doubt as to the number of days by which these differ from each other,
and whether to add or subtract the days. If we remember that when the
new style is adopted anywhere, days are omitted from the calendar,
and the date thereby set forward, we shall see that the old style
dates are always behind those of the new style, and we must add or
subtract as required. The astronomer Clavius, whose work has lent
immortality to the name of Pope Gregory XIII, put the calendar date
ten days forward, to make up for the error which had been accumulating
for centuries. This was in the 16th century. To prevent the calendar
from getting wrong again, he suppressed the intercalary days (Feb. 29)
three times in every 400 years, namely, in 1700, 1800, 1900, but not
in 1600 or 2000, the intercalary days being thus allowed to remain
in every century year whose first two digits are divisible by 4. By
the time England made the change it was necessary to put the date
forward 11 days, as this was in the 18th century, and the year 1700 had
intervened. Those countries which have not yet adopted the change were
12 days behind in the 19th century, and are now 13 days behind. The
correct way to write a date so as to represent it in both styles is,
for instance, July 31 / Aug. 13, 1911; or July 31 / Aug. 12, 1831. The
calendars, unless the old style is given up, will continue to differ by
13 days until March 1st, 2100.
* * * * *
A WRITER on heredity says that if a person has not inherited the music
disposition, he will never become a musician, although he may acquire
a knowledge of music; and that a person not born with the potentiality
of the poetical disposition will never be a poet, although he may gain
a knowledge of prosody. This is a dogmatic statement, but it does not
amount to much after all; for it can be turned around by saying that if
a person does not become a musician or a poet, the inference is that
he has not inherited the faculties. Thus it is mainly a question of
words and phrases.
At all events let the aspirant to the Muses put the matter to a
practical test. Let him strive to become a poet or a musician; and if
he succeeds, he can say: "See, I must have inherited the power." If he
fails, why then he can foist the blame upon heredity.
But surely it would be difficult, in many cases of musical genius, to
trace the effect to heredity. Still harder would it be, reversing the
process, to predict such hereditament. So the above-quoted theory is
only tantamount to an acknowledgment of the facts and the provision of
a plausible formulation of them.
Characteristics come partly from the parental and ancestral soil
wherein the human seed grows; partly from the mental atmosphere of
the race and community; partly from one's education; and partly from
qualities which the Individual himself has brought over from his own
past. All of these concomitants have to be taken into account in
considering the question of heredity. Needless to say, nobody should
permit his efforts and aspirations to be relaxed in consequence of any
dogma or theory which may tend to cast discouragement thereon.
* * * * *
TO BE conscious of one's ignorance is to have taken the first step from
folly towards wisdom; and doubtless the tremendous overhauling that
is now taking place in the stock of our ideas should be taken as a
hopeful sign rather than an omen of woe. Hence the fact that chaos, as
it seems, reigns in our ideas about the science of agriculture may be
regarded as the sign that something is about to hatch out.
According to quotations made by _The Literary Digest_, a university
professor of agricultural science takes to task the Bureau of Soils
of the United States Department of Agriculture. These opponents take
diametrically opposite views with regard to the care of the soil. The
Bureau is credited, on the strength of quotations from its circulars,
with maintaining that the soil contains an inexhaustible fund of plant
food which is continually replaced by natural processes. Its opponents
declare that this teaching is wrong and disastrous. The professor in
question claims to have taken the opinions of most of the land-grant
experiment stations, and maintains that the opinions of the Bureau are
derided by these and by most other authorities in this country and in
Europe. The soil needs to be taken care of, or else it will become
barren. History is quoted in support.
This controversy indicates that our theories are in a state of chaos.
The more we learn about agriculture, the more there is to learn; for
each new discovery opens up a new field. Plants need mineral food;
they need nitrogen; they need bacteria to help them get the nitrogen.
The chemist, the physicist, and the biologist all have a say in
agriculture. Some of the great nations of the past seem to have known a
good deal about agriculture; and probably there is a good deal of their
knowledge that has not yet been transmitted or revived.
* * * * *
THE statement that the emu is almost extinct is misleading, says an
Australian correspondent to a scientific paper. The birds exist in
large numbers in north and northwest New South Wales and practically
all over Queensland, and South and Western Australia. And he adds
that he does not think they will become extinct yet, "because they
are practically valueless." Can this be an instance of the survival
of the fittest? The naïve assumption that man destroys that which he
values can but lead to the scientific inference that the world will
become stocked with things which man does not value. Hence, whatever
may be supposed to be the case in nature, the influence of man is to
promote the survival of the unfit. True, this works out all right for
nature, but man becomes reduced to a mere destructive agency whose
influence nature eliminates. Eventually, on this theory, man will
find himself the denizen of a world stocked with things which are to
him "practically valueless"; and then, presumably, he will leave off
destroying, for want of anything to destroy.
Still it must not be forgotten that man, even in such a destructive
civilization as the present, is a creator. He is potent on the
invisible planes where thoughts are things; and according to hints
given in the ancient teachings, mankind is concerned in the processes
by which the animated forms of nature are evolved.
* * * * *
WITH regard to instinct in animals, people are sometimes prone to
take too extreme views. Experience teaches us that instinct which is
so reliable in beaten tracks of habit proves a failure in unfamiliar
circumstances. A bird in a room cannot find the way out, even when door
and windows are open, but flies back and forth just above the level
of the openings. But even here we must be cautious; for animals can
adapt themselves to new circumstances. The timid wild-bird learns to
feed from the hand. In this respect we notice degrees among different
animals, some having more plastic minds than others; this marks
different upward stages in the perfection of the animal monad.
Because instinct, the accumulation of age-long experience, is so
infallible in ordinary cases, we must not assume that it cannot err.
On the contrary we often meet with cases of dunderhead stupidity and
of a blind addiction to custom that savors almost of automatism. Thus
a correspondent of an English paper writes about a blackbird which had
been brought up as a nestling in the house. When grown up and given her
liberty, she insisted on coming back to build, and made her nest in a
bookshelf. But the family was a failure, because the hen had no mate
and nature failed to depart from her rule; there were no young; fertile
eggs had to be procured for her to hatch.
Another story in the same paper tells of a mare which lost her foal and
was given a calf dressed in the skin of the departed. The giving of
stuffed calves to cows, while being milked, is a familiar practice. In
animals we see minds in course of development, capable of considerable
growth, but within limits. The self-conscious ego, characteristic of
man, is not there. We must bear in mind that the animal is an animal
soul (or monad) within a form; that it is the monad which undergoes the
evolution; and that though an animal does not become a man, that which
ensouls the animal will in some future cycle of evolution enter into
the making of man. It is by the gift of the self-conscious Mind, which
links the Spiritual to the terrestrial, that the animal consciousness
was made to subserve the purposes of the human kingdom.
* * * * *
WHILE the acknowledged scientific method of inquiry consists in logical
inferences from observations, it is well known that a very limited
amount of observation is frequently made to support an unlimited amount
of inference. The "scientific use of the imagination" (Tyndall) is
highly recommended, but may o'erleap itself and "give to airy nothings
a local habitation and a name," unless checked by some sedater quality.
We see that a biologist has gone back in imaginative speculation beyond
"protoplasm" as the origin of life; for, just as the physicists have
subdivided their atom into electrons, so this theorist has subdivided
his protoplasm into something still more elementary and primordial,
which he calls "mycoplasm." The first part of the word means "fungus,"
so now we can speak of our ancestor as the primordial fungus; and
indeed fungoid traits do seem to survive in some people. Science, we
are told, knows a whole world of minute corpuscles which do not need
oxygen for their existence and cannot be killed by boiling water. They
do not make the amoeboid movements characteristic of protoplasm and
are immune to the strongest poisons. This kind of creature, therefore,
could exist on earth long before protoplasm could, as it is so very
hardy; and from it, as soon as the crust had cooled and oxygen been
formed, the protoplasm sprang. Such is the theory, but it may be wrong.
What we want to know, however, is what the mycoplasms sprang from;
because either they must have sprung from something else, or else they
are the great "I Am," eternal and uncreate.
It is a curious method, this, which traces the great back to the small,
thus making the small greater than the great. The man in a silk hat
proceeded from the man without a silk hat, and he from the ape, and
the ape from the duck-billed platypus, and so on back to Haeckel's
"moneron," and back again to this primordial mushroom.
So we may trace the scale of numbers back to prime factors and to
unity; but between the unit and the zero, infinitude stretches. Is not
unity, though in one sense the smallest of numbers, in all other senses
the greatest? From whatever source we derive life, that source must be
greater than life itself. So let us set up an image of the Mycoplasm
and worship it. Jehovah himself could not have done more than it has
done.
Is it not clear that material evolution is but one aspect, and that
a small one, of the process? Growth and evolution mean nothing if
not a coming into visibility from invisibility, into actuality from
potentiality. A seed grows; and, seen from the material point of
view, it seems to grow from nothing. But all the time the material
plant is unfolding, something unseen is expanding into it. Evolution
is a twofold process. A mycoplasm would lie forever wrapped in its
complacent hardihood in the primordial fiery atmosphere, unless some
Impulse gave it the word to unfold and turn itself into protoplasm.
The view of the world as a great machine without any motive power, and
running by the power of its own motion, may be interesting, but it is
not convincing.
If ever our globe were in such a primitive condition as that imagined,
it is equally certain that the life-impulse which it received came
from somewhere; and all analogy would lead us to surmise that that
life-impulse came from another globe. But obviously the matter is too
vast for little theories. The important point is that some theorists,
in spite of good intentions, appear to have got things wrong way up.
[Illustration: Lomaland Photo. and Engraving Dept. THE SURF AT
CORONADO, SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA THIS VIEW SHOWS THE SOUTHERN END OF
POINT LOMA Photograph by Slocum, San Diego]
[Illustration: Lomaland Photo. and Engraving Dept. THE MAMMOTH CAVE, LA
JOLLA, SAN DIEGO]
[Illustration: Lomaland Photo. and Engraving Dept. SERAEJEVO, CAPITAL
OF BOSNIA The minarets of the city's mosques are especially elegant]
[Illustration: Lomaland Photo. and Engraving Dept. KLAMATH RECLAMATION
PROJECT, OREGON-CALIFORNIA PART OF TULE LAKE, OREGON, LOOKING TOWARD
BLOODY POINT
Nature frequently puts too much water in some places, and too little
in others, to suit the purposes of man. Draining a piece of wet land
is just the opposite of irrigating a piece of dry land. Both processes
are called reclamation. This picture shows Tule Lake, in Oregon, which
required to be drained that its fertile bed might be turned into
farms.]
CONFLICT OF THE AGES: by S. F.
The bugle calls! while far and near
The gathering hosts are marching by;
Their clanging arms, their tread I hear,
The sounds which tell the strife is nigh.
To arms! to arms! each loyal heart
Responsive trembles at the call!
Each valorous soul will do his part
To win the victory for all.
'Tis not for selfish worldly gain,
For cross or crescent, king or crown,
They marshal on the battle plain
To strike the bold usurper down.
It is no mortal foe they seek--
No Brother's blood they wish to spill,
Nor strong that triumph o'er the weak--
Their good to gain through other's ill.
Ah no! the world has never yet
Been called to arm for such a fray,
Nor e'er such countless hosts have met
As those that bear the sword today.
'Tis hidden Forces they oppose--
A subtle Power that rules the earth--
While Nature shudders in her throes
To bring the Savior, Truth, to birth.
And 'tis not only men's weak hands
Which bear aloft the spear and lance--
Lo! o'er the plains the Master's bands
With swift and noiseless feet advance.
The Helpers of mankind are They--
Great Elder Brothers of the Race!
At dawning of the grand New Day
Each Warrior stands within his place.
The Order of the Ages New
Has come at last in dawning Light--
Its soldiers neither weak nor few--
And they are armed with God's own might.
In vain the hosts of Darkness rise
And shriek aloud their battle cry!
The dawn of Truth lights all the skies
And crime and wrong and fraud shall die.
WOMEN WHO HAVE INFLUENCED THE WORLD:
by the Rev. S. J. Neill
As gravitation existed before Newton made his discovery, so, also, has
the influence of woman exerted a powerful sway among many nations long
before the modern movement towards woman's emancipation.
That the modern movement is a powerful one cannot be denied by anyone
who knows what is going on in the world. The wise study the action of
the winds and waves and use them for beneficent purposes. We smile
at the picture of the English ruler ordering back the tide; and at
the Persian ruler who commanded the waters of the Bosphorus to be
castigated. The woman's emancipation of the present day calls for
careful study and wise direction on the part of all lovers of human
welfare. Everything which gives a clearer understanding of woman in her
own nature, and in her relation to man must be of service. What women
have done in the past may throw some light on what woman may achieve in
the future. As "lives of great men all remind us, we can make our lives
sublime," even so the lives of great and noble women are a beacon light
and a prophecy.
Though a truism, it must never be forgotten that woman's nature and
her function in the world differ from man's. Many mistakes have been
made, and are still made, through forgetting that woman and man are
two aspects of the One Life in manifestation; therefore they are not
opposed to each other, but are complementary of each other--"like
perfect music unto noble words." Milton has tried to express this in
the well-known lines:
For contemplation he and valor formed;
For softness she, and sweet attractive grace.
Harmony in nature consists in each part of the whole working according
to its proper use or function. While this general law may seem to
preclude the possibility of women being in their proper sphere and yet
acting as great generals, great statesmen, or great rulers, we find
that women have again and again become illustrious in these respects.
In doing so it is possible that the woman parts with some of that
"softness and sweet attractive grace," of which Milton speaks. It is
possible that she may "lose the childlike in the larger mind," which
Tennyson says the perfect woman should not lose; yet she remains a
woman essentially while doing work supposed to be appropriate to man.
Joan of Arc retained her girlish heart to the last, and after she had
led the armies of France to victory, wished for nothing better than to
return to her native village and live in peace. Even Queen Elizabeth
of England, generally regarded as one of the most masculine of her
sex, retained to the end some of those qualities which distinctly
belong to woman. Queen Isabella of Spain, though weighted down with
domestic sorrows and engrossed with cares of state, was moved with deep
compassion for the condition of the Indians, and in her last moments
exacted from her husband a promise for their protection. A biographer
says that she was possessed of all the "personal grace, gentleness, and
feminine accomplishments of Mary Stuart, without her weakness." Great
queen as she was, the name bestowed on her by her people, and ratified
by history, was: "Isabella of peace and good will."
From the dawn of history we find great women in many countries of the
world. Passing by Biblical women, as too well known to need mention, we
find in Egypt, according to Meyer in his _Oldest Books of the World_,
that "the position of woman both in religion and government was very
elevated." He says:
Woman appears to have met with more consideration among the old
Egyptians than with any other people of Oriental antiquity. It is to
the glory of ancient Egyptian wisdom, that it has been the first to
express the dignity and high position of the wife and woman.
Near the Great Pyramid a tomb has been opened which gives us a
few facts concerning the first Queen of Egypt of whom we have any
knowledge. Her name was Mer-ti-tef-s, which means "the beloved of her
father." She was also described as "the wife of the king whom she
loved." Another great ruler of Egypt, about 1516 B. C., was Hatshepsut.
Dr. Wallis Budge of the British Museum tells us that this queen
dressed herself as a man. Some of the other great queens of Egypt
are: Nitocris; Aah-hotep; Mutemva, mother of Amen-hotep III; Ti, wife
of Amen-hotep, whose tomb was found not long ago, and whose remains
were found wrapped in sheets of gold, with the exquisitely worked
crown of gold at her head. These two with Nefert-i-tain, are said to
have "worked harmoniously together for the establishment of ancient
truth in Egypt." Besides these we have Batria, wife of Rameses III;
the well-known Cleopatra; and last but not least, Dido of Carthage,
whom, had Aeneas married, the whole course of history would have been
different.
Crossing over to Greece, we may mention Sappho, the sweet singer, who
has suffered much misrepresentation, and of whom Professor Palgrave
says:
There is no need for me to panegyrise the poetess whom the whole world
has been long since contented to hold without a parallel.
There is also Aspasia, the wife of Pericles. From Greek statuary we see
how noble woman must have been in Greece.
In Italy we have Cornelia, who has been called "the ideal mother," and
Volumnia, mother of Coriolanus; and Portia, wife of Brutus; nor must we
forget Beatrice, the heroine of _The Divina Commedia_.
In Japan, in China, and in India, we find many names of great women
whose influence has endured through the ages. The Taj Mahal is
sufficient to remind us of what a woman has been in the Moslem world.
J. S. Mill says that
if a Hindû principality is strong, vigilantly and energetically
governed; if order is preserved without oppression, in three cases out
of four that principality is under the regency of a woman.
Coming to Western lands we find the valiant British queen Boadicea.
In ancient Germany there was Queen Radigünde, who founded a school
for women. In Sweden Birgitta was famous as a patron of learning; her
schools numbered eighty, and there still exist six schools of her order
on the Continent and one in England, the only one that can boast of an
unbroken existence from pre-Reformation times. Ireland too had a Saint
Brigit, some of whose wonderful works were evidently transferred to her
from the Celtic goddess Ceridwen.
Who has not seen the beautiful picture of Queen Louise of Prussia, of
whom such a great historian as Mommsen speaks so enthusiastically? She
is said to have been by no means a genius, nor in any way abnormal,
but she was so beautiful, so winning, so optimistic, and combined such
dignity and charm, such cheerfulness, faith and fortitude, that she
gained Silesia for her husband from Napoleon. Then we have such great
women as Madam Guyon, the mystic; Caroline Herschel; Frances Power
Cobbe; Florence Nightingale; Queen Olga of Greece; Queen Victoria;
Madame Curie, and many others whom time does not permit to mention.
There is no need here to speak of H. P. Blavatsky and Katherine
Tingley, the heralds of a new age, except to say that the world in that
new age will render them that justice which is so tardily given now.
While the greatness to which women have attained proves to us what
woman is capable of doing, yet, in a sense, it may be a little
depressing, for all cannot be queens or rulers. But true greatness
consists in doing well what has to be done. Besides, who can say what
is great and what is small in the Divine Economy? "The hand that rocks
the cradle rules the world," is an old saying. And for the great
majority of women the making of the home to be a _real home_ is the
highest service that can be done to help the world; for the home is the
foundation of the nation. And as Ruskin says:
Wherever a true wife comes, this home is always round her. The stars
only may be over her head, the glow-worm in the night-cold grass may
be the only fire at her foot, but home is yet wherever she is; and for
a noble woman it stretches far around her, better than ceiled with
cedar or painted with vermilion, shedding its quiet light far, for
those who else were homeless.
THE TURKISH WOMAN: by Grace Knoche
The Sultan of Turkey recently received a deputation of representative
Ottoman women and in the course of his conference with them pledged
them his support in their efforts to bring about a reform of certain
conditions. Press dispatches state that the members of this deputation
were heavily veiled.
The veil has always been, to the European mind, the point of departure
for Turkish feministic reform, and the wearing of it by those who
stand for such reform, when many Turkish women have discarded the
impenetrable _yashmak_ entirely and a still larger number wear only
veils of gauze, seems an anomaly. To realize that it is not, one must
get below current misunderstandings and baseless reports and know
the high-caste Turkish woman as she really is--for with her Turkish
feministic reform begins and by her it is being safeguarded.
Many who are familiar with the diplomatic and social life of our
European capitals have stated that the high-caste Turkish woman of
today is _as a class_ more highly educated, and also more feminine,
in the tenderest and most refined meaning of the term, than any other
woman in the world. She not only knows the history, geography, and
literature of her own and foreign nations, but in addition knows two,
three, and often four languages besides her own--always French and
German, usually English, and often Italian or Russian--languages which
she does not speak haltingly but with fluency and perfection, for in
the wealthier Turkish families of today French, German, and English
governesses are a recognized institution. She is very beautiful, always
refined, unobtrusively thoughtful of others, and supremely loyal to her
ideals of character and duty--and her ideals always center about the
home.
Yet her life is virtually an imprisoned one, bounded as it is, day and
night, year in and year out, by the four walls of the women's apartment
or _harem_. She cannot go out unattended in the daytime, nor in the
evening at all; she may not attend theaters nor even a concert; she may
not attend social or other gatherings where men are present.
This state of things was not so unendurable to the women of the
preceding generation, for they had not been permitted to embrace
European ideas through an education on European lines, but to the
high-caste woman of today, who has been given a glimpse into a larger
world than her own, and a world very wonderful and alluring, the old
_harem_ existence is almost intolerable. Yet she must continue in it
for a time, and here is the wonderful thing--she does this, in the
deeper sense, willingly.