Established by Edward L. Youmans
APPLETONS'
POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY
EDITED BY
WILLIAM JAY YOUMANS
VOL. LIV
NOVEMBER, 1898, TO APRIL, 1899
NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1899
COPYRIGHT, 1899,
BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.
VOL. LIV. ESTABLISHED BY EDWARD L. YOUMANS. No. 3.
APPLETONS' POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
JANUARY, 1899.
_EDITED BY WILLIAM JAY YOUMANS._
CONTENTS.
PAGE
I. The Evolution of Colonies. VI. Industrial Evolution. By
JAMES COLLIER 289
II. The Mind's Eye. By Prof. JOSEPH JASTROW. (Illustrated.) 299
III. Nature Study in the Philadelphia Normal School. By L. L. W.
WILSON, Ph. D. 313
IV. Principles of Taxation. XX. The Diffusion of Taxes. By the
Late Hon. DAVID A. WELLS 319
V. Our Florida Alligator. By I. W. BLAKE. (Illustrated.) 330
VI. The Racial Geography of Europe. The Jews. II. By Prof.
WILLIAM Z. RIPLEY. (Illustrated.) 338
VII. True Tales of Birds and Beasts. By DAVID STARR JORDAN 352
VIII. Glacial Geology in America. By Prof. DANIEL S. MARTIN 356
IX. Modern Studies of Earthquakes. By GEORG GERALAND 362
X. A Short History of Scientific Instruction. By Sir J. N.
LOCKYER 372
XI. Should Children under Ten learn to Read and Write? By Prof.
G. T. W. PATRICK 382
XII. Soils and Fertilizers. By CHARLES MINOR BLACKFORD, Jr.,
M. D. 392
XIII. Sketch of Friedrich August Kekulé. (With Portrait.) 401
XIV. Editor's Table: A Voice from the Pulpit.--Lessons of
Anthropology.--An Example of Social Decadence.--The
Advance of Science 409
XV. Scientific Literature 415
XVI. Fragments of Science 425
NEW YORK:
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,
72 FIFTH AVENUE.
SINGLE NUMBER, 50 CENTS. YEARLY SUBSCRIPTION, $5.00.
COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.
Entered at the Post Office at New York, and admitted for
transmission through the mails at second-class rates.
[Illustration: AUGUST VON KEKULÉ.]
APPLETONS' POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
JANUARY, 1899.
THE EVOLUTION OF COLONIES.
BY JAMES COLLIER.
VI.--INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION.
The earliest nomadic stage of mankind has left traces in many of the
colonies. The first age of French Canada, of New York, of great part
of North America, was one of hunters and trappers, and it has
continued in the Northwest till recent times. The first brief period
of Rhodesia was that of the big-game hunter. The Boers of the
Transvaal are still as much hunters as farmers. The American
backwoodsman who clears a patch, then sells his improvements to the
first newcomer, and, placing his wife and children and scanty
belongings on a cart, proceeds _da capo_ elsewhere, is a nomadic
pioneer. The stage is in one way or another perpetual, for the class
never quite dies out. The drunken English quarryman who, driven by a
demon of restlessness, continually goes "on tramp," and in his
wanderings covers on foot a space equal to twice the circumference of
the globe, is a demi-savage whose nomadism is only checked by the
"abhorred approaches of old age." If he emigrates, he repeats the old,
wild life as a pick-and-shovel man in Queensland or a quarryman in New
South Wales. The soberer colonial youth, who more luxuriously canters
from farm to farm in New Zealand on the back of a scrub, is a tamer
specimen who settles down when he marries. Nay, the "restless man" who
periodically applies for leave of absence from a colonial legislature
in order to travel in India, China, and Timbuctoo, is a still milder
but not less incorrigible example of the same indestructible type.
The pastoral stage is all but universal. Wherever grass grows (and
there is wild grass almost everywhere) sheep can graze, and where
there are succulent twigs cattle will fatten on them. The South
American _estancias_ and the ranches of Colorado, the cattle runs of
Queensland and northern New Zealand, the sheep runs of Victoria and
New South Wales repeat and perpetuate this stage. The genesis of it
may even now be daily observed. A Manchester accountant who has never
before been astride a horse will in twelve months learn the mysteries
of cattle and sheep farming, then purchase a hundred acres or two from
the colonial Government, gradually clear it of timber, build of his
own trees, with no skilled assistance, a weatherboard cottage, and
take home a swiftly wooed wife to lead with him a rather desolate
existence in "the bush." Or (on a larger scale) a squatter,[1] who is
commonly a gentleman by birth and education, comes out from England
with inherited wealth, buys or leases from the Government a large
inland tract of grazing land, takes with him flocks and herds,
shepherds and stockmen, builds a bark or wooden manor house, and
settles down to the life of Abram on the plains of Mamre. In earlier
days, when the colony was in its infancy, he would not have had to
purchase or lease his "run." One country after another saw the golden
age of a would-be landed aristocracy. As Norman William parceled out
all England among his nobles and knights, rulers of conquered
countries were then mighty free with what did not belong to them.
Possessing the authority of a sovereign, Columbus made lavish grants
of land, and thus pacified his rebels. Charles II presented Carolina
to eight proprietors. Baronies of twelve thousand acres in South
Carolina, manors of twenty thousand acres in Maryland, were dwarfed by
territorial principalities of more than a million acres in New York.
The absolute governors of early Australia gave away wide tracts. When
land was not given it was taken, on Rob Roy's principle. During the
interregnum that followed the recall of the first Governor of New
South Wales, military robbers seized fifteen thousand acres, and under
subsequent administrations they continued their depredations. Land was
held on various tenures. The first American forms were varieties of
belated feudalism; of a hundred often strange and ridiculous emblems
of suzerainty perhaps a dozen repeated Old World customs.[2] Sir H. S.
Maine has proved that nearly all the feudal exactions that maddened a
whole people to mutiny in 1789 were then in force in England. How
shadowy they must have grown is shown by the fact that none of them
was transported to Botany Bay in that or later years. They were
atrophied portions of the British land system when Australia was
founded in 1788. For fully sixteen years the possession of lands
granted or seized was as absolute as the English law ever allows it to
be. Then the landholders, finding the large tracts already conceded
insufficient for the development of the pastoral industry, applied for
more, and themselves suggested in 1803 a plan of leasing crown lands
which in the following year was legalized as "the first charter of
squatterdom"; it was the beginning of a system that has brought under
pastoral occupancy territories as extensive as the largest European
countries. The land system formed part of or gave birth to a political
organization. A host of so-called _seigneurs_ imported into old Canada
as much of the _ancien régime_ as would bear the voyage. Manors in
Maryland reproduced the feudal courts-baron and courts-leet. The great
New York landowners, as inheriting both English and Dutch
institutions, presided in such courts and were at the same time
hereditary members of a powerful legislative order.[3] The courts were
dropped on the way out to Australia, but the political influence of
the English landed aristocracy inhered in their representatives at the
antipodes. As the Southern slavearchy, through its Washingtons and
Jeffersons, Clays and Calhouns, was for three quarters of a century
the driving force in American politics, the Australian squatterarchy
for one generation or more ruled the seven colonies with a sway that
waxed as the absolute power of the governor waned. It composed the
legislature, appointed the judges, controlled the executive, and if
the governor was refractory it sent him home. In both southern
countries social life reflected its tastes and was the measure of its
grandeur. It constituted "society," ran the races, gave the balls, and
kept open house; the surrounding villages lived in its sunshine. Why
could not this patriarchal state last, as it has lasted in Arabia for
thousands of years and in Europe for centuries? In the Southern States
it was brought to bankruptcy by the civil war. In Australia it
collapsed before two enemies as deadly--a succession of droughts and a
fall in the price of wool. The banker has his foot on the squatter's
neck. If one may judge from the published maps, three fourths of the
freehold land in the older colonies is in the hands of the money
lenders. The once lordly runholder, who would have excluded from his
table, or at least from his visiting circle, any one engaged in
commerce, is now the tenant of a mortgage company which began by using
him too well and ended by crushing him unmercifully.
It is also brought to a close by the rise of the agricultural stage.
The colonial _latifundia_ gets broken up for the same economic reasons
as that of the mother country. Whenever from the increase of
population wheat-growing becomes more profitable than grazing, land
rises in value, and vast sheep walks are subdivided into
two-hundred-acre farms, which are put under the plow. The transition
may be retarded in some countries and altogether arrested in others.
Nasse has shown that, in consequence of the moisture of the climate,
there was in the sixteenth century a continual tendency in England to
revert from agriculture to pasture. The light rainfall, high
temperatures, and unfertilized soil will forever keep nine tenths of
Australia under grass. Most of the mountainous north and the
glacier-shaved portions of the south of New Zealand must be perpetual
cattle runs and sheep walks. A century or perhaps centuries will pass
before much of the light soil of Tasmania, hardly enriched by the
scanty foliage of the eucalyptus, is sufficiently fertilized by
grazing to grow corn. Rich alluvial or volcanic lands are put under
the plow, without passing through the pastoral stage, as soon as
markets are created by the advent of immigrants. There is a cry for
farm lands. Companies that have bought large estates break them up
into allotments. When they or other large landholders still resist
pressure, the radical colonial legislature accelerates their
deliberations by putting on the thumbscrew of a statute which
confiscates huge cantles of their land. Or the colonial Government, if
socialist-democratic, purchases extensive properties, which it breaks
up into farms and communistic village settlements. Over wide tracts
the agriculturist, great and small, takes the place of the
pastoralist. He holds his lands under a variety of tenures. New South
Wales, in its search for an ideal form, has flowered into fifteen
varieties. Other colonies are stumbling toward it more or less blindly
through a succession of annual statutes. Where land is abundant the
tenure will be easy. In North America nominal quitrents were general;
the system was long since introduced into South Africa, and it has
lately been imported into New Zealand in spite of all previous
experience to the effect that such rents can not be collected. Mr.
Eggleston remarks that in the United States the tendency was to "a
simple and direct ownership of the soil by the occupant." Since those
days Henry George has come and (alas!) gone. A craze for the
nationalization of the land buzzes in the bonnets of all who have no
land. There is an equal reluctance on the part of colonial
legislatures to grant waste lands as freeholds and on the part of
purchasers to accept them on any other terms. Hence the constant
effort to devise a tenure which shall reserve the rights of the colony
and yet not oppress the tenant. One legislature has blasphemed into
the "eternal lease," which would seem to be almost preferable to
absolute ownership in a country subject to earthquakes! But the
tenure in the early days is unimportant. With a virgin soil yielding
at first seventy and then regularly forty bushels to the acre, and
high prices ruling, the farmer can stand any tenure. Seen at market or
cattle show, his equine or bovine features and firm footing on mother
earth suggest a sense of solidity in the commonwealth to which he
belongs. He gives it its character. The legislature consists of his
representatives. Laws are passed in his interest. He controls the
executive. His sons fill the civil service. Judges sometimes come from
his ranks, and lawyers easily fall back into them. He supports the
churches and fills them. Small towns spring up in place of the
pastoral villages to supply his wants. As the period of the Golden
Fleece was the colonial age of gold, when Jason, the wool king, made a
fortune, received a baronetcy, and, returning to the mother country,
founded a county family and intermarried with the British aristocracy,
so the agricultural stage is the colonial age of silver, in money as
in morals. It lasted in England till well into the century, in Germany
till the other day, in France till now. It is, in the main, the stage
of contemporary colonies. What brings _it_ to an end? The soil gets
exhausted, prices fall, and a succession of wet seasons in New Zealand
or of dry seasons in Australia or South Africa sends the farmer into
the money market. Nearly every province of almost every colony gets
mortgaged up to the hilt. The foot of the land agent is on the neck of
the farmer, who becomes his tenant or serf--_adscriptus glebæ_ as much
as the Old English villeins who were the ancestors of the farmer, or
the Virginia villeins who repeated in the seventeenth century the Old
English status. But tenancy does not always arise out of bankrupt
proprietorship. A capitalist may drain an extensive marsh (like that
along the valley of the Shoalhaven River in New South Wales) and
divide the rich alluvial soil into hundreds of profitable dairy farms.
More inland marshes, like the Piako Swamp in New Zealand, have been so
completely drained as to make the soil too dry to carry wheat, and so
have swamped both capitalists and banker. Where the squatter owner
keeps the land in his own hands, he may lease an unbroken-up tract for
three or five years to a farmer who plows and fences it, takes off
crops, pays a light rent of from five to fifteen bushels per acre, and
leaves it in grass. On one tenure or another the whole colony
gradually comes into cultivation.
The predominance of the agricultural interest is long threatened and
at length shaken by the rise of the industrial stage. It is partly
evolved from the pastoral and agricultural stages and partly
independent. Nor do these stages at once and necessarily give rise to
collective industry. In all young colonies where the population is
scanty and processes are simple there are no division and no
association of labor. The account that one of the best of American
historians gives of the Northwest Territory might be accepted as a
description of this primitive state, and realizes Fichte's ideal of a
_geschlossener Handelstaat_ (closed trade state). Shut in by
mountains, the people raised their own flax and sometimes grew their
own wool, which they spun and wove at home. They made their own
spinning wheels and looms, as they made their own furniture. They
tanned their own leather and cobbled rude shoes of it. Of Indian-corn
husks they spun ropes and manufactured horse collars and chair
bottoms. Barrels and beehives were formed of sawn hollow trees. They
extracted sugar from the maple and tea from the sassafras root. Their
boats were dug-out canoes. In colonies of later foundation this
self-sufficing stage, which repeats an earlier period in the mother
country than the time when the colony was given off, is dropped,
though there are traces of it everywhere to be found. Sheep countries
give birth to the woolen industry. New Zealand reduplicates the woolen
manufactures of England and, owing to protective duties, has attained
a deserved success. New South Wales, with finer wools, has not
succeeded, for no other apparent reason than that she refuses to
impose such duties. For it is to be observed that it is under
legislative protection--bounties, bonuses, drawbacks, export and
especially import duties--that almost every colonial industry has
grown up, as the industries of the mother country grew up. Sometimes
the profit in a particular undertaking is exactly equal to the amount
of the import duty, and it is seldom greater. By taking extravagant
advantage of the liberty long refused (as leave to manufacture was
long refused to the North American colonies), but at length conceded,
to impose import duties, an Australasian colony, misled as much by its
own splendid energy as by evil counselors (Carlyle among them), built
up a whole artificial system of industries which sank in ruinous
collapse when the boom had passed. Independent industries spring first
from the soil. Gold and silver mining lose their wild adventurous
character, and become regular industries, worked by companies with
extensive plants. The digging of gum in Auckland (bled from the
gigantic Kauri pine) is operated by merchants who keep the gum diggers
in a species of serfage. The discovery of coal makes native industries
possible or remunerative, but till iron has been found the system is
incomplete. All countries, and therefore all colonies, are late in
reaching this stage; the most advanced contemporary colonies have not
yet reached it. None the less have they followed England with swifter
steps, if with less momentum, into the modern age of iron--that
Brummagem epoch which has the creation of markets for its war cry,
state socialism for its gospel, Joseph of Birmingham for its prophet,
and the British Empire for its deity.
The iron age is fitly inaugurated by the most degraded relationship
that man can bear to man--that of slavery. Only the oldest of modern
colonies imitate the mother countries in passing through this stage;
in those of later foundation a mere shadow of it remains, or it takes
other shapes. Colonists first enslave the natives of the country where
they settle. In the South American colonies, where they went to find
gold, they would work for no other purpose; they therefore needed the
natives to till the soil; they needed them also as carriers. For these
purposes they were used unscrupulously. They were distributed among
the Spaniards under a system of _repartimientos_ which repeated the
provisions of Greek and Roman slavery, and was itself reduplicated
three centuries later in the convict assignment system of New South
Wales. With such savage cruelty was it worked that, according to the
testimony of Columbus, six sevenths of the population of Hispaniola
died under it in a few years. The same form of slavery, but of a very
different character, prevailed in Africa down almost to our own times.
In the British colonies it was submerged in 1834, from causes exterior
to itself, by the humanitarian wave that wrecked the West Indies; in
the French colonies it was abolished by the revolutionary government
of 1848; in the Dutch colonies it possibly subsists to this day.
Theoretically abolished or not, the relationship between civilized
whites and savage blacks must be everywhere a modified form of
slavery; and a white colonization of the African tropics can only take
place under conditions indistinguishable from a limited slavery. In
colder or younger colonies, even if a more refined sentiment had
permitted it, there could be no question of enslaving the fierce red
Indians, the warlike Maoris, or the intractable Australian blacks. The
Indians rendered some services to the northern colonists. The Maoris
worked for the first immigrants into Canterbury, but as free laborers,
and the phase soon passed away as more valuable labor arrived. Blacks
were in the early years employed by the Australian settlers, but like
nearly all savages they were found incapable of continuous industry.
The next step is to import slaves. To lighten the oppression of the
Mexicans, negroes were introduced, as they had previously been into
Europe. There, and still more in the southern colonies of North
America, they were the chief pioneers. They cut down forests, cleared
the jungles, drained the swamps, and opened up the country. For the
best part of two hundred years the world's sugar, rice, cotton,
tobacco, and indigo were grown by negro labor. The effect on the negro
himself has been to raise him one grade in the scale of being. If, as
Mr. Galton believes, he is naturally two grades below the European, a
place in the "organization of labor" will have to be found for him
midway between the white workman and the slave. It is, indeed, being
found. As a farmer the negro has totally failed. "But he is a good
laborer under supervision. He is a success in the mines. He has found
acceptance in the iron furnaces and about the coke ovens. He is in
great demand in periods of railroad construction," and he is a Western
pioneer. Above born and bred slaves for life there is the status of
imported slaves for a term. For years Kanakas, hired or captured from
the Melanesian Islands of the Pacific, were used as slaves by the
sugar planters of Queensland, until the outcry in England put a stop
to an ill-conducted traffic. It has since been resumed under humaner
conditions, which make it as defensible as slavery can ever be.
Coolies from India are imported into Fiji and Hongkong practically as
free laborers. They are also employed on board the great liners that
ply between India, China, Australia, and England, much to the
discontent of the working class and to the great satisfaction of the
well-to-do, who thus gain cheaper passages and lower freights. The
radical opposition is no more likely to prevent this form of native
labor from spreading to all suitable environments than the
conservative opposition has prevented women from filling the
employments within their improved capacities. The ubiquitous Chinaman,
again, has imported himself into most colonies, and so long as he
takes a place that the white laborer refuses to occupy, he will
present the ugly problem of the coexistence of an indestructible alien
race with a civilized people whose type of civilization and his are
irreconcilable.
European colonies have also known white slavery, as Greek and Roman
colonies knew it, and slavery of their own race and nation, as
European countries knew it. Its most degraded type has doubtless been
Spanish, English, and French convictism. The Australian-English is the
most familiar and the worst. The Australian convict was a slave for
life or a long term. Like the slave, he was at the mercy of his
master, excepting that corporal punishment could not be inflicted by
the master's hands. The lash was none the less kept going; in a single
year, in New South Wales, nearly three thousand floggings were
administered. The Roman _ergastula_ were pleasure bowers compared with
the convict hells of Parramatta, in New South Wales, and Port Arthur,
in Tasmania. Marcus Clarke's terrible fiction proves to be still more
terrible fact. Convicts were herded together like pigs; kindness was
rare, oppression general, and many fine men died inch by inch. Such
was the state of things even after the introduction of the assignment
system. According to that system, convicts were assigned as
agricultural laborers and shepherds to settlers who cried out for
them, as the American planters did for slaves. Craftsmen were allotted
to high officials in lieu of salary or to influential persons who
hired them to others (herein repeating English serfdom) or permitted
them to work for themselves, receiving a portion of their earnings
(herein repeating Greek slavery). Mechanics were employed on public
works, and hundreds of buildings were erected by convict masons,
bricklayers, and carpenters. Day laborers were employed on roads, and
hundreds of miles of solid highway are a durable monument to the
memory of the convict. They were the true pioneers of the country,
braving the dangers of the "bush," resisting the aborigines, clearing
and cultivating the land, and developing the resources of the
colonies. For themselves they did well and ill. Many reformed, and
after manumission, which was at first special and at length general,
became respectable citizens, dealers, and traders. Some grew to be
prosperous merchants, wealthy squatters, editors, legislators, and all
but ministers. Their sons are judges, legislators, solicitors,
Government officials, newspaper proprietors. After lasting for sixty
years the system of transportation was at length abolished in
consequence of the opposition of the working class, who objected to
competition, and of the respectable classes generally. The legislative
body and the large landowners were rather in favor of its perpetuity,
and there are still members of the old "slave-driving party" in
Tasmania who regret its discontinuance.
The bond servants, who were common in New England and at first more
numerous than slaves in the Southern States, repeated the status of
the English serfs. Their origin was various. Crime, debt, sale by
parents, voluntary surrender, and kidnapping all contributed their
quota. The period of indentured service was at first from seven to ten
years, and was ultimately reduced to a fixed term of four years. They
were exchanged and sold like any other commodity. Their treatment
seems to have been often harsh. Like the Australian convicts, many of
them prospered. Leading families in the United States trace their
origin to bondmen. Not a few of the Southern overseers, free laborers,
and small farmers are believed to be descended from them. The vagabond
element in all the States, the "white trash" of the South, and the
criminal and pauper inhabitants of certain regions in the North are
also affiliated on the more degraded sections of the class.[4]
The worst of modern inventions, it has been said, is the invention of
the workingman. The workingman, however, has a pedigree; he is the son
of the bondman or the serf, and the grandson of the slave, who would
have been still more discreditable "inventions" if they had not been
the outgrowth of their time and place. The servile character of the
workman long survived in European countries; it was not till the
beginning of this century that the last trades were emancipated in
England. While in North America and New South Wales the transition is
plainly traceable, all vestiges of it have disappeared in the younger
colonies. In these, almost from the first, the mechanic is master of
the situation. The carpenter who can put up a wooden cottage commands
regular work and high wages, while the preacher who builds him a house
not made with hands is starved. The anomaly is in perfect consistency
with the biological analogy; the brain is everywhere of late
development. As the colony grows, wages fall, and the position of
professional men becomes more tolerable, but, _en revanche_, the
workman acquires and at length almost monopolizes political power. The
premier and cabinet ministers are sometimes former peddlers, gold
diggers, coal miners, shepherds, etc. The legislative bodies consist
largely of labor representatives. Laws are passed in the interest of
labor. Not content with a share of political power out of all
proportion to their numbers or importance, the regimented trades,
under the command of unscrupulous leaders, deliver a pitched battle
against the employers, with the object of gaining practical possession
of the agencies of production and distribution. They are necessarily
defeated. The value of labor and the importance of the mechanic
decline with the application of machinery to all industrial processes.
Accumulated wealth, subsidizing inventions, acquires an increasing
ascendency. The industrial system is in no greater danger from the
onslaughts of labor than civilized countries from the invasion of
barbarians.
Only the beginnings of the commercial epoch, or age of bronze, are to
be found in colonies. In production we witness the same supersession
of individual enterprise by the limited liability company. This is
also the case in distribution, where many obsolete Old World stages
are recapitulated. We may still see the long, slow bullock team, the
wearied pack horse (the fur trade in Canada was carried on by
"brigades of pack horses"), the hawker, purveyor of news and gossip.
We easily trace the evolution of the shop: at first a ship, then
landed, with everything inside--groceries, meat, bread, fruit, and
vegetables, clothes, crockery, ironmongery, stationery, and tobacco;
the butcher first hives off, then the baker, the grocer; in course of
time reintegration takes place, and shops are to be found in the
colonial cities which reduplicate Whiteley's in London, where
everything may again be had as in the beginning. The processes of
exchange likewise recapitulate the past. Barter is long universal, and
is still common in colonial villages. Even then a standard is needed.
In the Old English period the "currency" consisted of cattle, named by
a facetious writer "the current _kine_ of the realm." In Virginia and
Maryland tobacco was the circulating medium for a century and a half,
supplemented in Maryland with hemp and flax; taxes were paid in
tobacco, and rent in kind. In Illinois and Canada, skins and furs,
with wampum for small coin; in New England the latter singular
currency was used far into the eighteenth century. New South Wales has
the demerit of inventing the destructive medium of rum; wages were
paid in it or in wheat; meal or spirits were taken at the doors of
theaters. Store receipts for produce were given by the Government and
passed current, not without depreciation; military officers issued
bills for all sums up to one hundred pounds; private individuals, in
the lack of specie, gave promissory notes. Fixed prices were long
unknown; extortioners in the early days of all the colonies made a
profit of a thousand per cent; and in quite recent days usurious
attorneys exacted interest at the rate of a hundred per cent.
Colonies sometimes anticipate the development of the mother country.
The communistic dreams of the forties in France and England were for a
brief while realized in old Virginia, as they are at this hour being
realized in the village settlements of South Australia; and the state
socialism rendered popular by the German victories of 1870 was perhaps
more thoroughly embodied in convict New South Wales than anywhere else
outside of Peru under the Incas, as it is now sweeping all of the
Australasian colonies onward to an unknown goal.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] In its primary American sense the word _squatter_ denotes the
backwoodsman described in the foregoing paragraph. In its secondary
Australian sense it means the large landholder now described.
[2] See an instructive article by Mr. Edward Eggleston, Social
Conditions in the Colonies. Century Magazine, 1884, pp. 849, 850.
[3] Eggleston, _op. cit._, p. 850.
[4] Eggleston, _op. cit._, p. 858.
THE MIND'S EYE.
BY JOSEPH JASTROW.
HAMLET.--My father,--Methinks, I see my father.
HORATIO.--O, where, my lord?
HAMLET.--In my mind's eye, Horatio.
It is a commonplace taught from nursery to university that we see with
our eyes, hear with our ears, and feel with the fingers. This is the
truth, but not the whole truth. Indispensable as are the sense organs
in gaining an acquaintance with the world in which we live, yet they
alone do not determine how extensive or how accurate that acquaintance
shall be. There is a mind behind the eye and the ear and the finger
tips which guides them in gathering information, and gives value and
order to the exercise of the senses. This is particularly true of
vision, the most intellectual of all the senses, the one in which mere
acuteness of the sense organ counts least and the training in
observation counts most. The eagle's eye sees farther, but our eyes
tell us much more of what is seen.
The eye is often compared to a photographic camera, with its eyelid
cap, its iris shutter, its lens, and its sensitive plate--the retina;
when properly adjusted for distance and light, the image is formed on
the retina as on the glass plate, and the picture is taken. So far the
comparison is helpful; but while the camera takes a picture whenever
and wherever the plate happens to be exposed, the complete act of
seeing requires some co-operation on the part of the mind. The retina
may be exposed a thousand times and take but few pictures; or perhaps
it is better to say that the pictures may be taken, but remain
undeveloped and evanescent. The pictures that are developed are
stacked up, like the negatives in the photographer's shop, in the
pigeonholes of our mental storerooms--some faded and blurred, some
poorly arranged or mislaid, some often referred to and fresh prints
made therefrom, and some quite neglected.
In order to see, it is at once necessary that the retina be suitably
exposed toward the object to be seen, and that the mind be favorably
disposed to the assimilation of the impression. True seeing,
observing, is a double process, partly objective or outward--the thing
seen and the retina--and partly subjective or inward--the picture
mysteriously transferred to the mind's representative, the brain, and
there received and affiliated with other images. Illustrations of such
seeing "with the mind's eye" are not far to seek. Wherever the
beauties and conformations of natural scenery invite the eye of man
does he discover familiar forms and faces (Fig. 1); the forces of
Nature have rough-hewn the rocks, but the human eye detects and often
creates the resemblances. The stranger to whom such curiosities of
form are first pointed out often finds it difficult to discover the
resemblance, but once seen the face or form obtrudes itself in every
view and seems the most conspicuous feature in the outlook. The
flickering fire furnishes a fine background for the activity of the
mind's eye, and against this it projects the forms and fancies which
the leaping flames and the burning embers from time to time suggest.
Not all see these fire-pictures readily, for our mental eyes differ
more from one another than the physical ones, and perhaps no two
persons see the same picture in quite the same way. It is not quite
true, however, as many have held, that in waking hours we all have a
world in common, but in dreams each has a world of his own, for our
waking worlds are made different by the differences in what engages
our interest and our attention. It is true that our eyes when open are
opened very largely to the same views, but by no one observer are all
these views, though visible, really seen.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.[5]--The man's face in the rocks is quite
distinct, and is usually readily found when it is known that there is
a face somewhere. (For this view from the Dalles of the St. Croix,
Minn., I am indebted to the courtesy of Mr. W. H. Dudley, of Madison,
Wis.)]
This characteristic of human vision often serves as a source of
amusement. The puzzle picture with its tantalizing face, or animal, or
what not, hidden in the trees, or fantastically constructed out of
heterogeneous elements that make up the composition, is to many quite
irresistible. We turn it about in all directions, wondering where the
hidden form can be, scanning every detail of the picture, until
suddenly a chance glimpse reveals it, plainly staring us in the face.
When several persons are engaged in this occupation, it is amusing to
observe how blind each is to what the others see; their physical eyes
see alike, but their mental eyes reflect their own individualities.
[Illustration: FIG. 2.--In order to see the lion's head, hold the
dollar exactly inverted and the head will be discovered facing the
left, as above outlined. It is clearer on the dollar itself than in
this reproduction.]
Thousands upon thousands of persons handle our silver dollar, but few
happen to observe the lion's head which lies concealed in the
representation of the familiar head of Liberty; frequently even a
careful examination fails to detect this hidden emblem of British
rule; but, as before, when once found, it is quite obvious (Fig. 2).
For similar reasons it is a great aid in looking for an object to know
what to look for; to be readily found, the object, though lost to
sight, should be to memory clear. Searching is a mental process
similar to the matching of a piece of fabric in texture or color, when
one has forgotten the sample and must rely upon the remembrance of its
appearance. If the recollection is clear and distinct, recognition
takes place when the judgment decides that what the physical eye sees
corresponds to the image in the mind's eye; with an indistinct mental
image the recognition becomes doubtful or faulty. The novice in the
use of the microscope experiences considerable difficulty in observing
the appearance which his instructor sees and describes, and this
because his conception of the object to be seen is lacking in
precision. Hence his training in the use of the microscope is
distinctly aided by consulting the illustrations in the text-book, for
they enable his mental eye to realize the pictures which it should
entertain. He may be altogether too much influenced by the pictures
thus suggested to his mental vision, and draw what is really not under
his microscope at all; much as the young arithmetician will manage to
obtain the answer which the book requires even at the cost of a resort
to very unmathematical processes. For training in correct and accurate
vision it is necessary to acquire an alert mental eye that observes
all that is objectively visible, but does not permit the subjective to
add to or modify what is really present.
[Illustration: FIG. 3.--Observe the appearance of these letters at a
distance of eight to twelve feet. An interesting method of testing the
activity of the mind's eye with these letters is described in the
text.]
[Illustration: FIG. 3_a_.]
[Illustration: FIG. 3_b_.]
The importance of the mind's eye in ordinary vision is also well
illustrated in cases in which we see or seem to see what is not really
present, but what for one cause or another it is natural to suppose is
present. A very familiar instance of this process is the constant
overlooking of misprints--false letters, transposed letters, and
missing letters--unless these happen to be particularly striking. We
see only the general physiognomy of the word and the detailed features
are supplied from within; in this case it is the expected that
happens. Reading is done largely by the mental eye; and entire words,
obviously suggested by the context, are sometimes read in, when they
have been accidentally omitted. This is more apt to occur with the
irregular characters used in manuscript than in the more distinct
forms of the printed alphabet, and is particularly frequent in reading
over what one has himself written. In reading proof, however, we are
eager to detect misprints, and this change in attitude helps to make
them visible. It is difficult to illustrate this process
intentionally, because the knowledge that one's powers of observation
are about to be tested places one on one's guard, and thus suppresses
the natural activity of the mind's eye and draws unusual attention to
objective details. Let the reader at this point hold the page at some
distance off--say, eight or twelve feet--and draw an exact
reproduction of the letters shown in Fig. 3. Let him not read further
until this has been done, and _perhaps_ he may find that he has
introduced strokes which were not present in the original. If this is
not the case, let him try the test upon those who are ignorant of its
nature, and he will find that most persons will supply light lines to
complete the contours of the letters which in the original are
suggested but not really present; the original outline, Fig. 3_a_,
becomes something like Fig. 3_b_, and so on for the rest of the
letters. The physical eye sees the former, but the mental eye sees the
latter.
[Illustration: FIG. 4.--For description, see text.]
I tried this experiment with a class of over thirty university
students of Psychology, and, although they were disposed to be quite
critical and suspected some kind of an illusion, only three or four
drew the letters correctly; all the rest filled in the imaginary light
contours; some even drew them as heavily as the real strokes. I
followed this by an experiment of a similar character. I placed upon
a table a figure (Fig. 4) made of light cardboard, fastened to blocks
of wood at the base so that the pieces would easily stand upright. The
middle piece, which is rectangular and high, was placed a little in
front of the rest of the figure. The students were asked to describe
precisely what they saw, and with one exception they all described, in
different words, a semicircular piece of cardboard with a rectangular
piece in front of it. In reality there was no half-circle of
cardboard, but only parts of two quarter-circles. The students, of
course, were well aware that their physical eyes could not see what
was behind the middle cardboard, but they inferred that the two side
pieces were parts of one continuous semicircle. This they saw, so far
as they saw it at all, with their mind's eye.
[Illustration: FIG. 5.--The black and white portions of this design
are precisely alike, but the effect of looking at the figure as a
pattern in black upon a white background, or as a pattern in white
upon a black background, is quite different, although the difference
is not easily described.]
There is a further interesting class of illustrations in which a
single outward impression changes its character according as it is
viewed as representing one thing or another. In a general way we see
the same thing all the time, and the image on the retina does not
change. But as we shift the attention from one portion of the view to
another, or as we view it with a different mental conception of what
the figure represents, it assumes a different aspect, and to our
mental eye becomes quite a different thing. A slight but interesting
change takes place if we view Fig. 5 first with the conception that
the black is the pattern to be seen and the white the background, and
again try to see the white as the pattern against a black background.
I give a further illustration of such a change in Fig. 6. In our
first and natural view of this we focus the attention upon the black
lines and observe the familiar illusion, that the four vertical lines
seem far from parallel. That they are parallel can be verified by
measurement, or by covering up all of the diagram except the four main
lines. But if the white part of the diagram is conceived as the design
against a black background, then the design is no longer the same, and
with this change the illusion appears, and the four lines seem
parallel, as they really are. It may require a little effort to bring
about this change, but it is very marked when once realised.
[Illustration: FIG. 6.--When this figure is viewed as a black pattern
on a white background, the four main vertical lines seem far from
parallel; when it is viewed as a white pattern on a black background
this illusion disappears (or nearly so), and the black lines as well
as the white ones seem parallel.]
A curious optical effect which in part illustrates the change in
appearance under different aspects is reproduced in Fig. 7. In this
case the enchantment of distance is necessary to produce the
transformation. Viewed at the usual reading distance, we see nothing
but an irregular and meaningless assemblage of black and white
blotches. At a distance of fifteen to eighteen feet, however, a man's
head appears quite clearly. Also observe that after the head has once
been realized it becomes possible to obtain suggestions of it at
nearer distances.
[Illustration: FIG. 7.--This is a highly enlarged reproduction taken
from a half-tone process print of Lord Kelvin. It appeared in the
Photographic Times.]
A much larger class of ambiguous diagrams consists of those which
represent by simple outlines familiar geometrical forms or objects. We
cultivate such a use of our eyes, as indeed of all our faculties, as
will on the whole lead to the most profitable results. As a rule, the
particular impression is not so important as what it represents. Sense
impressions are simply the symbols or signs of things or ideas, and
the thing or the idea is more important than the sign. Accordingly, we
are accustomed to interpret lines, whenever we can, as the
representations of objects. We are well aware that the canvas or the
etching or the photograph before us is a flat surface in two
dimensions, but we see the picture as the representation of solid
objects in three dimensions. This is the illusion of pictorial art. So
strong is this tendency to view lines as the symbols of things that if
there is the slightest chance of so viewing them, we invariably do so;
for we have a great deal of experience with things that present their
contours as lines, and very little with mere lines or surfaces. If we
view outlines only, without shading or perspective or anything to
definitely suggest what is foreground and what background, it becomes
possible for the mind to supply these details and see foreground as
background, and _vice versa_.
[Illustration: FIG. 8.--This drawing may be viewed as the
representation of a book standing on its half-opened covers as seen
from the back of the book; or as the inside view of an open book
showing the pages.]
[Illustration: FIG. 9.--When this figure is viewed as an arrow, the
upper or feathered end seems flat; when the rest of the arrow is
covered, the feathered end may be made to project or recede like the
book cover in Fig. 8.]
[Illustration: FIG. 10.--The smaller square may be regarded as either
the nearer face of a projecting figure or as the more distant face of
a hollow figure.]
[Illustration: FIG. 11.--This represents an ordinary table-glass, the
bottom of the glass and the entire rear side, except the upper
portion, being seen through the transparent nearer side, and the rear
apparently projecting above the front. But it fluctuates in appearance
between this and a view of the glass in which the bottom is seen
directly, partly from underneath, the _whole_ of the rear side is seen
through the transparent front, and the front projects above the back.]
[Illustration: FIG. 12.--In this scroll the left half may at first
seem concave and the right convex, it then seems to roll or advance
like a wave, and the left seems convex and the right concave, as
though the trough of the wave had become the crest, and _vice versa_.]