The French government has placed on the top of the Puy de Dome a
meteorological observatory, which, as that is the highest land in
France, answers to our stations on Mt. Washington and Pike's Peak. It
is, however, constructed in a style very different from those somewhat
forbidding abodes. At the top is an observatory tower, placed on a
platform, and upon this is placed the anemometer, especially constructed
to withstand the force of the storms. Within the tower is a well hole
fifty feet deep, which leads to a tunnel more than a hundred feet long,
at the end of which is placed the keeper's house. This is a massive
building, situated a short distance from the top, where it is partly
protected by rocks. The whole work cost $45,000, and $20,000 more will
be spent in supplying it with apparatus.
MIGRATION OF THE LEMMING.
A new theory has been broached to explain the migrations of the Norway
lemming, a variety of field mouse. Every few years an immense body of
these animals leaves their habitat and proceed westward, attacking every
obstacle in front in preference to flanking it, until it reaches the
sea, which the little animals boldly enter, only to perish there. No
conceivable advantage to the lemming is known to have ever resulted from
these long and arduous marches. The losses in swimming large rivers,
from fire, the attacks of predatory animals, hunger, and fatigue, are so
great that but few reach the sea, and the remnant always perish there.
Mr. W. Duppa Crotch, who has studied the habits of these animals for ten
years, now suggests that they are moved by an hereditary instinct, and
that their prehistoric home was some country west of Sweden, and now
covered by the Atlantic. The same kind of reasoning would allot an
Atlantic origin to the progenitors of the grasshoppers, which have been
such plagues in this country for a few years, for, as stated in the
August "Galaxy," those which moved eastward in 1875 did not halt until
they perished on the ocean beach or in its waves. Mr. Crotch has thrown
new light on some of the habits of the lemming. According to him, says
"Nature," the migration is not all completed in one year, as formerly
supposed, nor do they, as stated, form processions and cut their way
through obstacles; but, breeding several times in the season, they
gather in batches, and at intervals make a move westward. Their
pugnacity, he states, is astonishing, and the approach of any animal, or
even the shadow of a cloud, arouses the anger of this small creature
like a guinea pig, and they back against a stone or rock uttering shrill
defiance. Our author found, in most examples, a bare patch on the rump,
due to their rubbing against the said buttress of support when at bay.
He wonders why a bare patch, and not a callosity, should not result from
this innate, apparently hereditary habit.
NEW DISCOVERY OF NEOLITHIC REMAINS.
A very interesting discovery of human remains has been made in a cave in
Cravanch, about two miles northwest of Belfort, France. Some workmen,
excavating in a quarry of Jurassic limestone, found the opening to the
cave, the bottom of which was covered with stalagmites, while there were
no corresponding stalactites hanging from the roof. Some of these
calcareous columns appear to be artificial piles covered with the
limestone sheeting. Between them, and also covered with stalagmite, were
a quantity of human skeletons, with the skulls raised above the rest of
the bodies. A number of weapons and implements, together with a mat of
plaited meshes, have been found, all belonging to the polished stone
period. It is thought that careful search may uncover remains of an
earlier date. The cave is quite large, a hundred feet long and forty
wide and high. It was at once taken possession of by the authorities and
placed under the charge of Mr. Felix Voulot, who hopes to extract at
least one skeleton entire.
OCTOBER WEATHER.
The most noticeable features of the month are: the hurricane of the 17th
to 23d; lower temperatures in the districts east of the Rocky mountains;
large excess of rainfall in some districts and large deficiencies in
others; low water in the rivers.
_Areas of High Pressure._--These have generally appeared in the Upper
Missouri valley, from whence their movements have been south and
eastward across the country. Their advance has been frequently marked by
high northerly winds and gales, especially when preceded by decidedly
low-pressure areas, in the more northern districts and on the Texas
coast. When rainy weather has preceded them, the fall in the temperature
has been sufficient to turn the rain into sleet and snow, while frequent
and heavy frosts have been produced.
_Areas of Low Pressure._--Nine have been traced. Excepting the hurricane
of the 17th to 23d, the centres of all have moved over the northern
sections, and further northward than during previous Octobers. They have
been frequently accompanied by barometric troughs, extending south or
southwestward toward the Gulf, in which rainy weather and high winds or
gales have prevailed.
_Temperatures._--
_Maximum._ _Minimum._
Albany 70 deg. 23 deg.
Boston 70 " 26 "
Buffalo 73 " 24 "
Cape May 73 " 34 "
Chicago 73 " 28 "
Cincinnati 74 " 29 "
Cleveland 75 " 26 "
Detroit 72 " 24 "
Duluth 67 " 23 "
Jacksonville 85 " 43 "
Marquette 73 " 28 "
Mt. Washington 48 " 5 "
New Orleans 84 " 50 "
New York 73 " 31 "
Pike's Peak 41 " -2 "
Philadelphia 75 " 31 "
San Diego 80 " 48 "
San Francisco 72 " 52 "
Washington 78 " 30 "
The first frost of the season is reported from a large number of
stations, and first snow from about twenty.
_Verifications._--The average is 92.8 per cent. for the weather; 90.1,
wind direction; 91.1, temperature; 87.7, barometric changes. For the
whole country the average verified is 90.4 per cent. There were four
omissions to predict out of 3,720, or 0.1 percent.
A severe earthquake shock was felt at San Francisco at 9:20 p.m., on the
6th, lasting ten seconds; motion from northwest to southeast. A second
and lighter shock was felt the same day.
FRENCH NATIONAL ANTIQUITIES.
Probably few American travellers visit a collection of antiquities,
infinitely older than the paintings, statues, and relics of mediaeval
life, or even than those of Roman and Grecian age, but which is as
freely open to them, near Paris. This is the museum which has been
established in the chateau of Saint Germain. France has been
particularly fortunate in rescuing fragments of the life which existed
within her borders long before the day of the very earliest races to
which history points us. These fragments have sometimes been preserved
in the most fortuitous manner, and afford unique illustrations of the
remarkable accidents to which man is occasionally indebted for his
knowledge. The fossil man of Denyse, whatever his age may have been, has
been preserved for our inspection by becoming overwhelmed in a volcanic
eruption. The skeleton of Mentone was found by Riviere while engaged in
a systematic search among French caves. Other caves in France have
preserved evidences sufficiently distinct for us to gain valuable hints
of ancient life. In fact all the ages of man, so far as they are
recognized, and all the kinds of proof concerning them, are well
represented in French collections. During the reign of the late Emperor
this museum was founded, and has received the case of many noted French
_savants_ who have won distinction in this field of research. The walls
are covered by finely painted maps illustrating the distribution of
caves, and rock shelters, and places where instruments of stone, bone,
and bronze have been found. Pictures are also exhibited which illustrate
the views of former social customs which are thought to be supported by
the material evidences assembled in the chateau. In the cases are not
only large collections of celts, but also the carved bones, horn, and
stones which, by their distribution through the stalagmite of caves, or
through the gravel of ancient river beds, give infallible proof of the
presence of man. One floor contains a collection not less interesting,
though illustrating the manners of a much later age. It is formed of the
military weapons, bridges, fortifications, camps, etc., which were
constructed to illustrate the "life of Caesar," by Napoleon. This
collection is, and will probably remain, unique. At the meeting of the
Geographical Congress last year, these great engines of war were taken
to the park and exhibited in action. The museum is now placed under the
control of the historical commission for constructing the map of Gaul.
This body is publishing a series of maps and engravings to illustrate
the progress of the science of the prehistoric and subsequent periods. A
catalogue of the collections has been made and is sold to visitors.
There is also in the establishment a special library in which has been
collected by M. Gabriel de Mortillet all the books relating to
prehistoric antiquities, and which is open free on certain days to the
public.
* * * * *
It is found that insects preserve their colors better under yellow glass
than in any other color. The curtains of entomological show-cases and
the blinds of the room should be yellow. Only in this way can the
delicate carmine tints of some insect wings be preserved.
A student of animal nature announces a case of two hens, who by joint
efforts hatched one chick. They have since, for some weeks, been
parading the yard, each clucking and manifesting all the anxiety and
care of a true mother over this one. The hens never quarrel, or show the
least appearance of jealousy or rivalry.
M. Tresca, who has charge of the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers, the
institution which in Paris answers to our Patent Office, says that
drawings of new inventions are more useful than models, are cheaper, and
are very much oftener consulted. In Paris the model room is covered with
dust and rarely entered.
The French weather bureau intends not only to study the thunderstorm,
hailstorm, rainfall, inundations, and frosts, with especial reference to
their effects upon agriculture, but also to experiment upon the
asserted effect of smoke as a preventive to frost. The experiments will
be extensive and may cover a large valley.
To discover by the spectroscope the smallest quantity of a gaseous or
very volatile hydrocarbon, the Messrs. Negri introduce a small quantity
of the gaseous mixture into a tube. This mixture should not contain
oxygen, carbonic oxide, or carbonic acid; and the pressure is to be
reduced to not more than twenty millimetres. Then if a hydrocarbon is
present, the passage of a spark from a Ruhmkorff's coil will cause the
appearance of a sky-blue light. Viewed with the spectroscope, this
presents the spectrum of carbon, and generally so brilliant as to mask
totally the spectra of other gases present.
The rare metals cerium, lauthanum, and didymium have been lately
investigated by Drs. Hillebrand and Norton, in Bunsen's laboratory.
Cerium looks like iron, having both its color and lustre, but is
heavier, and has the hardness of calcite. It tarnishes slowly in dry air
and rapidly in moist air. It ignites so readily that pieces scratched
off inflame, and its wire burns more brilliantly than magnesium wire.
Lauthanum is a little harder, but also a little lighter. It tarnishes
more easily and inflames less easily than cerium. Didymium resembles
lauthanum. The metals were all obtained by electrolysis of the
chlorides.
It is stated that a week's work in Birmingham comprises, among its
various results, the fabrication of 14,000,000 pens, 6,000 bedsteads,
7,000 guns, 300,000,000 cut nails, 100,000,000 buttons, 1,000 saddles,
5,000,000 copper or bronze coins, 20,000 pairs of spectacles, six tons
of papier mache wares, over L30,000 worth of jewelry, 4,000 miles of
iron and steel wire, ten tons of pins, five tons of hairpins and hooks
and eyes, 130,000 gross of wood screws, 500 tons of nuts and screw bolts
and spikes, fifty tons of wrought iron hinges, 350 miles' length of wax
for vestas, forty tons of refined metal, forty tons of German silver,
1,000 dozens of fenders, 3,500 bellows, 800 tons of brass and copper
wares--these, with a multitude of other articles, being exported to
almost all parts of the civilized world.
The aerated beverages of which Americans are so fond should not be kept
in copper vessels, for carbonic acid (which is the gas present)
dissolves this metal with great avidity. From three-hundredths to
one-tenth of a grain of copper per gallon has been found in aerated
lemonade, ginger ale, soda water, etc.
In making the ultimate analysis of organic compounds by combustion, with
lead chromate and metallic copper reduced by hydrogen, the results
obtained are too high, on account of the expulsion of hydrogen, which
had been occluded by the copper. Heating the copper to 150 deg. C. does
not prevent the error, which may be .05 per cent.
Mayer & Walkoff, who have been experimenting on the respiration of
plants, find that the action goes on both in light and darkness, and
that changes of temperature within normal limits have little effect.
There is no direct relation between growth in length and respiration, a
conclusion that is in conflict with that of previous experiments.
The famous "Blue Grotto" in the island of Capri, Italy, has been
investigated spectroscopically. Most of the light enters through the
water, which absorbs the red rays entirely and so much of the yellow as
to make the D line scarcely visible. The green, blue, and indigo rays
are very bright, and the F and _b_ lines unite in a well marked
absorption line.
The springs of Weissenburg in the Bernese Oberland yield a water which
is popularly supposed to have the power of cicatrizing cavities in the
lungs, but its analysis shows no reason for such a power. Sulphates of
lime and magnesia are its principal solid ingredients, with chloride and
a little iodide of lithium and an organic compound having the odor of
blackberries.
The mountains about Innsbruck in the Tyrol, as well as other parts of
the Alps, present the singular phenomenon of a climate more moderate at
a considerable elevation than in the valleys. Prof. Kerner finds that
there is a warm region midway up the mountain, lying between two colder
zones above and below it. We have heretofore referred to a similar
phenomenon in Indiana.
It is remarked by anthropologists that differences of color are one of
the most marked signs of race. The Aryan word for caste is _Varanum_,
meaning color, and the Aryans are supposed to have used it to
distinguish themselves from the Dasyuf, with whom they came in contact
on crossing the Indus, when migrating from Central Asia. The first
migrating wave from that centre of human creation can no longer be
traced, and only its remnants are found among the most degraded of the
hill tribe and slave population in India. Prof. Rollesten thinks that
the earliest races of man were preeminently of the Australioid type,
which is now brown-skinned and wavy haired, with long narrow heads.
Messrs. Gladstone & Tribe have been investigating the results of the
decomposition of alcohol by aluminium. When absolute alcohol, in which
iodine has been dissolved, is poured upon finely divided aluminium in a
flask, energetic action takes place and large quantities of hydrogen are
evolved. A pasty mass remains, and this heated to 100 deg. C., gives off
alcohol, and leaves a solid residue, which liquefies at 275 deg. C.,
alcohol and an oily body containing iodine passing over. At a higher
temperature, this product was again decomposed, with formation of
alcohol, ethylene, and alumina. But the most interesting results were
obtained under diminished pressure. Then a greenish white solid
sublimed, and this was found to be aluminic ethylate. This is therefore
the second known organometallic body, containing oxygen, which is
capable of distillation, cacodylic oxide being the other.
CURRENT LITERATURE.
Prof. Huxley's ingenious if somewhat shallow evasion of the Biblical
account of creation, by crediting it to Milton rather than to Moses, has
perhaps aroused many minds to inquire what modern theologians really do
think of the first chapters of Genesis. This question is answered by a
recent publication[12] by Dr. Cocker of the Michigan State University.
In the "Theistic Conception of the World" he treats the first two
chapters of the Bible as a poem, which he calls the "symbolical hymn of
creation." It has an exordium, six strophes, each with its refrain, and
an episode. He does not believe the sacred narrative intends to describe
the exact mode of forming the world, nor even to set the successive
events in order. It is an ascription, designed to embody in symbolical
language the fact that all existence is derived from God. One paragraph
will show the broad ground on which this conclusion is based:
A cursory reading of the narrative will convince any one that
its purpose is not to enlarge men's views of nature, but to
teach them something concerning nature's God. It says nothing
about the forces of nature, the laws of nature, the
classifications of natural history, or the size, positions,
distances, and motions of the heavenly bodies. From first to
last, every phenomenon and every law is linked immediately to
some act or some command of God. It is God who creates, God who
commands, God who names, God who approves, and God who blesses.
Strike out the allusions to God, and the narrative is
meaningless. Clearly it was never intended to teach science. It
has obviously one purpose, to reveal and keep before the minds
of men the grand truth _that Jehovah is the sole Creator and
Lord of the heavens and the earth_; and it leaves the
scientific comprehension of nature to the natural powers with
which God has endowed man for that end.
But the author believes that the Mosaic account is practically correct,
or perhaps we should say harmonious with the truth. It may be truthful
without being all the truth, or truthful and still be very defective. He
considers that when scientific knowledge is complete, the Scripture,
rightly interpreted, will be found in harmony with its final
conclusions. How Moses was made acquainted with the events of creation
is a matter upon which it is impossible to be positive. The author sees
no objection to the suggestion that he may have witnessed a series of
pictures or visions, the result of which upon his mind is given in the
hymn of creation. This explanation of the Biblical narrative forms but a
small part of the work, which is chiefly given to a discussion of the
views and positive discoveries of scientific men which relate to the
production of the world. It is a remarkable tribute to the overmastering
power of positive knowledge. Science and theology are mingled in an
extraordinary way, but a way that is now necessary, for there is not one
province of human thought that has not been compelled to acknowledge the
great possibilities of inductive reasoning. Dr. Cocker labors to
establish the old faith on the new ground. He is a man of great reading
and has a strong belief in the religion to which he has given his heart.
Every question is approached in the firm faith that when rightly
interpreted it will be found to sustain the Christian religion. This is
the fundamental fault of the work. It is a plea for a cause that does
not need it, for a cause that is quite as apt to lose as to gain by the
defence. The difficulty with this method of meeting the hypothesis of
science is that the scientific views are themselves in a state of
unstable equilibrium. They may topple at any moment, and then the
correspondence that eager devotees have found between them and the Bible
is a slur that falls altogether on the religion and not on the science.
This is a great error, and those who are drawn into it belittle the
cause that is dear to them. While our author is catholic in his reading,
he does not seem to assign to all writers in his field their just value.
His quotations, the fresh, the obsolete, the trustworthy, and the
doubtful, are mingled in a confusion that only the experienced can
penetrate. His book is creditable to his unshaken faith, and it
presents the religious aspect of modern knowledge in a thorough manner.
* * * * *
It is not strange that under the present condition of the general mind
the question as to the right of the State to teach religion at the
public expense should be regarded with unusual interest. This question
has been very ably discussed by the Rev. Dr. Spear, whose book upon the
subject,[13] originally published as a series of essays in "The
Independent," is notably thorough and notably calm and judicial in tone.
Dr. Spear considers the subject in both its constitutional and its
equitable aspect, and the conclusion to which he is led is that "the
public school, like the State, under whose authority it exists, by whose
taxing power it is supported, should be simply a civil institution,
absolutely secular and not at all religious in its purposes, and all
practical questions involving this principle should be settled in
accordance therewith." He admits that this logical result of his
argument excludes the Bible from the public school, just as it excludes
the Westminster Catechism, the Koran, or any of the sacred books of
heathenism. But, as he justly says, this conclusion pronounces no
judgment against the Bible and none for it; it simply omits to use it
and declines to inculcate the religion which it teaches. It is difficult
to see how any other view of the case can be taken consistently with the
spirit of our institutions, from the Constitution of the United States
downward; and it is a cheering promise of the disappearance of bigotry,
even in its milder forms, when we see this view set forth by a
distinguished orthodox minister of the Gospel. There still, however,
remains this question in connection with religious toleration and
religious qualifications--Does a religion one element of which is
absolute subservience to the will of a foreign potentate or prelate, the
Roman or the Greek, for example, and which undertakes to deal with a
civil relation, marriage for example, come properly within the provision
for universal religious toleration, or does it not, for the reasons
assigned, assume a relation to the State more or less political?
* * * * *
Captain Whittaker's "Life of General Custer"[14] can no more be
estimated by fixed biographical rules than the meteoric career of his
hero can be compared to the regular and peaceful lives of other men. Not
often, perhaps, does the biographer devote himself with such
enthusiastic _abandon_ to his task, and seldom is there to be found
within the covers of a single volume such an infinite variety of
incident and personal reminiscence. The chapters which deal with the
early youth of General Custer are exceedingly interesting photographs,
as it were, of a certain phase of American domestic and academic life.
The characteristics of the child, the sorrows of the "plebe," and the
aspirations and experiences of the cadet, are faithfully narrated. The
first service of the subaltern, and his initiation into the perils and
responsibilities of an officer in time of war, are interwoven with
Custer's own recollections of his generals and their campaigns. We are
irresistibly reminded of Lever in the style of the narration, and of
that dashing creature "O'Malley" in the adventures of our own dragoon.
The story of General Custer's wooing is quaintly told, and shines like a
bow of promise through all the clouds of his stormy career; it is a
romance by itself. _Apropos_ of the charge which we are told won the boy
general his star, we clip a bit of word painting which could only have
been written by "one who has been there":
Were you ever in a charge--you who read this now by the winter
fireside, long after the bones of the slain have turned to
dust, when peace covers the land? If not, you have never known
the fiercest pleasure of life. The chase is nothing to it; the
most headlong hunt is tame in comparison. In the chase the game
flees, and you shoot; here the game shoots back, and every leap
of the charging steed is a peril escaped or dashed aside. The
sense of power and audacity that possesses the cavalier, the
unity with his steed, both are perfect. The horse is as wild as
the man: with glowing eyeballs and red nostrils, he rushes
frantically forward at the very top of his speed, with huge
bounds as different from the rhythmic precision of the gallop
as the sweep of the hurricane is from the rustle of the breeze.
Horse and rider are drunk with excitement; feeling and seeing
nothing but the cloud of dust, the scattered flying figures;
conscious of only one mad desire, to reach them, to smite,
smite, smite!
The author of this book is too much of an artist, too much of a poet,
perhaps, to divest his battle descriptions of anything that is doubtful
in fact, if only it is eulogistic of his hero or picturesque in its
nature. He has an eye for color, and prefers to have his picture a showy
and effective one even if some of the accessories are purely of the
imagination. We cannot consider the letters of the "Times" special
correspondent as a reliable history of the events immediately following
the battle of Gettysburg, although they are undoubtedly glowing
bulletins of the exploits of General Kilpatrick and his temporary
subordinate, General Custer. Nor can we accept the statement of the
Detroit "Evening News" for an entirely correct report of the grand
review at Washington, in 1865, when he hands down to posterity that
sober-sided old warrior, Provost Marshal General Patrick, as one who
"had ridden down the broad avenue bearing his reins in his teeth, and
his sabre in his only hand"; although the Mazeppa act in which Custer
immediately followed is not overdrawn by the "News," because that would
be "painting the lily." There are several other extracts from newspapers
of a similar nature, but we have not space to refer to them. Captain
Whittaker's book offers material for that "coming historian," but cannot
be looked upon as an entirely safe historical authority. Colonel Chesney
says, "Accept no one-sided statement from any national historian who
rejects what is distasteful in his authorities, and uses only what suits
his own theory.... Gather carefully from actual witnesses, high and low,
such original material as they offer for the construction of the
narrative. This once being safely proved, judge critically and calmly
what was the conduct of the chief actor; how far his insight, calmness,
personal control over others, and right use of his means were concerned
in the result." The great fault of this otherwise attractive biography
is the unwise partisanship which, as Captain Whittaker shows, was so
injurious to his hero in life and which even in death does not forsake
him. At page 282 Captain Whittaker says of alleged envy and jealousy of
Custer in certain quarters:
A great deal of this was due to the boasting and sarcastic
remarks of his injudicious friends, who could not be satisfied
with praising their own chief without depreciating others.
Thus the author, after warning his readers of the pit into which so many
others have fallen, proceeds in the most inconsistent manner to fall
into it himself.
Had we space, we could here make many extracts entirely free from the
foregoing objections. Many new descriptions of Indian life, never before
in print, are here given; some excellent essays on the prominent phases
of American military life; and many anecdotes and biographical sketches
of the officers who fell with Custer on the "Little Big-horn," with
portraits, are also given. The volume is a very large, handsome octavo,
illustrated by two portraits of General Custer (one an excellent
likeness on steel), and many full-page woodcuts, and seems especially
seasonable as a holiday present. No biographical collection can be
considered complete without it, and we should think it would have an
especial charm to military readers. That Mrs. Custer is to receive a
share of the receipts from its sale will not lessen its circulation.
* * * * *
Palestine is certainly an inexhaustible source of books, and Dr.
Ridgaway[15] tells us the reason why. Travellers' descriptions of the
grand mountain scenery, its strange deserts, its ancient customs,
transmitted from the dawn of history, its trees a thousand years of age,
and its mighty ruins, contribute to and intensify the interest which the
Christian feels in that region alone of all the earth. Of late years
this country has been the scene of systematic explorations and the theme
of an important series of critical works. Dr. Ridgaway's volume deserves
a place in this series, though he has little of novelty to present. But
the author has produced just the book that was needed, the one which it
might be supposed the first traveller there would have written. Leaving
out nearly all the every-day incidents of travel, he aims to extract
from each place he saw just what is of interest to the Bible student. He
is to be congratulated on a rare ability to discriminate between the
important and entertaining and what is matter-of-course. The plan of his
journey, which was made in company with eleven others, mostly clergymen,
was to follow the route of the Israelites from Egypt to Palestine, and
then to visit every place made memorable by the life of Christ, besides
many others of Biblical interest. He tried to be critical, and
constantly discusses the pros and cons for admitting the received
location of prominent points; but in this he is not very successful, and
seems to decline at length into helpless acquiescence. He rejects the
innovations and doubts of such men as Robinson and Baker, and
acknowledges that the sacred sites have for the most part been
identified. But there is a limit to even his credulity. He swallowed
easily the "exact spot" where the cradle lay, but strained at the
fragment of a column on which Mohammed is to sit when he judges the
world, and says, "I was unable to resist the temptation to straddle it!"
Perhaps the secret of Dr. Ridgaway's success is that he has omitted
those rhapsodies which are natural enough amid such scenes, but which we
get our fill of without going to Palestine. He is too full of the real
situation to turn to fanciful imaginations, and as a consequence he
gives us the best companion to the Bible which we know of. The critical
results of his journey are small, but as a careful summary of what
others have finally settled upon his work is authentic. A large number
of engravings, of the best execution, bring the landscape and buildings
vividly before us. Many of them are from Dr. Ridgaway's sketches, others
from photographs, and the only fault we have to find is the omission of
titles to them, an omission which is artistic, but inconvenient.
--Lieutenant Ruffner[16] does not give a very assuring picture of New
Mexico, considered as a possible State in our Union. It has never
prospered; its population and area of cultivated land being smaller now
than three hundred years ago. As these changes are no doubt due to the
operation of natural causes, about which scientific men do not agree,
the immediate future of the country does not appear very flattering.
Wide as the spread of westward migration has been, it has hardly
affected New Mexico. Lieutenant Ruffner says: "The line once crossed, a
foreign country is entered. Foreign faces and a foreign tongue are
encountered." For twenty-six years the Territory has formed a part of
our country, but in that time our civilization has hardly made an
impression upon it. The author, without directly saying so, seems to
regard the scheme for making it a State with disfavor, and his readers
will agree with him. He has done his country a service by this
painstaking and impartial description of a region which few but army
officers know anything about.
--It is a very difficult thing nowadays to write a book of travels that
can interest the general public. A hundred years ago a man who had
circumnavigated the world was a remarkable object, and people would
crowd to see him, and read his works with avidity. But what a change the
last century has produced. Compare the difference of tone between 1776
and 1876, and then go back and compare 1676 with the former year. There
is not anything like a parity of advance between the two centuries. The
traveller and sailor was as much of a hero in 1776 as was the captain of
the Vittoria, the last ship of Magellan's fleet when he sailed into
Cadiz in 1522, having been round the earth and lost a day in the
operation; just as Mr. Phileas Fogg, of later fame, gained one by going
in the opposite direction. Men who have been to China and India,
Australia and New Zealand, are too plentiful to-day to excite notice;
and when it comes to writing books about their adventures, it is
necessary to be cautious to avoid treading in old tracks and wearying
the reader. The man who describes a voyage round the world to-day must
be a character of interest in himself, or he will not interest his
audience. The writer of the book now before us[17] possesses the
qualifications for the task seldom possessed by the professional
traveller, who is apt to bore one with long stories. He has the eye of a
newspaper correspondent, the quick intuition as to what is or is not
interesting _per se_, and has actually succeeded in making an
interesting and readable book of three hundred pages out of a subject
nearly worn out. Mr. Vincent started from New York in a clipper ship,
went round the Horn to San Francisco, thence to Hawaii, where he
remained some weeks, thence to New Zealand and Australia, finally to
Calcutta, and thence home to New York, after a prolonged tour through
India, Siam, and China. The incidents of the latter tour formed the
basis of his first book, the "Land of the White Elephant," the success
of which encouraged him to this, his second venture. The chief
characteristic of Mr. Vincent's second work is its freshness and
interest. He seems to be profoundly impressed with the truth of the
saying of Thales of Miletus, that "the half is sometimes more than the
whole." The taste and judgment of the author are shown by what he leaves
out as much as by what he leaves in. There is hardly a dull page in the
book, and in each place he only notes what is curious, leaving out of
the question all that is commonplace. More could not be asked of him.
* * * * *
We have received the first number of the "Archives of the National
Museum at Rio de Janeiro."[18] This is a scientific institution, and
from the number of officers named it appears to be prepared for
inaugurating thorough work in archaeology, geology, botany, zoology, etc.
Its aim, however, is not merely the study of pure science, but its
application to the immediate welfare of man through agriculture and the
industries. The director general is Dr. Netto, and the secretary Dr.
Joao Joaquin Pizarro. Most of the officers are Brazilians, but our
countryman, Prof. Hartt, is director of the "sciencias physicas,"
including geology, mineralogy, and palaeontology. This first number of
the "Archivos" contains papers in the Portuguese language on aboriginal
remains, one by Prof. Wiener and Prof. Hartt, and one by Dr. Netto on a
botanical subject.
* * * * *
Prof. Walker's work in both the Census Bureau and the Indian Department
shows how original and critical his mind is. The first fruit of his
activity as a professional teacher of political economy is an extended
treatise on the question of wages.[19] He seems to have found himself
unable to make the views of the systematic writers always harmonize with
his own conceptions, and his work is to a considerable extent
controversial. One of his prominent objects of attack is the wage-fund
theory, which is that wages are paid out of capital, that a certain
portion of the capital in every country is charged with this duty, and
that the rate of wages could be accurately determined if the amount of
this fund and the total number of laborers could be ascertained. This
theory makes the savings of past labor to be the source from which wages
are paid. Prof. Walker argues that "wages are, in a philosophical view
of the subject, paid out of the product of present industry, and hence
that production furnishes the true measure of wages." Labor is an
article which the employer buys because it forms a necessary part of a
certain product which he intends to sell. The price which he expects to
obtain for the product controls the amount he can afford to pay for the
labor. It is true that the money paid must necessarily come from past
savings unless the laborers wait for their pay, as they formerly did in
this country. But in making this payment capital merely _advances_ the
money, and its possessor receives interest for its use; the amount of
this interest being another element that is controlled by the price
which the manufacturer expects to obtain for the product. Prof. Walker
thinks it not surprising that the erroneous wage-fund theory found
acceptance in England, where the facts on which it is based were first
observed. But he marvels that American thinkers can accept it, for the
condition of some classes of laborers here was, so late as half a
century ago, a decided disproof of it. Farm hands, for instance, were
formerly often paid at the end of the year, for the reason that there
was not capital enough in farmers' hands to make the advances necessary
for weekly or monthly payments. Here was a case in which the employer
clearly had to wait for the product before he could pay the wages. No
past savings were available for the purpose. The author's arguments are
always clearly put and forcible, but his position loses strength by the
very character of his task. He has so completely separated the wages
question from all others, that we miss the natural collocation of wages
with the other items which make up the cost of a product. The capitalist
has one and the same purpose in buying raw material and labor, and no
discussion of the subject can seem complete that does not proceed from
the likeness or unlikeness of these two components of value. Another
theory which our author combats strongly is that the interest of the
employer is sufficient to keep wages up to the highest profitable point.
He holds that the laborer must be active in his own interests, or he
will never obtain that rate of payment which is necessary to his proper
maintenance. Bad food reduces the quantity and quality of the laborer's
work, so that more men have to be hired for a given task, and the
employer pays more in the end for his product, than when wages are good;
but even this prospective loss is not sufficient to keep employers from
experimenting to find just that point to which wages may be lowered
without affecting food disastrously. This disposition of the employer
can be combatted only by the resistance of the laborer. Prof. Walker
thinks there is a "constantly imminent danger that bodies of laborers
will not soon enough or amply enough resent industrial injuries which
may be wrought by the concerted action of employers or by slow and
gradual changes in production, or by catastrophes in business, such as
commercial panics." Of course he does not advocate strikes, which "are
the insurrections of labor," but even these are to be judged by their
results. The results may or may not justify them. He considers that
cooperation is a real panacea that can successfully take the place of
violent measures. He denies the assertion that cooperation gets rid of
the capitalist. It merely avoids the business man, who in the present
order of things borrows the capital, hires the laborers, and directs the
business. Practically he is a salaried man. Prof. Walker finds
difficulty in giving this man a title suitable for use in treatises on
political economy. He objects to "undertaker" and "adventurer," because
they have other meanings, and suggests the French _entrepreneur_. The
objections are well taken, but the middleman is not only a reality; he
also has a name by which he is known in business. If Prof. Walker wants
to have a cellar dug or rock blasted, he can go to Pennsylvania and find
a "venturer" to undertake the work; and there seems to be no good reason
why a term that is already in common use and well understood should be
rejected by the schoolmen. This is a valuable contribution to political
economy, so valuable, in fact, that we can only _say_ that it should be
read, not demonstrate the fact in a short notice.
* * * * *
"Elsie's Motherhood"[20] is a story in which piety of the Sunday-school
kind is curiously contrasted with villany in the shape of Ku Klux
outrages. Elsie's children are all sweetness, obedience, and kisses, and
live in an atmosphere of goodness that is revolting because it is
monstrous. There is a suspicion of political purpose associated with the
appearance of the book just at this time which does not improve it.
--The author of "Near to Nature's Heart"[21] shows abundant powers of
invention, but his imagination is not sufficiently well regulated for
the production of a natural or even plausible story. The individual who
is so intimate with nature is a young girl whose father has fled from
England and hidden himself in the forests of the Hudson river on account
of a quarrel with his brother, which he (erroneously) supposes to have
been a fatal one. His seclusion is so complete that his daughter grows
up almost without the sight of man or womankind except the three who are
in her father's hut, and the consequence is a partial reversion to the
wild state from which we are nowadays supposed to have been somewhat
removed by the process of evolution. The author dresses the nymph in a
style that ingeniously indicates the character he desires to paint. "Her
attire was as simple as it was strange, consisting of an embroidered
tunic of finely dressed fawn skin, reaching a little below the knee, and
ending in a blue fringe. Some lighter fabric was worn under it, and
encased the arms. The shapely neck and throat were bare, though almost
hidden by a wealth of wavy golden tresses that flowed down her
shoulders. Her hat appeared to have been constructed out of the skin of
the snowy heron, with its beak and plumage preserved intact, and dressed
into the jauntiest style. Leggings of strong buckskin, that formed a
protection against the briers and roughness of the forest, were clasped
around a slender ankle, and embroidered moccasins completed an attire
that was not in the style of the girl of the period, even a century
ago." This nymph was fishing, and for a float used the bud of a water
lily! This is quite characteristic of the author's idea throughout. In
losing civilization this girl put on all the supposed graces and none of
the known brutishness of the wild state. The result is an incongruous
character, but it is quite in harmony with the general notion that the
natural state is one of greater perfection than that we really dwell in.
As for the story, it relates to Revolutionary times, introduces
Washington and the Continental army, with battles, dangers, and other
lively and thrilling situations. In plot it is crude and rough. The
author makes the artistic mistake of introducing religion as a principal
element of his tale, though it does not relate to a time or to persons
characteristically religious. The variety of incident, the presence of
historical characters, including Washington and "Captain" Molly, and a
certain _quantum_ of real skill in the author, will no doubt make this
book acceptable to the uncritical, but it does not deserve the attention
of others. We notice that the publishers announce the "fourteenth
thousand," which is the best indication of the book's popularity.
* * * * *
The ranks of the rhymers of the day are thronged with women, among the
better of whom is the author of "Edelweiss,"[22] who has gathered her
occasional verses into a pretty volume under the title of that graceful
and tender little poem. Her title-page bears no publisher's name and her
dedication to friends, whose loving kindness has welcomed them one by
one, and at whose request they have been gathered together, seems to
imply that they are privately printed. If this is because no publisher
would undertake the production of the volume, we do not wonder; not
because of the inferiority of the poems, for they are much better than
many that do find publishers. They belong to a large class in which the
world cannot be brought to take any great interest--verses expressive of
various emotions, love, devotion, resignation, and so forth, which are
all uttered with fervor or with tenderness, verses graceful in style,
and in good rhythm, and which yet produce no great impression; while on
the other hand they are much above that sentimental or that sententious
twaddle which sometimes finds many admirers. It is sad to see so much of
this sort of verse published; for it is the occasion and the sign of
woful disappointment to persons of unusual intelligence and true poetic
feeling, who, however, have not in any great measure the poetic faculty.
--"Frithiof's Saga" has been often translated into English, and we have
here the result of one more effort to give us the great Swedish poem in
our own language.[23] The principal difference between this translation
and its predecessors is that this preserves the changing metres of the
original. It was undertaken chiefly because it seems the Swedes have not
been satisfied with the previous translations because they did not
follow the metre of the original. The reason is not a good one, and the
result of the attempt to conform to it is not very happy. There is no
question of pleasing the Swedes with a translation into English. It is
English ears that are to be consulted by what is written in English,
whether original or not. The Swedes have the original; that is for them;
the English version is for us. The effect of the many and great changes
in the rhythm and in the form of the verse is not pleasant to our taste;
and indeed we are inclined to think that the best translation of this or
of any other "Saga" would be into rhythmic prose, which embodied the
spirit, but did not simulate the form of the original.
--It is very unfortunate for what is often called American literature,
that almost all attempts to treat any part of our history poetically or
dramatically are miserable failures. Among the verse books before us two
are of this kind; one by Mr. George L. Raymond,[24] who has written in
what he supposes is the ballad form some things which are not at all
ballad-like, and which are dreary stuff under whatever name; and the
other a thing which Mr. Martin F. Tupper[25] seems to suppose is a drama
in blank verse upon the events of our war of independence. A more stupid
and ridiculous performance we have rarely seen. That it should be read
through by any one seems to us quite insupposable. And yet, although he
has written this and "Proverbial Philosophy," Mr. Tupper is a D. C. L.
of Oxford and an F. R. S.
--Something of a far higher quality than this is Mr. Bayard Taylor's
"National Ode" written for the Centennial celebration. It is to be
regretted, we think, that Mr. Taylor was not able to give himself up
entirely to poetical composition. He has the poetic faculty, and his
verse is nervous and manly, far better, we think, than his prose. Had he
been a poet only, he might have taken a still higher place in
contemporary literature. This poem, well known to the public, is one of
his finest and most spirited efforts. The present edition[26] is very
handsomely illustrated and printed.
--Charles Sprague is an "American" poet of the last generation, who is
almost forgotten, and indeed quite unknown to readers of the present
day. He has something of Campbell in his style--Campbell in his calm and
serious moods. It may have been desirable to reprint his poems and
essays in an attractive volume,[27] with his portrait; but we fear that
he belongs to the class of middling writers of prose and verse who were
much talked of by our fathers chiefly because they were "American."
--One of the best of the many volumes of verse upon our table is the
collection of poems by Mrs. S. M. B. Piatt.[28] Mrs. Piatt's muse is
often thoughtful, but in all that she has given us, of which much is
attractive in form and suggestive in substance, these lines that follow
are the most valuable. They refer to the altar which Paul found at
Athens "To the Unknown God":
Because my life was hollow with a pain
As old as death: because my eyes were dry
As the fierce tropics after months of rain,
Because my restless voice said, "Why?" and "Why?"
Wounded and worn, I knelt within the night
As blind as darkness--Praying? And to Whom?--
When yond' _cold crescent cut my folded sight_,
And showed a phantom Altar in my room.
It was the Altar Paul at Athens saw.
The Greek bowed there, but not the Greek alone!
The ghosts of nations gathered, wan with awe,
And laid their offerings on that shadowy stone.
The Egyptian worshipped there the crocodile;
There they of Nineveh the bull with wings;
The Persian there with swart, sun-lifted smile
Felt in his soul the writhing fire's bright stings.
There the weird Druid held his mistletoe;
There, for the scorched son of the sand, coiled bright,
The torrid snake was hissing sharp and low;
And there the Western savage paid his rite.
"Allah," the Moslem darkly muttered there;
"Brahma," the jewelled Indies of the East
Sighed through their spices with a languid prayer;
"Christ?" faintly questioned many a paler priest.
And still the Athenian Altar's glimmering Doubt
On all religions--evermore the same.
What tears shall wash its sad inscription out?
What hand shall write thereon His other name?
The last five lines of Mrs. Piatt's poem express finely the feeling as
to God and religion which now fills countless numbers of the truest
hearts and brightest minds.
--"As You Like It" has just been published in the "Clarendon Press
Series of Shakespeare's Select Plays." Mr. Grant White, in his article
"On Reading Shakespeare," in the present number of "The Galaxy," has
said so much in regard to this series and its present editor,[29]
William Aldis Wright, that it is only necessary for us to record here
the appearance of this edition of Shakespeare's most charming comedy,
and to say that Shakespeare's lovers and students will find in it some
new views which are interesting, and appear to be sound, and a copious
and careful body of annotation.
--Of poetry, or rather of verse, as we before remarked, our table is
full this month, and with it we have a dictionary to teach us to rhyme
withal.[30] "Walker's Rhyming Dictionary" has had complete possession of
this field for three quarters of a century, and we are not sure that it
will be supplanted by Mr. Barnum's. His new plan is very systematic. He
classifies his words in groups--single rhymes, double rhymes, triple,
quadruple, and even quintuple rhymes; and then he divides and subdivides
and parcels off his words under separate headings. He does not give
definitions. The book will be valuable to the student of the English
language, more so, we are inclined to think, than to the mere
rhyme-hunter, who will prefer to run his finger and his eye down a
column of words arranged merely according to their final letters.
--Mr. Tennyson's new dramatic poem is before us in the elegant Boston
typography of Ticknor & Field's worthy successors.[31] The poet laureate
added little to his fame by his previous dramatic work, "Queen Mary"; he
will gain less by this. It is good of course to a certain degree, but
it is only "fair to middling" Tennysonian work. We find in it not a
passage that stirs us, not one that charms. It puts the story of the
Norman Conquest of England into a dramatic form and into good blank
verse, with sound and sensible treatment of the subject, and that is
all. Its author's good taste, and above all his experience, his
dexterity, acquired by such long practice, are manifest on every page;
but there is little more. He dedicates it to the present Lord Lytton, in
evident desire to wipe out the memory of the old feud between him and
Bulwer Lytton; but that was too black and too bitter to be sponged away
with a little sugar and water.
--Mr. Latham Cornell Strong is modest in his preface about his
collection of verse,[32] although he is rather too elaborately
metaphorical in his way of blushing properly. He says, as to the flaws
in his poems, that he "has a reasonable confidence that they will not
all be discovered by any one reader." This may be true from the probable
fact that no one reader will read them all; we think that we have met
with enough of them to show that Mr. Strong might well have refrained
himself from publication. For example, we think that a true poet could
hardly have written many such passages as these, and there are many such
in the volume:
The night is rising from the trees,
Her _hands_, uplifted, _trail_ with stars
The moon hath flung _its banners_ on the sward
Old Rupert named, _alone of all the rest_
She most esteemed, for he had brought her flowers,
To wreathe her tresses and make manifest
His sympathy for her, _in many ways expressed_
The last four lines unite incorrectness, tameness, and inelegance with
remarkable and fatal facility.
FOOTNOTES:
[12] "_The Theistic Conception of the World._ An Essay in Opposition to
Certain Tendencies of Modern Thought." By B. F. COCKER, D.D., LL.D. New
York: Harper & Brothers.
[13] "_Religion and the State_; or, The Bible and the Public Schools."
By SAMUEL T. SPEAR, D.D. 12mo, pp. 393. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co.
[14] "_A Complete Life of General George A. Custer_," etc. By F.
WHITTAKER, Brevet Captain Sixth N. Y. V. Cavalry. New York: Sheldon &
Co.
[15] "_The Lord's Land_: A Narrative of Travels in Sinai, Arabia,
Petraea, and Palestine, from the Red Sea to the Entering in of Hamath."
By HENRY B. RIDGAWAY, D.D. New York: Nelson & Phillips.
[16] "_New Mexico and the New Mexicans_: A Political Problem." By an
Officer of the Army.
[17] "_Through and Through the Tropics._" By FRANK VINCENT, Jr. New
York: Harper & Brothers. 1876.
[18] "_Archivos do Musen Nacional do Rio de Janeiro._" Imprensa
Industrial.
[19] "_The Wages Question._ A Treatise on Wages and the Wages Class." By
FRANCIS A. WALKER. New York: Henry Holt & Co. $3.50.
[20] "_Elsie's Motherhood._" A Sequel to "Elsie's Womanhood." By MARTHA
FINLEY (FARQUHARSON). New York: Dodd, Mead & Co.
[21] "_Near to Nature's Heart._" By Rev. E. P. ROE. New York: Dodd, Mead
& Co.
[22] "_Edelweiss_: An Alpine Rhyme." By MARY LOWE DICKINSON. New York,
1876.
[23] "_Frithiof's Saga._ A Norse Romance." By ESAIS FEGNER, Bishop of
Wexio. Translated from the Swedish by Thomas A. Holcombe and Martha and
Lyon Holcombe. 16mo, pp. 213. Chicago: S. C. Griggs & Co.
[24] "_Colony Ballads_, etc., etc., etc., etc." By GEORGE L. RAYMOND.
16mo, pp. 95. New York: Hurd & Houghton.
[25] "_Washington_: A Drama in Five Acts." By MARTIN F. TUPPER. 16mo,
pp. 67. New York: James Miller.
[26] "_The National Ode._ The Memorial Freedom Poem." By BAYARD TAYLOR.
Illustrated. 8vo, pp. 74. Boston: William E. Gill & Co.
[27] "_The Poetical and Prose Writings of Charles Sprague._" 16mo, pp.
207. Boston: A. Williams & Co.
[28] "_That New World, and Other Poems._" By Mrs. S. M. B. PIATT. 16mo,
pp. 130. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co.
[29] "_Shakespeare._" Select Plays. "As You Like It." Edited by WILLIAM
ALDIS WRIGHT, M.A., Bursar of Trinity College, Cambridge. 16mo, pp. 168.
Oxford: at the Clarendon Press.
[30] "_A Vocabulary of English Rhymes._" Arranged on a new plan. By the
Rev. SAMUEL W. BARNUM. 18mo, pp. 767. New York: D. Appleton & Co.
[31] "_Harold_: A Drama." By ALFRED TENNYSON. 16mo, pp. 170. Boston:
James B. Osgood & Co.
[32] "_Castle Windows._" By LATHAM CORNELL STRONG. 16mo, pp. 229. Troy:
H. B. Nims & Co.
NEBULAE.
--The evolutionists manifestly feel that they are put upon their defence
in the matter of religion. As far as they themselves are concerned, they
are at peace with their own consciences; but nevertheless they do not
sit easily under the charge of atheism which is very generally brought
against them by that part of the world to which science does not stand
in place of religion. They are now making desperate efforts to show that
they have a religion, and Mr. M. J. Savage has written a very clever
book upon the subject, entitled "The Religion of Evolution." Mr. Savage
is a very pronounced evolutionist; he sticks at nothing in the most
extravagant form of the new theory, and the attitude which he would take
toward religion is clearly shown in the title of his previous volume on
a kindred subject, "Christianity the Science of Manhood." It is safe to
say that although Mr. Savage and others like him may call themselves
Christians and believe themselves to be so, and may live lives worthy of
the name, no man who twenty-five years ago was a professed believer in
the Christian religion, and comparatively very few of those who are so
now, would accept the term _science_ as applicable to Christianity or to
religion at all. For science means knowledge, knowledge of facts, and
cautious logical deductions from those facts; whereas the very essence
of religion is a faith which holds itself above knowledge and reason, a
faith which is not only the substance of things hoped for, but the
evidence of things not seen. And this great definition, one of the
greatest ever given, applies not particularly to the faith of the
Christian religion, but to all faiths--Judaism, Mohammedanism, Buddhism,
and the rest. The true religionist will sooner accept one of these as a
religion than a religion of evolution, or than he will consent to accept
Christianity as a science of anything--of manhood, or even of God-hood.
--It is with this view of religion, this feeling about it, that the
evolutionists have to deal when they endeavor to free themselves from
the charge of irreligion. This is a state of the case which some of them
do not seem to appreciate at its full importance. They shirk it, or at
least they slight it; but Mr. Savage, it must be admitted, meets it
fairly and boldly. He takes the position that such a view of religion is
unworthy of a reasonable creature, and he brushes it aside with little
ceremony and with some dexterity. But his chief difficulty is with the
conception which lies at the foundation of all religions--the idea of
god. Granted a god, or gods, and religion follows as a matter of course;
and conversely, no god, no religion. Therefore the evolutionists, those
of them who feel, or who see the necessity of a religion, of whom Mr.
Savage may be taken as a fair representative, go about to provide
themselves and the rest of the universe with a god, and they do it in
this fashion. It is shown to the satisfaction of the evolutionists, and
also of very many who have no respect for their theory, that the Mosaic
cosmogony--that is, the account in Genesis of the creation of the earth
and its inhabitants, and all the visible universe--has never been
proved, and is incapable of proof, and that it holds its place in
popular belief solely because of its supposed connection with
Christianity; that it is merely a tradition (from however high and
venerable a source), and that it rests upon no knowledge or study of the
facts which it professes to explain; that it is in no way connected with
Christianity, which would stand on its own merits equally whether the
world were six thousand or six million years old, and whether it and its
inhabitants were made in six days or six aeons; that it--the Mosaic
account of the origin of the world--explains nothing, but simply tells
dogmatically that God made all and that God did so and so; that no
intelligent person would think of resting satisfied with the Mosaic
account, had it not come to be regarded as a requirement of religion to
do so, but that this has become so fixed that the whole orthodox system
is the natural and logical outgrowth of the Mosaic account of the
beginning of things: "the prevailing belief about God, the nature and
the fall of man, total depravity, the need and the schemes for
supernatural redemption, the whole structure, creed, and ritual of the
Church, the common belief about the nature and efficacy of prayer
meetings, the whole system of popular revivals, limited salvation, and
everlasting punishment"--all and each being built on the foundation of
the Mosaic cosmogony. Therefore for the vast number of intelligent
thoughtful people to whom the Mosaic account of the creation is no
longer authoritative, although it may be mythically instructive, the
foundation of their religion is gone. It is then assumed that religion
must rest upon a veneration for the creative power or agent to which the
present _cosmos_ owes its existence, and that as the traditional God or
Creator of Genesis has been eliminated from cognition by science, his
place in religion must be taken by the power by which he is supplanted.
Hence we have the god of evolution and the religion of evolution.
--But what is this god of evolution? In a very remarkable series of
papers which have appeared for some months past in "Macmillan's
Magazine," upon Natural Religion, remarkable equally for the subtlety
and closeness of their thought and their clearness of style, something
called Nature is set up as God; Mr. Savage's god, as nearly as we can
make out, is the law of evolution--the formative power by which the
universe passed from a mass of fluid fire, revolving in space, into
suns, and suns and planets, and their inhabitants. In either case it
amounts to about the same thing. What is nature? We may be sure the word
is not used in the sense which it has when we say that a man admires
nature, loves nature, or observes nature, nor in that which it has when
we speak of the nature of things or the nature in a work of the
imagination, or the nature of man, or "the nature of the beast." What is
it then? We are very sure that the "Macmillan" writer, with all his
delicacy of thought and command of expression, could not say exactly
what he means when he speaks of this Nature which is so worthy of
reverence and of love. For this reason, and for no other, we may be
sure, he has left the word undefined. This is important; for, as Mr.
Savage says in his eleventh chapter, when he proposes the question
whether evolution and Christianity are antagonistic, so that one
necessarily excludes the other--"that depends upon definitions."
--The truth is that this whole question is one greatly of definitions.
What do you mean by God? what by Nature? what by religion? We are
inclined to think that if the two parties on one side and the other of
the great question of the day were to have a preliminary settlement of
definitions, it would become plain that there could be no discussion,
certainly no profitable discussion, between them--no more than there
could be a fight between a deep-sea fish and a chamois. They would find
that there was no ground on which they could meet, no point on which
they could come in contact! To one God is, and must be, a person, an
individual, who, however spiritual, eternal, omniscient, and
omnipresent, is yet as much a person as a man having a will, with
purposes, affections, feelings, sentiments, as indeed every spiritual
being must have--a being who can be feared, revered, admired, loved.
Religion to these men is worship of this person, obedience to his will
because it is his, faith in him, love of him. The god of the
evolutionists, on the other hand, is, if Nature, a mere manifestation or
result; if a law, a mere mode or rule of action. As to the religion of
evolution, we cannot, with all Mr. Savage's help, and that of the
"Macmillan" writer (who, we are sure, must be a man of mark, or at least
one who will become so), discover what it is, except a conformity to
what may be called the law of nature; but that is something of which a
healthy beast or a drop of water is quite as capable as a man is; and
such conformity implies feeling quite as much in one of these cases as
in the other. It implies feeling in no case; and religion without
feeling, sentiment, and faith is no religion at all in the sense which
the word has had from the beginning of its use to this day. The
religious man finds in _his_ God a being whom he can love and lean upon,
who has a right to his obedience, to whom he can be loyal, whom he can
address, calling him Father, as we are told that Christ did. But you
cannot love a law. True, David says, "O how I love thy law"; but the law
that he loved was the will of the Supreme Being, and he loved it because
it was His. It was not a mode of action or of evolution that he loved.
Nor can you obey such a law, although you may conform to it; nor can you
be loyal to it, for you cannot be loyal to an abstraction. As to
fatherhood, this law-god of evolution is the father of nothing except as
two and two are the father and mother of four. Therefore, while we
regard such books as Mr. Savage's as interesting expositions of the
condition as to super-scientific subjects into which modern science has
brought many of its votaries, we cannot see that they do anything toward
refuting the charge brought against science (as it is among the
evolutionists), that it is at war with religion, and takes away all the
grounds of religious faith. For that which the evolutionists set up as a
god religious people regard as the mere creature of the true God; and
what they set up as religion the others regard utterly lacking in all
the essentials of religion. It would be much better for the
evolutionists to face this whole question boldly, as Mr. Savage does in
part, and to say that the result of their investigations is the belief
that there is no God, and consequently that there need not be, and in
fact cannot be, any religion in the sense in which that word has for
centuries been used. Moreover, we cannot see the grounds of one pretence
which is made by the evolutionists, and which is implied if not in terms
set up in all their writings that are not purely scientific and have
what may be called a moral character, such as the book before us. This
is that their theory accounts for everything, and is more consistent
with reason than that of those who accept with faith the book of
Genesis. The evolution theory is, in the words of Mr. Savage, "that the
whole universe, suns, planets, moons, our earth, and every form of life
upon it, vegetable and animal, up to man, together with all our
civilization, has developed from a primitive fire-mist or nebula that
once filled all the space now occupied by the worlds; and that this
development has been according to laws and methods and forces still
active and working about us to-day." But if it be granted, or even
proved, that this is true, we cannot see how it satisfies the reason
when we come to the question of creation and a creator. For what a
stupendous, unutterably stupendous, and almost inconceivable thing was
that fire-mist that filled all space and had in it not only the germs
and possibilities of suns and moons and planets and our earth, but of
man and _all his civilization_; and those laws and methods and forces
according to which the universe and man and his civilization have been
evolved from a fire-mist--what inconceivable things they are! Now who
made the fire-mist and the law of evolution? We cannot see that reason
is satisfied by the substitution of a fire-mist and a law of evolution
for the will of a creator and a specific creation of the suns and stars
and planets, including the earth, and man, and his possibilities of
civilization. The thing is as broad one way as it is long the other. As
far as the fact of creation goes, in either case the belief must be a
matter of faith, not of reason. With regard to the anthropomorphism of
the Hebrew story, that is shared, and must be shared, by all
religions--that is, all religious which rest upon the notion of a
personal God. The limitations of man's nature, the limitations of
language, make anthropomorphic metaphor necessary when a man speaks of a
god. Even the evolutionists cannot get rid of the necessity of faith.
* * * * *
--Dr. Richardson's papers published in "Nature," and designed to prove
the advantage, and in fact the real necessity of experimenting on
animals in order to be ready to save human life, contain many
interesting facts and deserve to be widely read in view of the current
discussion as to the propriety of permitting the practice of
vivisection. The following case affords conclusive proof of the learned
and humane physiologist's argument. He says: "Dr. Weir Mitchell of
Philadelphia, in the year 1869, made the original and remarkable
observation that if a part of the body of a frog be immersed in simple
syrup, there soon occurs in the crystalline lens of the eyeball an
opaque appearance resembling the disease called cataract. He extended
his observations to the effects of grape sugar, and obtained the same
results. He found that he could induce the cataractic condition
invariably by this experiment, or by injecting a solution of sugar with
a fine needle, subcutaneously, into the dorsal sac of the frog. The
discovery was one of singular importance in the history of medical
science, and explained immediately a number of obscure phenomena. The
co-existence of the two diseases, diabetes and cataract, in man had been
observed by France, Cohen, Hasner, Mackenzie, Duncan, Von Graafe, and
others, and Von Graafe had stated that after examining a large number of
diabetic patients in different hospitals, he had found one-fourth
affected with cataract. Before Mitchell's observation there was not a
suspicion as to the reason of this connection, and a flood of light,
therefore, broke on the subject the moment he proclaimed the new
physiological fact. Still more, Mitchell showed that the cataract he was
able to induce by experiment was curable also by experiment, a truth
which will one day lead to the cure of cataract without operation. Then,
but not till then, the splendid character of this original
investigation, and the debt that is due to one of the most original,
honest, laborious workers that ever in any age cultivated the science
and art of medicine, will be duly recognized." Upon receiving
intelligence of this discovery, Dr. Richardson undertook experiments to
discover the cause of this dependence of cataract upon diabetes. He
found that whenever the specific gravity of the blood was raised to ten
degrees above the normal standard, and remained so for a short time,
cataract followed. He also found that the disease so produced could be
cured by removing the salts which had been introduced into the blood.
This certainly points to a cure for cataract which shall be really
radical, and adds another to the results which justify, even upon
humanitarian grounds, physiological experiments, at the expense of the
animal creation, within prescribed limits.
* * * * *
--Mr. Sorby has lately made some calculations of the probable size of
the invisible atoms which compose material substances. Dr. Royston
Pigott determined that the smallest visual angle which we can well
appreciate is that covering a hole of 11.4 inches diameter at a distance
of 1,100 yards. This corresponds to about six seconds of an arc. In a
microscope magnifying 1,000 diameters this would make visible a particle
one-three-millionth part of an inch thick. But Mr. Sorby is inclined to
think that a size between 1/80,000 and 1/100,000 of an inch is about the
limit of the visibility of minute objects, even with the best
microscopes. Now, taking the mean of the calculations made by Stoney,
Thomson, and Clerk-Maxwell, we have 21,770 as the number of atoms of any
permanent gas required to cover one-thousandth of an inch, when lying
end to end. By a series of calculations which produce numbers entirely
beyond human conception, (10,317,000,000,000 atoms in 1/100,000,000 of a
cubic inch, for instance) he reached the conclusion that there are in
the length of 1/80,000 of an inch (the smallest visible object) about
2,000 molecules of water, or 520 of albumen, and therefore, in order to
see the ultimate constitution of organic bodies, it would be necessary
to use a magnifying power from 500 to 2,000 times greater than those we
now possess. With this result settled, he was able to make one of those
radical predictions which are so rarely possible to the careful
scientist; namely, that the atom will never be seen by man. It is not
that instruments cannot be made powerful enough (though that is no doubt
true), but that the waves of light are too coarse to distinguish the
limits of such an extremely small distance. To see atoms we should need
light waves only one-two-thousandth of their actual length. At present
we are as far from that attainment as we are from reading a newspaper,
with the naked eye, at the distance of one-third of a mile.