Chapter V: Part 5

For the administration of large interests, involving the control of men and the building-up of great institutions, men of science have over and over again demonstrated their fitness. In the scientific societies of the world they have shown their capacity for organization, and in the management of schools and colleges their ability has often been proved. Among the presidents of universities and technical schools who have been drawn from the ranks of science I may mention Eliot, of Harvard; Gilman, of the Johns Hopkins; Drown, of Lehigh; Jordan, of the Leland Stanford; Chamberlin, of Wisconsin; Morton, of the Stevens Institute; and Mendenhall, of the Worcester Polytechnic. The Institute of Technology in Boston has been directed successively by Rogers, Runkle, Walker, and Crafts; the Columbia School of Mines was built up by a group of scientific workers, aided by President Barnard; and the list might be lengthened almost indefinitely. Have these men fallen below the average of their fellows? Have they not shown at least as high administrative ability as has been found elsewhere? The mere statement of their names is a sufficient answer, and renders argument unnecessary. With them the scientific training has not been a disqualification, nor even a handicap; it has rather been to their advantage, for to it they owe much of the insight, the power to grasp great problems intelligently, the ability to interpret evidence, and the tendency to prompt and decisive action, without which successful administration is impossible.

Again, consider the scientific institutions of the world, the museums and observatories, and the various governmental organizations in which science is recognized. In our own country, the Smithsonian Institution and National Museum were built up by Henry and Baird, in spite of great and varied difficulties; the Coast Survey was created by Hassler and Bache; and the Geological Survey was developed by a group of men among whom Hayden, King, and Powell were pioneers. The last-named organization has been controlled from the beginning by men of science, and the Coast Survey has been weak only when under nonscientific management. The Commission of Fish and Fisheries owes its existence and a great part of its effectiveness to its creator, Baird; the Army Medical Museum and Library represents the executive genius of Billings; and in none of these institutions has partisan politics ever exerted an appreciable influence. No bureaus of the Government have been more wisely or more efficiently handled than those which men of science have controlled; in none have there been fewer errors or scandals; there is not one in which the essential purpose of its existence has been better fulfilled.

Instead, then, of excluding the scholar, the investigator, the man who knows, the man of scientific training, from his fair share of public responsibility, we should do well to call him into service more and more. He may be, he often is, averse to administrative work, for the reason that it interferes with his chosen occupation, and hinders the prosecution of research. But his training and his mental bias are both needed in public affairs, wherein the scientific method is too often unapplied. In European countries men of high scientific rank are frequently found in legislative bodies and ministries; men like Playfair, Roscoe, and Lubbock in England, Virchow in Germany, Quintino Sella in Italy, and Berthelot in France. With us in America the maker of speeches outranks the thinker in popular esteem, and is given duties to perform in which he may become ridiculous. Both in legislation and in diplomacy many questions arise which demand the most careful scientific treatment, or which can be answered only by thorough scientific knowledge, and many of these have been intrusted for settlement to men of no specific training whatever. Of late years we have had the fur-seal controversy, the question of forest reserves, the irrigation of our arid lands, problems of sanitation and water supply, and in each of these the man of science has played a part which was too often subordinate to that of the politician. In an ideal government the two should work together, each supplementing the peculiar ability of the other. Many details of the tariff, and a notable part of the coinage question, require scientific data for their proper settlement, but the true expert has not always been consulted. The result of this neglect is sometimes seen in courts of law, where questions of interpretation arise which might have been averted, obscurity in legislation being often due to the careless use of scientific terminology or to ignorance of the relations in science between two branches of industry. The voice of the trained investigator might well be heard in Congress, but his testimony now is limited to the committee room. Even there it is received with an attention which is too often mingled with incredulity. The myth of the dreamer, the visionary, is more than half believed.

The supposed type, then, is not a type, but an exception--a man of straw, which is hardly worth overthrowing. But the belief in it has been and still is mischievous, a hindrance to wise action, an obstacle to progress. The misconception has worked injury to science. These words of protest, therefore, are not wholly superfluous.

FORENOON AND AFTERNOON.

BY CHARLES F. DOWD, PH. D.

It is a fact of common observation, at different times of the year, that the forenoon and afternoon, as to daylight, are of unequal length. Along in later autumn the shortness of the afternoons is very noticeable, and the shortness of forenoons along in later winter. Whatever makes common facts more intelligible adds to the general intelligence and to the general good. It is to this end that the following brief statements are made.

Nothing is more evident than that the sun requires just as much time to go from the eastern horizon to the midday meridian as to go from that meridian to the western horizon. But, strange to say, there are but four days during the whole year in which the sun reaches the midday meridian at just twelve o’clock. The true noon point varies from about fifteen minutes before to about sixteen minutes after twelve o’clock. These extreme points in one set of variations fall in the first week of November and in the second week of February, not to designate exact days for years in general.

The calendars show that in the latitude of Saratoga (essentially Boston latitude) on November 3, 1898, the sun rose at 6.30 and set at five o’clock, thereby making the forenoon a half hour longer than the afternoon. On that day the sun reached the midday meridian at 11.45. On February 13, 1899, the sun rose at just seven o’clock and set at 5.30, thereby making the afternoon a half hour longer than the forenoon, and on this day the sun reached the midday meridian at 12.15. These are facts plainly open to general view, and therefore need no verifying.

The causes of the foregoing are not so apparent to common observation. It must be borne in mind that the mean or average solar day is the basis for all time measurements, therefore its exact length is of the greatest importance. Yet the general solar day, from which the average one is derived, is a very indefinite term as to its length. Its length in general may be defined, under view of the sun’s apparent motion, as the time extending from the instant that the sun’s center crosses any given meridian of the earth on one day to the instant that center crosses the same meridian on the following day--i. e., the time intervening between these two instants is the length of a solar day.

The motion of the sun, however, is only apparent; the actual motion is in the earth’s revolution upon its axis. We should have one day a year long if the earth did not revolve on its axis at all, since the revolution of the earth around the sun once a year would in the course of the year bring all sides facing the sun. Consequently the earth makes one more revolution upon its axis each year than the number of solar days in that year, and a little consideration of this fact will show that in each solar day the earth makes one full revolution on its axis and about 1/365 of another, which fractional addition is occasioned by one day’s progress of the earth along its orbit.

Another fact needs to be considered. Since the earth’s orbit is in the form of an ellipse, with the sun at one of the foci, the earth must pass nearer the sun in some parts of its orbit than in others. By the laws of gravity, when nearer, the attraction between the earth and sun is greater, and if this were not balanced by increased velocity along its orbit the earth would fall into the sun; and, on the other hand, when farther off this attraction is less, and if this were not balanced by a diminution of velocity along its orbit the earth would fly off into space. This varying velocity, together with other complications too technical for a magazine article, gives varying lengths of orbit to the several solar days of the year. If the earth’s orbit were laid out upon paper and, by astronomical calculations, an exact proportionate section were marked off for each solar day of the year, the variable lengths of orbit for the different days of the year would plainly appear to the eye.

But, as before explained, the time of a solar day is the time of one revolution of the earth upon its axis, together with the fractional part of another revolution occasioned by one day’s progress of the earth along its orbit. Then it must follow that as the daily sections of the orbit vary in length, the time of the solar day must vary in length. No clock could be made to keep the variable time of true solar days, and if this were possible, the hour, minute, etc., would be variable of length, and hence no standard for time measurements. But by working a simple arithmetical problem of addition and division an average length of day for the year may easily be found. This average day is the mean solar day adopted. Its time is arbitrary and exact, forming a perfect standard for all time measurements. From this the term _mean time_ gains its significance.

By referring to the foregoing earth’s orbit laid out on paper, with the true solar days marked off in sections of mathematical exactness, it will be seen that by dividing each section into two equal parts and marking the division point with red ink, the true noon point of each solar day in the year will be conspicuous upon the drawing, and in its proportionate relations in every way. If now we set a pair of dividers or compasses so that the opening shall reach over the exact space on the orbit of one half of the mean solar day, and beginning at the red noon point of one of the four days in the year when the true noon falls at just twelve o’clock--say December 24th--and step the dividers around on the orbit, making a blue point mark at each second step, then as the blue points vary from the red so will the mean time which our clocks keep vary from the true noon of each day of the year.

Variation in length of forenoon and afternoon, therefore, may be viewed by common intelligence not only as a fact but as a necessity.

PRESIDENT JORDAN’S “NEMINISM.”

OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT, LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY,
PALO ALTO, CAL.
POST OFFICE, STANFORD UNIVERSITY.

DEAR DR. YOUMANS:

The inclosed, from an anonymous but appreciative source, may interest you. It is doubtless true that the philosophy of Neminism goes back to India, through Hegel and Plato, but the high priestess does not know this. She made it all out of her own head.

Truly yours,
DAVID S. JORDAN.

THE UNIVERSITY OF MENTIPHYSICS,
LYNN, MASS., _December 6, 1899_.

_President David Starr Jordan, Leland Stanford University, California._

SIR: I have before me the last issue of one of our two or three great scientific magazines, in which Mr. Giddings lays down the exact method we are to follow in sociology, thereby creating the pleasing impression that hereafter he intends to stick to it himself. But, sir, I wish to say, as a student of “Neminism,” as you call it, that my emotions were far less agreeable on perusing your brilliant plagiarism, the doctrine of _Nihil nemini nocet_, an aphorism which apparently you wish to make rival the _Cogito ergo sum_ of the Cartesian philosophy. I will concede to you (I being, as it is perhaps necessary for me to remark, a literary person) the undoubted right all real literary persons have of appropriating everything of a literary nature that they can lay their hands upon; but, while we are in perfect harmony upon this occasion, in regard to that point, I regret to insist that the thing must be done judiciously--_that_ is the art. Any mere plebeian can accumulate facts--_that_ is the _raison d’être_ of the plebeian; his duty is to work--but the real ethereal literary man, such as the monthly magazines nourish, must disdain facts and theories and the truth, and must float in the pure, soft twilight of his own imagination while he writes about people who never existed, in a language which nobody can understand. Yet, sir, in your unblushing appropriation of the late Professor Hegel’s dictum of _Sein und nicht Sein sind dieselbe_ (which I presume you, sir, to exculpate yourself, will swear you do not understand), and in your changing that immortal antithesis to your _Nihil nemini nocet_--in doing all this I declare that you have violated one of the most sacred principles, in fact, the very essence of Neminism; for to say, as you have said, that nothing hurts nobody, is to say a very dull, prosaic, vulgar fact which any fool can understand; but to say that “to be and not to be are the same” is to say something that is not only very beautiful, but, what is far more to the point, is likewise utterly incomprehensible; yet to do this _is_ the essence of Neminism, as you yourself have shown.

As a confirmed Neminist glorying in his Neminism, as Pascal’s Father Joseph, the Jesuit, gloried in “interpretation” of the words “murder” and “charity,” I am, sir (and I hope my frequent use of this monosyllable will not annoy you, for the first Neminist, Plato, uses Ω Σωκρατες [Greek: Ô Sôkrates] quite as frequently, though his expression requires four times as much wind or space as mine), I say, then, that I am always anxious to be thought well of by people who are on top or are getting there, in order, to use your own undignified and cruel metaphor in the Rev. Mr. Lyman Abbott’s journal of news and Christianity, that I may continue “to hold down” my position as the janitor and Professor of Leibnitzian Monadology in the University of Mentiphysics. But there are times, sir, when even a feminist rises above his interest, and, like Richelieu in the play, exchanges the lion’s and the fox’s skins. In short, I beg to inform you that I believe that you, seeing the growing attachment of the vulgar mob for the _Wissenshaftliche Pädagogie_ of the Robinson Crusoeans or concentrationists, have had the thought to sap the foundations of their success by vulgarizing our noble monopoly of Neministic science, and I should not be at all surprised to see your name, after a little, as the editor of a “Journal of Psycho-Materno-Kinder Apperceptics,” or of a strictly American “Great Educator Series,” beginning with Pontiac and ending with Jim Fiske.

Or perhaps, sir, you are actuated by deeper motives. Our university has not yet received the complimentary copy of your work on Imperial Democracy, the Government probably holding it back until General Young can catch Mr. Aguinaldo, but I see by the publishers’ lists that it is out. Now, it is easy to see that if Imperial Democracy gets within a stone’s throw of China it will get _into_ China, and, with your knowledge of Aristotle’s Politics and the Highbinders in Chinatown, you can not have failed to have recognized that Neminism and Orientalism are very similar. To be or not to be; to be alive or to be dead; to be drunk or to be sober--’tis all the same for the people; ’tis _Nirvana_. You wish to vulgarize Neminism. What follows your success? Immediately every State will make it an obligatory study in the public schools, and when, in the distant future, we meet the Chinamen face to face, we will be ready to exterminate them or be exterminated by them; for it is an axiom of sociology, which it is to be hoped Mr. Giddings will see the value of and will in the next edition of his Social Euclid make number one, that when two societies completely differing in origin, history, manners, institutions, and laws come together they start in the more quickly to cut each other’s throats when they have a common idea in which they can locate a difference, and hence find a logical excuse to begin.

I would have preferred that our president had taken up this unpleasant task of criticising your mischievous efforts to vulgarize our beautiful science, which, like the true religion of the Egyptians, should be retained _sub rosa_ in the temples; but she, as you yourself have said, does not like controversial publicity, and has often remarked that our science is like the mushroom, for, though it is the child of darkness and Byzantian filth, it is eminently adapted to be retained by weak stomachs, while for others it may be nauseating. I am, sir, very respectfully,

ANACHARSIS PANGLOSS, _M. Plane_.

Though religiously refraining from introducing my own personality in the foregoing, it being a cardinal point in our science that it is good form to appear modest--_videri quam esse_, as was said of Cato--I am, nevertheless, obliged to observe that I am not at all in any way related to the Dr. Pangloss, LL. D., A. S. S., mentioned in the play of the Heir at Law, nor yet, though perhaps more spiritually akin, to that other Dr. Pangloss--Dr. Leibnitz Pangloss, the tutor of Candide mentioned by the late Monsieur Voltaire of happy memory. Dr. L. Pangloss, a fine old fellow at bottom, was engaged in showing how, in the best possible words, a cause always precedes its effect; for instance, Monsieur the Baron Thunder den Trockendorf has a nose, argues he--it will carry spectacles, hence the nose was created for spectacles, and spectacles are created. It is plain that Dr. L. Pangloss was a scientist. Now, I am a sociologist, and it is the hope of my life to fill the chair of Monadology in the new American university, where I intend to show that while the rich are becoming richer the poor will become richer than the rich in contemplating how much more satisfaction the rich get out of their riches than they, the poor, get out of their poverty. This, as you will at once recognize, is in the line of what Mr. Lester Ward calls Dynamic Sociology, and, though it is not the acme of the application of dynamics such as that which knocked Hebraism out of Saul of Tarsus, I beg to remind you that, until German science has made further progress in the application of electricity, we lack the means of producing the necessary phenomena by which alone such effects can be secured.

A. P.

Correspondence.

FAITH AND KNOWLEDGE.

_Editor Popular Science Monthly_:

SIR: In your editorial, in the issue of September, you speak of “faith as the organ of religious apprehension.” This suggests some important facts that are not always apprehended, or are forgotten. There is no organ for the discovery, the proof, or the apprehension of truth but reason, whether facts of Nature or of religion. “Faith” is not a sixth sense which we do not use in scientific pursuits, but which comes to our help when we seek for religious truth. Much of the difficulty comes from the fact that the word “faith” is ambiguous, having two meanings, which are not distinguished. It is (1) simply belief of a fact because of evidence presented to and apprehended by the reason; or is it (2) trust, confidence in, belief in, as in a person, resting on the belief of that person’s competency and truthfulness, that belief resting on evidence apprehended by the reason. Because of this “faith” in the person we accept his testimony as to facts beyond our personal cognizance, we believe them not because we have discovered them, or may be are competent to discover them, but because of our “faith” in a person whom we have seen reason to believe is trustworthy--i. e., competent and truthful.

Now, these two meanings of “faith” are often confused, interchanged. Hence the discredit thrown upon belief of religious truth, because an illegitimate use is made of the place of “faith” in its justification. And writers defending religious belief have been great sinners in this illegitimate use of “faith.”

The place of “faith” is the same in science as in religion--i. e., it is the condition and justification of our acceptance of truth which is beyond our personal cognizance. We accept it because of the testimony of men in whom we have learned to have faith--e.g., How few of us who accept the revelations of the spectrum analysis as to the composition of the stars have any other justification for accepting them than just this? We believe them simply because men, whom we, in the exercise of our reason, have come to believe competent and truthful, tell us what they have seen. We believe on their testimony because we trust them. Our process involves three steps: (1) Belief of their competence through appeal to reason; (2) trust in them because of this belief; (3) belief of their testimony because of this trust or “faith” in them. The only organ we have used is reason, in its initial act of belief of the competence and truthfulness of the witnesses. Error in the use of reason here vitiates all that follows. Correct use of reason here gives a legitimate condition for correct results of the other steps. But reason must go along with us and guide us in these, that we may come to a rationally accepted belief of the truth.

Here is the place of “faith” in science, as belief and as trust. By its use we accept the great issues of scientific truth which we believe, and do it legitimately.

It is the same in all right acceptance of religious truth. Here appears a person in human history claiming to reveal facts beyond our sphere of cognizance. Now, the first (1) step is belief in his competence and truthfulness as a witness, just as in cases of science. His only appeal is to reason, our only organ for apprehending truth. We, because of the evidence presented to our reason, believe him competent and truthful--i. e., trustworthy--and we take the second step (2), as in case of search for scientific truth. We trust him, we have “faith” in him. Then (3) we believe his testimony as to facts beyond our cognizance, as to God, as to the inner world and life, as to his own person and work, and his agency in helping us to the true life. Here are the same three steps as in our believing the great facts of science, and they are equally legitimate, and the belief is equally legitimate, and with the same use of “faith” in both cases, which use is legitimate if we have applied our reason correctly.

It may be said that there is this difference in the two cases: We are, it may be, competent with training to perceive with our reason the facts to which the scientists witness, whereas in religion we are not competent by any training, in our present state, to see what Jesus Christ testified to; therefore the believing him is not legitimate.

Space forbids arguing this point, but the writer is confident it can be shown that this does not vitiate the process in the least. The only point now argued is that reason is the only organ of man for the apprehension of truth, and that “faith” acts the same part in scientific and religious belief.

JOHN R. THURSTON.
WHITINSVILLE, MASS., _September 30, 1899_.

[The point which our correspondent discusses is one which falls rather within the province of theology or philosophy than within that of science. In the article to which he refers we did not distinctly say that “faith” was “the organ of religious apprehension.” What we said was that _granting_ such was the case, the question still remained to be settled where the line should be drawn between faith and knowledge. We doubt whether the account which our correspondent gives of faith would be widely accepted by those who approach the subject from the theological side, while those who approach it from the scientific side would--at least many of them would--be disposed to consider the term one which might better be dispensed with in favor of the less ambiguous word “belief.” Belief is the inclination of the mind toward a proposition for which absolute or demonstrative proof is wanting, and it is this condition of mind, it seems to us, that our correspondent has in view. Faith in the religious sense, unless we are mistaken, is something different. It is an affirmation made by the human conscience or consciousness in its own behalf--a certain instinctive recognition of a presence and power in the universe which, though inaccessible to scientific investigation, sustains an intimate, profound, and all-essential relation to man’s moral nature. If trust in an individual ever rises to the level of faith in this sense, it is because the influence of the individual harmonizes with and re-enforces the primal instinct. That, at least, is how we view the matter.--EDITOR.]

FISKE’S VIEWS COMPARED.

_Editor Popular Science Monthly_:

SIR: Will you permit me to say a few words supplementing your review of Through Nature to God? To those who have perused Mr. Fiske’s latest three scientifico-theological booklets, and also his Cosmic Philosophy, it can not be new that their author has become entangled in hopeless contradictions of himself. The limited space of a letter does not allow of adducing more than one remarkable passage from Cosmic Philosophy, demonstrating the antithesis between the arguments of this work and Mr. Fiske’s latest opinions, these new thoughts having been developed, as he tells us, by “carrying such a subject about in his mind for” twenty-five years. We are told in Through Nature to God (page 12) that “it has usually been found necessary to represent the Creator as finite either in power or in goodness, although the limitation is seldom avowed, except by writers who have a leaning toward atheism and take a grim pleasure in pointing out flaws in the constitution of things. Among modern writers” Comte and Mill are conspicuous for such a “leaning toward atheism.” Then we are informed (page 20) that the “shock which such a clear, bold statement gives to our religious feelings is no greater than the shock with which it strikes counter to our modern scientific philosophy.” And a little further on we find that “the God which Mr. Mill offers us, shorn of the attribute of omnipotence, is no God at all.”

If the reader will now open Cosmic Philosophy, he is told in vigorous language (vol. ii, p. 405) that “if there exist a personal Creator of the universe who is infinitely intelligent and powerful, he can not be infinitely good; if, on the other hand, he be infinite in goodness, then he must be lamentably finite in power or in intelligence. By this two-edged difficulty, theology has ever been foiled.” Then (vol. ii, p. 406) Mr. Fiske, quoting from Mill, expresses his entire concurrence with the views of this eminent thinker, and adds (vol. ii, p. 407), “With Mr. Mill, therefore, ‘I will call no being good who is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow-creatures.’ And, going a step further, I will add that it is impossible to call that being good who, existing prior to the phenomenal universe and creating it out of the plenitude of infinite power and foreknowledge, endowed it with such properties that its material and moral development must inevitably be attended by the misery of untold millions of sentient creatures for whose existence their Creator is ultimately alone responsible.”

No comment of mine can show more clearly than the passages cited above the “conversion” of Mr. Fiske, against which imputation so much subtle ingenuity is expended in the preface to The Idea of God.

That Mr. Fiske is merely reviving gross anthropocentric views he himself admits. To him, man is “the goal toward which Nature’s work has been tending from the first.” But might not also some pithecoid ancestors of ours have deemed themselves the “goal toward which Nature had been tending from the first”? What is Nature’s goal in the endless cycle of evolution in which life is but an infinitesimal part? But with Huxley I believe that “it would be a new thing in history if _a priori_ philosophers were daunted by a factious opposition of experience.” Mr. Fiske’s latest writings, as all theodicies, bear testimony to the truth of Huxley’s scathing remark.

But granting, for the sake of the argument, that “in the deepest sense it is as true as it ever was held to be, that the world was made for man,” there is an objection to be raised on moral grounds stronger than any that could be founded on scientific arguments. Had this world been created for man, entailing, as it does, the “misery of untold millions of sentient creatures,” who but the crassest egotist could worship this Fiskean God of iniquity?

The careful student of Thomas Huxley’s works may be surprised to find Through Nature to God “consecrated” to the memory of him whose life work was devoted to “untiring opposition to that ecclesiastical spirit” that shines through every page of Mr. Fiske’s latest writings. I echo Mr. Fiske’s words: “I can never cease to regret that Huxley should have passed away without seeing my [Mr. Fiske’s] arguments and giving me the benefit of his comments.” The last stroke of Huxley’s pen was giving Mr. Balfour “the benefit of his comments”; would that he could have given them to the author of the excursion Through Nature to God!

B. A. BEHREND.
ERIE, PA., _December 5, 1899_.

_Editor Popular Science Monthly_:

SIR: Your trenchant criticism of Mr. John Fiske’s discussion of the mystery of evil recalls Mr. Spencer’s reminder that “there is a soul of truth in all things erroneous.”

Mr. Fiske certainly has not made it plain that the meaning of the universe is to be found (exclusively) in the higher developments of love and self-sacrifice; but is it not equally a mistake to say inferentially that “on a broad view of the world-wide struggle for life there are no moral elements to be seen”? If we define morality as the equivalent merely of love and self-sacrifice, the ever-present love of mother and, in a degree, of father for the offspring imperatively negatives such a conclusion.

But morality is something more than love and self-sacrifice. Morality is right conduct, and right conduct in the last analysis is conformity to the conditions of existence. The nearer the conformity, the more complete the life, and life approaches completeness only as the activities of men cease to be impeded by each other’s aggressions, the highest life being reached when men help to complete one another’s lives.

Conversely, evil must be defined as nonconformity to the conditions of existence. Slowly but surely man is learning these conditions, and as he learns it is not to be doubted that “evil” will lessen. If we affirm acquisition of knowledge by man, we must postulate a precedent or “necessary” condition of ignorance. Hence it may be truthfully said that evil is a necessary correlative, and in a manner the necessary condition of good; and also, I think, that a broad view of the worldwide struggle for life shows not an absence of moral elements, but rather that the ethical is inherent in the very nature of animate things.

We may not all share Mr. Fiske’s exuberant optimism, and many can not accept his teleological implications, but of the ultimate triumph of good over evil, of knowledge over ignorance, we may not doubt.

FRANK M. LOOMIS.
BUFFALO, _November 10, 1899_.

THE LOCATION OF VINLAND.

_Editor Popular Science Monthly_:

SIR: I beg to take exception to the exploded Boston theory again revived by Miss Cornelia Horsford in the last number of your valuable magazine. It is astonishing to notice how little Prof. G. Storm’s excellent prize essay and Mr. Reeve’s careful edition of the text of sagas seem to have availed against the misplaced patriotism that persists in carrying those Norse explorers down to New England in the face of the numerous difficulties with which this feat is associated. If I am not mistaken, not a single historian or antiquarian of note has taken Professor Horsford’s extremely unscientific treatment of the sagas or his Norse discoveries seriously, and the sober verdict of Mr. Thorsteinn Erlingsson and Dr. V. Gudmundsson on the alleged Norse ruins seems to show that Miss Cornelia Horsford has met with no better success. To refute all the philological curiosities and illogical conclusions drawn by Professor Horsford in his ten treatises on the subject would, however, require a book of at least five hundred pages, and nobody seems to think the question important enough to warrant such an output. The fact that Mr. A. H. Keane, in his recent work, Man, Past and Present, takes it for granted that the Norsemen met with Eskimos in New England in the year 1000 seems to prove, however, that this persistence in defending a baseless supposition is not merely a matter of innocent patriotism. Fortunately, the current year, which marks the nine hundredth anniversary of the discovery, will be sure to see some valuable new treatises on the subject, and those who are sufficiently interested furthermore need only consult the above-mentioned books to discover how many serious objections the New England theory really has to contend with. Permit me to mention one of them. Cape Cod has, it is true, one singular feature that suggests the Keel Cape of the best version of the Vinland manuscripts--viz., sandy shores. As everybody can see for himself, however, by consulting Mr. Reeve’s book, the explorers sailed south from Keel Cape on the eastern shore till the country became indented with bays. At the mouth of one of these they established their first winter quarters (the so-called Streamfirth), and the next fall proceeded still farther south for a considerable time till they came to “Hop,” the true Wineland. The extraordinary ease with which Professor Horsford, in his book Landfall of Leif Ericson, undertakes to chop up this version, in order to make the explorers return to Boston from Cape Cod instead of continuing on their course, is something remarkable in the annals of historical research. But even then his theory fails utterly to satisfy the critical reader. The trouble with most of the writers on this subject, not excluding a professional historian like Prof. John Fiske, is that they have failed to sift the material or see the force of Professor Storm’s criticism of the Flat Island version. This being done, everything falls into line for the Nova Scotia theory, due consideration being given to the fact that an oral tradition of at least one hundred years intervened between the events narrated and the first somewhat extended written record.

While, therefore, owing to the last-mentioned fact, it is not altogether impossible that the Norsemen reached New England, it should be distinctly understood that such a conclusion can only be drawn on archæological lines, the test of the sagas pointing clearly in the opposite direction.

JUUL DIESERUD.

FIELD COLUMBIAN MUSEUM, CHICAGO,
_December 7, 1899_.

Editor’s Table.

_THE WAR SPIRIT._

It must be a matter of deep regret to all right-thinking men that there should have been during the latter half of the century now expiring so marked a revival of the war spirit. In the middle of the century it was thought by many that the world had learned wisdom from the terrible experiences of the past, and that with the development of international trade war would become an outworn mode of settling international controversies. How different a turn things were destined to take need not here be told. Coming to recent events, however, we may say that it is lamentable our own country could not have won by peaceful means whatever advantages it has secured by its recent war with Spain. Equally lamentable is it that Great Britain, the other great representative of Anglo-Saxon civilization, should at this moment be engaged in a still bloodier struggle over questions which it is hard to believe could not have been settled by negotiation. “Whence come wars and fightings among you?” is a question that was asked very long ago, and we do not know that it is possible to improve on the answer then given: “From your lusts.”

We do not say that a nation should not resist to the death a distinct aggression on its liberties or its independence. We do not say that when horrors are being enacted in any part of the world force may not righteously be employed to arrest them; but it is clear to our mind that, in the present age, wars between civilized countries might be almost wholly avoided if more reliance were placed upon moral force and less rein given to the impulse to employ physical force. This is a matter for the people in any state enjoying free institutions to take to heart. Let every man in a time of national difficulty ask himself this question: “Do I personally want to have blood shed over this matter?” Or this one: “Am I personally indifferent whether or not this dispute ends in bloodshed?” If a nation or the majority of a nation wants to have blood shed over a dispute with another nation, or is indifferent as to whether that shall be the outcome, the discussion will be carried on in a very different spirit from what it would be if there were a pronounced aversion to such a result. With nations, as with individuals, everything depends upon the spirit and ulterior purpose with which a question is approached. The cases must be very few in which a great nation, safe itself from attack, might not, in any matter in which minor interests are involved, resolve within itself that it will not resort to war--that it will work, and continue to work, on moral lines, trusting that, if it has right on its side, it will in due time carry its point. If blood cries from the ground against the slayer, what must be the responsibility of those who heedlessly and ruthlessly give their voices for war, when patience, moderation, and disinterestedness would have better accomplished every legitimate purpose? Slaughter is slaughter, murder is murder, however we may seek to weaken their import by a conventional treatment. War is mutual murder carried on professionally and systematically. Yet the primal command still makes its solemn appeal to the human heart and conscience: “Thou shalt not kill.”

It is, unfortunately, only too easy to cultivate the military spirit in almost any nation, and the military spirit, it need hardly be said, is the spirit that seeks quarrels. To the military man war means excitement, emulation, reputation, promotion, subject of course to the possibility of injury or death. No one denies that deeds of heroism and self-devotion are done on the battlefield; but that men should acquit themselves nobly in the field is no compensation for the horrors of a war brought on by the predominance of the military spirit.

“‘Great fame the Duke of Marlborough won,
And our good Prince Eugene.’--
‘Oh, ’twas a very wicked thing,’
Said little Wilhelmine.”

And every war is wicked and detestable that could consistently with national honor be avoided. When we say “honor” we do not mean “reputation.” Reputation depends on the canons of judgment prevailing among those who presume to award it. In a dueling community a man’s reputation might suffer by declining a challenge, but his honor would be intact if he declined from sincere unwillingness to do a wrong act. There is much honor sometimes in sacrificing reputation, particularly the “bubble reputation” that is won “in the cannon’s mouth.” Every appeal to the sword weakens the reliance placed upon principles of justice, and thus undoes a vast amount of the work of peace. When war is once set on foot, the national judgment is more or less blinded. True, it is the action of a majority of the people only--admitting that a majority wanted it--but who is uncompromising enough, when his country’s armies are in the field, to proclaim that they are fighting in a wrong cause? A few may do it, but they do it at their peril. In all other matters a minority may censure with any degree of severity the policy of the majority, but not in the matter of a war once entered on. Yet how perverting such a situation is to right judgment, and how injurious an effect it must have on the rising generation, are only too apparent.

These reflections may not at first sight seem to have a very direct bearing on the interests for which this magazine is supposed to stand, but to our mind science, in the broad sense, has no function so important as that of settling the education of the young upon a right _moral_ basis. No system of education deserves to be called scientific that does not place the idea of justice at the very foundation of human life. You can not do this, however, without making it a working principle, and without inculcating a belief in it as such. Applying the principle to national affairs, we see at once that a strong nation which desires to be just will take no advantage of its strength in its dealings with other nations. If it has a demand to make, it will make it simply in the name of justice, and cast no sidelong glances at its up-to-date battle ships or its well-equipped battalions. It will have unbounded patience with weaker communities, which, rightly or wrongly, may seem to think they have right on their side. It will not be ashamed to shrink from the shedding of blood. The “young barbarians” of our public schools are always only too ready to exalt might above right; but the judicious teacher into whom the true spirit of science has entered will seize every favorable opportunity for inculcating the great lesson that the moral law has a way of vindicating itself in the end, and that the inheritance of the earth has been promised not to the quarrelsome or the overweening, but to the meek. A generation brought up on these principles would be slow to make war, and their influence on the world would be in every way powerful for good.

_LANGUAGE AND LIFE._

The ordinary school education in language and grammar is doubtless responsible for the impression which we find existing in so many minds that, in all matters of verbal expression, there is some one absolute standard of authority to which it implies simply ignorance not to bow--some supreme court, as it were, empowered to decide for us what words we are to use, how we are to pronounce them, and what rules of syntax we are to follow. It would be difficult, doubtless, to impart to children or very young people the wider and more scientific view of language, inasmuch as they need, in the first place, clear guidance as regards usage rather than correct theory. The idea, therefore, with which they grow up, if their school studies take any hold upon them at all and if no wider culture comes to change their way of looking at things, is that some very wise man made an infallible grammar and another very wise man an infallible dictionary, and that no one need be in doubt in regard to what is orthodox in language who has access to these tables of the law. We have known grown-up persons to turn away with a very skeptical air, and a kind of look as if they had found out a weak spot in your educational armor, when they were told that really it was impossible to say which of two pronunciations of a word was right and which was wrong--that either might be employed without mortal offense against elegance of speech or good breeding.

A hidebound view of language tends so much to narrow thought on general subjects that it seems to us of importance that the true and scientific view of the subject should be brought forward whenever opportunity offers. Mr. William Archer, the well-known English critic, contributed an article not long ago to the Pall Mall Magazine which might be read with much advantage by pedants and purists, and all blind followers of authority. He takes the broad ground that language is a transcript, as it were, of life, and that as life widens and becomes more varied, language must do the same. It must reflect the fancy, the imagination, and the humor of the day, and not merely the fancy, imagination, and humor of past generations. If we want a language that is fixed and unalterable in its forms we must seek one that has ceased to be spoken by men. Even then we can not always get absolute decisions. Cicero is perhaps the best standard of Latin prose, but no competent critic would say that his writing was flawless. We know that grammatical questions were much debated among the ancients, and we have no doubt that many such questions were left unsettled. In a living language there must be unsettled questions. There is a constant struggle for life going on among the words and phrases with which men endeavor to express their ideas, and, at a given moment, it is impossible to say which shall prosper, this or that. The word or phrase that prospers--that commends itself, after adequate trial, for expressiveness, convenience, or euphony, or for any combination of useful qualities--will survive and become classic; the expression that has nothing special to commend it, beyond its novelty and slanginess, will probably pass, after a brief and partial currency, into the vast limbo of the unfit. All we can say of a word at a given moment is how far it has actually become current and what kind of society it keeps. What its fortune will be we can only guess. Just as in the financial world great fortunes are sometimes very suddenly made and names before obscure spring into world-wide notoriety, so, in the realm of language, a word of very uncertain ancestry and no social repute may assert its right to recognition and take its place among the best.

It does not follow from this that it can ever be a matter of indifference what words we use or what tricks we play with language, any more than it can be a matter of indifference what personal habits we adopt. Language is the clothing of our thoughts, and as such it may exhibit the same qualities which attach to the clothing of our bodies. It may be marked by neatness and propriety, or by slovenliness and want of taste. Some men are over-dressed, and some affect over-fine language. Some go after the latest novelties in the tailoring world, and some after the latest slang, asserting thereby their resolution to be up to date. It is needless to draw the parallel further, but it is evident that there is wide scope in the choice of language for the exhibition of personal preference and personal character. We think it safe to say that the interests of a language, considered as an instrument of thought, will be best promoted by those who pay due respect to its established forms, and only countenance such neologisms as make good their claim to acceptance by supplying a real want. Mr. Archer, in the article we have referred to, states, and we do not doubt with truth, that the English language has been greatly enriched and strengthened by the fact that it has been spoken and written by millions of people on this side of the Atlantic, leading an intense and vigorous life of their own, under conditions very different in many respects from those prevailing in the mother country. The language moves with a freer step, beats with a stronger pulse, and assumes a more imperial bearing from the fact that it expresses the activity and sums up the life of the foremost communities of the human race in both hemispheres.

A great classical scholar not long ago wrote a letter to an English weekly newspaper expressing a very contemptuous estimate of the French language, as being only a degraded form of Latin. He thought it a great disgrace to the language that it had no better word for “much” than _beaucoup_, which, as he learnedly explained, came from two Latin words meaning “fine” and “blow.” The most cursory examination of any language will show that it abounds in just such verbal devices. We do not in English put the words “great” and “stroke” together, but, using them separately, we say “a great stroke” of luck and of many other things when there is no question of “striking” at all. In the same way we would say “a great hit,” when there is no question of hitting, except by remote analogy. Languages grow rich and flexible precisely by the adoption of such convenient combinations. What they may originally have meant becomes a matter of little moment when once they have become thoroughly accepted and thoroughly expressive. After they have become welded together, as sometimes happens, in one word, it is an advantage rather than otherwise if the separate meanings of their constituent parts become lost to all except the professional etymologist. As long as the separate parts retain their separate meaning some sense of incongruity will sometimes arise in connection with the use of the term. Thus to say “a handful of corn” is all right, but one might feel that it was not all right to say “a mere handful of men.” Yet it would be futile to criticise the expression which has become idiomatic English. If the word “handful” had parted with its essential meaning as completely as say the word “troop” has, for all but etymologists, there would be no kind of incongruity in its employment for any small number or quantity whatsoever.

The scientific view of language, then, is that it represents the effort of mankind to use audible symbols for the expression of thought; that it follows the development of man’s activity and enlarges with his enlarging knowledge, and comprehension of things; that while its object is essentially a practical one it gathers beauty with use and age, and begins to react on the minds of its makers; that its makers are the people, not the grammarians, these being merely its policemen, who, useful in general, are sometimes too officious; that great writers are the architects who felicitously arrange materials which the people have gathered and shaped, placing the best of such materials where they can be seen to best advantage; finally, that the language of each nation is its most precious possession, the record of its civilization, and the repository of all that is best in its moral and intellectual life, and that it is therefore the duty of all who make any pretensions to liberal training to watch over their heritage and, while allowing all reasonable scope for further development, to guard it by all means in their power against degradation and pollution. A great people will have a great language: when a language shows signs of weakness or declension, there is reason to fear for the civilization of which it is the expression.

Fragments of Science.