Society of London, speaking of Kekulé's residence in that city,
September, 1897, said that he always acknowledged the influence which
Liebig and Odling and Williamson, with whom he became acquainted in
London, exercised on the formation of his opinions. Kekulé's theories,
Professor Japp said, were based on Gerhardt's type theory; on
Williamson's theory of polyvalent radicals, which by their power of
linking together other radicals render possible the existence of
multiple types; and Odling's theory of mixed types, which was a
deduction from Williamson's theory. Less consciously, perhaps, his
opinions were influenced by E. Frankland's theory of the valency of
elementary atoms, and by Kolbe's speculation on the constitution of
organic compounds. Kekulé gathered together the various ideas which he
found scattered throughout the writings of his predecessors, added to
them, and welded the whole into the consistent system which forms our
present theory of chemical structure. In 1857, in the course of a
memoir on the constitution of fulminic acid, he gave a tabular
arrangement of compounds formulated on the type of marsh gas, this
being the earliest statement, though put forward only in an imperfect
form, of the tetravalency of carbon. In the same year he published an
important theoretical paper On the So-called Conjugated Compounds and
the Theory of Polyatomic Radicals, which contains a complete system of
multiple types and mixed types. In 1858 the celebrated paper, On the
Constitution and Metamorphoses of Chemical Compounds, and on the
Chemical Nature of Carbon, appeared. It embodies the fully developed
doctrine of the tetravalency of carbon, together with Kekulé's views
on the linking of atoms and on the valency of such chains of atoms,
the foundation on which our modern system of constitutional chemistry
rests. In 1865 Kekulé put forward his well-known benzene
theory--pronounced by Professor Japp the crowning achievement, in his
hands, of the doctrine of the linking of atoms, and the most brilliant
piece of scientific prediction to be found in the whole range of
organic chemistry. The conception of closed chains, or cycloids, which
he thus introduced, has shown itself to be capable of boundless
expansion.
Kekulé's students all speak admiringly of his qualities as a teacher.
The memorialist of the German Chemical Society said: "All of us who
have attended his lectures or heard him in other places will ever
remember what a teacher Kekulé was. With incomparable lucidity and
sometimes with the happiest humor, he could go playfully through the
theme he was considering, masterfully presenting it in new and often
surprising aspects. The charm of his personality affected all who came
in contact with him; it was the geniality which shone out of his whole
being, and involuntarily commanded admiration. Numerous pupils flocked
to him, and many of those who to-day fill chairs of chemistry in
Germany and other countries have made his name highly honored."
Professor Thorpe, of London, who spent a little time in Kekulé's
laboratory, describes him as having been one of the very best
expositors, with the single possible exception of Kirchhoff, to whom
it had been his lot to listen. As a laboratory teacher he was
excellent. He was a most severe judge of work, striving to exact the
same high manipulative finish, the same neatness and order, which he
invariably bestowed on everything he did, and he was absolutely
intolerant of anything slovenly or "sloppy." "But it was as a lecturer
that he was seen at his best. He was singularly luminous as a thinker,
a close and accurate reasoner, with a remarkable power of concentrated
expression.... His language was apt and well chosen, and his delivery
easy and natural"; and his whole address showed that every detail had
been carefully considered.
At a distance of thirty years, Professor Dewar said, at the London
memorial meeting, that to look back and call to mind the presence and
personality of the great chemist as he knew him was indeed a pleasure.
He was a man of noble mien, handsome, dignified, and yet of a homely
and kindly disposition. He was a severe critic, having a haughty
contempt for the accidental and bizarre in scientific work. His
originality and suggestiveness seemed endless, so that he had no need
to commit trespass or to follow just in the wake of other people's
ideas. "Everything that passed through the Kekulé alembic was indeed
transmuted into pure gold. His precision of thought and diction
rendered his papers profoundly suggestive to other workers."
"The last years of the master's life," his German eulogist says, "were
often troubled by illness, but there were not wanting bright days
which the love of his students and colleagues prepared for him." Such
a one was the celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of his
professorship at Bonn, June 1, 1892, in which the students and
officers participated with cordial unanimity. The ceremony began in
the morning with an enthusiastic ovation by the students. The chemical
theater was decorated with plants; the benzene hexagon was figured on
the blackboard with garlands of flowers, in the midst of which the
letters A. K. were wrought in a monogram of roses. Alfred Helle, one
of the chemical students, delivered a felicitous address, in which he
congratulated his fellow-students on being privileged to sit at the
feet of the greatest of living chemists, after which three cheers were
given to the professor. Kekulé responded to the offering in an address
giving some of the details of his life, from which we have already
quoted. Kekulé's personal staff and the officers of the university
then presented their congratulations.
In the evening the students honored him with a torchlight procession,
it being the third time he had received this, the most conspicuous
honor which is bestowed by German students. The first occasion was in
1875, when he declined the professorship at Munich; the second was in
1878, when he was rector of the university, and was given in
celebration of the restoration of unity among the students, after a
long period of disunion. Among the torchbearers on that occasion was
the present Emperor of Germany.
During the later period of his life Kekulé was comparatively sterile.
Those who knew him, however, Professor Thorpe says, "would be the
first to affirm that this seeming apathy sprang from no natural
indifference. There is no doubt that he suffered, even in the early
period of middle life, from the intense stress and strain of his
mental labors prior to the Ghent period. He too surely exemplified the
sad truth of Liebig's saying that he who would become a great chemist
must pay for his pre-eminence by the sacrifice of his health. There is
reason to know that it was the consciousness of failing power which
prevented him from finishing much to which he had put his hand, and
that his fastidiousness and his sense of 'finish,' amounting almost to
hypercriticism, restrained him from publishing much which he realized
fell short of his ideal."
The last time Kekulé's name was brought before the public was on the
occasion of the renewal of the ancient title of nobility of his
family, as August Kekulé von Stradowitz.
Editor's Table.
_A VOICE FROM THE PULPIT._
We called attention last month to a weak attack on the doctrine of
evolution by a certain Mr. A. J. Smith, Superintendent of Public
Schools in the city of St. Paul. The only thing which gave any
consequence to the deliverance in question was that it was addressed
to a large gathering of public-school teachers, who might possibly
have been unduly influenced in their appreciation of it by the
speaker's official position. We are glad now to learn that, very
shortly after the publication of Superintendent Smith's address, an
excellent statement of the true relation of the doctrine of evolution
to education was made in one of the city pulpits by the Rev. S. G.
Smith, who did not boast, as the superintendent had done, of having
made an exhaustive study of the subject, but who, nevertheless, showed
that he had a grasp of it which the other altogether lacked. The Rev.
Mr. Smith's discourse would have merited attention wherever it might
have been delivered; but, considered as a pulpit utterance, it seems
to us to possess a special and very encouraging significance. We need
hardly say that the pulpit has not always been friendly to broad
scientific views, but in this case it has spoken with a candor, a
breadth, and an intelligence which the lecture platform can not do
more than equal, and which it would certainly be too much to look for
in all our colleges.
"The law of evolution," said the reverend gentleman, "is as universal
in its application as the law of gravitation. It holds that in every
realm the simple tends to become complex, and that the complex is more
stable than the simple. Motion and matter have a history in which the
simple and the indefinite take on variety of organization and
definiteness of adaptation." This is a statement in which the author
of the Synthetic Philosophy would probably have very little change to
suggest. Mr. Smith does not, like so many who discuss the subject in a
superficial manner, confound evolution with Darwinism. Darwinism, he
recognizes, may, in its particular explanations as to the origin of
species and the descent of life, be in error; but evolution is
universal in its scope, and can only fail if it can be shown that the
fundamental postulates on which it rests, such as the instability of
the homogeneous, the continuity of motion, the law of rhythm, etc.,
are not to be depended on. Must a person have made the circle of the
sciences and comprehended all knowledge before he can reasonably
profess a belief in evolution? No, says Mr. Smith; when the
foundations of a doctrine have been clearly laid, when they have been
tested by many different investigators from many different points of
view, and when these, almost without exception, affirm that the
doctrine is not only in harmony with, but lends a new and deeper
significance to, the several orders of fact with which they are
individually concerned, any person of ordinary intelligence is
justified in considering that doctrine as satisfactorily proved and
giving it his personal adhesion.
What chiefly excited the ire of Superintendent A. J. Smith was the
contention of evolutionists that the modern child reflects the earlier
stages of human development. He asked his audience if they really
thought the children of to-day were young savages, and quoted Emerson
and Longfellow as authorities on the question. The Rev. S. G. Smith
takes up the point and expresses himself as follows: "When it is
stated that the child has many points of contact with primitive man,
it is not meant that the child is a savage, but that 'in its
immaturity' we can learn much respecting it from the study of child
races. The child has neither the virtues nor the vices of the savage,
but he has many of the mental characteristics. Embryology does not
teach that in prenatal life the child passes into the form of every
animal in a menagerie, but that its life passes through the stages
that mark the great subdivisions of all life. Nor do the comparisons
of the child with primitive man imply that he must pass through all
the activities of savage races, but that the development of his
faculties, the tendencies of his desires, the state of his ignorance,
all illustrate the history of the development of the race. Primitive
man may be understood by a study of the child, and, conversely, the
child may be illustrated by primitive man."
It must be borne in mind that the child is in constant contact with
its elders, that it is subject to the restraints which they impose,
and that it lives more or less in an atmosphere of affection and care.
There is excellent reason, therefore, why it should not resemble
primitive man in all points. Its daily life is really controlled and
guided by a higher power. In some cases there is even too much control
and guidance; the conditions are made too artificial, and the
development of the child's nature suffers in consequence. When the age
of manhood or womanhood is reached there is something lacking,
precisely because enough scope was not left for the primitive or, as
we may very properly say, the "savage" instincts of childhood. A great
French writer, Joseph de Maistre, quotes a popular saying to the
effect that "spoilt children always turn out well."[49] So far as
there is any truth in it, the explanation is that the spoilt child is
one that has a great deal of its own way, and is left to work out the
savage and so acquire a sounder foundation for its future life. In how
many of us are there not chained savages that might have made their
escape in earlier years if they had only been allowed! It is a
dangerous thing to try to make little angels of children.
The Rev. Mr. Smith is quite right in what he says as to the
predominance of the imagination in children, this being another strong
point of resemblance to primitive man. "The beginnings of history and
institutions," he truly says, "can only be understood when we remember
that races in their early development do not have clearly marked
activities of imagination, reason, and memory. They mix the three. So
legends, myths, and heroics are earnest efforts of the undeveloped
mind to make objective the truth, and are not clumsy lies at all."
Applying this to the child, the conclusion is that "he must be fed
through his imagination or he will not grow." A very imaginative child
is apt to be accused of falsehood, when he simply fails to distinguish
between things imagined and things remembered. Neither the child nor
the savage can concentrate his attention, and to force either to do so
beyond a certain very limited measure is simply to injure and deform
such natural powers as he possesses. The amount of mischief which a
dogmatic and over-logical teacher, wholly ignorant of the psychology
of the child, can do is beyond all calculation.
It is needless, however, to pursue the parallel further, though the
Rev. Mr. Smith very properly carries it into the region of morals,
where it is no less close than in that of intellectual action. There
is another interesting aspect of evolution which the reverend
gentleman glances at, and that is its bearing on general courses of
study. History and literature, considered as departments of research,
it has largely transformed by substituting for conventional categories
and abstract notions the perception of a genetic process pervading all
the works of the human spirit and linking them into an organic unity.
In conclusion, we may observe that, if Superintendent A. J. Smith had
not made some foolish remarks in a rather ostentatious manner, it is
probable the Rev. S. G. Smith would not have delivered the excellent
discourse on which we have commented, and which we feel sure will far
outweigh in general effect the performance which called it forth. The
conclusions to be drawn are the pleasing ones that good may sometimes
come out of evil, and that a free pulpit is admirably adapted to guard
the interests of liberty and common sense.
FOOTNOTE:
[49] "Les enfans gâtés réussissent toujours."
_LESSONS OF ANTHROPOLOGY._
The address delivered at the last meeting of the British Association
by the president of the Anthropological Section contained nothing that
was strikingly novel--it is not every year that striking novelties can
be announced--but it dealt in an interesting manner with several
phases of a most important subject. The speaker, Professor Brabrook,
took the position that the order of the universe is expressed in
continuity, not cataclysm, and that this principle will be found
illustrated in every branch of anthropological research, in direct
proportion to the completeness of the data obtained. He admitted the
vastness of the gap which still separates the remains of palaeolithic
from those of neolithic man, but expressed the belief that further
explorations would bring intermediate relics to light. To quote the
speaker's words: "The evidence we want relates to events which took
place at so great a distance of time that we may well wait patiently
for it, assured that somewhere or other these missing links must have
existed, and probably are still to be found."
Reference was made to the labors which are now being usefully expended
in gathering what is called the folklore of various communities, and
to the result which continually appears with fuller evidence, namely,
that the tendency of mankind everywhere is to develop like fancies and
ideas at a like stage of intellectual development. Full of detail as
these stories are, they are found to contain but a few primitive
ideas; and it seems not improbable that to a large extent they are
essentially Nature myths. Mr. Brabrook happily quotes Lord Bacon's
description of such narratives as "sacred relics, gentle whispers and
the breath of better times." The "better times" are a part of the
general system of myth; but who will deny that there is a special
charm in these early documents of our race? "Let one of our literary
exquisites," said a thoughtful French writer, "try to write a fairy
tale which shall neither be a pretentious apologue nor a tiresome and
transparent allegory, and he will soon feel that mere cleverness does
not suffice to create these marvelous narratives, and will conceive a
just admiration for those who constructed them, that is to say,
everybody and nobody."
The progress of anthropology, according to the president of the
section, seems more and more to confirm the theory adopted by Fustel
de Coulanges in France and Spencer in England, that the belief in
spirits lies at the basis of all religious systems. We thus see, to
use his words, "that the group of theories and practices which
constitute the great province of man's emotions and mental operations
expressed in the term 'religion' has passed through the same stages,
and produced itself in the same way, from rude early beginnings, as
every other mental exertion." Mr. Brabrook mentions a work lately
published by "a distinguished missionary of the Evangelical Society of
Paris," the Rev. Mr. Coillard, in which an account is given of the
superstitions prevailing among the natives of the upper Zambesi. The
reverend gentleman tells of their belief in witchcraft, and gives a
story of a young woman who was condemned to penal labor on suspicion
of having bewitched, or tried to bewitch, another young woman who had
taken her husband from her; the evidence of the crime being found in a
dead mouse, which had been discovered in the second young woman's
chamber. The missionary says: "She was made a convict. A few years ago
she would have been burned alive. Ah, my friends, paganism is an
odious and a cruel thing!" On which the president of the
Anthropological Section observes: "Ah, Mr. Coillard, is it many years
ago that she would have been burned alive or drowned in Christian
England or Christian America? Surely the odiousness and the cruelty
are not special to paganism any more than to Christianity." This is
much to the point. If witchcraft is no longer a recognized crime in
England or America, it is not because these lands are Christian, but
because science is mixed with their Christianity. Even missionaries
ought to know this.
A great many different sciences are grouped under the name
"anthropology," but they all have their rallying point in man, whose
nature and history they seek to explore. The fact is that all sciences
should have the same rallying point; and we trust that the greater
interest which is visibly being taken year by year in anthropological
studies will tend to humanize in a beneficial degree the whole circle
of human knowledge.
_AN EXAMPLE OF SOCIAL DECADENCE._
That the incessant encroachment of the Government upon the rights of
the individual will produce social decadence is a truth that most
Americans have yet to learn. With a light heart they are constantly
approving scheme after scheme for social regeneration that involves
some restriction upon freedom, or an increase of taxation, or both. It
is not perhaps singular that the history of similar schemes in the
past should possess no lesson for them. When President Eliot, of
Harvard University, says that the experience of the Italian republics
has no value for us, it is not to be expected that persons with less
capacity to interpret the records of other times should attach little
or no importance to them. But they ought not most certainly to
maintain the same attitude toward the experience of the nations of
to-day. It is to blind their eyes to what does not rest upon hearsay
or upon dubious documents--to what admits of the clearest
demonstration at the hands of living witnesses.
For this reason we urge upon all students of social science the study
of the condition of the inhabitants of the black-earth region of
Russia. In that field, one of the largest and most fruitful in the
world for investigation, they will find the amplest evidence of the
frightful havoc wrought by the abridgment of individual freedom and
the seizure of private property in the form of taxes for public
purposes. If it be said that Russia is an autocracy, and can not
therefore furnish instruction to a democracy like the United States,
the answer is easy, if not obvious. Despotism, like gravitation, is
the same all over the world. It makes no difference in the long run
whether a law abridging freedom issues from the palace of a czar or
from the legislative halls of a popular assembly. The individual
objecting to it is obliged to regulate his life, not in accordance
with his own notions, but in accordance with the notions of some one
else. It makes no difference, either, whether taxation is imposed by
an imperial edict or by a legislative vote. The citizens that have to
bear it against their will contribute money for purposes that some one
else only approves of. The only difference between Russia and the
United States is that this kind of despotism has been carried to much
greater lengths in one country than in the other. If, therefore, we
can find out what the effect has been in Russia, we will be able to
predict what the effect will be in the United States.
As every person familiar with Russia knows, the black-earth region is
one of the richest and most productive in the world. It ought to be
inhabited by one of the wealthiest and happiest of peoples. Yet such
is not the case. According to Count Tolstoi, who contributed recently
a letter to the London Times on the subject, the inhabitants are among
the poorest and most miserable in the world. They are in a state of
chronic starvation. They are obliged to content themselves with nearly
a third less food than is sufficient to maintain normal health. The
physical effect of this insufficiency of food is a decrease in
vitality, a diminished stature, and a check to the growth of
population. It is proved, first, by the failure of the peasants of the
region to meet the requirements for military service, and, second, by
the statistics of population, which show that the increase of births
over deaths has fallen from the maximum reached twenty years ago to
zero.
But the mental effects of the destitution wrought by the robberies of
the Government are more distressing even than the physical. It gives
birth to a stolidity and despair that tend to paralyze all effort
toward betterment. The people subjected to it come to feel that there
is no use of making any struggle beyond the maintenance of mere
existence. Whatever they get in excess of this requirement will be
taken from them. "A peasant," says Tolstoi, illustrating this fact,
"feels that his position as an agriculturalist is bad, but he believes
that it can not be improved; and, consequently, adapting himself to
this hopeless position, he no longer fights against it, but lives and
acts only in so far as he is stirred by the instinct of
self-preservation. Moreover, the very wretchedness of his condition
increases still more his depression of spirit. The lower the economic
condition of a population sinks, like a weight on a lever, the more
difficult it becomes to raise it again; the peasants feel this, and,
as it were, throw away the helve after the hatchet. 'Why should we
trouble ourselves?' they say. 'We sha'n't get fat. If we can only keep
alive.'"
The fruits of this mental state are as palpable as those of the lack
of food. They are to be found in every direction. In manners, habits,
and customs the peasants are hopelessly conservative. They belong, not
to the nineteenth century, but to the ninth. Instead of adopting new
and improved methods of agriculture, they cling to those of the
subjects of Rurik. They use the old plow, distribute tillage in three
crops, and divide their fields into long, narrow strips. So slowly do
they toil with primitive implements and debilitated animals, and so
indifferent are they to what they are doing, that it takes them a day
to do the work that a well-fed and alert peasant would do in half the
time. A more deplorable sign of demoralization is the prevalence of
family discord and loss of interest in a higher life. The aggressions
of the state have stimulated selfishness, bad temper, and incipient
rebellion. The children disobey their parents, the younger brothers
reject the primacy of the older, and money earned elsewhere is kept
from the family treasury. With the decadence of family life there is a
decadence of religious life. Although the peasants are nominally
orthodox, they care nothing for religion. Even the clergy confirm the
fact that they are becoming more and more indifferent to the church.
What they seek is not to penetrate the mysteries of life, but to
obliterate consciousness of them. "Under these circumstances," says
Tolstoi, alluding to the economic and mental decadence, "the craving
for forgetfulness is natural, and accordingly spirits and tobacco are
being consumed in ever greater and greater quantities." He adds that
"even quite young boys drink and smoke."