to benumb a soul--but I will venture to say that for every soul that Mr.
Carnegie, or anyone else, has taken away, he has created, awakened and
stimulated a thousand by contact with that almost soul--that
near-soul--that resides in books. Mr. Lee's books may be merely paper;
mine have paper and ink only for their outer garb; their inner warp and
woof is of the texture of spirit.
This is why I rejoice when a new library is opened. I thank God for its
generous donor. I clasp hands with the far-reaching municipality that
accepts and supports it. I wish good luck to the librarians who are to
care for it and give it dynamic force; I congratulate the public whose
privilege it is to use it and to profit by it.
SIMON NEWCOMB: AMERICA'S FOREMOST ASTRONOMER
Among those in all parts of the world whose good opinion is worth having,
Simon Newcomb was one of the best known of America's great men.
Astronomer, mathematician, economist, novelist, he had well-nigh boxed the
compass of human knowledge, attaining eminence such as is given to few to
reach, at more than one of its points. His fame was of the far-reaching
kind,--penetrating to remote regions, while that of some others has only
created a noisy disturbance within a narrow radius.
Best and most widely known as an astronomer, his achievements in that
science were not suited for sensational exploitation. He discovered no
apple-orchards on the moon, neither did he dispute regarding the railways
on the planet Venus. His aim was to make still more exact our knowledge of
the motions of the bodies constituting what we call the solar system, and
his labors toward this end, begun more than thirty years ago, he continued
almost until the day of his death. Conscious that his span of life was
measured by months and in the grip of what he knew to be a fatal disease,
he yet exerted himself with all his remaining energy to complete his
monumental work on the motion of the moon, and succeeded in bringing it to
an end before the final summons came. His last days thus had in them a
cast of the heroic, not less than if, as the commander of a torpedoed
battleship, he had gone down with her, or than if he had fallen charging
at the head of a forlorn hope. It is pleasant to think that such a man was
laid to rest with military honors. The accident that he was a retired
professor in the United States Navy may have been the immediate cause of
this, but its appropriateness lies deeper.
Newcomb saw the light not under the Stars and Stripes, but in Nova Scotia,
where he was born, at the town of Wallace on March 12, 1835. His father, a
teacher, was of American descent, his ancestors having settled in Canada
in 1761. After studying with his father and teaching for some little time
in his native province he came to the United States while yet a boy of
eighteen, and while teaching in Maryland in 1854-'56 was so fortunate as
to attract, by his mathematical ability, the attention of two eminent
American scientific men, Joseph Henry and Julius Hilgard, who secured him
an appointment as computer on the Nautical Almanac. The date of this was
1857, and Newcomb had thus, at his death, been in Government employ for
fifty-two years. As the work of the almanac was then carried on in
Cambridge, Mass., he was enabled to enter the Lawrence Scientific School
of Harvard University, where he graduated in 1858 and where he pursued
graduate studies for three years longer. On their completion in 1861 he
was appointed a professor of mathematics in the United States Navy, which
office he held till his death. This appointment, made when he was
twenty-six years old,--scarcely more than a boy,--is a striking testimony
to his remarkable ability as a mathematician, for of practical astronomy
he still knew little.
One of his first duties at Washington was to supervise the construction of
the great 26-inch equatorial just authorized by Congress and to plan for
mounting and housing it. In 1877 he became senior professor of mathematics
in the navy, and from that time until his retirement as a Rear Admiral in
1897 he had charge of the Nautical Almanac office, with its large corps of
naval and civilian assistants, in Washington and elsewhere. In 1884 he
also assumed the chair of mathematics and astronomy in Johns Hopkins
University, Baltimore, and he had much to to do, in an advisory capacity,
with the equipment of the Lick Observatory and with testing and mounting
its great telescope, at that time the largest in the world.
To enumerate his degrees, scientific honors, and medals would tire the
reader. Among them were the degree of LL.D. from all the foremost
universities, the gold medal of the Royal Astronomical Society of London
in 1874, the great gold Huygens medal of the University of Leyden, awarded
only once in twenty years, in 1878, and the Schubert gold medal of the
Imperial Academy of St. Petersburg. The collection of portraits of famous
astronomers at the Observatory of Pulkowa contains his picture, painted by
order of the Russian Government in 1887. He was, of course, a member of
many scientific societies, at home and abroad, and was elected in 1869 to
our own National Academy of Sciences, becoming its vice-president in 1883.
In 1893 he was chosen one of the eight foreign associates of the Institute
of France,--the first native American since Benjamin Franklin to be so
chosen. Newcomb's most famous work as an astronomer,--that which gained
him world-wide fame among his brother astronomers,--was, as has been said,
too mathematical and technical to appeal to the general public among his
countrymen, who have had to take his greatness, in this regard, on trust.
They have known him at first hand chiefly as author or editor of popular
works such as his "Popular Astronomy" (1877); of his text-books on
astronomy, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and calculus; of his books on
political economy, which science he was accustomed to call his
"recreation"; and of magazine articles on all sorts of subjects not
omitting "psychical research," which was one of the numerous by-paths into
which he strayed. He held at one time the presidency of the American
Society for Psychical Research.
The technical nature of his work in mathematical astronomy,--his
"profession," as he called it, in distinction to his "recreations" and
minor scientific amusements,--may be seen from the titles of one or two of
his papers: "On the Secular Variations and Mutual Relations of the Orbits
of the Asteroids" (1860); "Investigation of the Orbit of Neptune, with
General Tables of Its Motion" (1867); "Researches on the Motion of the
Moon" (1876); and so on. Of this work Professor Newcomb himself says, in
his "Reminiscences of an Astronomer" (Boston, 1903), that it all tended
toward one result,--the solution of what he calls "the great problem of
exact astronomy," the theoretical explanation of the observed motions of
the heavenly bodies.
If the universe consisted of but two bodies,--say, the sun and a
planet,--the motion would be simplicity itself; the planet would describe
an exact ellipse about the sun, and this orbit would never change in form,
size, or position. With the addition of only one more body, the problem at
once becomes so much more difficult as to be practically insoluble;
indeed, the "problem of the three bodies" has been attacked by astronomers
for years without the discovery of any general formula to express the
resulting motions. For the actually existing system of many planets with
their satellites and countless asteroids, only an approximation is
possible. The actual motions as observed and measured from year to year
are most complex. Can these be completely accounted for by the mutual
attractions of the bodies, according to the law of gravitation as
enunciated by Sir Isaac Newton? In Newcomb's words, "Does any world move
otherwise than as it is attracted by other worlds?" Of course, Newcomb has
not been the only astronomer at work on this problem, but it has been his
life-work and his contributions to its solution have been very noteworthy.
It is difficult to make the ordinary reader understand the obstacles in
the way of such a determination as this. Its two elements are, of course,
the mapping out of the lines in which the bodies concerned actually do
move and the calculations of the orbits in which they ought to move, if
the accepted laws of planetary motion are true. The first involves the
study of thousands of observations made during long years by different men
in far distant lands, the discussion of their probable errors, and their
reduction to a common standard. The latter requires the use of the most
refined methods of mathematical analysis; it is, as Newcomb says, "of a
complexity beyond the powers of ordinary conception." In works on
celestial mechanics a single formula may fill a whole chapter.
This problem first attracted Newcomb's attention when a young man at
Cambridge, when by analysis of the motions of the asteroids he showed that
the orbits of these minor planets had not, for several hundred thousand
years past, intersected at a single point, and that they could not,
therefore, have resulted, during that period, from the explosion of a
single large body, as had been supposed.
Later, when Newcomb's investigations along this line had extended to the
major planets and their satellites, a curious anomaly in the moon's motion
made it necessary for him to look for possible observations made long
before those hitherto recorded. The accepted tables were based on
observations extending back as far as 1750, but Newcomb, by searching the
archives of European observatories, succeeded in discovering data taken as
early as 1660, not, of course, with such an investigation as this in view,
but chiefly out of pure scientific curiosity. The reduction of such
observations, especially as the old French astronomers used apparent time,
which was frequently in error by quarter of an hour or so, was a matter of
great difficulty. The ancient observer, having no idea of the use that was
to be made of his work, had supplied no facilities for interpreting it,
and "much comparison and examination was necessary to find out what sort
of an instrument was used, how the observations were made, and how they
should be utilized for the required purpose." The result was a vastly more
accurate lunar theory than had formerly been obtained.
During the period when Newcomb was working among the old papers of the
Paris Observatory, the city, then in possession of the Communists, was
beset by the national forces, and his studies were made within hearing of
the heavy siege guns, whose flash he could even see by glancing through
his window.
Newcomb's appointment as head of the Nautical Almanac office greatly
facilitated his work on the various phases of this problem of planetary
motions. Their solution was here a legitimate part of the routine work of
the office, and he had the aid of able assistants,--such men as G.W. Hill,
who worked out a large part of the theory of Jupiter and Saturn, and
Cleveland Keith, who died in 1896, just as the final results of his work
were being combined. In connection with this work Professor Newcomb
strongly advocated the unification of the world's time by the adoption of
an international meridian, and also international agreement upon a uniform
system of data for all computations relating to the fixed stars. The
former still hangs fire, owing to mistaken "patriotism"; the latter was
adopted at an international conference held in Paris in 1896, but after it
had been carried into effect in our own Nautical Almanac, professional
jealousies brought about a modification of the plan that relegated the
improved and modernized data to an appendix.
Professor Newcomb's retirement from active service made the continuance of
his great work on an adequate scale somewhat problematical, and his data
on the moon's motion were laid aside for a time until a grant from the
newly organized Carnegie Institution in 1903 enabled him to employ the
necessary assistance, and the work has since gone forward to completion.
What is the value of such work, and why should fame be the reward of him
who pursues it successfully? Professor Newcomb himself raises this
question in his "Reminiscences," and without attempting to answer it
directly he notes that every civilized nation supports an observatory at
great annual expense to carry on such research, besides which many others
are supported by private or corporate contributions. Evidently the
consensus of public opinion must be that the results are worth at least a
part of what they cost. The question is included in the broader one of the
value of all research in pure science. Speaking generally, the object of
this is solely to add to the sum of human knowledge, although not seldom
some application to man's physical needs springs unexpectedly from the
resulting discoveries, as in the case of the dynamo or that of wireless
telegraphy. Possibly a more accurate description of the moon's motion is
unlikely to bring forth any such application, but those who applaud the
achievements of our experts in mathematical astronomy would be quick to
deny that their fame rests on any such possibility.
Passing now to Professor Newcomb's "recreation," as he called,
it,--political economy, we may note that his contributions to it were
really voluminous, consisting of papers, popular articles and several
books, including "The A B C of Finance" (1877) and "Principles of
Political Economy" (1886). Authorities in the science never really took
these as seriously as they deserved, possibly because they regarded
Professor Newcomb as scarcely orthodox. Some of his distinctions, however,
are of undoubted value and will live; for instance, that between the fund
and the flux of wealth, on which he insists in his treatises on finance.
As to Professor Newcomb's single excursion into fiction, a romance
entitled "His Wisdom the Defender," it is perhaps sufficient to say that,
like everything he attempted, it is at least worth notice. It is a sort of
cross between Jules Verne and Bulwer Lytton's "Coming Race."
Professor Newcomb's mind was comprehensive in its activity. One might have
thought that an intellect occupied to the last in carrying out one of the
most stupendous tasks ever attempted by a mathematical astronomer would
have had little time or little energy left for other things; but Newcomb
took his rest and pleasure in popular articles and interviews. Only a
short time before his death he published an essay on aeronautics that
attracted wide attention, drawing the conclusions that the aeroplane can
never be of much use either as a passenger-carrier or in war, but that the
dirigible balloon may accomplish something within certain lines, although
it will never put the railways and steamships out of business. In
particular, he treated with unsparing ridicule the panic fear of an aerial
invasion that so lately seized upon our transatlantic cousins.
Personally, Newcomb was an agreeable companion and a faithful friend. His
success was due largely to his tenacity of purpose. The writer's only
personal contact with him came through the "Standard Dictionary,"--of
whose definitions in physical science Newcomb had general oversight. On
one occasion he came into the office greatly dissatisfied with the
definition that we had framed for the word "magnet."--a conception almost
impossible to define in any logical way. We had simply enumerated the
properties of the thing,--a course which in the absence of authoritative
knowledge of their causes was the only rational procedure. But Newcomb's
mind demanded a logical treatment, and though he must have seen from the
outset that this was a forlorn hope, his tenacity of purpose kept him,
pencil in hand, writing and erasing alternately for an hour or more.
Finally he confessed that he could do no better than the following pair of
definitions,--"_Magnet_, a body capable of exerting magnetic force," and
"_Magnetic Force_, the force exerted by a magnet." With a hearty laugh at
this beautiful _circulus in definiendo_ he threw down his pencil, and the
imperfect and illogical office definition was accepted.
Logical as he was, however, he was in no sense bound by convention. His
economics, as has been said, was often unorthodox, and even in his
mathematical text-books he occasionally shocked the hide-bound. I well
remember an interesting discussion among members of the Yale mathematical
faculty just after the appearance of Newcomb's text-book of geometry, in
which he was unsparingly condemned by some because he assumed in certain
elementary demonstrations that geometrical figures could be removed from
the paper, turned over and laid down again,--the so-called "method of
superposition," now generally regarded as quite allowable. Of course, a
figure can be treated in this way only in imagination and for this season,
probably, the method was not employed by Euclid. Its use, however, leads
always to true results, as anyone may see; and it was quite characteristic
of Professor Newcomb that he should have taken it up, not having the fear
of the Greek geometers before him.
Such was Newcomb; it will be long before American science sees his equal.
Mathematical genius is like an automobile,--it is looked upon in two
opposing fashions as one has it or has it not. A noted educator not long
ago announced his belief that the possession of a taste for mathematics is
an exact index of the general intellectual powers. Not much later, another
eminent teacher asserted that mathematical ability is an exotic,--that one
may, and often does, possess it who is in other respects practically an
imbecile. This is scarcely a subject in which a single illustration
decides, but surely Newcomb's career justifies the former opinion rather
than the latter; the amount and kind of his mental abilities along all
lines seemed to run parallel to his mathematical genius, to resemble it in
quantity and in kind.
The great volumes of astronomical tables without which no astronomer may
now venture upon a computation are his best monument; yet the general
reader will longer remember, perhaps, the lucid expositor, the genial
essayist, the writer of one of the most readable autobiographies of our
day.
THE COMPANIONSHIP OF BOOKS[5]
[5] Read before the Pacific Northwest Library Association,
June, 1910.
Are books fitted to be our companions? That depends. You and I read them
with pleasure; others do not care for them; to some the reading of any
book at all is as impossible as the perusal of a volume in Old Slavonic
would be to most of us. These people simply do not read at all. To a
suggestion that he supplement his usual vacation sports by reading a
novel, a New York police captain--a man with a common school
education--replied, "Well, I've never read a book yet, and I don't think
I'll begin now." Here was a man who had never read a book, who had no use
for books, and who could get along perfectly well without them. He is not
a unique type. Hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens might as well
be quite illiterate, so far as the use that they make of their ability to
read is concerned. These persons are not all uneducated; they possess and
are still acquiring much knowledge, but since leaving school they have
acquired it chiefly by personal experience and by word of mouth. Is it
possible that they are right? May it be that to read books is unnecessary
and superfluous?
There has been some effort of late to depreciate the book--to insist on
its inadequacy and on the impracticality of the knowledge that it conveys.
"Book-learning" has always been derided more or less by so-called
"practical men". A recent series of comic pictures in the newspapers makes
this clear. It is about "Book-taught Bilkins". Bilkins tries to do
everything by a book. He raises vegetables, builds furniture, runs a
chicken farm, all by the directions contained in books, and meets with
ignominious failure. He makes himself, in fact, very ridiculous in every
instance and thousands of readers laugh at him and his absurd books. They
inwardly resolve, doubtless, that they will be practical and will pay no
attention to books. Are they right? Is the information contained in books
always useless and absurd, while that obtained by experience or by talking
to one's neighbor is always correct and valuable?
Many of our foremost educators are displeased with the book. They are
throwing it aside for the lecture, for laboratory work, for personal
research and experiment. Does this mean that the book, as a tool of the
teacher, will have to go?
What it all certainly does mean is that we ought to pause a minute and
think about the book, about what it does and what it can not do. This
means that we ought to consider a little the whole subject of written as
distinguished from spoken language. Why should we have two languages--as
we practically do--one to be interpreted by the ear and the other by the
eye? Could we or should we abandon either? What are the advantages and
what the limitations of each? We are so accustomed to looking upon the
printed page, to reading newspapers, books, and advertisements, to sending
and receiving letters, written or typewritten, that we are apt to forget
that all this is not part of the natural order, except in the sense that
all inventions and creations of the human brain are natural. Written
language is a conscious invention of man; spoken language is a
development, shaped by his needs and controlled by his sense of what is
fitting, but not at the outset consciously devised.
We are apt to think of written language as simply a means of representing
spoken language to the eye; but it is more than this; originally, at least
in many cases, it was not this at all. The written signs represented not
sounds, but ideas themselves; if they were intended to correspond directly
with anything, it was with the rude gestures that signified ideas and had
nothing to do with their vocal expression. It was not until later that
these written symbols came to correspond to vocal sounds and even to-day
they do so imperfectly; languages that are largely phonetic are the
exception. The result is, as I have said, that we have two languages--a
spoken and a written. What we call reading aloud is translation from the
written to the spoken tongue; while writing from dictation is translation
from the spoken to the written. When we read, as we say, "to ourselves,"
we sometimes, if we are not skilful, pronounce the spoken words under our
breath, or at least form them with our vocal organs. You all remember the
story of how the Irishman who could not read made his friend stop up his
ears while reading a letter aloud, so that he might not hear it. This
anecdote, like all good comic stories, has something in it to think about.
The skilful reader does not even imagine the spoken words as he goes. He
forgets, for the moment, the spoken tongue and translates the written
words and phrases directly into the ideas for which they stand. A skilful
reader thus takes in the meaning of a phrase, a sentence, even of a
paragraph, at a glance. Likewise the writer who sets his own thoughts down
on paper need not voice them, even in imagination; he may also forget all
about the spoken tongue and spread his ideas on the page at first hand.
This is not so common because one writes slower than he speaks, whereas he
reads very much faster. The swift reader could not imagine that he was
speaking the words, even if he would; the pace is too incredibly fast.