^^^^^^^"* SrViV&^VO mm m .-* .*."-& .;* 1^ ~ V ': i.J i Samuel Finley Breese Morse. !0m*m^ CENTRAL PARK, NE *4* 4aSfe v. POPULAE SCIENCE MONTHLY. CONDUCTED BY E. L. YOU MANS. VOL. I. MAY TO OCTOBER, 1872, NEW YORK: D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 549 & 551 BROADWAY. 1872. Enteeed, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, By D. APPLETON & CO., In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. A 3J THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. MAY, 1872. THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. Br HEKBEET SPENCER. I. Our Need of It. OVER his pipe in the village ale-house, the laborer says very posi- tively what Pai'liament should do about the " foot and moutb disease." At the farmer's market-table his master makes the glasses jingle as, with his fist, he emphasizes the assertion that he did not get half enough compensation for his slaughtered beasts during the cattle- plague. These are not hesitating ojrinions. On a matter affecting the agricultural interest, it is still as it was during the Anti-Corn-Law agitation, when, in every rural circle, you heard that the nation would be ruined if the lightly-taxed foreigner was allowed to compete in our markets with the heavily-taxed Englishman : a proposition held to be so self-evident that dissent from it implied either stupidity or knavery. Now, as then, may be daily heard, among other classes, opinions just as decided and just as unwarranted. By men called educated, the old plea for extravagant expenditure, that " it is good for trade," is still continually urged with full belief in its sufficiency. Scarcely any decrease is observable in the fallacy that whatever gives employ- ment is beneficial no regard being had to the value for ulterior purposes of that which the labor produces ; no question being asked what would have resulted had the capital which paid for the labor taken some other channel and paid for some other labor. Neither criticism nor explanation appreciably modifies these beliefs. When there is again an opening for them, they are expressed with undi- minished confidence. Along with these delusions go whole families of others. People who think that the relations between expenditure and production are so simple, naturally assume simplicity in other relations among social phenomena. Is there distress somewhere ? They suppose nothing more is required than to subscribe money for 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. relieving it. On the one hand, they never trace the reactive effects which charitable donations work on bank-accounts, on the surplus capital bankers have to lend, ou the productive activity which the capital now abstracted would have set up, on the number of laborers who would have received wages and who now go without wages; they do not perceive that certain necessaries of life have been with- held from one man who would have exchanged useful work for them, and given to another who perhaps persistently evades working. Nor, on the other hand, do they look beyond the immediate mitigation of misery ; but deliberately shut their eyes to the fact that as fast as you increase the provision for those who live without labor, so fast do you increase the number of those who live without labor ; and that, with an ever-increasing distribution of alms, there comes an ever-increasing outcry for more alms. Similarly throughout all their political thinking. Proximate causes and proximate results are alone contemplated; and there is scarcely any consciousness that the original causes are often numerous and widely different from the apparent cause, and that be- yond each immediate result there will be multitudinous remote results, most of them quite incalculable. Minds in which the conceptions of social actions are thus rudi- mentary, are also minds ready to harbor wild hopes of benefits to be achieved by administrative agencies. In each such mind there seems to be the unexpressed postulate that every evil in a society admits of cure ; and that the cure lies within the reach of law. " Why is not there a better inspection of the mercantile marine?" asked a corre- spondent of the Times the other day; apparently forgetting that within the preceding twelve months the power he invoked had lost two of its own vessels, and barely saved a third. c< Ugly buildings are eyesores, and should not be allowed," urges one who is anxious for aesthetic culture ; and, meanwhile, from the agent which is to foster good taste, there have come monuments and public buildings of which the less said the better, and its chosen design for the Law-Courts in- curs almost universal condemnation. " "Why did those in authority allow such defective sanitary arrangements ? " was everywhere asked, after the fevers at Lord Londesborough's ; and this question you heard repeated, regardless of the fact that sanitary arrangements, having such results in this and other cases, were themselves the outcome of appointed sanitary administrations regardless of the fact that the authorized system had itself been the means of introducing foul gases into houses. 1 "The State should purchase the l-ailways," is confident- 1 Of various testimonies to this, one of the most striking was that given by Mr. Charles Mayo, M. B., of New College, Oxford, who, having had to examine the drainage of Windsor, found that, " in a previous visitation of typhoid fever, the poorest and lowest part of the town had entirely escaped, while the epidemic had been very fatal in good houses. The difference was this, that, while the better houses were all connected with the sewers, the poor part of the town had no drains, but made use of cesspools in the gar- dens. And tnis is by no means an isolated instance." TEE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 3 ly asserted by those who, every morning, read of chaos at the Admi- ralty, or cross-purposes in the dock-yards, or wretched army organiza- tion, or diplomatic bungling that endangers peace, or frustration of justice by technicalities and costs and delays all without having their confidence in officialism shaken. " Building Acts should msure better ventilation in small houses," says one who either never knew or has forgotten that, after Messrs. Reid & Barry had spent 200,000 in fail- ing to ventilate the Houses of Parliament, the First Commissioner of Works proposed that " the House should get some competent engi- neer, above suspicion of partiality, to let them see what ought to be done." * And similarly there are continually cropping out in the press, and at meetings, and in conversations, such notions as that the State might provide " cheap capital " by some financial sleight of hand ; that " there ought to be bread-overseers appointed by Government ; " 2 that " it is the duty of Government to provide a suitable national asylum for the reception of all illegitimate children." 3 And here it is doubt- less thought by some, as it is in France by M. de Lagevenais, that Government, by supplying good music, should exclude the bad, such as that of Offenbach. 4 We smile on reading of that French princess, celebrated for her innocent wonder that people should starve when there was so simple a remedy. But why should we smile ? A great part of the current political thought evinces notions of practicability not much more rational That connections among social phenomena should be so little un- derstood need not surprise us, if we note the ideas which prevail re- specting the connections among much simpler phenomena. Minds left ignorant of physical causation are unlikely to appreciate clearly, if at all, that causation, so much more subtle and complex, which runs through the actions of incorporated men. In almost every house, ser- vants, and those who employ them, alike believe that a poker leaned up in front of the bars, or across them, makes the fire burn ; and you will be told, very positively, that experience proves the efficacy of the device the experience being that the poker has been repeatedly so placed and the fire has repeatedly burned ; and no comparison having been made with cases in which the poker was absent, and all other conditions as before. In the same circles the old prejudice against sitting down thirteen to dinner still survives : there actually exists, among ladies who have been at finishing-schools of the highest char- acter, and among some gentlemen who pass as intelligent, the convic- tion that adding or subtracting one, from a number of people who eat together will affect the fates of some among: them. And this state 1 Debates, Times, February 12, 1852. 2 Letter in Daily News, November 28, 1851. 8 Recommendation of a Coroner's Jury, Times, March 26, 1850. 4 Revue des Deux Mondes, February 15, 1872. 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. of mind is again displayed at the card-table, by the opinion that So- and-so is always lucky or unlucky that influences are at work which, on the average, determine more good cards to one person than to another. Clearly, those, in whom the consciousness of causation in these simple cases is so vague, may be expected to have the wildest notions of social causation. Whoever even entertains the supposition that a poker put across the fire can make it burn, proves himself to have neither a qualitative nor a quantitative idea of physical causation ; and if, during his life, his experiences of material objects and actions have failed to give him an idea so accessible and so simple, it is not likely that they have given him ideas of the qualitative and quantita- tive relations of cause and effect holding throughout society. Hence, there is nothing to exclude irrational interpretations and dispropor- tioned hopes. Where other superstitions flourish, political superstitions will take root. A consciousness in which there lives the idea that spilling salt will be followed by some evil, obviously allied as it is to the conscious- ness of the savage filled with belief in omens and charms, gives a home to other beliefs like those of the savage. It may not have faith in the potency of medicine-bags and idols, and may even wonder how any being can reverence a thing shaped with his own hands ; and yet it readily entertains subtler forms of the same feelings. For, in those whose modes of thought we have been contemplating, there is a tacit supposition that a government moulded by themselves has some effi- ciency beyond that naturally possessed by a certain group of citizens subsidized by the rest of the citizens. True, if you ask them, they may not deliberately assert that a legislative and administrative appa- ratus can exert power, either mental or material, beyond the power proceeding from the nation itself. They are compelled to admit, when cross-examined, that the energies moving a governmental machine are energies which would cease were citizens to cease working and fur- nishing the supplies. But, nevertheless, their projects imply an un- expressed belief in some store of force that is not measured by taxes. When there arises the question Why does not Government do this for us? there is not the accompanying thought Why does not Government put its hands in our pockets, and, with the proceeds, pay officials to do this, instead of leaving us to do it ourselves ; but the accompanying thought is Why does not Government, out of its in- exhaustible resources, yield us this benefit ? Such modes of political thinking, then, naturally go along with such conceptions of physical phenomena as are current. Just as the perpetual-motion schemer hopes, by a cunning arrangement of parts, to get from one end of his machine more energy than he puts in at the other ; so the ordinary political schemer is convinced that out of a legislative apparatus, properly devised and worked with due dexterity, may be had beneficial State-action without some corresponding detri- THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 5 mental reaction. He expects to get out of a stupid people the effects of intelligence, and to evolve from inferior citizens superior conduct. But, while the prevalence of crude political opinions, among those whose conceptions about simple matters are so crude, might be antici- pated, it is somewhat surprising that the class specially disciplined by- scientific culture should bring to the interpretation of social phenomena methods but little in advance of those used by others. Now that the transformation and equivalence of forces is seen by men of science to hold not only throughout all inorganic actions, but throughout all or- ganic actions; now that even mental changes are recognized as the correlatives of cerebral changes, which also conform to this principle ; and now that there must be admitted the corollary that all actions going on in a society are measured by certain antecedent energies, which disappear in effecting them, while they themselves become actual or potential energies, from which subsequent actions arise ; it is strange that thei-e should not have arisen the consciousness that these highest phenomena are to be studied as lower phenomena have been studied not, of course, after the same physical methods, but in pursuance of the same principles. And yet scientific men rarely display such a con- sciousness. A mathematician, who had agreed or disagreed with the view of Prof. Tait respecting the value of Quaternions for pursuing researches in Physics, would listen with raised eyebrows were one without mathe- matical culture to express a decided opinion on the matter. Or, if the subject discussed was the doctrine of Helmholtz, that hypothetical beings, occupying space of two dimensions, might be so conditioned that the axioms of our geometry would prove untrue, the mathema- tician would marvel if an affirmation or a negation came from a man who knew no more of the properties of space than is to be gained by daily converse with things around, and no more of the principles of reasoning than the course of business taught him. And yet, were we to take members of the Mathematical Society, who, having severally devoted themselves to the laws of quantitative relations, know that, simple as these are intrinsically, a life's study is required for the full comprehension of them were we to ask each of these his opinion on some point of social policy, the readiness with which he answered would seem to imply that in these cases, where the factors of the phe- nomenon are so numerous and so much involved, a general survey of men and things gives data for trustworthy judgment. Or, to contrast more fully the mode of reaching a conclusion which the man of science uses in his own department, with that which he regards as satisfactory in the department of politics, let us take a case from a concrete science say, the question, What are the solar spots, and what constitution of the Sun is implied by them ? Of tentative answers to this question there is first Wilson's, adopted by Sir William 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. Herschel, that the visible surface of the Sun is a luminous envelope, within which there are cloudy envelopes covering a dark central body ; and that, when by some disturbance the luminous envelope is broken through, portions of the cloudy envelope and of the dark central body become visible as the penumbra and umbra respectively. This hy- pothesis, at one time received with favor mainly because it seemed to permit that teleological interpretation which required that the Sun should be habitable, accounted tolerably well for certain of the appear- ances more especially the appearance of concavity which the spots have when near the limb of the Sun. But, though Sir John Herschel supported his father's hypothesis, pointing out that cyclonic action would account for local dispersions of the photosphere, there has of late years become more and more manifest the fatal objection that the genesis of light and heat remained unexplained, and that no supposition of auroral dischai-ges did more than remove the difficulty a step back ; since, \inless light and heat could be perpetually generated out of noth- ing, there must be a store of force perpetually being expended in pro- ducing them. A counter-hypothesis, following naturally from the hypothesis of nebular origin, is that the mass of the Sun must be incandescent ; that its incandescence has been produced, and is maintained, by progressing aggregation of its once widely-diffused matter ; and that surrounding its molten surface there is an atmosphere of metallic gases continually rising, condensing to form the visible photosphere, and thence precipi- tating. What, in this case, are the solar spots ? Kirchhoff, proceed- ing upon the hypothesis just indicated, which had been set forth before he made his discoveries by the aid of the spectroscope, contended that the solar spots are simply clouds, formed of these condensed metallic gases, so large as to be relatively opaque ; and he endeavored to ac- count for their changing forms as the Sun's rotation carries them away, in correspondence with this view. But the appearances as known to observers are quite irreconcilable with the belief that the spots are simply drifting clouds. Do these appearances, then, conform to the supposition of M. Faye, that the photosphere encloses matter which is wholly gaseous and non-luminous ; and that the spots are produced when occasional up-rushes from the interior burst through the photo- sphere ? This supposition, while it may be held to account for certain traits of the spots, and to be justified by the observed fact that there are up-rushes of gas, presents difficulties not readily disposed of. It does not explain the manifest rotation of many spots ; and, indeed, it does not seem really to account for that darkness which constitutes them spots ; since a non-luminous gaseous nucleus would be permeable by light from the remoter side of the photosphere, and hence holes through the near side of the photosphere would not look dark. There is, however, another hypothesis which more nearly reconciles the facts. Assuming: the incandescent molten surface, the ascending THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 7 metallic gases, and the formation of a photosphere at that outer limit where the gases condense; accepting the suggestion of Sir John Herschel, so amply supported by evidence, that zones north and south of the Sun's equator are subject to violent cyclones ; this hypothesis is, that if a cyclone occurs within the atmosphere of metallic gases between the molten sui'face and the photosphere, its vortex will be- come a region of rarefaction, of refrigeration, and therefore of precipi- tation. There will be formed in it a dense cloud extending- far down toward the body of the sun, and obstructing the greater part of the light radiating from below. Here we have an adequate cause for the formation of an opaque vaporous mass a cause which also accounts for the frequently-observed vortical motion ; for the greater blackness of the central part of the umbra; for the formation of a penumbra by the drawing in of the adjacent photosphere ; for the elongation of the luminous masses forming the photosphere, and the turning of their longer axes toward the centre of the spot ; and for the occasional drift- ing of them over the spot toward the centre. Still, there is the diffi- culty that vortical motion is by no means always observable ; and it remains to be considered whether its non-visibility in many cases is reconcilable with the hypothesis. At present none of the interpre- tations can be regarded as established. Here are sundry suppositions which the man of science severally tests by observations and necessary inferences. In this, as in other cases, he rejects such as unquestionably disagree with unquestionable truths. Continually excluding untenable hypotheses, he waits to de- cide among the more tenable ones until further evidence discloses fur- ther congruities or incongruities. Checking every statement of fact and every conclusion drawn, he keeps his judgment suspended until no anomaly remains unexplained. Not only is he thus careful to shut out all possible error from inadequacy in the number and variety of data, but he is careful to shut out all possible error caused by idiosyn- crasy in himself. Though not perhaps in astronomical observations such as those above implied, yet in all astronomical observations where the element of time is important, he makes allowance for the intervals occupied by his nervous actions. To fix the exact moment at which a certain change occurred, his perception of it has to be corrected for the "personal equation." As the speed of the nervous discharge varies, according to the constitution, from thirty to ninety metres per second, and is somewhat greater in summer than in winter ; and as, be- tween seeing a change and registering it with the finger, there is an interval which is thus appreciably different in different persons ; the particular amount of this error in the particular observer has to be taken into account. Suppose now, that, to a man of science, thus careful in testing all possible hypotheses and excluding all possible sources of error, we put a sociological question say, whether some proposed institution will 8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. be beneficial ? An answer, and often a very decided one, is forth* coming at once. It is not thought needful, proceeding by deliberate induction, to ascertain what has happened in each nation where an identical institution, or an institution of allied kind, has been estab- lished. It is not thought needful to look back in our own history to see whether kindred agencies have done what they were expected to do. It is not thought needful to ask the more general question how far institutions at large, among all nations and in all times, have justi- fied the theories of those who set them up. Nor is it thought needful to infer, from analogous cases, what is likely to happen if the proposed appliance is not set up to ascertain, inductively, whether in its ab- sence some equivalent appliance will arise. And still less is it thought needful to inquire what will be the indirect actions and reactions of the proposed organization how far it will retard other social agencies, and how far it will prevent the spontaneous growth of agencies having like ends. I do not mean that none of these questions are recognized as questions to be asked ; but I mean that no attempts are made after a scientific manner to get together materials for answering them. True, some data have been gathered from newspapers, periodicals, foreign correspondence, books of travel ; and there have been read sundry histories, which, besides copious accounts of royal misdemean- ors, contain minute details of every military campaign, and careful disentanglings of diplomatic trickeries. And on information thus ac- quired a confident opinion is based. Most remarkable of all, however, is the fact that no allowance is made for the personal equation. In political observations and judg- ments, the qualities of the individual, natural and acquired, are by far the most important factors. The bias of education, the bias of class- relationships, the bias of nationality, the political bias, the theological bias these, added to the constitutional sympathies and antipathies, have much greater influence in determining beliefs on social questions than has the small amount of evidence collected. Yet, though, in his search after a physical truth, the man of science allows for minute errors of perception due to his own nature, he makes no allowance for the enormous errors which his own nature, variously modified and dis- torted by his conditions of life, is sure to introduce into his perceptions of political truth. Here, where correction for the personal equation is all-essential, it does not occur to him that there is any personal equa tion to be allowed for. This immense incongruity between the attitude in which the most disciplined minds appi-oach other orders of natural phenomena, and the attitude in which they approach the phenomena presented by societies, will be best illustrated by a series of antithesis thus : The material media, through which we see things, always more or less falsify the facts: making, for example, the apparent direction of a star slightly THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 9 different from its real direction, and sometimes, as when a fish is seen in the water, its apparent place is so far from its real place, that great misconception results unless large allowance is made for refraction ; but sociological observations are not thus falsified : through the daily press light comes without any bending of its rays, and in studying past ages it is easy to make allowance for the refraction due to the historic medium. The motions of gases, though they conform to mechanical laws which are well understood, are nevertheless so involved, that the art of controlling currents of air in a house is not yet mastered ; but the waves and currents of feeling running through a society, and the con- sequent directions and amounts of social activities, may be readily known beforehand. Though molecules of inorganic substances are very simple, yet pro- longed study is required to understand their modes of behavior to one another, and even the most instructed frequently meet with interactions of them producing consequences they never anticipated ; but, where the interacting bodies are not molecules but living beings of highly- complex natures, it is easy to foresee all results which will arise. Physical phenomena are so connected that, between seeming proba- bility and actual truth, there is apt to be a wide difference, even where but two bodies are acting : instance the natural supposition that during our northern summer the Earth is nearer to the Sun than during the winter, which is just the reverse of the fact ; but among sociological phenomena, where the bodies are so multitudinous, and the forces by which they a* ., on one another so many, and so multiform, and so variable, the probability and the actuality will naturally correspond. Matter often behaves paradoxically, as when two cold liquids added together become boiling hot, as when the mixing of two clear liquids produces an opaque mud, or as when water immersed in sulphurous acid freezes on a hot iron plate ; but what we distinguish as Mind, especially when massed together in the way which causes social action, evolves no paradoxical results always such results come from it as seem likely to come. The acceptance of contradictions like these, tacitly implied in the beliefs of the scientifically cultivated, is the more remarkable when we consider how abundant are the proofs that human nature is difficult to manipulate ; that methods apparently the most rational disappoint expectation ; and that the best results frequently arise from courses which common-sense thinks unpractical. Even individual human nature shows us these startling anomalies. A man of leisure is the man naturally fixed upon, if something has to be done ; but your man of leisure cannot find time, and the man to be trusted to do what is wanted, is the man who is already busy. The boy who studies long- est will learn the most, and a man will become wise in proportion as he reads much, are propositions which look true but are quite untrue ko TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. as teachers are nowadays finding out in the one case, and as HoVbes long ago found out in the other. How obvious it appears that, when minds go deranged, there is no remedy but replacing the weak internal control by a strong external control ! Yet the " non-restraint system " has had far more success than the system of strait-waistcoats. Dr Tuke, a physician of much experience in treating the insane, has lately testified that the desire to escape is great when locks and keys are used, but almost disappears when they are disused. And in further evidence of the mischief often done by measures supposed to be cura- tive, here is Dr. Maudsley, also an authority on such questions, speak- ing of " asylum-made lunatics." Again, is it not clear that the repres- sion of crime will be effectual in proportion as the punishment is severe? Yet the great amelioration in our penal code, initiated by Romilly, has not been followed by increased criminality, but by decreased criminality; and the testimonies of those who have had most experience Maconochie in Norfolk Island, Dickson in Western Australia, Obermier in Germany, Montesinos in Spain unite to show that, in proportion as the criminal is left to suffer no other penalty than that of maintaining himself under such restraints only as are needful for social safety, the reformation is great: exceeding, indeed, all antici- pation. French school-masters, never questioning the belief that boys can be made to behave well only by rigid discipline and spies to aid in carrying it out, are astonished on visiting England to find how much better boys behave when they are less governed nay, among English schools themselves, Dr. Arnold has shown that more trust is followed by improved conduct. Similarly with the anomalies of incorporated human nature. We habitually accept the assumption that only by legal restraints are men to be kept from aggressing on their neighbors ; and yet there are facts which should lead us to qualify this assumption. So-called debts of honor, for the non-payment of which there is no legal penalty, are held more sacred than debts that can be legally enforced ; and on the Stock-Exchange, where only pencil memoranda in the respective note-books of two brokers guarantee the sale and purchase of many thousands, contracts are far safer than those which, in the outside world, are formally registered in signed and sealed parchments. Multitudes of cases might be accumulated showing how, in other directions, men's thoughts and feelings produce kinds of conduct which, a priori, would be judged very improbable. And, if, going beyond our own society and our own time, we observe what has happened among other races, and among the earlier generations of our own race, we meet, at every step, workings-out of human nature utterly unlike those which we assume when making political forecasts. Who, generalizing the experiences of his daily life, would suppose that men, to please their gods, would swing for hours from hooks drawn through the muscles of their backs, or let their nails grow through the palms of their clinched hands, or roll over and over hundreds of miles to THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. n visit a shrine? Who would have thought it possible that a public sentiment and a force of custom might be such that a man should revenge himself on one who insulted him by disembowelling himself, and so forcing the insulter to do the like ? Or to take historical cases more nearly concerning ourselves Who foresaw that the beliefs in purgatory and priestly intercession would cause the lapse of one-third or more of England into the hands of the Church ? Or who foresaw that a flaw in the law of mortmain might lead to bequests of large estates consecrated as graveyards ? Who could have imagined that robber-kings and bandit-barons, with vassals to match, would, genera- tion after generation, have traversed all Europe through hardships and dangers to risk their lives in getting possession of the reputed burial-place of one whose injunction was to turn the left cheek when the right was smitten ? Or who, again, would have anticipated that, when, in Jerusalem, this same teacher disclaimed political aims, and repudiated political instrumentalities, the professed successors of his disciples would by-and-by become rulers dominating over all the kings of Europe ? Such a result could be as little foreseen as it could be foreseen that an instrument of torture used by the Jews would give the ground-plans to Christian temples throughout Europe; and as little as it could be foreseen that the process of this torture, recounted in Christian narratives, might come to be mistaken for a Christian institution, as it was by the Malay chief who, being expostulated with for crucifying some rebels, replied that he was following "the English practice," which he read in " their sacred books." ' Look where we will at the genesis of social phenomena, and we shall similarly find that, while the particular ends contemplated and arranged for have commonly not been more than temporarily attained, if attained at all, the changes actually brought about have arisen from causes of which the very existence was unknown. How, indeed, can any man, and how more especially can any man of scientific culture, think special results of special political acts can be calculated, when he contemplates the incalculable complexity of the influences under which each individual, and a fortiori each society, develops, lives, and decays? The multiplicity of these factors is illustrated even in the material composition of a man's body. Every one, who watches closely the course of things, must have observed that at a single meal he may take in bread made from Russian wheat, beef from Scotland, potatoes from the midland counties, sugar from the Mauritius, salt from Cheshire, pepper from Jamaica, curry-powder from India, wine from France or Germany, currants from Greece, oranges from Spain, as well as various spices and condiments from other places; and if he considers whence came the draught of water he swallows, tracing it back from the reservoir through the stream and the brook and the rill, to the separate rain-drops which fell wide apart, l Boyle'3 "Borneo," p. 116. 12 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. and these again to the eddying vapors which had been mingling and parting in endless ways as they drifted over the Atlantic, he sees that this single mouthful of water contains molecules which, a little time ago, were dispersed over hundreds of square miles of ocean-swell Similarly tracing back the history of each solid he has eaten, he finds that his body is made up of elements which have lately come from all parts of the Earth's surface. And what thus holds of the substance of the body, holds no less of the influences, physical and moral, which modify its actions. You break your tooth with a small pebble among the currants, because the industrial organization in Zante is so imperfect. A derangement of your digestion goes back for its cause to the bungling management in a vineyard on the Rhine several years ago ; or to the dishonesty of the merchants at Cette, where imitation wines are produced. Because there happened a squabble between a consul and a king in Abyssinia, an increased income-tax obliges you to abridge your autumn holiday ; or, because slave-owners in North America try to extend the " peculiar institution" farther west, there results here a party dissension which perhaps entails on you loss of friends. If from these remote causes you turn to causes at home, you find that your doings are controlled by a plexus of influences too involved to be traced beyond their first meshes. Your hours of business are predetermined by the general habits of the community, which have been slowly established no one knows how. Your meals have to be taken at intervals which do not suit your health ; but under existing social arrangements you must submit. Such intercourse with friends as you can get is at hours and under regulations which everybody adopts, but for which nobody is responsible ; and you have to yield to a ceremonial which substitutes trouble for pleasure. Your opinions, political and religious, are ready moulded for you; and, unless your individuality is very decided, your social surroundings will prove too strong for it. Nay, even such an insignificant event as the coming of age of grouse affects your goings and comings throughout life. For has not the dissolution of Parlia- ment direct reference to the 12th of August? and does not the disso- lution end the London season ? and does not the London season de- termine the times for business and l-elaxation, and so affect the making of arrangements throughout the year ? If from coexisting influences we turn to influences that have been working through past time, the same general truth becomes still more conspicuous. Ask how it hap- pens that men in England do no work every seventh day, and you have to seek through thousands of past years to find the initial cause. Ask why in England, and still more in Scotland, there is not only a cessa- tion from work, which the creed interdicts, but also a cessation from amusement, which it does not interdict ; and for an explanation you must go back to successive waves of ascetic fanaticism in generations long dead. And what thus holds of religious ideas and usages, holds THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 13 of all others, political and social. Even the industrial activities are often permanently turned out of their normal directions by social states that passed away many ages ago ; as witness what has happened throughout the East, or in Italy, where towns and villages are still perched on hills and eminences chosen for defensive purposes in tur- bulent times, and where the lives of the inhabitants are now made laborious by having daily to carry themselves and all the necessaries of life from a low level to a high level. The extreme complexity of social actions, and the transcendent difficulty which hence arises of counting on special results, will be still better seen if we enumerate the factors which determine one simple phenomenon, as the price of a commodity say, cotton. A manufac- turer of calicoes has to decide whether he will increase his stock of raw material at its current price. Before doing this, he must ascertain, as well as he can, the following data : whether the stocks of calico in the hands of manufacturers and wholesalers at home are large or small ; whether by recent prices retailers have been led to lay in stocks or not ; whether the colonial and foreign markets are glutted or other- wise ; and what is now, and is likely to be, the production of calico by foreign manufacturers. Having formed some idea of the probable de- mand for calico, he has to ask what other manufacturers have done, and are doing, as buyers of cotton whether they have been waiting for the price to fall, or have been buying in anticipation of a rise. From cotton-brokers' circulars he has to judge what is the state of speculation at Liverpool whether the stocks there are large or small, and whether many or few cargoes are on their way. The stocks and prices at Xew Orleans, and other cotton-ports throughout the world, have also to be taken note of; and then there come questions respect- ing forthcoming crops in the Southern States, in India, in Egypt, and elsewhere. Here are sufficiently numerous factors, but these are by no means all. The consumption of calico, and therefore the consump- tion of cotton, and therefore the price of cotton, depends in part on the supplies and prices of other textile fabrics. If, as happened during the American Civil War, calico rises in price because its raw material be- comes scarce, linen comes into more general use, and so a further rise in price is checked. Woollen fabrics, also, may to some extent com- pete. And, besides the competition caused by relative prices, there is the competition caused by fashion, which may or may not pres- ently change. Surely the factors are now all enumerated ? By no means. There is the estimation of mercantile opinion. The views of buyers and sellers respecting future prices, never more than approxi- mations to the truth, often diverge from it very widely. Waves of opinion, now in excess, now in defect of the fact, rise and fall daily, and larger ones weekly and monthly, tending, every now and then, to run into mania or panic ; for it is a mong men of business as among other men, that they stand hesitating until some one sets the example, , 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. and then rush all one way, like a flock of sheep after a leader. These characteristics in human nature, leading to these perturbations, the far-seeing buyer takes into account judging how far existing influ- ences have made opinion deviate from the truth, and how far impending influences are likely to do it. Nor has be got to the end of the matter even when he has considered all these things. He has still to ask what are the general mercantile conditions of the country, and what the immediate future of the money market will be ; since the course of speculation in every commodity must be affected by the rate of dis- count. See, then, the enormous complication of causes which deter- mine so simple a thing as the rise or fall of a farthing per pound in cotton some months hence ! If the genesis of social phenomena is so involved in cases like this, where the effect produced has no concrete persistence but very soon dissipates, judge what it must be where there is produced something which continues thereafter to be an increasing agency, capable of self-propagation. Not only has a society, as a whole, a power of growth and development, but each institution set up in it has the like draws to itself units of the society and nutriment for them, and tends ever to multiply and ramify. Indeed, the instinct of self-preser- vation in each institution soon becomes dominant over every thing else ; and maintains it when it performs some quite other function than that intended, or no function at all. See, for instance, what has come of the " Society of Jesus," Loyola set up ; or see what grew out of the company of traders who got a footing on the coast of Hindostan. To such considerations as these, set down to show the inconsistency of those who think that prevision of social phenomena is possible without much study, though much study is needed for prevision of other phenomena, it will doubtless be replied that time does not allow of systematic inquiry. From the scientific, as from the unscien- tific, there will come the plea that, in his capacity of citizen, each man has to act ; must vote, and must decide before he votes ; must con- clude, to the best of his ability, on such information as he has. In this plea there is some truth, mingled with a good deal more that looks like truth. It is a product of that " must-do-something " impulse which is the origin of much mischief, individual and social. An amiable anxiety to undo or neutralize an evil often prompts to rash courses, as you may see in the hurry with which one who has fallen is snatched up by those at hand ; just as though there were danger in letting him lie, which there is not, and no danger in incautiously raising him, which there is. Always you nnd among people, in proportion as they are ignorant, a belief in specifics, and a great confidence in pressing the adoption of them. Has some one a pain in the side, or in the chest, or in the bowels ? Then, before any careful inquiry as to its probable cause, there comes an urgent recom- THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 15 mendation ol a never-failing remedy, joined probably with the remark that, if it does no good, it can do no harm. There still prevails in the average mind a large amount of the fetishistic conception clearly shown by a butler to some friends of mine, who, having been found to drain the half-emptied medicine-bottles, explained that he thought it a pity good physic should be wasted, and that what benefited his master would benefit him. But, as fast as crude conceptions of diseases and remedial measures grow up into Pathology and Thera- peutics, we find increasing caution, along with increasing proof that evil is often done instead of good. This contrast is traceable not only as we pass from popular ignorance to professional knowledge, but as we pass from the smaller professional knowledge of early times to the greater professional knowledge of our own. The question with the modern physician is not as with the ancient shall the treatment be bloodletting ? shall cathartics, or shall diaphoretics be given ? or shall mercurials be administered ? But there rises the previous ques- tion shall there be any treatment beyond a healthy regimen ? And even among existing physicians it happens that, in proportion as the judgment is most cultivated, there is the least yielding to the " must- do-something " impulse. Is it not possible, then is it not even probable that this supposed necessity for immediate action, which is put in as an excuse for drawing quick conclusions from few data, is the concomitant of deficient knowledge ? Is it not probable that, as in Biology so in Sociology, the accumulation of more facts, the more critical com- parison of them, and the drawing of conclusions on scientific methods, will be accompanied by increasing doubt about the benefits to be secured, and increasing fear of the mischiefs which may be worked ? Is it not probable that what in the individual organism is improperly, though conveniently, called the vis medicatrix naturae, may be found to have its analogue in the social organism ? and will there not very likely come, along with the recognition of this, the consciousness that in both cases the one thing needful is to maintain the condi- tions under which the natural actions may have fair play ? Such a consciousness, to be anticipated from increased knowledge, will di- minish the force of this plea for prompt decision after little inquiry ; since it will check this tendency to think of a remedial measure as one that may do good and cannot do harm. Nay, more, the study of Sociology, scientifically carried on by tracing back proximate causes to remote ones, and tracing down primary effects to secondary and tertiary effects which multiply as they diffuse, will dissipate the cur- rent illusion that social evils admit of radical cures. Given an average defect of nature among the units of a society, and no skilful manipulation of them will prevent that defect from producing its equivalent of bad results. It is possible to change the form of these bad results ; it is possible to change the places at which they are 1 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. manifested ; but it is not possible to get rid of tbem. The belief, that faulty character can so organize itself socially as to get out of itself a conduct which is not proportionately faulty, is an utterly baseless belief. You may alter the incidence of the mischief, but the amount of it must inevitably be borne somewhere. Very gen- erally it is simply thrust out of one form into another ; as when, in Austria, improvident marriages being prevented, there come more numerous illegitimate children ; or as when, to mitigate the misery of foundlings, hospitals are provided for them, and there is an increase in the number of infants abandoned ; or as when, to insure the stability of houses, a Building Act prescribes a structure which, making small houses unremunerative, prevents due multiplication of them, and so causes overcrowding ; or as when a Lodging-House Act forbids this overcrowding, and vagrants have to sleep under the Adelphi-arches, or in the Parks, or even, for warmth's sake, on the dung-heaps in mews. Where the evil does not, as in cases like these, reappear in another place or form, it is necessarily felt in the shape of a diffused privation. For, suppose that by some official instrumen- tality you actually suppress an evil, instead of thrusting it from one spot into another suppose you thus successfully deal with a number of such evils by a number of such instrumentalities do you think these evils have disappeared absolutely ? To see that they have not, you have but to ask, Whence comes the official appai'atus ? What defrays the cost of working it ? Who supplies the necessaries of life to its members through all their gradations of rank ? There is no other source but the labor of peasants and artisans. When, as in France, the administrative agencies occupy some 600,000 to 700,000 men, who are taken from industrial pursuits, and, with their families, supported in more than average comfort, it becomes clear enough that heavy extra work is entailed on the producing classes. The already-tired laborer has to toil an additional hour ; his wife has to help in the fields as well as to suckle her infant ; his children are still more scantily fed than they would otherwise be ; and, beyond a decreased share of returns from increased labor, there is a diminished time and energy for such small enjoyments as the life, pitiable at the best, permits. How, then, can it be supposed that the evils have been extinguished or escaped ? The repressive action has had its corresponding reaction ; and, instead of intenser evils here and there, or now and then, you have got an evil that is constant and universal. When it is thus seen that the evils are not got rid of, but, at best, only redistributed, and that the question in any case is, whether redistribution, even if practicable, is desirable, it will be seen that the " must-do-something " plea is a quite insufficient one. There is ample reason to believe that, in proportion as scientific men carry into this most involved class of phenomena the methods they have successfully adopted with other classes, they will see THE RECENT ECLIPSE OF THE SUN. 17 that, even less in this class than in other classes, are conclusions to be drawn and action to be taken without prolonged and critical inves- tigation. Still there will recur the same plea under other forms. " Political conduct must be matter of compromise." " We must adapt our meas- ures to immediate exigencies, and cannot be deterred by remote con- siderations." " The data for forming scientific judgments are not to be had : most of them are unrecorded, and those which are recorded are difficult to find as well as doubtful when found." " Life is too short, and the demands upon our energies too great, to permit any such elaborate study as seems required. We must, therefore, guide ourselves by common-sense as best we may." And then, behind the more scientifically-minded who give this answer, there are those who hold, tacitly or overtly, that guidance of the kind indicated is not possible, even after any amount of inquiry. They do not believe in any ascertainable order among social phe- nomena there is no such thing as a social science. This proposition we will discuss in the next chapter. -- THE RECENT ECLIPSE OF THE SUN. By R. A. PEOCTOE, B.A., F. E. A. S. THE eclipse of the sun which took place on December 12th last was looked forward to by astronomers with some anxiety, because many months must pass before they will have any similar opportunity of studying the sun's surroundings. Year after year, for four years in succession, there have been total eclipses of the sun in each year one and each eclipse has taught us much that has been worth knowing ; but during the present year there will be no total solar eclipse worth observing; there will be none in 18*73, only one (and not a very im- portant one) in 1874, while during the total eclipse of 1875 the moon's shadow will traverse a path very inconveniently situated for intending observers. Besides, the inquiries and discussions of astronomers had reached a very interesting stage before the recent eclipse occurred. A sort of contest though, of course, a friendly and philosophic contest had been waged over the sun's corona, the halo or glory which is seen around the black disk of the moon when the sun is totally concealed ; and, though, in the opinion of most astronomers, the contest had really been decided by the observations made during the total eclipse of De- cember, 1870, some slight doubts still existed in the minds of a few. 2 1 8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY It was hoped and the hope would appear to have been justified that during the late eclipse these doubts would be finally removed. A few weeks must elapse even after the present paper appears, and five or six from the present time of writing, before the sun-painted pictures, which are to decide the question, can be in the hands of the judges. But, from the description which has already reached us, we can feel very little doubt as to the nature of the decision which will be arrived at. A brief sketch of the progress of the inquiry into the subject of the solar corona will serve to exhibit the nature of the doubts which the recent expeditions to the Indian seas were intended to remove. From very early ages it had been known that when the sun's disk is wholly concealed by the moon, a glory of light starts into view, ren- dering the scene less terrible, though scarcely less striking, than it would be were total darkness to prevail. Now, gradually, it began to be recognized that this glory around the sun consisted of several distinct portions. In the first place, quite close to the moon's black body, a very narrow ring of light had been observed, so bright that many astronomers were led to believe that the sun was not in reality totally concealed, but that a ring of sunlight remained even at the moment of central eclipse. This excessively bright ring of light is not, however, always seen, if (as many accounts suggest) it is to be distinguished from the bright inner corona of which I shall presently have to speak. During the recent eclipses we have had no clear evidence respecting this brilliant but very narrow ring ; and it is just possible that the accounts derived from earlier eclipses have been a little exaggerated. Then, secondly, a red border is seen around portions of the black disk of the moon. This border has commonly a serrated edge, and has been called the sierra, from a well-known Spanish name for a range of hills. From what thus resembles a chain of rose-colored mountains, appear to spring certain red projections which have been called the solar prominences. Their general appearance during eclipse may be inferred from the description given by those who first observed them, in 1842, who compared the moon's disk surrounded by these glowing objects to a black brooch set round with garnets. But it is now known that such names as prominences and protuberances are not properly applicable to these red objects, and that the word sierra is equally inapplicable to the rim of colored light beneath the red projec- tions. The prominences as well as the sierra (for, however unsuitable, the names continue in use) are in reality formed of glowing gas, hy- drogen being their chief constituent element, but other elements being also present in a gaseous form. Only, the reader must not run away with the notion that these great red masses, some of which are more than a hundred thousand miles in height, are of the nature of our gas- THE RECENT ECLIPSE OF THE SUN. 19 flames. They are not, properly speaking, flames at all, but masses of gas glowing with intensity of heat. 1 Many of the most important discoveries recently made respecting the sun relate to these wonderful objects ; but in this place I shall refrain from speaking more about them than seems necessary to illus- trate the subject of the corona ; for, as a matter of fact, the observers during the late eclipse turned scarcely a thought to the colored promi- nences, nor is it likely that any thing new respecting them will ever be learned during total eclipses of the sun. Outside the sierra and the prominences, the true corona is seen. To ordinary vision, and probably also even under the scrutiny of pow- erful telescopes, it appears to be divided into two distinct portions. There is in the first place an inner and brighter region, extending ap- parently to a distance from the sun equal to about one-fifth of his diameter. The outline of this inner corona is uneven but not radiated, and, though not sharply defined, appears yet to be very definitely indicated by the rapid falling off of lustre beyond its limits. The inner corona has been described as of a white, pearly lustre by some observ- ers ; but under the most favorable conditions it appears, when care- fully observed, to have a somewhat ruddy hue. Extending much farther from the sun, how far is not as yet known, is the radiated corona. It is much fainter than the inner corona, and its light grows fainter and fainter with distance from the sun, until lost to view on the dark but not black background of the sky. Through this faint and softly-graduated corona extend radiations of somewhat greater brightness. It is between these radiations that those dark gaps or rifts appear, which have figured so much in the narratives of recent eclipse observations. The dark gaps are, indeed, more striking features than the radiations which form them ; but it must be remembered, nevertheless, that the radiations are the only positive features in this case, the gaps being merely regions where there are no radiations. We may typically represent the corona, as it had been revealed to us during former eclipses, by the accompanying sketch from a photo- graph taken by Mr. Brothers at Syracuse during the eclipse of Decem- ber, 1870. Only, it must be remembered that the photograph may not represent the full extent of the corona, while many details of its struct- ure are too delicate to be shown in a figure so small as is here given. It will be understood further that the inner part, marked r, is much brighter than the whole of the outer part, marked c, and that this out- er part shades off gradually into the dark background of the sky. 1 In a gas-flame there is (as our meters tell us) a continual supply of gas, which mixes with the oxygen of the air, and undergoes what is called combustion. But in the sun's colored prominences the hydrogen enters into no chemical combination, at least none such as we are familiar with. Simply by the intense heat to which it is exposed it glows, just as iron glows when it is heated sufficiently. zo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. Now, the question which Las agitated astronomy during the past few years has been simply whether the glory of light seen around the sun is in reality a solar appendage, or may not be due wholly or in part to the illumination either of our own atmosphere or of some other matter (not necessarily atmospheric) lying much nearer to us than the sun does. If we consider the figure, we can see at once that if we have here a real solar appendage that is, matter which exists all around the sun's globe it is an appendage of the most amazing ex- tent. The black disk which forms the centre of the figure is of course intended to represent the moon, whose diameter we know is about 2,200 miles, and if for a moment we suppose the corona c and R sur- rounds the moon, we see that it must extend on one side to about 5,000 miles, and elsewhere to about 2,800 miles. But exactly behind the moon lies the sun, a little more than concealed by the moon ; and the sun's diameter is about 850,000 miles. So that, if the corona is something which surrounds the sun, it extends, as the picture shows, to at least 2,000,000 miles on one side, and elsewhere to about 1,200,000 miles. Neglecting the dark rifts for the moment, and regarding the whole corona as shaped like a globe, and having a diameter four times as great as the sun's, we should have to regard its volume as ex- ceeding his not four times, nor sixteen times, but sixty-four times. And when we are reminded that the sun's own volume exceeds that of this earth on which we live some 1,200,000 times, we see what a stu- pendous conclusion we must arrive at, if we regard the corona as a solar appendage. Of course, we need not imagine that the corona has a continuous substance completely filling a space some 77,000,000 times larger than the earth. It may be made up of multitudes of minute bodies, with vacant spaces between. But the conclusion re- mains that a region of space, exceeding our earth's volume so many millions of times, is thus occupied by matter of some sort. Nor is the conclusion rendered a whit less surprising if we take the dark rifts into account. Nay, we obtain an enhanced idea of the wonderful nature of the corona, regarded as a solar appendage, when we consider that it possesses so remarkable a structure that, as seen from our distant stand-point, it shows well-defined gaps or rifts. For unquestionably it is not to be regarded as something flat or plane- shaped, like its picture, or a decoration (which in appearance it often strikingly resembles). It must extend on all sides from the sun (if it is indeed a solar appendage), and not merely from the sides of the disk he turns toward us at the time of an eclipse ; and it can easily be seen that its shape, in length and breadth and thickness, must be strange, to account for such rifts as are shown in the figure. If we take an orange to represent the sun, and, boring holes all over it, stick spills in these holes to represent the region occupied by the corona, we shall find that, in order that our spillikined orange may exhibit a rifted corona in whatever position it is placed, we must either leave several THE RECENT ECLIPSE OF THE SUN. 21 large parts of its surface without spills, or that the spills over many such parts must be very short. "When this consideration is attended to, the spillikin corona will be found to have a very complex and re- markable figure. It is not to be wondered at that, so soon as the corona began to be thought about at all, astronomers were led to believe that it is not of the nature of a solar appendage, but either a sort of halo in our own atmosphere, or else an appendage belonging in some way to the moon. Kepler and Halley and Newton, to say nothing of a host of other as- tronomers who considered the question during the infancy of modern astronomy, were led to different conclusions, by the comparatively im- perfect evidence available in their day. We may pass over the argu- ments adduced in favor of the three several theories which were in question. Suffice it that, gradually, it was admitted more and more generally that the corona must be some appendage surrounding the sun ; and, in comparatively recent times a quarter of a centuary ago, or thereabouts the opinion began to prevail that the corona is in fact the sun's atmosphere. But quite recently discoveries were made which seemed to throw great doubt upon this opinion. By means of the instrument called the spectroscope, astronomers have learned not only how to study the sun's colored prominences when the sun is shining in full splendor, but also to determine to some extent the condition of the glowing gas of which those prominences are formed. When this was done, it did not ap- pear that the density of the glowing gas even close by the sun's body was so great as might be expected if the corona were an atmosphere properly so called. Some prominences are shown in the figure ; and if we consider the pressure to which objects so placed must be sub- jected, supposing them to lie at the bottom of an atmosphere more than a million miles in height, we shall at once see that the pressure of our own air at the sea-level would be a mere nothing by compari- son. It is supposed that our air may be two or three hundred miles in depth, but, even if we suppose it to be ten times as deep as this, the depth of the imagined solar atmosphere would be many times greater. And then the pressure of our air is caused by the earth's attraction, and would be greater if the earth exerted a greater attraction. But the attractive energy of the sun (at his surface) exceeds the force of the earth's gravity about twenty-seven times. "We may safely infer, then, that an atmosphere such as the corona was supposed to be, would cause a pressure exceeding the atmospheric pressure we experience some thousands of times. The gas forming the prominences would be correspondingly compressed under these circumstances. But as a matter of fact the pressure at the very base of the colored promi- nences appears to be a mere fraction of that which our own air exerts ftt the sea-level. Accordingly, Mr. Lockyer, who had taken a prominent part in es- 22 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. tablishing this very interesting result, was led to express the opinion that the sun's atmosphere has no such extent as had been imagined, and that the corona is an appearance (only) in our own air, " an at- mospheric effect merely," "due to the passage of the sun's rays through our own atmosphere." This conclusion was, however, not very generally accepted. Sev eral astronomers at once pointed out that the air which lies toward the place on the heavens where the corona is seen, is not illuminated at all by the sun's rays during total eclipse. I also pointed out that whatever light that particular part of the air receives during totality not direct sunlight, but light from the prominences, and so much of the corona as might be admitted to be solar would extend over the very place of the moon, and gradually increase thence on all sides instead of gradually diminishing, as happens with the corona. This would not be the place to exhibit the reasoning by which these results can be demonstrated ; for mathematical considerations, not altogether simple, are involved in the complete discussion of the matter. Let it suffice to say, as respects the air between the observer and the moon, that, since the observer can see the colored prominences and the inner bright corona during totality, the air all around him (toward the moon as well as elsewhere) must be lit up by their light. And as respects the gradual increase of brightness on all sides of the place where the eclipsed sun is, let the reader consider that, if, at any time during totality, a bird were to fly (with enormous rapidity) from the observer's station directly toward the moon's centre, that bird would remain in the moon's shadow as he so flew ; but if he flew in any other direction he would presently pass out of the shadow that is, he would reach a place where the air is illuminated. And he would so much the more quickly reach the illuminated air, as he flew more directly from the moon's place on the sky. So that, putting the line of the ob- server's sight instead of the swiftly-flying bird, we see that this line will so much the sooner reach illuminated air, according as it is turned farther from the place of the moon on the heavens. Thus the air toward the place of the moon, though illuminated, is less brightly illuminated than that lying toward any other part of the sky; and the atmospheric illumination must gradually increase the farther we turn our eyes from the moon's place. So matters stood when preparations were being made for the expe- ditions to view the eclipse of 1870. Evidence had, indeed, been ob- tained during the eclipse of 1869 in America, which seemed to show that the substance of the corona is gaseous ; and singularly enough it appeared as though this substance, whatever it might be, shone with a light resembling that of the aurora borealis. But those who regarded the corona as a mere glare in our own atmosphere, rejected these re- sults because they seemed " bizarre and perplexing in the extreme." The American astronomers, however, were not willing to have their THE RECENT ECLIPSE OF THE SUN 23 observations rejected in this summary fashion ; and they, therefore, crossed the Atlantic in great force to observe the Mediterranean eclipse of December, 1870. It was with some little regret, I must confess, that, as the eclipse of 1870 drew near, I found many of the intending observers proposing to direct their chief attention to the question whether the corona is a solar appendage or a mere glare in our own atmosphere. It seemed to me clear that the atmospheric theory was completely disposed of by the evidence, while a host of interesting questions remained to be an- swered respecting the nature of the amazing solar appendage thus shown to exist. "I think I have not erred," I wrote in October, 1870, " in insisting that we have ample evidence to prove that the corona is a solar appendage ; but what sort of appendage it may be, remains yet to be shown. Observations directed to show whether it is or not a solar appendage will, I apprehend, be a total waste of time ; and it is for this reason that I have, at the meetings of the Astronomical Society and elsewhere, deprecated all such observations." (Preface to second edition of " Other Worlds.") Nay, I fear I even offended one or two by the zeal with which I urged the importance of endeavoring to de- termine, not whether the corona is a solar appendage, but what sort of solar appendage it may be. However, the observations were made, photographs and sketches were taken, and the general conclusion drawn from the work of 1870 was that which Sir John Herschel, only six weeks before his lamented decease, enunciated in the following terms in a letter addressed to my- felf : " The corona is certainly extra-terrestrial and ultra-lunar." Even then, however, some doubts still remained in a few minds. The question of the corona was still mooted in essays and lectures nay, the atmospheric theory was so successfully defended before the British Association last August, as to lead Prof. Tait to remark that, in his opinion, it was in the main true ; while the president of the meeting Prof. Thompson even expressed the opinion that the spe- cial observations made last December proved that the greater part of the corona was a mere phenomenon of our own atmosphere. It must be pointed out, however, in justice to these eminent mathemati- cians, that only one side of the question had been adequately presented to them. Thus another year had passed, and the subject of the corona stood almost exactly as in the autumn of 1870. Well-appointed expeditions were again about to set forth to view an important eclipse, and again the question which the observers had before them was the worn-out problem whether the corona is or is not a solar appendage. But much more faith was placed in photography than had been the case in 1870. Then, men doubted whether photography could give good pictures of the. corona. The colored prominences had been pho- tographed repeatedly; but the finest telescopes had failed to bring the 2 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. corona fairly on to the glass. Mr. Brothers, of Manchester, however, showed how this difficulty was to be surmounted. He discarded the telescope and employed the ordinary photographic camera. The re- sults were most satisfactory. The eclipsed sun was indeed partially hidden by clouds during all but the last few seconds of totality ; but for eight seconds the camera was fairly at work ; and the result was, " the corona as it had never been seen on glass before." THE Btm's CORONA. E, the inner or ring-formed corona ; C, the outer radiated corona. During the late eclipse, Mr. Brothers's plan was adopted at several stations, and most successfully, by all the photographing parties whose accounts have yet reached Europe. For many weeks, however, these photographs will not be available for examination. The great point which we know already respecting them is this : that they show an extensive corona, with persistent rifts those taken at the beginning of totality differing from those taken at the end only as respects parts of the corona very far from the sun. All those doubts, which had been based on the circumstance that Mr. Brothers's best photograph was taken nearly at the close of totality, are therefore removed by the photographs taken on the present occasion. But, the corona was so favorably seen even with the naked eye, during the recent eclipse, as to dispose of all the doubts formerly en- tertained. In an interesting letter in the Daily News, an eye-witness at Bekul, describing Mr. Lockyer's observations, says that so soon as the totality began the corona appeared, rigid in the heavens, like a magnificent decoration, suggesting by its fixity the idea of perfect rest THE RECENT ECLIPSE OF THE SUN. 25 in those distant regions. It was marked with radial streaks of great brilliancy, separated by relatively dark furrows, and extending all round the upper and lower parts of the moon's circumference, but less conspicuous (or altogether wanting the account is not very clear on this point) at the sides. This observation is of great interest, because the upper and lower parts of the sun's circumference at the moment of observation corresponded to the sun's equatorial regions, while the 6ides corresponded to the position of the solar poles. Mr. Lockyer's account thus seems to support a theory lately urged, according to which the corona is caused by radial emanations chiefly from the neigh- borhood of the solar equator. It is clear, however, from the rifts (es- pecially as shown in the figure), that such emanations cannot be con- tinuous, but must take place locally, and, as it were, fitfully. But the most important account which has yet reached Europe is that contained in a letter from M. Janssen, the eminent spectroscopist, to M. Faye, the president of the French Academy of Sciences. It should be noted, in the first place, that in a letter to the secretary of the Academy Janssen says : " I have just observed the eclipse, only a few moments ago, with an admirable sky ; and, while still under the emotion occasioned by the splendid phenomenon which I have but now witnessed, I send you a few lines by the Bombay Courier. The result of my observations at Sholoor indicates, without any doubt, the solar region of the corona and the existence of material substances (matures) outside the sierra." Then follows his letter to the president, which runs thus : " I have seen the corona as I could not in 1868, when I gavo myself wholly to the prominences. Nothing could be more beautiful or more brilliant ; and there were definite forms which exclude all possi- bility of an origin in our own atmosphere." He proceeds to describe the coronal spectrum, confirming the Ameidcan observations with one notable exception : he recognized the solar dark lines in the spectrum of the corona, a proof that no inconsiderable portion of its light is re- flected sunlight. Then he draws his letter to a conclusion with these decisive words: "I conceive that the question whether the corona is due to our own atmosphere is disposed of (tranchee), and we have be- fore us in perspective the study of the regions lying outside the sun, which must needs be most interesting and fruitful." I could wish that the same opinion had been received when it was advocated twenty-two months ago in almost the same words. CasselVs Magazine. 26 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY. Br Eev. T. W. FOWLE. HE who pretends to have any thing new to say upon so old a sub- ject as the immortality of the soul, must expect to arouse cer- tainly opposition, and probably contempt. Nevertheless, this at least is certain, that the tendency of science, which has powerfully affected every domain of thought in new and unexpected ways, cannot but place the old doctrine of immortality under new and, it may be, unexj)ected lights, abolishing old arguments, and suggesting new ones that have not yet obtained the consideration they deserve. My object in this paper is to endeavor, by the aid of all-victorious analysis, to throw some little light upon the relations of the belief in immortality with scientific thought ; and, at the outset, I wish distinctly and positively to affirm that it is not my intention to construct any argument for the belief against science, but merely to explain the conditions under which, as it seems to me, the question must be debated. Those conditions, though in themselves plain and simple, are, I believe, very imperfectly understood, and much bewildering nonsense is talked upon both sides of the question by men who have not clearly realized the nature of evidence, the amount of proof required, or the sources from which that proof must be derived. I think it possible to lay down a series of propositions with which, in principle at any rate, most reasonable minds would agree, and which would have the effect of defining the area of debate and the true point of conflict. This may sound presumptuous ; whether it be really so or not, the event alone can prove. Now, the first demand of science is for an accurate definition of the object of discussion, that is, that both religious and scientific thinkers should be quite sure that they are discussing the same thing. Im- mortality is bound up in the minds of religious people with a vast amount of beautiful and endearing associations, which form no part of the hard, dry fact itself. The definition of immortality, viewed scien- tifically, is, I take it, something of this sort : the existence of a think- ing, self-conscious personality after death, that is, after the bodily func- tions have ceased to operate. This personality may or may not exist forever ; it may or may not be responsible for the past ; it may or may not be capable of rest, joy, and love ; it may or may not be joined to its old body or to a new body. These, and a hundred similar beliefs with which religion has clothed the mere fact of existence after death, form no essential part, I must again affirm, of the fact itself. And throughout the argument, this, and no other than this, will be the sense in which I use the word immortality ; because it is the only one that I have a right to expect that the scientific mind will accept. It may be well, also, before going further, to make it clear to our- SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY. 27 selves in what sense we use the word religion. Men who would be very much ashamed of themselves if they were detected using scientific words inaccurately, do, nevertheless, attribute meanings to the word religion, which it is difficult to hear with patience. I have heard an eminent scientific man upon a public occasion, and in a serious manner, define religion to be duty, making a mere idle play upon the original meaning of the word. Without, however, entering into verbal discus- sions, it will be, surely, enough to define religion as a practical belief in, and consciousness of, God and immortality ; and, as the latter is now absolutely essential to the idea of religion as a motive moral power, and as, moreover, it includes, or at any rate necessitates the belief in the existence of God, we may fairly conclude that, for all practical purposes, and certainly for the purpose of this argument, re- ligion is synonymous with a belief in immortality. And if, for any reason, mankind does at any time cease to believe in its own immortal- ity, then religion will also have ceased to exist as a part of the con- sciousness of humanity. To clear up, therefore, the relations between immortality and science becomes a matter of the utmost importance It will be well next to analyze briefly the effect which science has upon the nature of the proofs by which this, like all other facts, must be demonstrated. Let us, for convenience' sake, regard the world as a vast jury, before which the various advocates of many truths, and of still more numerous errors, plead the cause of their respective clients. However much a man may wrap himself up in the consciousness of ascertained truth, and affirm that it makes no matter to him what the many believe, yet Nature is in the long-run too powerful for him, and the instinct of humanity excites him to plead the cause of what he knows to be truth, and to mourn in his heart and be sore vexed if men reject it. Truth is ever generous and hopeful, though at the same time patient and long-suffering ; she longs to make converts, but does not deny herself or turn traitress to her convictions if converts refuse to be made. There is a sense, indeed, in which it may be said that truth only becomes actual and vital by becoming subjective through re- ceiving the assent of men. What, then, must the advocate for the fact of the immortality of the soul expect that science will require of hitn when he pleads before the tribunal of the world for that truth which, because it is dear to himself, he wishes to enforce on others ? The alterations in the minds of men, which the tendency of modem thought has effected in respect of evidence, may be summed up undei two heads : First, the nature of the evidence required is altogethei altered, and a great many arguments, that would in former days have gone to the jury, are now summarily suppressed. Fact can only be proved by facts, that is, by events, instances, things, which are sub- mitted to experience and observation, and are confirmed by experi- ment and reason. And, secondly, the minds of the jury are subject to a priori, and, on the whole, perfectly reasonable prepossessions before z8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. the trial begins. The existence of changeless law, the regular, natural, and orderly march of life, the numerous cases in which what seemed to be the effect of chance or miracle have been brought within the. limits of ascertained causation; all these things predispose the mind against pleadings for the supernatural or the divine. Most true, ot course, it is, that there are most powerful prepossessions on the other side as well ; but the difference is, that these are as old as man him- self, while the former have only been of later times imported into the debate, and, if they have not been originated, have at least received their definite aim and vivid impulse from the results of scientific research. Now, the first result which flows from these alterations is the some- what startling one, that all the arguments for immortality derived from natural religion (so called) are, in the estimation of science, absolutely futile. To put this point in the strongest form, all the hopes, wishes, and convictions of all the men that ever lived, could not and cannot convince one single mind that disbelieves in its own immortality. Unless the advocates of religion clearly apprehend this truth, they are, it seems to me, quite disabled from entering into the discussion upon conditions which their opponents, by the very law of this opposition, cannot but demand. It is true, indeed, that this temper of mind is confined at present to a comparatively few persons, as in the last century it belonged to the philosophers and to their immediate followers. But then it is as clear as the day that, as science is getting a more and more practical hold upon men's minds by a thousand avenues, and mastering them by a series of brilliant successes, this temper is rapidly passing from the few into the popular mind ; that it is becoming part of the furniture of the human intellect, and is powerfully influencing the very conditions of human nature. Sooner or later we shall have to face a disposition in the minds of men to accept nothing as fact, but what facts can prove, or the senses bear witness to. In vain will witness after witness be called to prove the inalienable prerogative, the intuitional convictions, the universal aspirations, the sentimental longings, the moral necessity, all which have existed in the heart of man since man was. Nor will the science of religion help us in the hour of need. There can be a science of religion exactly as there can be a science of alchemy. All that men have ever thought or believed about the transmutation of metals may be brought together, classified as facts, and form a valuable addition to our knowledge of the history of the human mind, but it would not thereby prove that the transmutation had taken place, or that the desire for it was any thing more than man's childlike strivings after that which could only be really revealed by the methods of natural science. So also the science of religion can prove what men have held, and suggest what they ought to hold. It can show that they have believed certain things to be true, it is utterly powerless to prove that SCIENCE aND IMMORTALITY. 29 they are true. It can strengthen the principle of faith in those who do not require positive demonstration for their beliefs; it cannot even cross swords with those, soon to be the majority of thinking men, to whom positive demonstration has become as necessary to their minds as food to their bodies. Nay, they will resent rather than welcome the attempt to put a multitude of hopes and myriads of wishes in the place of one solid fact, and will soon confirm themselves in their opinions, by the obvious argument that these hopes and wishes are peculiar to the childhood of the race, and form only one out of many proofs, that man is liable to perpetual self-deception until he confronts fact and law. Not indeed that they will indulge in the equally un- scientific statement that there is no such thing as immortality. The attitude of mind which they will assume will be that of knowing nothing, and of having no reasonable hope of ever discovering any thing, about man's future destiny. And while they will think it good that man, or at any rate that some men, should allow themselves to hope for life after death, yet they will steadily oppose any assertion that these hopes ought to guide men's conduct, influence their motives, or form their character. Now, if this be true, it is difficult to overrate the importance of thoroughly and distinctly realizing it. That the evidence for the truths of natural religion is overwhelming. is one of the statements that are accepted as truisms, at the very moment that science is slowly leavening the human intellect with the conviction that all such evidence is scientifically worthless. Never- theless the opposite idea has taken firm hold of the religious mind, and forms the basis of many an eloquent refutation of the " pre- sumptuous assurance " and " illogical obstinacy " of modern thought. Men must have smiled to hear themselves alternately refuted and rebuked by controversialists who did not understand the tone of mind against which they were arguing, or who assumed as true the very things which their opponents resolved to know nothing about, either in the way of belief or rejection. It is very certain, however, that this error will not yield to the mere statement that it is an error, and therefore I will go on to examine a little more minutely the various arguments by which men seek to prove the doctrine of immortality These are mainly fourfold : 1. That it is an original intuition, and arising from this, 2. That it is a universal belief. 3. That it follows necessarily from the existence of God. 4. That it is essential as a motive for human morality. 1. I take the statement of this argument from the words of one than whom no man has a better right to be heard on such a subject. Prof. Max Muller, in his preface to the first volume of his " Chips from a German Workshop," writes as follows : " An intuition of God, a sense of human weakness and dependence, a belief in a Divine govern- ment of the world, a distinction between good and evil, and a hope of 30 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. a better life, these are the radical elements of all religions. . . . Unless they had formed part of the original dowry of the human soul, religion itself would have remained an impossibility." Now, I am not quite sure that I understand in what sense the writer means to assert that these intuitions, which, for practical purposes, may be limited to three, God, sin, and immortality, are part of the original dowry of the human soul. If it is meant that there was a special creation of the human soul, furnished from the beginning with these three intuitions, then science will resolutely refuse to admit the fact. There can be no mistake about the position held by the bulk of scientific men, and little doubt, I should think, as to its reasonableness. If there is any thing that is in ultimate analysis incomprehensible, or any fact that cannot be accounted for by natural causes, then the possibility of special crea- tion and original intuitions must be candidly allowed, but not other- wise. There is just a chance, for instance, that the difference between the brains of the lowest man and the highest animal may ultimately be regarded as a fact inexplicable upon any theory of evolution; more, however, from a lack of evidence than from any other cause. Be this as it may, the possibility of special creation finds a distinct foothold in the acknowledged fact that the connection between thought and the brain of animals, as well as of man, is an ultimate incomprehensibility, a mystery which the law of man's intelligence prevents his ever even attempting or hoping to understand. The famous saying " cogito ergo sum" the foundation of all modern metaphysics, may come to be a formula under which religion, philosophy, and science, may all take shelter, and approach each other without ever actually meeting. But the three intuitions of God, sin, and immortality, can all be accounted for by the growth of human experience, as every one knows who has at all studied the subject. At some period of the world's history, science will answer, an ape-like creature first recog- nized that it or he had offended against the good of some other crea- ture and so became conscious of sin, or was created as a moral being. Thus much Mr. Darwin has affirmed, but (speaking from memory) I do not think he has called very special attention to that still greater epoch (or was it the same ?) in man's history, when this ape-like crea- ture, seeing one of its own species lying dead, recognized as a fact " I shall die." This is what we may term the creation of man as an im- mortal being, for in the very conflict of the two facts one, the reflect- ing being, the self-conscious I ; the other, death, the seeming destroyer lie embedded all man's future spiritual cravings for eternity. And the idea of God would come in the order of Nature, before either of these, to the creature which first reflected upon the source of its own existence, and recognized a " tendency in things which it could not understand." This is, in brief, the scientific account of man's creation, and of the growth of the ideas of natural religion within his mind ; and we may remark in passing that it must be a singularly uncandid SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY 31 and prejudiced mind which does not recognize that the book of Gene- sis, which, upon any theory, contains man's earliest thoughts about himself, expresses in allegorical fashion exactly the same views. The same views are also apparently expressed by Prof. Max Miiller, in a very beautiful passage in the article on Semitic Monotheism, in the same volume : " The primitive intuition of God and the ineradicable feeling of dependence upon God could only have been the result of a primitive revelation in the truest sense of that word. Man, who owed his existence to God, and whose being centred and rested in God, saw and felt God as the only source of his own and all other existence. By the very act of the creation God had revealed Himself. Here He was, manifested in His works in all His majesty and power before the face of those to whom He had given eyes to see and ears to hear, and into whose nostrils He had breathed the breath of life, even the Spirit of God." The first impression made by this passage may be, that, in speak- ing of a " revelation in the truest sense," it affords an instance of that hateful habit of using religious words in a non-natural sense. But a little deeper consideration will show that no possible definition of a revelation, accompanied and attested by miracles, can exclude the revelation made by Nature to the first man who thought. In fact, we have here a description of creation, which science, with possibly a little suspiciousness at some of the phrases, may accept, while, at the same time, natural religion is carried to its utmost and highest limits, and a*ong with this a foundation is laid for a truer theory of the miracu- lous. But, while gladly admitting all this, the fact remains that these intuitions, following upon a revelation in which Nature herself was the miracle, are still plainly only the expressions of man's inward experi- ences, and that, however old, and venerable, and exalted, they are still only hopes, wishes, and aspirations, which may or may not be true, but which are incapable of proving the actual facts toward which they soar. It is open, therefore, to any man, accustomed to look for positive demonstration, to dismiss them as dreams of the infancy of man, or to relegate them into the prison-house of the incomprehensibilities, or to content himself with a purely natural theory of human life which re- jects and dislikes the theological. 2. But when we come to inquire how far these primary intuitions have been universal, and whether they can be fairly called ineradica- ble, we are met by some very startling facts. The dictum -naa SoKet tovto alvai (pa/xev is so reasonable in itself that no serious attempt would be made to question a belief that even approached to being uni- versal, even if it could not be shown to be part of the original furni- ture of the mind. But the real difficulty lies in finding (apart from morals) any beliefs of which this universality can be predicated, and assuredly the immortality of the soul is not one of them. The mind of man at its lowest seems incapable of grasping the idea, and the 32 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. mind of man at its highest has striven to emancipate itself from it altogether. The evidence for this statement lies within the reach of all, but I will just adduce three names whose very juxtaposition, by the sense of incongruous oddity stirred up, may make their joint testi- mony the more important. I mean Moses, Buddha, and Julius Csesar, all of whom, though widely separated in time, race, and character, representing absolutely different types of human nature, approaching the subject from widely different points of view, do, nevertheless, agree in this, that the consciousness of immortality formed no part of the furniture of their minds. Moses lived one of the most exalted lives, whether regarded from the religious or political side, that has ever been lived on earth, ana yet, as is well known, there is not a shadow of a trace to prove that he was moved by the hope of a reward after death, or that the idea of ex- istence after death was ever consciously presented to his mind. He may be, on the whole, claimed by modern science (the miraculous ele- ment being by it excluded) as an example of those who perform the greatest practical duties, and are content to stand before the mystery of the Unknowable without inquiry and without alarm, so far as the doctrine of man's immortality is concerned. Here is another of those strange links that unite the earliest thinker and legislator with so much of the spirit of modern thought and law. Buddha, on the con- trary (or his disciples, if it be true that his original teaching is lost to us), cannot be quoted as one who did not realize the possibility of life after death, nor is any scheme of philosophy that is practically Pan- theistic inconsistent with immortality, if we limit the word to the bare idea of existing somehow after death. But I rather quote him as one of those who show that the very consciousness of undying personal life, the existence of a self-reflecting ego, which gives all its shape and force to the desire for life after death, may come to be regarded as a positive evil, and painless extinction be maintained as the ultimate hope and destiny of man. And the case of Julius Caesar is, in some respects, stronger still. He is one of the world's crowning intellects, and he lived at a time when men such as he were the heirs of all the ages, the possessors of the treasures of thought in which, for genera- tions past, the greatest men had elaborated doctrines concerning re- ligion, duty, and life. And he represents the views of those whom the truest voice of science now repudiates as running into unscientilio extremes. With him non-existence after death was a matter of prac- tical belief. It colored his opinions upon politics, as really as Crom- well's religion affected his. He spoke against the infliction of the penalty of death upon the conspirators in Catiline's case, because death was a refuge from sorrows, because it solved all mortal miseriec and left place for neither care nor joy. And Cato expressly applaud- ed his sentiments, though with a touch of reaction from popular the- ology, which sounds strangely modern. To this, then, all the original SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY. 33 intuitions of the human mind, all the glowing aspirations enshrined in Greek poetry, legend, and art, all the natural theology contained in the works of Socrates and Plato, had come at last. Will any reason- able man affirm that an age, which breathes the very air of material- ism, and whose children suck in the notions of changeless law with their mother's milk, will arrive at any thing better if it has no facts tvpon which to rely as proofs that its hopes are not unfounded ? And how can that be called a truth of human nature, or be allowed to ex- ercise a real influence upon men's minds, which is capable of being either entirely suppressed, or earnestly striven against, or contemptu- ously rejected ? 3. The remaining two arguments need not detain us long ; indeed, I should not have mentioned them, were it not that very eminent divines have based the belief in immortality upon the existence of God or the necessities of man. Let it once be granted that we are the creatures of a personal, loving, and sustaining God, concerning whom it is possible to form adequate conceptions, and then doubts as to our immortality would be vain indeed. But the rejoinder from the scientific view is plain enough. This, it w r ould be said, is a mere obscurum per obscurius. The belief in God is simply the working of the human mind striving to account for the beginning of its own existence, exactly as the belief in immortality is the result of the attempt to think about the end thereof. If the definition of God be a stream or tendency of things that we cannot otherwise account for, then it will not help us to a belief in immortality. It is surprising indeed to see how the plain conditions of the case are evaded by enthusiastic controversialists ; and I am almost ashamed of being obliged to make statements that have an inevitable air of being the baldest truisms. 4. The idea that immortality is essential to the moral development of man, and that therefore it is demonstrably true, seems to receive some little countenance from Prof. Max Muller in the close of his article on Buddhism, in which he thinks it improbable that "The reformer of India, the teacher of so perfect a code of morality, .... should have thrown away one of the most powerful weapons in the hands of every religious teacher, the belief in a future life, and should not have seen that, if the life was sooner or later to end in nothing, it was hardly worth the trouble which he took himself, or the sacrifices which he imposed upon his disciples." The true bearing, in all its immense importance, of man's morality upon his belief in immortality will have to be considered hereafter; but, when used as a demonstration, it is at once seen to belong to the class of arguments from final causes which science resolutely rejects. A much more fatal answer, however, is found in a simple appeal to history, from which it will be found that, in Mr. Froude's words, no doctrine whatever, even of immortality, has a mere "mechanical 3 34 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. effect " upon men's hearts and consciences, and that noble lives may be lived and exalted characters formed by those who are brave enough to disregard it. Nay, what is worse, immortality may be a powerful weapon for evil as for good, if it chime in with a perverted nature. The Pharaoh before whom Moses stood believed it, and we know with what results. Only that, once more will science retort, which can be proved to be true upon sufficient evidence, can be positively known to be useful. To sum up, then, what has been said, we have seen that, however strong may be the wishes of man for immortality, however ennobling to his nature and true to his instincts the belief in it may be, there is nothing in natural religion to answer the demands of modern thought for actual proof, and nothing therefore to impugn the wisdom or refute the morality of that class of persons, representing, as they do, a growing tendency in the human mind, who take refuge in a suspense of thought and judgment upon matters which they declare are too high for them. Occasionally we may suspect that the garb of human weakness does but conceal the workings of human pride, never perhaps so subtle and so sweet as when human nature meekly resolves to be contented with its own imperfections, and to bow down before its own frailty ; but denunciations of moral turpitude only harden the hearts of men who ask for the bread of evidence and receive stones in the shape of insults. We turn next to consider the effects of modern thought upon the evidence for immortality derived from Revelation. And here the difficulty of obtaining assent to what seem to me obvious truths will be transferred from the advocates of religion to those of science. Nevertheless, I maintain an invincible conviction that it is possible to state the terms of debate in propositions which commend themselves to candid minds, and which do not, as I have said, pretend to solve the controversy, but merely to define its conditions. Now, the first proposition is : That the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, if assumed to be true, does present actual scientific evidence for immortality. An illustration will make my meaning clear. Whether or not life can be evolved from non-living matter is a subject of debate ; but it is admitted on all hands that, if a single living creature can be produced under conditions that exclude the presence of living germs, then the controversy is settled, and therefore Dr. Bastian sets himself to work with the necessary apparatus to prove his case. So, in the same way, if any man known to be dead and buried did rise again (as for the moment is assumed to be the case), and did think and act and speak in His own proper personality, then immortality (in the scientific sense of the word) is thereby proved. Accordingly, those who wish to prove their case, betake themselves to history for the required evidence, which they may or may not find, but which, such as It is, must be allowed to go to the jury. Science may refuse to listen SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY, 35 to arguments for facts derived from men's hopes and beliefs ; it ceases to be science if it refuses to listen to arguments which profess to rely upon facts also. Were there to happen now an event purporting to resemble the Resurrection, it would be necessary to examine the evidence exactly as men are commissioned to investigate any unusual occurrence, say, for instance, the supposed discovery of fertile land at the North Pole. All this is plain enough, and leads to no very impor- tant conclusions, but it is, nevertheless, necessary that it should be stated clearly, and distinctly apprehended. Two other propositions may also be laid down as to the nature of the evidence for the Resurrection, both of them once more sufficiently obvious, but still not without their value in leading to a fair and reasonable estimation of the exact state of the case, and tending also, as we shall see presently, in one direction. It may be taken for granted, in the first place, that nothing can be alleged against the moral character of the witnesses, or against the morality which accompanied and was founded upon the preaching of the Resurrec- tion. Mistaken they may have been, but not dishonest ; enthusiasts, but not impostors. Furthermore, the deeper insight into character, which is one of the results of the modern critical spirit, enables us to see that they numbered among their ranks men of singular gifts, both moral and intellectual, who combined in a w r onderful degree the faculty of receiving what was, op what they thought to be, a miracu- lous revelation, and the power of setting it forth in a sober and meas- ured manner. All this is candidly admitted by the best representa- tives of modern thought. Again, it may safely be asserted that, judged by the critical standards of historical science, the evidence is abundantly sufficient to prove any event not claiming to be miraculous. Let us suppose such an event as an extraordinary escape from prison related in the same way, though I admit that it requires a considerable intellectual tow deforce to eliminate, even in imagination, the supernatural from the narrative. It is not going too far to say that no real question as to its truth would in that case ever be raised at the bar of history, even though a powerful party were interested in maintaining the contrary. A strictly scientific investigation, for instance, has brought out in our own days the absolute accuracy and consequent evidential value of the account of St. Paul's voyage to Malta. On the whole, then, we may conclude that the testimony is really evidence in the case, that it proceeds from honest and capable men, and that no one, apart from the existence of the supernatural element, would care to deny its truth- fulness, except upon grounds that would turn all history into a mass of fables and confusion. There remains, then, the old argument, that it is more easy to believe the witnesses to be mistaken than the fact itself to be true, and that we cannot believe a miracle unless it be more miraculous to 36 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. disbelieve it. To this argument I avow my deliberate conviction, after the best thought I can give the subject, that no answer can be given regarded from a merely intellectual point of view, and subject to the conditions which modern thought not only prescribes, but is strong enough to enforce. It goes by the name of Hume, because he was the first to formulate it, but it is not so much an argument as a simple statement of common experience. All men who, from the days of St. Thomas, have disbelieved in miracles, have done so practically upon this ground. And to the " doubting " Apostle maybe safely attributed the first use of the now famous formula, " It is much more likely that you, my friends, should be mistaken than that He should have risen." Now, to such a state of mind, what answer short of another miracle could be given then, or can be given now ? True, you may point out the moral defects in the mind of Thomas which led him to disbelieve, but these are immediately counterbalanced by a reference to the intellectual defects of Mary Magdalene, which prompted her to accept the miracle. There is no real room for weighing the evidence on both sides, and pronouncing for that which has the greatest probability, when your opponent, by a simple asser- tion, reduces all the evidence on one side to zero. Once more let one ask Christian apologists to realize this, and having realized it, no matter at what cost to the fears and prejudices of theology, let us then proceed the more calmly to examine what it precisely means and to what conclusions it leads us. We observe, first, that this argument is derived not from the first of the two ways in which, as we saw, science influences belief, namely, by altering the nature of the evidence required, but from the second, namely, by predisposing the minds of men against belief upon any attainable evidence whatever. "We have seen that the evidence is that of honest men, that it is scientifically to the point, and sufficient to prove ordinary historical events. More than this cannot be demanded in the case of events which do not come under law or per- sonal observation. But the minds of men are so predisposed by their experience of unchanging order to reject the miraculous, that, first, they demand more and more clear evidence than in other cases ; and, secondly, they have recourse at once to the many considerations which weaken the force of evidence for things supernatural, and account for men's mistakes without impugning their veracity. Any one who reads Hume's essay will be struck at once with the, so to speak, subjectivity of the argument. Upon this very point he says, *' When any one tells me he saw a dead man restored to life, I imme- diately consider within myself" etc., etc.. We ask then, at once, " To whom is it more likely that evidence of a miracle should be false than that the miracle should be true ? " and the answer must of course be, " Those who, rightly or wrongly, are predisposed in that direction, by their experience of a changeless law, growing ever wider and more SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY. 37 comprehensive." Nor is Paley's answer, which assumes the existence of God, at all available as against Hume, who, in his next section, puts into the mouth of an imaginary Epicurus all the arguments against such a belief. But it is a most just and reasonable remark that this predisposition does not exist in the case of those who again rightly or wrongly are wishing to know God and hoping to live after death. It is at this point that natural and revealed religion, weak when divided, becomes strong by combination. The Resurrection would certainly never be believed if it did not fall like a spark upon a mass of wishes and aspirations which are immediately kindled into life. Granted a man (and this is no supposition, but a fact), whose whole nature craves not to die, and whose mind is occupied by the standing miracle of its own immortality, and then the Resurrection, so far from being improbable, will be the very thing which gives life to his hopes. The more he sees that natural religion cannot give him facts as proofs, the more he will welcome Revelation which does, just because it will satisfy the rational desire which science is creating in the human mind. And just as there is no answer to Hume's argu- ment for one predisposed as Hume was, so is there none to one pre- disposed as this supposed (but very actual) man is. The one is as incapable of disbelief as the other of assent. Hume and Paley do not really grapple with each other, but move in parallel lines that never meet. As Hume himself said of Berkeley, "His arguments admit of no answer and produce no conviction," so might each of the two say of the other. On the one hand, we have all the results of human experience, a severe standard of intellectual virtue, a morality which confines itself to its duties toward humanity, and the power of being able not to think about ultimate incomprehensibilities. On the other hand, we have intense longings after the infinite, which science, admitting, as it does, the existence of the Unknowable, can- not possibly deny to be legitimate in those who feel them sincerely ; also a body of evidence, sufficient to prove ordinary events, for a fact that gives certainty and power to all these longings ; a morality, which has reference to a Supreme Judge, and an absolute incapacity for life and duty until some sort of conclusion has been arrived at concerning the mysteries of our being and destiny. Both of these represent tendencies of human nature with which the world could at this stage very badly dispense ; both may have their use and their justification; either maybe true, but both cannot, for the Resurrec- tion either did or did not happen. From this account of things some very important considerations follow, a few of which I will endeavor to sum up in three heads. The scientific value of Revelation as a necessity, if there is to be any vital and practical religion at all, will, I hope, have been sufficiently indi- cated already : 1. The lines of a long and, perhaps, never-ending conflict between 58 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. the spirit of Religion and what, for want of a better word, I will call the spirit of Rationalism, are here defined. Neither of the two being able by mere argument to convince the othei', they must rely upon gradually leavening the minds of men with prepossessions in the direction which each respectively favors. The time may come when Rationalism will have so far prevailed that a belief in the miraculous will have disappeared ; the time may also come when the Christian Revelation, historically accepted, will everywhere be adopted as God's account to man of ultimate incomprehensibilities. Surely, no man who has ever fairly examined his own consciousness can deny that elements leading to either of these two conclusions exist within his own mind. He must be a very hardened believer to whom the doubt, " Is the miraculous really possible ? " never suggested itself. And he must in turn be a very unscientific Rationalist who has never caught himself wondering whether, after all, the Resurrection did not take place. Nor, so far as we may at this epoch discern the probable direction of the contest, is it possible to estimate very accurately the influence which science will exercise upon it. On the one hand, it will certainly bring within the mental grasp of common men that view of law and causation which, in Hume's time, was confined to philosophers and their followers, and was attained rather by intellectual conceptions than by such common experiences of every-day life and thought as we have at present. On the other hand, it will purge religion of its more monstrous dogmas, and further, by calling attention to the necessity cf proving fact by fact, and again, by clearing up the laws of evi- dence, will tend to deepen in the minds of religious people the value and meaning of Revelation ; while, at the same time, by its frank admission of hopeless ignorance, it will concede to faith a place in the realm of fact. Every man will have his own views as to the issue of the conflict : for the present it is sufficient for him, if he can be fully satisfied in his own mind. 2. The predisposition in men's minds in favor, whether of Religion or Rationalism, will be created and sustained solely by moral means. This is the conclusion toward which I have been steadily working from the beginning of this paper to the end of it. The intellect of both Christian and Rationalist will have its part to play ; but that part will consist in presenting, teaching, and enforcing each its own morality upon the minds of men. I need not say that I use the word morality as expressing in the widest sense all that is proper for and worthy of humanity, and not merely in the narrower sense of individ- ual goodness. Rationalism will approach mankind rather upon the side of the virtues of the intellect. It will uphold the need of caution in our assent, the duty of absolute conviction, the self-sufficiency of men, the beauty of law, the glory of working for posterity, and the true humility of being content to be ignorant where knowledge is impossible. Religion will appeal to man's hopes and wishes recorded SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY. 39 in Nature and in history, to his yearnings for affection, to his sense of sin, to his passion for life and duty, which death cuts short. And that one of the two which is truest to humanity, which lays down the best code of duty, and creates the strongest capacity for accomplishing it, will, in the long-run, prevail; a conclusion which science, so far as it believes in man, and religion, so far as it believes in God, must adopt. Here, once more, it is well nigh impossible to discern the immediate direction of the conflict, whatever may be our views as to its ultimate decision. Science is almost creating a new class of virtues ; it is laying- its finger with unerring accuracy upon the faults of the old morality ; it is calling into existence a passion for intellectual truth. But then Religion has always given the strongest proofs of her vitality by her power of assimilating (however slowly) new truths, and of rejecting (alas ! how tardily) old falsehoods, at the demands of reason and dis- covery. A religious man can always say that Christians, and not Chris- tianity, are responsible for what goes amiss. It is because religious practice never has been, and is at this moment almost less than ever, up to the standard of what religious theory exacts, that we may have confidence in gradual improvement and advance, until that standard, toward the formation of which science will have largely contributed, be attained. 3. Closely connected w r ith the above, follows the proposition that all attempts on the part of religion to confute the " skeptic " by purely intellectual methods are worse than useless. There is no intellectual short cut to the Christian faith ; it must be built up in the minds of men by setting forth a morality that satisfies their nature, consecrates humanity, and establishes society. It is not because men love the truth, but because they hate their enemies, that in things religious they desire to have what they can call an overwhelming preponderance of argument on their side of the question, the possession of which enables them to treat their opponents as knaves or fools or both. Religion may have been the first to set this pernicious example, but, judging from the tone of much modern writing, Rationalism has somewhat bettered her instructions. No doubt it is a tempting thing to mount a big pulpit, and then and there, with much intellectual pomp, to slay the absent infidel absent no less from the preacher's argument than from his audience. Delightful it may be, but all the more dangerous, because it plunges men at once into that error, so hateful to modern thought, of affirming that intellectual mistakes are moral delinquencies. No one, least of all science, denies that men are responsible for the consequences of their belief, provided these consequences are limited to such as are capable of being recognized and foreseen, and are not extended to comprehend endless perdition in a future state an idea which is supposed, rightly or wrongly, to lurk beneath the preacher's logical utterances, and which religion has done next to nothing to dis- avow. And so we come to this conclusion : to build up by precept fo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. and example a sound and sufficient morality ; to share in all the hopes and aspirations of humanity ; to be foremost in practical reforms ; to find what the instincts of mankind blindly search for by reference to the character of God finally revealed in Christ, and to the hope of im- mortality which His Resurrection brought to light ; to endeavor to clear religion from the reproach of credulity, narrowness, timidity, and bitter sectarian zeal ; these are, as our Master Himself assured us, the only means of engendering in the hearts of men that moral quality which we call Faith : for " he that is of the truth heaketh my voice." In a future paper I hope to show, by reference to the facts of man's nature, how this faith in immortality is being, and is to be, so far wrought into his mind as to form a predisposition toward a belief in the Christian doctrine of the Resurrection of Christ as a proof of that which he cannot help but desire to believe. Contemporary Review. THE SOURCE OF LABOR. SCIENCE has taught us that the processes going on around us are but changes, not annihilations and creations. With the eye of knowledge, we see the candle slowly turning into invisible gases, nor doubt for an instant that the matter of which the candle was composed is still existing, ready to reappear in other forms. But this fact is true not only of matter itself, but also of all the influences that work on matter. We wind up the spring of a clock, and, for a whole week, the labor thus stored up is slowly expended in keeping the clock going. Or, again, we spend five minutes of hard labor in raising the hammer of a pile-driver, which, in its fall, exerts all that accumulated labor in a single instant. In these instances, we easily see that we store up labor. Now, if we put a dozen sovereigns in a purse, and none of them be lost, we can take a dozen sovereigns out again. So in labor, if no labor be lost, as science asserts for the inertia of matter, its very deadness, so to speak, which renders it incapable of spontaneously producing work, also prevents its destroying work when involved in it we should be able to obtain back without deduction all our invested labor when we please. Imagine a mountain-stream turning an overshot wheel. It thug falls from a higher to a lower level. A certain amount of labor would be required to raise the water from the lower level to the higher; just this amount of labor the water gives out in its fall, and invests, as it were, in the wheel If, however, when arrived at the lower level, the water were to demand of the wheel to be pumped up again, the Highest trial would show that it would ask more than it could obtain, THE SOURCE OF LABOR. 41 though not more than it had given. The wheel, if questioned as to the cause of its inability, must reply as others have done, that it has shut up part of the labor in investments which it cannot realize. The reason, as commonly stated, is, that friction has destroyed part of the labor. The labor is not, however, destroyed. Science has shown that heat and labor are connected; labor may be turned into heat, and heat into labor. The labor absorbed by friction, is but turned into heat. If, however, we try to extract labor from the heat thus diffused through the different parts of the water-wheel, and make it available, we find ourselves quite at a loss. The heat gradually diffuses itself through surrounding bodies, and, so far as we are concerned, the labor is wasted, though it still exist, like Cleopatra's pearl dissolved in the cup of vinegar. If no labor is lost, so neither is any created. The labor we exert is but the expenditure of labor stored up in our frames, just as the labor invested in the wound-up spring keeps the clock going. Whence, then, does all this labor originally come ? We see the waste how is compensation made ? The answer is simple and easy to give. All the labor done under the sun is really done by it. The light and heat which the sun supplies are turned into labor by the organizations which exist upon the earth. These organizations may be roughly divided into two classes the collectors and the expenders of the sun's labor. The first merely collect the sun's labor, so as to make it available for the other class ; while, just as the steam-engine is the medium by which the steam gives motion, so this second class is the medium by which the sun's heat is turned into actual labor. Still, the sun does not work only through organized labor: his mere mechanical influence is very great. With the moon the only second post he deigns to fill he produces the tides by his attraction on the sea. But for the friction of the earth and sea, the tides, once set in motion, would rise and fall without any further effort ; but the work done in overcoming the friction is, though due to the sun and moon, not extracted from them, but by them from the earth. For it would take a vast effort to cause the earth to cease rotating. All this effort is, as it were, stored up in the revolving earth. As the tidal waters, then, rub along the bed of the sea, or the waters on which they rest and the adjacent coasts, this friction tends to make the earth move faster or slower, according: to the direction in which the tidal flow is. The general effect is, however, that the friction of the tides makes the earth revolve more slowly ; in other words, that part of the energy of rotation of the earth, so to speak, is consumed in rubbing against the tidal waters. All the work, therefore, that the tides do in undermining our cliffs, and washing away our beaches, is extracted by the sun and moon from the work stored up in the rotation of the earth. The diminution of rotation, indeed, is so small as scarcely to be perceived by the most refined observation, but the reality of it is now gener- { 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. ally recognized ; and this process, too, will apparently go on till th& earth ceases to rotate on its axis, and presents one face constantly to the sun. Thus we see that the destruction of the land by the sea, so inter- esting in a geological point of view, is partly due to the sun's action. Not only is he the source of the light and heat we enjoy, but he aids in forming the vast sedimentary beds that form so large a part of the crust of the earth, mixing the ingredients of our fields, and moulding our globe. By heating the air, the sun produces winds, and some of the labor thus expended is made use of by man in turning his windmills, and carrying his wares across the sea. But there is another expenditure of the sun's heat more immediately useful to man. By evaporating the sea and other bodies of water, he loads the air with moisture, which, when in contact with cold mountain-peaks or cold masses of air, loses its heat, and, being condensed, falls as rain or snow. Thus the rivers are replenished, which for a long time supplied the greater part of the labor employed in manufactures, though the invention of the steam-engine is fast reducing relatively the value of this supply of labor. But vast as the sun's power thus exerted is, and useful as it is to man, it is surpassed in importance by his labor exerted through organ- ized beings. The above-named agents have one defect : on the whole, they are incapable of being stored up to any great degree ; we must em- ploy them as Nature gives them to us. Organized existence, however, possesses the power of storing up labor to a very high degree. The means it adopts are not mechanical, but chemical. The formation of chemical compounds is attended with the giving out of heat, which, as we have said before, is equivalent to labor, and, if of sufficient intensity, can by us be made available as labor, as in the steam-engine. Now, we take iron-ore, consisting of iron in combination with other substances. By means of great heat, the iron is set free in the smelt- ing-furnace. The iron, then, in its change of form has, as it were, taken in all this heat. If, now, we take this iron, and, keeping it from the influence of the air, reduce it to very fine powder, and then sud- denly expose it to the air, by the force of natural affinity, it will absorb the oxygen of the air, and in so doing give out the heat before required to set it free from the oxygen ; and if the iron be in small enough por tions, so that the process is sufficiently rapid, we may see the iron grow red-hot with the heat thus disengaged. Now, plants and trees, by the aid of the solar light and heat, re move various substances, carbon especially, from what seem to be theii more natural combinations, and in other combinations store them up in their structures. Take a young oak-tree with its first tender leaves ; if deprived of the sun's light and heat, its growth would be stayed, and its life die out. But, with the aid of the sun's rays, it absorbs THE SOURCE OF LABOR. 43 carbon from the gases iu the air, each particle of carbon absorbed be- ing absorbed by the power of the sun through the agency of the plant, and with each particle of carbon stored up is also, as it were, stored up the labor of the sun by which that particle was set free from its former fetters. The sap of the plant, thus enriched, returns in its course, and by some mysterious process is curdled into cells and hard- ened into wood. But the work by which all this was accomplished lies hid in the wood, and not only is it there, but it is there in a great- ly-condensed state. To form a little ring of wood round the tree, not an eighth of an inch across it, took the sunshine of a long summer, falliug on the myriad leaves of the oak. Lemuel Gulliver, at Laputa, was astonished by seeing a philosopher aiming at extracting sunbeams from cucumbers. Had he but rightly considered the thing, he would have wondered at any one's troubling to make a science of it. The thing has always been done. From Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden eating sweet fruits, through the onion-eating builders of the pyramids,. down to the flesh-eating myriads of our land, this process has always been going on. The active life of reasoning man, and his limitless powers of invention, need for their full development a vast supply of labor. By means of the vegetable kingdom, the sun's work is stored up in a number of organic substances. Man takes these into his system, and in the vessels and fibres of his body they resume their original combinations, and the labor of the sun is given out as muscular action and animal heat. To allow a larger supply of labor for man's intellect to work with, Providence created the herbivorous races. Some of these further condense the work of the sun involved in plants, by taking these plants into their systems, and storing up the work in them, in their flesh and fat, which, after some preparation, are fit to be received into the frame of man, there, as the simpler vegetable substances, to simply heat and labor. Others, extracting work from the vegetable kingdom, just as man does, and mostly from parts of the vegetable kingdom that are not suited to the organs of man, are valuable to man as sources of labor, since they have no power to invent modes of employing this labor to their own advantage. Man might have been gifted with a vastei frame, and so with greater power of labor in himself, but such a plan had been destitute of elasticity, and, while the savage would have basked in the sun in a more extended idleness, the civilized man had still lacked means to execute his plans. So that Good Providence which formed man devised a further means for supplying his wants. Instead of placing him at once on a new-formed planet, it first let the sun spend its labor for countless ages upon our world. Age by age, much of this labor was stored up in vast vegetable growths. Accu- mulated in the abysses of the sea, or sunk to a great depth by the collapse of supporting strata, the formation of a later age pressed and compacted this mass of organic matter. The beds thus formed were 44 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. purified by water, and even by heat, and at last raised to within the reach of man by subterranean movements. From this reservoir of labor, man now draws rapidly, driving away the frost of to-day with the sunshine of a million years ago, and thrashing this year's harvest with the power that came to our earth before corn grew upon it. Such are the processes by which the sun's power is collected and stored up by the vegetable kingdom in a form sufficiently condensed to be available for working the machinery of the bodies of men and beasts, and also to assist man in vaster expenditures of labor. It is most interesting to trace stxch processes, and not only interesting, but also instructive, for it shows us in what direction we are to look for our sources of labor, and will at once expose many common delusions. One hears, perhaps, that something will be found to supplant steam. Galvanism may be named ; yet galvanism is generated by certain decompositions of metal, for instance and this metal had first to be prepared by the agency of coal, and in its decomposition cau give out no more labor than the coal before invested in it. It is as if one should buy a steam-engine to pump up water to keep his mill-wheel going. The source of all labor is the sun. We cannot immediately make much use of his rays for the purposes of work ; they are not intense enough ; they must be condensed. The vegetable world alone at present seems capable of doing this ; and its past results of coal, peat, petroleum, etc., and present results of wood and food, are ulti- mately all we have to look to. To say that man will ever be dependent upon the vegetable world for all his work, may be considered bold, but there is certainly great reason to believe it. The sun's labor being supplied in such a diluted form, each small quantity continually supplied must be packed in a very small space. Now, man can only subject matter to influences in the mass. The little particle of carbon that the plant frees each in- stant is beyond his ken. The machinery he could make would not be fine enough : it would be like trying to tie an artery with the biggest cable on board the Great Eastern. Organized existence possesses machinery fine enough to effect these small results, and to avail itself of these little instalments of labor. At present, this machinery is be* yond our corapi-ehension, and possibly will ever remain so. Nature prefers that her children should keep out of the kitchen, and not pry into her pots and pans, but eat in thankfulness the meal she provides. Some interesting: results follow from what has been stated above One is, that we are consuming not only our present allowance of the sun's labor, but also a great deal more, unless the formation of coal in our age equals its consumption, which is not probable. Mother Earth will certainly, so far as we can see, some day be bankrupt. Such a consummation is pointed to, however, in other quarters. The sun's heat, unless miraculously replenished, must gradually be dissipated through space. There are reasons for thinking that the planets must QUETELET ON THE SCIENCE OF MAN. 45 ultimately fall into the sun. These things, however, possess to us no practical physical interest. Such countless ages must elapse ere they affect man's material condition upon earth, that we hardly can gravely consider them as impending. The chief interest they excite is moral. Like the man's hand that appeared to the revelling king, they write "Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin" (Weighed, measured, limited, doomed) on our material world, and dimly point to some power that stands, as it were, hidden from our view behind the screen of matter, " that shall make all things new." Chambers's Journal. -+++- QUETELET ON THE SCIENCE OF MAN. 1 By E. B. TYLOK. TWO lines of research into the Science of Man, of the highest mo- ment as well in theoretical Anthropology as in practical Ethics and Politics, both to be always associated with the name of Quetelet, are now discussed at large in his Social Physics and Anthropometry. The two great generalizations which the veteran Belgian astronomer has brought to bear on physiological and mental science, and which it is proposed to describe popularly here, may be briefly defined : First, he has been for many years the prime mover in introducing the doc- trine that human actions, even those usually considered most arbitrary, are in fact subordinate to general laws of human nature ; this doctrine, maintained in previous publications, especially in the earlier edition of the first-named work some thirty-seven years ago, is now put forth in its completest form. Second, he has succeeded in bringing the idea of a biological type or specific form, whether in bodily structure or mental faculty, to a distinct calculable conception, which is likely to impress on future arguments a definiteness not previously approached. The doctrine of the regularity and causality of human actions was powerfully stated some fifteen years ago by Mr. Buckle in the intro- duction to his " History of Civilization." Buckle is here essentially the exponent of Quetelet's evidence, from which, indeed, as a specula- tive philosopher, he draws inferences more extreme than those of hie statistical teacher. To Quetelet is due the argument from the aston ishing regularity from year to year in the recurrences of murders and suicides, a regularity extending even to the means or instruments by which these violent acts are committed ; his inference being broadly that " it is society which prepares the crime, the criminal being only 1 Physique Sociale, ou Essai sur le Developpement des Facultes de l'Homme. Pai Ad. Quetelet. (Brussels, 1869.) Anthropometric, ou Mesure des differentes Facultes de l'Homme. Par Ad. Quetelet (Brussels, 1870.) <.6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. the instrument which executes it." From various other sources Buckle brought together other pieces of evidence, especially one which is now quoted by all who discuss the subject, the regularity from year to year of letters posted, whose writers forget to direct them. It may by this time be taken as proved by such facts that each particular class of human actions may be estimated, and, to a great extent, even predicted, as a regular product of a definite social body under definite conditions. To quote another luminous instance of this regularity of action, M. Quetelet gives a table of the ages of marriage in Belgium ("Phys. Soc," i., p. 275). Here the numbers of what may be called normal marriages, those between men under 45 with women under 30, as well as of the less usual unions where the women are between 30 and 45, show the sort of general regularity which one would expect from mere consideration of the circumstances. The astonishing: fea- ture of the table is the regularity of the unusual marriages. Disre- garding decimals, and calculating the approximate whole numbers in their proportion to 10,000 marriages, the table shows, in each of five five-year periods from 1841 to 1865, 6 men aged from 30 to 45 who married women aged 60 or more, and 1 to 2 men aged 30 or less who married women aged 60 or more. M. Quetelet may well speak of this as the most curious and su^o-estive statistical document he has met with. These young husbands had their liberty of choice, yet. their sexagenarian brides brought them up one after the other in periodical succession, as sacrifices to the occult tendencies of the social system. The statistician's comment is : " It is curious to see man, proudly en- titling himself King of Nature, and fancying himself controlling all things by his free-will, yet submitting, unknown to himself, more rig- orously than any other being in creation, to the laws he is under sub- jection to. These laws are coordinated with such wisdom that they even escape his attention." The admission of evidence like this, however, is not always followed by the same philosophical explanation of it. Buckle finds his solution by simply discarding the idea that human action " depends on some capricious and personal principle peculiar to each man, as free-will oi the like ; " on the contrary, he asserts " the great truth that the ac- tions of men, being guided by their antecedents, are in reality never inconsistent, but, however capricious they may appear, only form part of one vast scheme of universal order, of which we, in the present state of knowledge, can barely see the outline." M. Quetelet's argu- ment from the same evidence differs remarkably from this. His ex- pedient for accounting for the regularity of social events, without throwing over the notion of arbitrary action, is to admit the existence of free-will, but to confine its effects within very narrow bounds. He holds that arbitrary will does not act beyond the limits at which sci- ence begins, and that its effects, though apparently so great, may, if taken collectively, be reckoned as null, experience proving that indi- QUETELET ON THE SCIENCE OF MAN. 47 vidual wills are neutralized in the midst of general wills (p. 100). Free-will, though of sufficient power to prevent our predicting the ac- tions of the individual, disappears in the collective action of large bodies of men, which results from general social laws, which can ac- cordingly be predicted like other results regulated by natural laws. We may perhaps apprehend the meaning of Quetelet's views more clearly from another passage, where, to show how apparently isolated events may be really connected under some wide law, he compares single facts to a number of scattered points, which seem not related to one an- other till the observer, commanding a view of a series of them from a distance, loses sight of their little accidents of arrangement, and at the same time perceives that they are really arranged along a connecting curve. Then the writer goes on to imagine, still more suggestively, that these points might actually be tiny animated creatures, capable of free action within a very narrow range, while nevertheless their spontaneous movements would not be discernible from a distance (p. 94), where only their laws of mutual relation would appear. M. Quetelet can thus con- ciliate received opinions by recognizing the doctrine of arbitrary volition, while depriving it of its injurious power. 1 His defence of the exist- ence of free-will is perhaps too much like the famous excuse of the personage who was blamed for going out shooting on the day he had received the news of his father's death, and who defended himself on the ground that he only shot very small birds. But it is evident that the statistics of social regularity have driven the popular notion of free-will into the narrow space included between Quetelet's restriction and Buckle's abolition of it. In fact, no one who studies the temper of our time will deny the increasing prevalence of the tendency of the scientific world to reject the use of the term free-will in its vulgar sense that of unmotived spontaneous election and even to discour- age its use in any other sense as apt to mislead, while its defenders draw their weapons not so much from observation of facts as from speculative and dogmatic philosophy. To those who accept the extreme principle that similar men under similar circumstances must necessarily do similar acts ; and to those, also, who adopt the notion of free-will as a small disturbing cause which disappears in the large result of social law, the regularity of civilized life carries its own explanation. Society is roughly homo- geneous from year to year. Individuals are born, pass on through stage after stage of life, and die ; but at each move one drops into another's place, and the shifting of individuals only brings change into the social system, so far as those great general causes have been at work which difference one age from another the introduction of different knowledge, different principles, different arts, different indus- trial materials and outlets. The modern sociologist, whatever his 1 In regard to the relation of statistics to the doctrine of fatalism, see Dr. Farre'B " Report on the Programme of the Fourth Session of the Statistical Congress." 48 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. metaphysical prepossessions, looks at society as a system amenable to direct cause and effect. To a great extent his accurate reckonings serve to give more force and point to the conclusions of rough expe- rience ; to a great extent, also, they correct old ideas and introduce new aspects of social law. What gives to the statistical method its greatest scope and power is, that its evidence and proof of law applies indiscriminately to what we call physical, biological, and ethical prod- ucts of society, these various effects acting and reacting on one another. A few instances may be given to show the existence of the relations in question, without attempting to show their precise nature, or to trace the operation of other determining causes. Thus, for instance, the mode of life affects its length. Statistics show that the mortality of the very poor is about half as much again as the mortality of the very rich ; while, as to the influence of pro- fessions, it appears that, in Germany, only 24 doctors reach the age of 70 as against 32 military men and 42 theologians. The propensity to theft bears a distinct relation to age ; thus the French criminal statis- tics estimate the propensity to theft between the ages of 21 and 25 as being five-thirds as much as between the ages of 35 and 40. The amount of criminality in a country bears a relation, indirect and as yet obscure, but unmistakable, to its education, or rather to its want of education. In France, in 1828-'31, the constant percentage of accused persons was about as follows : could not read or write, 61 ; imperfectly, 27; well, 12. The comparison of this group of numbers with those taken lately in England shows a great change of propor- tion, evidently resulting from the wider diffusion of education ; but the limitation of crime to the less-educated classes is even more strik- ing : cannot read or write, 36 ; imperfectly, 61 ; well, 3. Again, for an example of connection of physical conditions with moral actions, we may notice a table showing how the hours of the day influence people who hang themselves (" Phys. Soc," ii., 240). The maximum of such cases, 135, occurred between six and eight in the morning; the number decreased slightly till noon, and then suddenly dropped to the minimum ; there being 123 cases between ten and twelve o'clock, against only 32 between twelve and two o'clock. The num- ber rose in the afternoon to 104 cases between four and six, dropping to an average of about 70 through the night, the second minimum, 45, being between two and four o'clock in the morning. Here it is impossible to mistake the influences of the periods of the day. We can fancy we see the poor wretches rising in the morning to a life of wdiich the misery is beyond bearing, or can only be borne till evening closes in ; while the temporary relief of the midnight sleep and the mid-clay meal are marked in holding back the longing to self-destruc- tion. Madness varies with the season of the year: the maximum being in summer, and the minimum in winter (p. 187) ; a state of things which seems intelligible enough. Again, it is well known in QTJETELET ON THE SCIENCE OF MAN. 49 current opinion that more children are born in the night than in the day ; in fact, there are about five night-born against four day-born, the maximum being about midnight, the minimum a little before noon (i., p. 208). Why this is, no one yet knows; it is a case of unexplained law. But another not less curious law relating to births seems to have been at last successfully unravelled. In Europe about 106 boys are born to every 100 girls. The explanation appears to depend on the husband being older than the wife ; which difference again is regulated by prudential considerations, a man not marrying till he can maintain a wife. In connection with this argument, it must be noticed that illegitimate births show a much less excess of male children (p. 168). Here, then (if this explanation may be accepted), it appears that a law, which has been supposed to be due to purely physiological causes, is traceable to an ultimate origin in political economy. The examples brought forward by Quetelet, which thus show the intimate relation between biological and ethical phenomena, should be pondered by all who take an interest in that great movement of our time the introduction of scientific evidence into problems over which theologians and moralists have long claimed exclusive jurisdiction. This scientific invasion consists mainly in application of exact evidence in place of inexact evidence, and of proof in place of sentiment and authority. Already the result of the introduction of statistics into inquiries of this kind appears in new adjustments of the frontier line between right and wrong, as measured under our modern social conditions. Take, for instance, the case of foundling hospitals, which provide a "tour," or other means, for the secret reception of in- fants abandoned by their parents. It has seemed, and still seems, to many estimable persons, an act of benevolence to found and maintain such institutions. But, when their operation comes to be studied by statisticians, they are found to produce an enormous increase in the number of exposed illegitimate children (" Phys. Soc," i., p. 84). In fact, thus to facilitate the safe and secret abandonment of children is to set a powerful engine at work to demoralize society. Here, then, a particular class of charitable actions has been removed, by the statis- tical study of its effects, from the category of virtuous into that of vicious actions. An even more important transition of the same kind is taking place in the estimation of alms-giving from the ethical point of view. Until modern ages, through all the countries of higher civili- zation, men have been urged by their teachers of morality to give to the poor, worthy or unworthy ; the state of public opinion being well exemplified by the narrowing of the word " charity " from its original sense to denote the distribution of doles. Yet, when the statistics of pauperism were collected and studied, it was shown that indiscrimi- nate alms-giving is an action rather evil than good, its tendency being not only to maintain, but actually to produce, idle and miserable pau- 4 50 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. pers. In our time a large proportion of the public and private funds, distributed among the poor, is spent in actually diminishing their in- dustry, frugality, and self-reliance. Yet the evil of indiscriminate alms-giving is diminishing under the influence of sounder knowledge of social laws, and genuine charity is more and more directed by care- ful study of the means by which wealth may be spent for the distinct benefit of society. Such examples as these show clearly the imperfec- tion and untrustworthiness of traditional, or what is called intuitive morality, in deciding on questions of right and wrong, and the neces- sity of appealing in all cases to the best attainable information of so- cial science to decide what actions are really for or against the general good, and are therefore to be classed as virtuous or vicious. Moreover, it is not too much to say that the comparatively small advance which moral science has made, since barbaric ages, has been due to the repugnance of moralists to admit, in human action, the regular causality which is the admitted principle of other parts of the action of the universe. The idea of the influence of arbitrary will in the individual man has checked and opposed the calculations which now display the paramount action of society as an organized whole. One point in M. Quetelet's doctrine of society requires a mention for its practical bearing on morals. There has seemed to some to be an immoral tendency in his principle that virtuous and vicious acts are products, not merely of the individual who does them, but of the socie- ty in which they take place, as though the tendency of this view were to weaken individual responsibility, and to discourage individual effort. Yet, when properly understood, this principle offers a more strong and definite impulse to the effort of society for good and against evil, than the theory which refers the individual's action more ex- clusively to himself. M. Quetelet's inference from the regular pro- duction of a certain amount of crime year by year, from a society in a certain condition, is embodied in his maxim that society prepares the crime and the criminal executes it. This should be read with a comment of the author's. " If," he says, " I were to take up the pavement before my house, should I be astonished to hear in the morning that people had fallen and hurt themselves, and could I lay the blame on the sufferers, inasmuch as they were free to go there or elsewhere?" Thus every member of society who offers a facility to the commission of crime, or does not endeavor to hinder its commission, is, in a degree, responsible for it. It is absurd to suppose that the crimes in great cities are attributable altogether to the free agency of the poor wretches who are transported or hung for them. The nation which can and does not prevent the exist- ence of a criminal class is responsible collectively for the evil done by this class. This we can see plainly enough, although the exact distribution of the responsibility among the different members of society may be impossible to determine. Such a theory, of course, QTJETELET ON THE SCIENCE OF MAN. 51 easts aside the revenge-theory of criminal law, assimilating the treat- ment of criminals to the operation of a surgeon healing a diseased part of the body, if possible, or, if not, rendering it harmless or re- moving it. The wealthy and educated classes, whose lives seem to them- selves as free from moral blame as they are from legal punishment, may at first hear with no pleas- ant surprise a theory which in- culpates them as sharers in the crimes necessarily resulting from the state of society which they are influential in shaping. Yet this consideration is by no means one of mere hopeless regret, for coupled with it is the knowledge that it is in their power, by adopt- ing certain educational and reformatory measures, so to alter the pres- ent moral status of society as to reduce the annual budget of crime to a fraction of its present amount. Thus the doctrine that .the nation participates in and is responsible for the acts of its individual members is one which widens the range of duty to the utmost. The labors of M. Quetelet, in reducing to absolute calculation this doctrine of the solidarity of human society, entitle him to a place among those great thinkers whose efforts perceptibly raise that society to a higher intel- lectual and moral level. Here, as everywhere, the larger comprehen- sion of the laws of Nature works for good and not for evil in the his- tory of the world. Some slight account has now to be given of M. Quetelet's doc- trine of typical forms, as displayed in the "homme moyen," or "mean man," of a particular nation or race. This is no new theo- ry; but, since the publication of the "Physique Sociale " in 1835, the author has been at work extending and systematizing it, his last results being shown in the present works. First, it must be pointed out that the term " homme moyen " is not intended to indicate what would be popularly meant by an " average man." An average or arithmetical mean of a number of objects may be a mere imaginary entity, having no real representative. Thus, an average chessman, computed as to height from the different pieces on the board, might not correspond to any one of the actual pieces. But the " homme moyen " or central type of a population really exists ; more than this, the class he belongs to exceeds in number any other class, and the less nearly any other class approaches to his standard the less numerous that class is, the decrease in the number of individuals as they depart from the central type conforming to a calculable numerical law. The " mean man " (the term may probably be adopted in future research es, and when technically used its popular meaning will cease to inter* ; 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. . fere with this special one) the " mean man " thus stands as a repre- sentative of the whole population, individuals as they differ from him being considered as forms varying from his specific type. To realize a conception which even among anthropologists has scarcely yet become familiar, it is desirable to show by what actual observations M. Quetelet was led to the discovery of his principle. When a large number of men of a practically homogeneous population are measured, and arranged in groups accordingly, it becomes evident that the individuals are related to one another by a law of distribution A central type is represented by the most numerous group, the adjoin- ing groups becoming less and less numerous in both directions. Thus, on classifying the measured heights of some 26,000 American soldiers of the Northern army during the late war, the proportionate number of men to each height was ascertained to be as follows (" Phys. Soc," i., p. 131 ; " Anthropom.," p. 259) : Height, inches 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 No. of men in 1,000.... 1 1 2 20 48 75 117 134 157 Height, inches 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 No. of men in 1,000.... 140 121 80 57 26 13 5 2 Here it is seen that the mean man is a little under 5 ft. 8 in. in height, the numbers of men shorter and taller diminishing with evident regu- larity, down to the few representatives of the very short men of 5 ft. and under, and the very tall men of 6 ft. 4 in. and over. The law of relation of height to numerical strength is shown graphically by the binomial curve figured above, where the abscissae (measured from an origin on the left) represent the heights of the men, and the ordinates the relative numbers of men corresponding to each height. The maxi- mum ordinate, representing the number of mean men, is at m = about 5 ft. 8 in., the ordinates on both sides diminishing almost to nothing as they reach the dwarfish and gigantic limits d and g, and vanishing beyond. Again, measurement around the chest, applied to the soldiers of the Potomac Army, shows a similar law of grouping ("Phys. Soc," ii., 59 ; " Anthropom.," p. 289) : Kound chest, inches 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 No. of men in 1,000 1 3 11 36 67 119 160 204 Round chest, inches 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 No. of men in 1,000 166 119 68 28 13 4 1 Here the mean man measures about 35 in. round the chest, the numbers diminishing both ways till we reach the few extremely narrow-chested men of 28 in., and the few extremely broad-chested men of 42 in. These two examples may represent the more symmetrical cases of dis- tribution of individuals on both sides of a central type, as worked out by M. Quetelet from various physical measurements applied to large numbers of individuals. Here the tendency to vary is approximately QUETELET ON THE SCIENCE OF MAN. 53 equal in both directions. Where the tendency to vary is perceptibly different in the two directions, the curve loses its symmetry, as in the figures representing the weights of women at different ages (" Anthro- pom.," p. 349), and the number of marriages of men and women at different ages (" Phys. Soc," i., 272). The actual series of numbers given by observation are placed beside series computed according to the law of the expanded binomial, the same which is applied in the theory of probabilities to such calculations as that of the proportion- ate distribution of less probable events on each side of a most proba- ble maximum term, the distribution of errors of observation of a sin- gle object, and of accidental variations in general. It is the closeness of approximation between the observed and calculated series of varia- tions, computed not only as to the dimensions, but the actions of man, which gives to M. Quetelet's theory its remarkable definiteness and precision. The diagram of statures here figured, which may be looked upon as representing a nation measured in one particular way, at once im- presses on the mind a conception of a race-type materially differing from the vague notions hitherto current. It is seen that individual men of different statures are required to constitute a nation, but they are required in less and less proportion as they depart in excess or defect from the central type. The nation is not even complete without its dwarfs and giants. In fact, if all the monstrously short and tall men of a particular country were put out of sight, and the census of the population taken according to stature, the national formula thence deduced would enable a statistician to reckon with considerable accu- racy how many dwarfs and giants of each size had been removed. M. Quetelet's investigations further prove, or tend to prove, that similar laws of variation from the central type govern the distribution of individuals classed according to other bodily dimensions, and also according to physical qualities such as weight and strength, it being borne in mind that the particular expressions with their descriptive curves differ for the various qualities or faculties of man, being also in some cases much less symmetrical than in others. An absolute coincidence of the series of observed facts with the numerical law chosen to express them would be too much to expect ; it is a great deal to obtain even a rough coincidence. For instance, when the strength of a number of men is estimated by a dynamometer, the maximum number showed 140 to 150 degrees on the scale, the number of weaker and stronger men being both fewer from this point, groups following approximately the proportions of the coefficients of a bino- mial of the sixth order ; the numbers are reduced as follows from the table (" Anthropom.," p. 365) : Renal force, degrees 90 100-110 120-130 140-150 160-170 No. of men in 64 18 14 20 15 Binom. coeff 1 6 15 20 15 54 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. Eenal force, degrees. . . 180-190 200 No. of men in 64 6 1 Binom. coeff 6 1 In the various numerical examples here given, the element of age is not introduced, the ages of the individuals being calculated or taken as uniform. The problem of variation of numerical distribution of a population at different ages is treated by M. Quetelet in a compara- tively simple case, that of the stature-curve. Here a curve approxi- mating to a parabola is laid down, the ages of man from birth onward being measured along its axis ; each double ordinate of this curve forms the base on which a binomial curve is erected perpendicularly, the vertices of these curves forming 'a curve of mean stature, of the nature of a curve of mortality (" Anthropom.," p. 264). How far JM. Quetelet may succeed in his contemplated purpose of carrying his method from the physical into the intellectual and moral nature of man, it is premature to judge. Without entering into the more intricate and difficult problems opened by this theory of central types, it is evident that the bearing of its main conception on the problems of anthropology and biology in general is highly important. Some able anthropologists have accept- ed the theory of the mean, or central standard, as a basis for the com- parison of races, but this line of research is still in its infancy. In M. Quetelet's last volume, a principle is worked out which serves as a bridge between the old and new methods. His experience is that, in a well-marked population, no extraordinary number of observations is required for the determination of the mean man. In former ages, one result of the national type being so preponderant in number and so easily recognizable was, that the bodily measurements of any man of ordinary stature and proportions could be trusted to give, with reason- able accuracy, the standard measures of the nation, such as the foot, cubit, fathom, etc. In the same manner M. Quetelet finds a small number of selected individuals sufficient for ascertaining the standard national proportions of the human body, male and female, from year to year of growth ; his tables, founded for the most part on Belgian models, are given in an appendix. This method is applicable to the purposes of general anthropology. Thus a traveller, studying some African or American race, has to select by mere inspection a moderate number of typical men and women, by comparison of whose accurate- ly admeasured proportions he may approximate very closely to a cen- tral race-type. 1 It is not necessary to dwell on the obvious difficulties 1 Thus General Lefroy's measurements of thirty-three Chippewa Indians (" Journal *f the Ethnological Society," vol. ii., p. 44, 1870) are sufficient to determine the stature of the mean man as about 5 ft. 1 in., the number of individuals in this maximum group being 8. It is even possible to guess from this small number of measurements the nu- merical law of variation in the tribe, the series of groups from five ft. 3 in. to 5 ft. 11 in being as follows : 1, 1-J, U, 6, 8, 4, 4 J, 3, 1. DISINFECTION AND DISINFECTANTS. 55 of connecting the standard types of mixed nations with the races com- posing them. The stature-curve of England differs visibly in propor- tions from that of Italy, the measurements of Scotch and American soldiers show very different mean and extreme terms, and the problems of race underlying these differences are of a most complex character, the more so when the consideration is introduced of the race-type varying within itself from century to century. M. Quetelet is natural- ly apt, when expressing his views in an exordium or a peroration, to draw a good deal on the anticipated future results of his admirable method; but in judging of the value of his doctrine of central types, the best criterion is his actual success in reducing the observed facts of Nature to numerical calculation. The future must show how far it will be possible to apply to the theory of species the definition of cen- tral specific forms, from which varieties calculably diminish in numbers as they depart in type. Nature. -++*- DISINFECTION AND DISINFECTANTS. By WILLIAM EASSIE, C. E. THERE are certain rules to be promulgated respecting the protec- tion of human life from contagion, or from the injurious effects of decomposing organic matters, which may be gleaned from the ex- perience of ages, and which as yet have never been laid down with sufficient clearness. A writer in a medical journal, the other day, pointed out, from the " Odyssey " of Homer, the great solicitude of Ulysses for the purification of his house with sulphur, and the history of purgation could go still farther back, and bring to light many other interesting memorabilia. This, however, hardly comes within the scope of these short papers ; neither, as I said before, would any attempt to explain the cause of disease, for it would only be a repetition of wise things said before. Happily, too, the grim dwellers of the threshold are now watched with eye of lynx and nerve of steel, and their newer thrusts at poor mankind met or parried. Names like those of Drs. Parkes and Sanderson, in this respect, are fast becoming household words. For the purposes of this chapter, however, I cannot forbear from condensing the remarks of Dr. Angus Smith, with respect to disease generally. According to this authority, the classes of disease may be caused firstly, by gases easily diffused in air, such as carbonic acid, nitrogen, marsh-gas, and others ; secondly, by vapors falling in cold air and. taken up in fogs, volatile bodies in fact, that concentrate in cool temperatures, and not to be classed with gases ; thirdly, by putrid or decomposing substances, 56 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. that include, with the hurtful gases named under the first head, many organic forms which, transferred to a suitable soil, are capable of working havoc with life and health ; and, fourthly, by those more or- ganized bodies in various stages and ferments that have a definite ex- istence, and that multiply the diseases to which they are most allied, whenever they meet with suitable fields for propagation. Disinfection is practised by fits and starts. With u& it has been mainly a summer practice, when our nostrils encounter the smell off offensive matters. Contagion seizes a house, or a town, and for a time the sanitaiw inspectors, and the awakened people themselves, distribute even the most noxious disinfectants without system, and with the in- evitable result of expending the most money with the least possible good result. The destruction of valuable property, a senseless panic, and a relapse into the indulgence of time-honored abuses, are the com- mon results of outbreaks of typhus or typhoid fevers, of small-pox, cholera, or any other of the many diseases by which we are punished for grave derelictions of duty. We cannot neglect with impunity the maintenance of personal and household cleanliness ventilation, and an abundant supply of pure water. Soap and soda are the simplest ex- pedients at our disposal for cleansing purposes. Experience teaches us that ancient cities, and even modern human dwellings, are admirably suited to act as reservoirs of contagion, and are constantly polluted by the excreta of the healthy as well as of the sick. We have, therefore, been compelled to resort to disinfection. But such has been our short- sightedness in the matter, that the employment of any agent to destroy infection is too often evaded, and has usually been rendered most dis- tasteful and even painful. A nauseous coating has been put upon this very simple pill. A poor woman is sent to the oil-shop for a little chloride of lime ; a foul room is thereby rendered unbearable, the place has to be thrown open, disinfection is not attained, and the maximum of discomfort is attended with a minimum of benefit. Some medical men are, I fear, blamable for not estimating with greater precision the real benefits derived from the use of volatile dis- infectants. They are all irritating and of bad odor, and a popular be- lief has arisen that, unless they are foul and caustic, they can do no good service. A distinguished chemist, Mr. J. A. Wanklyn, has very recently shown that the constitution of a poisoned atmosphere cannot be modified even in a small dwelling by an expenditure of material that woiild be certainly beyond the means of a wealthy person. To dimin- ish the evils of a malign atmosphere, he says, " ventilate," and, while admitting the correctness of this, I shall humbly attempt to show that means may be employed for fixing the poisonous particles floating in a fever-chamber without rendering the air of that chamber irrespirable, or without killing a patient by draughts of cold air. Disinfectants are employed as deodorizers and as contagion-de stroyers. Such agents as carbolic acid prevent the decomposition of DISINFECTION AND DISINFECTANTS. 57 organic matter, and therefore favor a state of atmospheric purity ; but carbolic acid is not a deodorizer. It makes, but it does not absorb or destroy, fetid vapors : and it is for this reason that M. Lemaire and others have recommended the use of carbolic acid in conjunction with sulphate of zinc, salts of iron, chloride of lime, and so on. There is indisputable similarity between the working of putrid germs and of the seeds of the most virulent plagues. Fevers were classed of old as putrid diseases, and any one who has witnessed the prompt decomposition and the foul emanations of fever-stricken beings, whether human or brute, can readily understand that it was no very India-rubber-like stretch of the imagination that led our forefathers to confound contagion with putrescence. It is, however, necessary to learn that, in practising Disinfection, we have to neutralize the products of, or check the decay of healthy matter separated from living plants or animals, and that we have like- wise to destroy specific elements of contagion, elements which differ in the various maladies that are known to be transmissible from the sick to the healthy. In order to illustrate this, let us take the case of sewage. The excreta of healthy human beings decompose, and the sewer-gases belong to the class of irrespirable gases which cannot be absorbed into the system without producing serious ill effects, and even symptoms such as characterize a putrid fever vomiting faintness fol- lowed by prolonged stupor fetid diarrhoea, and even death. The re- sults are apparently undistinguishable from typhus fever. The line of demarcation, between a malignant fever produced under such circum- stances and fevers due to a specific virus, has not yet been satisfactorily established. The foregoing symptoms result also from decomposing matters pass- ing into the blood otherwise than by the lungs, and whole hecatombs of slain, through the instrumentality of hospital gangrene, pyaemia, puer- peral fever, and allied diseases, testify to the great dangers arising from the diffusion of solid or fluid matters in a state of decomposition. In dealing with the excreta of the sick, it is not the volatile elements and simple gases that we have to fear, but the materials that adhere to any thing and every thing on and around the sick, and, if ever we allow them to pass from the sick-room, it is quite impossible to control them. If we even let them pass in any quantity from room to room or house to house in atmospheric currents, we cannot trace them until they have victimized fresh subjects susceptible to their pernicious influences. For our purpose it may be accepted as proved that successful dis- infection must aim at preventing decomposition in simple putrescible matters, or must aim at attacking fever-germs as soon as discharged by the patient. It is desirable that a disinfectant should be an anti septic viz., an agent that arrests chemical change in animal or vege- table matters, and it must be a deodorizer, or capable of fixing the most noxious gases evolved. It has been erroneously believed that 5 8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. sulphuretted hydrogen is the principal deleterious gas which disinfect- ants have to encounter the worst kind of vermin to ferret out. Prof. Way, however, asserts that the gaseous elements that are usually foul smelling and hurtful are ammoniacal. The best disinfectant to deal with sulphuretted hydrogen, such as is evolved in the emptying of a foul ash-pit, would be salts of iron or chloride of zinc. Salts of iron and copper are antiseptics and very active deodorizers, and would have been used even more extensively than they have been, had they been harmless. But the iron-salts stain all they come iuto contact with, and copper salts are injurious to life. Zinc-salts are also inimical in this latter way. A disinfectant, to be available in the homes I am endeavoring to depict, must neces- sarily be harmless, and until quite recently it was not easy to find such an agent. The alkaline permanganates have been extolled as disinfectants. They are in many instances admirable deodorizers, but the fact that permanganates are sparingly soluble in water renders their employment very difficult, except in dealing with small accumu- lations of putrid matter. The use is too limited to enable us to rely on them for systematic disinfection. There is one volatile deodorizer and disinfectant that has been recommended very strongly in some cases by Dr. B. W. Richardson and Mr. Spencer Wells, and that is iodine. In some virulent diseases attended with fetid discharges, a little iodine placed in a box, with a little muslin to confine it, is sufficient to render the room tolerable to the attendants upon the sick. For similar purposes, peat, sea-weed, wood, or animal charcoal, have been recommended, owing to the avid- ity with which they condense the gases of decomposition within their pores. For some years, Prof. Gamgee has used charcoal charged with sulphurous acid as an active antiseptic, and he now suggests the use of charcoal mixed with chloride of aluminium, or, as he popularly calls it, chloralum. The sulphurous acid renders air irrespirable, but chlora- lum, which is a deliquescent chloride of aluminium, attracts and neu- tralizes the noxious elements of a poisoned atmosphere. Having attempted to show that disinfection must be an every-day practice in the household, and that disinfectants must necessarily be harmless antiseptic deodorizers, it is not difficult to establish a code of rules of almost universal application. There is a caution that should be given at all times in a household : Servants cannot be ex- pected to understand the use of disinfectants any more than they can be trusted to carry out a system of ventilation. Disinfection and ven tilation, therefore, shoidd, to a large extent, be automatic processes and, happily, such things are to be found. A fusion of the two processes of disinfection and ventilation has been tried, of late, in the following manner : The space occupied by a top pane of glass is fitted up with a piece of metal which slants from the bottom upward, and the top is rounded in shape and perforated. DISINFECTION AND DISINFECTANTS. 59 Inside this wedge-shaped ventilator are two shelves, pierced with holes, the top one being made to carry a box of charcoal and the bot- tom one a piece of sponge. By this double contrivance the inventor and patentee, Dr. Howard, of St. John's, Canada, claims not only to absorb the watery vapor of the incoming air by the sponge, and dis- infect any foul air that may seek entrance by means of the charcoal, but also to warm the cold air by the amount of friction it has to under- go in its ingress through the body of a ventilator which is already somewhat heated by the warmth of the room. If the wind blows too strongly upon the outside mouth of the ventilator, Dr. Howard pro- poses a sliding valve to work up and down inside the pane occupied by the apparatus. I cannot but regard such a contrivance as a clumsy one. It may be said to stand in the same relationship to either per feet ventilation or perfect disinfection that spurious freemasonry doe? to what is called the pure craft masonry, or certain litharges to good white lead. There is no necessity, either, to filter the air of a room ic such a manner. There can, however, be a strong case made out why the water- closet pans of a house should be disinfected, and I am able to point out an apparatus which fulfils every require- ment for that purpose. It is exhibited in the diagram, both in section and elevation, and is known as Brown's patent self-acting dis- infector. The object is to deliver at every upheaval of the handle a certain portion of a fluid disinfectant ; formerly it was exclu- sively Condy's fluid, now it is chloralum. The construction is the essence of simplici- ty. In a metal, glass, or earthenware ves- sel, holding a gallon of disinfecting fluid, a metal siphon is fixed, and the bottom is coiled and has a small inlet as shown, by which means the siphon fills itself. When the closet-handle is raised, the water rushing down the supply-pipe to flush the basin causes a vacuum in the disinfecting siphon, and its contents are blended with the water. By this means a portion of the deodorizing fluid is re- tained in the trap or basin where it has no sineenre of work to per- form. The siphon refills in a few seconds, and, as only a certain quan- tity is discharged, a pint of disinfecting fluid, costing one shilling, mixed with sufficient water to make up the gallon, will serve about 140 distinct actions of the closet. The cost of the apparatus is about ten shillings, and it can be fixed in an hour to any patterned water- closet whatever. The vessel containing the fluid is usually fixed upon a bracket in a corner above the seat. This kind of apparatus can be fixed to a tap in the stable, or anywhere else, and water containing a percentage of the medicated fluid drawn off into buckets, or run off U> THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. into the pavement-drains. They can be obtained at the depot, 5fl The Exchange, Southwark. Such disinfectors are not new, but the above is the simplest. A patent automatic apparatus of a similar kind was introduced some lit tie time ago by Mr. Spencer. It is also worked by the handle of the closet, and fixed on the wall above the seat, but it is too dependent upon a complicated action of wires and cranks its cost is, moreover, thirty shillings. Similar contrivances are sold, adaptable for the earth- closets now in use. Whether it be true or not that the partisans of the earth-closet first drew attention to the disinfection of the excreta, I do not know, but at all events they were not far behind. I have already given an example of these as applied to the earth or ash closet. As a matter of course, they are chiefly powdered disinfectants. Mr. Bannehr, in his improved ash-closet, uses a simple carbonaceous pow- der, chiefly as an absorbing medium. Nothing could be more wearisome than wading through the his- tory of disinfectants, and yet an occasional smile would be sure to light up the way. Who would propose to burn incense to the God of Stinks at various times throughout the day, in the shape of patent pas- tils, composed chiefly of charcoal, sulphur, and nitrate of potass ? Or who could be brought to look, Hindoo-fashion, on his patrimonial open drain or sewer as a river Ganges, and with religious punctuality set adrift upon the water there a sacred vessel which would admit a cer- tain portion of such water, and also containing a phosphuret which would decompose in contact with the water, the gas and flame thus evolved being understood to neutralize the evaporating poison of Siva, the destroyer ? And yet men have paid for leave to rivet such absurd- ities upon us, and the cry is, " Still they come." Since the time of M Legras, who, in 1849, claimed to discover and patented not less than twelve disinfectants (three liquids and nine powders), what have hu' r c ,ehoHers not had to endure ? Apsjft from the many simpler disinfectants, such as earth, ashes, charcoal, peat, salt, sulphur, gypsum, alum, vinegai', and tar-water, etc., suitable for the coarser purposes of a farm, the disinfectants for the house now in commerce may be reckoned on the fingers of one hand. I have already given a general indication of the action of each, and will only add that these useful agents have now been brought to such a state of perfection, that the person who chooses to make up his own mixtures, puts himself in the position of an ague-patient, who, ignoring the labors of chemistry, prefers the powdered Peruvian bark to the sulphate of quinine. The disinfectant used in a household ought certainly to be a non- poisonous one. Fortunately, or unfortunately, there is not any choice, for the only one of this description is chloralum, now adopted by the Board of Trade. This is the popular name bestowed upon it by its in- ventor, Prof. Gamgee. It contains 1,500 grains of hydrated chloride THE UNITY OF TEE HUMAN SPECIES. 61 of aluminium to the pint, or about 15 grains to the ounce, and is sold in a fluid and solid state. Slightly diluted, the former will disinfect se- cretions in the utensils of a sick-room ; and, exposed in a saucer in its concentrated form, I have found it to remove even the smell which is given off by a newly-painted room. In its powdered state it may be sprinkled in cellars, larders, dust-bins, ash-pits, stables, piggeries, poul- try-houses, and wherever a smell is continually arising. In the deo- dorization of sewage, while being pumped over the garden, one gallon of the fluid, or three pounds of the powder, will suffice for 150 gallons of sewage. As regards the disinfection of clothing in the laundry, Mrs. Mere- dith, the patroness of the Discharged Female Prisoners' Aid Society, lately wrote to the Standard newspaper as under : "The articles taken in for the wash are fairly sprinkled with chl or alum-pow- der; they are then packed in sacks, in which they remain for about two hours, wlien they arrive at the wash-house. They are then unpacked and shaken singly. After this they are put in a large tank, where a great quantity of water flows over and through them. In this way they rest for at least twelve hours. They are then wrung out, and undergo the ordinary process of washing. It is highly satisfactory to add that not the least deterioration of texture or color results." At the wash-houses referred to by this lady, a great number of women are employed, and nothing but the washing of the sick is car- ried on. -*- THE NATUKAL HISTOKT OF MAK A COURSE OF LECTURES AT THE IMPERIAL ASYLUM OF VINCENNES. By A. DE QUATEEFAGES, MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE OP FRANCE, PROFESSOR AT THE MUSEUM, ETC. TBAN6LATED BY ELIZA A. YOTTMANS. 7". The Unity of the Human Species. f~^\ ENTLEMEN" : Each of my fellow-laborers in science comes here VJ to lecture to you; they each select the subject which habitually occupies them. Some tell you of the heavens, the earth, the waters; from others you get the history of vegetables and animals. As I am Professor of the Natural History of Man at the Museum, I ask myself why I should not speak to you of man. There is evidently as much interest for us in our own species as in the history of animals, even of those most useful to us. Indeed, at this time, the mind is drawn toward this study by an irresistible move- 62 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. ment. Formerly, Anthropology, the natural history of man, was not represented in philosophical bodies, nor by the periodical press. Now, in Paris alone there are two Philosophical Societies occupied exclusively with this science, and two large publications equally devoted to it. At the Museum the teaching of anthropology is older. It is there aided by a collection which is still the best in the world. I do not hesitate to say that it is one of the glories of France to have given by these methods an example to the entire world an example followed to-day in America as well as in Europe. And I wish to make you take a part in this movement, by giving you some serious notion of the ensemble of the human family. This, gentlemen, is much more difficult for me than for my associ- ates. In all these lectures we are to speak of only a single being, man. Consequently, there will be an intimate union between them, so much so that any person who should miss a lecture would find difficulty in thoroughly understanding those that follow. To remove this diffi- culty, I mean to shape my teaching so that each lecture will form as definite a whole as possible. Then, at the commencement of each lecture, I shall endeavor to give, in a few words, a resum'e of the pre- ceding. In this way I hope to carry you to the end without ceasing to be understood. Each lecture, then, will be a sort of chapter of what we might call Popular Anthropology. By-and-by I hope that these lectures will be collected into a volume, and I shall be very proud if one day they merit the ad- jective I have employed if, in reality, they become popular among you. Let us enter, then, upon our first chapter. Since man is the sub ject of our discourse, we must first ask what he is. But, before answer- ing, I ought to enter into some explanation. This question has been often asked, but generally by theologians or by philosophers. Theologians have answei-ed in the name of dog- ma and religion ; philosophers in the name of metaphysics and abstrac- tion. Let it be well understood between us that I shall take neither of these grounds, but shall avoid, with great care, both that of theolo- gy and that of philosophy. Before I became professor at the Museum, I was occupied with the study of animals I was a naturalist. It is as a naturalist that I have taken my chair at the Institute. At the Mu- seum I remain what I was, and nothing else. I shall continue the same at Vincennes, leaving to theologians theology, to philosophers philosophy, limiting myself in the name of science, and, above all, in the name of natural science. Let us now return to the question I was about to put : "What is man ? It is evidently useless to insist that man is neither a mineral nor a vegetable that he is neither a stone nor a plant. But is he an animal ? THE UNITY OF THE HUMAN SPECIES. 63 No indeed, especially when we take into account all which exists in him. And I am sure that in this respect you all agree with me. Certainly none of you would wish to be compared with cattle that ruminate, with hogs that wallow in the mire. Nor would you wish to be classed with the dog, notwithstanding all the qualities which make him the friend and companion of man ; nor with the horse, though it should be with Gladiator, Man is not an animal. He is widely distinguished from animals by numerous and important characters of different sorts. I shall here only refer to his intellectual superiority, to which belongs articulate speech, so that each people has its special language ; writing, which permits the reproduction of this language ; the fine arts, by the aid of which he conveys, and, in some sort, materializes the conceptions of his imagi- nation. But he is distinguished from all animals by two fundamental characters which pertain only to him. Man is the only one among or- ganized and living beings who has the abstract sentiment of good and evil ; in him alone, consequently, exists moral sense. He is also alone in the belief that there will be something after this life, and in the recognition of a Supreme Being, who can influence his life for good or for evil. It is upon this double idea that the great fact of religion rests. By-and-by these two questions of morals and religion will turn up again. We shall, I repeat, examine them, not as theologians, but simply as naturalists. I will only say for the present that man, every- where, however savage he may be, shows some signs of morality and of religion that we never find among animals. Hence man is a being apart, separated from animals by two great characters, which, I repeat, distinguish him yet more than his incon- testable intellectual superiority. But here the differences end. So far as the body is concerned, man is an animal, nothing more, nothing less. Except some differences of form and disposition, he is the equal, only the equal, of the superior animals that surround him. If we take, for terms of comparison, the species that approach us nearest in general form, anatomy shows us that our organs are exactly the same as theirs. We can trace in them, almost muscle by muscle and nerve by nerve, those which we find in man himself. Physiology, in its turn, shows us, in the body of man, the organs, muscles, nerves, performing exactly the same functions as in the ani- mal. This is a capital fact which daily profits us, both from a purely scientific and from a practical point of view. We cannot experiment upon man we can upon animals. Human physiology has employed this means to discover the functions of our organs. Physicians go further still ; they bring to the sick-bed the fruit of experiments made upon animals. Anthropology also, as we have just seen, applies to these inferior creatures for very important instruction. 64 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. But Anthropology should descend much lower than the animals when it would enlighten us completely. Vegetables are not animals, any more than animals are man. But men, animals, and vegetables, are all organized and living beings. They are distinguished from min- erals, which are neither the one nor the other, by certain general facts common to all. All organized beings have a limited duration ; all are born small and feeble ; during part of their existence, all grow and strengthen, then decrease in energy and vitality, sometimes also in size ; finally all die. Throughout life, all organized and living beings need nourish- ment. Before death, all reproduce their kind by a seed or an egg (we speak here of species, not of individuals), and this is true even of those which seem to come directly from a bud, from a layer, from a graft, etc. ; for from bud to bud, from layer to layer, from graft to graft, we can rise to the seed and to the egg. Finally, then, all organized and living beings have had a father and a mother. These grand phenomena, common to all living beings, and conse- quently to man, imply general laws which control them, and which must therefore govern man as well as the plant. Science every day confirms this conclusion, which might have been reached by reason alone, but which may now be regarded as a fact of experience. And I believe I need not dwell here, to make you understand the magnificence of this result. As for me, I find it admirable that man and the lowest insect, that the king of the earth and the lowliest of the mosses, are so linked to- gether that the entire living world forms but one whole where all har- monizes in the .closest mutual dependence. From this community in certain phenomena, from this subjection to certain laws equally common, results a consequence of the highest importance. Whatever questions concerning man you may have to examine, if they touch upon any of these properties, of these phenom- ena common to all organized and living beings, you must interrogate not only animals, but vegetables also, if you would reach the truth. When one of these questions is put and answered, to make the answer good, to make it true, you must bring man under all the gen- eral laws which rule other organized and living beings. If the solution tends to make man an exception to general laws, you may affirm that it is bad and false. But also, when you have resolved the question so as to include man in these great general laws, you may be certain that the solution is good, that it is true, and really scientific. With these data, and these alone, we will now consider the second question of Anthropology, and here it is : Are there several species of men, or is there but one, including several races ? To be understood, this question requires some explanation. TEE UNITY OF TEE EUMAN SPECIES. 65 Look at the drawings I have hung at the bottom of the hall. These figures are part of those I employ in the course at the Jardin des Plantes. I have brought but a small number, but they suffice to give an idea of the principal varieties which the human type presents. You have here individuals taken from nearly every part of the world ; and this I regard as a very important point. You see that they differ considerably fi - om each other in color, often also in hair, sometimes in proportions, sometimes in features. Well, our question is, whether the differences presented by the human groups from which these designs were taken are differences of species, or if they indicate only differences among races that belong to one and the same species. To answer this question, we must begin by getting a clear idea of what is meant by the words species and race. In fact, the whole dis- cussion turns on these two words. Unhappily, they have been often taken one for the other, or else they have been badly defined. The discussions which have hence arisen would very quickly cease, if we would study them a little more closely. Let us see if we cannot get precise ideas without going into details impossible here. Certainly none of you would ever confound an ass with a horse : not even when a horse is small, and there are horses no larger than a Newfoundland dog ; nor when an ass attains the size of an ordinary horse, as, for example, our large asses of Poitou. You say imme- diately, they are different species : here is a big ass and a little horse. And you say the same on seeing, side by side, a dog and a wolf. On the other hand, all of you here would give the single name of dog to animals which differ from each other, as do the bull-dog and water-spaniel, the greyhound and the lapdog, the Newfoundland dog and the King-Charles ; and you are right. However, judging by sight alone, even after detailed observation, you see, between the dogs I have just named, differences of size, of proportion, of color, much greater than those which separate the horse from the ass. An ass and a horse of the same size certainly resemble each other much more than the types of dog I have just named. Further, if you place side by side a black and a white water- spaniel, you will not designate them bv different names. You will call them both water-spaniels, although one is black and the other white. In the case of vegetables you do exactly the same thing. A red rose and a white rose are equally roses ; a pear is always a pear, whether you buy two for a sous in the street, or pay three francs at Chevet. Well, without doubt, your decision is exactly like that of the 5 66 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. naturalists. You have answered, just as they do, the question of species and race a question that at first appears very complicated, because of the confusion before referred to. Here, then, is one more example to prove that, under many circumstances, popular observa- tion and good sense go straight 'to the mark, as well as the labors of science. Indeed, let us translate into general scientific language what I have just said of your views, and I am very sure not to be mistaken with regard to them. The meaning of this judgment is, that an animal or a vegetable may vary within certain limits. The dog remains a dog, whatever its general form, its size, its hair ; the pear remains a pear, whatever its size, its savor, the color of its skin. From these facts, which I simply allude to, it results that these variations may be transmitted by way of generation. You all know that the union of two water-spaniels will produce water-spaniels ; that the union of two bull-dogs gives bull-dogs. It results, finally, in a more general way, that individuals of the same species may cease to resemble each other in an absolute manner, may sometimes even take very different characters, without becoming isolated and forming different species. As we have just said, the dog remains a dog, whatever its modifications. Well, these groups, formed by individuals which have departed from the primitive type, and have formed distinct secondary groups, are precisely the ones that naturalists call races. You understand why we constantly speak of races of cattle, horses, etc. There is, in fact, but one species of domestic cattle, which has given birth to the race hretonne, as well as to the great cattle of Uri, with their savage aspect, and to the peaceful Durham. We have, again, but one species of domestic horse, and this species has given birth to the little Shetland pony, of which I spoke just now, and to those enormous brewers' horses that we see in the streets of London. Finally, the various races of sheep, goats, etc., have arisen from one and the same species. We must give more precision to our ideas on this point, because the least vagueness here will make very serious inconvenience. I will cite some further examples taken from Vegetables and animals, being careful to choose such as are entirely familiar. You all know the seed of the coffee-tree. Permit me to give its history. You will see that it is instructive. The coffee-tree came originally from Africa, where from time im- memorial it has been cultivated on the declivities of Abyssinia that elope toward the Red Sea. About the fifteenth century, something like four hundred years ago, the coffee-tree crossed this sea and pene- trated into Arabia, where it has since been cultivated, and whence especially we get the famous coffee of Mocha. THE UNITY OF THE HUMAN SPECIES. 67 The use of coffee spread very early and with great rapidity in the East. It penetrated Europe much more slowly, and it was first taken in France at Marseilles. Coffee was first drunk in Paris in 1667. The seeds which furnished it were brought in small quantity by a French traveller named Theve- not. Two years afterward, in 1669, Soliman Aga, ambassador of the Sublime Porte in the time of Louis XIV., induced the courtesans of that great king to taste it, and they found it very agreeable. How- ever, its use did not spread for a long time. It. was not until the eighteenth century that it began to be generally used. You see that coffee has not been very long in circulation. In fact, it is scarcely a century and a half since it became an article of general consumption by the people of Europe. Well, during many years Europe remained tributary to Arabia for this commodity. All the coffee consumed in Europe came from Arabia, and particularly from Mocha. Toward the commencement of the eighteenth century the Dutch attempted to import it into Batavia, one of their colonies in the Indian Archipelago. They succeeded very well. From Batavia some stalks were taken to Holland and put in a hot-house, where they succeeded equally well. One of these stalks was brought to France toward 1710, and was placed in the conserva- tory of the Jardin des Plantes, and there also it prospered and gave birth to a certain number of sprouts. In 1720 or 1725 (I have not been able to find the precise date), an officer of the French Navy, Captain Desclieux, thought that, since Hol- land had cultivated coffee at Batavia, he might also acclimate it in our colonies of the Gulf of Mexico. When embarking for Martinique, he took from the Jardin des Plantes three stalks of coffee, and carried them with him. The voyage was long and difficult, by reason of con- trary winds. The supply of water proving insufficient, it was neces- sary to put the crew on rations. Captain Desclieux, like the others, had but a small quantity of water to drink each day. He divided it with his coffee-plants. Notwithstanding all his care, two died on the passage ; only one arrived safe and sound at Martinique. Put at once into the earth, it prospered so much and so well that from it have de- scended all the coffee-trees now spread over the Antilles and tropical America. Twenty years after, our Western colonies exported millions of pounds of coffee. You see the coffee-tree, starting from Africa, has reached the ex- tremity of Asia on the east and America on the west. Hence, it has nearly travelled round the world. Now, in this long voyage, coffee has become modified. Passing by the tree, of which we know little, let us consider the seed. We need not be grocers to know the different qualities of cof- fees and their different production. Nobody would confound Mocha with Bourbon, Rio Janeiro with Martinique. Each of these seeds car- 58 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. lies in its form, in its proportions, in its aroma, the certificate, so t