influenced indeed by practical motives. For instance, the great
religious interest taken in the Bible—not by scientists, but by the
general public—has sent out special expeditions and done much to advance
the study of cuneiform inscriptions. The Assyrian collections of the
University of Pennsylvania are accounted, in many respects, the most
complete in existence. Its curator, Hilprecht, is well known, and Lyon,
Haupt, and others almost as well. Whitney, of Yale, was undoubtedly the
leader in Sanskrit. Lanman, of Harvard, is his most famous successor,
and besides him are Jackson, Buck, Bloomfield, and others. Toy is the
great authority on Semitic languages.
It would lead us too far away if we were to follow philological science
into modern languages. As a matter of course, the English language and
literature are the most studied; in fact, English philology has had its
real home in the New World since the days of Child. Francis James Child,
one of the most winning personalities in the history of American
scholarship, has contributed much on Chaucer and ancient English dramas;
and as his great work, has gathered together English and Scottish
ballads into a collection of ten volumes. This work has often been
esteemed as America’s greatest contribution to philology. Kittredge, who
has succeeded Child at Harvard, works on much the same lines. Lounsbury
is known especially for his brilliant works on Chaucer; Manley has also
studied Chaucer and the pre-Shakesperian drama; Gummere the early
ballads, while Wendell and Furness are the great Shakesperian scholars.
The Arthurian legends have been especially studied by Schofield, Mead,
Bruce, and others; the Anglo-Saxon language by Bright, Cook, Brown, and
Callaway. Lowell was the first great critic of literature, and he has
been followed by Gates and many others. The belles-lettres themselves
have given rise to a large historical and critical literature, such as
the admirable general works of Steadman, Richardson, and Tyler, and the
monographs by Woodberry, Cabot, Norton, Warner, and Higginson. The very
best work, however, on American literature, in spite of all aspersions
cast on the extreme aristocrat, is Barrett Wendell’s “Literary History
of America.” We might mention a long list of works on Romance and
Germanic languages and literature. At least emphasis must be laid on
one, Kuno Francke’s extraordinary book on “Social Influences in German
Literature,” the work of the most gifted herald of German culture in
America. We may also mention the works of Thomas and Hempl in Germanic,
and Todd, Elliot, and Cohn in romance languages.
Political economy is the favourite study of the American, since the
history of this country has been determined by economic factors more
directly than that of any other nation, and since all the different
economic periods have been lived through in the still surveyable past.
In a sense, the country looks like a tremendous experimental laboratory
of political economy. The country is so unevenly developed that the most
diverse economic stages are to be found in regions which are
geographically near each other, and everything goes on, as it were,
under the scientific magnifying glass of the statistical student.
Remarkably enough, the actual history of economics has been rather
neglected in American studies, in spite of many beginnings made in
Germany on the history of American economics. The chief attention of the
nation has been given rather to the systematic analysis and deductive
investigation of special conditions. In political economy there are, of
course, first the well-known agitators like Henry Carey, the great
protectionist of the first half of the century; Henry George, the
single-tax theorist, whose book, “Progress and Poverty,” found in 1879
extraordinary circulation; and Bellamy, whose “Utopia” was in much the
same style: and the political tracts on economic subjects are far too
numerous to think of mentioning. The really scientific works form
another group. At first we find the pioneer efforts of the seventies and
eighties—Wells’s work on tariff and commerce, Charles Francis Adams’s
work on railways, Sumner’s on the history of American finance,
Atkinson’s on production and distribution, Wright’s on wages, Knox’s on
banking, and the general treatises of Walker, who conducted the censuses
of 1870 and 1880. In recent times the chief works are those of Hadley on
railroads, of Clark on capital, of James on political finance and
municipal administration, of Ely on taxation, of Taussig on tariff,
silver and wages, of Jenks on trusts, of Brooks on labour movements, of
Seligman on the politics of taxation, of H. C. Adams on scientific
finance, of Gross on the history of English economics, of Patten on
economic theory, and of Lowell on the science of government. Moreover,
the political economists and students of government have an unusually
large number of journals at their disposal. In sociology there are
Giddings, Small, and Ward, known everywhere, and after them Willcox,
Ripley, and others.
We have spent too much time over the historical disciplines. Let us look
at the opposite pole of the scientific globe from the mental sciences to
the natural sciences, and at first to mathematics. Mathematicians were
especially late in waking up to really scientific achievements; and this
was scarcely ten years ago, so that all the productive mathematicians
are the younger professors. Of the older period, there are but three
mathematicians of great importance—Benjamin Peirce, perhaps the most
brilliant of American mathematicians, and his pupils, Hill and Newcomb.
Their chief interest has been mathematical astronomy. Of their
generation are also Willard Gibbs in mathematical physics, McClintock in
algebra, and Charles Peirce in mathematical logic. In the last ten
years, it is no longer a question of a few great names. The younger
generation has taken its inspiration from Germany and France, and is
busily at work in pure mathematics; there are Moore and Dixon, of
Chicago; Storey and Taber, of Clark; Böcher and Osgood, of Harvard;
White at Evanston; Van Vleck at Wesleyan, and many others.
We find again, in the natural sciences, that the American by no means
favours only practical studies. There is no less practical a science
than astronomy, and yet we find a series of great successes. This is
externally noticeable in a general interest in astronomy; no other
country in the world has so many well-equipped observatories as the
United States, and no other country manufactures such perfect
astronomical lenses. America has perfected the technique of astronomy.
Roland, for instance, has improved the astronomical spectroscope, and
Pickering has made brilliant contributions to photometry. The catalogue
of stars by Gould and Langley is an indispensable work, and America has
contributed its full share to the observation of asteroids and comets.
Newcomb, however, who is the leader since forty years, has done the most
brilliant work, in his thorough computations of stellar paths and
masses. We should also not forget Chandler’s determination of
magnitudes, Young’s work on the sun, Newton’s on meteorites, and
Barnard’s on comets.
Surprisingly enough, the development of scientific physics has been less
brilliant so far. Only in optics has really anything of high importance
been done; but in this field there have been such accomplishments as
Michelson’s measurements of lightwaves, Rowland’s studies of concave
gratings, Newcomb’s measurements on the speed of light, and Langley’s
studies of the ultra-red rays. In all other fields the work is somewhat
disconnected; although, to be sure, in the branches of electricity,
acoustics, and heat, important discoveries have been made by Trowbridge,
Woodward, Barus, Wood, Cross, Nichols, Hall, B. O. Pierce, Sabine, and
many others. In purely technical subjects, especially those related to
electricity, much has been done of serious scientific importance; and
these triumphs in technical branches are, of course, famous throughout
the world. From the hand tool of the workman to locomotives and bridges,
American mechanics have been victorious. Applied physics has yielded the
modern bicycle, the sewing-machine, the printing-press, tool-making
machinery, and a thousand other substitutes for muscular labour; has
also perfected the telegraph, the incandescent lamp, the telephone and
the phonograph, and every day brings some new laurel to the American
inventor. But it is not to be supposed that Edison, Tesla, and Bell are
the sole representatives of American physics. Quiet scientific work of
the highest order is carried on in a dozen laboratories. Meteorology
ought to be mentioned as a branch of physics; it has been favoured by
the large field of observation which America offers and has developed
brilliantly under Ferrel, Hazen, Greely, Harrington, Mendenhall, Rotch,
and others.
It is still more true of chemistry than of physics that advance has been
independent of the industrial application of science. The leading
chemists have all worked in the interests of pure science; and this work
started at the beginning of the last century, when Benjamin Silliman, of
Yale, the editor of the first magazine for natural science, laid the
foundations for his scientific school. He was followed in succeeding
generations by Hare, Smith, Hunt, and most notably Cooke, whose studies
on the periodic law and the atomic weight of oxygen are specially
valuable. Of later men there are Willard Gibbs, the Nestor of chemical
thermo-dynamics, who became famous by his theory of the phase rule, and
Wolcott Gibbs through his studies on complex acids. Crafts is known for
his researches into organic compounds, and Mallet by classical
investigations into the atomic weight of aluminum. Other valuable
contributions have been Hillebrand’s analysis of minerals, Stieglitz’s
organic syntheses, Noyes’s studies on ions, the work of Clark and
Richards on atomic weights, Gooch’s technical discoveries, Hill’s
synthetic production of benzol compounds, Warren’s work with mineral
oils, Baskerville’s study of thorium, not to mention the highly prized
text-books of Ira Remsen, the discoverer of saccharin. Among the
physiological and agricultural chemists, the best known are Chittenden,
Pfaff, Atwater, and Hilgard. The pioneer of physical chemistry is
Richards, of Harvard, probably the only American professor so far who
has been called to the position of a full professor at a German
university. He remained in America, although invited to Göttingen.
Bancroft and Noyes are at work on the same branch of chemistry.
The work in chemistry is allied in many ways to mineralogy, petrography,
and geology. Oddly enough, mineralogy has centred distinctly at one
place—Yale University. The elder Dana used to work there, whose “System
of Mineralogy” first appeared in 1837, and while frequently revised has
remained for half a century the standard book in any language; Dana’s
chemical classification of minerals has also found general acceptance.
His son, the crystallographer, worked here, as also Brush and Penfield,
who has investigated more kinds of stone than any other living man.
Beside these well-known leaders, there are such men as Lawrence Smith,
Cooke, Gerth, Shepard, and Wolff. The advances in geology have been
still more brilliant, since nature made America an incomparable field of
study. Hall had already made an early beginning here, and Dana and
Whitney, Hayden and King, Powell and Gilbert, Davis, Shaler, and Branner
have continued the work. Remains of the Glacial Epoch and mountain
formation have been the favourite topics. And the investigation which
has frequently been connected with practical mining interests is among
the most important, and in Europe the most highly regarded of American
scientific achievements.
Closely related to the geological are the geographical studies. The
Government Bureau of Survey figures prominently here, by reason of its
magnificent equipment. Most famous are the coast surveys of Pache and
Mendenhall, and the land surveys of Rogers, Whitney, and Gannet. The
hydrographic investigations of Maury have perhaps had more influence on
geography, and his physical geography of the ocean has opened up new
lines of inquiry; Guyot has done most to spread the interests of
geography. Americans have always been greatly interested in expeditions
to dangerous lands, wherefore many Americans have been pioneers,
missionaries, and scientific travellers. In this spirit Lewis and Clark
explored the Northwest, Wilkes crossed the Pacific Ocean, Perry went to
Japan, and Stanley to Africa; others have travelled to South America,
and many expeditions have been started for the North Pole since the
first expedition of Kane in 1853. Palæontology has been well represented
in America, and has contributed a good deal to the advance in geology.
Hall commenced the work with studies on invertebrate fossils; then came
Hyatt, who studied fossil cephalopods, Scudder fossil insects, Beecher
brachiopods; and then Leidy, Cope, Osborne, and above all, the great
scientist, Marsh—all of whom have studied fossil vertebrates.
Almost every one of these men was at the same time a systematic
zoölogist. Especially in former days, many young men devoted themselves
to systematic zoölogy under the leadership of Audubon, whose pioneer
work on “The Birds of America” appeared in 1827; then later of Say, the
first investigator of butterflies and mussels; and still later of Louis
Agassiz, the great student of jelly-fish, hydroids and polyps, whose
son, Alexander Agassiz, has carried on the famous studies of coral
islands. Besides these men have laboured LeConte, Gill, Packard, and
Verrill in the province of invertebrates; Baird, Ridgeway, Huntington,
Allen, Meriam, and Jordan in the field of vertebrates. At the present
time interest in America as well as in Europe is turning toward
histology and embryology. Here, too, the two Agassizes have taken the
lead, the senior Agassiz with his studies on turtles, the younger
Agassiz in studies on starfishes. Next to theirs come the admirable
works of Wyman, Whitman, Brooks, Minot, Mark, and Wilson, and the
investigations of Davenport on the subject of variation. The phenomenon
of life has been studied now by zoölogists and again by biologists and
physiologists. Here belong the researches into the conscious life of
lower animals carried on by Lee and Parker, and the excellent
investigations of the German-American Jacques Loeb, of California, who
has placed the tropisms of animals and the processes of fertilization in
a wholly new light. Of his colleagues in physiology, the best known are
Bowditch, Howell, Porter, and Meltzer.
The highest organism which the natural scientist can study is man, taken
not historically, but anthropologically. The American has been forced to
turn to anthropology and to ethnology, since circumstances have put at
his hand some hundred types of Indians, with the most diverse languages
and customs, and since, moreover, peoples have streamed from every part
of the world to this country; millions of African negroes are here, the
ground is covered with the remains of former Indian life, and the
strange civilizations of Central America have left their remains near
by. The Ethnological Bureau at Washington and the Peabody Museum at
Harvard have instituted many expeditions and investigations. In recent
times the works of Morgan, Hale, Brinton, Powell, Dall, Putnam, McGee,
and Boas have opened new perspectives, especially on the subject of the
American Indian.
The American flora has contributed no less new material to science than
the American fauna. European botanists had commenced the work with tours
of observation, when in the middle of the last century Asa Gray began
his admirable life-work. He was in the closest sympathy with European
botanists, and published in all more than four hundred papers on the
classification and systematic study of the profuse material. Gray died
in 1888, undoubtedly the greatest botanist that America has produced.
His labours have been supplemented by his teacher, Torrey; by Chapman,
who worked up the southeastern part of the country; by scientific
travellers, such as Wright and Watson; by Engelmann, who studied cacti;
Bebb, who studied the fields; by Coulter, the expert on the plants of
the Rocky Mountains; by Bailey and many others. This great work is more
or less pervaded by the ideas of Gray; but in the last twenty years it
has branched off in several directions under a number of leaders. Farlow
has reached out into cryptogamic botany, Goodale into plant physiology,
and Sargent into dendrology. There has been, moreover, considerable
specialization and subdivision of labour in the botanical gardens of New
York, Boston, and St. Louis, and the herbaria and botanical institutes
of various universities and of the agricultural experiment stations.
These institutions put forth publications under the editorship of such
able botanists as Robinson, Trelease, Fernald, Smith, and True; and
these works are not excelled by those of any other country.
We have had, perhaps, too much of mere names; and yet these have been
only examples, calculated to show the strength and the weakness of the
scientific development of America. We have sought specially to keep
within the limits of the “philosophical faculties.” It would be
interesting to go into the subjects of theology, law and medicine, and
of technology in a similar way; but it would lead too far. Yet whether
the unprejudiced observer considers such disciplines as we have
described, or whether he looks out into neighbouring academic fields, he
will find the same flourishing condition of things—a bold, healthy, and
intelligent progress, with a complete understanding of the true aim of
science, with tireless industry, able organization, and optimistic
energy.
Of course, the actual achievements are very uneven; they are, in some
directions, superior to those of England and France—in a few directions
even to those of Germany, but in others far inferior to German
attainments. We have seen that the conditions a short time ago were
unfortunate for science, and that only recently have they given way to
more favourable factors. Most people see such favourable factors first
of all in the financial support offered to the investigator; but the
chief aid for such work does not lie in the providing of appliances.
Endowments can do no more than supply books, apparatus, laboratories,
and collections for those who wish to study, but all that never makes a
great scientist; the average level of study may be improved by material
support, but it will never be brought above a certain level of
mediocrity. For, after all, science depends chiefly on the personal
factor; and good men can do everything, even on narrow means.
The more important factor in the opulence which science now enjoys is an
indirect one; it improves the social status of scientific workers, so
that better human material is now attracted to the scientific career. As
long as scientific life meant poverty and dependence, the only people
attracted to it were men of the schoolteaching stamp; the better men
have craved something fuller and greater, and have wished to expend
their strength in the more thoroughly living province of industrial and
commercial life, where alone the great social premiums were to be found.
But now the case is different. Science has been recognized by the
nation; scientific and university life has become rich in significance,
the professor is no longer a school-teacher, and the right kind of young
scholar is stepping into the arena. Another factor is working in the
same direction. Substantial families are coming to the third generation,
when they go over from trade to art and science. The sons of the best
people with great vitality and great personality prefer now to work in
the laboratory rather than in the bank. Each one brings Yankee
intelligence and Yankee energy with him. This social reappraisement of
science, and its effect on the quality of men who become productive
scholars, are the best indication of the coming greatness of American
science.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
_Literature_
What does the American read? In “Jörn Uhl,” the apprentice in the
Hamburg bookshop says to his friend: “If I am to tell you how to be wise
and cunning, then go where there are no books. Do you know, if I had not
had my father, I should have gone to America—for a fact! And it would
have gone hard with anybody who poked a book at me.” In that way many a
man in Europe, who is long past his apprenticeship, still pictures to
himself America: Over in America nobody bothers about books. And he
would not credit the statement that nowhere else are so many books read
as in America. The American’s fondness for reading finds clearest
expression in the growth of libraries, and in few matters of
civilization is America so well fitted to teach the Old World a lesson.
Europe has many large and ancient collections of books, and Germany more
than all the rest; but they serve only one single purpose—that of
scientific investigation; they are the laboratories of research. They
are chiefly lodged with the great universities, and even the large
municipal libraries are mostly used by those who need material for
productive labours, or wish to become conversant with special topics.
Exactly the same type of large library has grown up in America; and
here, too, it is chiefly the universities whose stock of books is at the
service of the scientific world. Besides these, there are special
libraries belonging to learned societies, state law libraries, special
libraries of government bureaus and of museums, and largest of all the
Library of Congress. The collection of such scientific books began at
the earliest colonial period, and at first under theological auspices.
The Calvinist Church, more than any other, inclined to the study of
books. As early as 1790 the catalogue of Harvard College contained 350
pages, of which 150 were taken up by theological works. Harvard has
to-day almost a million books, mostly in the department of literature,
philology, history, philosophy, and jurisprudence. There are, moreover,
in Boston the state library of law, with over a hundred thousand
volumes; the Athenæum, with more than two hundred thousand books; the
large scientific library of the Institute of Technology, and many
others. Similarly, in other large cities, the university libraries are
the nucleus for scientific labours, and are surrounded by admirable
special libraries, particularly in New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia.
Then, too, the small academic towns, like Princeton, Ithaca, New Haven,
and others, have valuable collections of books, which in special
subjects are often unique. For many years the American university
libraries have been the chief purchasers of the special collections left
by deceased European professors. And it often happens, especially
through the gift of grateful alumni, that collections of the greatest
scientific value, which could not be duplicated, come into the
possession even of lesser institutions.