The name of William Pengelly is most closely associated with the
explorations of caves in England containing relics of men together
with the remains of extinct animals, the results of which, confirming
similar conclusions that had been reached in France, convinced English
geologists of man's extreme antiquity. Speaking of him at the time of
his death as one of the last survivors of the heroes who laid the
foundation of geological science, Prof. T. G. Bonney said, "He has
left behind an example of what one man can do in advancing knowledge
by energy and perseverance."
WILLIAM PENGELLY was born at East Looe, a fishing village in Cornwall,
England, January 12, 1812, and died in Torquay, March 16, 1894. The
name of Pengelly is not uncommon in Cornwall, and has figured in
English history--among others, in the person of Sir Thomas Pengelly,
who was chief baron of the exchequer, and left certain sums for the
discharge of debtors from the jails of Bodmin and Launceston. His
father was captain of a small coasting vessel, and he acquired a
strong attachment to the sea. He was sent to the Dame's School in his
native village when very young, and before he was five years old had
made so rapid progress that his mother applied to the master of a
school for larger boys to receive him as a pupil. The master declined
to take him, but, hearing him reading as he passed the door of the
house not long afterward, concluded to grant the mother's request. At
school he soon gained such a reputation for scholarship that the boys
made him spend all his play hours helping them in their lessons. His
school days ended when he was twelve years old, and he accompanied his
father to sea, making, however, voyages that were seldom more than
three days long, most of the work of which consisted in taking in and
taking out cargo. The sailors soon discovered his clerkly gifts and
employed him to write their letters, but did not so well appreciate
his excellent conversational powers. On "tailoring days" it was
understood that his clothes should be repaired for him, while he read
aloud for the general benefit, and the sailors would amuse themselves
by finding solutions to questions in Walkingham's Arithmetic. His
seafaring life closed in his sixteenth year, when the death of a
brother made it desirable that he should remain at home.
Though working hard all the day for a mere support, young Pengelly
managed to spend several hours every night in study, seeking to master
mathematics. He had no tutor and no really good text-books, but made
such progress in his studies that in a comparatively short time he
became "a mathematical tutor of no mean order." He bought his first
Euclid of a peddler who occasionally visited the place; then, having
saved up a little money for the purpose, it was a happy day for him
when he walked thirty miles to Devonport and back, bearing, on his
return, twenty volumes in a bundle over his shoulder; among them were
the works of some of the standard authors, for he cultivated a
literary as well as a mathematical taste.
He received his first lesson in geology while he was still a sailor
boy, at Lyme Regis--a spot exceedingly rich in fossils. A laborer whom
he was observing broke a stone, the opening of which disclosed a fine
ammonite. To his question as to what the fossil was, the laborer
replied that if he had read his Bible he would have known; that there
was once a flood that covered all the world; the things that were
drowned were buried in the mud, and this was a snake which had
suffered that fate. "A snake! but where's his head?" He was again
referred to the Bible, which would tell him why the snakes in the
rocks had no heads. "We're told there that the seed of the woman shall
bruise the serpent's head. That's how 'tis." The second lesson came a
few years later, in a reading club of which Pengelly was a member.
They were reading Dick's Christian Philosopher, and came to a
geological section, when the reader remarked that "as geology was very
likely to be extremely dry, and as many good people thought it
dangerous if not decidedly infidel in its teachings, he would propose
that the selection should not be read. This was passed by acclamation,
and the reader passed on to astronomy."
While still young, Pengelly removed to Torquay, where he spent the
remainder of his life. Shortly after arriving there, he opened a small
day school on the Pestalozzian system, into which he introduced the
novelty of the use of chalk and the blackboard in giving instruction.
Beginning with six pupils, the school grew rapidly. He had private
pupils, too, and in 1846 these had become so numerous that he gave up
his school, and as a special tutor in mathematics and the natural
sciences found his life occupation. Some of his pupils became
distinguished in after life; while others, like the two Russian
princes, nephews of the Czar Alexander II, and Princess Mary, of the
Netherlands, all of whom became much attached to him, were famous by
reason of their position. His attention was brought for a third time
to geology while looking over some books which he thought might be
useful to his pupils, when he found one published by the brothers
Chambers, which contained a chapter on that science. This was not
much, but it was enough to inform him how much had already been done
in geology, and, perhaps, to give him a hint of some of the
possibilities that lay in it. From this time on, he was ardently
interested in geology. The journal of his first visit to London and
the British Museum, in 1843, attests how he was becoming absorbed in
it. He spent his holidays in geological explorations and in excursions
which gradually grew larger, until his position as a geologist was
recognized, and he became an authority respecting all points and
phenomena which had come under his personal knowledge. A hint dropped
to him by Professor Jameson as he was about to visit the Isle of Arran
taught him to make his notes of observations on the spot, and greatly
helped, his daughter Hester observes in the biography on which we have
drawn very largely, "to form those habits of extreme accuracy which
characterized all his scientific work."
In 1837 Mr. Pengelly assisted in the reorganization of the Torquay
Mechanics' Institute, with which he maintained a connection for more
than twenty years, and before which he delivered many lectures. In
1844 he participated in the organization of the Torquay Natural
History Society, of which he became, in 1851, honorary secretary, and
remained so for more than thirty-nine years. "Under his guidance it
became a scientific power in the country. Year after year he lectured
there, tincturing the locality with his own enthusiasm; and from the
society there ultimately sprang the museum in Babbacombe Road, with
its admirable collections."
His lectures, delivered gratuitously at Torquay, were very popular,
and were attended by large audiences. The fame of them spread, and he
was called to other places--Exeter, Exmouth, and larger towns and
farther off, and to the great learned societies--where he lectured,
always with success, and to the satisfaction and delight of his
audiences. "Those persons living, and they are many," says Mr. F. S.
Ellis in the preface to Hester Pengelly's biography of her father,
"who had the good fortune to hear Pengelly lecture will bear ready
witness to the complete mastery he always had of his subject, and of
the faculty of imparting his knowledge. Even when speaking upon
abstruse subjects to a mixed audience, he would make the matter
perfectly clear without in any degree appearing to talk down to the
capacity of those he was addressing.... His manner was no less
pleasing and attractive than the language in which he clothed his
ideas was grateful to the ear." Geology and astronomy furnished the
subjects of the lectures.
It would be impracticable in a brief sketch to follow the detail of
Pengelly's geological investigations previous to his engaging in
systematic cave exploration. They embraced fields chiefly in
Devonshire and Cornwall, and afforded subjects for correspondence and
discussion with many of the most eminent British geologists, and some
of other countries than England. A study of some fossil fish, first
observed by Mr. Charles W. Peach in Cornwall, furnished the occasion
for one of his first recorded papers, On the Ichthyolites of East
Cornwall, in the Transactions of the Royal Geological Society of East
Cornwall, 1849-'50; and a single volume--the seventh--of these
Transactions contains nine of his papers. Another subject of interest
was the beekites, curious formations of chalcedonic silica on the
limestone fragments in the New Red Sandstone of Devonshire, first
observed by Dr. Beek, of Bristol, concerning which he read a paper at
the Cheltenham meeting of the British Association, the first which he
attended, in 1856. In 1860 he completed the formation of a collection
of Devonian fossils from Devon and Cornwall, which was presented by
the Baroness Burdett-Coutts to the new museum of the University of
Oxford, in connection with the foundation of a geological scholarship,
and was named "the Pengelly Collection."
The first of the more important geological researches with which
Pengelly's name is intimately associated was the exploration of the
peculiar formation at Bovey Tracey, for the identification of its
fossils and the determination of its age. The plain in which the
formation lay had an aspect suggesting the basin of an ancient lake,
and its deposits, "very different from the solid rocks of the
surrounding hills," confirmed the suggestion. They consisted of
gravels, sands, and clays, distinctly stratified, with seams of
lignite, for which they had been worked. The pits had already
attracted some notice, and the deposits had been mentioned in
scientific literature, but very little had been learned concerning
their age. In 1860 the subject was mentioned by the late Dr. Falconer,
an eminent paleontologist, to Miss Burdett-Coutts as one the
investigation of which would be a boon to science. Miss Coutts
supplied the money that was needed, and the direction of the
systematic investigation was intrusted to Pengelly; on learning which,
Sir Charles Lyell wrote to him: "I am very glad of the prospect of our
knowing something of the Bovey coal plants. It is almost a reproach to
English geology that they have been so little explored, as they are
perhaps the only fossils of the Tertiary period to which they belong."
In order to determine accurately the nature, thickness, and order of
the successive beds, and to make a satisfactory collection of fossils,
a new section of the deposit was made, measuring one hundred and
twenty-five feet, down to the bottom of a seam of lignite four feet in
thickness, the "last bed" of the workmen, but not at the actual base
of the deposit. Thirteen of the thirty-one beds of lignite which were
cut through, and two of the beds of clay, yielded distinguishable
plant remains. These were sent to Dr. Oswald Heer, of Switzerland, for
examination; and he determined from the collection fifty species,
including ferns, conifers, figs, cinnamon trees, an oak, a laurel,
vines, andromedas, a bilberry, a gardenia, a water lily, and some
leguminous plants. Heer referred the group to the Lower Miocene
period, but some modification was afterward made in this determination
in the light of a fuller knowledge of the Tertiary flora. The deposits
and work at Bovey Tracey were the subject of a memoir to the Royal
Society by Sir Charles Lyell; and Dr. Heer's account of his work--The
Fossil Flora of Bovey Tracey--was published in 1863.
While this investigation was going on, Lyell was preparing the fifth
edition of his Manual of Geology. He invited Pengelly to suggest
corrections to the text, saying that, besides positive mistakes, he
would "be glad of any hints and suggestions made freely, which your
knowledge of the manner in which beginners are struck may enable you
to send us." The criticisms supplied by Mr. Pengelly were adopted by
Lyell except where they had already been made unnecessary.
On the accidental discovery by workmen, in 1858, of a cavern in
Windmill Hill, overhanging the town of Brixham, Pengelly at once
thought of finding what was in it, and what story it might have to
tell. He visited the place and applied to the owner for permission to
explore it in behalf of the Torquay Natural History Society. But on
consultation with Dr. Hugh Falconer it was decided that as that
society probably had not means sufficient to bear the expense of the
exploration, the Royal and Geographical Societies should be applied to
for a grant. This was obtained, and the work was carried on under the
superintendence of Professor Prestwich and Mr. Pengelly, on whom, as a
resident of the place, the burden substantially fell. The decision to
explore the cave was brought about largely by the fact that it was a
virgin cave which had been inaccessibly closed during an incalculably
long period, the last previous event in its history having been the
introduction of a reindeer antler, which was found attached to the
upper surface of the stalagmitic floor. It was therefore free from the
objection urged against Kent's Cavern that, having been long known and
open, it had probably been ransacked again and again. A thorough
method of exploration was determined upon, beginning with the
examination and removal of the stalagmitic floor; after which the
upper bed should be dealt with in a similar manner horizontally
throughout the entire length of the cavern, or so far as practicable;
then the next lower bed, and so on, till all the deposits had been
removed. By this method the general stratigraphical order of the
deposits and their characteristics could be learned, all their fossils
secured, and the highest possible exactness attained. The excavations
were continued through twelve months, at the end of which the cave had
been practically emptied. Besides furnishing interesting indications
relative to its physical history, the cave yielded sixteen hundred and
twenty-one bones and thirty-six flints. While most of the flints were
flakes, some of which possibly might not be artificial, three were
fairly well made implements of paleolithic type; and it was therefore
concluded that man either frequented or at any rate sometimes entered
the Brixham Cave while Devonshire was inhabited by various mammals
which are now extinct. Previous to the execution of this work, all
geological evidence as to the antiquity of man had been received, even
by English geologists of the first rank, with what Pengelly called
apathy and skepticism. After the work it soon became evident, Pengelly
said in an address to the Section of Anthropology of the British
Association, in 1883, that this geological apathy had been more
apparent than real. "In fact, geologists were found to have been not
so much disinclined to entertain the question of human antiquity, as
to doubt the trustworthiness of the evidence which had previously been
offered to them on the subject." The discoveries are thought to have
had a considerable share in disposing Mr. Prestwich to undertake the
investigation of the remains at Amiens and Abbeville in France and
Hoxne in England, "which added to his own great reputation and rescued
M. Boucher de Perthes from undeserved neglect." Prof. Boyd Dawkins
says that they established beyond all doubt the existence of
paleolithic man in the Pleistocene age, and caused the whole of the
scientific world to awake to the fact of the vast antiquity of the
human race. Of course, they aroused a theological controversy which
was long and bitter, and has only recently died out. Pengelly had no
trouble through it all. "Geologists," he said, "see no mode of
reconciling the Mosaic account of creation with geological science....
For myself, I am satisfied that science can do nothing for the
salvation of the soul, and that the Bible is able, through God's
grace, to make us wise unto salvation." No doubts or difficulties
could ever undermine his faith as a Christian.
The evidence accumulated at Brixham suggested the propriety of a
re-examination of other evidences of man's antiquity, and
particularly, in England, of those from Kent's Hole, or Cavern, at
Torquay. The existence of this cave had been known from time
immemorial, but the first recorded exploration of it was made in 1824
by Mr. Northmore, of Cleve, looking for organic remains and an ancient
temple of Mithras. Mr. W. C. Trevelyan followed him, and first
obtained results of value to science. The Rev. J. MacEnery, a Roman
Catholic priest, began a four years' exploration of the cave in 1825,
and prepared a narrative of his work, which was not published for
several years after his death, having been lost, and found by Pengelly
after a long search. He showed that the cave had been inhabited,
practically at the same time, by man and various extinct animals; but
the antiquity of man not being yet a live subject, little regard was
paid to his evidences. With a grant of a hundred pounds from the
British Association, the work was begun under the direction of a
committee of which Pengelly was the leading spirit and the working
member. It opened a new chapter in his life, his daughter says, "for
he not only superintended the exploration of the cavern, but undertook
its entire management, throwing himself, heart and soul, into the
numerous duties which it entailed. The labor was arduous, and severely
taxed his energies for fifteen years; but it was a congenial
employment, and most faithfully performed.... After undertaking the
exploration, Pengelly became such an enthusiast in the progress made
that, when in Torquay, he never (unless prevented by illness) failed
on a single week day to visit the cavern, while he devoted many hours
at home in the examination of the specimens exhumed. He even abridged
his short holidays, and all idea of living in London was abandoned on
this account." In the investigation, the surface accumulations having
been removed and preserved for examination, the floor of granular
stalagmite was stripped off, so as to lay bare the cave earth, and
this was dug out ultimately to a depth of four feet in a series of
prismatic blocks, a yard long and a foot square in section, layer by
layer. This material was examined in the cave by candlelight, then at
the door by daylight. A box was appropriated to each "yard," in which
all the objects of interest found in that particular earth were put.
The boxes, with the record of what they contained, were sent daily to
Pengelly, who cleaned the articles and repacked them, and kept regular
records of his day's works. Other materials were dealt with with
similar thoroughness in ways according to their nature. "Whatever was
discovered beneath the stalagmite flooring must have been sealed up by
it for, at the very least, two thousand years, probably for a much
longer time." The exploration was completed June 19, 1880. The more
than seventy-three hundred prisms of material which proved productive
yielded, besides fifty thousand bones examined by Prof. Boyd Dawkins,
numerous implements, including those of bone, the work of man. Two
deposits were evident, one of "cave earth," and one of breccia beneath
it. A glance at the implements from them showed that they were very
dissimilar. Those from the breccia were more massive and ruder in
every way than the others, and none of them were of bone. "In short,
the stone tools, though both sets were unpolished and coeval with
extinct mammals, represent two distinct civilizations. It is equally
clear that the ruder men were the more ancient, for their tools were
lodged in a deposit which, whenever the two occurred in the same
vertical section, was invariably the undermost." Various conditions in
the deposits united in indicating that the interval between them must
have been very considerable. Other caves were examined by Pengelly,
but his most important discoveries were made in those of Brixham and
Kent.
A third section of Pengelly's scientific work reviewed by Prof. T. G.
Bonney in the summary he has added to Miss Pengelly's biography, from
which we have quoted freely, includes miscellaneous papers on geology
and kindred subjects, relating almost exclusively to the southwest of
England. As a rule, the papers are comparatively short, being the
fruits of researches which either did not demand a long time, or could
be carried on at intervals as circumstances allowed, and appeared
mostly in the transactions of local societies.
Pengelly was one of the prime movers and a leading spirit in the
organization, in 1862, of the Devonshire Association for the
Advancement of Science, Literature, and Art, at Plymouth, and was its
president in 1867-'68. The objects of the association were "to give a
stronger impulse and a more systematic direction to scientific inquiry
in Devonshire, and to promote the intercourse of those who cultivate
science, literature, or art in different parts of the country." It
worked according to the methods of the British Association, with
literature and art added to its objects, besides giving some attention
to history and archæology. The first meeting was held under the
presidency of Sir John Bowring. In 1872 the president was the bishop
of the diocese, Dr. Temple, now Archbishop of Canterbury. In 1863
Pengelly was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.
From 1856, when he read a paper at the Cheltenham meeting, Mr.
Pengelly was almost a constant attendant upon the meetings of the
British Association, and gained, as the years advanced, a prominent
position among its leading members. He was president of the Geological
Section at the Plymouth meeting, 1877. At the jubilee meeting of the
association, held at York in 1880, he made the acquaintance of Prof.
Asa Gray, which ripened into a friendship and resulted in a visit of
Professor Gray and Mrs. Gray to Torquay. He met another distinguished
American man of science, Prof. O. C. Marsh, recently deceased, at the
International Geological Congress in London, in 1888. In 1801 he
received a visit from Prof. G. F. Wright. He opposed the transference
of the meeting of the British Association to Montreal in 1884, on
account of the expense and the sacrifice of time which he thought many
who would like to attend could not afford, and did not go himself. In
March, 1874, he was visited at Torquay by Professor Phillips and
others in behalf of a number of members of the British Association,
and presented with an illuminated parchment containing the signatures
of the contributors and a check, as a testimonial "in recognition of
his long and valued services to science in general, and more
especially for the exploration of Kent's Cavern. Replying to the
addresses, he said he had done the work in connection with Kent's
Cavern simply because he liked it.... He had experienced intense
pleasure in it, and he could assure them that, on his finding a
_Machairodus latidus_, after seven years and a half exploration, the
discovery of that one tooth, in his opinion, was worth all the money
that had been spent in the exploration of the cavern."
Besides geology, Mr. Pengelly had a living concern with astronomy, on
subjects of which he lectured and read papers, and in folklore, and
was "extremely interested" in the religious history of Cornwall. He
became a member of the Society of Friends about 1853, and married his
second wife, Lydia Spriggs, in that body. She assisted him in his
scientific work, preparing diagrams.
Of Pengelly's character as a man, Professor Bonney speaks of the great
charm in his personality, and the union in him of "such strong mental
powers, and no less strong sense of what was just, true, and right, to
such genuine humor and hearty enjoyment of wit." Sir Archibald Geikie
speaks of his "genial, kindly, and helpful nature, and his invariably
bright, cheery, and witty talk." Prof. Rupert Jones characterizes him
as "a good example of a religious man--earnest, persevering, and exact
in scientific research." The Rev. Robert Hardy says, "He did not
obtrude his theological opinions, but it was easy to perceive that he
was a man of true religious character." Sir Joseph Lister, looking
back to the times of his acquaintance with him, recalled "vividly the
impression of his great intellectual powers, his genial benevolence,
and his sparkling humor."
As a lecturer his style is described as having been "most attractive.
It is incisive, clear, and at times there are touches of humor. His
perfect knowledge of the subject, combined with intense earnestness,
clothed his lecture with genuine eloquence."
Miss Pengelly's biography abounds with illustrations of her father's
rare faculty of attracting and interesting workingmen. A letter from
one such man expresses gratitude, mingled with great pleasure, for the
lasting happiness he was "so anxious and constant to impart to us
young men during the Young Men's Society and afterward at the
Mechanics' Institute, ... and I have often felt and said I owe more
gratitude for the small amount of knowledge I possess, to Mr.
Pengelly, of Torquay, than to any living man, and I think there are a
few now in Torquay who might truly say so too."
Editor's Table.
_KINDERGARTENIZED CHILDREN._
We do not know whether the verb "to kindergartenize" has yet crept
into the language, but, after reading the article of Miss Marion
Hamilton Carter in the March Atlantic on The Kindergarten Child--after
the kindergarten, one is disposed to think that such a verb is a
present necessity. The question as to whether the kindergarten on the
whole is a good institution is too wide for discussion within the
restricted limits of the Table; but no one can read Miss Carter's
article without being forced to the conclusion that, in some of its
aspects, kindergarten work is of very doubtful utility. That lady
found by actual experience with two or three successive levies of
kindergarten children that they seemed to have an impaired rather than
an improved faculty of acquiring knowledge, that their infancy seemed
to have been artificially prolonged, that they had become accustomed
to a nauseating amount of endearment in the language addressed to them
by their instructors, that they seemed to expect to be continually
amused, and that a certain drill through which they had been put for
the alleged purpose of developing their powers of imagination had gone
a long way toward making them incapable of speaking of things simply
as they found them. All this is set forth in Miss Carter's article in
a manner which leaves little doubt that she has described things
substantially as they fell under her observation.
There is one important principle in education which it seems to us the
kindergarten system too much ignores, if it does not completely set it
at defiance, and that is that very young children require a great deal
of letting alone. The spontaneous activity of the little ones--and
they are sure to be active if they get the chance--is worth more for
their education than any amount of directed activity. Their
imaginations, too, will take care of themselves much better than we
can take care of them. Nothing is less favorable to the development of
imagination in a child than constant intercourse with grown people who
have passed the imaginative stage, and whose daily duty it is to lay
out ordered knowledge for assimilation by these babes. It is no wonder
that part of the system should consist of special exercises for the
cultivation of the very faculty which the system as a whole is so
adapted to dull and to weaken. Anything much more silly, however, than
the method described by Miss Carter it would be difficult to imagine.
The great popularity of the kindergarten is due in large measure to
the fact that it relieves mothers during part of the day of the care
of their small children. That it does this in very many cases at the
expense of weakening the tie between mother and child there is too
much reason to fear. The State has been stepping in more and more
between parents and children, until now it lays its hand almost upon
the cradle. The mothers of the republic are giving way, so far as
influence over the rising generation is concerned, to the schoolmarms;
but it is idle to expect that the latter can take the place of the
mothers we used to know. The kindergarten constitutes a vast extension
of the educational machinery previously in operation, and machinery is
always impressive, especially to those who do not understand it. What
people see is that the system works very smoothly and uniformly and
rhythmically, and that it saves, or seems to save, them a great deal
of trouble; and that it is enough to make them think it something very
fine. Whether it is really saving trouble in the end is a question
which we consider quite open to discussion. There is room, in our
opinion, to inquire whether the stimulus of society is not too early
and too systematically brought to bear on the infants who throng the
educational nursery--whether it is well for children of three and four
to be brought every day under the eye of, and more or less into
competition with, a large number of companions of their own age. We
doubt much whether it tends to simplicity of character, and we can not
but regard it as distinctly unfavorable to the development of
individuality. The rule of fashion begins at once to operate with
great intensity, and the child loses the power of conceiving life
except in the herd. As to whether trouble on the whole is being saved
to parents by the new system, the question could best be answered by
ascertaining whether, in the long run, parents have more or less
trouble with their children now than formerly. We should be surprised
to hear any one maintaining that they had less.
We are aware that parents, for the most part, enthusiastically testify
that their children enjoy the kindergarten very much; but may it not
be possible for children, as well as their elders, to like what is not
altogether for their good? We do not consider that we can safely
follow all a child's likes and dislikes in the matter of diet, or
companionship, or hours for going to bed and rising. Sensible people
do not think that everything children crave should be given to them,
or that more than a limited number of excitements should be thrown in
their way. It is one of the drawbacks to wealth that the possessors of
it can hardly refrain from half burying their children beneath a
profusion of toys, and crowding upon them such a multitude of
distractions, in the way of travel, shows of all kinds, and society,
that all chance of development from within is well-nigh destroyed. It
has been remarked by many that the children of to-day who rarely read
a story that is not illustrated, have much less imagination than the
children of former days, who in reading had to make and did make their
own mental pictures. Yet what pampered child ever said he or she was
pampered too much? What overflattered child ever asked for a surcease
of flattery? What child suffering from an excessive amount of social
excitement ever requested that it might have less of such unhealthy
stimulation? The inference we draw is that it does not settle the
question finally in favor of the kindergarten to say that children
enjoy it. If Miss Carter's experience is to be depended on, the result
at least of some kindergarten training is to stimulate the vanity of
the little ones and give them a quite undue sense of their
self-importance. They would enjoy that while it lasted, poor little
things! but it would be a bad preparation for the subsequent work of
education. One broad fact stares the educational world in the face,
and that is that the average child has to-day, at a given age, a less
capacity for learning than the average child of twenty-five or thirty
years ago. What share the kindergarten may have had in this retardment
of intellectual development is a question which deserves
investigation. Messrs. McLellan and Dewey, in their work on The
Psychology of Number (International Education Series), say (page 154):
"We have known the seven-year-old 'head boy' of a kindergarten,
conducted by a noted kindergarten teacher, who could not recognize a
quantity of three things without counting them by ones.... There is
surely something lacking either in the kindergarten as a preparation
for the primary school, or in the primary school as a continuation of
the kindergarten, when a child, after full training in the
kindergarten, together with two years' work in the primary school, is
considered able to undertake nothing (in arithmetic) beyond the number
twenty." These authors enter into a very elaborate analysis of the
number concept, and lay down with extreme care what they conceive to
be the best lines of approach to the youthful mind in the teaching of
arithmetic. It seems to us, however, that the number concept will dawn
upon the youthful mind without much effort on the part of teachers
when the time arrives for it to be of use. In most childish games the
element of number is involved. The smallest girl with a skipping rope
will get into the way of counting her skips with a more or less
distinct conception of the difference between one number and another.
So in the matter of "turns" in any game in which two or more are
engaged: if one child wants to have more "turns" than it is entitled
to, the others have to be very young indeed not to protest. In a
tug-of-war with, say, four on each side, the addition of a fifth to
one side without permission would make trouble in the camp. When
candies are being distributed the arithmetical sense is generally
keenly alive.
We conclude by commending Miss Carter's article to the careful
consideration of all who are interested in educational problems. She
writes with a certain tinge of vexation, and, without meaning it, may
have somewhat forced the case against her kindergarten children. The
Atlantic Monthly deserves credit, we must add, for the many able and
timely articles which it has lately been publishing on educational
topics--articles stamped by the breadth of thought and high culture
which are characteristic of our contemporary, and eminently adapted to
assist in delivering our educational methods from bondage to a
mechanical routine, and bringing them nearer to the simplicity and
freedom of Nature.
_IS FREEDOM LIMITED BY CLIMATE?_
Since the United States turned its ambition toward the tropics, the
question as to whether its political institutions can be extended to
the inhabitants there has been widely discussed. As might be expected,
the philanthropic advocates of expansion have insisted that "the
blessings of freedom and civilization" are not limited by latitude or
longitude. Any other position would, of course, have involved them in
the charge of inconsistency and hypocrisy. But certain philosophic
expansionists, as they may be politely called, have taken the opposite
view. "It is a cardinal fact," they say, quoting the language of a
recent essay of Mr. Benjamin Kidd, "that in the tropics the white man
lives and works only as a diver lives and works under water....
Neither physically, morally, nor politically can he be acclimatized in
the tropics." Still quoting his language, they say again that "a
clearer insight into the laws that have shaped the course of human
evolution must bring us to see that the process which has gradually
developed the energy, enterprise, and social efficiency of the race
northward, and which has left less richly endowed in this respect the
people inhabiting the regions where the conditions of life are
easiest, is no passing accident, nor the result of circumstances
changeable at will, but part of the cosmic order of things which we
have no power to alter."
Whether Mr. Kidd recognizes the odious significance of his captivating
speculation or not, it is certainly a plea and an apology for slavery
and political despotism in the tropics. Most welcome will it be to all
those nations and people of easy conscience and measureless greed that
now hold in bondage of greater or less intensity millions of the
inhabitants of that rich and splendid region. But there is reason to
believe that it must be relegated to the limbo of a kindred and
popular superstition. Within the past year much has been said about
the genius of the Anglo-Saxon for freedom and the ethnic incapacity of
the Latins for that boon of civilization. Even so great a scholar as
Guizot encourages this extraordinary theory. Again and again does he
point out in his History of Civilization how the spirit of freedom may
be traced to the Teutonic hordes that swarmed the forests of Germany.
He does so despite the overwhelming evidence against him to be found
in his own pages even. In apology for his misinterpretation of social
phenomena there can be urged his ignorance of the law of evolution and
of the hardly less important law of the militant origin of despotism
and the pacific origin of freedom. No such apology can, however, be
made in behalf of Mr. Kidd, or of any other apostle of imperialism.
Not only have they at command all the generalizations of social
science, but all the facts upon which those generalizations are based,
to prove that neither climate nor race is a limitation upon freedom.
If climate determined the character of the political institutions of a
people, many questions would be suggested at once that would be beyond
solution. Why, for instance, should a certain freedom have existed in
Athens, and the most intolerable despotism in Sparta? Again, why
should there be despotism in Russia and Germany as well as in Morocco
and Egypt? Another series of questions equally perplexing can be
raised. Why should there be more freedom in England to-day than six
hundred or even one hundred years ago? The climate has not changed in
the interval. Why should the institutions of Spain in the thirteenth
century have been more liberal than in the seventeenth? Why was it
that the freedom that existed in Germany before the Thirty Years' War
had virtually ceased to exist at the Peace of Westphalia? Here also
the climate had not changed. Why, finally, was there a reaction toward
despotism in France after the French Revolution, in Germany after the
disturbances of 1848, in England after the Crimean War, and in the
United States after the rebellion? The only satisfactory answer to
these questions is to be found in the fact that militant activities
always lead to despotism, and pacific activities always to freedom.
When people get into war, the central power must exercise all the
authority over life and property essential to success in battle. The
impulse thus given to despotism spreads to every part of the social
fabric. When people are devoted to the pursuits of peace, the forces
that make for freedom transform their ideas, feelings, morals, and
institutions, political, industrial, and social.
Whether despotism exists, as Mr. Kidd and his followers assume, among
all the indigenous populations of the tropics, only a careful
investigation of the subject would permit one to say. But that it
must, as they contend, always exist there, none of the laws of social
evolution gives the slightest warrant. Wherever it does exist, it had
the same origin that it had in England, and in obedience to the same
forces of peace and industry that operated against it in that country,
it must pass away. The struggles between clans and tribes for the
possession of desirable territory, or for the capture of food or
slaves, or for the gratification of predatory and belligerent
instincts, gave rise to the permanent chief, to the ruling hierarchy,
and to all the other characteristics of a militant society. The degree
of heat or humidity or the luxuriant vegetation of the tropics had no
more to do with this political organization than the degree of cold,
or the dryness of the atmosphere, or the comparative poverty of the
soil of some of the Western States with the similar political
organization of the Indians that roamed over them. None of these
physical characteristics can prevent the play of those forces that
drive people eventually to the adoption of that form of social
organization that will best promote their happiness. As the social
philosophy of evolution shows, the social organization best fitted for
this purpose is the one where the largest individual freedom prevails.
Since the abolition of slavery and serfdom and many other forms of
despotism has been found necessary for the best interests of society
in Europe, we have a right to believe that the abolition of the same
forms of despotism will be found necessary for the best interests of
society in the tropics.
It is true that in the tropics the white man has found it
uncomfortable to work, and has often reduced the indigenes to a kind
of slavery. But that either is inevitable and unavoidable because of
the laws of social evolution, or any more than a temporary reversion,
there is no reason for holding. Alfred Russel Wallace, who spent
twelve years in the tropics, says in a recent article that the white
man can and does work in every part of them. If he does not work, it
is simply for the same reason that he does not work in Europe or the
United States--namely, because he does not have to. When, however,
necessity lays its heavy hands on him, driving him to earn his living
by the sweat of his brow, he does it in the tropical region quite as
well as he does in the temperate. That is shown particularly in
Queensland. But when natives can be reduced to slavery the crime is
committed with slight compunction, and defended on the same ground
that it was defended in the South and elsewhere. The time must come,
however, as it came in Brazil and in other countries where slave labor
was found too wasteful and demoralizing, when it will be displaced
with free labor. The time must come, too, when free institutions will
be found as essential under the equator as farther north. Without them
social evolution can not reach its highest point, nor man attain to
his greatest happiness, a state that he is always seeking, no matter
where he lives.
Scientific Literature.