  That  meta- 
phor is  in  our  time  changed  to  a  truth  by  Lavoi- 
sier's means.  A  living  being  is  like  a  burning 
torch :  the  body  wastes,  the  substance  of  the  torch 
burns ;  the  first  shines  with  a  physical  flame,  the 
other  with  a  vital  flame.  Yet  to  make  the  com- 
parison absolutely  exact,  we  must  imagine  a  phys- 
ical torch,  with  the  power  of  lasting,  maintaining 
and  renewing  itself,  like  the  vital  torch.     Physi- 


520 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


cal  combustion  is  a  single  phenomenon,  acciden- 
tal in  a  way,  having  no  harmonious  connections 
in  Nature  out  of  itself.  Vital  combustion,  on  the 
contrary,  presupposes  a  correlated  renovation,  a 
phenomenon  of  the  highest  importance.  The  de- 
scription of  its  chief  characteristics  will  complete 
our  subject. 

The  movement  of  renovation  or  organic  syn- 
thesis presents  two  chief  modes.  Sometimes  syn- 
thesis composes  nutritive  principles  by  the  assim- 
ilation of  surrounding  substance,  and  sometimes 
it  forms  the  elements  of  the  tissues  from  it  imme- 
diately. Thus  we  observe,  alongside  the  forma- 
tion of  direct  products  of  chemical  synthesis,  the 
appearance  of  the  phenomena  of  moultings,  or  his- 
tologic reparations,  sometimes  continuous,  some- 
times periodic.  The  phenomena  of  renewal,  res- 
toration, reparation,  displayed  in  the  adult  indi- 
vidual, are  of  the  same  kind  as  the  phenomena  of 
generation  and  evolution,  by  which  the  embryo 
in  the  beginning,  composes  its  organs  and  anatom- 
ical elements.  The  living  being,  then,  is  distin- 
guished by  generation  and  nutrition  at  the  same 
time ;  we  must  combine  and  mingle  these  two  or- 
ders of  phenomena,  and,  instead  of  dividing  them 
into  distinct  categories,  we  treat  them  as  a  single 
act,  completely  similar  in  essence  and  mechanism. 
With  this  conception,  it  is  entirely  correct  to  say 
that  nutrition  is  only  continuous  generation.  Or- 
ganic synthesis,  generation,  regeneration,  renova- 
tion, and  even  cicatrization,  are  aspects  of  one  and 
the  same  phenomenon — various  manifestations  of 
one  and  the  same  agent,  the  germ. 

The  germ  is  chiefly  and  specially  the  agent 
of  organization  and  nutrition ;  it  attracts  cosmic 
matter  about  it,  and  organizes  it  to  form  the  new 
being.  But  the  germ  can  only  manifest  its  organ- 
izing power  by  itself  performing  combustions — 
organic  destructions.  For  this  reason  it  is,  at  the 
beginning,  inclosed  in  a  cell — the  cell  of  the  egg 
— and  there  surrounds  itself  with  those  elaborated 
nutritive  materials  which  take  the  name  of  the 
vitellus. 

The  egg-cell,  thus  composed  of  the  germ  and 
the  vitellus,  unfolds  the  new  organism  by  segmen- 
tation, by  an  infinite  self-division  into  a  number- 
less quantity  of  cells,  each  provided  with  a  germ 
of  nutrition.  This  cellular  germ,  called  the  nu- 
cleus of  the  cell,  attracts  around  it  and  elaborates 
those  special  nutritive  materials  designed  for  com- 
bustion in  action  by  each  of  the  elements  of  our 
tissues  or  organs.  When  natural  or  accidental 
phenomena  of  renovation  occur;  when,  for  in- 
stance, a  nerve  that  is  cut  repairs  itself,  and  re- 
sumes its  functions,  in  such  a  case,  too,  it  is  the 


cellular  kernels  that,  like  the  primordial  germ 
they  are  derived  from,  divide  and  increase  in  num- 
ber, to  recompose  new  tissues  in  the  adult,  in  ex- 
act repetition  of  the  processes  followed  by  the 
embryo  in  its  growth. 

All  these  very  various  phenomena  of  renova- 
tion and  organic  synthesis  have  the  distinctive 
mark,  as  we  have  said,  of  being  in  a  manner  in- 
visible to  outward  view.  From  the  stillness  that 
reigns  in  an  egg  in  course  of  hatching,  we  could 
have  no  suspicion  of  the  activity  which  is  at  work 
in  it,  and  the  importance  of  the  phenomena  that 
are  there  taking  place ;  at  its  exit  only  the  new 
being  will  display  to  us,  by  its  vital  manifesta- 
tions, the  wonders  of  that  slow  and  secret  work. 

It  is  the  same  with  all  our  functions ;  each  one 
has,  we  may  say,  its  period  of  organizing  incuba- 
tion. When  a  vital  act  shows  itself  outwardly, 
the  conditions  of  it  had  been  for  a  long  time  gath- 
ering in  that  deep  and  quiet  elaboration  that  makes 
ready  the  causes  of  all  phenomena.  It  is  impor- 
tant not  to  leave  these  two  phases  of  physiological 
operation  out  of  view.  If  it  is  desired  to  modify 
vital  actions,  they  must  be  attacked  in  their  hid- 
den unfolding;  when  the  phenomenon  comes  to 
light,  it  is  too  late.  In  this,  as  in  everything  else, 
nothing  comes  by  sudden  chance ;  events  seem- 
ingly most  abrupt  have  had  their  secret  causes. 
The  object  of  science  is  exactly  to  discover  these 
elementary  causes,  and  gain  the  power  of  modify- 
ing and  thus  controlling  the  final  appearance  of 
phenomena. 

In  fine,  we  shall  perceive,  with  distinction,  in 
the  living  body,  two  great  groups  of  inverse  phe- 
nomena :  functional  phenomena,  or  vital  waste ; 
organic  phenomena,  or  vital  concentration.  Life 
is  kept  up  by  two  orders  of  acts  wholly  contrasted 
in  their  nature :  the  combustion  of  disassimilation, 
which  uses  up  living  matter  in  the  acting  organs ; 
the  synthesis  of  assimilation,  which  repairs  the 
tissues  in  the  organs  at  rest.  The  agents  em- 
ployed in  these  two  kinds  of  phenomena  are  not 
less  diverse.  Yital  combustion  borrows  from 
without  that  common  agent  of  combustions — oxy- 
gen ;  or,  when  that  is  not  to  be  had,  the  ferments, 
whose  disassimilating  action  may  interpose  in  the 
inner  parts  of  the  organism  not  reaohed  by  the  air. 
Organizing  synthesis,  on  the  contrary,  has  a  spe- 
cial agent — the  germ,  properly  so  called,  or  the 
kernels  of  cells,  the  secondary  germs  that  emanate 
from  it,  and  are  found  scattered  throughout  all 
the  elementary  parts  of  the  living  body.  So,  too, 
the  conditions  of  functional  disassimilation  and 
those  of  organic  assimilation  are  widely  different. 
The  same  agents  of  combustion  that  waste  the 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  LIFE. 


521 


organic  structure  during  life  continue  their  de- 
structive work  after  death,  when  the  phenomena 
of  repair  in  the  organism  have  ceased.  It  follows 
from  this  that  all  functional  phenomena,  attended 
by  combustion,  fermentation,  or  organic  dissocia- 
tion, can  take  place  as  well  outside  as  inside  of 
living  bodies.  This  fact  puts  into  the  power  of 
the  physiologist  to  analyze  vital  mechanism  by 
the  aid  of  experiment.  In  a  mutilated  organism, 
he  artificially  keeps  up  respiration,  circulation, 
digestion,  and  so  on ;  and  he  studies  the  proper- 
ties of  living  tissues  separated  from  the  body.  In 
these  dissevered  parts,  the  muscle  contracts,  the 
gland  secretes,  the  nerve  conducts  stimulus  ex- 
actly as  during  life;  yet,  if  these  tissues,  severed 
from  the  group  of  their  organic  conditions,  can 
still  act  and  waste,  they  have  no  longer  the  power 
of  repair,  and  therefore  it  is  that  their  final  death 
then  becomes  inevitable.  The  phenomena  of  or- 
ganic renewal,  unlike  the  phenomena  of  functional 
combustion,  can  only  be  displayed  in  the  living 
body,  and  each  in  its  special  place ;  no  contrivance 
has  as  yet  availed  to  make  up  for  these  essential 
conditions  of  the  activity  of  the  germs — being  in 
their  place,  and  in  the  structure  of  the  living  body. 
It  would  be  a  grave  error  to  reason,  from  the 
marked  differences  just  noted,  that  in  the  system 
combustion  and  organic  restoration  might  each 
take  a  vital  part,  independent  of  the  other :  since 
the  two  orders  of  phenomena  are  so  mutually 
active  in  the  work  of  nutrition  that  they  may  be 
said  to  be  distinct  only  in  thought ;  in  Nature  they 
are  inseparable.  No  living  creature,  animal  or 
vegetable,  can  manifest  its  functions  otherwise 
than  by  the  simultaneous  employment  of  vital 
combustion  and  of  organic  synthesis.  On  this 
ground,  chemical  and  anatomical  schools  must 
come  together  in  reconciliation,  for  the  solution 
of  the  physiological  problem  of  life  demands  the 
united  labors  of  both. 

IV. 

We  have  thus  followed  the  characteristic  phe- 
nomenon of  life,  nutrition,  even  to  its  inmost 
manifestations :  let  us  see  what  conclusion  that 
study  can  yield  us  as  regards  the  answer  to  that 
question  so  often  attempted — the  definition  of  life. 
Were  we  to  choose  for  expression  the  fact  that 
all  vital  functions  are  the  necessary  result  of  or- 
ganic combustion,  we  should  repeat  what  we  have 
already  declared  :  Life  is  death,  the  destruction  of 
the  tissues ;  or  else  we  might  say  with  Buffon, 
"  Life  is  a  Minotaur,  it  devours  the  organism."  If, 
on  the  contrary,  we  preferred  to  dwell  on  that  oth- 
er aspect  of  the  phenomena  of  nutrition,  that  life 


is  kept  up  only  on  condition  of  the  constant  reno- 
vation of  the  tissues,  we  should  look  upon  life 
as  a  creation  effected  by  means  of  a  forming  and 
repairing  act  opposed  to  vital  manifestations. 
In  fine,  were  we  to  attempt  combining  the  two 
aspects  of  the  phenomenon,  organization  and  dis- 
organization, we  should  come  near  to  the  defini- 
tion of  life  given  by  De  Blainville  :  "  Life  is  a  two- 
fold internal  movement  of  decomposition,  general 
and  continuous  at  once."  More  lately  Herbert 
Spencer  has  offered  the  following  definition : 
"  Life  is  the  definite  combination  of  heterogeneous 
changes,  which  are  both  simultaneous  and  suc- 
cessive ; "  and  under  this  abstract  definition  the 
English  philosopher  mainly  aims  at  pointing  out 
the  idea  of  evolution  and  succession  observed  in 
vital  phenomena.  Such  definitions,  how  incom- 
plete soever  they  may  be,  have  at  least  the  merit 
of  expressing  one  aspect  of  life;  they  are  not 
merely  verbal  ones,  like  that  of  the  Encyclopae- 
dia, "  Life  is  the  opposite  of  death  ;  "  or,  again, 
like  Beelard's,  "  Life  is  organization  in  action  ; " 
or  that  of  Duges,  "  Life  is  the  special  activity  of 
organized  beings ; "  which  is  as  much  as  to  say, 
Life  is  life.  Kant  defined  life  "  an  inner  principle 
of  action."  This  definition,  which  reminds  us 
of  the  idea  of  Hippocrates,  has  been  accepted  by 
Tiedemann  and  other  physiologists.  As  a  mat- 
ter of  fact,  there  is  no  more  an  inner  principle  of 
activity  in  living  matter  than  there  is  in  inert  mat- 
ter. The  phenomena  that  occur  in  minerals  are, 
it  is  true,  directly  influenced  by  external  atmos- 
pheric conditions  ;  but  that  is  the  case  also  with 
the  activity  of  plants  and  of  cold-blooded  animals. 
The  seeming  freedom  and  independence  of  men 
and  warm-blooded  animals  in  their  vital  manifes- 
tations depends  on  the  fact  that  their  body  pre- 
sents a  more  perfect  construction,  which  enables 
it  to  produce  such  a  quantity  of  heat  that  it  has 
no  absolute  need  of  borrowing  warmth  from  the 
surrounding  medium.  In  a  word,  the  spontaneity 
of  living  matter  is  but  a  false  appearance.  There 
is  the  constant  presence  of  outward  principles, 
foreign  exciting  causes,  which  always  act  in  call- 
ing out  the  manifestation  of  the  properties  of  a 
matter  which  is  at  all  times,  in  the  same  way,  of 
itself  inactive. 

We  will  not  proceed  with  these  citations, 
which  might  be  multiplied  endlessly  without  find- 
ing a  single  thoroughly  satisfactory  definition  of 
life.  Why  is  this  so  ?  It  is  because,  in  regard 
to  life,  we  must  distinguish  the  word  from  the 
thing  itself.  Pascal,  who  understood  so  well  all 
the  weaknesses  and  illusions  of  the  human  mind, 
bids  us  observe  that  true  definitions  are  really 


522 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


only  the  creations  of  our  own  thought,  meaning 
that  they  are  definitions  of  names,  or  agreed  terms 
for  shortening  speech  ;  but  he  recognizes  primi- 
tive words  that  are  understood  without  any  need 
of  defining  them. 

Now,  the  word  life  is  in  that  situation.  All 
men  understand  each  other  when  they  speak  of 
life  and  death.  It  would  be  impossible,  at  any 
rate,  to  separate  these  two  terms,  or  these  two 
correlative  ideas,  for  that  which  lives  is  that 
which  will  die,  and  that  which  is  dead  is  that 
which  has  been  alive.  When  we  are  dealing 
with  a  phenomenon  of  life,  as  with  any  phenome- 
non of  Nature,  the  first  condition  is,  to  under- 
stand it ;  its  definition  can  only  be  given  a  poste- 
riori— it  is  the  conclusion  gathered  from  a  previ- 
ous study  ;  but,  properly  speaking,  such  a  propo- 
sition is  not  a  definition,  it  is  a  view,  a  concep- 
tion. Our  business,  then,  will  be  to  learn  what 
conception  we  should  shape  for  ourselves  of  the 
phenomena  of  life,  at  this  day,  in  the  present  state 
of  our  physiological  knowledge. 

That  conception  has  varied,  as  a  matter  of 
course,  with  epochs  and  in  accordance  with  the 
advance  of  knowledge.  At  the  beginning  of  this 
century  a  French  physiologist,  Le  Gallois,  pub- 
lished, even  at  that  date,  a  volume  of  experiments 
on  the  principle  of  life,  and  the  seat  of  that  prin- 
ciple. We  are  now  no  longer  looking  for  the  seat 
of  life ;  we  know  that  it  dwells  everywhere,  in 
all  the  molecules  of  organized  matter.  The  vital 
properties  are  in  reality  only  in  the  living  cells, 
and  all  the  rest  is  merely  arrangement  and  mech- 
anism. The  very  various  manifestations  of  life 
are  expressions,  combined  and  diversified  in  many 
thousands  of  ways,  of  fixed  and  unchanging  or- 
ganic elementary  properties.  Therefore  it  is  of 
less  consequence  to  know  the  immense  variety 
of  vital  manifestations  which  Nature  seems  unable 
even  to  exhaust,  than  it  is  to  fix  with  rigorous 
precision  the  properties  of  tissues  that  give  rise  to 
them.  At  this  day,  for  this  reason,  all  the  efforts 
of  science  are  directed  to  the  histological  study 
of  those  infinitely  little  points  which  conceal  the 
true  secret  of  life. 

How  deeply  soever  we  may  now  be  able  to 
penetrate  into  the  secrets  of  those  phenomena 
peculiar  to  living  beings,  the  question  rising  for 
solution  is  always  the  same.  It  is  the  very  ques- 
tion asked  in  the  oldest  times,  at  the  beginning  of 
science.  Is  life  due  to  a  special  power,  or  force, 
or  is  it  only  a  mode  of  action  of  the  general  forces 
of  Nature  ?  In  other  words,  does  there  exist  in  liv- 
ing beings  a  peculiar  force,  distinct  from  physi- 
cal, chemical,  or  mechanical  forces  ?     The  vital- 


ists  have  always  taken  up  their  position  in  the  im- 
possibility of  explaining  all  the  phenomena  of  life 
through  physics  or  mechanics ;  their  opponents 
have  always  answered  by  bringing  an  increasing 
number  of  vital  manifestations  within  well-demon- 
strated physico-chemical  explanations.  It  must 
be  owned  that  the  latter  have  steadily  gained 
ground,  and  that  especially  in  our  times  they  gain 
more  and  more  every  day.  Will  they  thus  suc- 
ceed in  reducing  everything  to  their  theories,  and 
will  there  not  remain,  spite  of  all  their  efforts,  a 
quid proprium  of  life,  still  irreducible  ?  This  is 
the  point  we  now  have  to  examine.  By  carefully 
analyzing  all  vital  phenomena,  whose  explanation 
belongs  to  physical  and  chemical  forces,  we  shall 
press  vitalism  back  into  a  region  of  smaller  ex- 
tent, and  therefore  more  easily  defined. 

Of  the  two  orders  of  nutritive  phenomena  that 
substantially  compose  life,  and  originate  all  its 
manifestations,  without  exception,  there  is  one, 
that  of  destruction,  of  organic  disassimilation, 
which  henceforward  takes  its  place  unquestion- 
ably among  chemical  actions ;  these  decomposi- 
tions in  living  beings  present  no  greater  nor  less 
mystery  than  do  those  shown  us  by  inorganic  bod- 
ies. As  to  the  phenomena  of  organizing  through 
genesis,  and  of  renovation  through  nutrition, 
they  do  seem  at  the  first  glance  to  be  of  an  entire- 
ly special  vital  nature,  not  reducible  to  general 
chemical  action.  This,  however,  is  only  so  in  ap- 
pearance, and  to  account  for  the  matter  com- 
pletely we  must  study  these  phenomena  under  the 
twofold  aspect  they  present,  that  of  an  ordinary 
chemical  synthesis,  and  of  an  organic  evolution 
which  is  proceeding.  In  truth,  vital  genesis  com- 
prises phenomena  of  chemical  synthesis  arranged 
and  unfolded  after  a  special  order,  which  makes 
their  evolution.  It  is  necessary  to  distinguish 
chemical  phenomena  in  themselves  from  their  evo- 
lution, for  these  are  two  completely  separate 
things.  In  so  far  as  they  are  synthetic  acts,  it  is 
clear  that  these  phenomena  arise  only  from  gen- 
eral chemical  forces ;  and  this  is  plainly  proved 
by  studying  them  one  by  one  in  their  succession. 
The  calcareous  matters  found  in  the  shells  of  mol- 
lusks,  the  eggs  of  birds,  the  bones  of  mammals,  are 
very  certainly  formed  during  the  evolution  of  the 
embryo  according  to  the  laws  of  common  chemis- 
try. The  fatty  and  oily  matters,  too,  are  formed 
in  the  same  way,  and  chemistry  has  already  suc- 
ceeded in  the  artificial  reproduction  in  its  labora- 
tories of  a  large  number  of  immediate  principles 
and  essential  oils  which  naturally  belong  to  the 
animal  or  vegetable  kingdom.  So,  too,  amylace- 
ous substances  that  are  developed  in  animals,  and 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  LIFE. 


523 


are  produced  in  the  green  leaves  of  plants  by  the 
union  of  carbon  and  water  under  the  influence  of 
the  sun,  are  really  very  well-marked  chemical 
phenomena.  If  the  synthetical  processes  are  much 
less  clear  in  the  instance  of  azoted  or  albuminoid 
matters,  the  reason  is,  that  organic  chemistry  is 
not  yet  far  enough  advanced  to  explain  them ; 
but  it  is  very  certain,  nevertheless,  that  these  sub- 
stances are  formed  by  chemical  processes  in  the 
organisms  of  living  beings.  It  must  be  owned 
that  the  agents  of  organic  synthesis,  the  germs 
and  cells,  may  be  said  to  be  entirely  exceptional 
agents.  It  might  be  said,  in  the  same  sense,  as 
to  phenomena  of  disorganization,  that  ferments 
are  agents  special  to  living  beings.  In  my  own 
view,  it  is  a  fact  that  there  is  such  a  general  law, 
and  that  chemical  phenomena  are  made  to  occur 
in  the  organism  by  special  agents  or  processes  ; 
but  that  fact  does  not  at  all  affect  the  purely 
chemical  nature  of  the  phenomena  that  take  place, 
and  of  the  products  that  result  from  it. 

After  this  study  of  chemical  synthesis,  let  us 
take  organic  evolution.  The  agents  of  chemical 
phenomena  in  living  bodies  do  not  stop  with  pro- 
ducing chemical  syntheses  of  exceedingly  various 
substances,  but  go  on  to  organize  them  and  apply 
them  to  the  morphological  construction  of  the  new 
being.  The  most  potent  and  wonderful  among 
these  agents  of  living  chemistry  is  unquestiona- 
bly the  egg,  the  primordial  cell  that  contains  the 
germ,  the  organizing  principle  of  the  whole  body. 
We  are  not  present  at  any  creation  of  the  egg  ex 
nihilo :  it  comes  from  the  parents,  and  the  origin 
of  its  virtue  of  evolution  is  hidden  from  us ;  but 
science  is  ascending  nearer  to  this  mystery  every 
day.  It  is  by  the  germ,  and  by  reason  of  that 
kind  of  power  of  evolution  it  possesses,  that  the 
perpetuity  of  species  and  the  descent  of  beings 
are  established ;  by  it  we  understand  the  neces- 
sary relations  existing  between  the  phenomena  of 
nutrition  and  those  of  development.  It  explains 
for  us  the  limited  duration  of  the  living  being,  for 
death  must  come  when  nutrition  stops,  not  because 
aliment  fails,  but  because  the  developing  progress 
of  the  being  has  reached  its  end,  and  the  cell's 
impulse  of  organization  has  exhausted  its  virtue. 

Again,  the  germ  directs  the  organization  of 
the  being,  by  forming  living  substance  with  the 
aid  of  surrounding  matter,  and  by  giving  it  those 
qualities  of  chemical  instability  which  become  the 
cause  of  the  unceasing  vital  movements  that  take 
place  in  it.  The  cellules,  those  secondary  germs, 
in  the  same  way  govern  the  nutritive  cellular  or- 
ganization. It  is  very  clear  that  these  are  purely 
chemical  acts ;  but  it  is  not  less  plain  that  these 


chemical  acts,  in  virtue  of  which  the  organism 
increases  and  builds  up,  follow  in  linked  succes- 
sion with  a  view  to  this  result,  which  is,  the  or- 
ganization and  the  growth  of  the  individual, 
whether  animal  or  vegetable.  There  is,  as  it  were, 
a  scheme  of  life,  which  sketches  the  plan  of  every 
being  and  of  every  organ  ;  so  that  if,  considered 
by  itself,  each  phenomenon  of  the  organization 
depends  on  the  general  forces  of  Nature,  yet. 
taken  as  a  whole,  and  in  their  succession,  these 
phenomena  seem  to  disclose  a  special  bond  among 
them  ;  they  seem  to  be  guided  by  an  unseen  con- 
ditioning something  in  the  course  they  follow 
and  in  the  order  that  holds  them  together.  Thus, 
the  chemical  synthetic  acts  of  organization  and 
nutrition  come  to  view  as  if  they  were  ruled  by 
an  impulsive  force  governing  matter,  working 
with  a  chemistry  applied  to  an  end,  and  bringing 
together  the  laboratory's  senseless  reagents,  as  the 
chemist  himself  does.  That  force  of  evolution, 
imminent  in  the  ovule  which  is  to  reproduce  a 
living  being,  unites  within  it,  as  we  have  explained, 
the  phenomena  of  generation  and  of  nutrition; 
both,  therefore,  have  an  unfolding  character, 
which  is  their  basis  and  essence. 

It  is  this  evolutive  power,  or  property,  which 
we  now  merely  designate,  that  alone  could  com- 
pose the  quid  proprium  of  life,  for  it  is  certain 
that  this  evolutive  property  of  the  egg  which  will 
produce  a  mammal,  a  bird,  or  a  fish,  belongs  nei- 
ther to  physics  nor  to  chemistry.  The  theories 
of  the  vitalists  cannot,  at  this  day,  hover  over  the 
whole  field  of  physiology.  The  evolutive  power 
of  the  egg  and  the  cells  is  thus  the  last  stronghold 
of  vitalism  ;  but,  in  taking  refuge  there,  it  is  easy 
to  see  that  vitalism  changes  into  a  metaphysical 
conception,  and  breaks  the  last  tie  that  bound  it 
to  the  physical  world,  or  to  physiological  science. 
When  we  say  that  life  is  the  guiding  idea,  or  the 
evolutive  force  of  the  being,  we  merely  express  the 
thought  of  a  unity  in  the  succession  of  all  the 
morphological  and  chemical  changes  effected  by 
the  germ,  from  the  beginning  to  the  end  of  life. 
Our  mind  grasps  that  unity  as  a  conception  it  can- 
not escape  from,  and  explains  it  by  "  a  force;" 
but  the  mistake  is  in  supposing  that  this  meta- 
physical force  acts  after  the  manner  of  a  physical 
force.  That  conception  does  not  quit  the  region 
of  mind,  to  react  in  presence  upon  those  phenom- 
ena for  the  explanation  of  which  the  mind  has 
formed  it;  though  it  issues  out  of  the  physical 
world,  it  has  no  retroactive  effect  upon  that  world. 
In  a  word,  the  metaphysical  evolutive  force  by 
which  we  may  describe  life  is  useless  to  science, 
because,  being  outside  of  physical  forces,  it  can 


124 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


exert  no  influence  upon  them.  We  need  here  to 
draw  a  distinction  between  the  metaphysical  world 
and  the  phenomenal  physical  world,  which  serves 
as  its  basis,  but  which  can  borrow  nothing  from  it. 
Leibnitz  expressed  that  discrimination  in  those 
words  of  his  we  repeated  at  the  beginning  of  this 
essay ;  science  recognizes  and  adopts  it  in  our  day. 
To  conclude,  if  it  is  possible  to  define  life  by 


the  help  of  a  particular  metaphysical  conception 
it  remains  no  less  the  truth  that  mechanical, 
chemical,  and  physical  forces  are  the  only  efficient 
agents  in  the  living  organism,  and  the  physiolo- 
gist has  nothing  else  than  their  action  to  note 
and  explain.  Descartes's  phrase  must  be  accept- 
ed :  "  We  think  metaphysically,  but  we  live  and 
act  physically." 


IMPRESSIONS  OF  AMERICA. 


By  E.   W.  DALE. 


I. — SOCIETY. 

IN  the  autumn  of  last  year  I  spent  two  very 
pleasant  months  on  the  other  side  of  the  At- 
lantic. Since  my  return  I  have  been  asked,  as  a 
matter  of  course,  by  all  my  friends,  what  I  think 
of  America.  I  had  to  answer  or  to  evade  the 
question  almost  as  soon  as  I  was  on  the  landing- 
stage  at  Liverpool,  and  before  my  portmanteaus 
were  fairly  through  the  custom-house  ;  I  am  near- 
ly sure,  indeed,  that  the  question  was  asked  me 
on  the  tender  before  we  had  reached  the  landing- 
stage.  I  have  had  to  answer  or  to  evade  it  nearly 
every  day  since. 

I  say  that  I  have  had  to  "  answer  or  to  evade  " 
it ;  for  the  question  cannot  be  fairly  answered  in 
an  omnibus,  or  between  the  courses  at  a  dinner- 
party, or  while  putting  on  one's  great-coat  after 
a  committee-meeting,  or  while  talking  under  an 
umbrella  to  a  friend  one  has  happened  to  meet 
in  the  street  in  a  shower  of  rain.  Indeed,  I  am 
not  sure  that  I  have  a  right  to  express  any 
opinion  on  America  and  the  American  people, 
even  when  there  is  the  opportunity  for  express- 
ing it  deliberately  and  fully.  I  sailed  from  Liv- 
erpool on  the  1st  of  September,  and  reached 
Liverpool  again  on  the  17th  of  November.  In 
seven  or  eight  weeks  what  trustworthy  judgment 
can  a  man  form  of  the  habits,  manners,  temper, 
and  character,  of  a  population  so  varied  in  its 
origin  and  occupations  as  that  of  the  United 
States,  and  covering  so  vast  a  territory  ?  After 
so  brief  a  visit,  what  right  have  I  to  form  any 
confident  opinion  on  American  institutions  ? 

I  do  not  imagine  that  all  Americans  are  like 
the  accomplished  professors  at  Yale,  or  like  the 
clergymen  I  met  in  New  York,  Brooklyn,  Bos- 
ton, and  in  several  of  the  smaller  cities  of  New 


England,  or  like  the  distinguished  physicians  who 
showed  me  hospitality  at  Philadelphia  and  Chi- 
cago, or  like  the  Education  Commissioners  and 
the  chairmen  and  members  of  school  committees, 
with  whom  I  spent  many  interesting  days  in  sev- 
eral great  cities,  or  like  the  heads  of  famous 
commercial  houses  to  whom  I  was  introduced  by 
my  friend  and  fellow-traveler  Mr.  Henry  Lee. 
Nor  do  I  suppose  that  I  have  a  complete  and 
exhaustive  knowledge  of  American  manners  and 
character  because  I  staid  in  many  American 
hotels,  and  traveled  several  thousands  of  miles  on 
steamboats  and  in  railway-carriages.  I  can  but 
tell  what  I  saw.  But  I  saw  enough  to  convince 
me  that  some  of  the  representations  of  the  Amer- 
ican people  which  have  become  popular  in  Eng- 
land are  gross  and  slanderous  libels. 

An  American  who  had  formed  his  conception 
of  Englishmen  from  the  typical  "  John  Bull  "  in 
top-boots,  with  a  cudgel  in  his  hand,  would  be 
rather  perplexed  on  meeting  Dean  Stanley,  whose 
hospitality  to  Americans  has  given  him  a  repu- 
tation on  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic  almost 
as  enviable  as  that  which  he  has  won  by  his 
literary  genius  ;  nor  would  his  perplexity  be  less- 
ened if  from  the  deanery  at  Westminster  he 
crossed  over  to  the  House  of  Commons,  and 
happened  to  see  and  hear  Mr.  Gladstone.  He 
might  go  to  fifty  London  dinners  and  still  won- 
der where  the  ideal  Englishman  was  to  be  found. 
At  churches,  concerts,  museums,  picture-galleries, 
and  theatres,  his  curiosity  would  still  be  unsat. 
isfied.  He  might  ride  in  innumerable  omnibuses, 
he  might  travel  morning  after  morning  by  the 
underground  railway,  and  go  from  London  Bridge 
to  Chelsea  every  afternoon  in  a  penny  boat,  and 
never  see  the  object  of  his  search.  He  might  go 
down  to  Oxford,  or  York,  or  Brighton,  or  Salis- 


IMPRESSIONS   OF  AMERICA. 


525 


bury,  and  still  look  in  vain  for  the  John  Bull  of 
his  imagination.  Neither  in  appearance  nor  in 
manners  would  the  men  he  met  with  correspond 
to  the  familiar  type.  At  an  agricultural  show  he 
might  find  a  man  here  and  there  who  looked 
dressed  for  the  character,  but  the  chances  are 
ten  to  one  that  if  he  began  to  talk  with  the 
burly-looking  farmers  he  would  discover  that 
many  of  them,  though  a  little  rough  in  their 
ways  and  rather  loud  in  their  speech,  were  wholly 
unlike  in  their  temper  and  spirit  what  he  had 
supposed  that  every  Englishman  ought  to  be. 
Occasionally,  no  doubt,  the  type  is  realized — re- 
alized physically  and  realized  morally — but  it  is 
possible  to  live  for  months  in  many  parts  of  Eng- 
land without  seeing  a  man  who  has  anything  of 
the  appearance  of  the  John  Bull  of  one  of  Punch's 
cartoons  ;  and  when  you  have  found  a  man  who 
looks  as  if  he  might  have  sat  for  the  picture,  he 
often  turns  out  to  have  no  moral  resemblance  to 
the  conventional  ideal  of  our  national  character. 
The  people  I  happened  to  meet  with  in  New  York 
and  Chicago,  in  Boston  and  Philadelphia,  in 
Washington  and  the  manufacturing  towns  of 
New  England,  were  equally  unlike  the  high-fa- 
lutin',  self-asserting  American  of  caricature  and 
popular  fancy.  They  were  quiet  instead  of  noisy, 
modest  instead  of  ostentatious  and  boastful,  reti- 
cent rather  than  demonstrative. 

My  own  impressions  were  confirmed  by  an 
English  friend  who  had  been  living  in  New  York 
for  several  months,  and  who  asked  me  whether  I 
had  not  been  struck  with  the  extreme  gentleness 
of  American  manners.  Nor  was  it  the  gentleness 
merely  that  impressed  me.  There  was  something 
of  the  old-fashioned  formal  courtesy  which  has 
now  almost  disappeared  in  this  country.  It  is 
one  of  the  reproaches,  indeed,  which  the  Repub- 
licans of  America  fling  at  the  Democrats  that  the 
triumph  of  the  Democratic  party  in  1801  de- 
stroyed the  good  manners  of  the  people  and 
made  them  rude  and  insolent.  Before  Jefferson's 
election  to  the  presidency — so  it  is  said — the 
children,  when  they  passed  their  elders  on  coun- 
try roads  or  in  the  streets  of  the  smaller  towns, 
made  a  respectful  bow ;  but  with  the  accession 
of  the  Democrats  to  power  the  bow  began  to  sub- 
side, "  first  into  a  vulgar  nod,  half  ashamed  and 
half  impudent,  and  then,  like  the  pendulum  of  a 
dying  clock,  totally  ceased."  To  illustrate  this 
charge,  a  popular  author,  Mr.  Goodrich,  tells  a 
characteristic  story:  "How  are  you,  priest?" 
said  a  rough  fellow  to  a  clergyman.  "  How  are 
you,  Democrat  ? "  was  the  clergyman's  retort. 
"  How  do  you  know  I  am  a  Democrat  ?  "  asked 


the  man.  "  How  do  you  know  I  am  a  priest  ?  " 
said  the  clergyman.  "  I  know  you  to  be  a  priest 
by  your  dress."  "  I  know  you  to  be  a  Democrat 
by  your  address,"  said  the  parson.1 

It  is  true,  no  doubt,  that  the  kind  of  respect 
which  the  people  in  an  English  agricultural  vil- 
lage sometimes  show  to  their  pastors  and  masters 
is  not  to  be  found,  as  far  as  I  know,  in  the 
United  States.  The  little  girls  do  not  draw  up 
against  the  wall  and  make  a  respectful  courtesy 
to  every  well-dressed  stranger  they  meet.  If  you 
say  "  Good-morning "  to  a  man  you  happen  to 
pass  in  the  rural  parts  of  New  England,  and 
who  looks  like  a  prosperous  agricultural  la- 
borer, but  who  is  probably  the  owner  of  a  farm 
of  eighty  or  a  hundred  acres,  he  will  not  feel 
so  honored  by  your  condescension  as  to  stand 
still  and  pull  the  front  lock  of  his  hair ;  he 
may  even  stride  on  with  a  grunt  which  is  hard- 
ly courteous.  The  servants  or  "helps  "  have  not 
exactly  the  manners  of  servants  in  England.  I 
always  found  them  respectful  and  attentive,  but 
there  is  a  certain  something  with  which  we  are 
familiar  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic  that  is  ab- 
sent. It  is  quite  clear  that  they  do  not  suppose 
that  their  master  and  their  master's  guests  be- 
long to  a  superior  race.  At  an  English  picnic 
the  younger  ladies  and  gentlemen  sometimes 
spread  the  cloth,  hand  the  lobster-salad,  the 
cold  chicken,  and  the  bread,  pour  out  the  wine, 
and  take  round  the  fruit ;  they  wait  "for  love  " 
and  not  for  wages.  Perhaps,  when  the  dinner  is 
half  over,  they  take  their  seats  and  are  waited 
on  themselves.  American  servants  reminded  me 
occasionally  of  these  kindly  volunteers.  Seneca 
tells  one  of  his  correspondents  that  he  should 
treat  his  slaves  not  like  beasts  of  burden,  but  as 
"humble  friends."  Seneca  would  have  found 
himself  quite  at  home  in  America.  If  he  thought 
that  the  slaves  who  waited  on  him  should  be 
treated  as  "  humble  friends,"  he  would  have  treat- 
ed free  men  and  women  who  waited  on  him  as 
friends  that  required  to  be  described  by  another 
epithet.  I  found  that  the  servants  took  quite  a 
hospitable  interest  in  me.  The  day  before  I  left 
New  Haven  I  called  to  bid  good-by  to  a  friend, 
whose  guest  I  had  been  during  the  earlier  part  of 
my  stay  in  the  city.  He  happened  to  be  out,  but 
the  house-maid  who  opened  the  door  understood 
the  object  of  my  call,  and  hoped  I  was  well,  and 
that  I  had  had  a  pleasant  time  in  America,  and 
that  I  should  have  a  good  voyage,  and  find  all 
well  at   home.      I  do    not  think   that   the   girl 

]  James  Parton's  "  Life  of  Thomas  Jefferson,"  pp. 
584,  585. 


526 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


did  her  work  at  all  the  worse  because  she  felt 
herself  at  liberty  to  speak  in  this  way  to  her 
master's  friend.  Sometimes,  indeed,  this  sense 
of  social  equality  may  show  itself  in  ways  which 
strike  an  English  traveler  as  rather  odd  and  not 
quite  agreeable.  An  English  gentleman  told  me 
that  he  was  being  driven  through  the  beautiful 
park  at  Philadelphia  by  an  American  lady  with 
whom  he  was  staying.  She  wanted  to  leave  the 
carriage  at  a  particular  point,  walk  through  the 
Exhibition  Building,  and  meet  the  carriage  at  an- 
other entrance,  and  she  asked  her  coachman,  a 
colored  man,  whether  he  thought  the  doors  at 
the  other  end  of  the  building  were  open.  "  Dunt 
know,"  was  the  reply ;  "  hadn't  you  better  get 
down  and  ask  ?  "  If  he  had  proposed  that  the 
gentleman  should  "get  down,"  it  would  have 
been  more  consistent  with  our  notions  of  pro- 
priety.1 

I  was  told  that  there  are  delicate  distinc- 
tions among  the  servants  which  it  is  necessary 
for  a  stranger  to  remember.  When  you  leave 
the  house  an  Irish  girl  will  take  your  dollar 
with  as  much  satisfaction  as  a  servant  in  Eng- 
land receives  the  customary  "  vail."  I  believe 
that  most  German  and  Swedish  girls  will  be 
equally  accommodating.  But  I  heard  that  if  by 
chance  your  friend  has  a  genuine  American  girl 
for  a  house-maid,  she  will  resent  the  offer  of 
money  as  an  insult.  Whether  this  is  true  or  not 
I  cannot  say,  as  I  did  not  happen  to  have  the 
opportunity  of  trying  the  experiment.  A  story 
that  was  told  me  by  an  English  lady  living  at 
Ottawa — the  wife  of  a  colonel  in  the  English 
army — shows  that  the  conditions  of  American 
life  have  affected  Canada.  A  girl  applied  to  her 
for  a  house-maid's  place,  and  asked  what  seemed 
to  the  lady  extravagant  wages.  "  How  much  did 
you  have  at  your  last  situation  ?  "  asked  my 
friend.  "  Well,  ma'am,"  was  the  reply,  "  I  only 
had  six  dollars  a  month,  but  the  lady  gave  me 
music-lessons." 

American  mistresses  have  their  sorrows,  and 
are  disposed  to  envy  ladies  in  England,  who 
seem  to  have  their  servants  more  perfectly  under 
command.  But  English  mistresses  are  not  with- 
out their  annoyances.      I  believe  that  the  real 

1  An  English  servant  who  has  not  been  well  "brok- 
en in  "  can  sometime?  be  sufficiently  free  and  inde- 
pendent. A  lady  in  the  south  of  England  had  a  new 
house-maid  who,  after  being  in  the  house  a  fortnight, 
omitted  to  put  any  water  on  the  dinner-table.  When 
she  was  reminded  of  her  omission,  she  replied,  "Fur 
varteen  days  I  ha'  putt  they  bottles  on  the  table  and 
none  of  yur  have  drunk  any  warter  ;  I  dunt  mean  to 
put  'em  on  any  more." 


trouble  on  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic,  as  on 
this,  is  the  difficulty  of  finding  servants  who  really 
understand  their  work.  In  the  relations  between 
servants  and  masters  I  saw  nothing  that  was  of- 
fensive ;  indeed,  I  am  democratic  enough  to  think 
that  the  friendly  ease  of  the  American  "  help  " 
is  more  satisfactory  than  the  absolute  self-sup- 
pression and  mechanical  deference  which  are 
seen  in  the  servants  of  many  English  houses. 

When  I  said  that  in  America  there  remains 
something  of  the  old-fashioned  courtesy  which 
among  ourselves  must  have  vanished  for  at  least 
fifty  years,  I  was  not  thinking  of  the  relations  of 
the  " lower  orders  "  to  their  "betters,"  but  of  the 
manners  of  educated  American  society.  Again 
and  again  I  was  reminded  of  the  characters  in 
Miss  Austen's  novels.  There  was  just  a  touch  of 
the  same  formality.  "  Politeness,"  which  is  a 
word  that  has  very  much  gone  out  of  use  in  Eng- 
land, still  survives  in  America ;  according  to  an 
American  author,  "politeness  appears  to  have 
been  invented  to  enable  people  who  would  natu- 
rally fall  out  to  live  together  in  peace."  As  the 
word  is  in  more  common  use  in  America  than 
among  ourselves,  so  I  think  that  in  the  ordinary 
life,  even  of  those  who  are  in  no  danger  of  "  fall- 
ing out,"  there  is  more  of  what  the  word  denotes. 
The  disappearance  of  the  reverential  habits  of  the 
last  century  is,  of  course,  deplored.  Jonathan 
Edwards's  children  always  rose  from  their  seats 
when  their  father  or  mother  came  into  the  room. 
This  surprising  custom  does  not  exist  in  any  of 
the  families  that  showed  me  hospitality;  but  I 
noticed  that  one  of  my  young  lady  friends  often 
called  her  father  "  sir,"  and  that  she  used  the 
word  not  playfully,  but  with  all  the  respect  with 
which  she  would  address  a  stranger.  Her  father 
was  not  "  stiff  and  unsociable  "  as  Jonathan  Ed- 
wards was  thought  to  be  by  "  those  who  had  but 
a  slight  acquaintance  with  him," '  but  one  of  the 
kindest,  simplest,  and  most  genial  of  men.  His 
children  were  on  the  freest  and  easiest  terms  with 
him,  teased  him  and  played  with  him  just  as  chil- 
dren on  this  side  of  the  ocean  tease  and  play  with 
their  fathers;  but  the  line  of  filial  respect  was 
never  passed,  and  the  respect  showed  itself  in  the 
deferential  "  sir."  The  "  sir  "  was  used,  indeedt 
unconsciously.  I  asked  my  young  friend,  who 
was  a  bright,  clever  girl,  whether  she  generally 
called  her  father  "  sir ; "  she  said  that  she  did 
not  know  that  she  ever  did,  but  within  five  min- 
utes the  word  was  on  her  lips  again.  A  day  or 
two  afterward  I  asked  a  gentleman,  whom  I  met 

1  Hopkins's  "Memoir"  prefixed  to  English  edition 
of  Edwards's  Works,  p.  44. 


IMPRESSIONS  OF  AMERICA. 


527 


frequently,  whether  it  was  customary  for  children 
when  addressing  their  father  to  say  "  sir."  He 
said,  "  Oh,  yes — is  it  not  customary  in  England  ? 
We  teach  our  children  to  do  it ;  we  have  not  too 
much  of  the  spirit  of  reverence  in  America,  and 
we  think  it  desirable  to  cultivate  it." 

I  came  to  the  conclusion — to  me  a  very  unex- 
pected one — that  the  Americans  are  a  reserved 
people.  They  are  not  eager  to  talk  to  you  about 
their  own  affairs.  Manufacturers,  except  when  I 
asked  them,  did  not  tell  me  how  many  men  they 
employed.  Merchants  were  not  anxious  to  im- 
press me  with  the  magnitude  of  their  business 
transactions.  Xor,  indeed,  did  I  find  that  the 
strangers  I  met  were  very  anxious  or,  indeed, 
very  willing  to  talk  at  all.  I  often  found  it  hard 
to  discover  whether  the  people  I  was  traveling 
with  approved  of  Mr.  Hayes's  Southern  policy  or 
not,  or  even  whether  they  belonged  to  the  Re- 
publican or  the  Democratic  party.  When  I  was 
fortunate  enough  to  find  a  man  with  a  cigar  in 
his  mouth  standing  on  the  platform  of  a  Pullman 
car,  I  could  sometimes  make  him  more  communi- 
cative ;  and  occasionally,  under  these  conditions, 
I  learned  a  great  deal  about  the  country.  But, 
as  a  rule,  strangers  opened  slowly  and  shyly. 
Nor  was  this  because  I  was  an  Englishman.  I 
used  to  watch  the  people  in  railway-carriages — a 
dozen  or  twenty  in  a  Pullman  drawing-room  car, 
forty  or  fifty  in  an  ordinary  car — and  if  they  did 
not  know  each  other  they  would  travel  together 
all  day  without  exchanging  half  a  dozen  words. 
Occasionally  three  men  who  were  friends  would 
ask  a  stranger  to  take  a  hand  at  whist,  but  this 
was  not  very  common.  Perhaps  the  reticence  is 
confined  to  the  wealthier  people.  On  the  lines 
which  have,  two  classes  of  carriages  I  often  spent 
half  an  hour  in  a  smoking-car  intended  for  both 
classes  of  passengers.  There  I  generally  found 
much  more  freedom.  Working-men  talked  to 
each  other  without  any  difficulty ;  but  even  there 
the  passengers  who  had  come  from  the  first-class 
carriages  sat  and  smoked  in  silence. 

I  remember  one  conspicuous  exception,  how- 
ever, to  the  general  reserve.  In  the  smoking- 
cabin  of  a  steamboat  a  Southern  gentleman,  a 
professor  in  a  college  of  some  reputation,  gave 
the  company  an  elaborate  account — d  propos  of 
nothing — of  the  exercises  he  had  had  to  perform 
for  his  degree  in  a  German  university.  As  most 
of  the  men  were  obviously  men  of  business,  and 
just  as  uninterested  in  university  affairs  as  in  the 
incidents  of  the  gentleman's  personal  history,  they 
smoked  on  in  silence,  looking  at  him  occasionally 
with  an  expression  of  stolid  wonder,  alleviated 


slightly  with  perplexity  and  amusement.  On  an- 
other occasion,  and  equally  without  provocation, 
the  same  gentleman  gave  the  same  company  the 
most  minute  information  about  his  physical  ail- 
ments and  how  lie  treated  them,  and  was  listened 
to  with  the  same  look  of  amusement,  perplexity, 
and  wonder.  It  was  very  odd.  He  was  under 
fifty,  so  that  he  had  not  become  garrulous  through 
old  age.  He  had  not  lost  the  control  of  his  tongue 
by  drinking  whiskey-and-water.  I  had  several 
private  talks  with  him  outside  the  smoking-room, 
and  found  him  an  intelligent  and  well-read  man. 
He  had  seen  a  great  deal  of  the  world,  and  though 
he  was  extraordinarily  communicative  about  his 
opinions  and  doings,  he  could  talk  pleasantly 
about  many  things  besides  his  own  learning, 
headaches,  and  attacks  of  indigestion.  But  he 
was  the  only  instance  I  happened  to  meet  with 
of  an  American  absolutely  free  from  reserve.  As 
a  rule,  the  people  appeared  to  me  to  be  more  re- 
served than  ourselves. 

The  same  quality  of  their  national  temper- 
ament shows  itself  in  another  form ;  as  a  rule, 
they  are  undemonstrative.  The  late  Lord  Lytton 
tells  us  that  on  one  occasion  when  Kean  was  per- 
forming in  the  United  States,  he  came  to  the  man- 
ager at  the  end  of  the  third  act  and  said :  "  I  can't 
go  on  the  stage  again,  sir,  if  the  pit  keeps  its 
hands  in  its  pockets.  Such  an  audience  would 
extinguish  Etna."  After  receiving  this  alarming 
threat  the  manager  appeared  before  the  curtain 
and  informed  the  audience  that  "  Mr.  Kean,  hav- 
ing been  accustomed  to  audiences  more  demon- 
strative than  was  habitual  to  the  severer  in- 
telligence of  an  assembly  of  American  citizens, 
mistook  their  silent  attention  for  disapprobation ; 
and,  in  short,  that  if  they  did  not  applaud  as 
Mr.  Kean  had  been  accustomed  to  be  applauded, 
they  could  not  have  the  gratification  of  seeing 
Mr.  Kean  act  as  he  had  been  accustomed  to 
act."  » 

Mr.  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  was  lecturing 
many  years  ago  in  some  city  in  Vermont  or  New 
Hampshire,  and  the  same  "  severe  intelligence  of 
an  assembly  of  American  citizens  "  baffled  and 
perplexed  him.  There  was  no  sign  of  interest. 
His  brightest  wit  and  his  shrewdest  humor  failed 
to  produce  even  a  passing  smile.  The  people  sat 
as  if  they  had  been  in  church  listening  to  the 
dullest  of  sermons.  But  as  he  was  walking  away 
from  the  lecture-room  with  the  full  conviction 
that  he  had  made  a  miserable  failure,  his  host 
said  to  him  quietly  :  "  Why,  Mr.  Holmes,  you  said 

J  "Upon  the  Efficacy  of  Praise,"  " Caxtoniana," 
vol.  i.,  p.  335. 


52S 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


some  real  funny  things  to-night ;  I  could  hardly 
help  laughing."     Mr.  Holmes  was  comforted.     I 
also  heard  of  a  politician  from  the  South  who 
made  a  long  speech  to  a  political  meeting  in  New 
England  without  provoking  the  faintest  expression 
of  sympathy  or  approbation.     He  thought  that 
the  audience  was  unfriendly.     But  as  soon  as  lie 
sat  down  a  gentleman  rose  and  moved,  with  great 
gravity,  that  the  meeting  should  give  the  speaker 
three  cheers;  and  when  the  motion  had  been  duly 
seconded  and  formally  put  from  the   chair,  the 
cheers  were  given  with  well-regulated  enthusiasm. 
The  last  two  stories  seem  to  show  that  this 
undemonstrativeness  is  characteristic  of  the  New- 
Englanders,  and  is  not  common  in  other  parts  of 
the  country,  though  perhaps  it  may  exist  in  those 
districts  in  the  Middle  and  Western  States  which 
have  been  settled  by  immigration  from  New  Eng- 
land.    My  own   impressions   favor   this   suppo- 
sition.    I  think  that  the  manners  of  the  people 
I  saw  in  Chicago,  Philadelphia,  and  New  York, 
though  quiet,  were  freer  and  more  cordial  than 
the  manners  of  the  people  I  saw  in  New  England. 
There  was  less  restraint  upon  the  expression  of 
kindly  feeling,  in  words  and  tone  and  bearing. 
The  New-Englander  is  apt  to  keep  his  heart  where 
he  keeps  the  furnace  which  heats  his  house — 
underground.     He  does  not  care  to  have  an  open 
grate  in  every  room,  and  to  let  you  see  the  fire. 
But  the  fire  is  there,  and  the  heat  makes  its  way 
secretly  to  every  part  of  the  house.     You  see  no 
coals  burning,  but  behind  the  door  of  the  dining- 
room  there  is  a  hole  in  the  carpet,  and  through 
the  register  there  comes  a  stream  of  hot  air  which 
keeps  the  room  at  70°  on  the  coldest  day.     There 
is  another  register  in  the  hall  and  another  in  your 
bedroom.     I  missed  the  sight  of  the  fire.     When 
we  had  what  the  Americans  call  the  first  "  snap  " 
of  cold  weather,  I  wanted  the  assurance  of  my 
eyes  to  make  me  believe  that  though  there  was  a 
frost  outside  there  was  no  reason  for  shivering  in- 
doors.    Sydney  Smith  tells  us  that  soon  after  the 
introduction  of  plate-glass  Samuel  Rogers  was  at 
a  dinner-party,  and  thought  that  the  window  near 
him  was  open  all  the  evening.     The  window  was 
shut,  but  Rogers  went  home  with  a  severe  cold 
which  he  had  caught  from  an  imaginary  draught. 
Unkindly  critics  might  affect  to  mourn  that  his 
imagination  was  not  always  equally  active  when 
he  was  writing  his  verses.     He  soon  learned  that 
a  window  might  be  shut  though  he  could  not  see 
the  window-frame ;  and  I  soon  learned  in  America 
that  a  house  may  be  warm  on  a  cold  day — too 
warm,  indeed — though  I  could  not  see  the  fire. 
And  so,  though  Americans,  and  especially  per- 


haps the  New-Englanders,  are  not  demonstrative, 
a  stranger  soon  discovers  that  they  are  among  the 
kindest  people  in  the  world.  There  are  no  limits 
to  their  kindness.  They  find  out  what  their 
guest  would  like  to  see  and  to  do,  and  spare 
themselves  no  thought  or  trouble  to  gratify  him. 
Their  hospitality  is  of  the  best  sort ;  they  do  not 
force  a  stranger  to  visit  the  places  which  they 
themselves  may  think  the  most  interesting  and  at- 
tractive ;  they  consult  his  tastes,  and  place  them- 
selves absolutely  at  his  disposal.  A  Brooklyn 
host  would  probably  be  very  much  distressed  if 
an  Englishman  persistently  put  aside  a  proposal 
to  drive  to  Greenwood  Cemetery,  and  a  Philadel- 
phian  would  be  vexed  if  he  could  not  persuade 
his  guest  to  take  a  drive  through  the  charming 
park  in  which  the  Centennial  buildings  were 
erected ;  but  they  would  bear  their  disappoint- 
ment quietly.  I  wanted  to  see  the  common 
schools.  Most  of  my  friends  had  become  fa- 
miliar with  the  common  schools,  and  saw  very 
little  in  them  that  was  novel  or  surprising ;  they 
therefore  wished  me  to  go  to  lunatic  asylums, 
prisons,  and  hospitals,  where  they  thought  thatT 
should  see  something  that  was  much  more  re- 
markable. But  when  they  discovered  that  my 
preference  was  no  mere  whim  they  took  a  great 
deal  of  trouble  to  satisfy  it. 

I  was  struck  with  the  admirable  temper  of  the 
people.  Though  I  traveled  several  thousands 
of  miles  on  steamboats  and  in  railway- car- 
riages— westward  as  far  as  Chicago,  and  south- 
ward as  far  as  Richmond — I  never  heard  the 
noisy  quarreling  which  some  sketches  of  Amer- 
ican manners  might  have  led  me  to  expect.  On 
my  way  from  Chicago  to  Washington,  the  train 
was  delayed  for  several  hours.  The  "watch- 
as   I   think   they   called    the   man   who 


man, 


had  charge  of  a  portion  of  the  line  near  one 
of  the  stations,  had  left  his  post  to  attend  a 
Democratic  meeting.  While  he  was  away,  a 
wooden  bridge  was  burned  down.  The  train  was 
stopped  for  an  hour  or  two  at  a  small  station 
some  ten  or  twelve  miles  distant  from  the  burn- 
ing bridge.  There  was  no  refreshment-room,  no 
"  bar,"  and  the  passengers  could  do  nothing  ex- 
cept lounge  about  the  line,  speculate  on  the  cause 
of  the  accident,  smoke,  and  wonder  when  the 
train  would  get  to  Washington ;  but  every  one 
was  in  excellent  temper,  and  accepted  the  delay 
without  any  resentment.  After  a  time  we  went 
on,  and  when  we  were  within  a  mile  of  the  river 
which  the  train  could  not  cross,  we  were  met  by 
an  omnibus,  and  several  of  the  rough  wagons  of 
the  country.     The  passengers  packed  themselves 


IMPRESSIONS  OF  AMERICA. 


529 


as  close  as  they  could  in  the  several  conveyances 
— some  of  them  having  to  climb  to  the  summit 
of  a  mountain  of  luggage  on  the  top  of  the  om- 
nibus— and  were  driven,  still  in  excellent  humor, 
round  the  country  and  over  a  bridge  which  crossed 
the  river  a  mile  above  or  below  the  point  where 
the  flames  revealed  the  scene  of  the  disaster. 
At  the  little  town  on  the  other  side  we  had  to 
wait  two  or  three  hours  more ;  but  still  there  was 
not  a  sign  of  bad  temper,  there  was  no  abuse  of 
the  railway  in  general,  and  only  a  very  measured 
and  moderate  condemnation  of  the  official  whose 
political  zeal  had  led  him  away  from  his  post, 
where  he  might  have  prevented  the  accident.  It 
occurred  to  me  that  if  the  Limited  Mail  between 
London  and  Edinburgh  were  stopped  for  three  or 
four  hours  by  a  similar  accident,  there  would  be 
the  expenditure  of  a  great  deal  of  stormy  elo- 
quence ;  the  company  would  be  denounced  for 
having  even  a  single  wooden  bridge  on  the  line  ; 
there  would  be  loud  threats  of  letters  to  the 
Times,  and  of  actions  to  recover  damages  caused 
by  the  delay  ;  the  zealous  Liberal  who  had  de- 
serted his  duty  to  listen  to  Mr.  Chamberlain  or  to 
some  other  orator  of  his  party  would  be  vigor- 
ously abused  ;  the  offense  would  be  treated  as  a 
characteristic  illustration  of  the  effect  of  Liberal 
principles ;  Mr.  Gladstone  would  be  made  indi- 
rectly responsible  for  the  whole  business.  But 
the  Americans  treated  the  delay  with  as  much 
equanimity  as  if  it  had  been  an  eclipse  of  the 
moon,  for  which  no  one  was  to  be  blamed,  and 
at  which  no  one  had  a  right  to  grumble.  This 
was  not  because  they  are  more  accustomed  to 
railway  accidents  and  delays  than  we  are.  The 
trains  seem  to  me  to  keep  as  good  time  in  Amer- 
ica as  in  England,  and  it  is  maintained  by  the 
Americans  that  their  accidents  are  not  more  fre- 
quent than  ours. 

It  is  possible,  I  think,  that  the  war  produced 
a  great  effect  on  the  national  manners.  An  im- 
mense number  of  men  went  into  the  army,  and 
had  to  learn  to  obey  the  word  of  command,  and  to 
submit  to  a  rigid  drill.  For  three  or  four  years 
they  were  "  under  authority."  While  in  the 
army  they  had  no  time  for  idleness  and  dissipat- 
ing pleasures.  They  had  to  make  long  marches 
and  to  do  a  great  deal  of  fighting.  The  self-control 
and  orderliness  which  seem  to  me  to  characterize 
the  mass  of  the  American  people  may  be  partly 
the  effect  of  the  discipline,  the  serious  work,  and 
the  perils  and  sufferings  of  those  terrible  years. 
Such  an  experience  could  hardly  fail  to  produce  a 
deep  impression  on  the  national  character. 

The  absence  of  a  powerful  and   hereditary 

70 


aristocracy,  the  trustees  and  heirs  of  the  culture 
and  refinement  of  many  generations,  produces, 
no  doubt,  a  sensible  difference  between  American 
society  and  our  own.  In  England  the  classes 
which  are  never  brought  into  contact  with  the 
country  gentry  or  with  families  wearing  old  titles 
are  affected  more  or  less  powerfully  by  aristocrat- 
ic traditions  and  manners.  Even  the  servants 
and  tradesmen  of  great  people  acquire  habits 
of  courtesy  and  deference  which  are  not  likely  to 
be  found  in  societies  organized  on  a  democratic 
basis,  and  these  habits  have  an  effect  on  their 
friends  and  neighbors.  But,  on  the  other  hand, 
when  the  power  of  an  aristocracy  has  begun  to 
wane,  their  position  and  their  pretensions  will 
probably  provoke  in  the  classes  which  do  not 
share  their  dignity  a  spirit  of  self-assertion  which 
is  far  more  "vulgar"  and  far  more  alien  from 
the  "  sweet  reasonableness  "  which  Mr.  Arnold 
wishes  us  to  cultivate  than  the  spirit  of  equality 
which  troubles  some  English  travelers  in  America. 
When  the  mass  of  the  English  people  supposed 
that  a  duke  with  estates  covering  a  whole  coun- 
ty was  as  much  an  ordinance  of  Nature  as  Skid- 
daw  or  Ben  Nevis — when  the  existence  of  an 
aristocracy  of  wealth  and  of  title  was  accepted 
just  in  the  same  spirit  in  which  men  accept  the 
succession  of  day  and  night — there  were  certain 
gracious  habits  of  mind  produced  by  the  ine- 
qualities of  our  social  order.  But  for  good  or 
evil  that  time  has  gone  by.  The  best  men  of  the 
middle  classes  are,  indeed,  almost  unconscious  of 
the  existence  of  the  classes  above  them,  and  de- 
vote themselves  to  their  business,  their  books, 
their  pictures,  and  their  public  work,  without 
troubling  themselves  about  "  society."  But  the 
men  of  inferior  quality  cannot  make  themselves 
quite  happy  unless  they  can  penetrate  into  the 
charmed  circle.  There  is  a  certain  measure  of 
suppressed  resentment  as  long  as  they  are  ex- 
cluded from  it ;  and  even  when  they  obtain  occa- 
sional admission,  and  are  tolerably  well  content 
with  their  own  good-fortune,  the  mischief  is  not 
over.  They  begin  to  draw  invisible  lines  between 
themselves  and  the  "  ruck  "  of  the  people  about 
them.  This  in  its  turn  provokes  ill-feeling  and 
self-assertion,  and  the  feeling  spreads — assump- 
tion on  the  one  side  and  resentment  on  the  other 
— through  all  the  imaginary  degrees  of  social  in- 
feriority beneath  them.  Some  years  ago,  a  Bir- 
mingham manufacturer  told  me  that  the  girls  who 
wrapped  up  his  goods  in  the  warehouse  refused 
to  tolerate  the  humiliation  of  leaving  the  premises 
by  the  same  entrance  as  the  girls  who  made  them 
in  the  workshops.     The  "  uppishness  "  which  of- 


530 


TEE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTELY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


fends  many  of  the  critics  of  the  manners  of 
English  manufacturing  districts  is,  I  believe,  the 
direct  result  of  our  aristocratic  social  order. 
There  is  no  reason  for  a  man  to  be  "  uppish  "  in 
America.  He  does  not  live  in  the  presence  of 
social  institutions  which  permanently  assert  the 
social  superiority  of  a  class  to  which  he  does  not 
belong. 

To  an  English  traveler  the  scare  which  the 
Americans  received  last  autumn  from  the  railway 
disturbances  is  very  surprising.  I  talked  with 
many  grave  and  wise  men — men  who  had  studied 
the  political  and  social  history  both  of  America 
and  of  Europe — who  imagined  that  the  Pittsburg 
riots  were  an  outburst  of  the  spirit  of  communism, 
and  that  they  indicated  the  existence  of  a  serious 
conspiracy  against  the  institution  of  private  prop- 
erty, and  against  the  whole  social  order  of  the 
country.  The  strikes  were  no  doubt  very  annoy- 
ing. They  showed  that  some  of  the  economical 
and  social  troubles  from  which  the  old  countries 
of  Europe  have  suffered  will  have  to  be  faced  in 
America.  Perhaps,  too,  they  showed  that  the  pres- 
ent means  for  repressing  popular  disturbances 
are  inadequate.  But  that  the  strikes  were  the 
result  of  a  deep  and  general  hostility  against  the 
present  social  organization  of  America,  that  they 
were  the  premature  explosion  of  forces  which 
threaten  America  with  a  social  revolution,  ap- 
peared to  me  to  be  one  of  the  wildest  and  most 
grotesque  fancies  which  ever  found  a  lodgment  in 
the  brains  of  reasonable  men. 

It  is  very  possible  that  in  several  of  the  great 
manufacturing  cities  there  maybe  a  few  hundreds 
of  restless  and  discontented  men  who  have  car- 
ried with  them  across  the  Atlantic  the  bitter  hos- 
tility to  government  and  to  society  which  exists 
among  the  less  fortunate  classes  in  many  Conti- 
nental nations.  Men  with  similar  passions  may  be 
scattered  thinly  through  the  agricultural  States. 
In  the  New  World  as  in  the  Old,  some  of  these 
men  see  visions  and  dream  dreams.  They  are 
hoping  for  a  social  millennium  in  which  all  the 
present  contrasts  between  poverty  and  wealth, 
luxurious  ease  and  severe  labor,  will  disappear. 
They  have  clung  to  the  hope  so  long  and  so  pas- 
sionately that  they  cannot  easily  surrender  it. 
They  see  that  under  a  republic  these  contrasts, 
if  less  violent  than  in  the  monarchical  countries 
from  which  they  came,  are  still  violent  enough. 
They  believe  that  it  is  an  economical,  not  a  mere- 
ly political,  reorganization  of  society  which  is  to 
remedy  all  human  evils  and  redress  all  human 
wrongs.  But,  of  all  the  great  countries  in  the 
world,  America  contains  the  smallest  number  of 


people  that  can  have  any  motive  for  desiring  a 
social  revolution.  The  fiercest  hatred  of  the  in- 
stitution of  private  property  gradually  cools  when 
a  man  finds  that  he  is  getting  his  house  filled  with 
good  furniture ;  it  vanishes  altogether  when  he  is 
able  to  buy  a  farm.  There  has  been  considerable 
distress  during  the  last  few  years  in  some  of  the 
manufacturing  districts  of  America  ;  but  the  dis- 
tress has  been  very  slight  and  transient  compared 
with  what  was  suffered  in  this  country  during  the 
first  quarter  of  the  present  century;  and  the  enor- 
mous numbers  of  the  population  holding  prop- 
erty in  land  constitute  a  conservative  social  force 
of  enormous  and  irresistible  power. 

While  I  was  staying  at  Bridgeport,  in  Con- 
necticut, my  host  proposed  that  we  should  drive 
twenty  miles  round  the  neigborhood,  that  I  might 
have  some  impression  of  the  agricultural  districts 
in  New  England.  It  was  a  charming  afternoon 
in  October,  and  the  maple  and  the  oak  and  the 
hickory  were  beginning  to  clothe  themselves  in 
their  autumnal  splendor  of  scarlet  and  gold. 
But  it  was  not  the  beauty  and  the  glory  of  the 
foliage  which  struck  me  most  powerfully.  We 
drove  on  for  mile  after  mile,  but  there  was  not 
a  laborer's  cottage  to  be  seen.  We  came  to  a 
village — it  was  a  group  of  beautiful  houses  with 
lawns  and  trees  about  them.  In  the  open  coun- 
try, at  intervals  of  every  few  hundred  yards  along 
the  road,  there  was  a  cozy,  clean-looking  farm- 
house. The  houses  were  nearly  all  built  of  wood, 
and  were  painted  white ;  the  windows  were  pro- 
tected against  the  sun  by  green  Venetian  shutters. 
I  hardly  ever  saw  a  house  that  was  in  bad  condi. 
tion.  The  paint  was  nearly  always  bright  and 
fresh.  There  were  no  mansions  belonging  to 
great  landlords.  The  farms  belong  to  the  men 
who  cultivate  them.  On  my  voyage  out  a  New 
York  lawyer,  with  a  large  knowledge  of  American 
affairs,  said  to  me :  "A  girl  will  not  look  at  a 
man  who  wants  to  marry  her,  if  he  hasn't  a  farm 
of  his  own.  Marry  a  man  that  hires  his  land  ! — 
she  will  not  dream  of  it.  It  sometimes  happens 
that  a  man  takes  a  farm  and  can't  pay  the  money 
down ;  in  that  case  he  engages  with  the  owner  to 
rent  it  for  four  or  five  years  ;  but  it  is  arranged 
that  at  the  end  of  that  term — or  earlier  if  he  is 
able  to  find  the  money — he  shall  have  the  farm 
for  a  price  that  is  fixed  when  his  occupation  be- 
gins. Tenant-farmers  are  almost  unknown  in 
America." 

The  farmer  owns  the  farm  and  works  on  the 
land  himself.  His  sons,  if  he  has  any,  work  with 
him.  If  he  wants  additional  labor,  he  may  get 
help  from  a  neighbor  whose  farm  is  too  small  to 


IMPRESSIONS   OF  AMERICA. 


531 


occupy  all  his  own  time,  or  he  may  get  help  from 
his  neighbors'  boys  when  their  fathers  can  spare 
them.  If  he  is  obliged  to  engage  laborers,  they 
are  described  as  "hired  men,"  and  they  live  in 
the  house  with  their  employer.  In  the  census 
for  1S70  i  the  total  number  of  persons,  over  ten 
years  of  age,  engaged  in  agriculture,  is  given  as 
5,922,471.  Of  these,  only  2,885,996,  or  consid- 
erable less  than  half,  are  described  as  "  agricult- 
ural laborers ;  "  if  we  add  "  dairymen  and  dairy- 
women,"  2  "  farm  and  plantation  overseers,"  and 
"turpentine- laborers,"  we  have  a  total  of  2,895,- 
272  persons  employed  in  agriculture  who  are  not 
their  own  masters.  The  "  farmers  and  planters  " 
number  2,977,711 — that  is,  the  masters  are  more 
numerous  by  80,000  than  the  men.  Add  to 
these,  "  apiarists,"  "  florists,"  "  gardeners  and 
nurserymen,"  "  stock  -  drovers,"  "  stock  -  breed- 
ers," "  stock-raisers,"  "  turpentine-farmers,"  and 
"  vine-growers,"  and  we  have  a  total  of  3,027,- 
099 ;  and  even  if  some  of  these  should  be  in- 
cluded in  the  class  of  "  hired  men,"  the  error  is 
vary  slight,  for  the  whole  of  these  minor  classes 
together,  number  only  49,388,  and  we  still  arrive 
at  the  result  that  in  the  United  States  the  men 
that  employ  agricultural  labor  are  more  numer- 
ous than  the  men  they  employ. 

Of  course,  this  implies  that  the  farms  are 
small.  In  Connecticut  the  average  size  of  a 
farm  in  1850  was  106  acres,  and  of  this  acreage 
there  was  a  percentage  of  25.8  —  more  than  a 
fourth  —  consisting  of  "unimproved"  land;  in 
1860  the  average  size  of  a  farm  was  99  acres, 
with  26.9  per  cent  of  "unimproved"  land;  in 
1870,  93  acres,  with  30.4  per  cent.  —  nearly  a 
third — of  the  land  "  unimproved."  In  Maine,  in 
1850,  the  average  size  of  a  farm  was  97  acres ;  in 
1860,  103  acres ;  in  1870,  98  acres ;  and  the  pro- 
portion of  "unimproved"  land  at  these  periods 
was  55.2,  52.8,  and  50  per  cent,  of  the  whole. 
In  Massachusetts  the  farms  averaged  99  acres  in 
1850,  94  acres  in  1860,  and  103  acres  in  1870; 
of  this  acreage  in  the  same  years  36.1,  35.4,  and 
36.4  per  cent,  were  "  unimproved."  For  the 
whole  of  the  States  the  average  size  of  a  farm 
was  203  acres  in  1850,  199  acres  in  1860,  and 
153  acres  in  1870;  the  "unimproved"  land  in- 
cluded in  this  acreage  was  61.5  per  cent,  in  1850, 
59.9  per  cent,  in  1860,  and  53.7  per  cent,  in  1870.3 

'"Compendium,'1  table  Ixv.,  "Occupations,"  pp. 
604,  605. 

2  It  is  doubtful  whether  all  the  "  dairymen  and 
dairywomen  '*  should  be  included  in  the  class  employed 
by  others. 

3  "  Farms  .  .  .  include  all  considerable  nurseries, 
orchards,  and  market-gardens,  which  are  owned  by 


It  follows,  therefore,  that  the  average  amount  of 
land  which  each  "  farmer  "  was  actually  cultivat- 
ing amounted  in  1S50  to  about  77  acres,  in  1860 
to  about  80  acres,  and  in  1870  to  about  70  acres. 

If  "  considerable  nurseries,  orchards,  and  mar- 
ket-gardens "  had  not  been  enumerated  as  farms, 
the  average  holdings  of  those  who  are  properly 
described  as  "  farmers  "  would  have  been  slightly 
increased;  but  an  examination  of  the  tables  will 
show  that  the  difference  would  probably  have 
amounted  to  not  more  than  an  acre. 

In  New  England  the  person  whom  we  describe 
as  the  "  gentleman-farmer  "  is,  therefore,  almost 
as  unknown  as  the  "  tenant-farmer."  The  same 
man  is  landlord,  farmer,  and  laborer.  He  owns 
the  soil,  and  he  cultivates  it  with  his  own  hands 
— cuts  the  drains,  loads  the  manure,  holds  the 
plough,  sows  the  seed,  works  in  the  harvest-field, 
and  does  the  thrashing.  Even  if  he  employs 
"hired"  labor,  he  shares  the  work  with  the 
"  hired  men."  In  the  Southern  States,  where  the 
plantations  are  worked  by  the  colored  people,  the 
economical  condition  of  the  country  is,  of  course, 
very  different.  Even  there  the  small  farm  system 
is  being  rapidly  introduced.  It  was  difficult, 
however,  at  the  last  census,  to  obtain  exact  re- 
turns from  the  Southern  States  "  in  consequence 
of  the  wholly  anomalous  condition  of  agriculture 
at  the  South.  The  plantations  of  the  old  slave 
States  are  squatted  all  over  by  the  former  slaves, 
who  hold  small  portions  of  the  soil — often  very 
loosely  determined  as  to  extent — under  almost 
all  varieties  of  tenure."  The  holdings  of  these 
squatters  have  been  treated  in  the  census  as 
farms  "  of  more  than  three  and  less  than  ten 

separate  parties,  which  are  cultivated  for  pecuniary 
profit,  and  employ  as  much  as  the  labor  of  one  able- 
bodied  workman  during  the  year.  Mere  cabbage  and 
potato  patches,  family  vegetable-gardens,  and  orna- 
mental lawns,  not  constituting  a  portion  of  a  farm  for 
general  agricultural  purposes,  will  be  excluded.  No 
farm  will  be  reported  of  less  than  three  acres,  unless 
five  hundred  dollars'  worth  of  produce  has  actually 
been  sold  off  from  it  dnring  the  year.  The  latter  pro- 
viso will  allow  the  inclusion  of  many  market-gardens 
in  the  neighborhood  of  large  cities,  where,  although 
the  area  is  6mall,  a  high  state  of  cultivation  is  main- 
tained, and  considerable  values  are  produced.  A  farm 
is  what  is  owned  or  leased  by  one  man  and  cultivated 
under  his  care.  A  distant  wood-lot  or  sheep-pasture, 
even  if  in  another  subdivision,  is  to  be  treated  as  part 
of  the  farm  ;  but,  wherever  there  is  a  resident  overseer 
or  a  manager,  there  a  farm  is  to  be  reported.  By 
"  improved  land  "  is  meant  cleared  land  used  for  graz- 
ing, grass,  or  tillage,  or  lying  fallow.  Irreclaimable 
marshes,  and  considerable  bodies  of  water,  will  be 
excluded  in  giving  the  area  of  a  farm,  improved  and 
unimproved."—  Compendium  of  the  Ninth  Census  of  the 
United  States,  pp.  688,  689,  notes. 


532 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


acres,"  and  it  is  believed  that  the  assumption  an- 
swers to  the  real  facts  of  the  case  in  ninety-nine 
out  of  every  hundred  instances.1  In  the  Middle 
and  Western  States  there  are  larger  farms,  and 
there  must  be,  I  imagine,  an  occasional  reproduc- 
tion of  our  own  idea  of  a  farmer,  as  a  man  who 
employs  agricultural  laborers  but  does  none  of  the 
rough  work  himself ;  but  in  these  cases,  too,  it  is 
necesssary  to  remember  that  the  farmer  is  not  a 
tenant  but  a  freeholder. 

This  organization  of  agriculture,  so  remark- 
able to  an  Englishman,  raises  many  economical 
and  social  questions.  I  was  especially  anxious  to 
learn  its  effects  on  the  intellectual  and  moral  life 
of  the  farming  population.  What  kind  of  men 
are  these  New  England  farmers  ?  That  they  have 
advantages  which  raise  them  to  a  condition  far 
above  that  of  our  own  agricultural  laborers  might 
be  assumed  without  much  inquiry  ;  but  are  they, 
as  a  class,  inferior  to  those  tenant-farmers  of  Eng- 
land who  have  land  enough  and  capital  enough  to 
release  them  from  the  necessity  of  working  in  the 
fields  ?  What  kind  of  women  are  their  wives 
and  daughters  ?  Are  the  men  made  coarse  and 
dull  by  the  severity  of  their  physical  labor  ?  Do 
the  women  suffer  any  injury  from  constant  asso- 
ciation with  men  engaged  in  rough,  out-door  la- 
bor, and  from  the  necessity  of  doing  their  own 
housework  ? 

I  was  driving  one  afternoon,  in  the  neighbor- 
hood of  New  Haven,  with  a  gentleman  who  lived 
among  New  England  farmers  for  many  years,  and 
I  told  him  that  I  should  like  to  see  the  inside  of 
one  of  the  pleasant-looking  farmhouses  which 
we  were  continually  passing.  He  said,  "  By  all 
means,"  and,  at  the  next  farmhouse,  he  pulled  up. 
up.  I  asked  him  whether  he  knew  the  people 
who  lived  there.  "  No."  My  friend's  daughter, 
a  young  lady  who  has  also  seen  a  great  deal  of 
country-life  in  New  England,  went  and  asked 
whether  two  English  gentlemen  might  see  the 
house,  and  in  a  few  moments  she  came  to  us  and 
said  that  we  might  go  in.  The  farm  belonged  to 
a  widow.  She  met  us  at  the  door,  and  received 
us  with  a  quiet  dignity  and  grace,  which  would 
have  done  no  discredit  to  the  lady  of  an  English 
squire  owning  an  estate  worth  four  or  five  thou- 
sand a  year.  Her  English  was  excellent — the 
English  of  a  refined  and  educated  woman.  Her 
bearing  and  manners  had  an  ease  and  quietness 
which  were  charming.  The  bouse  had  three  good 
sitting-rooms,  well  furnished.  Books  and  maga- 
zines were  lying  about;  and  there  was  a  small 

1  "Compendium  of  the  Ninth  Census,"  pp.  692,  936, 
notes. 


but  pretty  greenhouse.  I  went  into  one  bedroom 
and  saw  that  it  was  extremely  neat,  and  that  the 
linen  looked  as  white  as  the  driven  snow.  I 
found  that  the  farm  was  an  unusually  large  one, 
being  about  200  acres.  How  much  of  it  was 
under  actual  cultivation  and  how  much  was  "  un- 
improved," it  did  not  occur  to  me  to  ask.  The 
farm-work  was  done  by  the  lady's  two  sons,  and 
either  two  or  three  "  hired  men  "  who  lived  in 
the  house.  There  was  another  "  hired  man  "  who 
did  "  chores  " — cut  the  wood,  lit  the  fires,  at- 
tended to  the  garden,  cleaned  the  boots,  went  on 
errands,  and  relieved  the  solitary  "girl"  of  the 
rougher  part  of  the  house-work ;  when  the  hay 
had  to  be  got  or  the  wheat  cut,  I  dare  say  he  was 
employed  on  the  farm.  The  house  gave  me  the 
impression  that  the  people  who  lived  in  it  must 
be  surrounded  by  all  the  comforts  and  many  of 
the  luxuries  and  refinements  of  life.  The  lady, 
whom  I  have  already  described,  was  the  only 
member  of  the  family  that  I  was  fortunate  enough 
to  see. 

When  we  had  got  back  into  the  carriage,  I 
charged  my  friend  roundly  with  having  played 
me  false.  I  told  him  that  I  felt  sure  that  the 
house  was  not  a  fair  specimen  of  its  kind,  and 
that  the  lady  I  had  seen  must  be  very  unlike 
most  of  the  ladies  of  the  same  class ;  that  he 
must  have  selected  the  farm  in  order  to  give  me 
a  favorable  impression.  However,  he  assured 
me  that  it  was  not  so.  Then  I  appealed  to  the 
young  lady  who  had  gone  into  the  house  with  my 
traveling  companion  and  myself.  She  said  that 
the  house  was  certainly  rather  better  than  the 
average  farmhouse,  but  that  there  were  very 
many  others  quite  as  good ;  and  that  the  lady 
was  rather  superior,  both  in  education  and  in 
refinement  of  manners,  to  the  average  farmer's 
wife,  but  that  she  knew  very  many  ladies  living 
in  farmhouses  who  were  quite  her  equals.  The 
suspicion  of  my  friend's  good  faith  had  to  be  dis- 
missed, and  though  I  was  unfortunate  in  happen- 
ing to  hit  upon  what  was  admitted  to  be  an  ex- 
ceptionally favorable  illustration  of  farm-life  in 
New  England,  what  I  had  seen  made  it  easier  for 
me  to  understand  and  to  believe  those  of  my 
friends  who  were  never  so  eloquent  as  when  they 
were  celebrating  the  virtue,  the  intelligence,  and 
the  comfort  that  exist  in  the  rural  districts  of 
Connecticut,  Massachusetts,  Rhode  Island,  Ver- 
mont, New  Hampshire,  and  Maine. 

They  reminded  me  that  it  was  in  the  farm- 
houses of  the  New  England  States  that  a  large 
number  of  the  most  eminent  Americans — states- 
men, theologians,  orators,  men  of  science — had 


IMPRESSIOXS  OF  AMERICA. 


533 


received  their  early  training ;  and  that  the  sons 
of  these  plain  and  homely  farmers  had  not  only 
created  the  great  manufacturing  industries  which 
are  now  established  in  the  older  parts  of  the 
country,  but  had  been  among  the  most  adventu- 
rous and  successful  settlers  in  the  West.  An 
Englishman  whom  I  met  in  New  York  the  day 
after  I  landed,  said  that  wherever  I  went  I  should 
find  that  the  brains  came  from  New  England ; 
my  New  England  friends  did  not  make  quite  so 
strong  a  claim  as  this,  but  they  asserted  that 
from  the  farmhouses  of  the  New  England  States 
had  been  derived  a  very  large  proportion  of  the 
intellectual  and  moral  strength  of  tbe  country. 
One  of  the  most  learned  and  accomplished  men 
in  America,  who  for  some  years  had  preached  to 
a  congregation  of  New  England  farmers,  assured 
me  that  they  were  generally  men  of  strong,  shrewd 
sense  and  sound  judgment,  rather  slow  in  their 
intellectual  movements,  but  with  a  healthy  appre- 
ciation for  solid  thinking.  Many  of  them,  he 
assured  me,  had  a  considerable  number  of  excel- 
lent books  and  read  them.  On  the  other  hand,  I 
was  told  by  a  distinguished  lawyer  that  the  intel- 
lectual development  of  the  farmers  was  seriously 
checked  by  the  severity  of  their  out-door  work. 
On  the  whole,  however,  the  testimony  which 
reached  me  from  those  who  had  the  largest  ac- 
quaintance with  them  supported  very  strongly 
the  most  favorable  estimate  both  of  their  intelli- 
gence and  their  morals.  "What  I  heard  about  the 
farmers'  wives  and  daughters  was  still  more  de- 
cisive. These  ladies  generally  rise  early  and 
spend  their  morning  in  house-work ;  but  after  an 
early  dinner,  which  most  of  them  cook  with  their 
own  hands,  they  "  dress,"  and  are  generally  free 
to  visit  their  friends  or  to  occupy  themselves  with 
their  books,  their  music,  or  their  needle.  They 
take  a  pride  in  cultivating  the  refinements  of  life. 
At  dinner  and  supper  the  table-cloth  is  as  white 
and  the  silver  as  brilliant  as  in  the  houses  of 
wealthy  merchants  in  Boston  or  New  York.  The 
farmhouses  are  planted  so  thickly  over  the  coun- 
try that  evening  entertainments  are  very  numer- 
ous, and  at  many  of  these — so  I  was  assured — 
the  conversation  is  very  bright  and  intelligent. 
It  is  a  common  thing  for  a  farmer  to  send  at 
least  one  of  his  boys  to  college,  and  during  the 
vacations  the  lads  find  in  their  mothers  and  sis- 
ters the  keenest  sympathy  with  their  literary  am- 
bition. One  lady,  who  had  been  surrounded  from 
her  childhood  by  the  most  cultivated  society  in 
New  England,  told  me  that  she  knew  a  large 
number  of  women  living  in  farmhouses,  that  she 
constantly  corresponded  with  some  of  them,  and 


that  among  the  farmers'  wives  and  daughters 
there  were  some  of  the  most  attractive,  most  in- 
telligent, and  best  informed  women  that  she  had 
ever  met  with. 

About  the  effect  of  the  New  England  agri- 
cultural system  on  the  intellectual  activity  and 
refinement  of  the  population  there  may  be  dif- 
ferences of  opinion ;  but  there  can  be  no  dif- 
ference of  opinion  as  to  the  effect  it  must  pro- 
duce on-  their  political  spirit  and  principles.  A 
population  of  farmers,  owning  the  land  they  cul- 
tivate, is  certain  to  have  strong  conservative  in- 
stincts. Nor  is  the  conservative  temper  the  spe- 
cial, or  at  least  the  exclusive,  characteristic  of 
New  England.  To  an  English  radical  the  con- 
servatism of  the  people  generally  is  very  striking. 
If  a  couple  of  million  American  voters  were  sud- 
denly transferred  to  English  constituencies,  the 
conservative  reaction  would  probably  receive  a 
great  accession  of  vigor.  Of  course,  the  Church 
would  be  disestablished  within  a  few  months  af- 
ter the  first  general  election  ;  perhaps  the  House 
of  Lords  would  be  abolished ;  there  would  per- 
haps be  an  attempt  to  change  the  monarchy  for 
a  republic ;  but  there  might  be  a  very  vigorous 
conservative  spirit  in  England,  as  there  is  in 
America,  in  the  absence  of  a  throne,  a  House  of 
Lords,  and  an  ecclesiastical  establishment.  The 
respect  for  the  rights  of  property,  for  instance,  is 
positively  superstitious.  Some  of  the  most  "  lib- 
eral "  of  my  American  friends  were  astounded  by 
Mr.  Cross's  "  Artisans'  Dwellings  Act."  They 
were  doubtful  themselves  about  the  policy  and 
the  justice  of  it ;  they  were  certain  that  no  such 
act  could  be  carried  in  America.  The  proceed- 
ings of  the  Endowed  Schools  Commission  under 
the  late  Lord  Lyttleton,  and  of  the  present  Charity 
Commissioners,  appear  to  many  Americans  per- 
fectly revolutionary.  There  are  trusts  in  the 
United  States  which  are  utterly  useless,  because 
the  conditions  under  which  they  were  created 
have  become  obsolete  ;  the  money  is  lying  idle  or 
is  being  applied  in  ways  which  confer  no  benefit 
on  the  community,  but  to  change  the  trusts 
seems  like  sacrilege  or  spoliation.  A  few  men 
are  plucking  up  courage  to  make  the  attempt, 
and  are  coming  to  the  conclusion  that  the  ghosts 
of  the  founders  are  not  likely  to  appear  if  the 
trusts  are  modified,  and  that  there  is  nothing  in 
the  Ten  Commandments  requiring  us  to  confer 
upon  any  man  the  right  to  determine  the  uses  of 
property  for  a  thousand  years  after  his  death ; 
and  yet  the  boldest  of  them  show  a  certain  tre- 
mor and  awe  when  they  are  drawn  into  a  discus- 
sion of  the  question.     They  are  like  those  pa- 


534 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


gans  who,  having  discovered  that  their  gods  are 
wood  and  stone,  want  to  displace  them  from  their 
shrines,  but  approach  the  sacred  places  with  a 
nervous  dread  lest,  after  all,  they  should  be  com- 
mitting some  terrible  offense  against  mysterious 
powers. 

This  conservative  instinct  reveals  itself  in 
many  directions.  From  what  I  know  of  Oxford 
and  Cambridge,  I  am  inclined  to  believe  that  in 
neither  of  them  is  the  conservative  temper  so 
strong  as  at  Yale.  I  mean  that  at  Yale  there  is 
less  disposition  to  try  adventurous  experiments, 
and  to  turn  aside  from  the  old  paths  ;  there  is  a 
more  deeply-rooted  belief  in  the  "  wisdom  of  our 
ancestors,"  and  a  greater  reverence  for  methods 
of  education  which  are  sanctioned  by  the  exam- 
ple and  authority  of  past  generations.     At  Har- 


vard, however,  there  is  far  less  reluctance  to  try 
new  schemes,  and  I  imagine  that  the  changes 
which  have  been  made  there  during  the  last  few 
years  would  almost  satisfy  the  most  advanced 
liberals  in  our  own  universities. 

It  is  possible  for  a  nation  with  republican 
institutions  to  be  intensely  conservative,  and  it 
is  possible  for  a  nation  with  monarchical  institu- 
tions to  be  earnestly  liberal.  I  do  not  say  that, 
on  the  whole,  America  is  more  conservative  than 
England,  but  there  is  a  strength  of  conservative 
sentiment  in  America  which  some  English  states- 
men would  be  very  glad  to  transfer  to  this  coun- 
try. But  what  I  have  to  say  about  the  political 
spirit  and  character  of  the  American  people  must 
be  reserved  for  another  paper. — Nineteenth  Cen- 
tury. 


ON  THE   ORIGIN  OF  REASON". 


By  Professor  MAX  MULLER. 


THE  book  to  which  I  should  wish  to  call  the 
attention  of  English  philosophers  bears  the 
title  of  "  The  Origin  of  Language,"  by  L.  Noire. 1 
More  clearly,  however,  than  by  the  title,  the  real 
purpose  of  the  book  is  set  forth  by  a  short  sen- 
tence from  the  late  Lazar  Geiger's  work  "  On  the 
Origin  of  Language  and  Reason,"  printed  as  a 
motto  on  the  title-page — "Language  has  created 
Reason;  before  there  was  Language,  man  was  with- 
out Reason.''''  Indeed,  the  more  appropriate  title 
of  Prof.  Noire's  book  would  have  been,  "  On  the 
Origin  of  Reason."  It  is  a  work  which  stands 
apart  from  the  large  class  of  treatises  lately  pub- 
lished by  comparative  philologists  on  the  begin- 
ning of  human  speech,  most  of  which,  though 
containing  the  fruits  of  original  thought  and  the 
results  of  careful  research,  are  disappointing  for 
one  and  the  same  reason,  their  authors  not  having 
perceived  that  the  problem  of  the  origin  of  lan- 
guage cannot  be  treated  by  itself,  but  must  be 
viewed  as  an  integral  part,  nay,  as  the  corner- 
stone, of  a  complete  system  of  philosophy. 

THE    ORIGIN    OF    LANGUAGES,    AND     THE     ORIGIN     OF 
LANGUAGE. 

It  is  one  thing  to  trace  one  language,  or  a 
number  of  languages,  or,  it  may  be,  all  languages, 
back  to  their  first  beginnings  ;  it  is  quite  another 

1  "  Der  Ursprung  der  Sprache,"  von  Ludwig  Noire" : 

Mainz,  1877. 


to  investigate  the  origin  of  language.  How  lan- 
guages can  be  arranged  into  families,  and  how  all 
the  languages  and  dialects  belonging  to  one  fam- 
ily can  be  broken  up  into  their  simplest  constit- 
uent elements,  may  be  seen  in  any  of  the  numer- 
ous books  published  during  the  last  twenty  years 
on  the  science  of  language.  "While  engaged  in 
these  researches,  we  feel  that  we  are  on  firm 
ground.  We  are  simply  carrying  on  a  process 
of  analysis,  and  as  in  a  chemical  experiment  we 
arrive  in  the  end  at  residua,  which  resist  further 
separation,  so  in  dealing  with  language  we  find 
that,  after  having  explained  all  that  can  be  ex- 
plained in  the  growth  of  words,  there  remain  at 
the  bottom  of  our  crucible  certain  elements  which 
cannot  be  further  dissolved.  It  matters  little  how 
we  call  these  stubborn  residua,  whether  roots,  or 
phonetic  types,  or  elements  of  language.  What 
is  important  is,  that,  when  we  have  removed  all 
that  can  be  removed,  the  whole  crust  of  historical 
growth  in  words,  when  we  have  broken  up  every 
compound,  and  separated  every  suffix,  prefix,  and 
infix,  there  remain  certain  simple  substances,  the 
results,  not  of  synthetic  speculation,  but  of  ex- 
perimental analysis.  These  simple  substances 
being  granted,  we  can  fully  understand  how  out 
of  them  the  whole  wealth  of  language,  as  treasured 
up  in  its  dictionaries  and  grammars,  could  have 
been  brought  together.  "We  can  unmake  a  lan- 
guage and  make  it  again,  and  it  was  this  process 


ON  THE  ORIGIN  OF  REASON. 


535 


of  analysis  and  synthesis  which  I  tried  to  rep- 
resent as  clearly  as  possible  in  my  "  Lectures 
on  the  Science  of  Language,"  first  published  in 
1861. 

ROOTS  OR  PHONETIC  TYPES. 

Those  who  have  read  those  lectures  will  re- 
member how  strongly  I  opposed  any  attempt  on 
the  part  of  the  students  of  language  to  go  beyond 
roots,  such  as  we  actually  find  them  as  the  result 
of  the  most  careful  phonetic  analysis.  It  was 
thought  at  the  time  that  my  protests  against  all 
attempts  to  ignore  or  skip  those  roots,  and  to 
derive  any  word  or  any  grammatical  form  straight 
from  mere  cries  or  from  imitations  of  natural 
sounds,  were  too  vehement.  But  I  believe  it  is 
now  generally  admitted,  even  by  some  of  my 
former  opponents,  that  the  slightest  concession 
to  what,  not  ironically,  but  simply  descriptively, 
I  called  the  bow-wow  and  pooh-pooh  theories  in 
the  practical  analysis  of  words,  would  have  been 
utter  ruin  to  the  character  of  the  science  of  lan- 
guage. 

But  to  show  that  a  certain  road,  and  the  only 
safe  road,  leads  us  to  a  mountain-wall,  which 
from  our  side  can  never  be  scaled,  is  very  differ- 
ent from  saying  that  there  is  or  that  there  can 
be  nothing  behind  that  mountain-wall.  To  judge 
from  the  manner  in  which  some  comparative 
philologists  speak  of  roots,  one  would  imagine 
that  they  were  not  only  indiscernibilia,  but  Palla- 
dia fallen  straight  from  the  sky,  utterly  incom- 
prehensible in  their  nature  and  origin.  It  was  in 
order  to  guard  against  such  a  view  that,  at  the 
end  of  my  lectures,  I  felt  induced  to  add  a  few 
lines,  just  as  a  painter,  when  he  has  finished  a 
landscape,  dots  in  a  few  lines  in  the  background 
to  show  that  there  is  a  world  beyond.  The  sci- 
ence of  language,  I  felt,  had  done  its  work  when 
it  had  reduced  the  vague  problem  of  the  origin 
of  language  to  a  more  definite  form,  viz.,  "  What 
is  the  origin  of  roots  ? "  How  much  has  been 
gained  by  that  change  of  front  those  will  best  be 
able  to  appreciate  who  have  studied  the  history 
of  the  innumerable  attempts  at  discovering  the 
origin  of  language  during  the  last  century. 

Beyond  that  point,  however,  where  the  stu- 
dent of  language  is  able  to  lay  the  primary  ele- 
ments of  language  at  the  feet  of  philosophers,  the 
science  of  language  alone,  apart  from  the  science 
of  thought,  will  not  carry  us.  We  must  start 
afresh,  and  in  a  different  direction ;  and  it  was  in 
order  to  indicate  that  direction,  in  order  to  show 
to  what  quarter  I  looked  for  a  solution  of  the 
last  problem,  the  origin  of  roots,  that  I  appealed 


to  the  fact  that  everything  in  Nature,  when  set  in 
motion  or  struck,  reacts;  that  it  vibrates,  and 
causes  vibrations.  This  seemed  to  me  the  highest 
generalization  and  at  the  same  time  the  lowest 
beginning  of  what  is  meant  by  language.  The  two 
problems,  how  mere  cries,  whether  interjectional 
or  imitative,  could  develop  into  phonetic  types, 
and  how  mere  sensations  could  develop  into  ra- 
tional concepts,  I  left  untouched,  trusting  that 
philosophers  by  profession  would  quickly  per- 
ceive how  some  of  the  darkest  points  of  psychol- 
ogy might  be  illuminated  by  the  electric  light  of 
the  science  of  language,  and  fully  convinced  that 
they  would  eagerly  avail  themselves  of  the  mate- 
rials placed  before  them  and  ready  for  use  to  build 
up  at  last  a  sound  and  solid  system  of  mental 
philosophy. 

SCIENCE    OF   LANGUAGE   AND    SCIENCE  OF   THOUGHT. 

Prof.  Noire  seems  to  me  the  first  philosopher 
who  has  clearly  perceived  that  in  the  direction 
indicated  by  the  Science  of  Language  there  was 
a  new  world  to  discover,  and  who  discovered  it. 
Already  in  his  earlier  works  there  are  repeated  in- 
dications that  the  teaching  of  comparative  phi- 
lology had  not  been  lost  on  him. 

I  confess  I  have  often  wondered  at  the  apathy, 
particularly  of  the  students  of  psychology,  with 
regard  to  the  complete  revolution  that  has  been 
worked  before  their  eyes  in  the  realm  of  language. 
They  simply  looked  on,  as  if  it  did  not  concern 
them.  Why,  if  language  were  only  the  outward 
form  of  thought,  is  it  not  clear  that  no  philoso- 
phy, wishing  to  gain  an  insight  into  the  nature  of 
thought,  and  particularly  into  its  origin,  could 
dispense  with  a  careful  study  of  language  ?  What 
would  Hobbes  or  Locke  have  given  for  Bopp's 
"  Comparative  Grammar  ?  "  What  should  we  say 
if  biologists  were  to  attempt  to  discover  the  na- 
ture and  laws  of  organic  life  without  ever  looking 
at  a  living  body?  And  where  are  we  to  find  the 
living  body  of  thought,  if  not  in  language  ?  What 
are  the  two  problems  left  unsettled  at  the  end  of 
the  Science  of  Language — "  How  do  mere  cries 
become  phonetic  types  ?  "  and  "  How  can  sensa- 
tions be  changed  into  concepts  ?  " — what  are 
these  two,  if  taken  together,  but  the  highest  prob- 
lem of  all  philosophy,  viz.,  What  is  the  origin  of 
reason  ? 

PROFESSOR    NOIRE'S    WORKS. 

It  is  impossible  to  do  justice  to  Prof.  Noire's 
last  book,  "On  the  Origin  of  Language,"  without 
going  back  to  his  earlier  works.  His  last  work 
is  the  last  stone  that  finishes  the  arch  of  his  phil- 
osophical system,  but  it  is  held  in  its  place  by 


536 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.-SUPPLEMENT. 


the  works  which  preceded  it.     The  most  impor- 
tant of  them  are: 

1.  Die  Welt  als  Eutwiehelung  des  Geistes,  1874. 

"  The  World  as  an  Evolution  of  Spirit." 

2.  Der  monistische  Gedanke,  eine  Concordanz  der 

PhilosopMe  Schopenhauer's,  Darwin's,  B. 
Mayer's,  und  L.  Geiger's,  1875.  "  Monistic 
Thought :  a  Concordance  of  the  Philoso- 
phy of  Schopenhauer,  Darwin,  E.  Mayer, 
and  L.  Geiger." 

3.  Grundlegung  einer  zeitgemdssen  PhilosopMe, 

1875.  "  Foundations  of  a  new  System  of 
Philosophy." 

4.  Die  Doppelnatur  der  Causalitat,  1875.    "  The 

Double  Nature  of  Causality." 

5.  Einleiiung  und  liegrundung  einer  monistwchen 

Erhenntnuslehre,  1877.  "Introduction  to 
a  Monistic  Doctrine  of  Perception." 

These  works,  though  written,  or  at  least  pub- 
lished, within  a  short  space  of  time,  show  a  con- 
stant advance  toward  a  clearer  perception  of  the 
nature  of  language.  Noire  is  not  one  of  those 
philosophers  who  sacrifice  their  delight  in  truth 
to  a  stationary  infallibility,  He  is  one  of  the  few 
students  who  can  still  say,  "  I  was  wrong."  With 
regard  to  the  origin  of  language,  he  has  openly 
retracted  what  he  had  written  but  a  few  years  be- 
fore. In  his  first  book,  "  The  World  as  an  Evo- 
lution of  Spirit,"  he  still  looked  upon  language 
as  some  sort  of  copy  of  the  external  world. 

"  The  first  human  sound,"  he  wrote  (page  255), 
"  which  deserves  the  name  of  word,  cannot  have 
differed  from  the  warning  calls  of  animals,  except 
by  a  higher  degree  of  luminousness  in  the  images 
•which  excited  arid  followed  these  calls.  They  ex- 
cited the  idea  of  approaching  danger  among  fel- 
low-animals. ...  I  assume  that  men  were  held 
together  by  the  ties  of  social  life  in  herds  or  tribes 
even  before  the  beginning  of  the  language.  War 
was  then  the  natural  state — war  against  animals  of 
another  species,  and  against  neighbors  of  the  same 
species.  It  is  not  unlikely  that  a  peculiar  sound  or 
watchword  united  the  members  of  a  single  tribe, 
so  that  they  could  collect  by  it  those  who  were  scat- 
tered abroad  and  had  lost  their  way,  or  encourage 
each  other  while  engaged  in  fight  with  other  tribes. 
Let  us  suppose  that  but  once  one  member  of  a 
tribe  warned  the  other  members  by  imitating  the 
watchword  of  a  hostile  tribe  when  he  saw  the  en- 
emy approaching,  and  we  have  in  reality  the  origin 
of  the  first  human  word,  capable  of  doing  what 
words  have  to  do,  viz.,  to  excite,  as  they  were  in- 
tended to  do,  an  idea  in  the  mind  of  cognate  and 
homogeneous  creatures." 

"  I  found  afterward,"  Prof.  Noire"  continues,1 
"  that  Darwin,  in  his  '  Descent  of  Man,'  had  start- 

1  "  Ursprung  der  Sprache,"  p.  170. 


ed  an  hypothesis  almost  identical  with  my  own. 
After  declaring  that  he  could  not  doubt  that  lan- 
guage owed  its  origin  to  the  imitation  and  modi- 
fication, aided  by  signs  and  gestures,  of  various 
natural  sounds,  the  voices  of  other  animals,  and 
man's  own  instinctive  cries,  he  says :  >  '  As  mon- 
keys certainly  understand  much  that  is  said  to  them 
by  man,  and  as  in  a  state  of  nature  they  utter  sig- 
nal-cries of  danger  to  their  fellows,  it  does  not  ap- 
pear altogether  incredible  that  some  unusually  wise 
ape-like  animal  should  have  thought  of  imitating 
the  growl  of  a  beast  of  prey,  so  as  to  iudicate  to  his 
fellow-monkeys  the  nature  of  the  expected  danger; 
but  this  would  have  been  a  first  step  in  the  forma- 
tion of  a  language.' 

"  The  difference  between  my  own  hypothesis 
and  that  of  Darwin  consists  only  in  this,  that  I 
after  all  see  in  the  contents  of  the  first  sound  of 
language  something  more  natural,  more  familiar, 
more  human,  viz.,  the  hostile  neighbors,  •while 
Darwin  makes  the  wild  animal  the  first  object 
of  a  common  cognition.  With  a  little  reflection, 
however,  it  can  be  seen  that  such  an  attempt  is 
utterly  impossible,  for  the  objects  of  fear,  and 
trembling,  and  dismay,  are  even  now  the  least  ap- 
propriate to  enter  into  the  pure,  clear,  and  tran- 
quil sphere  of  speech-thought  (Adyo?),  or  to  supply 
the  first  germs  of  it.  The  same  objection  applies 
of  course  to  my  own  theory. 

"  From  whatever  point  of  view  we  look  at 
them,  these  hypotheses  can  never  stand  against 
serious  criticism.  A  call  of  warning  is  a  call  of 
terror,  and  terror  communicates  itself  by  sym- 
pathy. But  according  to  mine  and  Darwin's 
theories,  one  more  particularly  gifted  Homo  pri- 
migenius  would  have  had  to  ruminate  and  reflect 
thus :  '  How  can  I  make  my  fellows  conscious 
of  the  threatening  danger  \ '  and  then,  by  some 
kind  of  momentary  inspiration,  he  would  have 
uttered  the  dreaded  sound.  Let  us  grant,  what 
I  is  impossible  and  utterly  incredible,  that  he  cal- 
I  culated  on  his  being  understood ;  how  could  he 
have  been  understood  by  others  without  there 
being  the  same  inspiration  on  their  part  answer- 
ing to  his  own  2  And  that  is  to  be  the  beginning  of 
language !  The  fierce  howling  of  the  wild  animal, 
the  battle-shout  of  the  enemy,  are  these  to  have 
been  the  first  genu,  the  centre  of  crystallization, 
of  that  wonderful  intellectual  creation  which,  rest- 
ing on  the  solid  ground  of  human  consciousness, 
has  become  the  mirror  of  the  world,  of  earth  and 
heaven  and  all  their  marvels?  Nothing  is  more 
incredible,  more  unlikely.  And  as  I  recognize 
the  insufficiency  of  my  own  hypothesis,  it  was  im- 
possible that  the  whole  philosophical  significance 
of  the  problem,  and  the  crying  misproportion  be- 
tween it  and  his  own  lightly -uttered  guesses,  could 
long  remain  a  secret  to  the  serious  and  profound 
mind  of  Darwin.     He,  too,  in  a  clear  and  consid- 

i  "  Descent  of  Man,"  vol.  i.,  p.  57. 


ON  THE  ORIGIN  OF  REASON". 


537 


erate  confession,  has  admitted  the  inadequacy  of 
his  former  views,  and  I  can  do  no  better  than  to 
quote  his  last  words,  which  dispose  of  our  com- 
mon phantasmagoria  once  and  forever  :  '  But  the 
whole  subject  of  the  diiferehces  of  the  sounds 
produced  under  different  states  of  the  mind  is  so 
obscure,  that  I  have  succeeded  in  throwing  hard- 
ly any  light  on  it ;  and  the  remarks  which  I  have 
made  have  but  little  significance.' "  ' 

We  cannot  sufficiently  honor  the  noble  spirit 
that  dictated  these  words,  particularly  if  we  com- 
pare it  with  the  manner  of  other  philosophers 
who  seem  to  consider  the  suggestion  that  they 
could  ever  grow  wiser  as  the  greatest  insult. 

To  watch  the  struggles  of  a  mind  impelled 
by  a  strong  love  of  truth,  and  following  up  his 
prey  in  the  right  direction,  though  not  without 
occasional  swervings  to  the  right  and  to  the  left, 
is  certainly  far  more  interesting  and  far  more 
useful  than  to  have  results  set  before  us  with- 
out our  knowing  how  they  have  been  obtained. 
Prof.  Noire  has  evidently  been  for  a  long  time 
under  the  influence  of  Schopenhauer  and  Geiger, 
the  former  by  this  time  well  known  in  England 
also  ;  the  latter,  a  man  of  high  promise  and  full 
of  original  thought,  who  died  in  1870,  after  hav- 
ing published  two  books :  one  "  On  the  Origin  of 
Human  Language  and  Reason,"  1868  ;  the  other 
"  On  the  Origin  of  Language,"  1809.  After  a 
time,  however,  Noire  went  beyond  Schopenhauer 
and  Geiger  ;  and  though  he  continues  to  express 
for  both  of  them  the  warmest  admiration,  he 
now  differs  from  them  on  some  very  essential 
points.  He  differs  from  Schopenhauer  because 
he,  Noire,  is  a  thorough-going  evolutionist  in  body 
and  mind ;  he  differs  from  Geiger,  because  he  no 
longer  recognizes  the  first  beginnings  of  lan- 
guage in  involuntary  interjectional  sounds,  but  in 
sounds  naturally  accompanying  the  earliest  acts 
of  man.  Where  Noire  agrees  with  Geiger,  I  am 
generally  at  one  with  both  of  them  ;  and  I  say 
this,  not  in  order  to  establish  any  claims  of  pri- 
ority, which  are  utterly  out  of  place  in  a  disin- 
terested searcli  after  truth,  but  simply  in  order 
to  define  my  own  position  in  this  decisive  battle 
of  thought.  Whatever  others  have  done  before 
him,  to  Noire  belongs  the  merit  of  having  rallied 
the  scattered  forces  and  led  them  to  victory. 
When  a  student  of  the  science  of  language  points 
to  the  supreme  importance  of  a  right  understand- 
ing of  language  for  the  solution  of  the  most  in- 
tricate problems  in   psychology  or  logic — when 

1  Darwin,  "  Expression  of  the  Emotions,"  p.  93.  I 
feel  bound  to  add  that  I  do  not  see  in  the  words  of 
Mr.  Darwin  so  complete  a  retractation  of  his  former 
philosophy  of  language  as  Prof.  Noire  imagines. 


he  tries  to  show,  for  instance,  that  the  formation 
of  species  is  a  question  belonging  in  the  first 
instance  to  subjective  philosophy,  and  inseparable 
from  the  question  of  the  formation  of  concepts 
— when  he  represents  the  whole  history  of  phi- 
losophy as  in  truth  an  uninterrupted  struggle 
between  language  and  thought,  and  maintains 
that  all  philosophy  must  in  the  end  become  a 
philosophy  of  language — he  is  apt  to  be  taken  for 
an  enthusiast.  But,  when  a  philosopher  by  profes- 
sion subscribes  to  every  one  of  these  positions,  the 
case  becomes  different.  In  Germany  Prof.  Noire's 
reputation  as  an  original  thinker  is  by  this  time 
firmly  established ;  and  if  less  has  been  heard  of 
him  and  his  system  in  journals  and  newspapers, 
this  is  said  to  be  due  to  the  fact  that,  like  Scho- 
penhauer, he  is  not  a  university  professor,  and 
therefore  without  colleagues  to  support  him,  and 
without  a  large  train  of  clientes,  which  originally 
meant  cluenies  or  hearers,  to  swear  by  their  mas- 
ter. It  has  also  been  said  that  the  age  of  abstract 
philosophy  in  Germany  has  passed  away,  and  that 
physical  science  now  occupies  the  throne  which 
formerly  belonged  to  Kant,  Fichte,  Schelling,  and 
Hegel.  This  is  not  so.  There  is  no  lack  of  phi- 
losophical productiveness,  but  there  is  certainly  a 
lack  of  philosophical  receptivity  in  Germany,  so 
that  books  which  thirty  or  forty  years  ago  would 
have  excited  general  attention,  now  pass  unheed- 
ed, except  by  the  smaller  circle  of  working  phi- 
losophers. Books  which  in  England  would  sell 
by  thousands,  and  be  reviewed  in  all  the  leading 
journals,  sell  in  Germany  by  hundreds  hardly,  and 
are  generally  discussed  in  the  correspondence  only 
that  passes  between  the  author  and  his  friends. 

There  are  exceptions.  Some  philosophical 
books  have  made  a  stir  in  Germany  even  in  these 
days  of  iron  and  blood.  But  there  is  generally  a 
reason  for  these  exceptional  successes.  The  same 
taste  which  finds  a  satisfaction  in  the  more  or  less 
Turkish  atrocities  of  sensational  novels,  is  grati- 
fied, it  seems,  by  a  class  of  philosophical  writers 
who  try  to  outbid  each  other  in  startling  asser- 
tions and  unblushing  negations,  and  who,  if  they 
speak  but  loud  enough,  and  have  some  friends  to 
speak  still  louder,  attract,  at  least  for  a  time,  a 
crowd  of  idle  listeners.  The  following  specimens 
of  this  kind  of  popular,  or  rather  vulgar,  philoso- 
phy are  taken  from  Noire's  books,  and  elsewhere : 

"  Man  possesses  many  internal  qualities,  such 
as  imagination  and  the  milt." 

"  An  external  quality  is  seeing,  an  internal  one 
is  digestion." 

"  Thought  is  a  secretion  of  the  brain,  as  other 
secretions  come  from  the  kidneys." 

"  Man  is  what  he  eats.    Homo  est  quod  est." 


>38 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


A  lady  published  some  letters  addressed  by 
her  to  Prof.  Moleschott,  in  which  the  following 
sentiments  occur : 

"  The  moral  rule  for  each  man  is  given  by  his 
own  nature  only,  and  is  dhTerent,  therefore,  for 
each  individual.  What  are  excesses  and  passions 
by  themselves  ?  Nothing  but  a  larger  or  smaller 
overflowing  of  a  perfectly  legitimate  impulse." 

A  philosopher l  belonging  to  the  other  sex  in- 
dulges in  the  following  dithyrambus : 

"  Enjoyment  is  good,  and  frenzy  and  love  are 
good,  but  hatred  also !  Hatred  answers  well  when 
we  cannot  have  love.  Wealth  is  good,  because  it 
can  be  changed  into  enjoyment.  Tower  is  good, 
because  it  satisfies  our  pride.  Truth  is  good,  so 
long  as  it  gives  us  pleasure ;  but  good  is  lying  also, 
and  perjury,  hypocrisy,  trickery,  flattery,  if  they 
secure  us  any  advantage.  Faithfulness  is  good,  so 
long  as  it  pays ;  but  treason  is  good  also,  if  it 
fetches  a  higher  price.  Marriage  is  good,  so  long 
as  it  makes  us  happy ;  but  good  is  adultery  also 
for  every  one  who  is  tired  of  marriage,  or  who 
happens  to  fall  in  love  with  a  married  person. 
Fraud  is  good,  theft,  robbery,  and  murder,  if  they 
lead  to  wealth  and  enjoyment.  Life  is  good,  so 
long  as  it  is  a  riddle  ;  good  is  suicide  also  after  the 
riddle  has  been  guessed.  But  as  every  enjoyment 
culminates  in  our  being  deceived  and  tired,  and  as 
the  last  pleasure  vanishes  with  the  last  illusion, 
he  only  would  seem  to  be  truly  wise  who  draws 
the  last  conclusion  of  all  science — i.  e.,  who  takes 
prussic  acid,  and  that  without  delay." 

I  need  hardly  say  that  Prof.  Noire's  style  is 
as  far  as  possible  removed  from  such  ravings,  at 
which  even  a  Greek  cynic  would  have  smiled,  but 
he  is  nevertheless  by  no  means  a  timid  philoso- 
pher, and  never  shrinks  from  any  conclusion  that 
is  forced  on  him  by  facts  or  real  arguments.  What 
distinguishes  him  from  most  philosophers  is  his 
strong  feeling  for  the  history  of  philosophy.  There 
is  in  all  he  writes  a  warm  sympathy  with  the 
past,  without  which  there  is  no  prophet  and  no 
philosopher.  He  is  not  always  anxious  to  im- 
press us  with  the  fact  that  his  system  is  a  new 
system,  that  his  thoughts  are  quite  his  own,  quite 
original.  He  knows  what  has  been  said  before 
him  on  the  old  questions  which  disturb  our  own 
philosophical  atmosphere,  whether  by  the  ancient 
philosophers  of  Greece,  or  by  the  schoolmen,  or 
by  any  of  the  great  leaders  of  philosophic  thought, 
from  Descartes  to  Kant.  He  never  announces  as 
a  new  discovery  what  may  be  read  in  any  manual 

1  R.  Schuricht,  as  quoted  in  Carriere's  remarkable 
book,  "  Die  sittliche  Weltordming,"  p.  24  (Leipzig, 

1877). 


of  the  history  of  philosophy.     He  never  indulges 
in  the  excited  language  of  the  raw  recruit  with 
whom  every  little  skirmish  is  to  rank  as  one  of 
the  great  battles  of  thought.      He  has  a  clear 
perception  that  the  roots  of  his  own  system  of 
philosophy  go  back  through  Schopenhauer,  Kant, 
and  Leibnitz,  to  Spinoza  and  Descartes,  and  it  is 
with  a  full  consciousness  of  what  he  owes  to  every 
one  of  his  intellectual  ancestors,  that  he  takes  his 
own   position   on   the  high-road  of  philosophic 
thought.      On  the  tower  built  up  to  a  certain 
height  he  rears  his  own  story,  and  he  invites  us 
to  see  whether  it  does  not  command  a  wider  and 
clearer  view  than  the  loop-holes  of  his  predeces- 
sors.    If  there  is  an  evolution  anywhere,  it  is  in 
philosophy,  and  a  philosophy  which  ignores  its 
antecedents  is  like  a  tree  without  roots.     The 
great  leaders  in  metaphysical  speculation  during 
the  last   four  centuries  are   to  Noire  not  only 
names  to  be  cited,  but  living  powers  with  whom 
he  has  to  reckon,  and  from  whom,  even  when  he 
treats  of  the  most  recent  problems  of  the  day, 
he  demands  an  answer  in  accordance  with  their 
principles. 

HISTORICAL    ANTECEDENTS    OF    NOIRE'S   PHILOSOPHY 
— DESCARTES. 

Thus,  when  he  has  to  define  the  point  from 
which  he  himself  starts,  in  approaching  the  great 
questions  of  our  time,  and  more  particularly  the 
questions  of  the  origin  of  reason  and  language, 
he,  like  every  true  philosopher,  feels  the  influence 
of  Descartes,  the  founder  of  modern  metaphysics. 
His  Cogilo  remains  the  starting-point  of  modern 
philosophy,  whatever  we  may  think  even  of  the 
very  first  of  his  conclusions,  ergo  sum.  What 
separated  Descartes  from  the  philosophy  of  the 
middle  ages,  and  gave  him  that  strong  position 
which  he  still  holds  in  the  history  of  philosophy, 
was  his  fixing  his  starting-point  on  the  subjective 
side,  and  assigning  to  cognition  the  first  place 
among  all  philosophical  problems.  We  must 
know  "  how  "  we  know  before  we  ask  "  what  " 
we  know.  Every  system  of  philosophy  which 
plunges  into  the  mysteries  of  Nature  without 
having  solved  the  mysteries  of  the  mind,  the  sys- 
tems of  natural  evolution  not  excepted,  is  pre- 
Cartesian  and  mediaeval. 

But,  though  breaking  the  fetters  of  many  of 
the  traditional  ideas  of  the  schoolmen,  Descartes 
remained  under  the  sway  of  others.  He  remained 
a  dualist,  never  doubting  the  independent  exist- 
ence of  two  separate  worlds,  the  world  of  thought 
and  the  world  of  matter.  The  world  of  thought 
was  given  him  in  his  Cogito,  but  the  world  of 


ON  THE  ORIGIN  OF  REASON". 


539 


matter  was  a  world  by  itself,  beyond  the  reach 
of  the  Cogito.  Mind  with  Descartes  was  a  sub- 
stance possessed  of  the  property  of  thinking,  if 
we  use  that  word  in  its  largest  sense,  so  as  to 
comprehend  perceiving,  willing,  and  imagining. 
Matter  was  a  substance  possessed  of  the  property 
of  extension — extension  comprehending  the  qual- 
ities of  divisibility,  form,  and  movement.  Hav- 
ing put  asunder  these  two  substances,  how  was 
he  to  join  them  together  again  ?  And,  even  if  he 
could  have  joined  them,  how  was  he  to  prove  that 
the  knowledge  which  mind  seemed  to  possess  of 
matter  was  correct  ? 

Descartes's  solution  sounds  strange  to  our 
ears,  yet  it  can  be  translated  into  modern  philo- 
sophic thought.  He  starts  with  the  conception 
of  God,  which  he  finds  impressed  on  his  mind ; 
and,  as  the  conception  of  God  involves  the  con- 
ception of  a  perfect  being,  Descartes  considers 
that  every  possibility  of  delusion  in  the  world 
which  he  has  created,  is  ipso  facto  removed. 
This  step,  which  changed  the  uncompromising 
skepticism  with  which  Descartes  begins  his  phi- 
losophy into  an  equally  uncompromising  faith, 
was  influenced  no  doubt  by  the  theological  atmos- 
phere of  his  time.  But  we  must  guard  against 
suspecting  in  it  a  mere  concession  to  the  preju- 
dices of  the  day,  or,  as  many  have  done,  a  com- 
promise with  his  own  convictions.  Every  man, 
even  the  greatest  philosopher,  is  a  slave  of  the 
language  in  which  he  has  been  brought  up.  He 
may  break  some  of  its  fetters ;  he  wiil  never 
break  them  all.  If  Descartes  lived  now,  he  might 
have  expressed  ail  that  he  really  wished  to  say 
on  the  character  of  our  cognition  in  the  words  of 
Dr.  Martineau :  "  Faith  in  the  veracity  of  our 
faculties,  if  it  means  anything,  requires  us  to 
believe  that  things  are  as  they  appear — that  is, 
appear  to  the  mind  in  the  last  and  highest  resort; 
and  to  deal  with  the  fact  that  they  '  only  ap- 
pear '  as  if  it  constituted  an  eternal  exile  from 
their  reality,  is  to  attribute  lunacy  to  universal 
reason." 

"  Trust  in  God  as  a  perfect  being,"  and  "  an 
unwillingness  to  attribute  lunacy  to  universal 
reason,"  sound  very  different ;  but  their  intention 
is  the  same. 

Noire  takes  his  first  step  with  Descartes.  He 
s'arts  from  the  Cogito,  as  what  is  certain  above 
everything  else,  and  as  that  without  which  noth- 
ing can  be  certain  ;  but  he  protests  against  the 
rupture  between  the  subject  and  object  of  knowl- 
edge, and  still  more  against  any  attempt  to  heal 
it  by  means  of  the  concursus  divhvus,  maintained 
by  Descartes  and  his  followers.     One  of  the  most 


distinguished  Cartesians,  Malebranche,  went  so 
far  as  to  maintain  that  when  our  soul  wills,  it 
does  not  act  on  the  body,  but  that  God  intervenes 
to  produce  the  desired  effect ;  while,  when  the 
soul  perceives,  it  is  not  influenced  by  outward 
objects,  but  again  by  God  only,  calling  forth  in 
the  soul  the  sensations  which  we  ascribe  to  the 
action  of  the  material  world.  Here  we  have  the 
true  precursor  of  Bishop  Berkeley. 

SPINOZA. 

At  this  point  Noire,  like  all  modern  philoso- 
phy, becomes  for  a  time  and  up  to  a  certain  point 
Spinozistic.  The  very  fact  that  we  cannot  bridge 
the  gulf  between  two  heterogeneous  substances, 
such  as  mind  and  matter,  shows  us  that  there  can 
be  no  such  gulf.  Thus  Spinoza  was  led  on  to 
admit,  in  place  of  the  two,  or,  in  reality,  three, 
substances  of  Descartes's  philosophy,  one  sub- 
stance only,  of  which  mind  and  matter,  or,  as  he 
would  say,  thought  and  extension,  are  inherent 
qualities.  Body  and  soul  being  the  same  sub- 
stance under  two  different  aspects,  the  problem 
of  body  acting  on  soul,  or  soul  on  body,  van- 
ishes. Individual  souls  and  bodies  are  modes  or 
modifications,  whatever  that  may  mean,  of  the 
one  eternal  substance,  and  every  event  in  them 
is  at  the  same  time  both  material  and  spiritual. 

Noire  goes  hand-in-hand  with  Spinoza,  but 
only  for  a  part,  though  a  very  important  part,  of 
his  journey.  The  permanent  gain  from  Spinoza's 
philosophy,  in  which  we  all  share,  is  the  clear 
perception  that  spirit  cannot  be  the  product  of 
matter  (materialism),  nor  matter  the  product  of 
spirit  (idealism),  but  that  both  are  two  sides  of 
one  and  the  same  substance. 

LEIBNITZ. 

Noire  parts  company  with  Spinoza  where 
Leibnitz  diverged  from  the  great  monistic  thinker, 
viz.,  when  it  became  a  question  whether  all  ex- 
isting things,  material  or  spiritual,  could  be  satis- 
factorily explained  as  so-called  modes  of  one  eter- 
nal substance.  What  are  these  modes  ?  Whence 
did  they  arise?  What  would  the  eternal  sub- 
stance be  without  such  modes  ?  Such  questions 
led  Leibnitz  to  postulate,  as  an  explanation  of  the 
given  universe,  not  one  substance,  like  Spinoza, 
nor  three,  like  Descartes,  but  an  infinite  number 
of  individual  monads.  Each  monad  was  to  him 
a  universe  in  itself,  each  was  endowed  with  two 
qualities  of  thought  and  force.  The  two  impor- 
tant differences  between  Spinoza  and  Leibnitz 
were,  first,  Leibnitz's  recognition  of  the  individ- 
ual  as  something  independent,  not  derivative  ; 


54-0 


TEE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


and,  secondly,  his  substitution  of  force  instead  of 
extension. 

DESCARTES,      SPINOZA,     LEIBNITZ,     AND     LOCKE,     ON 
LANGUAGES. 

But  Noire  not  only  turns  away  from  Descartes 
and  Spinoza  on  these  points,  but  he  declares  him- 
self most  emphatically  a  pupil  of  Leibnitz  on 
another  point  also,  viz.,  the  proper  study  of  lan- 
guage, as  before  all  things  an  empirical  study. 
He  had  asked  Descartes  what  place  he  assigned 
to  language  in  his  system  of  philosophy,  but  he 
received  from  his  works  no  answer  which  would 
show  that  he  had  ever  given  serious  thought  to 
the  relation  between  his  Cogito  and  the  Logos. 
We  might  have  expected  that  Descartes  would 
have  treated  words  as  material  sounds,  as  me- 
chanical products  running  parallel  with  the  ideas 
of  the  mind,  but  neither  provoking  ideas  nor 
provoked  by  them,  and  fulfilling  their  purpose 
simply  by  means  of  the  concursus  divinus.  But, 
instead  of  this,  he  simply  repeats  the  views  then 
current,  that,  "  if  we  learn  a  language,  we  join 
the  letters  or  the  pronunciation  of  certain  words, 
which  are  material,  with  their  meanings,  which 
are  thought ;  so  that  whenever  we  hear  the  same 
words  again  we  conceive  the  same  things,  and, 
when  we  conceive  the  same  things,  the  same 
words  recur  to  our  memory."  ' 

Neither  does  Spinoza  return  a  more  satisfac- 
tory answer  as  to  the  mutual  relation  between 
language  and  thought,  and  we  look  in  vain  for 
any  passage  in  which  he  might  have  attempted 
to  bring  the  facts  of  language  into  harmony  with 
his  general  system  of  philosophy.  He  distin- 
guishes in  one  place  very  clearly  between  ideas 
or  concepts  on  one  side,  and  images  or  percepts 
and  words  on  the  other.  But  it  is  again  the  old 
story.  Words  are  there  to  signify  things,2  but 
how  they  came  to  be  there  and  to  perform  such 
an  office,  is  never  even  asked.  In  another  place, 
words  and  images  are  said  to  consist  in  corpo- 
real movements  which  have  nothing  to  do  with 
thought  (ideas).  Once  Spinoza  asks  himself  the 
question  how,  on  hearing  the  sound  of  pomum, 
a  Roman  thought  of  what  had  no  similarity  what- 

1  Epistola  i.,  35  :  "  Sic  qunm  linguam  aliquam  ad- 
disciruus,  literas  sive  quarundam  vocum,  quae  mate- 
riales  sunt,  pronunciationem  conjungimus  cum  earum 
significationibus,  quae  sunt  cogitationes,  ita  ut  auditis 
iterum  iisdem  vocibus  easdem  res  concipiamus,  atque 
iisdem  rebus  conceptis,  eaedem  voces  in  memoriam 
recurrant." 

2"Ethica,"  ii.,  Propoeitio  xlix.,  schol. :"  Verba 
quibusressigniflcamus."  Ibid.:  "  Vcrborumnamque 
et  imaginum  essentia  a  eolis  motibus  corporeis  consti- 
tuta,  qui  cogitatioiiis  conceptum  minime  iuvolvunt." 


ever  with  that  sound,  viz.,  an  apple ;  and  the 
answer  is,  by  the  concatenation  of  ideas.  "  The 
body,"  he  says,  "  has  frequently  been  affected  at 
one  and  the  same  time  by  the  sound  of  pomum 
and  by  the  sight  of  an  apple,  and  hence,  on  per- 
ceiving the  sound  of  pomum,  it  perceives  its  fre- 
quent or  constant  concomitant,  the  apple."  '  The 
question,  "  Whence  that  sound  of  pomum,  and 
whence  its  first  concomitancy  with  an  apple  ?  "  is 
never  asked  by  Spinoza.  One  remark  only  shows 
that  his  thoughts  must  have  dwelt  on  the  diffi- 
culties of  language.  In  one  passage  he  com- 
pares words  with  footprints,  and  remarks  that 
when  the  soldier  sees  the  footprints  of  a  horse, 
he  thinks  of  cavalry  and  war,  while  the  peasant 
who  sees  the  same  marks  is  carried  away  in  his 
thoughts  to  the  plough  and  the  field.  This  shows 
an  advance  beyond  the  then  current  view  of  the 
purely  conventional  character  of  language,  and 
some  apprehension  of  the  fact  that  words  imply 
far  more  than  they  express. 

Noire,  not  satisfied  with  Descartes  and  Spino- 
za, turns  to  Leibnitz,  not,  however,  because  that 
philosopher  seemed  to  him  to  have  solved  the 
problem  as  to  the  relation  between  language  and 
reason,  but  because  he  was  the  first  to  point  out 
that,  as  in  every  other  part  of  Nature,  so  in  lan- 
guage, it  was  the  inductive  method  only  that 
could  lead  to  any  valuable  results.  Before  you 
attempt  to  find  out  how  language  arose,  he  would 
say,  collect  all  that  there  is  of  language,  classify, 
analyze,  sift,  label;  only  when  that  has  been 
done,  and  done  thoroughly,  will  there  be  a  chance 
of  discovering  the  simple  elements  of  human 
speech.  This  was  the  conviction  which  guided 
Leibnitz  in  his  own  linguistic  labors,  in  his  col- 
lection of  living  dialects,  in  his  bringing  to  light 
the  earliest  documents  of  his  own  language,  in 
his  encouraging  emperors  as  well  as  missionaries 
in  the  compilation  of  dictionaries  of  hitherto  un- 
known and  barbarous  tongues.  It  was  in  this 
way  that  he  became  the  founder  of  the  science  of 
language,  as  an  inductive  science.  It  was  in  this 
way  also  that  he  was  led  to  conceive  the  possi- 
bility of  a  more  perfect,  or  so-called  universal, 
philosophical  language.  But  the  vital  question 
as  to  whether  thought  was  possible  without  lan- 
guage, or  language  without  thought,  remained 
outside  the  horizon  of  his  speculations. 

At  the  same  time,  while  Leibnitz  was  laying 
the  foundation  of  comparative  philology,  Locke 
approached  nearer  than  any  one  before  him  to 

1  "Ethica,"  ii.,  Propositio  xviii. 

2  "Lectures  on  the  Science  of  Language,"  vol.  i.,  p. 
158  (tenth  edition). 


ON   THE  ORIGIN  OF  REASON. 


541 


what  is  now  called  the  philosophy  of  language. 
In  his  great  though  very  unequal  work,  "On 
the  Human  Understanding,"  he  pointed  out  that 
words  were  not  the  signs  of  things,  but  that  in 
their  origin  they  were  always  the  signs  of  con- 
cepts ;  that  language  begins  in  fact  where  ab- 
straction begins,  and  that  the  reason  why  ani- 
mals have  no  language  is  that  they  do  not  pos- 
sess the  power  of  abstraction.  This  observation 
was  little  regarded  at  the  time,  till  it  was  re- 
marked how  completely,  and  yet  how  undesign- 
edly, it  had  been  confirmed  in  our  own  time  by 
the  discoveries  of  the  comparative  philology.1 
When  it  had  been  shown  by  a  very  considerable 
amount  of  evidence  that  every  word  in  every 
language  that  had  been  carefully  analyzed  was 
formed  from  a  root,  and  that  every  root  expressed 
an  abstract  idea,  a  concept,  not  a  percept,  then 
the  coincidence  between  Locke  and  Bopp  became 
startling,  and  gave  a  new  impulse  to  a  new  phi- 
losophy both  of  language  and  thought.  Lange, 
in  his  "  History  of  Materialism,"  has  called  Locke's 
work  "  On  the  Human  Understanding  "  a  "  Criti- 
cism of  Language."  We  may  go  further,  and 
say  that,  together  with  Kant's  "  Criticism  of 
Reason,"  it  forms  the  true  starting-point  of  mod- 
ern philosophy. 

leibnitz's  "  manadologie." 

But,  before  we  leave  Leibnitz  and  the  lesson 
which  Noire  thinks  should  be  learned  from  him 
even  at  the  present  day,  we  must  endeavor  to  see 
more  clearly  how  Leibnitz  freed  himself  from  the 
charm  of  Spinoza's  monistic  philosophy,  and  how 
Noire,  who  calls  his  own  philosophy  Monismus, 
yet  breaks  loose  from  Spinoza,  by  admitting  not 
one  monon,  but  many  mona.  The  escape  from 
the  %v  Kctl  irav  is  not  so  easy  to  those  who  have 
once  been  under  its  spell,  as  Leibnitz  would  have 
us  believe.  His  well-known  remark,  "  Spinoza 
aurait  raison,  s'il  n'y  avait  point  de  monades,"  is 
rather  the  saying  of  a  philosophical  cavalier,  and 
might  be  met  by  the  easy  retort,  ''  Leibnitz  aurait 
raison,  s'il  n'y  avait  point  de  substance."  Nor 
did  Leibnitz  by  any  means  shake  off  the  almost 
irrepressible  longing  of  the  human  mind  after  the 
One,  as  the  source  of  the  Many.  At  first  sight 
his  monads  seem  to  form  a  real  republic  of  small 
divinities ;  but  not  only  is  there  for  them  all  a 
"  preestablished  harmony,"  but  in  the  end  his 
monads  are  represented  as  created  by  one  monad, 
which  itself  is  not  created.  There  is  an  "  unite 
primitive  ou   substance   simple   originaire   dont 

1  See  M.  M.'s  "  Lectures  on  the  Science  of  Lan- 
guage ,"  vol.  i.,  p.  405. 


toutes  les  monades  creees  ou  derivatives  sont  des 
fulgurations  continuelles,  de  moment  en  mo- 
ment." 1  Are  these  fulgurations  pour  ainsi  dire 
a  very  real  advance  on  Spinoza's  modes?  The 
real  solution,  if  there  can  be  a  solution  of  what 
is  in  reality  one  of  the  so-called  antinomies  of  the 
human  mind,  would  seem  to  lie  in  our  clearly  un- 
derstanding that  we  can  never  conceive  the  Many 
without  the  One,  nor  the  One  without  the  Many  ; 
but  it  will  be  best  to  let  Prof.  Noire  speak  for 
himself:8 

"  Spinoza's  doctrine  received  its  necessary  com- 
plement through  the  great  Leibnitz.  That  the  In- 
finite alone  exists  and  can  be  conceived  by  itself 
only ;  that  all  single  phenomena  are  throughout 
dependent  on  the  Eternal  and  the  Infinite ;  that  the 
two  true  attributes  of  substance,  namely,  extension 
and  thought,  cannot  be  given  to  us  by  experience, 
but  must  be  conceived  immediately;  that  our  imagi- 
nation misleads  us  when  it  attempts  to  count  and 
measure,  where,  according  to  their  nature,  count- 
ing and  measuring  are  impossible — all  these  were 
precious  truths  which,  difficult  to  understand,  could 
ripen  and  bear  fruit  at  a  much  later  time  only. 

"  The  principle  of  individuality  remained  en- 
tirely neglected  in  the  philosophy  of  Spinoza.  In- 
dividual beings  are  nothing  but  modifications,  af- 
fections of  the  One-and-AU,  the  eternal  and  infi- 
nite God-world.  Nature,  however,  there  can  be  no 
doubt,  is  entirely  founded  on  individuality,  and 
higher  knowledge  as  well  as  higher  reality  arises 
only  through  the  combination  of  forces  which  were 
originally  distinct.  '  Spinoza  aurait  raison,  sHl 
n'y  avait  Point  de  monades.''  With  these  words  the 
opposition  of  the  philosophy  of  Leibnitz  to  that  of 
Spinoza  is  clearly  pronounced.  The  thought  of  an 
evolution  of  the  world  has  already  pierced  through 
the  mind  of  Leibnitz. 

"  That  the  lowest  monad  consists  in  extreme 
limitation,  most  perfect  isolation  and  exclusion ; 
that  with  the  progress  of  evolution  higher  monads 
are  formed,  endowed  with  constantly  brighter  per- 
ception, and  having  the  law  of  their  existence  in 
themselves ;  that  an  inner  quality  is  given  to  all 
beings  down  to  the  lowest  inorganic  matter,  deter- 
mining their  form  and  expressed  in'it,  until  the 
highest  form  of  existence,  man,  lets  shine  forth  the 
light  of  his  intelligence  as  the  very  crown  of  crea- 
tion, illuminating  himself  and  the  world  around : 
this  is  the  object  and  the  true  kernel  of  Leibnitz's 
'  Monadologie.' 

"  And  if  man  himself  is  a  true  individual,  there- 
fore a  being  in  active  and  passive  relation  to  the 
rest  of  the  world,  it  follows  that  all  his  endeavors, 
and  all  his  acts,  and  all  his  knowledge,  proceed 
from  his  limited  nature  only.    Absorption  in  the 

i  "Monadologie,"  §47. 

2  "Einleitnngund  Beirrundung  einer  monistischen 
Erkennmiss-lehre,"  p.  126. 


542 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


Infinite  would  annihilate  him  no  less  than  a  disso- 
lution into  primary  atoms.  His  individuality  ex- 
ists and  maintains  itself  only  in  opposition  to  all 
the  rest.  Independent  active  force  is  the  true 
character  of  all  things  in  the  world." 

TIIE    INTELLECT    ACCORDING   TO  LOCKE,   KANT,  SCHO- 
PENHAUER, AND    NOIRE. 

What  Noire  takes  away  with  him  from  Leib- 
nitz are  the  monads,  or,  as  he  prefers  to  call  them, 
the  mona,  leaving  the  preestablished  harmony  in 
the  same  philosophical  lumber-room  with  the  con- 
cursus  divinus,  and  pronouncing  no  opinion  on  the 
necessity  of  admitting,  beyond  all  individual  mo- 
nads, one  supreme  or  creative  monad.  Having 
settled  his  accounts  with  Leibnitz,  Noire  has  next 
to  pass  through  the  ordeal  of  Locke,  and  to  de- 
fend his  mona  from  becoming  mere  canvas,  or 
tabula  rasa.  What  are  the  monads  with  which 
he  undertakes  to  build  up  the  world ;  and,  more 
particularly,  what  are  those  monads  of  which  we 
have  to  predicate  the  old  Cartesian  Cogito  ?  The 
so-called  faculties  or*  the  soul  had  long  ago  been 
destroyed  by  Spinoza,  the  innate  ideas  had  fallen 
under  the  strokes  of  Locke.  Well  did  Herder 
say  : '  "  All  the  forces  and  faculties  of  our  souls, 
and  of  animal  souls,  are  nothing  but  metaphysical 
abstraction.  They  are  effects,  subdivided  by  us, 
because  our  weak  mind  cannot  grasp  them  as  one. 
They  are  arranged  in  chapters,  not  because  in 
Nature  they  act  in  chapters,  but  because  an  ap- 
prentice apprehends  them  most  easily  in  this 
manner.  In  reality,  the  whole  soul  acts  every- 
where undivided."  In  Locke's  philosophy  there 
remained  nothing  but  the  perceiving  subject  as 
tabula  rasa  on  one  side,  and  on  the  other  the  ob- 
jective world,  throwing  its  picture  on  the  white 
surface  of  the  soul.  Nothing  was  in  the  intellect 
except  what  had  come  into  it  through  the  senses ; 
and  if  Leibnitz  rejoined,  "No,  nothing,  except  the 
intellect  itself,"  the  next  question  clearly,  which 
philosophy,  in  its  historical  progress,  had  to  an- 
swer, was,  "  What,  then,  is  that  intellect  ?  " 

The  answer  was  given  from  two  opposite  quar- 
ters, by  the  philesophers  of  France  and  by  the 
philosophers  of  Germany.  Penser  c'est  sentir,  was 
the  answer  of  Condillac,  La  Mettrie,  and  Diderot. 
Kant's  answer  was  the  "  Critik  der  reinen  Ver- 
minft,"  giving  to  the  world  what  is  the  only  pos- 
sible definition  of  the  intellect,  i.  e.,  the  fixing  of  its 
limits.  What  these  limits  are,  according  to  Kant, 
is  well  known  by  this  time  to  all  students  of  phi- 
losophy. Man  can  possess  a  knowledge  of  phe- 
nomena only;  what  lies  beyond  the  phenomenal 

1  Noire,  "  TJ-rsprnng  der  Sprache,"  p.  47- 


world  is  beyond  his  perception  and  conception. 
Space  and  time  are  the  inevitable  forms  of  his 
sensuous  perception,  the  categories  the  inevitable 
forms  of  his  mental  conception.  These  forms  of 
perception  and  conception  are,  according  to  Kant, 
neither  innate  or  cognate,  but  inevitable,  irremov- 
able; they  cannot  be  thought  away,  as  he  ex- 
presses it,  when  we  speak  of  perception  and  con- 
ception. They  are  contained  in  them  as  light  is 
contained  in  color,  as  number  is  contained  in 
counting,  analytically,  not  synthetically.  They 
are  that  without  which  thought  could  not  be  con- 
ceived as  possible  in  man.  If  it  made  their  nature 
more  intelligible,  there  would  be  no  harm  in  call- 
ing them  laws  of  sense,  and  laws  of  thought. 

Within  the  charmed  circle  described  by  Kant, 
the  human  intellect  is  safe  ;  outside  it,  it  becomes 
entangled  in  antinomies  or  inevitable  contradic- 
tions, without  finding  any  criterion  of  its  own  to 
solve  them.  According  to  Kant,  we  have  on  one 
side  man,  imprisoned  within  the  walls  of  his 
senses,  and  with  no  more  freedom  of  movement 
than  the  categories  or  the  chains  of  his  intellect 
will  allow  him  ;  on  the  other  side  we  have  a  world, 
of  which  we  know  nothing  except  that  it  is,  and 
that  by  its  passing  shadows  it  disturbs  the  repose 
of  our  prison. 

As  far  as  the  prisoner  is  concerned,  nothing 
that  later  philosophers  have  added  has  materially 
changed  his  position.  Space  and  time  have  re- 
mained, what  Kant  was  the  first  to  prove  them 
to  be,  necessary  forms  of  our  sensuous  intuition. 
The  number  of  the  categories  has  been  changed, 
and  by  some  philosophers,  in  particular  by  Scho- 
penhauer, they  have  been  reduced  to  one,  the 
category  of  causality,  as  the  one  primary  form  of 
all  human  thought.  Thus  armed,  the  subject,  or, 
as  we  might  say  with  Noire,  the  monos,  expects 
the  mona. 

But  what  about  these  mona?  What  about 
the  outside  world  ?  Can  we  really  know  it  only 
as  it  appears  ?  Can  we  predicate  nothing  of  it  ? 
It  is  from  this  question  that  the  most  powerful 
impulse  to  philosophic  thought  proceeded.  We 
might  follow  the  stream  of  philosophy  which,  start- 
ing from  this  point,  and  following  the  course  in- 
dicated by  Fichte,  Schelling,  and  Hegel,  seems  for 
the  present,  like  the  river  Saras vati,  to  be  lost 
beneath  the  ground.  But  Noire  calls  us  away 
from  -that  enchanted  valley,  and  bids  us  follow 
him  in  another  direction,  from  Kant  to  Schopen- 
hauer, and  then  onward  to  his  own  system. 

The  transition  from  Kant  to  Schopenhauer  is 
easy,  and  may  be  stated  in  the  form  of  a  single 
syllogism.    He  accepts  all  that  Kant  teaches  about 


ON  THE  ORIGIN  OF  REASON 


543 


the  subject  or  the  I ;  or,  if  he  modifies  Kant's 
doctrines,  he  does  so  chiefly  by  simplifying  them. 
But  he  differs  from  Kant  in  his  view  of  the  ob- 
ject, or  the  Non-I.  Our  only  real  knowledge,  he 
says,  of  anything  really  existing  is  our  knowledge 
of  the  I,  which  involves  not  only  being,  but  con- 
scious being,  resisting,  or,  as  he  prefers  to  call  it, 
willing.  Therefore,  if  we  say  that  the  Non-I  ex- 
ists, we  say  at  the  same  time  that  it  exists  as 
something  willing,  resisting,  and,  if  not  actually, 
at  least  potentially,  conscious.  We  know  no  other 
kind  of  being,  and  therefore  we  cannot  predicate 
any  other.  As  we,  the  I,  are  to  others  as  the 
Not-I,  so  the  Not-I  must  be  to  us  as  the  Not-I. 
This  is  the  bridge  from  Kant  to  Schopenhauer, 
from  death  to  life.  As  soon  as  we  have  arrived 
on  the  opposite  shore,  as  soon  as  we  have  recog- 
nized in  all  Nature,  in  all  that  is  not  ourselves, 
something  like  ourselves,  Noire  bids  us  welcome. 
This  is  the  threshold  of  his  own  philosophy. 

THE    TWO    ATTRIBUTES    OF    SUBSTANCE. 

The  first  question  with  him,  after  he  has  ar- 
rived at  his  monads,  is,  What  are  their  inherent 
attributes  ?  He  does  not  ask,  What  is  intellect  ? 
or,  What  is  matter  ?  but,  What  is  essential  in  or- 
der to  explain  the  whole  of  the  subjective  and 
objective  evolution  of  the  world  ?  Like  Descartes, 
like  Spinoza,  and  like  Leibnitz,  he  requires  two 
attributes  only,  but  he  defines  them  differently 
from  his  predecessors,  as  motion  and  sensation. 
Out  of  these  materials  he  builds  up  his  universe, 
or  rather,  taking  the  universe  as  he  finds  it,  he 
traces  it  back  through  a  long  course  of  evolution, 
to  those  simple  beginnings.  As  Goethe  said,  "No 
spirit  without  matter,  no  matter  without  spirit," 
Noire"  says,  "No  sensation  without  motion,  no 
motion  without  sensation." 

According  to  these  two  attributes,  philosophy 
has  to  deal  with  two  streams  of 
evolution,  the  subjective  and  the 
objective.  Neither  of  them  can 
be  said  to  be  prior.  On  the  one 
hand  it  may  be  said  that  motion 
precedes  sensation,  because  mo- 
tion causes  vibration,  and  vi- 
bration of  the  conscious  self  is  sensation.  I  see, 
I  hear,  I  feel,  I  taste,  I  smell — all  of  these,  trans- 
lated into  the  highest  and  most  general  language, 
mean,  I  vibrate,  I  am  set  in  motion.  But,  on  the 
other  hand,  motion  exists  only  where  there  is 
sensation ;  it  presupposes  sensation  ;  it  means 
something  which  is  nothing  except  in  relation  to 
something  else,  and  that  something  else  capable 
of   perceiving.     The  two  streams   of   evolution 


UGHT.A 


HE  A  T.  C 


SOUND.  E 


run  parallel,  or,  more  correctly,  the  two  are  one 
stream,  looked  at  from  the  two  opposite  shores. 

SUBJECTIVE    EVOLUTION. 

Taking  the  subjective  aspect  first,  Noire  shows 
how  sensation  begins  in  its  lowest  form,  as  a  mere 
disturbance  or  irritation.  But  even  that  irrita- 
tion presupposes  something  that  reacts,  some 
force  which  is  conservatrix  sui,  and  it  is  that 
power  of  reacting  against  foreign  disturbance 
which  constitutes  the  beginning  of  real  sensa- 
tion. Sensation  is,  in  fact,  conscious  motion  or 
reaction. 

We  may  define  every  kind  of  sensation  as 
conscious  vibration,  and  we  are  able  now  to  de- 
termine the  different  kinds  of  sensation  by  the 
number  of  vibrations  acting  within  a  given  time 
upon  certain  specially  receptive  organs.  Let  the 
line  A  B  represent  the  tuVu  Pai't  °f  a  second ;  let 
each  straight  line  (  |  )  represent  4,000,000,000 
vibrations,  and  each  curved  line  (— )  one  vibra- 
tion. Then,  disturbed  and  set  to  vibrate  in  uni- 
son with  these  vibrations,  the  eye  within  this  jifo  a 
part  of  a  second  would  see  red,  the  skin  would 
perceive  about  31°  of  heat  (Centigrade),  and  the 
ear  would  hear  the  tone  of  e'"". l 

While  one  monon  maintains  itself  against  the 
inroads  of  another,  or  in  reality  of  an  infinite 
number  of  other  mona,  it  vibrates.  It  asserts  its 
existence  by  vibration,  i.  e.,  by  a  constantly  and 
regularly  repeated  attempt  to  maintain  itself 
against  foreign  inroads.  Vibration  in  the  high- 
est sense  is  the  struggle  between  being  and  not 
being.  So  far  as  for  a  moment  one  monon  has  to 
yield,  and  as  it  were  to  surrender  some  of  the 
ground  which  belonged  to  itself,  it  recognizes  in 
the  very  act  of  yielding  the  existence  of  something 
else,  able  to  disturb,  but  unable  to  annihilate,  so 
that  when  we  say  of  something  that  it  exists,  what 


we  really  mean  is  that  for  a  moment  it  is  where 
we  were  before. 

And  here  we  have  the  first  glimmering  of  the 
category  of  causality.  It  is  by  looking  upon  a 
disturbance  as  caused,  and  by  fixing  that  cause 
outside  ourselves,  that  we  translate  disturbance, 
or  irritation,  or  vibration,  into  the  perception  of  an 
object.  The  gradual  change  from  the  one  to  the 
1  Noire,  "  Grundlcjjnug,"  p.  56. 


544 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


other  has  been  so  fully  elaborated  by  the  most  re- 
cent school  of  English  philosophy,  that  English 
readers  will  hardly  find  anything  new  in  this  por- 
tion of  Noire's  philosophy.  We  must  only  re- 
mark, as  against  all  philosophers  from  Descartes 
to  Kant  and  his  school,  that  even  the  most  primi- 
tive perceptions  or  empirical  cognitions  are  never 
entirely  passive.  Malebranche  said :  "  In  the  same 
manner  as  the  faculty  of  receiving  different  figures 
and  configurations  in  the  body  is  entirely  pas- 
sive, and  involves  no  action  whatever,  the  faculty 
also  of  receiving  different  ideas  and  different  mod- 
ifications in  the  mind  is  entirely  passive,  and  in- 
volves no  action  whatever.  I  call  this  faculty,  or 
this  capacity  which  the  mind  possesses  of  receiv- 
ing all  those  things,  the  understanding  (l'entende- 
ment)."  We  hold,  on  the  contrary,  that  every 
impression  becomes  perceived  by  our  resistance 
only,  and  every  resistance  is  active  and  self-con- 
scious. We  suffer,  no  doubt,  in  seeing  and  hear- 
ing, but  we  suffer  because  we  resist. 

Kant  says,  "  If  I  take  away  all  thought  from 
an  empirical  cognition,  there  remains  no  cognition 
whatever  of  an  object,  for  nothing  is  thought  by 
mere  intuition,  and  the  fact  of  my  sense  being 
affected  gives  me  nothing  that  relates  to  any  ob- 
ject." But  whatever  we  may  do  in  abstract  rea- 
soning, we  cannot  in  rerurn  natura  take  away  all 
thought  from  an  empirical  cognition,  without  de- 
stroying it.  This  is  what  Schopenhauer  urges, 
with  great  success,  against  Kant.  He  shows  that 
even  the  simplest  intuition  involves  activity,  sen- 
sation, and  thought.  In  giving  to  our  sensuous 
disturbances  an  object,  in  saying  of  these  objects 
that  they  are,  we  are  not  only  passive ;  we  are 
active,  we  think,  we  are  using  Kant's  own  cate- 
gory of  causality,  in  addition  to  the  intuitions  of 
space  and  time.  In  placing  the  cause  of  our  sen- 
suous disturbance  outside  ourselves,  we  apply 
what  Kant  calls  one  form  of  our  sensuous  intui- 
tion, viz.,  space.  In  placing  one  disturbance  by 
the  side  of  another,  we  begin  to  count,  and  apply 
Kant's  second  form  of  sensuous  intuition,  viz., 
time.  There  is,  in  fact,  according  to  Schopen- 
hauer, no  real  sensation  without  the  first  germs 
of  intellect  in  it.  Kant  takes  the  intellect  as  some- 
thing given,  as  ready  at  hand,  whenever  we  want 
to  apply  it  to  the  brute  material  supplied  by  the 
senses.  Noire  looks  upon  the  intellect  as  grad- 
ually developing  from  the  lowest  indications  of 
conscious  sensation  to  the  highest  achievements 
of  discursive  reasoning.  On  this  point  he  was, 
for  a  time,  as  it  would  seem,  chiefly  under  the  in- 
fluence of  Geiger.  Geiger,  speaking  historically 
rather  than  psychologically,  says: 


"  One  thing  is  certain,  that  as  far  as  our  obser- 
vation reaches,  man  is  rational.  And  yet  he  has  not 
always  been  rational.  Keason  does  not  date  from 
all  eternity.  Reason,  like  everything  else  on  earth, 
had  an  origin  and  beginning  in  time.  And,  like 
the  species  of  living  beings,  reason  did  not  spring 
into  existence  suddenly,  finished,  and  in  all  its  per- 
fection, as  it  were  by  a  kind  of  catastrophe  ;  but  it 
has  had  its  own  development.  We  have  in  lan- 
guage an  inestimable  and  indispensable  instrument 
for  seeing  this.  Nay,  I  believe  that  whatever 
plausible  theories  on  the  descent  of  man  may  have 
been  started  elsewhere,  certainty  and  assurance 
can  be  obtained  from  language  only." 

Geiger  seems  to  me  to  mix  up  two  ideas  in  the 
word  rational.  When  he  say3  that  man  was  not 
always  rational,  he  means  rationalis,  not  rationa- 
bilis  ;  and  between  these  two  words  the  difference 
is  immense.     We  agree  with  Noire  when  he  says : 

"  How  is  it  possible  that  from  unconscious  and 
non-sentient  matter  consciousness  and  sensation 
should  suddenly  shine  forth,  unless  the  inner  qual- 
ity, though  in  a  dark  and  to  us  hardly  perceptible 
manner,  belonged  before  to  those  substances  from 
which  the  first  animal  life,  in  its  most  elementary 
form,  was  developed?"  (p.  193). 

It  may  probably  be  objected  that  the  inner 
quality  here  spoken  of  is  only  a  different  name  for 
the  qualitates  occulta,  which  form  the  terror  of 
modern  philosophy.  But  honest  philosophers 
must  not  allow  themselves  to  be  swayed  by  the 
clamor  of  the  day.  No  doubt  the  abuse  that  was 
made  of  occult  qualities,  innate  ideas,  and  of 
faculties  and  instincts,  was  very  great;  but  be- 
cause modern  philosophy  had  shown  that  these 
terms  were  musty  with  the  crust  of  long-accu- 
mulated misconceptions,  there  was  no  ground  for 
throwing  away  these  old  terms,  like  broken  toys. 
Every  one  of  them,  if  only  carefully  defined,  has 
its  legitimate  meaning ;  and  with  all  the  prejudice 
attaching  to  their  name,  the  theory  of  occult  qual- 
ities and  their  gradual  manifestation  rules  really 
supreme  at  the  present  day,  though  thinly  veiled 
under  the  new  name  of  evolution  and  potential 
energy. 

Noire's  philosophy  rests  on  a  most  compre- 
hensive theory  of  evolution ;  it  is  the  first  attempt 
at  tracing  the  growth  of  the  whole  world,  not  only 
of  matter,  but  of  thought  also,  from  the  beginning 
of  time  to  the  present  day.  As  the  philosophy 
of  Nature  strives  to  account  for  all  that  exists  by 
a  slow  progress  of  evolution,  beginning  from  the 
simplest  elements,  and  ascending  through  endless 
combinations  to  the  highest  effort  of  Nature,  re- 
alized in  man,  the  philosophy  of  thought  starts 


ON  TEE   ORIGIN  OF  REASON. 


>45 


from  the  lowest  indications  of  conscious  feeling, 
and  follows  the  growth  of  thought  through  every 
variety  of  perception,  i  magination,  and  concep- 
tion, to  the  latest  work  of  philosophy. 

OBJECTIVE    EVOLUTION. 

Noire  is  a  true  evolutionist,  subjectively  and 
objectively.  But  he  is  a  follower  of  Cuvier,  not 
of  Lamarck.  He  avails  himself  of  all  the  new 
light  which  modern  science,  particularly  through 
Robert  Mayer  and  Charles  Darwin,  has  shed  on 
that  oldest  of  all  problems;  but  he  is  not  a  Dar- 
winian, in  the  ordinary  sense  of  the  word.  With 
Robert  Mayer,  he  holds'  that "  there  is  but  one  uni- 
versal force  of  Nature  in  different  forms,  in  itself 
eternal  and  unchangeable.  Whatever  we  perceive, 
•whether  in  the  form  of  light,  heat,  sound,  or  any- 
thing else,  is  due  to  motion,  and  must  be  solved 
as  a  purely  mechanical  problem.  Nor  can  any 
motion  be  lost ;  it  can  only  be  changed  into  a 
new  kind  of  motion." 

Even  organic  life  is  looked  upon  as  a  me- 
chanical process,  though  it  is  fully  admitted  that 
science  has  not  yet  mastered  it.  In  this  respect 
we  have,  in  fact,  advanced  but  little  beyond  Des- 
cartes, who  likewise  looked  upon  animals,  and 
even  on  the  human  body,  as  mere  machines, 
though  in  the  case  of  man  the  machine  was  con- 
nected  with  a  new  substance,  the  soul.  Physical 
science  is  no  doubt  fully  justified  in  always  keeping 
the  solution  of  the  problem  of  life  before  its  eyes ; 
nay,  in  representing  such  a  solution  as  the  high- 
est triumph  which  mechanical  or  chemical  science 
could  achieve.  But  it  should  never  allow  the 
anticipation  of  that  triumph  to  influence  philo- 
sophical speculation.  We  know  exactly  what  a 
cell  is  composed  of,  but  no  synthesis  has  yet  pro- 
duced anything  like  a  living  cell,  absorbing, 
growing,  and  generating,  if  only  by  self-division. 
We  may  laugh  at  the  occult  quality  of  vital  force, 
but  we  cannot  confess  too  openly  that  as  yet  vital 
force  is  to  us  an  occult  quality. 

Leaving  the  origin  of  organic  life  as  an  open 
question,  and  remembering  that  even  Charles 
Darwin  requires  a  Creator  to  breathe  life  into 
matter,  we  may  afterward  follow  the  progress 
from  the  lowest  to  the  highest  forms  of  life,  with 
all  the  new  light  that  patient  research  has  thrown 
upon  it.  Noire  here  goes  entirely  with  the  evo- 
lutionists, he  believes  even  in  the  Bathybios  Hae- 
clcelii.  To  me  he  does  not  seem  to  lay  sufficient 
stress  on  the  many  gaps  which  the  most  laborious 
members  of  the  evolutionist  school  are  the  most 
ready  to  acknowledge,  nor  to  dwell  sufficiently  on 

1 "  Grundlegung,"  pp.  6, 11. 

71 


the  indications,  supplied  by  Nature  herself,  that 
she  may  have  had  more  than  one  arrow  in  her 
quiver.  He  differs,  however,  most  decidedly  from 
the  evolutionists  in  the  explanation  of  the  pro- 
cess of  evolution.  He  looks  upon  the  struggle 
for  life,  the  old  iriKep-os  ircrn;p  iravTuv,  the  bellurn 
omnium  contra  omnes,  on  the  survival  of  the  fit- 
test, on  natural  selection,  influence  of  environ- 
ment, and  all  the  rest,  as  merely  concomitant 
agencies,  and  places  the  original  impulse  in  what 
Schopenhauer  called  Will — a  word,  as  it  seems 
to  me,  as  badly  chosen  as  could  be  to  express 
what  Schopenhauer  wished  to  express.  What  he 
means  by  Will  is  simply  the  subjective  form  of 
what  appears  objectively  as  Force.  Where  other 
philosophers  would  say  that  everything  is  what 
it  is  by  its  own  nature,  what  the  Hindoos  call 
svabhdvdt,  Schopenhauer  says  it  is  so  by  its  will, 
wishing  to  indicate  thereby  that  the  nature  of 
everything,  from  a  stone  to  an  animal,  is  not  de- 
termined by  any  other  higher  will,  but  by  itself 
alone.  He  is  thus  driven  to  speak  of  an  uncon- 
scious will  in  stones  and  plants,  and  he  dates  the 
beginning  of  a  conscious  will  from  its  first  mani- 
festation in  the  animal  kingdom. 

It  is  not  quite  easy  to  see  how  far  Noire 
adopts  Schopenhauer's  theory  of  will.  Will,  as 
used  by  Schopenhauer,  does  not  differ  much  from 
fact,  however,  or — from  another  point  of  view — 
from  accident.  The  broader  question  is  really 
this,  whether  we  are  to  admit  that  each  thing  is 
a  law  to  itself,  or  that  there  is  a  higher,  universal 
law  for  all.  Schopenhauer  ends  with  a  republic 
of  separate  wills,  without  a  supreme  ruler — nay, 
without  a  superintending  law.  Hence  the  aver- 
sion he  felt  and  expressed  to  the  theory  of  evolu- 
tion. "  What  has  philosophy  to  do  with  becom- 
ing? "  he  writes  ;  "  it  ought  to  try  to  understand 
being." l  No  doubt,  what  exists,  and  is  what  it 
is  by  its  own  will,  cannot  easily  be  conceived  as 
changing,  and  yet  what  greater  change  can  be 
imagined  than  that  from  an  unconscious  will  in 
stones  and  plants  to  a  conscious  will  in  animals 
and  men  ?  Here  it  is  where  Noire  separates  him- 
self decidedly  from  Schopenhauer.  To  him  all 
being  is  becoming,  and  all  becoming  is  deter- 
mined from  the  first.  There  could  be  no  con- 
sciousness in  the  animal  world  unless  its  unde- 
veloped germs  existed  in  the  lower  stages  from 
which  animal  life  proceeds.  Here  is  the  funda- 
mental difference  between  Lamarck's  chaotic,  pan- 
genetic  evolution,  and  that  development  which  is 
from  beginning  to  end  the  fulfillment  of  a  will,  a 
purpose,  a  law,  or  a  thought. 

»  "  Einleitunp,"  p.  193. 


546 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


KINETICS    AND   .ESTHETICS. 

Noire  divides  the  whole  of  philosophy,  accord- 
ng  to  the  views  just  explained,  into  two  branches, 
which  he  calls  Kinetics  and  ^Esthetics. 

By  Kinetics  every  problem  from  the  first  mo- 
tion of  the  atom  to  the  revolutions  of  the  solar 
system,  from  the  formation  of  the  first  cell  to  the 
life  of  man,  has  to  be  solved  as  a  purely  mechani- 
cal problem. 

By  ^Esthetics,  using  that  word  in  the  Kantian 
sense,  he  tries  to  unravel  the  growth  of  the  sub- 
jective world,  from  the  first  tremor  of  the  embryo 
to  the  brightest  thoughts  of  man,  from  the  first 
reaction  of  the  moneres  to  the  highest  flights  of 
human  genius. 

The  field  for  the  study  of  Kinetics  is  open  ;  it 
is  the  whole  realm  of  Nature,  which  anybody  may 
explore  who  has  eyes  to  see.  It  is  physical  sci- 
ence in  the  largest  sense  of  the  word.  Experi- 
ence and  experiment  are  the  two  tools,  Nature 
the  never-failing  material,  for  those  who  want  to 
work  out  the  history  of  evolution  in  the  objective 
world. 

For  the  study  of  ^Esthetics  the  same  tools  are 
at  hand,  but  where  is  the  material  ?  where  are  the 
documents  in  which  to  study  the  growth  or  his- 
tory of  the  sentient  subject  ?  Must  we  be  satisfied 
either  with  introspection,  the  most  uncertain  of  all 
vivisectory  experiments,  in  which  he  who  dissects 
is  at  the  same  time  he  who  is  being  dissected  ?  or 
with  the  study  of  that  short  period  of  growth 
which  we  call  the  history  of  the  world,  compris- 
ing no  more  than  a  few  thousand  years,  filled 
with  names  of  kings  and  battles  rather  than  with 
an  account  of  the  silent  growth  of  the  mind  ¥ 
No  wonder  that  men  accustomed  to  deal  with 
facts,  and  to  base  their  theories  upon  them, 
should  turn  away  with  dismay  from  mental  sci- 
ence in  which  every  fact  can  be  disputed  by  men 
who  profess  that  they  do  not  see  it,  and  where 
there  is  hardly  one  technical  term  that  admits  of 
one  definition  only.  An  exact  philosophy  of  the 
human  mind  seemed  to  become  more  and  more 
hopeless  the  greater  the  achievements  in  the  con- 
quest of  Nature. 

LANGUAGE,    AS    SUBJECTIVE     NATURE. 

And  yet  while  philosophers  complained  about 
the  scarcity  or  the  total  absence  of  trustworthy 
materials,  there  were  old  archives  brimful  of 
them,  if  people  would  only  see  them,  open  them^ 
and  read  them.  What  should  we  say  if  we  were 
told  that,  in  studying  the  growth  of  the  earth, 
we  must  be  satisfied  with  looking  at  its  surface 
only — that  everything  else  was  hidden  and  lost  ? 


Were  there  not  chronicles  of  the  past  written  on 
that  very  surface,  if  people  would  only  recog- 
nize them  as  such  ?  Was  there  not  a  history  to 
be  read  in  every  bit  of  coal,  in  every  flake  of 
flint  ?  We  can  hardly  understand  how  men 
could  have  been  so  blind  as  not  to  see  what 
stared  them  in  the  face ;  and  yet  all  mental  phi- 
losophy has  hitherto  been  struck  with  such  blind" 
ness.  Noire  is,  in  fact,  the  first  philosopher  by 
profession  who  has  perceived  what  students  of 
the  science  of  language,  more  particularly  Gei- 
ger,  have  pointed  out  again  and  again,  that  lan- 
guage is  the  embodiment  of  mind,  the  nature,  so 
to  say,  of  mind,  the  subjective  universe  in  which 
the  whole  objective  universe  is  reflected,  per- 
ceived, imaged,  and  conceived.  Here  is  the 
realm  of  mental  science,  here  are  materials,  as 
real  as  any  that  physical  science  has  to  deal 
with.  Nor  have  we  only  the  surface,  the  living 
language  of  the  day,  in  which  to  study  the  rem- 
nants of  that  unbroken  series  of  growth  which 
begins  with  the  first  conscious  sensation.  We 
possess  in  the  so-called  dead  languages  petrifac- 
tions of  former  stages  of  growth,  and  in  the 
many  families  of  human  speech  a  wealth  of  form 
comparable  only  to  the  numberless  forms  of 
vegetable  and  animal  life  which  overwhelm  the 
student  of  objective  Nature.  The  evolution  of 
sensation,  therefore,  can  be  studied  as  well  as  the 
evolution  of  motion,  viz.,  in  the  enormous  wealth 
of  language.  The  history  of  the  human  mind  is 
the  history  of  language  ;  the  true  philosophy  of 
the  human  mind — true,  because  resting  on  facts 
— is  the  philosophy  of  language. 

I  quote  from  Noire  ("  Einleitung,"  p.  213) : 

"  How  could  such  a  new  creation  as  we  have  in 
reason  spring  from  antecedent  and  less  perfect 
forms  ?  How  could  what  is  rational  and  thinking 
proceed  from  what  is  without  reason  and  without 
speech  \ 

"  If  we  want  to  know  the  means  by  which  hu- 
man reason  worked  its  way  from  small  beginnings 
to  always-increasing  clearness  with  reference  to 
the  qualities  of  things,  and  always  higher  self- 
consciousness,  this  can  be  done  historically  only, 
by  investigating  the  regular  development  of  the 
conceptual  contents  of  words,  which,  without  such 
contents,  are  empty  sound.  Concepts,  as  Geiger 
shows,  determine  each  other  in  their  genesis,  so 
that  not  every  one  could  spring  accidentally  from 
every  other,  but  certain  concepts  only  from  certain 
concepts,  according  to  rule.  While  there  can  be 
no  science  to  determine  the  connection  between 
concept  and  sound,  a  scientific  method  must  be 
found,  following  the  development  of  concepts, 
without  reference  to  their  phonetic  forms  ;  and  in 


OX  THE  ORIGIN  OF  REASON. 


54' 


the  same  manner  the  development  of  phonetic 
forms,  without  reference  to  their  meanings.  We 
must  try  to  find  the  empirical  laws  according  to 
which  concepts  can  be  concatenated,  laws  which 
alone  enable  us  to  judge  of  real  relationship  of 
ideas,  as  phonetic  laws  of  real  relationship  of 
sounds.  Thus  only  shall  we  gain  an  insight  into 
the  nature  of  reason,  and  be  enabled  to  ascribe  to 
it  that  certainty  which  consists  in  a  knowledge  of 
a  necessity  determined  by  law." 

Let  us  see  now  how  Noire  works  out  this  new 
discovery.  What  he  takes  as  granted  on  the 
subjective  side  of  his  philosophy  is  sensation, 
corresponding  to  motion.  Thai  sensation,  how- 
ever, is  something  different  from  what  we  have 
made  it,  by  separating  from  it  in  language  what 
in  reality  can  never  be  separated  from  it,  viz., 
some  kind  of  self-conscious  thought.  Even  the 
faintest  shiver  is  pervaded  by  something  which 
we  must  accustom  ourselves  to  call  thought. 
The  fact  is,  we  suffer  from  the  abundance  of 
terms  which  have  been  created  to  signify  the 
various  manifestations  of  sensation  as  well  as 
the  faculties  corresponding  to  them,  and  which, 
from  being  used  loosely,  have  encroached  on 
each  other  to  that  extent  that  it  is  almost  im- 
possible now  to  disentangle  them.  It  would  be 
the  greatest  benefit  to  mental  science  if  all  such 
words  as  perception,  intuition,  remembering, 
ideas,  conception,  thought,  cognition,  senses, 
mind,  intellect,  reason,  soul,  spirit,  etc.,  could 
for  a  time  be  struck  out  of  our  philosophical  dic- 
tionaries, and  not  be  admitted  again  until  they 
had  undergone  a  thorough  purification.  Sensa- 
tion, then,  in  the  sense  in  which  Noire  uses  it,  so 
far  from  being  the  lowest  degree  only  of  mental 
activity — so  far  from  being  what  is  most  easy  to 
understand  and  what  would  seem  to  require  no 
explanation  at  all — is  really  the  most  mysterious 
act,  the  act  which  we  can  explain  by  no  other,  of 
which  there  is  no  simile  or  metaphor  anywhere. 
Like  motion,  sensation  will  always  remain  an  ul- 
timate fact — a  ne  phis  ultra  of  human  philosophy. 
French  philosophers  imagined  that  by  their  tenet 
of  Penser  <Pest  sentir  they  were  degrading  thought, 
and  such  had  been  the  influence  of  fashion  that  j 
few  only  at  the  time  could  see  that  sensation, 
being  at  all  events  the  indispensable  antecedent 
of  thought,  was  in  no  way  a  viler  function,  but 
had  a  perfect  right  to  claim  precedence  of 
thought.  The  French  tenet  became  faulty  only 
because  Condillac  and  his  school  took  sentir  in 
its  unnaturally  restricted  sense.  They  had  pre- 
viously taken  out  of  sentir  all  that  is  penser,  and 
then  thought  they  could  startle  the  world,  like  a 


juggler,  by  showing  that  the  bird  was  still  to  be 
found  in  the  empty  egg-shell.  Give  u^  sensation, 
such  as  it  really  is,  not  such  as  it  has  been  imag- 
ined to  be  for  logical  purposes,  as  something 
distinct  from  thought,  but  impregnated  with 
thought,  and  everything  in  the  human  mind 
becomes  intelligible,  and  penser  may  as  truly  be 
said  to  be  sentir  as  the  oak-tree  is  the  acorn. 

But  then  it  has  been  asked :  "  Is  there  no 
such  thing  as  mind,  soul,  reason,  intellect,  etc.  ? 
Is  not  the  soul  a  simple  substance  ?  Is  not  rea- 
son a  special  gift  ?  "  Such  is  the  influence  of 
words  on  thought,  that  as  soon  as  we  throw  away 
a  word,  or  attempt  to  define  its  meaning,  every- 
body thinks  he  is  being  robbed.  But  the  sun 
rises  just  the  same,  though  we  say  now  that  it 
does  not  rise ;  the  moon  has  not  been  minished, 
though  for  thousands  of  years  she  has  been  told 
that  she  is  waning;  and  all  our  mental  life  will 
remain  just  the  same,  though  we  deny  that  reason 
has  any  independent  substantive  existence.  All 
the  various  shades  of  sensation  from  the  first  to 
the  last  were  doubtlessly  distinguished  and  named 
for  some  very  useful  purpose.  The  mischief  was, 
that  there  were  too  many  distinctions  to  remain 
distinct,  and  that,  as  usual,  what  was  meant  as  an 
adjective  was  soon  changed  into  a  substantive. 
Perception,  intuition,  remembering,  ideas,  con- 
ception, thought,  cognition — all  these  exist  as 
modes  or  developments  of  sensation,  but  sensa- 
tion itself  exists  only  as  a  quality  of  the  monon, 
and  therefore  neither  mind,  nor  intellect,  nor 
reason,  nor  soul,  nor  spirit,  being  all  modes  or 
products  of  sensation,  can  claim  any  substantive 
existence  beyond  what  they  derive  through  sen- 
sation from  the  monon.  To  speak  of  reason  as  a 
thing  by  itself,  as  even  'Kant  does,  is  simply 
philosophical  mythology ;  to  speak  of  mind,  in-» 
tellect,  reason,  soul,  or  spirit,  as  so  many  inde- 
pendent beings,  with  limits  not  very  sharply  de- 
fined, yet  each  differing  from  the  other,  is  neither 
more  nor  less  than  philosophical  polytheism.  A 
man  is  not,  however,  an  atheist  because  he  does 
not  believe  in  Aphrodite  as  a  goddess  ;  nor  is  a 
philosopher  to  be  called  hard  names  because  he 
does  not  believe  in  mind,  intellect,  reason,  soul, 
or  spirit,  as  so  many  independent  substances,  or 
powers,  or  faculties,  or  goddesses. 

Noire  sees  all  this  quite  clearly  in  some  parts 
of  his  works ;  but  at  other  times  he  seems  still 
under  the  sway  of  the  old  philosophical  theogony. 
Thus  he  sometimes  identifies  himself  with  Geiger, 
whose  words  he  quotes  on  the  title-page  of  his 
text-book  :  "  Language  has  created  Reason;  before 
there  was  Language,  man  was  without  Reason." 


548 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


I  do  not  object  to  this  statement  so  long  as  it  is 
only  meant  as  a  protest  against  the  received 
opinion  that  language  is  the  handiwork  of  rea- 
son ;  that  man,  because  he  was  possessed  of  rea- 
son, was  able  to  frame  for  himself  and  others  an 
instrument  of  communication  in  language.  Gei- 
ger's  words  convey  much  truth,  as  calling  atten- 
tion to  the  fact  that  it  is  reason  rather  which  was 
built  up  by  language  than  language  by  reason. 
But  what  is  reason  without  language?  What 
shall  we  think  of  language  without  reason  ? 
When  we  say  that  language  has  been  built  up 
by  reason,  it  is  the  same  as  when  we  say  that 
a  living  body  is  built  up  by  a  vital  force.  Rea- 
son, like  vital  force,  is  a  result  which  we  sub- 
stantiate and  change  into  a  cause.  With  every 
new  word  there  is  more  reason,  and  every  prog- 
ress of  reason  is  marked  by  a  new  word.  The 
growth  of  reason  and  language  is  coral-like. 
Each  shell  is  the  product  of  life,  but  becomes  in 
turn  the  support  of  new  life.  In  the  same  man- 
ner each  word  is  the  product  of  reason,  but  be- 
comes in  turn  a  new  step  in  the  growth  of  reason. 
Reason  and  language,  if  we  must  separate  them 
for  our  own  purposes,  are  always  held  together 
in  mutual  dependence ;  and  if  we  wish  to  arrive 
at  a  true  understanding  of  their  nature,  all  we 
can  do  is  to  break  up  the  two  words  and  knead 
them  into  one,  viz.,  Logos.  Then  and  then  only 
shall  we  see  that  reason  by  itself  and  language 
by  itself  are  nonentities,  and  that  they  are  in 
reality  two  sides  of  one  act  which  cannot  be  torn 
asunder. 

"  Then  what  is  Logos  ?  "  it  will  be  said.  "  Is 
that  term  clearer  than  language  and  reason  ?  Are 
we  not  simply  placing  one  idol  in  the  place  of 
two  ?  "  I  believe  not!  Logos  is  the  act  of  the 
monon,  freeing  itself,  by  means  of  signs,  from  the 
oppressive  weight  of  sensations.  Logos  is  what 
its  name  signifies,  the  act  of  collecting,  arranging, 
classifying;  and  this  act  is  performed  by  signs, 
and  chiefly  by  words. 

PERCEPTS   AND   CONCEPTS. 

In  order  to  understand  this  process  of  gather- 
ing and  naming,  we  must  go  back  to  where  we 
left  the  stream  of  the  philosophy  of  language,  and 
chiefly  to  Locke's  observation  that  words  are  the 
signs  of  concepts,  confirmed  as  it  was  by  the  later 
discoveries  of  Comparative  Philology,  that  all 
words  are  derived  from  roots,  and  that  roots  ex- 
press general  concepts.  If  that  is  so — and  no 
one  doubts  it — then  the  question  recurs,  "  How 
does  sensation,  which  deals  with  percepts  only, 
arrive  at  concepts,  and  how  can  concepts  be  ex- 


pressed by  vocal  sounds  ?  "  Our  chief  difficulties 
here  too  are  again  created  by  language.  Nothing 
is  more  useful  than  the  distinction  between  per- 
cepts and  concepts,  yet  the  line  which  separates 
them  from  each  other,  like  that  which  separates 
sensation  from  reason,  is  by  no  means  so  sharp 
as  we  imagine.  Instead  of  saying  that  we  can- 
not think  in  sight  nor  see  in  thought,  I  should 
say,  on  the  contrary,  that  we  never  really  see 
without  thought,  and  never  really  think  without 
sight.  There  is  no  percept  which,  if  we  examine 
it  closely,  does  not  participate  more  or  less  in  the 
nature  of  a  concept,  nor  is  a  concept  possible 
except  on  the  ruins  of  percepts.  We  hardly 
ever  take  in  a  thing  as  a  whole.  When  we  look 
at  a  poppy,  we  see  its  red  color,  and  perhaps,  to 
make  quito  sure,  the  shape  of  its  leaves;  but 
then  we  have  done.  We  have  here  a  percept 
which,  on  account  of  its  very  incompleteness, 
represents  the  first  step  toward  a  concept. 
From  these  imperfect  percepts  still  more  drops 
away  when  the  immediate  impression  ceases.  I 
call  this  a  kind  of  involuntary  abstraction,  I 
might  also  call  it  memory.  Much  difficulty  has 
been  raised  about  the  so-called  faculty  of  mem- 
ory, but  the  truth  is,  that  the  real  problem  to  be 
solved  does  not  lie  in  our  remembering,  but  in 
our  forgetting.  If  no  force  is  ever  lost,  why 
should  the  force  of  our  sensations  ever  become 
less  vivid  ?  The  right  answer  is  that  their  force 
is  never  lost,  but  determined  only  by  new  forces, 
and  in  the  end  changed  into  those  faint  and  more 
general  sensations  which  we  call  memory.  These 
remembered  sensations  lead  us  another  step 
nearer  toward  concepts.  In  one  sense  concepts 
may  be  called  higher  than  percepts,  and  they  cer- 
tainly constitute,  as  all  true  philosophers  have 
seen,  the  chief  difference  between  man  and  brute. 
But  from  another  point  of  view  concepts  are  low- 
er, less  vivid,  less  clear  and  accurate  than  per- 
cepts, and  they  certainly  constitute  the  chief 
source  of  our  errors.  Kant  says  that  concepts 
without  percepts  are  empty,  percepts  .  without 
concepts  blind;  it  would  perhaps  be  truer  to 
say  that  concepts  and  percepts  are  inseparable ; 
and  if  torn  asunder,  they  are  nothing. 

HOW    ARE    CONCEPTS    NAMED? 

The  process  by  which  percepts  are  constantly 
being  changed  into  concepts  is  by  no  means  uni- 
form, but  admits  of  endless  variety.  *  What  con- 
cerns us,  however,  at  present,  is  not  so  much  the 
formation  of  concepts,  as  the  process  by  which  a 
concept  can  be  fixed  and  named.  We  may  un- 
derstand how  the  faint  recollection  of  the  red 


ON  THE  ORIGIN  OF  REASON. 


549 


color  of  the  poppy,  separated  from  everything 
else,  particularly  after  it  has  been  strengthened 
by  the  red  color  of  other  flowers,  of  birds,  of 
blood,  or  of  the  sunset,  becomes  in  the  fullest 
sense  of  the  word  a  concept.  But  while  we  can 
point  to  the  flower,  the  bird,  and  the  red  sky,  we 
never  can  point  to  the  red  as  such,  apart  from 
the  things  to  which  it  belongs.  Unless,  there- 
fore, we  have  signs  to  assist  our  memory  in  the 
retention  of  concepts,  they  would  vanish  almost 
as  soon  as  they  have  risen.  This  is  not  a  merely 
theoretic  difficulty,  but  it  must  have  been  felt  as 
a  very  serious  practical  difficulty,  from  the  first 
beginnings  of  civilized  life.  How  to  distinguish 
blood  from  water,  except  through  the  concept  of 
red,  and  through  some  sign  for  red  ? 

It  is  the  object  of  Prof.  Noire's  last  book  to 
give  an  answer  to  this  question,  "  How  are  con- 
cepts framed  and  named  ?  "  That  language  does 
not  begin  with  mere  sensation,  that  man  never 
attempted  to  name  a  single  subject  in  its  com- 
pleteness, he  takes  for  granted,  for  the  single 
reason  that  it  is  a  superhuman  task.  Try  to 
name  a  whole  oak,  and  you  will  find  that  lan- 
guage cannot  even  get  near  it.  All  names  are 
made  from  roots,  all  roots  are  signs  of  concepts. 
Bring  the  oak  under  a  concept,  under  the  con- 
cept of  eating,  for  instance,  and  you  can  name  it, 
as  it  was  named  <pr\y6s,  the  eaten  tree,  the  food- 
tree,  par  excellence ;  but  not  otherwise.  I  be- 
lieve, however,  that  one  class  of  roots  has  here 
been  overlooked,  and  must  indeed  be  ascribed  to 
the  purely  perceptive  phase  of  the  human  mind, 
viz.,  the  demonstrative  or  pronominal  as  opposed 
to  the  predicative  roots.  Those  sounds  which 
simply  point  to  an  object — this,  that,  I,  thou,  he, 
etc. — are  in  their  most  primitive  form  purely 
sensational.  They  are  few  in  number,  but  they 
are  made  to  render  the  greatest  service  in  the 
later  formation  of  words. 

With  the  exception  of  this  small  class  of 
roots,  however,  Prof.  Noire  is  certainly  right  that 
all  roots  are  signs  of  concepts.  We  may  take 
any  word  we  choose,  it  will  invariably  lead  us 
back  in  the  beginning,  not  to  a  single  sensation, 
but  to  a  concept.  A  book  is  originally  what  was 
made  of  beech.  The  English  beech,  the  Latin 
fagus,  the  Greek  (pt)y6s,  oak,  were  all  so  called 
from  the  root  <pay,  to  feed,  to  eat ;  that  is  to  say, 
the  tree  was  conceived  as  giving  food  to  cattle, 
whether  acorns  or  beech-nuts.  But  even  <pay,  to 
eat,  is  a  secondary  root,  and  may  be  traced  back 
to  the  Sanskrit  root  bhag,  which  has  preserved 
the  more  general  meaning  of  dividing. 

Wool,  vellus,  Zp-wv,  Sanskrit  urna,  all  come 


from  a  root  var,  to  cover.  A  horse  was  called 
equus,  Sanskrit  asva,  the  swift,  from  a  root  a*,  to 
be  sharp  and  quick ;  while  the  cow,  in  contradis- 
tinction to  the  runner  or  the  horse,  was  called 
fiovs,  Sanskrit  gaus,  from  a  root  bd  or  gd,  to  go, 
to  move  slowly.  We  may  tap  language  wherever 
we  like,  the  sap  that  runs  from  its  veins  is  always 
conceptual. 

We  saw  before  how  concepts  arose ;  we  also 
saw  why  it  was  necessary  that  concepts  should 
have  signs.  They  would  have  vanished  without 
signs,  and  it  was  desirable  that  they  should  not 
vanish.  The  question  that  remains  to  be  answered 
is,  how  concepts  were  expressed  in  sounds. 

THE    INTERACTIONAL    AND    MIMETIC    THEORIES. 

The  most  common  theories  hitherto  advocated 
on  that  point  have  been  the  inter jectional  and  the 
mimetic,  or,  as  they  have  also  been  called,  when 
misapplied  to  etymological  purposes,  the  Pooh- 
pooh  and  Bow-wow  theories.  According  to  the 
former,  roots  are  derived  from  involuntary  excla- 
mations forced  out  by  powerful  impressions. 
According  to  the  latter,  they  are  formed  from 
imitations  of  natural  sounds,  such  as  the  barking 
of  dogs,  the  lowing  of  cows,  etc.  In  my  lectures 
on  Mr.  Darwin's  "Philosophy  of  Language,"  I 
tried  to  explain  how,  with  certain  modifications, 
both  of  these  theories  could  be  defended,  not  in- 
deed as  supplying  actual  roots,  still  less  actual 
words,  but  as  furnishing  the  materials  out  of 
which  roots  might  be  formed.  Yet  the  arguments 
against  this  theory  of  mine  are  powerful.  It  is 
perfectly  true,  as  Prof.  Noire  points  out,  that  the 
simplest  sensations  which,  we  should  think,  might 
be  expressed  by  interjections,  are  never  so  ex- 
pressed, but  are  reached  by  language  in  the  most 
circuitous  way.  To  hunger  and  to  thirst  are  two 
very  primitive  sensations ;  but  have  they  been 
expressed  interjectionally  ? 

The  word  hunger  is  as  yet  without  any  ety. 
mology ;  it  may  possibly  be  connected  with  San- 
skrit kars,  to  dwindle  away ;  krisa,  lean,  lank ; 
the  German  hager.  The  Latin  esurio,  derived 
from  edo,  means  I  wish  to  eat.  The  same  mean- 
ing we  find  in  the  Sanskrit  asanayati,  to  desire 
food.  The  Greek  ireiva,  hunger,  is  connected 
with  ir6vos,  labor,  irei/opai,  I  labor,  I  strive,  I 
reach  after  food ;  the  original  conception  being 
most  likely  what  we  find  in  airda,  to  draw  out, 
the  German  spannen,  to  stretch. 

To  thirst,  Gothic  thaursja,  Sanskrit  trtsh- 
yami,  shows  its  original  conception  in  Greek, 
rtpffoixai,  I  am  dry  ;  Latin,  torreo  ;  Gothic,  thaur- 
sus,  dry.     The  same  root  supplied  material  for 


550 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


terra,  dry  land  ;  tes-ta,  dried  clay,  bowl,  French 
tete;  testudo,  turtle;  probably  for  torrens,  tor- 
rent, torris,  torch,  and  even  for  French  aussitot.1 
This  shows  how  language  works. 

And  with  regard  to  objects  which  might  most 
easily  have  been  named  after  the  sounds  which 
they  utter,  we  find  again  that  generally  they  are 
not  so  named,  while  in  such  words  as  cuckoo, 
cuculus,  Noire  points  out  that  these  are  not 
names,  but  rather  proper  names,  or  nicknames, 
and  that  they  came  in  long  after  the  concept  of 
the  bird  had  been  framed.  Sounds  such  as  bow- 
wow, or  baa  or  moo,  would  remind  us,  he  thinks, 
of  single  objects  only,  and  would  never  be  fit  to 
express  conceptual  thought. 

I  had  tried  to  show,  in  my  lecture  on  Mr.  Dar- 
win's "Philosophy  of  Language,"  how  even  out 
of  such  sounds  the  materials  for  roots  or  phonetic 
types  might  have  been  elaborated,  and  how  in 
the  same  manner  as  various  cries  would  leave  the 
concept  of  crying,  various  sounds,  such  as  baa 
and  moo,  might,  by  mutual  friction,  be  raised  to 
a  root,  containing  the  concept  of  to  cry. 

THE    STMPATHIC    THEORY. 

Prof.  Noire  has  brought  forward  no  argu- 
ments against  this  theory,  but  he  has  started  a 
new  theory,  which,  so  far  as  it  reaches,  supplies 
certainly  a  better  explanation  of  phonetic  types 
and  rational  concepts  than  my  own.  He  points 
out  that  whenever  our  senses  are  excited  and  the 
muscles  hard  at  work,  we  feel  a  kind  of  relief  in 
uttering  sounds.2  He  remarks  that  particularly 
when  people  work  together,  when  peasants  dig 
or  thrash,  when  sailors  row,  when  women  spin, 
when  soldiers  march,  they  are  inclined  to  accom- 
pany their  occupation  with  certain  more  or  less 
vibratory  or  rhythmical  utterances.  These  ut- 
terances, noises,  shouts,  hummings,  songs,  are  a 
kind  of  reaction  against  the  inward  disturbance 
caused  by  muscular  effort.  These  sounds,  he 
thinks,  possess  two  great  advantages.  They  are 
from  the  beginning  signs  of  repeated  acts,  acts 
performed  by  ourselves  and  perceived  by  our- 
selves, but  standing  before  us  and  continuing  in 
our  memory  as  concepts  only.  Every  repeated 
act  can  be  to  us  nothing  but  a  concept,  compre- 
hending the  many  as  one,  and  having  really 
nothing  tangible  corresponding  to  it  in  the  outer 
world.  Here,  therefore,  was  certainly  an  easy 
bridge  from  perception  to  conception.  Secondly, 
as  being  uttered,  not  by  one  solitary  man,  but  by 

1  Breal,  "Melanges,"  p.  318. 

2  This  point  has  been  illustrated  by  Mr.  Darwin  in 
Ms  "Expression  of  the  Emotions,"  chapter  iv. 


men  associated  in  the  same  work,  these  sounds 
have  another  great  advantage  of  being  at  once 
intelligible.  It  cannot  be  denied  that  Noire's 
arguments  in  support  of  his  theory  are  very 
strong,  nor  can  there  be  any  doubt  that,  as  most 
of  our  modern  tools  find  their  primitive  types  in 
cave-dwellings  and  lacustrian  huts,  a  very  large 
portion  of  our  vocabulary  can  be  derived,  and 
has  been  derived,  from  roots  expressive  of  such 
primitive  acts  as  digging,  cutting,  rubbing,  pull- 
ing, striking,  weaving,  rowing,  marching,  etc. 

My  only  doubt  is  whether  we  should  restrict 
ourselves  to  this  one  explanation,  and  whether  a 
river  so  large,  so  broad,  so  deep  as  language  may 
not  have  had  more  than  one  source. 

Human  language  had,  for  instance,  from  a 
very  early  time,  to  express  not  only  acts,  but 
also  states,  or  even  sufferings.  In  fact,  as  Prof. 
Noire  has  himself  shown,  all  the  work  of  our 
senses  admits  of  a  double  application,  an  active 
and  passive  one.  We  listen  actively,  and  we 
hear  passively ;  we  watch  actively,  and  we  per- 
ceive passively ;  we  scent  and  sniff,  and  we  per- 
ceive disagreeable  smells  ;  we  grope,  and  we  feel ; 
we  taste  tentatively,  and  we  taste  something  bit- 
ter, whether  we  like  it  or  not.  Though  in  mod- 
ern languages  these  two  sides  are  often  expressed 
by  one  and  the  same  verb,  the  two  concepts  were 
originally  quite  distinct.  To  hear  was  probably 
to  vibrate,  to  be  moved,  to  be  struck ;  and  the 
root  kru,  or  klu,  which  in  all  the  Aryan  lan- 
guages means  to  hear,  may  have  been  connected 
with  other  roots,  such  as  kru,  to  strike;  krad,  to 
sound.  Where  we  say,  I  hear  the  thunder,  the 
old  expression  might  have  been,  I  tremble,  I 
shake  from  the  thunder.  Hence  the  old  con- 
struction of  such  verbs  with  the  ablative  or  geni- 
tive preserved  in  Sanskrit  or  Greek ;  while  audire 
in  Latin  has  lost  every  trace  of  the  old  concept, 
and  governs  the  general  objective  case.  To  listen 
in  the  active  sense  of  watching,  giving  ear  (aus- 
culto),  might  have  been  expressed  by  a  root  con- 
nected with  the  low,  breathing  sounds  uttered  by 
a  number  of  people  who  are  waiting  together  for 
some  great  event.  Instead  of  this,  we  find  that 
in  Sanskrit  it  is  expressed  by  a  secondary  root, 
srush,  to  hear,  a  kind  of  derivative  from  sru,  to 
hear,  still  present  in  the  English  to  listen,  Anglo- 
Saxon  hlosnian,  hlystan. 

In  some  cases,  again,  Noire's  view  comes  very 
near  the  interjectional  theory.  Whether,  for  in- 
stance, the  root  anh,  to  choke,  should  be  called 
interjectional  or  mimetic,  or  whether,  as  Noire 
would  have  it,  it  was  produced  by  the  sympathy 
of  activity,  will  be  difficult  to  determine.     If 


THE  LAW  OF  LIKENESS,   AND  ITS   WORKING. 


551 


originally  it  was  meant  to  express  the  sense  of 
oppression  and  choking,  it  would  be  due  to  a 
sympathy  of  passivity,  rather  than  activity  ;  and 
a  sound  uttered  from  sympathy  of  passivity  comes 
very  near  to  an  interjectional  or  mimetic  sound. 

Prof.  Noire  has,  I  believe,  struck  a  new  vein, 
but  when  he  comes  to  work  out  his  theory  more 
in  detail,  he  will  probably  find  that  the  prim- 
itive centres  of  force  from  which  the  endless 
rays  of  thought  radiated,  do  not  all  lie  in  the 
same  direction.  Locke  '  remarked,  long  ago,  and 
others  had  done  so  before  him,  that  all  words  ex- 
pressive of  immaterial  ideas  are  derived  from 
words  expressive  of  material  subjects.  "  By 
which,"  as  he  adds,  "  we  may  give  some  kind  of 
guess  what  kind  of  notions  they  were,  and  whence 
derived,  which  filled  their  minds  who  were  the 
first  beginners  of  language."  Nothing  is  more 
likely  than  that  their  daily  occupations  should 
have  supplied  the  first  concepts  through  which 
the  framers  of  language  gradually  laid  hold  of 
everything  that  attracted  their  attention.  If 
they  had  a  word  for  plaiting  or  weaving,  they 
could  derive  from  it  not  only  the  name  of  the 
spider,  but  likewise  of  the  poet  who  weaves  words 
and  thoughts  together.  I  agree  with  Aufrecht 
that  we  should  derive  from  a  root  vabh,  to  spin, 
the  Sanskrit  urnavabhi,  spider,  Greek  $<pos,  web, 
and  v^lvos,  poem,  while  Greek  expressions  such  as 
S6\ovs  Kal  nrjriv  fxvdovs  Ka\  /x7]5ea,  oi/fo5o^juoTa, 
o\&ov,  KTjpbv  xxpalveiv,  show  how  many  branches 
may  spring  from   one  single  stem.     The  same 


root,  in  its  simpler  form,  vap,  gives  us  the  Greek 
ij-Tptov,  warp.  The  roots  vabh,  however,  and  vap 
before  they  came  to  mean  weaving,  meant  throw- 
ing, also  sowing  ;  and  in  an  intransitive  sense, 
even  our  modern  verb  to  wabble,  clearly  onomato- 
poetic,  according  to  Mr.  Wedgwood,  has  been 
traced  back  historically  to  that  root  by  Prof. 
Pott. 

I  fully  agree,  therefore,  with  Noire,  that  the 
primitive  occupations  of  man,  and  the  sounds 
which  accompany  them,  would  supply  ample  ma- 
terials for  carving  out  of  them  a  complete  diction- 
ary. I  also  agree  with  him  that  man  finds  the 
most  natural  metaphors  for  the  expression  of 
natural  phenomena  by  referring  them  to  himself, 
by  looking  upon  them  anthropopathically.  When 
the  color  red  had  to  be  expressed  he  called  it  a 
crying  color,  a  bitter  taste  was  a  biting  taste,  a 
shrill  note  was  a  sharp-cutting  note.  All  this  is 
true,  and  much  more.  But  though  I  willingly 
say  fvpj]Kat  to  Prof.  Noire,  I  still  think  we  ought 
not  to  shut  all  other  doors  that  may  lead  into  the 
dark  passages  of  language,  and  that  we  ought,  in 
our  searchings  after  the  earliest  ramifications  of 
human  thought  and  human  language,  to  guard 
against  nothing  more  than  against  the  arch-enemy 
of  all  truth — dogmatism. 

I  hope  in  a  future  article  to  show  more  in  de- 
tail how  the  gradual  development  both  of  the 
material  and  of  the  framework  of  reason,  the  so- 
called  categories,  may  be  studied  by  means  of  an 
historical  analysis  of  language. 

—  Contemporary  Review. 


THE  LAW  OF  LIKENESS,  AND  ITS  WOEKING. 

By  Dr.  ANDREW  WILSON. 


THAT  the  offspring  should  bear  a  close  re- 
semblance to  the  parent  forms  one  of  the 
most  natural  expectations  of  mankind,  while  the 
converse  strikes  us  as  being  an  infringement  of 
some  universal  law  that  is  not  the  less  recogniz- 
able because  of  its  unwritten  or  mysterious  char- 
acter. "  The  acorn,"  says  a  great  authority  on 
matters  physiological,  "tends  to  build  itself  up 
again  into  a  woodland  giant  such  as  that  from 
whose  twig  it  fell ;  the  spore  of  the  humblest 
lichen  reproduces  the  green  or  brown  incrusta- 
tion which  gave  it  birth  ;  and  at  the  other  end  of 
the  scale  of  life,  the  child  that  resembled  neither 
1  "Lectures  on  the  Science  of  Language,"  ii.,  p.  3T3. 


the  paternal  nor  the  maternal  side  of  the  house 
would  be  regarded  as  a  kind  of  monster."  Thus 
true  is  it  of  the  humblest  as  of  the  highest  being, 
that  the  law  of  likeness  or  "heredity,"  as  it  has 
been  termed,  operates  powerfully  in  moulding  the 
young  into  the  form  and  resemblance  of  the  par- 
ent. But  the  law  that  is  thus  admitted  to  be  so 
universal  in  its  operation  exhibits,  at  the  same 
time,  very  diverse  readings  and  phases.  The 
likeness  of  the  parent  may  be  attained  in  some 
cases,  it  is  true,  in  the  most  direct  manner,  as, 
for  example,  in  the  higher  animals  and  plants, 
where  the  egg  or  germ,  embryo,  and  seed,  become 
transformed  through  a  readily-traced  process  of 


552 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


development  into  the  similitude  of  the  being 
which  gave  it  birth.  So  accustomed  are  we  to 
trace  this  direct  resemblance  between  the  parent 
and  the  young  in  the  higher  animals  and  among 
ourselves,  that  any  infringement  of  the  law  of 
likeness  is  accounted  a  phenomenon  of  unusual 
kind.  Even  extending  to  the  domain  of  mind  as 
well  as  of  body,  we  unconsciously  expect  the  child 
to  exhibit  the  traits  of  character  and  disposition 
which  are  visible  in  its  parents,  and  to  grow  up 
"  the  child  of  its  father  and  mother,"  as  the  ex- 
pression runs,  in  every  phase  of  its  bodily  and 
mental  life. 

A  wider  view  of  the  relations  and  harmonies 
existing  in  Nature,  however,  shows  us  that  this 
direct  development  of  the  young  into  the  simili- 
tude of  its  ancestors  is  by  no  means  of  universal 
occurrence.  Many  forms  attain  the  resemblance 
to  their  progenitors  only  after  passing  through  a 
series  of  changes  or  disguises,  often  of  very  com- 
plicated nature.  And  a  very  slight  acquaintance 
with  the  facts  of  physiology  would  serve  to  show 
that  the  law  of  likeness,  like  most  other  laws 
regulating  the  world  of  life,  has  its  grave  excep- 
tions, and  that  it  exhibits  certain  phases  of  sin- 
gular interest  in  what  may  be  termed  its  abnor- 
mal operation.  The  young  of  an  animal  or  plant 
may,  and  frequently  do,  exhibit  very  remarkable 
variations  from  tbe  parent  in  all  the  characteris- 
tics which  are  associated  with  the  special  nature 
of  the  being.  The  circle  of  repeated  and  perpetu- 
ated likeness  may  thus  be  broken  in  upon  at  any 
point,  and  the  normal  law  of  heredity  may  be  re- 
garded as  occasionally  superseded  in  its  working 
by  the  operation  of  another  law — that  of  varia- 
tion and  divergence.  Forms  unlike  the  parents 
are  thus  -known  to  be  frequently  produced,  and 
these  errant  members  of  the  family  circle  may  be 
shown  to  possess  no  inconsiderable  influence  on 
the  nature  and  constitution  of  the  world  of  life 
at  large.  Family  likeness,  as  every  one  knows, 
lies  at  the  root  at  once  of  the  differences  between, 
and  relationships  of,  living  beings.  The  offspring 
must  resemble  their  parents  and  their  own  kind 
more  closely  than  they  resemble  other  groups, 
else  our  knowledge  of  the  relationship  of  one 
form  to  another  must  be  regarded  as  possessing 
no  sound  basis  whatever.  But  admit  that  the 
young  may  not  resemble  the  parent,  and  a  veri- 
table apple  of  discord  is  at  once  projected  into 
the  apparent  harmonies  of  Nature,  and  dire  con- 
fusion becomes  the  order  of  the  day.  As  will 
be  hereafter  shown,  however,  while  the  law  of 
variation  does  undoubtedly  operate,  and  that  to  a 
very  great  extent,  among  living  beings,  other  and 


compensating  conditions  are  brought  to  light  by 
the  careful  study  of  development  at  large ;  and 
the  old  law  of  like  producing  like  may  be  seen, 
after  all,  to  constitute  the  guiding  principle  of 
Nature  at  large.  As  a  study  of  high  interest,  and 
one  the  elements  of  which  are  afforded  by  our  ob- 
servation of  the  every-day  world,  the  investigation 
of  the  law  of  likeness  may  be  safely  commended 
to  the  seeking  mind.  And  in  the  brief  study  of 
this  law  and  its  operations  we  may  firstly  glance 
at  some  instances  of  development  by  way  of 
illustration,  and  thereafter  try  to  discern  the 
meaning  and  causes  of  similitude  or  heredity. 
"  Rassemblons  des  fails  pour  nous  donner  des 
idees"  says  Buffon,  and  the  advice  is  emi- 
nently appropriate  to  those  who  purpose  to 
enter  upon  a  popular  study  of  an  important 
natural  law. 

One  of  the  simplest  instances  of  development, 
in  which  the  young  are  not  only  transformed  di- 
rectly into  the  likeness  of  the  parent,  but  repre- 
sent in  themselves  essential  parts  of  the  parent- 
body,  is  illustrated  by  the  case  of  the  little  worms 
known  to  the  naturalist  as  Naidides,  and  familiar 
to  all  as  inhabitants  of  our  ditches,  and  as  occur- 
ring in  damp  mud  and  similar  situations.  If  a 
Na'is  be  chopped  into  a  number  of  small  pieces, 
each  piece  will  in  time  develop  a  head  and  tail 
and  become  a  perfect  worm,  differing  in  no  re- 
spect, save  in  that  of  size,  from  the  original  form. 
A  Na'is  cut  into  forty  pieces  was  transformed 
through  the  operation  into  as  many  small  worms 
of  its  own  kind.  Here  the  law  of  likeness  or  he- 
redity operates  in  the  plainest  and  most  direct 
fashion.  The  young  aie  like  the  parent-stock, 
because  they  consist  in  reality  of  detached  por- 
tions of  the  parent's  personality.  The  experi- 
ments of  naturalists  carried  out  on  animals  of 
lower  organization  than  these  worms,  such  as 
the  little  fresh-water  polyp  or  hydra,  show  a  pow- 
er of  artificial  reproduction  which  is  of  literally 
marvelous  extent;  and  all  such  animals  eviuce  at 
onee  the  simplest  mode  of  development  and  the 
plainest  reasons  why  the  young  should  exactly  re- 
semble the  parent.  It  might,  however,  be  alleged 
that  such  artificial  experimentation  was  hardly 
to  be  accepted  as  illustrative  of  natural  develop- 
ment ;  but  in  answer  to  such  an  observation  the 
naturalist  might  show  that  an  exactly  similar 
method  of  reproduction  occurs  spontaneously 
and  naturally  in  the  Na'is  and  in  certain  other 
animals  of  its  class.  A  single  Na'is  has  been  ob- 
served to  consist  of  four  connected  but  distinct 
portions,  the  hinder  three  of  which  had  become 
almost  completely  separated  from    the  original 


THE  LA  W  OF  LIKENESS,   AND  ITS   WORKING. 


553 


body  —  represented  by  the  front  segment.  A 
new  head,  eyes,  and  appendages,  could  be  traced 
in  course  of  formation  upon  the  front  extremity 
of  each  of  the  new  segments ;  and,  as  development 
terminated,  each  portion  could  be  seen  to  gradu- 
ally detach  itself  from  its  neighbors ;  the  original 
worm  thus  resolving  itself  into  four  new  individ- 
uals. The  most  curious  feature  regarding  this 
method  of  development  consists  in  the  fact  that 
the  bodies  of  these  worms  and  of  nearly-related 
animals  grow  by  new  joints  being  added  between 
the  originally-formed  segments  and  the  tail.  If, 
therefore,  we  suppose  that  one  of  these  new  joints 
occasionally  develops  into  a  head,  we  can  form 
an  idea  of  the  manner  in  which  a  process,  origi- 
nally intended  to  increase  the  growth  of  one  and 
a  single  worm,  becomes  competent  to  evolve  new 
individuals,  each  of  which  essentially  resembles 
the  parent  in  all  particulars. 

The  great  Harvey,  whose  researches  on  ani- 
mal development  may  be  regarded  as  having 
laid  the  foundation  of  modern  ideas  regarding 
that  process,  adopted  as  his  physiological  motto 
the  expression,  omne  animal  ex  ovo.  While  it  is 
undoubtedly  true  that  the  egg,  or  ovum,  must  be 
regarded  as  the  essential  beginning  and  type  of 
development  in  animals,  we  note  that,  as  in  Na'is, 
the  production  of  new  beings  is  not  solely  de- 
pendent on  the  presence  of  that  structure.  Just 
as  plants  are  propagated  by  slips  and  cuttings, 
so  animals  may  be  developed  from  shoots  or  spe- 
cially detached  portions  of  the  parent-body.  And 
it  is  in  the  development  of  the  egg,  or  in  the 
course  of  what  may  be  regarded  as  the  most 
regular  and  defined  stages  of  that  process,  that 
the  exceptions  to  the  law  of  likeness  are  most 
frequently  met  with.  One  of  the  most  remark- 
able deviations  from  the  normal  law  of  devel- 
opment is  seen  in  the  case  of  the  little  aphides, 
or  plant-lice,  the  insect  so  familiar  to  all  as  the 
pests  of  the  gardener.  At  the  close  of  the  au- 
tumn season,  winged  males  and  females  of  these 
insects  appear  among  their  "neighbor  aphides, 
and  these  produce  eggs,  which,  however,  lie  dor- 
mant throughout  the  winter.  Waking  into  life 
and  development  with  the  returning  spring,  these 
eggs  give  birth  each  to  a  wingless  female  ;  no  in- 
sect of  the  sterner  sex  being  found  among  the 
developed  progeny  of  these  insects.  The  pres- 
ence of  both  sexes  is  throughout  the  animal 
world  regarded  as  necessary  for  the  production 
of  eggs  capable  of  developing  into  offspring. 
Strangely  enough,  however,  these  wingless  fe- 
males not  only  produce  eggs,  hatching  them 
within   their  bodies,  but  the  eggs  develop  into 


beings  exactly  resembling  themselves,  not  a  sin- 
gle male  aphis  being  represented  within  the 
limits  of  this  Amazonian  population.  Seven, 
eight,  nine,  or  even  eleven  generations  of  these 
wingless  females  may  be  produced  in  this  man- 
ner, and  the  swarms  of  plant-lice  which  infest 
our  vegetation  attest  the  fertility  of  the  race. 
But  in  the  last  brood  of  these  insects,  produced 
toward  the  close  of  autumn,  winged  males  appear 
in  addition  to  the  females,  which  latter  also  pos- 
sess wings.  The  members  of  this  last  brood 
produce  eggs  of  ordinary  nature,  which  lie  dor- 
mant during  the  winter,  but  which  in  the  suc- 
ceeding spring  will  inaugurate  the  same  strange 
life  -  history  through  which  their  progenitors 
passed.  The  case  of  the  plant-lice  may  for  the 
present  be  dismissed  with  the  observation  that 
the  law  of  heredity  appears  to  operate  in  this 
instance  in  a  somewhat  abnormal,  or,  at  any 
rate,  in  a  very  unusual  manner.  The  true  simili- 
tude of  the  winged  parents  is  not  attained  until 
after  the  lapse  of  months,  and  through  the  inter- 
ference, as  it  were,  of  many  generations  of  dis- 
similar individuals  ;  while  no  less  worthy  of  re- 
mark is  the  circumstance  that  one  sex  alone  is 
capable  of  giving  origin  to  new  beings,  which 
sooner  or  later  produce  in  turn  the  natural  dual- 
ity of  sex,  forming  the  rule  of  both  animal  and 
plant  creation.  And  the  case  of  the  plant -lice  is 
rendered  the  more  remarkable  by  the  considera- 
tion that  of  58,000  eggs  laid  by  female  silk-moths 
which  were  separated  from  the  opposite  sex,  only 
twenty-nine  developed  into  perfect  caterpillars — 
the  female  plant-lice  possessing  a  fertility  under 
like  circumstances  which  would  be  amazing  even 
if  taking  place  under  the  normal  laws  and  con- 
ditions of  development. 

Cases  of  the  unusual  development  of  ani- 
mals, which  serve  as  parallel  instances  to  the 
case  of  the  plant-lice,  are  by  no  means  rare. 
Thus  in  the  case  of  the  starfishes,  sea-urchins, 
and  their  neighbors,  the  egg  gives  origin  to  a 
free-swimming,  active  body,  which  develops  a 
structure  of  its  own,  and  appears  in  a  fair  way 
to  become,  as  might  bo  expected,  the  future 
starfish.  But  within  the  body  of  this  first  em- 
bryo another  formation  is  seen  to  take  place ; 
and  sooner  or  later  this  secondary  development 
comes  to  assume  priority,  and  appears  as  the 
true  and  veritable  representative  of  the  young 
starfish  —  the  primitive  body  or  embryo  which 
produced  it  being  either  absorbed  into  its  sub- 
stance, or  cast  off  on  development  being  fully 
attained  and  completed.  The  production  of  the 
second  starfish,  as  it  were,  out  of  a  first-formed 


554 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


embryo,  is  paralleled  by  the  curious  case  of  a  i 
certain  kind  of  gall-flies  (Cccidomyia),  within  the 
larvae  or  caterpillars  of  which  other  young  or 
larvae  are  produced.  The  present  case  partakes 
thus  of  the  nature  of  a  strikiug  exception  to 
the  ordinary  laws  of  development,  seeing  that  a 
young  and  immature  form  possesses  the  power 
of  producing  other  beings,  immature  like  itself, 
no  doubt,  but  capable  of  ultimate  development 
into  true  flies.  In  other  words,  heredity,  or  the 
power  of  like  producing  like,  which  ordinary 
observation  demonstrates  to  occur  usually  in  the 
mature  and  adult  being,  is  here  witnessed  occur- 
ring in  the  young  and  imperfect  form. 

Certain  very  typical  but  more  complicated 
cases  of  animal  development  than  the  preceding 
instances  are  witnessed  in  the  reproduction  of 
those  curious  animal-colonies  collectively  named 
"zoophytes."  Any  common  zoophyte,  such  as 
we  may  find  cast  up  on  our  coasts  or  growing 
attached  to  the  fronds  of  tangle,  is  found  to  con- 
sist of  a  plant-like  organism,  which,  however, 
instead  of  leaves  or  flowers,  bears  numerous  lit- 
tle animals  of  similar  kind,  connected  together 
so  as  to  form  a  veritable  colony.  Each  of  the 
little  members  of  this  colony  possesses  a  mouth, 
surrounded  by  arms  or  tentacles,  and  a  little 
body-cavity  in  which  food  is  digested ;  and  it 
may  be  noted  that  each  member  of  the  colony 
contributes  to  form  the  store  of  nourishment  on 
which  all  the  members,  including  itself,  in  turn 
depend  for  sustenance.  Such  a  veritable  animal- 
tree,  growing  rooted  and  fixed  to  some  object, 
increases  by  a  veritable  process  of  "budding." 
As  the  animal-buds  die  and  fall  off,  new  buds 
aie  thrown  out  and  developed  to  supply  the 
place  of  the  lost  members;  the  zoophyte,  like 
the  tree,  renewing  its  parts  according  to  the 
strict  law  of  heredity,  and  each  new  member  of 
the  colony  bearing  as  close  a  likeness  to  the  ex- 
isting members  as  that  borne  by  the  one  leaf 
of  a  tree  to  its  neighbor-leaves.  But,  as  the 
tree  sooner  or  later  produces  flowers  which  are 
destined  to  furnish  the  seeds  from  which  new 
trees  may  spring,  so  the  zoophyte  in  due  time 
produces  animal-buds  of  a  kind  differing  widely 
from  the  ordinary  units  which  enter  into  its 
composition.  These  varying  buds,  in  very  many 
cases,  appear  in  the  likeness  of  bell-shaped  or- 
ganisms, and,  when  they  detach  themselves  from 
the  zoophyte-tree  and  swim  freely  in  the  sur- 
rounding water,  we  recognize  in  each  wandering 
bud  a  strange  likeness  to  the  familiar  Medusae 
or  jelly-fishes,  which  swarm  in  the  summer  seas 
around  our  coasts.     Living  thus  apart  from  the 


zoophyte-parent,  these  medusa-buds  may  pass 
weeks  or  months  in  an  independent  existence. 
Ultimately,  however,  they  develop  eggs,  and  with 
the  production  of  the  eggs  the  clear,  elegant, 
glassy  bodies  undergo  dissolution,  and  vanish 
away  amid  the  waters,  to  which,  in  the  delicacy 
of  their  structure,  they  presented  so  close  a  re- 
semblance. From  each  egg  of  the  jelly-fish-bud 
there  is  gradually  developed,  not  a  medusa,  but 
a  zoophyte.  The  egg,  in  fact,  develops  a  single 
bud  of  the  zoophyte,  and  this  primitive  bud,  by 
a  process  of  continuous  budding,  at  last  produces 
the  connected,  tree-like  form  with  which  the  life- 
history  began.  Thus  the  zoophyte  is  seen  to  give 
origin  to  a  jelly-fish,  and  the  jelly-fish  in  turn  re- 
produces the  form  of  the  zoophyte — one  genera- 
tion of  animals,  as  the  older  naturalists  believed, 
"  alternating  "  in  this  way  with  another. 

The  law  of  likeness  would  at  first  sight  seem 
to  be  ill-adapted,  in  virtue  of  its  essential  nature, 
to  explain  the  cause  of  an  animal,  such  as  the 
zoophyte,  producing  an  entirely  different  being, 
represented  in  the  present  instance  by  the  jelly- 
fish-bud ;  and  it  might  appear  to  be  equally  inex- 
plicable that  the  progeny  of  the  jelly-fish  should 
revert  to  the  zoophyte  stock  and  likeness.  The 
case  of  those  curious  oceanic  organisms,  allied  to 
the  "  sea-squirts,"  and  known  as  Salpce,  presented 
to  the  zoologists  of  former  years  phenomena  of 
an  equally  abstruse  kind.  The  salpae  are  met 
with  floating  on  the  surface  of  the  ocean  in  two 
distinct  forms.  One  form  exists  in  the  shape  of 
a  long,  connected  "  chain  "  of  individuals,  while 
the  other  form  is  represented  by  single  salpae. 
It  was,  however,  ascertained  that  these  two  va- 
rieties were  linked  together  in  a  singularly  inti- 
mate manner  by  their  development.  The  chain- 
salpae  were  found  to  produce  each  a  single  egg, 
which  developed  into  a  single  salpa ;  and  the 
latter,  conversely,  produced  each  a  long  "  chain  " 
of  individuals  —  the  one  variety,  in  fact,  repro- 
ducing the  other.  The  apparently  mutual  devel- 
opment of  the  zoophyte  and  the  jelly-fish,  and  of 
the  chain  and  single  salpa,  is,  however,  explica- 
ble, as  far  as  its  exact  nature  goes,  on  other 
grounds  than  those  on  which  the  naturalists  of 
former  years  accounted  for  the  phenomena.  The 
jelly-fish  is  not  ad  istinct  animal  from  the  zoophyte, 
but  merely  one  of  its  modified  buds,  produced, 
like  the  other  parts  of  the  animal-tree,  by  a  pro- 
cess of  budding,  and  destined  for  a  special  end — 
that  of  the  development  of  eggs.  The  latter  il- 
lustrate the  law  of  heredity  because  they  are  to 
be  regarded  as  having  been  essentially  and  truly 
produced  by  the  zoophyte,  into  the  form  of  which 


THE  LA  W  OF  LIKENESS,   AND  ITS   WORKING. 


555 


each  egg  directly  develops.  And  similarly  with 
the  salpse.  The  chain-salpa  may  be  regarded  as 
corresponding  to  the  zoophyte,  each  individual 
of  the  chain  producing  an  egg,  which  develops 
again  into  a  chain-salpa,  through  the  medium  of 
the  single  and  unconnected  form. 

To  a  still  greater  extent  in  insects  and  some 
crustaceans — such  as  barnacles,  etc. — may  the 
process  of  development  be  complicated  and  ex- 
tended. The  egg  of  the  butterfly  gives  origin, 
not  to  the  aerial  winged  insect,  but  to  the  mun- 
dane caterpillar,  which,  after  passing  an  existence 
devoted  solely  to  the  work  of  nourishing  its  body, 
envelops  that  body  in  a  cocoon  and  becomes  the 
chrysalis  ;  finally  appearing  from  this  latter  in- 
vestment as  the  winged  and  mature  form.  In 
the  case  of  all  insects  which,  like  the  butterfly, 
pass  through  a  metamorphosis,  as  the  series  of 
changes  is  named,  the  law  of  likeness  appears  to 
be  protracted,  and  its  terms  somewhat  evaded  or 
extended.  The  egg,  in  other  words,  develops 
into  the  mature  form  only  after  passing  through 
an  extended  development,  and  evolves  the  simili- 
tude of  the  parent-form  through  certain  interme- 
diate stages  of  well-marked  kind.  And  so,  also, 
with  the  well-known  barnacles  which  attach  them- 
selves to  the  sides  of  the  ships  and  to  floating 
timber.  The  young  barnacle  appears  as  an  ac- 
tive little  creature,  possessing  limbs  adapted  for 
swimming,  along  with  feelers,  eyes,  and  other 
appendages.  Ultimately,  the  embryo  barnacle 
forms  its  shell,  loses  its  limbs  and  eyes,  attaches 
itself  by  its  feelers  to  some  fixed  object,  develops 
its  flexible  stalk,  and  passes  the  remainder  of  its 
existence  in  a  fixed  and  rooted  condition.  The 
development  in  this  latter  case,  although  in  due 
time  producing  the  likeness  of  the  parent,  clearly 
leads  to  a  state  of  life  of  much  lower  character, 
and  to  a  structure  of  humbler  grade,  compared 
with  the  life  and  organization  of  the  young  bar- 
nacle. The  invariable  law  of  heredity  in  the  va- 
rious examples  detailed  is  thus  seen  to  operate 
sometimes  in  clear  and  definite  manner,  convert- 
ing the  offspring  into  the  likeness  of  the  parent 
directly,  and  with  but  little  change,  save  that  in- 
volved in  the  process  of  growth,  into  the  parent- 
form.  In  other  cases,  the  operation  of  the  law  is 
carried  out  through  an  extended  and  often  com- 
plicated process  of  development ;  and  the  obser- 
vation of  the  manifold  variations  which  the  work- 
ing of  the  law  exhibits,  adds  but  another  to  the 
many  proofs  of  the  inherent  plasticity  of  Nature, 
and  the  singular  adaptations  which  are  exhibited 
to  the  varying  necessities  of  living  beings. 

Among  the  higher  animals,  as  we  have  noted, 


the  process  of  development  for  the  most  part 
evolves  the  likeness  of  the  parent  in  a  simple 
and  direct  manner.  True,  in  all  higher  animals, 
as  in  lower  animals,  the  mere  formation  of  organs 
and  parts  in  the  body  of  the  developing  being 
constitutes  a  process  in  which,  from  dissimilar  or 
from  simple  materials,  the  similarity  of  the  ani- 
mal to  its  parent  and  to  the  intricacy  of  the  adult 
form  are  gradually  evolved.  But  we  miss  in 
higher  animals  these  well-defined  and  visible 
changes  of  form  through  which  the  young  being 
gradually  approximates  to  the  parental  type  and 
likeness.  Direct  heredity  forms,  in  fact,  the  rule 
in  higher  life,  just  as  indirect  heredity  is  a  com- 
mon feature  of  lower  organisms.  The  frogs, 
toads,  and  newts,  form  the  most  familiar  excep- 
tions to  this  rule  among  higher  animals  ;  the 
young  of  these  forms,  as  is  well  known,  appearing 
in  the  form  of  "  tadpoles,"  and  attaining  the  like- 
ness of  the  adult  through  a  very  gradual  series 
of  changes  and  developments.  But  in  no  cases 
can  the  existence  of  hereditary  influences  be  more 
clearly  perceived  or  traced  than  in  cases  of  the 
development  of  higher  animals,  in  which  traits 
of  character,  physical  peculiarities,  and  even  dis- 
eases, are  seen  to  be  unerringly  and  exactly  re- 
produced through  the  operation  of  the  law  of 
likeness ;  while  in  certain  unusual  phases  of  de- 
velopment the  influence  of  the  law  can  be  shown 
not  less  clearly  than  in  its  common  and  normal 
action. 

The  case  of  the  "  ancon  "  or  "  otter  "  sheep 
serves  as  an  apt  illustration,  not  only  of  the  trans- 
mission of  characters  to  the  offspring,  but  like- 
wise of  the  sudden  appearance  and  development 
of  characters  not  accounted  for  by  heredity.  In 
the  year  1791  a  ewe  belonging  to  a  Massachusetts 
farmer  produced  a  lamb  differing  materially  from 
its  neighbors  in  that  its  legs  were  disproportion- 
ately short,  while  its  body  was  disproportionately 
long.  This  departure  from  the  ordinary  type  of 
the  sheep  could  not  be  accounted  for  in  any  way ; 
the  variation  being,  as  far  as  could  be  ascertained, 
perfectly  spontaneous.  The  single  short-legged 
sheep  became  the  progenitor  of  others,  and  in 
due  time  a  race  of  ancons  was  produced  ;  the  va- 
riety, however,  falling  into  neglect,  and  ultimately 
disappearing,  on  account  of  the  introduction  of 
the  Merino  sheep,  and  of  the  attention  paid  to  the 
development  of  the  latter  breed.  The  law  of  like- 
ness in  the  case  of  the  ancon  sheep  proved  nor- 
mal in  its  working  after  the  introduction  of  the 
first  ancon.  The  offspring  of  two  ancons  was 
thus  invariably  a  pure  otter  sheep ;  the  progeny 
of  an  ancon  and  an  ordinary  sheep  being  also 


556 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


pure  either  in  the  direction  of  the  sheep  or  the 
ancon ;  no  blending  or  mixture  of  the  two  races 
ever  after  taking  place..  The  law  of  likeness  thus 
holds  good  in  its  ordinary  operation,  but  takes 
no  account  and  gives  no  explanation  of  the  ab- 
struse and  unknown  causes  arising  from  the  law 
of  variation,  and  on  which  the  development  of 
the  first  ancon  sheep  depended. 

The  heredity  and  transmission  of  mere  influ- 
ences, which  have  been  simply  impressed  upon 
either  parent,  and  which  form  no  part  of  the  par- 
ent's original  constitution,  presens  some  of  the 
most  marvelous,  as  well  as  some  of  the  most  in- 
explicable, features  of  animal  and  plant  develop- 
ment. Thus,  an  Italian  naturalist,  taking  the 
pollen  or  fertilizing  matter  from  the  stamens  of 
the  lemon,  fertilized  the  flowers  of  the  orange. 
The  result  was,  that  one  of  the  oranges,  subse- 
quently produced,  exhibited  a  portion  of  its  sub- 
stance which  was  not  only  colored  like  the  lemon, 
but  preserved  the  distinct  flavor  of  the  latter  fruit. 
Changes  of  similar  nature  have  been  produced  in 
the  fruit  of  one  species  of  melon  by  fertilizing  the 
flowers  with  pollen  of  a  different  species,  and  thus 
producing,  through  the  operation  of  the  law  of 
likeness,  a  blending  of  the  character  of  the  two 
species.  Equally  certain,  as  regards  their  effects 
on  the  young  forms  of  animals,  are  the  effects  of 
the  transmission  of  influences  or  qualities  im- 
pressed on  the  parents.  The  birth  of  a  hybrid 
foal,  half  quagga,  half  horse,  has  been  of  sufficient 
influence  to  transmit  to  the  subsequent  and  pure 
progeny  of  the  mother  the  banded  stripes  or 
markings  of  the  quagga ;  the  influence  of  the  first 
male  parent  and  offspring  extending,  as  it  were, 
to  the  unconnected  and  succeeding  progeny. 

The  case  of  the  human  subject  presents  no 
exceptions  to  the  laws  of  heredity  and  of  heredi- 
tary influences,  since  the  common  experience  of 
every-day  life  familiarizes  us  with  the  transmis- 
sion of  the  constitution  of  body  and  mind  from 
parent  to  child;  while  the  careful  investigation 
of  the  family  history  of  noted  artists,  sculptors, 
poets,  musicians,  and  men  of  science,  clearly 
proves  that  the  qualities  for  which  they  are  or 
were  distinguished  have,  in  most  cases,  been 
transmitted  to  them  as  a  natural  legacy  and  in- 
heritance— so  fully  does  science  corroborate  the 
popular  saying  that  qualities  of  body  and  mind 
"  run  in  the  blood." 

.  A  notable  case  of  the  operation  of  the  law  of 
likeness  in  perpetuating  a  singular  condition  of 
body  is  afforded  by  the  history  of  the  Lambert 
family.  Edward  Lambert  was  exhibited  in  1*731, 
at  the  age  of  fourteen,  before  the  Royal  Society 


of  London,  on  account  of  the  peculiar  condition 
of  his  skin,  which  was  covered  with  horny  scales ; 
these  appendages,  in  their  most  typical  develop- 
ment, according  to  one  account,  "  looking  and 
rustling  like  the  bristles  or  quills  of  a  hedgehog 
shorn  off  within  an  inch  of  the  skin."  In  1757 
the  "porcupine-man,"  as  Lambert  was  called, 
again  exhibited  himself  in  London.  He  had  in 
the  interim  suffered  from  small-pox ;  the  disease 
having  had  the  effect  of  temporarily  destroying 
the  roughened  skin,  which,  however,  reappeared 
during  his  convalescence.  Lambert's  children 
presented  the  same  peculiar  skin-development, 
and  the  correlation  between  parent  and  offspring 
in  this  case  was  most  marked,  even  in  the  date  of 
the  first  appearance  of  the  abnormality,  since  the 
skin  developed  its  scales  in  each  of  his  children, 
as  in  himself,  about  nine  weeks  after  birth.  In 
Lambert's  grandchildren  this  peculiarity  was  also 
well  marked ;  two  brothers,  grandsons  of  Lam- 
bert, being  exhibited  in  Germany  on  account  of 
their  peculiar  body-covering. 

The  history  of  the  Kelleias,  a  Maltese  family, 
is  no  less  instructive  than  that  of  Lambert,  as 
tending  to  prove  the  distinct  and  specific  opera- 
tion of  the  laws  of  heredity.  Gratio  Kelleia — 
whose  history  is  given  by  Reaumur  in  his  "  Art 
de  faire  eclore  les  Poulets,"  as  a  kind  of  lesson 
in  the  rearing  of  poultry — was  a  -Maltese,  who 
possessed  six  fingers  on  each  hand  and  six  toes 
on  each  foot.  His  parents  possessed  the  ordinary 
number  of  digits,  and  hence  the  law  of  variation 
may  be  regarded  as  operating  in  the  case  of  the 
human  subject,  as  in  the  ancon  sheep  and  in 
lower  animals  still,  in  producing  sudden  and  spon- 
taneous deviations  from  the  normal  type  of  a 
species  or  race.  Kelleia's  family  consisted  of 
four  children,  the  mother  exhibiting  no  abnor- 
mality of  hands  or  feet.  The  eldest  son,  Salvator, 
exactly  resembled  his  father.  George,  the  second 
son,  had  five  fingers  and  five  toes,  but  his  hands 
and  feet  were  deformed.  Andre,  the  third  son,  ex- 
hibited no  abnormality;  and  Marie,  the  daughter, 
had  deformed  thumbs.  The  operation  of  the  law 
of  heredity  was  not  especially  marked  in  this  first 
generation,  but  its  effects  were  of  very  striking 
character  in  the  second.  To  begin  with  the 
family  of  Andre,  none  of  his  children  exhibited 
any  divergence  from  the  normal  type.  Of  Marie's 
family,  only  one,  a  boy,  had  six  toes ;  his  fingers 
being  normal.  Of  George's  four  children,  one 
boy  possessed  hands  and  feet  of  ordinary  type ; 
one  girl  had  six  fingers  on  each  hand,  but,  curi- 
ously  enough,  six  toes  on  the  right  foot  only  ; 
while  the  remaining  two  girls  had  each  six  fingers 


THE  LAW  OF  LIKENESS,  AND  ITS   WORKING. 


557 


and  six  toes  on  each  hand  and  foot.  Salvator's 
family  likewise  consisted  of  four  children,  three 
of  whom  possessed  the  six  fingers  and  six  toes  of 
their  father  and  grandparent ;  the  fourth  and 
youngest  possessing  the  ordinary  number  of  di- 
gits. The  four  mothers  of  the  second  generation 
of  Kelleias  exhibited  no  abnormality  in  respect 
of  hands  or  feet,  and  hence  the  hereditary  influ- 
ence of  the  female  parent  doubtless  made  itself 
felt  in  the  development  of  a  proportion  of  normal 
haudsand  feet — although,  as  far  as  the  genealogy 
of  the  family  is  traced,  the  proportion  of  six- 
fingered  and  six-toed  members  clearly  tends  to 
exceed  that  of  those  possessing  the  normal  num- 
ber of  fingers  and  toes. 

Having  thus  selected  and  marshaled  some  of 
the  chief  facts  relating  to  the  occurrence  of  hered- 
ity or  the  likeness  between  parent  and  offspring, 
it  may  be  fairly  urged  that  these  facts  seem  to 
establish  the  existence  of  some  well-defined  law, 
in  virtue  of  which  the  bodily  structure,  the  mental 
characteristics,  or  even  the  peculiarities  induced 
by  disease,  are  transmitted  from  one  generation 
to  another.  And  it  also  becomes  an  important 
study  to  determine  the  causes  which  operate  in 
producing  such  variations  in  the  law  of  inheri- 
tance as  we  have  endeavored  to  illustrate  in  the 
case  of  certain  groups  of  lower  animals.  Can  we, 
in  other  words,  account  for  the  similarities  and. 
resemblances,  and  for  the  diversities  and  varia- 
tions, which  living  beings  present,  apparently  as 
a  natural  sequence  of  their  life,  and  of  the  opera- 
tion of  the  laws  which  regulate  that  existence  ? 
The  answer  to  some  such  question  as  the  preced- 
ing closely  engaged  the  attention  of  physiologists 
in  former  years,  the  result  of  their  considerations 
being  the  framing  of  various  theories  whereby 
the  facts  of  heredity  could  be  correlated  and  ex- 
plained. It  is  evident  that  any  explanation  of 
heredity  must  partake  of  the  nature  of  a  mere 
speculation,  from  our  sheer  inability  to  penetrate 
deeper  into  the  investigation  of  its  laws  than  the 
observation  of  phenomena  can  lead  us.  But, 
when  rightly  employed,  generalizations  and  theo- 
ries serve  as  leading-strings  to  the  truth ;  and, 
moreover,  aid  in  the  most  valuable  manner  in 
connecting  facts  which  otherwise  would  present 
a  most  confusing  and  straggling  array.  We  may, 
in  truth,  sketch  in  the  outlines  of  the  subject  in 
theory,  and  leave  these  outlines  to  be  deleted  or 
intensified  by  the  subsequent  progress  of  knowl- 
edge. Buffon  speculated,  about  the  middle  of 
last  century,  on  the  causes  of  heredity,  and  viewed 
the  subject  from  a  very  comprehensive  stand- 
point.    He  assumed   that  the  ultimate  parts  of 


living  beings  existed  in  the  form  of  certain  atoms, 
which  he  named  "  organic  molecules,"  and  main- 
tained that  these  molecules  were  received  into 
the  body  in  the  shape  of  food,  and  became  stored 
up  in  the  various  tissues  and  organs,  receiving 
from  each  part  a  corresponding  "impression." 
The  molecules  in  each  living  body  were,  in  tact, 
regarded  by  Buffon  as  plastic  masses,  which  not 
only  received  the  imprint,  in  miniature,  of  the 
organ  in  which  they  had  lodged,  but  were  also 
fitted  to  reproduce  that  organ  or  part.  Poten- 
tially, therefore,  each  molecule  might  be  said  to 
carry  within  it  some  special  portion  of  the  body 
of  which,  for  a  time,  it  had  formed  part.  It  was 
organic  and,  moreover,  indestructible.  For,  after 
itself  and  its  neighbors  had  been  freed  from  cor- 
poreal trammels  by  the  death  of  the  organism  in 
which  it  had  existed,  they  were  regarded  as  being 
capable  of  entering  into  new  combinations,  and 
of  thus  building  up  afresh  the  forms  of  living 
animals  or  plants  similar  to,  or  widely  different 
from,  those  in  which  they  had  previously  been 
contained.  Buffon's  theory  had  special  reference 
to  the  explanation  of  cases  of  the  "  spontaneous 
generation"  of  animalcules  in  closed  vessels,  but 
it  also  served  to  explain  the  cause  of  heredity. 
The  molecules,  each  charged  with  the  form  of 
the  organ  or  part  in  which  it  existed,  were  be- 
lieved ultimately  to  pass,  in  the  case  of  the  ani- 
mal, to  the  egg-producing  organs,  or,  in  the 
plant,  to  the  seed ;  the  egg  and  the  seed  being 
thus  formed,  as  it  were,  from  materials  contrib- 
uted by  the  entire  body.  The  germ  was  to  the 
body  at  large,  as  a  microcosm  is  to  the  greater 
"  cosmos." 

A  second  authority  who  framed  an  explana- 
tion of  the  causes  of  likeness  was  Bonnet,  who 
maintained  that  lost  parts  were  reproduced  by 
germs  contained  in  the  nearest  portions  of  the 
injured  body ;  while,  by  his  theory  of  emboite- 
ment,  it  was  held  that  each  germ  was  in  itself  the 
repository  of  countless  other  germs,  these  bodies 
being  stored  up  in  a  quantity  sufficient  for  the 
reproductive  needs  of  countless  generations. 
Prof.  Owen's  explanation  depends  upon  the 
recognition  of  the  fact  that  certain  of  the  cells 
of  the  germ  from  which  the  living  being  springs 
pass  into  its  body,  and  there  remain  to  transmit 
to  its  successors  the  material  characters  which  it 
has  acquired ;  while,  also,  the  repair  of  injuries, 
and  the  propagation  of  new  beings  by  budding 
and  like  processes,  are  explained  on  the  supposi- 
tion that  these  germ-cells  may  grow,  increase,  and 
operate  within  the  organism  which  they  are  ulti- 
mately destined  to  propagate.     Lastly,  Mr.  Dar- 


558 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


win  has  come  to  the  solution  of  heredity  with  his 
theory  of  Pangenesis,  which  may  be  said  to  avail 
itself  of  all  that  is  reasonable  and  probable  in 
the  explanations  just  discussed,  and  also  to  in- 
clude several  new  and  important  ideas  of  which 
the  older  theorists  took  no  account. 

As  paving  the  way  for  an  understanding  of 
this  and  other  explanations  of  the  law  of  like- 
ness, we  may  briefly  glance  at  some  of  the  chief 
facts  with  reference  to  the  structure  and  intimate 
composition  of  living  beings,  with  which  micro- 
scopic study  has  made  us  acquainted.  When 
the  anatomist  or  physiologist  seeks  to  unravel 
the  complications  of  human  structure,  or  when, 
indeed,  he  scrutinizes  the  bodies  of  all  animals, 
save  the  very  lowest,  he  finds  that  each  organ  or 
tissue  of  the  body  is  composed  of  certain  minute 
vesicles  or  spheres,  to  which  he  gives  the  name 
of  cells.  Cells,  in  fact,  are  the  units  of  which  the 
bodily  whole  is  composed.  Nerves  thus  resolve 
themselves,  under  the  microscope,  into  fibres,  and 
the  fibres,  in  turn,  are  seen  to  originate  from 
cells.  Muscles  similarly  originate  from  muscle- 
cells.  Each  tissue,  however  compact  it  may  ap- 
pear, is  capable  of  ultimate  reduction  to  cells  of 
characteristic  kind.  Nor  is  this  all.  The  cells 
themselves  are  in  turn  composed  of  smaller  par- 
ticles, and  these  smaller  particles — of  infinitesi- 
mally  minute  size — may  be  regarded  as  consist- 
ing, in  turn,  of  the  essential  material  of  life — the 
bioplasm  or  protoplasm — with  the  name  of  which 
every  one  must  be  more  or  less  familiar  from  the 
part  it  has  played  in  more  than  one  grave  biologi- 
cal controversy.  But  the  body  of  every  living 
thing  is  in  no  case  stable,  viewed  either  in  its 
chemical  or  in  its  more  purely  physical  aspects. 
It  is  continually,  as  the  inevitable  result  of  living 
and  being,  undergoing  change  and  alteration. 
Chemical  action  is  wasting  its  substance  and  dis- 
sipating its  energy  with  prodigal  hand  on  the  one 
side,  and  rebuilding  and  reconstructing  its  parts 
on  the  other.  Its  material  particles  are  contin- 
ually being  wasted  and  excreted,  while  new  parti- 
cles are  as  incessantly  being  added  to  its  frame.  A 
never-ending  action  of  waste  and  repair  is  main- 
tained within  every  living  being;  and  it  is  not  the 
least  striking  thought  which  may  ensue  from  the 
study  of  such  a  subject  that,  notwithstanding 
the  constant  renewal  of  our  frames,  we  continue 
to  preserve  the  same  recognizable  form  and  feat- 
ures. The  development  of  new  particles  in  place 
of  the  old  appears  to  follow  the  same  course  as 
that  whereby  the  first  formed  particles  were 
guided  to  their  place  in  the  developing  young. 
Germs,  or  "  nuclei  " — "  germinal  centres,"  as  the 


physiologist  terms  them — are  abundantly  to  be 
descried  within  most  of  the  tissues.  Imbedded 
among  the  fibres  of  muscles,  for  example,  are  to 
be  seen  the  germs  from  which  new  muscular  fibres 
will  be  developed ;  and  in  the  brain  itself  such 
reproductive  bodies  are  to  be  observed.  Thus 
the  growth  and  continuance  of  our  mental  exist- 
ence may  be  shown  to  be  dependent  on  the  pres- 
ence of  these  new  particles,  which  are  destined 
to  renew  in  a  material  sense  those  powers  which, 
of  all  others  in  man's  nature,  most  nearly  ap- 
proach the  immaterial  and  spiritual. 

Nor,  lastly,  is  the  problem  of  existence  and 
structural  complexity  lessened  in  any  degree  by 
the  consideration  that  man's  frame,  as  well  as 
that  of  all  other  animals,  originates  from  a  mi- 
nute germ,  composed  primitively  of  a  microscop- 
ic speck  of  living  matter,  and  exhibiting  in  its 
earliest  stages  the  essential  features  of  one  of 
the  minute  cells  or  units  of  his  tissues.  Through 
the  powers  with  which  this  living  germ-particle 
has  been  endowed,  it  is  capable  of  passing 
through  a  defined  series  of  changes,  and  of  de- 
veloping therefrom  a  being  of  more  or  less  com- 
plicated kind  ;  while  the  germ  itself  must  be  re- 
garded as  transmitting  in  some  fashion  or  other, 
and  in  a  material  form,  the  likenesses  which  link 
parent  and  offspring  together  in  so  close  and  in- 
timate a  union. 

Applying  the  reasoning  of  the  theory  of  pan- 
genesis to  the  explanation  of  heredity  and  like- 
ness in  the  light  of  the  physiological  evidence  thus 
briefly  detailed,  we  are  required  to  bear  in  mind 
that,  as  an  established  fact,  the  cells  of  which  a 
living  being  is  composed  increase  and  multiply  to 
form  tissues  and  organs,  the  new  cells  retaining 
the  form  and  essential  characters  of  the  parent- 
cells.  The  cell,  in  short,  is  formed,  is  nourished, 
grows,  and  reproduces  its  like,  as  does  the  body 
of  which  it  forms  part.  And  botanists  and  zool- 
ogists would  inform  us  that  lowly  plants  and  ani- 
mals, each  consisting  of  but  a  single  cell,  not 
only  exist,  but  carry  on  the  functions  of  life  as 
perfectly,  when  regarded  in  relation  to  the  wants 
of  their  existence,  as  do  the  highest  animals  or 
most  highly-organized  plants.  Each  cell,  pos- 
sessed thus  of  vital  powers,  may  further  be  re- 
garded as  correlating  itself  with  the  life  of  the 
body  at  large,  in  that  it  is  capable  of  throwing 
off  minute  particles  of  its  substance.  These  par- 
ticles, named  gemmulcs,  may  be  supposed  to  cir- 
culate freely  through  the  system,  and  when  duly 
nourished  are  regarded  as  being  capable  of  devel- 
oping into  cells  resembling  those  from  which  they 
were  derived.     These  gemmules  are  further  sup- 


THE  LA  W  OF  LIKENESS,   AND  ITS   WORKING. 


559 


posed  to  be  thrown  off  from  cells  at  every  stage 
of  the  development  and  growth  of  a  living  be- 
ing. More  especially  do  they  aggregate  together 
to  form  the  germ,  or  the  materials  from  which 
the  germ  is  formed.  Transmitted  thus  from  par- 
ent to  offspring,  the  latter  may  be  regarded  as 
potentially  composed  of  the  gemmules  derived 
from  its  parent — which,  like  the  organic  mole- 
cules of  Buffon,  are  charged  with  reproducing  in 
the  young  form  the  characters  they  have  acquired 
from  the  parent. 

Regarded  from  a  physiological  standpoint,  this 
explanation  of  the  transmission  of  likeness  from 
parent  to  offspring  appears,  it  must  be  owned,  to 
present  no  difficulties  of  very  formidable  kind.  Sci- 
entific evidence  regarding  the  functions  and  prop- 
erties of  cells  is  thoroughly  in  agreement  with  the 
theory,  as  far  as  the  behavior  of  these  bodily  units 
is  concerned.  The  exercise  of  scientific  faith  and 
the  weighing  of  probabilities  commence  with  the 
assumption  of  the  development  of  the  gemmules 
from  the  cells  ;  and  it  may  be  asked  if  the  belief 
that  these  gemmules  are  capable  of  transmission 
and  aggregation,  as  held  by  this  theory,  is  one  in- 
consistent with  the  tenets  and  discoveries  of  bio- 
logical science  at  large.  If  we  inquire  regarding 
the  feasibility  of  the  mere  existence  of  such  mi- 
nute gemmules,  we  shall  find  that  physical  sci- 
ence opposes  no  barrier  to  the  favorable  reception 
of  such  an  idea.  The  inconceivably  minute  size 
of  the  particles,  for  example,  given  off  from  a 
grain  of  musk,  which  scents  a  room  for  years 
without  losing  so  much  of  its  substance  as  can  be 
determined  by  the  most  acute  physical  tests,  lies 
beyond  the  farthest  limit  even  of  the  scientific  im- 
agination. The  particles  of  vaccine  lymph  diffused 
through  the  body  by  the  lancet  of  the  vaccinator, 
are  much  more  minute  than  the  smallest  cells ; 
yet,  judged  by  the  standard  of  development  and 
by  the  effects  of  their  multiplication  in  our  frames, 
their  existence  must  be  regarded  as  anything  but 
problematical.  Then,  as  regards  numbers,  the 
eggs  of  some  animals  exist  in  quantities  of  which, 
at  the  best,  we  can  only  form  a  dim  and  approxi- 
mate idea.  A  small  parasitic  worm,  the  Ascaris, 
is  known  to  produce  64,000,000  eggs,  and  some 
of  the  orchids  will  produce  as  many  seeds  ;  while 
the  fertility  of  some  fishes  is  almost  inconceivable. 
It  has  been  objected,  it  is  true,  to  this  conception 
of  the  manner  through  which  the  law  of  likeness 
operates,  that  it  is  difficult  to  believe  in  the  com- 
plicated powers  and  tendencies  of  the  gemmules 
to  select  and  carry  the  special  qualities  of  the 
cells  from  which  they  originate;  and  that,  in 
short,  the  conception  credits  the  gemmules  with 


powers  of  too  mysterious  and  occult  a  kind  for 
ordinary  acceptance  and  belief.  But,  in  answer 
to  this  objection,  it  may  be  urged  that  the  powers 
with  which  the  gemmules  are  credited  are  not  a 
whit  more  extraordinary  than  those  possessed  by 
cells,  or  than  those  which  nerve-cells  and  nerve- 
fibres  possess,  for  example,  in  forming  and  trans- 
mitting the  undetermined,  mysterious  force  which, 
under  certain  conditions,  becomes  resolved  into 
thought  and  mind.  The  mere  conditions  of  hered- 
ity which  the  theory  explains,  constitute,  in  fact, 
a  greater  draft  upon  scientific  credulity  than  is 
demanded  by  any  conditions  or  ideas  included  in 
the  explanation  itself.  Moreover,  there  is  hardly 
a  condition,  illustrated  by  the  examples  of  hered- 
ity and  animal  development  already  given,  which 
is  insusceptible  of  explanation  through  the  aid  of 
this  theory.  The  cases  of  fission  illustrated  by 
the  fresh-water  worms,  and  the  process  of  budding 
exemplified  by  the  zoophyte,  become  intelligible 
on  the  idea  that  a  determination  of  the  gemmules 
to  the  parts  concerned  in  these  processes  takes 
place,  and  that  by  their  aggregation  they  form 
parts  resembling  those  from  which  they  were  de- 
rived. The  curious  phases  of  reproduction  in 
the  plant-lice,  in  which,  it  will  be  remembered,  fe- 
male insects  were  seen  to  be  capable  of  produc- 
ing generation  after  generation  of  beings  re- 
sembling themselves  without  the  intervention 
of  the  opposite  sex,  are  likewise  explained  by  the 
supposition  that  gemmules  aggregate  in  quanti- 
ties in  the  egg-producing  organs  of  the  insects. 
These  gemmules  are  further  regarded  as  being 
charged  with  the  power  of  perpetuating  the  like- 
ness of  the  stock  from  which  they  were  origi- 
nally derived,  and  being  transmitted  from  one 
generation  to  another,  until,  through  some  more 
special  modification,  the  periodical  production 
of  fertilized  eggs  in  autumn  is  once  more  illus- 
trated. The  exact  nature  of  "alternate  genera- 
tions  "  of  the  zoophytes  and  salpaa  becomes  clear 
to  us  if  we  presume  that  the  gemmules  of  the  pro- 
ducing form,  such  as  the  zoophyte,  are  multiplied 
and  specially  developed  to  form  the  jelly-fish-bud, 
which,  finally,  as  we  have  seen,  is  launched 
abroad  charged  with  the  task  of  reproducing  the 
zoophyte.  Each  egg  of  the  jelly-fish  contains 
thus  the  gemmules  inherited  from,  and  which 
convey  the  likeness  and  form  of,  the  zoophyte ; 
the  special  development  of  new  beings  seen  in 
this  case  presenting  a  contrast  to  the  ordinary  in- 
crease of  the  single  zoophyte  by  budding.  The 
metamorphoses  or  changes  which  animals  under- 
go in  passing  from  the  egg  to  the  adult  state — 
well  illustrated  by  the  insect-class — can  similarly 


560 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


be  explained  by  the  deductions  of  pangenesis,  if 
we  suppose  that  the  gemmules  which  tend  to  form 
the  perfect  being  undergo  a  progressive  develop- 
ment, and  a  gradual  elaboration  in  the  earlier 
stages  of  the  process.  And  we  can  the  more 
readily  apply  this  reasoning  to  the  explanation  of 
the  manner  in  which  the  winged  butterfly,  for 
example,  is  evolved  from  the  caterpillar,  when 
we  find  that  within  the  chrysalis-case  or  cocoon 
the  body  of  the  larva  is  literally  broken  down 
and  resolved  into  atomic  parts,  while,  by  a  won- 
drous process  of  reconstruction  and  rearrange- 
ment of  these  atoms,  the  perfect  insect  is  in  due 
time  formed.  Metamorphosis,  in  this  respect, 
may  truly  be  described  as  a  process  of  the  read- 
justment and  rearrangement  of  the  atoms  and 
gemmules  of  the  insect's  frame.  The  variations 
of  living  beings  may,  in  their  turn,  be  explained 
by  assuming  an  irregularity  to  exist  in  the  ar- 
rangement of  the  gemmules  which  unite  to  form 
the  germ  of  the  varying  form.  Modified  cells 
will  give  out  modified  gemmules,  and  these  last 
will  produce  variations  in  the  new  being.  Any 
cause  producing  alterations  in  the  gemmules, 
either  in  the  direction  of  over-fertility,  or  in  that 
of  deficiency,  will  tell  with  corresponding  effect 
on  the  germ  which  they  tend  to  form.  While,  in 
cases  in  which  bodily  structures,  mental  qualities, 
or  even  diseases,  lie  dormant  in  one  generation, 
and  become  developed  in  the  succeeding  race, 
the  gemmules  may  be  regarded  as  having  been 
transmitted  in  a  latent  condition  in  the  former 
race,  and  as  having  been  awakened  and  redevel- 


oped in  the  latter.  The  transmission  of  active 
disease  to  a  particular  generation,  through  an  in- 
intervening  and  latent  stage,  represented  by  the 
preceding  generation,  is  clearly  explicable,  if  we 
suppose  that  the  dormant  condition  acts  on  the 
gemmules  as  rest  acts  on  wearied  muscles  in  serv- 
ing to  restore  their  pristine  strength.  Some  dis- 
eases are  known  to  gain  strength  and  virulence 
after  the  lapse  of  a  generation,  in  which  they 
have  lain  dormant  and  inactive.  And  the  reap- 
pearance of  the  diseased  condition  becomes  con- 
nected by  the  explanation  just  given,  to  use  Mr. 
Darwin's  words,  with  "  the  wonderful  fact  that 
the  child  may  depart  from  the  type  of  both  its 
parents,  and  resemble  its  grandparents  or  ances- 
tors removed  by  many  generations." 

The  relativity  of  our  knowledge,  however, 
forms  a  subject  which  may  well  be  suggested  as  a 
closing  thought.  Whether  pangenesis  or  any  other 
explanation  of  heredity  be  ultimately  proved  to  be 
true  or  not,  the  consideration  must  be  ever  with 
us,  that  we  are  likely  to  remain  ignorant  of  the 
primary  causes  which  determine  and  regulate  the 
more  apparent  laws  of  likeness.  We  may  thus 
scarcely  hope  to  reach  that  "  law  within  the  law  " 
which  operates  through  the  medium  of  secondary 
laws  and  ascertainable  conditions.  But  it  should 
form,  at  the  same  time,  no  mean  consolation, 
that  we  have  been  able  to  approach  theoretically, 
at  least,  toward  an  understanding  of  one  of  the 
commonest,  but  at  the  same  time  most  abstruse, 
parts  of  the  puzzle  of  fife. —  Gentleman 's  Maga- 
zine. 


FOREST  AND   FIELD  MYTHS. 


By  W.  E.  S.  EALSTON. 


ONCE  upon  a  time — says  a  tale  widely  spread 
in  Asia — four  travelers  spent  a  night  in  a 
forest,  and  agreed  that  one  of  them  should  keep 
watch  by  turns  while  the  others  slept.  The  first 
watcher  was  a  carpenter.  By  way  of  passing  the 
time,  he  took  his  axe,  and  out  of  the  stem  of  a 
tree  lying  prostrate  hard  by,  fashioned  the  form 
of  a  woman,  shapely  in  figure  and  comely  in  face. 
Then  he  awoke  one  of  his  comrades,  and  lay  down 
to  rest.  The  second  watcher  was  a  tailor.  And 
when  he  saw  the  wooden  woman  lying  bare  on 
the  ground,  he  produced  his  work-basket  and 
bundle   of  stuffs,   and   clothed  her  handsomely 


from  head  to  foot.  Then  he  too  resumed  his 
slumber,  after  having  aroused  the  third  of  the 
party,  who  was  a  jeweler.  And  the  jeweler  was 
struck  by  the  sight  of  the  fair  and  well-dressed 
female  form  leaning  against  a  neighboring  tree, 
and  he  opened  his  caskets  and  decked  her  with 
rings,  and  necklaces,  and  bracelets.  Then  he 
called  the  last  of  the  party,  who  was  a  holy  man, 
strong  in  prayer  and  incantation,  and  went  to 
sleep.  And  when  the  fourth  watcher  saw  the 
wooden  woman,  so  well  dressed  and  decked,  he 
set  to  work,  and  by  spells  and  prayers  turned 
her  wood  into  flesh  and  blood,  and  inspired  her 


FOREST  AND  FIELD  MYTHS. 


561 


with  life.  Just  then  his  three  companions  awoke, 
and  gazed  with  wonder  and  admiration  at  the 
lovely  creature  who  stood  before  them.  Simul- 
taneously, each  of  the  four  travelers  claimed  her 
as  his  wife ;  the  carpenter  because  he  had  framed 
her,  the  tailor  because  he  had  dressed  her,  the 
jeweler  because  he  had  adorned  her,  and  the 
holy  man  because  he  had  given  her  life.  A  fierce 
dispute  arose.  The  authorities  of  the  neighbor- 
ing village  were  in  vain  appealed  to ;  the  prob- 
lem, as  to  which  of  the  four  had  most  claim  to 
the  hand  of  the  disputed  bride,  was  too  difficult 
for  them  to  solve.  At  last  it  was  resolved  to  sub- 
mit the  case  to  a  higher  court.  The  claimants, 
the  judges,  and  the  audience,  all  went  out  to  the 
cemetery,  and  there  prayed  for  a  decision  from 
on  high.  While  the  prayer  went  up,  the  woman 
leaned  against  a  tree.  Suddenly  the  tree  opened, 
and  the  woman  entered  it,  and  was  seen  no  more. 
As  she  disappeared,  a  voice  from  on  high  was 
heard,  saying,  "  To  its  origin  shall  every  created 
thing  return."  l 

The  mythological  core  of  this  story  is  the  idea 
that  human  and  tree  life  may  be  connected.  The 
rest  of  it  has  been  supplied  by  teachers  who 
wished  to  inculcate  the  doctrine  that  all  things 
return  to  their  first  elements,  and  narrators  desir- 
ous of  framing  one  of  the  numerous  stories  in- 
volving a  problem  or  puzzle  capable  of  various 
solutions.  The  leading  idea  has  been  better  pre- 
served in  the  following  modern  Greek  folk-tale  : 

There  was  once  a  childless  wife,  who  used  to 
lament,  saying,  "  If  only  I  had  a  child,  were  it  but 
a  laurel-berry  !  "  And  Heaven  sent  her  a  golden 
laurel-berry,  but  its  value  was  not  recognized,  and 
it  was  thrown  away.  From  it  sprang  a  laurel- 
tree  which  gleamed  with  golden  twigs.  At  it  a 
prince,  while  following  the  chase,  wondered  great- 
ly. And  determining  to  return  to  it,  he  ordered  his 
cook  to  prepare  a  dinner  for  him  beneath  its  shade. 
He  was  obeyed.  But  during  the  temporary  ab- 
sence of  the  cook,  the  tree  opened,  and  forth  came 
a  fair  maiden,  who  strewed  a  handful  of  salt  over 
the  viands,  and  then  returned  into  the  tree,  which 
immediately  closed  upon  her.  The  prince  re- 
turned and  scolded  the  cook  for  oversalting  the 
dinner.  The  cook  declared  his  innocence,  but  in 
vain.  The  next  day  just  the  same  occurred.  So 
on  the  third  day  the  prince  kept  watch.     The 

1  For  the  Indian  originals  of  the  story,  see  Benfey's 
"  Pantchatantra,"  i.,  489 ;  for  the  Persian  variant,  the 
"  Tnti-Nameh  or  Parrot-Book;"  and  for  a  third,  in 
which  various  additional  incidents  are  given,  the 
Turkish  version  of  the  "  Tutl-Nameh."  The  story 
seems  never  to  have  become  domesticated  in  West- 
ern Europe. 

72 


tree  opened,  and  the  maiden  came  forth.  But 
before  she  could  return  into  the  tree,  the  prince 
caught  hold  of  her  and  carried  her  off.  After  a 
time  she  escaped  from  him,  ran  back  to  the  tree, 
and  called  upon  it  to  open.  But  it  remained 
shut.  So  she  had  to  return  to  the  prince.  And 
after  a  while  he  deserted  her.  It  was  not  till  af- 
ter long  wandering  that  she  found  him  again,  and 
became  his  royal  consort.1 

Hahn  thinks  this  story  is  founded  on  the  Hel- 
lenic belief  in  Dryads  ;  but  it  belongs  to  an  earlier 
mythological  family  than  the  Hellenic,  though  the 
Dryad  and  the  Laurel-maiden  are  undoubtedly 
kinswomen.  Long  before  the  Dryads  and  Oreads 
had  received  from  the  sculpturesque  Greek  mind 
their  perfection  of  human  form  and  face,  trees 
were  credited  with  woman-like  inhabitants  capable 
of  doing  good  and  ill,  and  with  powers  of  their 
own,  apart  from  those  possessed  by  their  super- 
natural tenants,  of  banning  and  blessing.  There- 
fore was  it  that  they  were  worshiped,  and  that 
recourse  was  had  to  them  for  the  strengthening 
of  certain  rites.  Similar  ideas  and  practices  still 
prevail  in  Asia ;  survivals  of  them  may  yet  be 
found  in  Europe.  To  this  day,  for  instance,  one 
of  the  features  of  a  Russian  marriage  is  the  thrice- 
repeated  walk  of  the  bride  and  bridegroom  around 
a  part  of  the  church.  This  ceremony  is  accounted 
for  by  reasons  in  accordance  with  Christian  ideas, 
but  in  reality  it  seems  to  be  connected  with  the 
Indian  marriage-ceremony  of  making  the  bride 
and  bridegroom  walk  several  times  round  a  tree, 
a  rite  of  which  the  following  story  gives  a  most 
remarkable  form : 

A  certain  thief,  having  been  caught,  was  im- 
paled. After  dark,  a  woman,  who  had  gone  out 
to  fetch  water,  happened  to  pass  by  his  place  of 
torture,  and  accidentally  touched  his  foot,  there- 
by giving  him  great  pain.  Grieved  thereat,  she 
asked  if  she  could  make  up  for  her  awkwardness 
by  rendering  him  any  service.  "  You  can,"  he 
replied.  "  It  is  impossible  for  me  to  die  com- 
fortably while  I  am  unmarried.  You  have  an  un- 
married daughter.  Marry  her  to  me,  and  I  will 
pay  handsomely  for  the  temporary  accommoda- 
tion." So  she  went  swiftly  home,  and  brought 
her  daughter,  and  married  her  to  the  dying  thief 
— by  making  her  walk  four  times  round  the  stake 
on  which  he  was  impaled.2 

I  have  told  these  three  tales,  chiefly  because 
they  are  among  the  few  important  tree-stories 

»  Hahn,  No.  31.  Cf.  Basile's  "  Pentamerone,"  No 
23  ;  Schott's  "  Walachische  Marchen,"  No.  24  ;  "Rus- 
sian Folk-Tales,"  p.  15. 

»  "  Baital  Pachisi,"  No.  18. 


562 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


which  I  have  not  found  quoted  in  the  exhaustive 
work  on  "Ancient  Cults  of  Forest  and  Field,"  * 
recently  published  by  one  of  the  most  painstak 
ing  and  judicious  of  living  comparative  mytholo- 
gists,  Dr.  Wilhelm  Mannhardt,  of  Dantzic.  To  it 
may  be  safely  referred  all  serious  students  of  the 
subjects  on  which  it  throws  a  copious  and  steady 
light.  It  is  a  work  which  no  mycologist's  libra- 
ry should  be  without.  But  as  the  two  volumes 
comprise  more  than  a  thousand  pages  of  stiff  read- 
ing, they  are  not  likely  (although  provided,  ac- 
cording to  Dr.  Mannhardt's  most  laudable  custom, 
with  copious  indexes)  to  become  familiar  to  the 
general  reader.  It  may  be  worth  while,  there- 
fore, to  give  a  summary  of  their  contents,  a  rapid 
survey  of  the  great  field  of  thought  over  which 
they  range.  But  first  a  few  words  about  the  au- 
thor. 

As  a  child  (he  tells  us  in  a  charming  sketch 
of  his  intellectual  life,  prefixed  to  the  second  vol- 
ume of  the  present  work),  long  confinement  to  a 
couch  gave  him  the  leisure  of  reading  such  works 
as  introduced  him  to  the  land  of  classic  fable  and 
"  the  fair  humanities  of  old  religion."  Later  on  in 
healthier  boyhood,  during  long  hours  spent  in  the 
greenwood  or  by  the  resounding  shore,  he  became 
rapt  in  the  study  of  Milton,  Ossian,  and  the  North- 
ern Sagas  and  Eddas.  Then  came  the  eager  perusal 
of  Grimm's  "  German  Mythology,"  and  the  fate  of 
his  life  was  decided.  Becoming  in  1851  a  student 
in  the  University  of  Berlin,  he  flung  himself  into 
the  study  of  mythology.  The  best-known  result 
of  his  labors  is  his  "  Germanic  Myths,"  a  most 
valuable  work,  although  he  now  frankly  admits 
that  many  of  its  doctrines  are  erroneous  ;  for  he 
is  not  now  so  enthusiastic  a  disciple  of  the 
"  storm-myth  "  school  of  Kuhn  and  Schwartz  as 
he  then  was.  Neither  does  he  altogether  agree 
with  the  "  solar-myth  "  school ;  having  been  led, 
by  long  and  patient  study,  to  the  wise  conclusion 
that  it  is  useless  to  attempt  to  find  any  single 
"  Key  to  all  the  Mythologies."  After  filling  for 
some  time  a  professorial  chair  at  Berlin,  he  was 
compelled,  by  a  return  of  bad  health,  to  give  up 
lecturing,  and  to  retire  to  the  secluded  post  of 
city  librarian  at  Dantzic.  Thence  he  has  followed 
with  unchanging  interest  the  discoveries  in  As- 
syrian and  Accadian  mythology,  which  have 
thrown  so  much  light  upon  the  early  stages  of 

i  "  Wald-  und  Feldkulte,"  2  vols.  Berlin,  1875-'T7 
(Gebruder  Borntrager).  Ed.  Eggers.  The  volumes  are 
published  separately.  Vol.  i.  is  entitled  "  Der  Baum- 
kultus,"  etc.,  and  vol  ii.,  "Antike  Wald-  und  Feld- 
kulte, aus  Nordeuropaischer  Ueberlieferung  erlau- 
tert." 


Hellenic  religious  thought.  At  the  same  time 
his  residence  on  the  shores  of  the  Baltic  has  en- 
abled him  to  study,  under  exceptionally  advan- 
tageous circumstances,  the  remains  of  ancient 
Lettish  and  Lithuanian  mythology ;  a  fact  to 
which  some  of  the  most  interesting  portions  of 
his  present  work  bear  witness,  as  well  as  the 
valuable  but  little-known  volume  he  not  long  ago 
published  on  "The  Lettish  Sun- Myth."  In  trav- 
els also  to  Holland,  Sweden,  and  the  Baltic  prov- 
inces of  Russia,  he  has  collected  much  informa- 
tion ;  and,  during  the  wars  with  Denmark,  Aus- 
tria, and  France,  he  had  frequent  opportunities 
of  talking  with  prisoners  successively  sent  from 
many  parts  of  Europe  to  Dantzic,  and  of  obtain- 
ing from  them  many  a  curious  custom,  legend,  or 
song.  Of  late  years  his  studies  have  chiefly  been 
directed  to  all  that  illustrates  ancient  faiths  in 
spirits  connected  with  the  growth  of  herbs,  corn, 
and  trees.  Some  time  ago  he  published,  as 
specimens  of  his  work,  a  small  book  on  "The 
Corn-Wolf,"  and  another  on  "  Corn-Demons."  ' 
But  they  were  received  by  "a  auite  death-like 
silence  on  the  part  of  the  native  press — merely  a 
few  kindly  words  from  abroad,  and  the  sympathy 
shown  by  the  Universities  of  Berlin  and  Vienna, 
encouraged  him  to  proceed.  Even  the  first  vol- 
ume of  the  present  work  was  received  in  the 
same  discouraging  manner  in  Prussia.  Let  us 
trust  that  the  reception  of  the  completed  work 
may  be  one  more  in  keeping  with  its  great  merits. 

From  the  earliest  times  of  which  we  know  any- 
thing, men  have  been  inclined  to  find  resem- 
blances between  human  and  tree  life.  In  many 
cosmogonies  these  are  closely  connected,  as  in 
the  Iranian  account  of  how  the  first  human  pair 
grew  up  as  a  single  tree,  the  fingers  or  twigs  of 
each  one  folded  over  the  other's  ears,  till  the  time 
came  when  they  were  separated,  and  infused  by 
Ahuramazda  with  distinct  human  souls.  By  the 
inhabitants  of  almost  every  land,  trees  were  sup- 
posed to  be  sentient  beings,  and  survivals  of 
that  belief  linger  on  at  the  present  day.  Thus 
in  some  places  trees  are  informed  when  their 
owner  dies,  in  others  wood-cutters  beg  a  sound 
tree's  pardon  before  they  fell  it.  Not  only  did 
and  does  a  belief  prevail  that  spirits  dwell  be- 
tween the  tree-stem  and  its  bark,  and  that  there- 
fore the  barking  as  well  as  the  felling  of  a  tree 
may  dislodge  demons  capable  of  doing  mischief, 
but  there  was  a  widely-spread  belief  that  trees 

1  The  Roggenwolf  and  Korndamonen.  The  latter 
word  sounds  better  than  its  English  equivalent,  which 
is  open  to  misapprehension. 


FOREST  AND  FIELD  MYTHS. 


563 


had  souls  of  their  own  ;  that  either  a  demon  lived 
within  the  stem,  or  that  human  souls,  after  death, 
might  take  up  their  residence  within  it.  The  life 
of  a  tree,  also,  might  be  linked  with  that  of  a 
man,  and  the  man's  health  and  fortunes  might  be 
affected  by  an  action  done  to  the  tree.  Thus  the 
tremulousness  of  a  shrew-ash  might  be  connected 
with  a  man's  ague ;  and  the  disease  might  be 
cured  by  immuring  a  living  shrew-mouse  in  the 
tree,  which  was  then  supposed  to  take  back  its 
communicated  malady;  and  thus,  according  to  a 
widely-spread  German  belief,  if  an  invalid  is 
passed  through  a  split  tree,  which  is  then  bound 
up,  the  man  and  the  tree  enter  into  sympathetic 
relations  with  each  other.  If  the  tree  flourishes, 
so  will  the  man ;  if  it  withers,  he  will  die.  But 
if  he  dies  while  the  tree  lives  on,  his  soul  will  in- 
habit it.  If  the  tree,  says  Rugen  tradition,  is 
afterward  cut  down,  and  used  for  ship-building, 
the  dead  man's  ghost  becomes  the  haunting  pa- 
tron of  the  ship.  Under  these  circumstances  it  is 
not  wonderful  that  trees  should  sometimes  bleed 
when  wounded.  Thus,  on  one  occasion,  when  a 
musician  cut  a  piece  of  wood  from  a  tree,  into 
which  a  girl  had  been  metamorphosed  by  her 
angry  mother,  blood  flowed  from  the  wound. 
And  when  he  had  shaped  it  into  a  fiddle-bow,  and 
played  with  it  upon  his  fiddle  before  her  mother, 
such  a  sad  wail  made  itself  heard  that  the  moth- 
er repented  of  her  hasty  deed.  As  trees  are  of- 
ten emblems  of,  and  are  connected  with,  a  human 
being's  life  and  fortunes,  they  were  often  intro- 
duced into  birth  and  marriage  feasts.  In  Sweden 
many  families  took  their  names  from  their  sa- 
cred and  thus  associated  trees.  The  three  fami- 
lies of  Linnaeus  (or  Linne),  Lindelius,  and  Tili- 
ander,  were  all  called  after  the  same  tree,  an  an- 
cient linden  or  lime  which  grew  at  Jonsboda 
Lindergard.  When  the  Lindelius  family  died 
out,  one  of  the  old  lime's  chief  boughs  withered ; 
after  the  death  of  the  daughter  of  the  great 
Linnaeus,  the  second  main  bough  bore  leaves  no 
more ;  and,  when  the  last  of  the  Tiliander  family 
expired,  the  tree's  active  life  came  to  an  end, 
though  the  dead  trunk  still  exists,  and  is  highly 
honored.1 

Sometimes  travelers,  when  starting  on  a  jour- 
ney, linked  their  existence  with  that  of  a  tree, 
just  as  Satu,  in  the  oldest  of  tales,  the  Egyptian 
story  of  the  Two  Brothers,  left  his  heart  behind 
him  in  an  acacia.  For  trees  were  often  sup- 
posed to  exercise  a  beneficial  influence  on  human 

1  Dr.  Mannhardt  quotes,  as  his  authorities  for  this 
statement,  Hylten-Cavallius,  "Varend,"  i.,  144  ;  "Pas- 
sarge,  "Schweden,"  p.  217.  i 


life.  As  Vard-trad,  Guardian-trees,  they  were 
the  homes  of  a  spirit  or  genius,  who  led  and 
guarded  the  men  over  whom  they  kept  watch.  In 
the  Sailors'  Quarter  of  Copenhagen,  according  to 
H.  Steffens,  each  house  has  its  protecting  elder- 
tree,  which  is  religiously  guarded  and  watched ; 
and  similar  trees  have  for  centuries  been  con- 
nected with  Lettish  homes.  In  one  Livonian  par- 
ish, a  certain  Pastor  Carlbom  is  said  to  have  hewn 
down  eighty  such  guardian-trees  in  a  single  fort- 
night of  the  year  1836.  It  was  a  tree  of  this  kind 
which  a  poor  Tyrolese  peasant  (a  story  tells)  rev- 
erenced so  much  that  he  refused  to  sell  it.  At 
length  there  came  a  storm  which  blew  it  down ; 
and  amid  its  roots  the  reverent  proprietor  found 
a  rich  treasure.  Similar  to  the  Watch-tree  was 
also  the  Botra,  or  Abode-tree,  a  holy  tree  honored 
by  sacrifices,  and  tenanted  by  elves.  Sometimes 
these  are  tiny  beings,  whose  linen  may  be  seen,  in 
fine  weather,  hanging  out  on  the  branches  to  dry. 
Sometimes  they  are  of  the  ordinary  human  dimen- 
sions. One  of  the  latter  kind,  says  a  Czech  story, 
was  a  nymph  who  appeared  by  day  among  men, 
but  always  went  back  to  her  willow  by  night. 
She  married  a  mortal,  bare  him  children,  and  lived 
happily  with  him,  till  at  length  he  cut  down  her 
willow-tree;  that  moment  his  wife  died.  Out  of 
the  willow  was  made  a  cradle  which  had  the  power 
of  instantly  lulling  to  sleep  the  babe  she  had  left 
behind  her;  and,  when  the  babe  became  a  child, 
it  was  able  to  hold  converse  with  its  dead  mother 
by  means  of  a  pipe,  cut  from  the  twigs  growing 
on  the  stump  which  once  had  been  that  mother's 
home. 

From  the  idea  that  trees  had  their  peculiar 
spirits  seems  to  have  arisen,  Dr.  Mannhardt  thinks, 
a  belief  in  wood-spirits  in  general.  Each  copse, 
or  wood,  or  forest,  was  supposed  to  have  its  own 
denizens,  sometimes  green  of  hue  and  mossy  of 
hide,  at  other  times  capable  of  passing  muster  as 
mortal  men  and  women.  These  female  spirits 
were  usually  supposed  to  lead  joyous  lives,  but 
some  of  them  were  liable  to  be  chased  and  slain 
by  the  terrible  Wild  Huntsman,  who,  on  stormy 
nights,  might  be  heard  tearing  at  full  gallop  through 
the  forest.  A  further  generalization  may  have  led 
to  the  belief  in  a  genius  of  tree-life,  and  of  all 
vegetable  life ;  a  genius  who  was  closely  connect- 
ed with  growth  and  fertility,  and  to  whom,  there- 
fore, reverence  was  to  be  paid,  especially  at  the 
times  when  foliage,  and  flowers,  and  fruits,  are 
most  impressive  to  the  mind  of  man.  Wijh  those 
seasons  are  connected  many  surviving  rites  of 
time-bonored  descent.  In  many  of  these  the  gen- 
ius of  vegetation  is  symbolized  under  the  form 


564: 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


of  a  tree.  In  the  blithe  spring-time,  when  the 
plant-world  has  awakened  from  its  winter  sleep, 
the  May-tree,  the  head  of  the  family  to  which  our 
May-pole  belongs,  is  sought  for  in  the  forest  all 
over  Northern  Europe,  is  carted  away  in  triumph, 
and,  decked  with  ribbons  and  other  bravery,  is 
solemnly  planted  on  the  village  green,  or  beside 
the  peasant's  house.  With  the  summer  heats  come 
other  feasts,  in  which  trees  play  a  leading  part, 
and,  when  autumn  gilds  the  fields,  the  last  harvest- 
wagon  is  adorned  with  a  tree  gayly  decked  and 
religiously  honored.  When  a  house  is  finished,  a 
similar  tree  is  placed  upon  the  roof;  when  a  wed- 
ding takes  place,  another  is  set  up  before  the  door 
of  the  newly-married  couple.  And  when  the  short 
winter  day  begins  to  lengthen,  the  Christmas-tree 
plays  its  cheery  part — a  tree  which,  Dr.  Mann- 
hardt  observes,  has  now  become  an  especially 
German  institution,  and  follows  German  emigrants 
over  land  and  sea  to  the  New  World,  but  which, 
at  the  beginning  of  the  present  century,  was  known 
but  to,  comparatively  speaking,  few  Germans ;  just 
as  it  remained  till  about  1830  all  but  unknown  to 
Hungary,  and  was  unfamiliar  later  still  to  England 
and  France,  till  its  observance  received  an  impulse 
in  those  countries  from  the  loving  hands  of  Prince 
Albert  and  the  Duchess  Helen  of  Orleans.  Its 
origin  is  plainly  heathenish,  though  it  has  been 
claimed  for  the  Christian  Church,  on  the  ground 
that  the  24th  of  December  is  consecrated  to  Adam 
and  Eve ;  and  a  well-known  legend  relates  how 
Adam  brought  from  paradise  a  fruit  or  slip  from 
the  Tree  of  Knowledge,  from  which  eventually 
sprang  the  tree  from  which  the  cross  was  made; 
while  another  states  that  a  branch  from  the  Tree 
of  Life  was  planted  above  Adam's  grave,  and  be- 
came the  tree  from  which  Christ  plucked  the 
fruits  of  Redemption. 

But  it  was  not  only  under  the  forms  of  trees 
or  plants  that  the  human  mind  symbolized  the 
Spirit  of  Growth  or  Vegetation,  the  genius  of 
spring-tide  and  harvest-tide.  A  natural  tendency 
toward  imagining  that  supernatural  beings  are 
of  like  forms  to  our  own  led  to  such  spirits  being 
represented  under  human  shapes.  Of  these,  many 
still  survive,  though  many  others  have  perished. 
Sometimes  these  figures  were  single;  sometimes 
they  went  in  pairs.  Of  the  single  figures,  the  best 
known  to  ourselves  is  the  Jack-in-the-Green — our 
chief  representative  of  the  numerous  beings  who, 
in  various  lands,  when  spring-tide  comes,  are 
robed  in  dresses  made  of  herbs  and  boughs.  Of 
the  coupled  symbols  of  this  kind,  the  most  famil- 
iar to  English  minds,  not  long  ago,  were  the  King 
and  Queen  of  May.     For  in  Old  England  the  May- 


King  played  a  prominent-  part  in  May  revels, 
though  now  we  are  generally  accustomed  to  think 
only  of  the  May-Queen.  But  in  foreign  countries 
there  still  exist  all  sorts  of  May-kings  and  May- 
counts,  and  the  Mairitt  is  still  kept  up  in  Ger- 
many, though  among  ourselves  the  good  old  Eng- 
lish custom  of  "going  a-Maying"  has  fallen  into 
disrepute,  and  has  been  handed  over  to  chimney- 
sweeps, or,  still  worse,  to  negro  minstrels.1  With 
these  May-ridings,  and  with  the  somewhat  similar 
midsummer  fire-festivals,  are  connected  a  number 
of  customs.  Most  remarkable  among  them  is  that 
of  carrying  out  to  the  forest  a  figure  made  of  wood, 
straw,  or  some  other  like  material,  which  is  sol- 
emnly destroyed  either  by  water  or  by  fire.  Similar 
puppets  are  thus  drowned  or  burned  at  various 
seasons  of  the  year.  That  which  is  thus  destroyed 
in  spring  seems,  at  least  in  Slavonic  lands,  to  be  a 
personification  of  the  winter.  But  in  that  which 
is  burned  at  midsummer,  Dr.  Mannhardt  is  in- 
clined to  see  an  image  of  the  summer  vegetation, 
parching  under  the  blazing  sun.  The  flinging  of 
a  puppet  into  water  may  be  a  rite  connected  with 
rain-producing  spells,  especially  as  in  times  of 
drought  the  peasants  in  many  Slavonic  lands  are 
in  the  habit  of  leading  about  through  their  vil- 
lages a  youth  or  girl  robed  in  flowers  and  foliage, 
who  is  afterward  solemnly  stripped  and  sluiced 
with  abundant  water. 

Among  the  most  remarkable  features  of  this 
rite  of  destroying  a  straw-man  or  other  puppet 
— a  rite  to  which  an  historical  air  has  been  given 
among  us  by  our  burning  of  Guy  Fawkes,  a  re- 
ligious meaning  among  the  southern  Catholics  by 
their  hanging  of  Judas  Iscariot — are  the  traces 
which  they  retain  in  some  lands  of  an  ancient 
custom  of  human  sacrifice.     To  this  day,  in  re- 
mote districts,  especially  in  Russia,  not  only  are 
fruits  and  flowers  destroyed  along  with  the  figure 
which  seems  to  be  an  effigy  of  either  the  genius 
or  the  enemy  of  vegetation,  but  living  creatures 
also  are  put  to  death.     Thus,  in  olden  days,  the 
Parisians  were  diverted  by  the  screams  of  a  score 
of  cats,  which  were  burned  to  death  in  the  mid- 
summer St.  John's  fire  on  the  Place  de  Greve. 
And  thus,  at  the  present  day,  the  inhabitants  of 
Luchon,  in  the  Pyrenees,  extract  great  delight 
from  the  wrigglings  of  the  snakes  which,  on  St. 
John's  Eve,  they  throw  into  a  fire  which  is  lighted 
under  the  auspices  of  the  clergy.2   For  the  clergy 

1  The  blackening  of  faces  at  May-tide  was  an  ancient 
cnstom,  much  older  than  the  story  of  the  aristocratic 
young  sweep. 

2  See  an  account  quoted  by  Dr.  Mannhardt  (whom 
nothing  seems  to  escape)  from  the  Athenaeum  of  July 
24. 1869. 


FOREST  AND  FIELD  MYTHS. 


>65 


have,  in  many  lands,  given  their  sanction  to  what 
is  really  an  old  heathenish  custom,  connected 
with  the  ancient  Baal  or  Moloch  fires  of  Asia,  the 
Palilia  fires  of  the  old  Romans,  and  the  Not-feuer 
or  plague-staying  Need-fire  of  our  Teutonic  and 
Keltic  ancestors.  There  seems  to  be  good  reason 
for  supposing  that  into  these  fires,  in  very  ancient 
times,  human  beings  also  were  flung.  In  some 
places  the  straw-man,  or  other  figure  represent- 
ing a  human  being  of  ordinary  size,  was  replaced 
by  a  gigantic  wicker-work  form.  Such  a  figure 
as  this,  six  yards  high,  made  of  osier-twigs,  used 
to  be  burned  every  July  in  the  Rue  des  Ours  at 
Paris,  after  having  been  led  in  procession  through 
the  whole  city.  This  custom,  which  lasted  till 
1743,  was  popularly  supposed  to  date  back  to  the 
burning  of  a  blasphemous  soldier  on  the  same 
spot  in  1418.  But  that  was  a  perversion  of  his- 
tory.1 Just  as  figures  of  the  Guy  Fawkes  kind 
are  yearly  burned  in  lands  which  never  heard  of 
a  Gunpowder  Plot,  so  were  similar  figures  to 
u  the  Giant  of  the  Rue  des  Ours  "  yearly  given  to 
the  flames  in  other  places.  Thus  in  Brie  (Isle  de 
Prance),  un  mannequin  d'osier  is  said  to  be  burned 
every  23d  of  June.  Very  interesting  is  it  to  com- 
pare this  osier-twig  figure  with  that  in  which  the 
ancient  Britons  are  said  to  have  burned  human 
beings  to  death.  According  to  the  testimony  of 
Caesar,  Strabo,  and  Diodorus,  the  Druids  used  to 
construct  huge  figures  of  twigs,  which  they  filled 
with  human  beings,  and  then  consumed  with  fire. 
Thieves  and  murderers  were  preferred  as  sacri- 
fices, but  if  there  were  not  enough  of  them  forth- 
coming, innocent  persons  also  had  to  suffer.  Cae- 
sar's gigantic  figures,  conlexta  viminibus,  seem 
very  like  the  osier-twig  giant  of  the  Rue  des  Ours 
and  his  monstrous  kin.  And  there  appears  to 
be  good  reason  for  supposing  that  the  human 
sacrifices  thus  offered  up  by  the  Britons  were  in- 
tended to  accompany  some  such  rites  as  those 
with  which  the  inhabitants  of  a  great  part  of  Eu- 
rope still  hail  the  advent  of  spring  or  midsum- 
mer, or  attempt  to  ward  off  pestilence  from  their 
fields  and  homes.  Within  the  last  few  years,  at 
least  one  Russian  peasant  has  been  known  to  sac- 
rifice a  poor  relation  in  the  hopes  of  staying  an 
epidemic. 

More  pleasant  than  these  sacrificial  associa- 
tions are  the  customs  springing  from  the  idea  of 
a  bridal  pair  as  a  representative  of  the  genius  of 
fertility.  From  it  arose  the  custom  of  "May- 
weddings,"  still  prevalent  in  many  parts  of  Eu- 

1  In  technical  language,  an  etiological  explanation 
of  a  custom  based  on  an  anthropomorphic  form  of  a 
Xature-myth. 


rope.  There  is  an  ancient  and  widely-spread 
prejudice  against  marrying  in  May,  but  the  wed- 
dings in  question  are  only  fictitious  and  tempo- 
rary alliances.  In  honor  of  the  supposed  union 
of  the  imaginary  male  and  female  representatives 
of  the  fertilizing  powers  of  Nature,  it  was,  and  in 
many  parts  of  Germany  still  is,  the  custom  for 
village  lads  and  lasses  to  be  sportively  betrothed 
to  each  other  at  May-time  for  a  year.  The  cere- 
mony often  takes  place  beside  a  bonfire  lighted 
for  the  purpose.  The  girls  thus  temporarily  bound 
are  known  as  their  lads'  May-wives  or  Maifrauen. 
So  in  England  might  similar  couples  be  linked  for 
a  year  as  Valentines,  in  Germany  as  Liebchen  or 
Vielliebchen,  in  France  as  Philippe  and  Philip- 
pine.1 

With  all  these  spring  and  midsummer  festi- 
vals in  honor  of  the  awakening,  after  his  winter 
sleep;  of  the  Genius  of  Vegetation,  are  closely 
linked  those  which  take  place  in  the  autumn, 
when  the  harvest  is  gathered  in.  Nearly  allied 
to  the  Tree-spirits,  according  to  primitive  ideas, 
were  the  Corn-spirits  which  haunted  and  protect- 
ed the  green  or  yellow  fields.  But  by  the  popular 
fancy  they  were  often  symbolized  under  the  form 
of  wolves  or  of  "  buck-men,"  goat-legged  creatures 
similar  to  the  classic  Satyrs.  When  the  wind 
bows  the  long  grass  or  waving  grain,  German 
peasants  still  say,  "  the  Grass-wolf"  or  "  the 
Corn-wolf  is  abroad  ; "  in  many  places  the  last 
sheaf  of  rye  is  left  afield  as  a  shelter  for  the  Rog- 
genwolf  or  Rye-wolf  during  the  winter's  cold,  and 
in  many  a  summer  or  autumn  festive  rite  that  be- 
ing is  represented  by  a  rustic,  who  assumes  a  wolf- 
like appearance.  The  Corn-spirit,  however,  was 
often  symbolized  under  a  human  form.  "  Corn- 
mothers  "  pass  over  German  fields  when  the  grain 
waves;  a  "Kirnbaby"  is,  or  was,  supposed  to 
dwell  in  the  ears  of  English  wheat ;  and  by  Rus- 
sian eyes  Rye-spirits  are  often  seen,  tall  as  the 
highest  corn  before  harvest-time,  short  as  the  cut 
stems  afterward.  Many  a  memory  of  the  Corn- 
spirit  is  still  preserved  in  the  ceremonies  of  the 
harvest-home.  All  over  Enrope  honor  is  shown 
to  him  in  the  reception  of  the  last  wain-load  from 
a  field,  in  the  last  sheaf  left  out  in  his  behalf  amid 
the  deserted  stubble. 

Thus  far  does  Dr.  Mannhardt  carry  his  read- 
ers in  his  first  volume.  His  chief  aim  in  it  is  to 
show  how  there  seem  to  have  arisen,  in  the 
minds  of  primitive  men,  a  series  of  ideas  respect- 

1  Valentine  has  nothing  to  do,  etymologically,  with 
St.  Valentine,  but  comes  from  Galantins,  a  Norman 
word  for  a  lover.  Philippine  is  a  corruption  of  Viellieb- 
chen. 


566 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


ing  the  fertilizing  and  fruit-bearing  powers  of 
Nature.  At  first,  he  thinks,  arose  the  belief  that 
each  tree  or  plant  possesses  spiritual  as  well  as 
physical  life,  being  tenanted  either  by  semi-divine 
spirits  or  by  the  ghosts  of  the  dead.  Then  came, 
he  supposes,  a  generalization  of  this  idea,  ac- 
cording to  which  plants  or  trees  collectively,  the 
grassy  meadow  and  the  leafy  wood,  were  credited 
with  peculiar  inhabitants.  And  from  this  a  still 
higher  generalization  led  to  a  belief  in  a  genius 
of  plant-life  or  forest-life,  or,  higher  still,  a  gen- 
ius of  growth  or  fertility  in  general.  This  uni- 
versal genius  of  growth  was  symbolized  by  a 
bush  or  tree,  brought  in  triumph  from  the  forest, 
gayly  decked,  and  solemnly  planted  near  the 
homestead  or  in  the  village,  or  by  the  effigy  of  a 
human  being,  or  by  a  human  being  dressed  in  or 
adorned  with  foliage  and  flowers,  or  by  a  pair  of 
similar  human  beings,  male  and  female,  who  were 
at  times  supposed  to  be  a  wedded  couple.  And 
all  these  ideas,  he  clearly  shows,  prevailed  as 
well  in  relation  to  the  field  as  to  the  forest,  espe- 
cially to  the  life-supporting  cornfield.  His  sec- 
ond volume  is  chiefly  devoted  to  a  comparison  of 
old  Greek  and  Eoman  ideas  about  the  semi-divine 
inhabitants  of  the  meadow  and  the  grove  with 
those  prevalent  among  the  inhabitants  of  the 
north  of  Europe,  and  of  the  ceremonies  which  in 
the  north  and  south  sprang  out  of  them. 

Very  closely  connected  with  the  forest  and 
field  spirits  of  the  ancient  Teutons,  Slavs,  and 
Kelts,  were  the  "  wild  folk  "  of  classic  lore.  The 
tree-haunting  Dryads  of  Hellenic  times,  as  well 
as  their  successors,  the  Nereids  of  modern  Greece, 
were  clearly  cousins  of  the  northern  tree-nymphs. 
And  near  relations  of  the  Teutonic  and  Slavonic 
Buck-men  and  Corn-demons  must  have  been  the 
Fauns  and  Satyrs  of  ancient  days.  The  simi- 
larity between  the  legends  relating  to  these  spir- 
its of  the  north  and  south  is  well  illustrated  by 
the  following  Tyrolese  folk-tale  :  A  peasant  once 
hired  a  maid-servant  of  unusual  strength  and 
skill,  under  whose  guidance  his  cattle  prospered 
greatly.  But  after  a  time,  as  his  family  sat  at 
dinner  one  day,  they  heard  a  voice  from  without 
cry,  "  Salome,  come  !  "  The  maid  sprang  up  and 
disappeared.  And  with  her  seemed  to  go  the 
prosperity  of  the  house.  Some  years  later,  a 
butcher  was  passing  through  a  neighboring  for- 
est at  midnight,  when  he  heard  a  voice  cry, 
"  When  thou  comest  to  such  and  such  a  place, 
call  out,  '  Salome  is  dead  ! ' "  Coming  to  the  ap- 
pointed place  before  daybreak,  the  butcher  did 
as  he  had  been  bid.  Then  from  the  mountain 
recesses  arose  a  cry  of  wailing  and  loud  lament, 


and  the  butcher  continued  his  journey,  full  of 
vague  alarm.  Compare  with  this  the  well-known 
story  which  so  greatly  puzzled  the  Emperor  Ti- 
berius—  who,  whatever  his  failings  may  have 
been,  at  least  was  a  genuine  lover  and  investiga- 
tor of  the  marvelous,  though  a  little  too  much 
given  to  inquire,  if  Suetonius  is  to  be  trusted, 
what  was  the  name  of  Hecuba's  mother,  what 
name  Achilles  bore  among  the  maidens,  and  what 
songs  the  Sirens  used  to  sing.  As  a  ship  was 
sailing  from  Greece  to  Italy,  a  voice  from  the 
shore  hailed  one  of  the  passengers,  and  bade 
him  call  out  when  he  came  to  a  certain  spot, 
"  The  great  Pan  is  dead ! "  And  when  he  had 
done  so,  a  wailing  cry,  as  of  many  voices,  was 
heard  resounding  along  the  shore.  Common  to 
all  Europe,  also,  was  the  idea  that  it  was  danger- 
ous to  work  in  the  middle  of  the  day,  for  that 
those  who  then  labored  were  liable  to  the  wrath 
of  some  evil  spirit ;  just  as  the  Hellenic  shep- 
herd believed  that  Pan  slept  during  the  sultry 
noontide-hour,  and  therefore  refrained  at  that 
time  from  music  which  might  awake  and  irritate 
that  guardian  of  flocks.1  So  far  as  the  field- 
spirits  and  wood-demons  of  Greece,  Italy,  and  the 
barbaric  North  were  concerned,  there  is  a  wealth 
of  evidence  to  show  that  similar  views  of  the 
forces  of  Nature,  as  mamifested  in  beneficial 
plant-growth  and  hostile  storm-rage,  produced  all 
over  Europe  almost  identical  beliefs  in  supernat- 
ural inhabitants  of  meadow,  cornfield,  grove,  and 
stream.  Only  the  Centaurs  offer  a  difficulty. 
Their  horsy  nature  has  never  been  quite  satisfac- 
torily explained  ;  whether  they  be  considered  as 
kinsmen  of  the  Vedic  Gandharvas,  or  mere  per- 
sonifications of  mountain-cataracts,  or  as  wild 
pre-Hellenic  inhabitants  of  Pelion,  or — from  Dr. 
Mannhardt's  point  of  view  —  as  spirits  of  the 
hill  and  wood,  descended  either  from  Ision,  the 
whirlwind,  or  from  trees,  as  Cheiron  from  a  lime- 
tree,  Pholos  from  an  ash.  Their  equine  nature, 
he  thinks,  must  have  been  thrust  upon  them  by 
some  poet  or  painter,  who  too  literally  accepted 
a  now-lost  myth,  which  compared  them  to  horses 
or  metaphorically  bestowed  upon  them  equine 
attributes.  Russia  seems  to  be  the  only  land  at 
any  distance  from  Greece,  we  may  observe,  in 
which  the  Centaur  has  become  naturalized  in 
folk-lore.  But  his  appearance  there,  under  the 
name  of  Polkan, 2  is  probably  due  to  the  Byzan- 

1  The  herdsman's  special  friend  ;  supposing  his 
name  not  to  be  connected  with  irav  =  all,  nor  to  he 
derived  from  a  root  pu  =  to  cleanse,  but  to  spring 
from  a  root  pa  =  to  guard,  to  pasture,  etc.,  with  which 
are  connected  <wa,  grass,  noL^v,  a  herdsman;  cf. pas- 
cere,  pa-nis,  etc.  a  Pol  —  half,  kon  =  horse. 


FOREST  AND  FIELD  MYTHS. 


567 


tine  traditions,  which  exercised  for  centuries  so 
great  an  influence  on  early  Russian  thought  and 
art. 

Not  only  did  similar  ideas  produce  a  similar 
mythological  population  in  the  woods  and  fields 
of  Northern  and  Southern  Europe,  but  they  led 
also  to  very  similar  festivals  and  religious  rites. 
Thus  a  ceremony  is  familiar  to  the  west  of  Ger- 
many and  the  greater  part  of  France,  of  bringing 
home  on  the  last  harvest-wain  a  gayly-decorated 
tree  or  bough,  which  is  received  with  all  respect 
by  the  master,  and  planted  on  or  near  the  house, 
to  remain  there  till  the  next  harvest  brings  its 
successor.  And  some  rite  of  this  sort  seems  to 
have  prevailed  all  over  the  north  of  Europe.  So 
in  the  autumnal  harvest  thanksgiving-feast  at 
Athens,  it  was  customary  to  carry  in  sacred  pro- 
cessioD  an  olive-branch  wrapped  in  wool,  called 
Eiresione,  to  the  temple  of  Apollo,  and  there  to 
leave  it ;  and,  in  addition  to  this,  a  similar  bough 
was  solemnly  placed  beside  the  house-door  of 
every  Athenian  who  was  engaged  in  agriculture 
or  fruit-culture,  there  to  remain  until  replaced 
by  a  similar  successor  twelve  months  later.1  The 
ceremonies  with  which  this  Athenian  counterpart, 
as  Dr.  Mannhardt  considers  it,  of  the  Teutonic 
Erntemai,  was  attended  to  its  destination,  were 
singularly  like  those  which  still  survive  in  North- 
ern Europe  as  part  of  the  rustic  harvest-home 
rite.  In  Athens,  many  of  them  were  supposed  to 
refer  to  the  mythical  expedition  of  Theseus  to 
Crete;  but  it  was  a  common  practice  in  olden 
time  to  combine  the  harvest  thanksgiving  with 
religious  rites  in  commemoration  of  some  histori- 
cal or  traditional  deliverance.  Another  interest- 
ing parallel  is  supplied  by  the  spring-tide  rites, 
celebrated  at  Rome  every  March,  and  certain 
spring  and  summer  festivals  common  to  the  Teu- 
tons and  Slavs.  To  this  day,  in  Germany  and 
Russia,  as  has  already  been  stated,  it  is  customa- 
ry, either  in  the  early  spring  or  at  midsummer, 
to  carry  out  in  procession,  to  a  spot  where  water 
flows,  some  type  of  the  winter  which  has  passed 
away,  or  the  spring  which  has  reappeared,  or  the 
genius  of  growth  and  vegetation,  dead  or  slum- 
bering, or  brisk  and  full  of  life,  and  there  solemn- 
ly to  lave  in  the  stream,  or  to  fling  into  it  from  a 
bridge,  the  living  Jack-in-the-Green,  or  the  pup- 
pet made  of  straw  or  leafy  boughs ;  or  else  (at  the 
midsummer  festivals)  to  pass  them  through  fire, 
and  next  day  immerse  them  in  running  water.  At 
Rome,  in  olden  times,  there  existed  twenty-four 

1  According  to  Liddell  and  Scott,  the  Eires=iOne 
{eiros  =  wool)  was  a  wool-bound  wreath,  adorned  with 
fruits. 


chapels,  called  Argei  or  Argeorum  Sacraria,  sol- 
emnly visited  by  the  faithful  on  the  16th  and  17fh 
of  March.  And  under  the  name  of  Argei  were 
known  the  twenty-four  puppets,  fashioned  in  hu- 
man shape  out  of  straw  or  rushes,  and  clothed 
and  gayly  decked,  which,  on  the  13th  of  May,  were 
carried  in  procession  to  the  Pons  Sublicius,  and 
from  it  were  flung  into  the  Tiber  by  the  Vestal 
Virgins.  An  old  tradition  declared  that,  original- 
ly, human  victims  were  thus  flung  into  the  stream 
as  an  offering  to  Saturnus  (Kronos)  and  Dispater 
(Hades) ;  but  that,  as  time  passed  by,  and  man- 
ners became  milder,  in  place  of  the  men  more  than 
sixty  years  old,  who  used  to  be  chosen  for  the 
purpose,  were  substituted  types  in  the  shape  of 
Scirpei  Quirites,  puppets  made  of  straw  or  reeds. 
The  sacrifice  was  supposed  to  be  of  an  expiatory 
nature,  likely  to  keep  off  misfortune  and  pesti- 
lence from  the  city.  It  is  possible,  says  Dr.  Mann- 
hardt, that  at  an  early  period  the  twenty  four  Ar- 
gei or  puppets  may  have  been  carried  in  March  to 
the  chapels  which  bore  the  same  name,  and  left 
there  till  the  time  came  for  their  being  carried 
away  to  the  bridge,  and  thence  flung  into  the  river. 
At  all  events,  the  puppets  were  no  doubt  closely 
connected  with  the  chapels,  as  they  seem  to  be 
also  with  the  figures  formed  of  or  robed  in  foli- 
age, which  were,  and  still  are,  flung  into  northern 
streams.  In  the  same  way  interesting  parallels 
are  supplied  by  Teutonic  and  Slavonic  spring  and 
summer  festivals  to  the  ancient  rites  commemo- 
rating the  death  of  Adonis  or  Tammuz.  In  those 
ancient  Asiatic  customs,  Dr.  Mannhardt  sees  an 
embodiment  of  a  prehistoric  myth  referring  to 
the  temporary  death  of  the  spring-tide  vegetation. 
The  spring  itself,  or  the  plant-life  it  vivifies,  was 
personified  as  a  comely  youth,  beloved  by  the 
goddess  of  fertility,  and  united  with  her  during 
the  spring.  In  the  summer  heats  he  leaves  her 
and  disappears,  but  lives  on  in  the  unseen  world 
of  the  dead.  He  is  represented  by  a  figure  which 
is  supposed  to  be  dead,  and  which  is  mourned 
over,  and  laved  with  or  flung  into  water.  At 
length  comes  the  spring,  and  with  it  returns  the 
godlike  youth,  who  is  received  with  joyous  rites, 
his  reunion  with  his  divine  spouse  being  typified 
by  temporary  unions  entered  into  by  their  wor- 
shipers. So  in  the  north  of  Europe,  the  genius 
of  vegetation  is  still  personified  under  the  shape  of 
a  living  Laubmctnn,  or  a  Jack-in-the-Green,  or  a 
Pere-Mai,  and  other  figures  of  the  same  kind,  or 
under  the  form  of  a  leafy  puppet,  or  a  gayly-decked 
tree.  And  this  is  received  in  spring  with  a  joy- 
ous greeting.  But  at  midsummer  the  Russian 
peasant,  with  wailing  cries  such  as  attend  a  corpse, 


568 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


lays  in  a  coffin  a  puppet,  or  flings  into  a  stream 
a  straw-figure,  loudly  lamenting  it  as  one  dead. 
But  when  the  spring  comes  back,  the  typified 
genius  of  vegetation  is  again  hailed  with  mirth 
and  revel,  and  to  the  German  "  May-bridegroom  " 
is  given  a  "  May-bride,"  and  lads  and  lasses  in 
many  a  European  land  enter  into  a  kind  of  fic- 
titious union,  lasting  for  a  year,  as  Valentines  and 
Vielliebchen,  and  the  like. 

Lastly  may  be  considered  the  fires  which  from 
time   immemorial   have   blazed   at    midsummer. 
Just  as  the  winter  solstice  has  from  the  earliest 
times  been  honored  by  what  are  now  our  Christ- 
mas revels,  so  has  the  summer  solstice  been  for 
countless  ages  celebrated  by  its  fires.     The  night 
which  precedes  St.  John's  or  Midsummer-Day  is 
still  rendered  brilliant  in  many  a  European  land 
by  flames,  through  which  spring,  not  only  young 
people,  but  also  men  and  women  carrying  their 
little  ones  in  their  arms.     For  the  flames  are  sup- 
posed to  possess  a  purifying,  evil-averting  influ- 
ence.    In  like  manner  blazed  of  old  the  Phoenician 
fires  in  honor  of  Baal,  and  the  Moloch-fires  through 
which  children  were  passed  in  order  to  secure 
them  against  evil  influences,  and  the  Purim  fires 
into  which  Hainan's  effigy  was  annually  flung,  the 
Babylonish   demon  of  dearth  having  been  con- 
fused by  the  Jews  with  their  enemy  Haman,  just 
as  some  similar  demon  is  now  represented  by  a 
Judas  Iscariot  or  a  Guy  Fawkes.     In  like  manner 
do  the  women  of  modern  Greece  spring  through  a 
fire  on  midsummer-eve,  crying,  "I  leave  my  sins!" 
So  in  the  early  days  of  Rome,  at  the  spring-tide 
festival  of  Palilia,  when  it  was  the  custom,  among 
other   things,  for  men  to   spring  through  fires 
lighted  by  sparks  obtained  from  flints :  all  these 
bonfires  being   closely  connected  also  with   the 
"  need-fires,"  employed  on   special  occasions  to 
drive  away  evil  spirits,  or  avert  plagues,  fires  in 
which  even  at  the  present  day  birds  and  beasts 
are  frequently  offered  in  sacrifice ;  just  as  in  olden 
times  human  sacrifices  were  offered  up,  whether 
such  criminals  or  unfortunates  as  Ctesar  mentions 
were  burned  alive  in  England,  or  other  human  be- 
ings were  given  to  the  flames,  as  Manetho  asserts, 
in  Egypt,  their  bodies  being  consumed,  and  their 
ashes  scattered  to  the  winds,  during  the  dog-days, 
in  honor  of  Typhon.     One  interesting  feature  of 
some  of  these  fire-feasts  was  the  running  of  the 
initiated  barefoot  over  glowing  coals.     This  was 
a  feat  annually  performed  in  honor  of  the  corn- 
goddess  Feronia,  at  Soracte,  by  the  men  who  called 
themselves  Hirpi  or  wolves,  and  who  were  known 
as  the  Hirpi  Sorani.     In  them  Dr.  Mannhardt  is 
inclined  to  see  a  personification  of  the  same  idea 


as  that  which  in  the  north  of  Europe  has  given 
rise  to  the  belief  in  corn-wolves ;  a  species  of  the 
corn-demon  genus.  With  their  barefoot  perform- 
ances he  compares  the  similar  feat  performed 
every  other  harvest-tide  by  certain  Brahmans  for 
the  edification  of  the  Badagas  in  the  South-High- 
lands of  Mysore.  A  missionary  relates  how  one 
of  these  Brahmans  once  came  to  him  to  ask  for 
some  salve  for  his  feet,  which  had  been  burned  by 
the  glowing  ashes  on  which  he  had  walked  rather 
longer  than  was  usual  or  prudent. 

There  is  one  feature  of  Dr.  Mannhardt's  work 
to  which  it  is  well  to  call  special  attention :  the 
rich  contribution,  namely,  which  he  has  made  to 
our  knowledge  of  Lithuanian  and  Lettish  mythol- 
ogy, superstitions,  and  folk-lore.     But  very  little 
is  known  by  us  of  those  strange  races,  now  slowly 
dying  out,  who,  in  the  northeast  of  Europe,  in 
Prussia  and  Russia,  feebly  represent  the  once  fierce 
and  warlike  inhabitants  of  the  grand-duchy  of 
Lithuania,  the  land  which  so  long  clung  to  its  hea- 
thenism ;  the  land  which  for  so  many  centuries, 
before  and  after  its  incorporation  with  Poland,  was 
a  constant  source  of  danger  to  the  growing  power 
of  the  Grand-Princes  of  Moscow,  afterward  the 
Czars  of  Russia.    Very  few  scholars  are  acquaint- 
ed with  the  language  spoken  either  by  the  Letts  or 
by  the  Lithuanians,  a  language  to  which  may  al- 
most be  applied  the  expression  so  amusingly  mis- 
applied by  a  popular  novelist  in  reference  to 
Basque,  that  of  its  being  a  kind  of  "  bastard  San- 
skrit."    And  still  fewer  know  anything,  except 
through  the  medium   of  Nesselmann's  German 
translations,  of  the  rich  stores  of  songs  and  sto- 
ries which  exist  in  the  memories  of  the  Lettish  and 
Lithuanian  people.     In  spite  of  what  Dr.  Mann- 
hardt has  already  done,  especially  in  his  excellent 
monograph  on  "  The  Lettish  Sun-Myth,"  and  of 
what  has  been  done  by  Dr.  W.  Pierson  and  others, 
but  few  scholars  are  in  a  position  to  use  the  copi- 
ous materials  which  have  been  recently  laid  up  at 
Wilna  and  other  Lithuanian  cities.     But  now  that 
he  has  placed  upon  record  in  his  present  work  so 
much  that  is  valuable  of  Lithuanian  and  Lettish 
evidence,  there  no  longer  exists  any  excuse  for 
Western  ignorance  of  the  subject.     All  through 
the  two  volumes  of  the  "  Wald-  und  Feldkulte  " 
are  scattered  numerous  references  to  the  customs, 
songs,  and  folk-tales,  of  the  Letts  and  Lithuanians, 
people  whom  Dr.  Mannhardt,  from  his  watch-tower 
at  Dantzic,  has  had  peculiar  opportunities  of  ob- 
serving.    It  will  be  sufficient  at  present  to  call  at- 
tention to  a  few  of  the  most  characteristic  among 
their  number.     For  this  purpose  may  be  selected 
the  account  given  in  the  second  volume  of  a  Lith- 


FOREST  AND  FIELD  MYTHS. 


JG9 


uanian  harvest-feast,  and  of  a  means  of  avert- 
ing pestilence.  The  first  is  taken  from  the  origi- 
nal MS.  of  the  work  (edited  by  Dr.  W.  Pierson 
in  1871)  on  Lithuanian  tradition  and  folk-lore, 
compiled  during  the  latter  half  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  by  Matthias  Priitorius  and  other  Lutheran 
clergymen  in  Prussian  Lithuania,  and  completed, 
but  not  published,  in  1703.  In  it  Priitorius  de- 
scribes, among  other  things,  the  Lithuanian  Sam- 
borios  or  grain-feast.  In  the  early  part  of  De- 
cember, he  says,  when  the  peasants  begin  thrash- 
ing their  corn,  each  husbandman  takes  nine  hand- 
fuls  of  every  kind  of  seed-bearing  plant  which  he 
cultivates — corn,  beans,  etc. — and  divides  each 
handful  into  three  parts.  He  then  collects  the 
twenty-seven  small  sheaves  thus  made  into  one 
large  heap,  and,  from  part  of  the  grain  and  other 
seeds  thrashed  out  of  it,  bakes  a  small  loaf  for 
each  member  of  his  household,  mixes  the  rest 
with  the  other  materials  necessary,  and  therewith 
brews  beer.  The  first  draught  of  this  beer  is  re- 
served for  himself,  his  wife,  and  bis  children ;  the 
second  for  the  rest  of  the  household  and  any 
stranger  who  may,  though  uninvited,  accidentally 
be  present.  When  the  beer  is  ready,  the  father 
of  the  family,  at  eventide,  kneels  down  before  the 
cask,  and  utters  a  prayer,  commencing  with  the 
words,  "  0  fruit-bearing  Earth,1  let  our  rye  and 
barley  and  all  our  grain  bear  fruit."  Then  he  re- 
turns, beer-laden,  to  the  room  in  which  his  wife 
and  children  await  him,  together  with  a  cock  and 
hen  which  lie  pinioned  on  the  floor.  The  father 
kneels  down,  holding  in  his  hand  the  beer-can, 
and  prays  for  a  blessing  on  his  farm  and  home- 
stead. Then  all  lift  up  their  hands  and  say,  "  0 
God,  and  thou,  0  Earth,  we  offer  to  thee  this  cock 
and  hen;  receive  them  as  freely-offered  gifts." 
Then  he  kills  the  fowls  with  a  wooden  ladle,  and 
hands  them  over  to  a  maid  to  be  plucked.  The 
housewife  then  sends  away  the  servants  and  labor- 
ers, and  cooks  the  fowls  in  an  unused  pan.  When 
ready,  they  are  placed  on  a  large  corn-measure, 
which  is  covered  with  a  table-cloth,  along  with  the 
above-mentioned  little  cakes,  and  round  this  spe- 
cies of  altar  kneel  all  the  family.  The  father  then 
utters  the  Creed  and  the  Ten  Commandments, 
prays  for  a  blessing  on  the  coming  year,  and  three 
times  empties  a  cup  of  beer.  Then  all  the  others 
drink  in  turn,  and  the  cakes  and  fowls  are  eaten. 
All  that  is  eatable  must  be  consumed.     The  bones 

1  Zeminele :  in  Kussian  zemlya.  "  Bless  us,  O  Zem- 
inele,  bless  our  cornfields,  bless  the  woods  and  past- 
ures, too,"  runs  a  song,  printed  for  the  first  time  by 
Dr.  Mannhardt,  who  obtained  it  from  a  witness  who 
heard  it  sung  by  a  peasant  in  1866. 


must  be  gnawed  clean  by  the  house-dog  before 
the  master's  eyes,  and  afterward  reverently  buried 
in  the  cow-house  or  stable.  During  the  whole  of 
the  day  the  servants  and  laborers  must  be  ad- 
dressed only  in  kindly  terms. 

It  was  not  till  the  year  1386  that  the  Lithu- 
anians accepted  Christianity.  Until  then  hea- 
thenism prevailed  all  over  the  country,  except  in  a 
few  towns,  such  as  Wilna,  where  there  were  many 
members  of  the  Greek  Church,  including  the 
reigning  family.  But  in  that  year  Yagello, 
Grand  -  Duke  of  Lithuania,  married  Jadwiga, 
Queen  of  Poland,  passed  from  the  Greek  to  the 
Latin  Church,  and  made  Christianity  the  religion 
of  his  country.  The  heathen  Lithuanians  were 
baptized  in  troops,  the  sacred  groves  were  felled, 
the  holy  fires  were  extinguished,  and  an  end  was 
put  to  the  snakes  and  lizards  which  till  then 
had  been  revered  if  not  worshiped.  Heathenism, 
however,  though  scotched,  was  not  killed,  and  in 
the  gloomy  recesses  of  Lithuanian  forests  it  long 
lived  on,  and  was  represented  for  centuries  by 
such  feasts  as  that  of  "  the  Thrice-nine  "  which 
has  just  been  mentioned,  and  by  such  other  rites 
as  the  following  Lettish  ceremony  whereby  to 
keep  off  pestilence.  It  is  described  in  the  work 
published  at  Riga,  in  1636,  by  a  Lutheran  super- 
intendent named  Einhorn,  under  the  title  of 
"  Reformatio  gentis  Letticae  in  Ducatu  Curlan- 
dias."  "When  a  cattle-plague  is  dreaded,"  he 
says,  "  the  peasants  hold  a  solemn  feast,  which 
they  call  Sobar.  Having  contributed  a  coin 
apiece,  they  purchase  an  ox  or  other  horned 
beast,  which  they  slay  and  cook.  Each  man, 
also,  brings  a  certain  amount  of  grain,  from 
which  they  bake  cakes  and  brew  beer.  Then, 
all  having  met  together,  they  call  upon  God  to 
avert  the  plague  from  them,  and  afterward  con- 
sume the  victuals  and  drink.  This  was  done," 
he  goes  on  to  say,  "in  1602  and  1625,  years  of 
murrain  and  pestilence.  But  it  had  to  be  done 
secretly,  being  strictly  prohibited  by  law.  Many 
men  have  told  me,"  he  adds,  "that  they  were 
warned  in  dreams,  by  the  spectres  which  at  such 
times  show  themselves,  to  avert  a  coming  plague 
by  a  Sobar."  To  this  day,  the  Russian  peasants 
in  out-of-the-way  places  attempt  by  equally  hea- 
thenish rites  to  keep  off  the  dreaded  cattle-plague 
from  their  herds.  Od  an  appointed  evening  the 
men  are  all  confined  to  their  homes.  The  wom- 
en, wearing  nothing  but  smocks,  go  outside  the 
village,  yoke  one  of  their  number  to  a  plough, 
and  follow  her,  singing  the  wildest  of  songs, 
while  she  draws  the  plough  round  the  home- 
steads which  are  to   be  secured   against  pesti- 


570 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


lence.  Across  the  magic  circle  thus  traced,  they 
believe  that  the  hostile  spirit,  the  antagonist  of 
the  genius  of  growth  and  fertility,  will  not  be 
able  to  pass.  Should  any  male  person  be  rash 
enough  to  intrude  upon  the  rites  which  are  being 
solemnized  by  the  women,  he  is  attacked  and 
subjected  to  nearly  as  severe  treatment  as  Or- 
pheus received  at  the  hands  of  his  countrywomen. 
This  strange  kind  of  plough-driving  used  to  be 
known  in  many  lands.  Akin  to  it  was  the  old 
English  custom  of  "  ledyng  of  the  ploughe  aboute 
the  fire  as  for  gode  begynnyng  of  the  yere,  that 
they  shulde  fare  the  better  all  the  yere  follow- 
yng."  Later  on  it  was  partially  preserved  in 
the  ceremonies  still  peculiar  to  "Plough-Mon- 
day." Still  nearer  to  it  came  the  German  cus- 
tom described  by  Naogeorgus  in  his  "  Regnum 
Papisticum,"  published  in  1553.  The  lads  used 
to  pull  the  lasses  out  of  their  houses  on  Ash- 
Wednesday,  and  harness  them  to  a  plough,  which 
was  then  driven  from  street  to  street,  and  from 
market-place  to  market-place.  On  the  plough 
sat  a  man  who  played  and  sang.  Behind  it  went 
another,  who,  with  the  gestures  of  a  sower, 
strewed  sand  and  ashes  behind  him.  Finally, 
the  plough  was  driven  into  a  brook,  and  the 
girls,  after  being  ducked,  were  invited  to  a  feast 
and  a  dance.  In  Leipsic  a  similar  rite  was  sol- 
emnized on  Shrove-Tuesday,  when  masked  and 
otherwise  disguised  youths  used  to  compel  every 
girl  they  met  to  help  in  dragging  the  plough,  by 
way  of  a  punishment  for  her  not  having  become 
married  yet.  In  the  year  1499,  as  a  lad  was 
pressing  a  strong-minded  young  woman  into  this 
compulsory  plough-service,  she  stabbed  him,  and 
excused  herself  before  the  magistrates  on  the 
plea  that  what  she  had  struck  was  not  a  man 
but  "  a  spectre."  To  this  day  the  custom  has  sur- 
vived, in  a  mitigated  form,  at  Hollstadt,  near 
Neustadt,  where  a  plough-festival  is  held  once 
every  seven  years,  in  February,  one  of  the  feat- 
ures of  which  is  a  plough  drawn  by  six  of  the 
fairest  maidens  who  can  be  found,  all  arrayed  in 
the  local  costume. 

But  it  is  time  to  stop.  Of  course  it  would  be 
absurd  to  see,  in  every  myth  or  fable  with  which 
the  heathen  world  has  edified  or  amused  itself,  a 
reference  to  vegetation  spirits  and  their  foes. 
To  do  this  would  be  merely  to  repeat,  with  a 
slight  variation,  the  error  of  those  explorers 
who,  having  gazed  too  earnestly  at  the  glorious 
sun,  can  see  nothing  but  solar  myths  whatever 
way  they  turn  ;  or  who,  blinded  by  the  lightning's 
flash  and  deafened  by  the  thunder's  roar,  recog- 


nize a  storm-myth  in  every  creation  of  popular 
fancy.  Such  unwise  supporters  of  theories  which 
are  sound  enough  in  themselves,  and  which  will 
carry  the  investigator  safely  if  he  does  not  lay 
unfair  stress  upon  them,  merely  bring  into  discredit 
what  is  really  well  worthy  of  credit.  The  solar 
myth,  for  instance,  has  done  right  good  service 
while  judiciously  worked  by  such  a  scholar  as  Prof. 
Max  Muller.  But  some  of  his  followers  have  made 
it  ridiculous  by  such  imaginings  as  that  of  one  of 
their  number,  who  suggests  that  the  idea  of  Poly- 
phemus being  blinded  by  a  heated  stake  may 
have  sprung  into  the  mind  of  some  seer,  who 
saw  a  fir-tree  stand  out  in  bold  relief  against  the 
setting  sun.  Such  reasoners  as  these  do  infinite 
harm  to  the  cause  which  they  support.  For,  dis- 
cussing sound  truths,  they  arrive  at  conclusions 
which  are  "reductions  to  absurdity."  And  so 
the  ideas  which,  under  Dr.  Mannhart's  generally 
judicious  guidance,  have  in  these  two  most  valu- 
able volumes  of  his  borne  good  fruit,  worthy  of 
being  carefully  gathered  and  garnered,  may,  in 
the  forcing-house  of  some  too  eager  and  not  suffi- 
ciently experienced  cultivator,  bring  forth  noth 
ing  but  a  kind  of  mythological  Dead  Sea  apples, 
neither  savory  nor  nutritious.  To  him,  however, 
the  greatest  credit  is  due.  With  admirable  pa- 
tience he  has  gathered  from  literary  treasure, 
houses,  requiring  for  their  ransacking  th  e  aid  of 
very  many  linguistic  keys,  an  immense  mass  of 
rich  material,  and  he  has  arranged  and  classified 
and — no  small  merit — indexed  it,  in  a  manner 
deserving  of  all  praise.  Never  before  have  been 
so  clearly  detailed  the  ideas  with  regard  to  the 
field  and  forest,  and  their  connection  with  the 
unseen  universe,  possibly  or  probably  entertained 
by  the  primitive  man  and  his  prehistoric  descend- 
ants— commencing  with  the  comparison  of  human 
life  with  that  of  the  plant-world,  and  the  inclina- 
tion on  the  man's  part  to  attribute  a  soul  like 
unto  his  own  to  the  sturdy  oak,  or  the  clinging 
ivy,  or  the  daisy's  opening  bud;  the  herb  or  tree 
being  sometimes  looked  upon  as  the  temporary 
home  or  husk  of  a  human  soul,  torn  by  a  violent 
death  from  its  fleshy  mansion,  or  reduced  to  plant- 
life  by  the  action  of  a  curse  or  spell,  at  others 
being  supposed  to  be  the  chosen  habitation  of 
some  kind  of  demon  or  haunting  spirit,  whose 
good-will  was  to  be  propitiated,  his  ill-will  depre- 
cated by  prayer  and  sacrifice — rising  from  these 
conceptions  about  the  individual  grass,  or  shrub> 
or  tree,  to  views  with  regard  to  spirits  collec- 
tively haunting  plains,  and  hills,  and  woods,  wheth- 
er in  the  shape  of  ravenous  wolves,  or  hirsute 
satyrs,  or   tricksy   elves,  or  divinely  beauteous 


THE  ROMANCE  OF  ACCIDENT. 


571 


Oreads  and  other  nymphs ;  and  finally  reaching 
the  highest  stage  of  this  spiritual  development  in 
the  imagining  of  such  general  spirits  of  vegetation 
or  growth  as  have  been  variously  personified  by 
popular  fancy  under  the  form  of  a  rustic  Jack-in- 
the-Green  or  May-Queen,  or  a  princely  Adonis,  or 
divine  Pan.     And,  certainly,  never  have  all  the 


thousand  changing  aspects,  under  which  these 
ideas  have  been  represented  by  popular  mythol- 
ogy, been  so  clearly  defined  and  rendered  intel- 
ligible as  in  Dr.  Mannhardt's  latest  contribution 
to  our  knowledge  of  the  mystic  law  of  the  corn- 
field, the  meadow,  and  the  forest. —  Contemporary 
Review. 


THE  BOMANCE  OF  ACCIDENT. 


MANY  of  our  most  important  inventions  and 
discoveries  owe  their  origin  to  the  most 
trivial  circumstances  ;  from  the  simplest  causes 
the  most  important  effects  have  ensued.  The 
following  are  a  few  culled  at  random  for  the 
amusement  of  our  readers  : 

The  trial  of  two  robbers  before  the  Court  of 
Assizes  of  the  Basses-Pyrenees  accidentally  led 
to  a  most  interesting  archaeological  discovery. 
The  accused,  Rivas  a  shoemaker,  and  Bellier  a 
weaver,  by  armed  attacks  on  the  highways  and 
frequent  burglaries,  had  spread  terror  around 
the  neighborhood  of  Sisteron.  The  evidence 
against  them  was  clear ;  but  no  traces  could  be 
obtained  of  the  plunder,  until  one  of  the  men 
gave  a  clew  to  the  mystery.  Rivas  in  his  youth 
had  been  a  shepherd-boy  near  that  place,  and 
knew  the  legend  of  the  Trou  d' Argent,  a  cavern 
on  one  of  the  mountains  with  sides  so  precipitous 
as  to  be  almost  inaccessible,  and  which  no  one 
was  ever  known  to  have  reached.  The  commis- 
sary of  police  of  Sisteron,  after  extraordinary 
labor,  succeeded  in  scaling  the  mountain,  and 
penetrated  to  the  mysterious  grotto,  where  he 
discovered  an  enormous  quantity  of  plunder  of 
every  description.  The  way  having  been  once 
found,  the  vast  cavern  was  afterward  explored 
by  savants  ;  and  their  researches  brought  to  light 
a  number  of  Roman  medals  of  the  third  century, 
flint  hatchets,  ornamented  pottery,  and  the  re- 
mains of  ruminants  of  enormous  size.  These  in- 
teresting discoveries,  however,  obtained  no  indul- 
gence for  the  accused  (inadvertent)  pioneers  of 
science,  who  were  sentenced  to  twenty  years' 
hard  labor. 

The  discovery  of  gold  in  Nevada  was  made 
by  some  Mormon  immigrants  in  1850.  Advent- 
urers crossed  the  Sierras  and  set  up  their  sluice- 
boxes  in  the  canons;  but  it  was  gold  they  were 
after,  and  they  never  suspected  the  existence  of 


silver,  nor  knew  it  when  they  saw  it.  The  bluish 
stuff  which  was  so  abundant,  and  which  was 
silver-ore,  interfered  with  their  operations  and 
gave  them  the  greatest  annoyance.  Two  broth- 
ers named  Grosch  possessed  more  intelligence 
than  their  fellow-workers,  and  were  the  real  dis- 
coverers of  the  Comstock  lode ;  but  one  of  them 
died  from  a  pickaxe-wound  in  the  foot,  and  the 
other  was  frozen  to  death  in  the  mountains. 
Their  secret  died  with  them.  When  at  last,  in 
the  early  part  of  1859,  the  surface  croppings  of 
the  lode  were  found,  they  were  worked  for  the 
gold  they  contained,  and  the  silver  was  thrown 
out  as  being  worthless.  Yet  this  lode  since  1860 
has  yielded  a  large  proportion  of  all  the  silver 
produced  throughout  the  world.  The  silver- 
mines  of  Potosi  were  discovered  through  the 
trivial  circumstance  of  an  Indian  accidentally 
pulling  up  a  shrub,  to  the  roots  of  which  were 
attached  some  particles  of  the  precious  metal. 

During  the  Thirty  Years'  War  in  Germany, 
the  little  village  of  Coserow  in  the  island  of  Use- 
dom,  on  the  Prussian  border  of  the  Baltic,  was 
sacked  by  the  contending  armies,  the  villagers 
escaping  to  the  hills  to  save  their  lives.  Among 
them  was  a  simple  pastor  named  Schwerdler,  and 
his  pretty  daughter  Mary.  When  the  danger  was 
over,  the  villagers  found  themselves  without 
houses,  food,  or  money.  One  day,  we  are  told, 
Mary  went  up  the  Streckelberg  to  gather  black- 
berries ;  but  soon  afterward  she  ran  back  joy- 
ous and  breathless  to  her  father,  with  two  shin- 
ing pieces  of  amber  each  of  very  great  size. 
She  told  her  father  that  near  the  shore  the  wind 
had  blown  away  the  sand  from  a  vein  of  amber; 
that  she  straightway  broke  off  these  pieces  with 
a  stick ;  that  there  was  an  ample  store  of  the 
precious  substance  ;  and  that  she  had  covered  it 
over  to  conceal  her  secret.  The  amber  brought 
money,  food,  clothing,  and   comfort ;    but  those 


572 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


were  superstitious  times,  and  a  legend  goes  that 
poor  Mary  was  burned  for  witchcraft.  At  the 
village  of  Stiimen,  amber  was  first  accidentally 
found  by  a  rustic  who  was  fortunate  enough  to 
turn  some  up  with  his  plough. 

Accidents  have  prevented  as  well  as  caused 
the  working  of  mines.  At  the  moment  that  work- 
men were  about  to  commence  operations  on  a 
rich  gold-mine  in  the  Japanese  province  of 
Tskungo,  a  violent  storm  of  thunder  and  light- 
ning burst  over  them,  and  the  miners  were 
obliged  to  seek  shelter  elsewhere.  These  super- 
stitious people,  imagining  that  the  tutelar  god 
and  protector  of  the  spot,  unwilling  to  have  the 
bowels  of  the  earth  thus  rifled,  had  raised  the 
storm  to  make  them  sensible  of  his  displeasure, 
desisted  from  all  further  attempts  to  work  the 
mine. 

A  cooper  in  Carniola  having  one  evening 
placed  a  new  tub  under  a  dropping  spring,  in 
order  to  try  if  it  would  hold  water,  when  he  came 
in  the  morning  found  it  so  heavy  that  he  could 
hardly  move  it.  At  first,  the  superstitious  notions 
that  are  apt  to  possess  the  minds  of  the  ignorant 
made  him  suspect  that  his  tub  was  bewitched  ; 
but  at  last  perceiving  a  shining  fluid  at  the  bot- 
tom, he  went  to  Laubach,  and  showed  it  to  an 
apothecary,  who  immediately  dismissed  him  with 
a  small  gratuity,  and  bade  him  bring  some  more 
of  the  same  stuff  whenever  he  could  meet  with  it. 
This  the  poor  cooper  frequently  did,  being  highly 
pleased  with  his  good  fortune ;  till  at  length  the 
affair  being  made  public,  several  persons  formed 
themselves  into  a  society  in  order  to  search  far- 
ther into  the  quicksilver  deposits,  thus  so  unex- 
pectedly discovered,  and  which  were  destined  to 
become  the  richest  of  their  kind  in  Europe. 

Curious  discoveries  by  ploughmen,  quarry- 
men,  and  others,  of  caves,  coins,  urns,  and  other 
interesting  things,  would  fill  volumes.  Many  val- 
uable literary  relics  have  been  preserved  by  curi- 
ous accidents,  often  turning  up  just  in  time  to 
save  them  from  crumbling  to  pieces.  Not  only 
mineral  but  literary  treasures  have  been  brought 
to  light  when  excavating  mother  earth.  For 
instance,  in  the  foundations  of  an  old  house, 
Luther's  "  Table-Talk"  was  discovered  "  lying  in  a 
deep,  obscure  hole,  wrapped  in  strong  linen  cloth, 
which  was  waxed  all  over  with  beeswax  within 
and  without."  There  it  had  remained  hidden 
ever  since  its  suppression  by  Pope  Gregory  XIII. 
The  poems  of  Propertius,  a  Roman  poet,  long 
lurked  unsuspected  in  the  darkness  of  a  wine- 
cellar,  whence  they  were  at  length  unearthed  by 
accident,  just  in  time  to  preserve  them  from  de- 


struction by  rats  and  mildew.  Not  only  from 
beneath  our  feet  but  from  above  our  heads  may 
chance  reveal  the  hiding-places  of  treasure-trove. 
The  sudden  falling  in  of  a  ceiling,  for  example,  of 
some  chambers  in  Lincoln's  Inn,  revealed  the 
secret  depository  of  the  Thurloe  state  papers. 
Other  literary  treasures  have  turned  up  in  an 
equally  curious  manner.  Milton's  essay  on  the 
"  Doctrines  of  Christianity  "  was  discovered  in  a 
bundle  of  old  dispatches  ;  a  monk  found  the  only 
manuscript  of  Tacitus  accidentally  in  Westphalia ; 
the  letters  of  Lady  Mary  Montagu  were  brought 
to  light  from  the  recesses  of  an  old  trunk ;  the 
manuscripts  of  Dr.  Dee  from  the  secret  drawer 
of  an  old  chest ;  and  it  is  said  that  one  of  the  can- 
tos of  Dante's  great  poem  was  found,  after  be- 
ing long  mislaid,  hidden  away  beneath  a  window- 
sill. 

It  is  curious  to  trace  how  the  origin  of  some 
famous  work  has  been  suggested  apparently  by 
the  merest  accident.  We  need  but  remind  the 
reader  how  Lady  Austen's  suggestion  of "  the 
sofa"  as  a  subject  for  blank  verse  was  the  begin- 
ning of  "  The  Task,"  a  poem  which  grew  to  for- 
midable proportions  under  Cowper's  facile  pen. 
Another  example  of — 

"What  great  events  from  trivial  causes  spring," 

is  furnished  by  Lockhart's  account  of  the  gradual 
growth  of  "  The  Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel."  The 
lovely  Countess  of  Dalkeith  hears  a  wild  legend 
of  border  diablerie,  and  sportively  asks  Scott  to 
make  it  the  subject  of  a  ballad.  The  poet's  ac- 
cidental confinement  in  the  midst  of  a  yeomanry 
camp  gave  him  leisure  to  meditate  his  theme  to 
the  sound  of  a  bugle  ;  suddenly  there  flashes  on 
him  the  idea  of  extending  his  simple  outline  so 
as  to  embrace  a  vivid  panorama  of  that  old  bor- 
der-life of  war  and  tumult.  A  friend's  sugges- 
tion led  to  the  arrangement  and  framework  of  the 
"  Lay  "  and  the  conception  of  the  ancient  harp- 
er. Thus  step  by  step  grew  the  poem  that  first 
made  its  author  famous.  The  manuscript  of  "  Wa- 
verley"  lay  hidden  away  in  an  old  cabinet  for 
years  before  the  public  were  aware  of  its  exist- 
ence. In  the  words  of  the  Great  Unknown :  "  I 
had  written  the  greater  part  of  the  first  volume 
and  sketched  other  passages,  when  I  mislaid  the 
manuscript ;  and  only  found  it  by  the  merest  ac- 
cident, as  I  was  rummaging  the  drawer  of  an  old 
cabinet ;  and  I  took  the  fancy  of  finishing  it." 

Charlotte  Bronte's  chance  discovery  of  a 
manuscript  volume  of  verses  in  her  sister  Emily's 
handwriting  led,  from  a  mutual  confession  of  the 
furor  poelicus,  to  the  joint  publication   of  their 


THE  ROMANCE  OF  ACCIDENT. 


573 


poems,  which,  though  adding  little  to  their  sub- 
sequent fame,  at  least  gives  us  another  instance 
of  how  much  of  what  is  called  chance  has  often  to 
do  with  the  carrying  out  of  literary  projects.  It 
was  the  burning  of  Drury  Lane  Theatre  that  led 
to  the  production  of  "The  Rejected  Addresses," 
the  success  of  which,  says  one  of  the  authors,  "  de- 
cided him  to  embark  in  that  literary  career,  which 
the  favor  of  the  novel-reading  world  rendered 
both  pleasant  and  profitable  to  him."  Most  of 
us  know  how  that  famous  fairytale  "Alice  in 
Wonderland  "  came  to  be  written.  The  characters 
in  "  Oliver  Twist "  of  Fagin,  Sikes,  and  Nancy,  were 
suggested  by  some  sketches  of  Cruikshank,  who 
long  had  a  design  to  show  the  life  of  a  London 
thief  by  a  series  of  drawings.  Dickens,  while 
paying  Cruikshank  a  visit,  happened  to  turn  over 
some  sketches  in  a  portfolio.  When  he  came  to 
that  one  which  represents  Fagin  in  the  con- 
demned cell,  he  studied  it  for  half  an  hour,  and 
told  his  friend  that  he  was  tempted  to  change  the 
whole  plot  of  his  story — not  to  carry  Oliver 
through  adventures  in  the  country,  but  to  take 
him  up  into  the  thieves'  den  in  London,  show 
what  this  life  was,  and  bring  Oliver  through  it 
without  sin  or  shame.  Cruikshank  consented  to 
let  Dickens  write  up  to  as  many  of  the  drawings 
as  he  thought  would  suit  his  purpose.  So  the 
story  as  it  now  runs  resulted  in  a  great  measure 
from  that  chance  inspection  of  the  artist's  port- 
folio. The  remarkable  picture  of  the  Jew  male- 
factor in  the  condemned  cell,  biting  his  nails  in 
the  torture  of  remorse,  is  associated  with  a  happy 
accident.  The  artist  had  been  laboring  at  the 
subject  for  several  days,  and  thought  the  task 
hopeless ;  when  sitting  up  in  his  bed  one  morn- 
ing with  his  hand  on  his  chin  and  his  fingers 
in  his  mouth,  the  whole  attitude  expressive  of 
despair,  he  saw  his  face  in  the  cheval  glass. 
"  That's  it ! "  he  exclaimed ;  "  that's  the  expres- 
sion I  want."     And  be  soon  finished  the  picture. 

The  sudden  prosperity  of  many  a  famous 
painter  has  resulted  from  some  fortunate  acci- 
dent. Anthony  Watteau,  when  a  nameless,  strug- 
gling artist,  timidly  offered  a  painting  to  a  rich 
picture-dealer  for  six  francs,  and  was  on  the  eve 
of  being  scornfully  rejected,  had  not  a  stranger 
who  happened  to  be  in  the  shop,  come  forward, 
and  seeing  some  talent  in  the  work,  spoke  en. 
couragingly  to  the  youth,  and  offered  him  one 
hundred  and  fifty  francs  for  the  picture ;  nor  was 
this  all,  for  he  became  Watteau's  patron  and  in- 
structor. One  day  a  little  shepherd-boy  was 
seated  near  the  road-side  on  the  way  from  Yes- 
pignano  to   Florence   drawing   upon   a  polished 


stone,  his  only  pencil  another  polished  stone 
which  he  held  in  his  tiny  fingers.  A  richly, 
dressed  stranger,  who  had  descended  from  a  con- 
veyance that  was  following  him,  chanced  to  pass, 
and,  looking  over  the  boy's  shoulder,  saw  that  he 
had  just  sketched  with  wonderful  truth  and  cor- 
rectness a  sheep  and  its  twin  lambs.  Surprised 
and  pleased,  he  examined  the  face  of  the  young 
artist.  Certainly  it  was  not  its  beauty  that  at- 
tracted him.  The  child  looked  up,  but  with  such 
a  marvelous  light  in  his  dark  eyes,  that  the 
stranger  exclaimed :  "  My  child,  you  must  come 
with  me ;  I  will  be  your  master  and  your  father : 
it  is  some  good  angel  that  has  led  me  here."  The 
stranger  was  Cimabue,  the  most  celebrated  paint 
er  of  that  day ;  and  his  pupil  and  protege  be- 
came the  famous  painter,  sculptor,  and  architect, 
Giotto,  the  friend  and  admiration  of  Dante  and 
Petrarch. 

How  the  fortunes  of  painters  may  hinge  upon 
the  most  trifling  circumstances  has  another  ex- 
ample in  that  of  ftibera  or  Spagnoletto,  which  was 
determined  by  a  very  simple  incident.  He  went 
to  reside  with  his  father-in-law,  whose  house,  it  so 
happened,  stood  in  the  vast  square,  one  side  of 
which  was  occupied  by  the  palace  of  the  Spanish 
viceroy.  It  was  the  custom  in  Italy,  as  formerly 
among  the  Greeks,  that  whenever  an  artist  had 
completed  any  great  work,  he  should  expose  it  in 
some  street  or  thoroughfare,  for  the  public  to 
pass  judgment  on  it.  In  compliance  with  this 
usage,  Ribera's  father-in-law  placed  in  his  balcony 
the  "  Martyrdom  of  St.  Bartholomew  "  as  soon  as 
it  was  finished.  The  people  flocked  in  crowds  to 
see  it,  and  testified  their  admiration  by  deaf- 
ening shouts  of  applause.  These  acclamations 
reached  the  ears  of  the  viceroy,  who  imagined 
that  a  fresh  revolt  had  broken  out,  and  rushed 
in  complete  armor  to  the  spot.  There  he  beheld 
in  the  painting  the  cause  of  so  much  tumult.  The 
viceroy  desired  to  see  the  man  who  had  distin- 
guished himself  by  so  marvelous  a  production ; 
and  his  interest  in  the  painter  was  not  lessened 
on  discovering  that  he  was,  like  himself,  a  Span- 
iard. He  immediately  attached  Spagnoletto  to 
his  person,  gave  him  an  apartment  in  his  palace, 
and  proved  a  generous  patron  ever  afterward. 

Lanfranco,  the  wealthy  and  munificent  artist, 
on  his  way  from  the  church  H  Gesii,  happened  to 
observe  an  oil-painting  hanging  outside  a  picture- 
broker's  shop.  Lanfranco  stopped  his  carriage, 
and  desired  the  picture  to  be  brought  to  him. 
Wiping  the  thick  dust  from  the  canvas,  the  de- 
lighted broker  brought  it,  with  many  bows  and 
apologies,  to  the  great  master,  who  on  nearer  in- 


574: 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


spection  saw  that  his  first  glance  had  been  cor- 
rect. The  picture  was  labeled  "  Hagar  and  her 
Son  Ishmael  dying  of  Thirst,"  and  the  subject 
was  treated  in  a  new  and  powerful  manner.  Lan- 
franco  looked  for  the  name  of  the  painter,  and  de- 
tecting the  word  Salvatoriello  modestly  set  in  a 
corneivof  the  picture,  he  gave  instructions  to  his 
pupils  to  buy  up  every  work  of  Salvatoriello  they 
could  find  in  Naples.  To  this  accident  Salvator 
owed  the  sudden  demand  for  his  pictures,  which 
changed  his  poverty  and  depression  into  compar- 
ative ease  and  satisfaction. 

More  than  one  famous  singer  might  probably 
never  have  been  heard  of  but  for  some  discrimi- 
nating patron  chancing  to  hear  a  beautiful  voice, 
perhaps  exercised  in  the  streets  for  the  pence  of 
the  compassionate.  Some  happy  stage-hits  have 
resulted  from  or  originated  in  accidents.  The  odd 
hop  skip  and  jump  so  effective  in  the  delineation 
of  Dundreary,  says  an  American  interviewer  of 
Mr.  Sothern,  was  brought  about  in  this  way.  In 
the  words  of  the  actor :  "  It  was  a  mere  acci- 
dent. I  have  naturally  an  elastic  disposition,  and 
during  a  rehearsal  one  cold  morning  I  was  hopping 
at  the  back  of  the  stage,  when  Miss  Keene  sarcas- 
tically inquired  if  I  was  going  to  introduce  that 
into  Dundreary.  The  actors  and  actresses  stand- 
ing around  laughed ;  and  taking  the  cue,  I  re- 
plied :  '  Yes,  Miss  Keene ;  that's  my  view  of  the 
character.'  Having  said  this,  I  was  bound  to 
stick  to  it ;  and  as  I  progressed  with  the  rehearsal, 


I  found  that  the  whole  company,  including  scene- 
shifters  and  property  -  men,  were  roaring  with 
laughter  at  my  infernal  nonsense.  When  I  saw 
that  the  public  accepted  the  satire,  I  toned  down 
what  was  a  broad  caricature  to  what  can  be  seen 
at  the  present  day  by  any  one  who  has  a  quick 
sense  of  the  absurd." 

An  excellent  landscape  of  Salvator  Rosa's  ex- 
hibited at  the  British  Institution  in  1823  came  to 
be  painted  in  a  curious  way.  The  painter  hap- 
pened one  day  to  be  amusing  himself  tuning  an 
old  harpsichord  ;  some  one  observed  that  he  was 
surprised  he  could  take  so  much  trouble  with  an 
instrument  that  was  not  worth  a  crown.  "  I  bet 
you  I  make  it  'worth  a  thousand  before  I  have 
done  with  it !  "  cried  Rosa.  The  bet  was  taken  ; 
and  Salvator  painted  on  the  harpsichord  a  land- 
scape that  not  only  sold  for  a  thousand  crowns, 
but  was  esteemed  a  first-rate  painting.  Chem- 
istry and  pathology  are  indebted  to  what  has 
often  seemed  the  merest  chance  for  many  an  im- 
portant discovery.  A  French  paper  says  it  has 
been  accidentally  discovered  that  in  cases  of  epi- 
leptic fits,  a  black-silk  handkerchief  thrown  over 
the  afflicted  persons  will  restore  them  immediate- 
ly. Advances  in  science  and  art,  and  sudden 
success  in  professions,  have  often  more  to  do  with 
the  romance  of  accident  than  most  people  im- 
agine ;  but,  as  we  may  have  occasion  again  to 
take  up  the  subject,  we  quit  it  for  the  present. — 
Chambers's  Journal. 


WASTE  SUBSTANCES. 


CIGAR-ENDS. 

PROBABLY  few  people  in  this  country  are 
aware  that  that  usually  wasted  substance,  a 
cigar-end,  is  utilized  in  Germany  to  a  large  extent, 
and  with  even  beneficent  results. 

We  can  imagine  many  of  our  readers  wonder- 
ing what  can  be  the  object  of  collecting  these 
small  ends ;  and  we  will  therefore  briefly  explain 
that  they  are  sold  for  the  purpose  of  being  made 
into  snuff,  and  that  the  proceeds  of  such  sales  are 
devoted  to  charitable  purposes.  There  is  in  Ber- 
lin a  society  called  the  "  Verein  der  Sammler  von 
Cigarren-Abschnitten,"  or  the  Society  of  Collect- 
ors of  Cigar-Cuttings,"  wyhich  has  been  in  exist- 
ence some  ten  years,  and  has  done  much  good. 


Every  Christmas  the  proceeds  of  the  cigar  ends 
collected  by  this  society  and  its  friends  are  ap- 
plied to  the  purchase  of  clothes  for  some  poor 
orphan  children.  In  1876  about  thirty  children 
were  clothed  by  this  society,  each  child  being 
provided  with  a  shirt,  a  pair  of  good  leather 
boots,  a  pair  of  woolen  stockings,  a  warm  dress, 
and  a  pocket-handkerchief.  In  addition  to  this, 
a  large,  well-decorated  Christmas-tree  is  given  for 
their  entertainment,  and  each  child  is  sent  home 
with  a  good  supply  of  fruit  and  sweetmeats.  Al- 
together more  than  two  hundred  poor  orphan  chil- 
dren have  been  clothed  by  this  society  simply  by 
the  proceeds  of  such  small  things  as  cigar-ends. 

The  success  of  the  society  at  Berlin  has  in- 
duced further  enterprise  in  the  same  direction, 


BRIEF  NOTES. 


575 


and  it  is  now  proposed  to  erect  a  building,  to  be 
called  the  "Deutsches  Reichs-Waisenhaus  "  (Im- 
perial German  Orphan-Home),  *here  orphans  who 
are  left  unprovided  for  may  be  properly  cared  for, 
clothed,  and  instructed.  The  site  proposed  for 
this  institution  is  at  Lahr,  in  Baden,  where  there 
are  a  number  of  snuff-manufactories,  and  it  is 
therefore  well  adapted  to  the  scheme,  which  we 
can  only  hope  may  be  successfully  carried  out. 
Although  the  directors  of  this  Home  propose  to 
have  a  plan  prepared  for  a  large  building,  only  a 
small  part  of  it  will  at  first  be  erected,  to  which 
each  year  or  two  more  rooms  may  be  added,  in 
accordance  with  the  original  plan,  in  proportion 
to  the  success  which  is  found  to  attend  the  under- 
taking. It  will  be  readily  understood  that  a  good 
many  difficulties  beset  this  scheme,  for  it  requires 
the  most  perfect  cooperation  of  the  smoking  com- 
munity and  some  assistance  also  from  the  non- 
smokers  ;  but  much  can  be  done  by  friends  who 
will  undertake  the  duty  of  collecting,  and  some 
of  the  most  energetic  of  these  are  not  unfrequent- 
ly  of  the  fair  sex. 

The  system  of  collection,  which  is  extended 
over  a  large  part  of  Germany,  is  generally  under- 
taken by  one  or  two  ladies  or  gentlemen  in  each 
town,  who  collect  now  and  then  from  their  smok- 
ing friends  the  ends  which  they  have  been  saving 
up.  These  collectors  either  send  on  the  cigar- 
ends  to  the  central  society,  or  sell  them  on  the 
spot  and  transmit  the  proceeds.  This  latter 
plan,  when  it  can  be  worked,  is  preferable,  as 
saving  expenses  in  carriage  and  packing.  It  is 
proposed  that  the  number  of  children  which 
each  town  shall  have  the  privilege  of  sending  to 


the  Home  shall  be  regulated  according  to  the 
amount  which  they  have  contributed  to  the  so- 
ciety. 

To  insure  the  success  of  this  institution,  it 
will  be  absolutely  necessary  for  all  to  unite  and 
work  together ;  each  one  must  not  leave  it  for 
his  neighbor,  thinking  that  one  more  or  tegs  can 
make  no  difference.  To  show,  however,  what 
might  be  accomplished  by  a  thorough  unity  in 
this  matter,  let  us  say  that  there  are  at  least 
some  10,000,000  smokers  in  Germany;  or,  to 
be  very  much  within  the  mark,  we  will  take  only 
5,000,000  smokers,  who  will  give  themselves 
the  trouble,  if  such  it  is,  of  saving  up  their  cigar- 
ends  ;  and,  assuming  that  the  cigar-ends  of  each 
person  during  one  week  are  worth  only  a  quarter 
Pfennig  (10  Pfennig  =  1  penny  English),  we  have 
a  total  revenue  for  the  year  of  650,000  marks,  or 
£32,500.  Now,  these  £32,500,  which,  as  a  rule, 
are  thrown  away  and  wasted,  can  be  used  to  pro- 
vide a  home  for  at  least  13,000  poor  orphan  chil- 
dren. Further,  if  the  5,000,000  smokers  would 
contribute  but  once  a  year  the  value  only  of  a 
single  cigar,  say  in  Germany  one  penny,  this  would 
make  an  additional  500,000  marks,  or  £25,000, 
which  would  clothe  another  10,000  children. 

Now  we  ask,  is  it  not  worth  while  to  be  care- 
ful in  small  things,  and  to  save  up  these  usually 
wasted  cigar-ends,  when  we  see  what  great  things 
might  result  ?  We  can  only  conclude  by  wishing 
success  to  this  remarkable  institution,  which  has 
taken  for  its  motto  the  most  appropriate  words, 
"  Viele  "Wenig  machen  ein  Viel ; "  or,  in  the 
words  of  the  old  Scottish  proverb,  "  Many  a 
little  makes  a  mickle." — Chambers's  Journal. 


BEIEF  NOTES. 


Comparative  Illuminating  Power  of  Gas  and 
Electric  Lights. — The  Electric  Light  Company  of 
Paris  has  erected  a  large  frame  building  for  the 
purpose  of  exhibiting  the  illuminating  power  of 
JabloshkofFs  electric  candle,  and  comparing  its 
results  with  those  of  coal-gas.  A  correspondent 
of  the  American  Manufacturer,  having  attended 
an  exhibition,  gives  in  that  journal  a  very  good 
account  of  his  observations.  The  hall  in  which 
the  experiments  are  made  is,  he  says,  about  60 
feet  long,  40  wide,  and  25  high.  The  walls  and 
ceilings  are  white.  From  the  latter  were  sus- 
pended three  chandeliers,  the  central  one  having 
three  "  opalized  "  glass  globes  about  one  and  a 
half  foot  in  diameter — each  surrounding  an  elec- 


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


576 


THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 


than  it  does  in  looking  at  the  ground-glass  globes 
of  single  gas-burners.  On  one  of  the  walls  of  the 
illuminated  hall  was  a  series  of  silk  specimens 
of  all  colors  and  tints,  some  of  the  shades  being 
very  delicate.  Near  by  was  the  notice,-  "The 
electric  light  does  not  alter  colors."  This  state- 
ment seemed  to  be  verified  by  the  experiments. 
At  any  rate,  the  smallest  differences  of  tints'  were 
easily  distinguished.  After  a  time  the  g#s  was 
relighted,  but,  notwithstanding  its  great  brilliancy 
at  first,  its  light  now  seemed  quite  feeble,  and  of  a 
dirty-yellow  color,  as  compared  with  the  electric 
illumination. 

The  cost  of  electrical  illumination  is  estimated 
at  from  one-half  to  one-third  the  price  of  gas, 
for  equal  quantities  of  light. 

The  anti-malarial  action  of  the  eucalyptus- 
tree  is  called  in  question  by  Mr.  Arthur  Nichols, 
who,  writing  in  Nature,  says  that  in  Queensland, 
in  the  very  heart  of  a  forest  extending  for  many 
miles  in  everytlirection,  and  composed  mainly  of 
eucalyptus  of;  every  variety,  he  has  himself  suf- 
fered from  mfilaria,  and  has  known  many  instances 
of  febrile  attacks  among  shepherds  and  stock- 
men in  the  locality.  On  inquiry,  he  learned  that 
these  attacks  were  not  confined  to  any  particular 
year,  but  that  every  year  some  cases  might  be 
expected.  Again,  it  has  been  asserted  that,  wher- 
ever the  eucalyptus  had  been  introduced  on  a 
considerable  scale  in  Algeria,  the  mosquitoes  all 
disappeared.  But  this  correspondent,  writing  of 
Australia,  says  that  he  has  found  these  pests  so 
intolerable  on  high  land,  where  almost  the  only 
variety  of  tree  to  be  found  was  one  variety  or  an- 
other of  eucalyptus,  and  sometimes  all,  that  sleep 
was  impossible  while  camping  out  at  night,  life  a 
burden  during  the  day,  by  reason  of  these  insects. 

The  anti-malarial  properties  of  the  Eucalyp- 
tus globulus  are  commonly  supposed  to  depend 
exclusively  on  the  emanations  from  the  leaves ; 
but  Mr.  A.  W.  Bennett  thinks  it  most  probable 
that  the  chief  effect  is  produced  by  the  action  of 
the  roots  on  the  soil.  Writing  of  this  subject  in 
Nature,  he  remarks  that  the  effect  of  the  planting 
of  forests  in  increasing  the  rainfall  is  often  er- 
roneously reputed  to  be  due  to  the  "  attractive 
force  of  the  trees"  on  the  moisture  in  the  air, 
similar  to  that  exerted  by  a  range  of  mountains ; 
but  this  supposition  he  regards  as  untenable. 
The  mode  in  which  trees  mainly  act  is,  he  says, 
by  their  roots  arresting  the  rainfall  which  would 
otherwise  escape  by  the  natural  drainage  of  the 
country ;  the  combined  forces  of  capillarity,  os- 
mose, and  transpiration,  then  cause  the  ascent 
through  the  tissues  of  the  tree  of  the  water  thus 


arrested,  and  the  larger  portion  is  eventually 
given  off  into  the  air  through  the  stomata  of 
the  leaves.  In  t^ds  way  a  forest-tree  will  in  a 
very  short  time  give  off  into  the  air  its  own  weight 
of  water,  which  is  again  deposited  as  rain  or  dew. 
It  is  quite  possible,  however,  that  the  effect  of  the 
planting  of  trees  may  be  apparently  the  reverse 
of  this  in  swampy  regions  without  natural  drain- 
age. The  water  then  accumulates  in  the  soil ; 
and  if  the  country  is  bare  of  timber-trees  and  the 
sun  powerful,  a  rapid  decomposition  takes  place 
of  the  herbaceous  vegetation,  with  consequent 
emanation  of  malarial  vapors.  If  trees  be  plant- 
ed, the  effect  is  to  supply  natural  drainage ;  the 
accumulation  of  water  in  the  soil,  and  the  conse- 
quent noxious  effluvia,  will  be  diminished  and 
finally  prevented,  and  the  atmosphere  rendered, 
if  not  drier,  at  least  more  wholesome. 

Needed  Inventions. — Under  the  title  of  "  Room 
for  Invention,"  the  Polytechnic  Review  points  out 
a  number  of  mechanical  problems,  the  solution 
of  which  would  be  of  inestimable  service  to  the 
human  race.  The  writer  of  the  article,  while  ac- 
knowledging the  great  benefit  conferred  by  the 
invention  of  reaping  and  mowing  machines,  calls 
attention  to  the  need  which  exists  of  machines 
for  gathering  root-crops  and  fruit.  Sundry  fibres 
that  ought  to  be  available  in  textile  art,  as  ramie, 
are  still  intractable.  The  gorgeous  aniline  colors 
fade  with  a  summer's  sun.  Household  fires — 
once  the  very  emblems  of  health  and  cheerful- 
ness— now  poison  us  insidiously  but  surely.  "  Our 
sewers  and  drains,"  the  author  goes  on  to  say, 
"  are  confounded  in  name  and  use,  and  both  of 
them  are  poisonous.  Our  chimneys  breathe  forth 
smoke  which  is  unconsumed  fuel,  and  hence  waste- 
ful. Our  steam-boilers,  with  partly-consumed  fuel, 
supply  our  engines  with  wet  steam,  and  the  en- 
gines (whose  cylinders  have  to  be  supplied  with 
oil,  through  faulty  design  and  workmanship) 
waste  part  of  the  remainder.  Our  horses,  shod 
with  no  regard  to  humanity  or  for  tractive  effect, 
draw  wagons  or  cars  which  rattle  our  teeth  out, 
on  roads  or  rails  which  rattle  the  vehicle  to  pieces. 
The  explosives  which  long  ago  were  constrained  to 
throw  hurtful  missiles  for  miles,  have  but  in  one 
instance — blasting — been  employed  in  peaceful 
work ;  if  we  may  except  the  gunpowder  pile- 
driver,  the  precursor  of  a  long  line  of  explosive 
motors  yet  to  come.  There  is  yet  no  ice-machine 
which  will  satisfactorily  and  economically  com- 
pete with  Nature  in  supplying  a  commodity  now 
so  great  a  necessity.  For  these  and  hundreds 
of  other  evils,  inventive  genius  must  provide  the-- 
remedy." 


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