Chapter II: COSMOPOLITAN AND PROVINCIAL FAUNAS.--There are apparently in the (2)

Perhaps the most comical episode in his strange career is his pretended repentance, resulting in the return of this black sheep to the fold of the Catholic Church. In his Confessions the arrant renegade relates how, on April 3, 1885 (April 1st would have been a more appropriate date), while engaged in writing a book on Joan of Arc designed to excite animosity against the clergy, his fell purpose was suddenly shaken by strong compunctions, and soon a fearful agitation convulsed his whole being. His description of his contrition and self-reproaches is quite sensational and thrilling, and shows rare talent as an actor, if we only bear in mind that the whole thing was a farce. "I burst into sobs. 'Pardon me, O God!' I cried out in a voice choked with tears. 'Pardon my many blasphemies! Pardon all the evil I have wrought!' I passed the night in prayer, and resolved on the next day to seek absolution for my sins." He retired from the editorship of the _République Anti-Clericale_, and handed in his resignation at a meeting of the "Anti-Clerical League," of which he was the founder and hitherto the most active member, when he had the satisfaction of being denounced by the presiding officer as a comedian and scoundrel. No one of his former colleagues believed in his sincerity, and yet every one was puzzled to understand the strategic purpose of this retrograde movement. The general impression was that he had been bribed. "You can't fool us by your abjuration!" they exclaimed. "The fact is, you have received a large sum of money from the Vatican." He does not seem to have attempted to refute these charges, nor did he permit them to divert him from the execution of his deep-laid plot. With hypocritical humility, he made full confession to the papal nuncio in Paris, Monsignore Di Rende, who, after subjecting him to several days' penance, embraced him with joy and released him from all excommunications and ecclesiastical censures.

Taxil now began to issue his Complete Revelations concerning Freemasonry, in four volumes, the ostensible object of which was to expose the secret and sacrilegious rites of this order as an organized system of devil-worship, thus confirming by the testimony of an eyewitness the assertions of the Popes, and proving that their decrees and decisions on this point had been bulls in the ecclesiastical and not in the Irish sense of the term. This work, although a mere tissue of fabrications, was greeted by the Catholic press and priesthood with exultation, as an authentic narration containing positive and irrefutable proofs of the diabolic character of the Masonic mysteries. The members of this fraternity, says Taxil, regard the God of the Catholics as an evil principle--a crafty, jealous, and cruel genius, a supernal tyrant, and archenemy of human happiness. Opposed to him is Lucifer, the good genius, the perennial source of virtue and wisdom, the spirit of freedom, and the friend of mankind. For this reason, in the high-grade lodges Lucifer, the reputed father of Cain, Canaan, and Hiram, is adored, under different names indicative of the Supreme Being, as the God of Nature, and the great architect of the universe. In short, while modern freethinking is atheistic and begets a skepticism which, even when not denying God, does not care for him, Freemasonry is essentially a Satanic cult. These words give the sum and substance of the supposititious disclosures which excited such intense joy in the clerical camp. In 1887, when Taxil was received in solemn audience by Leo XIII, "My son," asked the Pope, "what dost thou desire?" "Holy Father, to die this moment at thy feet were for me the highest bliss," replied the kneeling penitent. "Not so," was the benignant response of the successor of St. Peter; "thy life is still very useful in combats for the faith." His Holiness then pointed to Taxil's writings on the shelves of his library, declaring that he had read them all through with extreme satisfaction, and encouraged him to continue his exposures of these satellites of Satan and their abominations. Taxil left the Vatican with the papal benediction and with the firm conviction that he could devise no better means of currying favor with the Apostolic See than by inventing tales about the homage paid by the Freemasons to the devil, and determined to work this rich vein to its utmost capacity. He also came to the conclusion that he could imagine nothing so absurd that it would not be received in Catholic circles as authentic and indorsed by infallible authority.

His work had an immense pecuniary success, and thus attained the chief object which he had in view. More than one hundred thousand copies of the original French edition were sold, and it was translated into English, German, Italian, and Spanish. This result is not so surprising, if we remember that nearly all the bishops and other clergy of the Catholic Church acted as voluntary and extremely zealous agents for the diffusion of these Revelations, which they seemed to regard as a new apocalypse designed to unveil the mysteries of Babylon and disclose the present doings of Satan and dominion of antichrist. Of the utterly apocryphal character of the Revelations they do not appear to have entertained the slightest suspicion, although the hoax was clearly perceptible to every unprejudiced mind. The German translation by the Jesuit Father Gruber, which appeared at Freiburg, in Switzerland, and at Paderborn, in Westphalia, omitted the volume entitled The Masonic Sisters, on account of the indecency of its contents, although accepted as true and deemed especially damaging to the Masonic fraternity. However desirable it might be to tear away the mask of philanthropy from the face of Freemasonry and let the world see its devilish features, it was thought best not to outrage the moral sense of the community by uncovering "the filthiness of the hellish crew."

In 1892 Taxil's coadjutor, Dr. Bataille (a pseudonym of Dr. Karl Hacks, a German from the Rhineland), began to issue a serial publication, entitled The Devil in the Nineteenth Century, purporting to embody the results of his observations as ship's surgeon during his travels in various countries, and especially in the Orient, where he had opportunities of studying Satanism in its diverse manifestations. He begins by referring to the encyclical letter _Humanum genus_, already cited, in which Leo XIII divides the human race into worshipers of God and worshipers of Satan, and then proceeds to adduce facts proving the correctness of this classification. It is, in reality, a bold burlesque of the papal circular, as, indeed, it was intended to be, and would doubtless have been laughed at for a time as a clever persiflage, if the dignitaries of the Church had not taken it seriously, as they were expected to do. Dr. Hacks confessed to an "interviewer," in 1897, that no sooner had he read the pontifical circular in question than he saw in it "a rare opportunity to coin money out of the crass credulity and boundless stupidity of the Catholics. It needed only a Jules Verne to clothe these extravagant fancies in an attractive garb. I resolved to play the part of this Jules Verne. Strangely enough, the same idea occurred to others. I therefore joined forces with Leo Taxil and a few friends, and began to publish The Devil in the Nineteenth Century, the success of which is well known.... I had traversed many lands and got up marvelous stories, the scenes of which were laid in remote regions, which I was sure no one would visit in order to test the truth of my assertions." Besides, he counted on the silliness of the persons with whom he had to deal, and felt certain that if he should tell them he had been fooling them they would not believe him, but would remain convinced that all his inventions were strictly true. He could not conceive of a body of ecclesiastics as ready to discard a belief which served their turn, however evident its absurdity might be to other minds. "Sometimes I fabricated the most incredible stories, as, for example, that of the serpent inditing prophecies with its tail on the back of Sophia Walder, or that of the demon, who, in order to marry a Freemason, transformed himself into a young lady, and played the piano evenings in the form of a crocodile. My colleagues were aghast, and exclaimed, 'You'll spoil the whole joke with your nonsense.' 'Bah!' I replied. 'Let me be, and you will see!'" And they did see how eagerly such gross falsehoods were accepted as positive facts. Protestants without exception are denounced as godless apostates. Every Lutheran is a Luciferian in disguise. Singapore, he says, like every British colony, is settled by knaves, footpads, and all sorts of criminals. The Protestant Englishman is, at the bottom, an embodiment of scoundrelism coupled with Satanism. There is a strangely infernal element in the social life at Singapore. "The British matrons and even the maidens are incarnations of vice and godlessness. The young English woman dedicates all her charms and intelligence to the service of Satan, whose apostle and agent she is; cursed by God, she is the dearly beloved paramour of Lucifer; a woman only in name, she is in fact absolutely infernal--an actual deviless." Hacks asserts that in a Presbyterian church at Singapore he discovered a secret tabernacle for the worship of Satan. The pastor opened the door, and there was a Baphomet, with all the Palladistic (Satanic) apparatus--goblet, host, and dagger--standing before his eyes.

Albert Pike, Grand Master of the Freemasons in Charleston, S. C., is called the "Satanic Pope," and is said to have a telephone invented and operated by devils, whereby instantaneous communication is possible between the seven principal directorates at Charleston, Rome, Berlin, Washington, Montevideo, Naples, and Calcutta. He has also a magic bracelet, by means of which he can summon Lucifer at any moment. "One day Satan took Pike gently in his arms and made a trip with him to Sirius, traversing the whole distance in a few minutes. After exploring the fixed star, he was brought back safe and sound to his room in Washington." Whether he found the star as hot and scorching as its name implies is not stated. Hacks discovered, under the cliffs of Gibraltar, mysterious caverns with laboratories in which devils prepared microbes for generating and diffusing epidemics. He was politely received by Tubal-Cain, the director of the establishment, who addressed him in pure Parisian French, from which we may infer that this is the language of the lower regions. On his departure Hacks was presented with a small vial, the contents of which would suffice to produce a fearful epidemic of cholera. No less an authority than Professor Bautz, of the Prussian Academy at Münster, tells us that the volcanoes are the flues of hell, and it was probably this contribution to the topography of Tartarus that led Hacks to look for the devil's workshop in the cavities of mountains, which, however, being used for infernal purposes, would hardly be what Milton calls "umbrageous grots and caves of cool recess."[8]

The following may be cited as a specimen of the manner in which historical events were perverted by Hacks to subserve his purpose: Before the capture of Rome by the Italian troops in 1870, a secret meeting of Freemasons was held in Milan, at which Riboli, Cucchi, and General Cadorna were present, and the revolutionary deliberations were rendered piquant by dreadful blasphemies. Thus General Cadorna, a renegade priest, parodied the consecration of the host with a piece of bread, which he finally threw into the fire with the words, "In honor of Lucifer!" Thereupon Lucifer rose up in person through the floor, gazed benignantly for a moment on his faithful followers, and said, "The moment is come for firing the third salvo of cannon." A month later General Cadorna entered Rome through the breach of the Porta Via. In Luciferian lingo, the first salvo was the Reformation and the second the French Revolution, while the third victory of Satan was the overthrow of the Pope's temporal power.

Hacks relates that in Freiburg, Switzerland, there was a Masonic temple of Satan hewn in a rock and provided with altars and all the paraphernalia of this cult. There men and women assembled in the costume worn by our first parents before the fall. Attached to the lodge was a brothel, the scene of the most disgusting debaucheries. One altar, in the form of a triangle with an image of the demon Baphomet, was used for stabbing the body of Christ, in the form of consecrated wafers, with a dagger. At this altar, too, was said the so-called "black mass," an invention of the Grand Master Holebrook and Albert Pike, of Charleston. During this service hymns were sung to Satan. The consecrated wafers were procured by Miss Lucia Claraz, of Freiburg, who stole them while pretending to partake of the communion, and passed the night before committing the theft in the wildest orgies. This incredibly foolish story was published in the _Moniteur de Rome_, against which Miss Claraz, a lady "piously inclined and morally irreproachable," according to the testimony of the Bishop of Freiburg, brought suit for defamation. The court sentenced the editor, Monsignore Vöglin, to a fine of twenty-five thousand lire and four years' imprisonment.

These examples suffice to show the wretched stuff which Hacks hashed up for the edification of the clerical and the entertainment of the carnal-minded public. Even the silly statement that he saw a gigantic tree bow down before Sophia Walder, the predestined great-grandmother of antichrist, and present her with a bouquet, did not shake the faith of the true believers. The editor of the _Revue Mensuelle_ declared, in 1894, that Dr. Bataille had really made all these discoveries on his travels, and that his honesty and sincerity were beyond question. This was the attitude of the whole clerical press almost without exception, as well as of abbots, bishops, cardinals, and the highest dignitaries of the Church. Even as late as July, 1897, when the imposture had been exposed and confessed, a Parisian Catholic journal continued to regard "the mystification as more apparent than actual, and the documents adduced as chiefly authentic"; so difficult is it for minds thus constituted, with the rational faculties dwarfed and stunted by being constantly kept in the leading strings of credulity, to recognize the falsity of what they wish or are told to believe.

Another of Taxil's confederates was Domenico Margiotta, according to his own account a native of Palmi, in southern Italy, and professor of literature and philosophy. His principal work, Adriano Lemmi, Supreme Head of the Freemasons, published in French in 1894, gives a long list of his titles, designed to impress the public by indicating his high position in the Masonic order. Hacks calls him a "Member of the Sovereign Sanctuary of the Oriental Rite of Memphis and Mizraim," a purely fictitious designation. This cunning device was also crowned with complete success, and caused the fabricated disclosures to be hailed with enthusiasm. Here, exclaimed the clerical journals, we have "not an apprentice or novice like Taxil, but one of the highest dignitaries of universal Freemasonry and Luciferianism, who is initiated and instructed in all its mysteries and occult observances," being apparently ignorant of the fact that Taxil was in the main the real author of the book.

One of the most common accusations brought against the Freemasons is that of desecrating the host by stabbing it with a dagger. A German Catholic journal, The Pelican,[9] affirms that not only Masonic devil worshipers, but also Jews, infidels, and heretics in general commit this sacrilege in order to show their deadly hatred of Christianity. In proof of this charge, the following "historical fact" is published in the number for July, 1897: Several consecrated wafers were once stolen by Jews from a church at Langenses, in Silesia, and, after being pierced through with knives, were hidden in the forest. They were discovered by a Polish nobleman, whose four horses, as he was driving by, suddenly kneeled down and refused to go on, although he beat them with his whip. He then descended from the carriage, and soon found the wafers covered with blood. They were carried back with solemn ceremony to the church, which became a place of pilgrimage with a wonder-working pyx. What a hardened and hopeless skeptic a man must be, who is not convinced by conclusive evidence of this kind, when even horses bear witness to the truth by their genuflections!

Still more sensational was the part played in this spicy comedy by Miss Diana Vaughan, whom Taxil introduced to the public as a descendant of the Rosicrucian alchemist and Oxford professor Thomas Vaughan, and who was said to have in her possession a copy of the written pact with Satan, signed by her ancestor on March 25, 1645. The young lady claimed to have been born in Paris on February 29, 1874. The fact that there was no February 29th in the year 1874 would make this date an impossible natal day for ordinary mortals, but a person with Luciferian blood in her veins would naturally take no note of the divisions of time as recorded in human calendars; for, according to Taxil, her forbear was the goddess Astarte, who appeared to Thomas Vaughan on a summer night in 1646, while he was sojourning among the American Indians, in all her marvelous beauty, bringing with her a bed surrounded with flames and attended by little demons bearing flowers. She approached Vaughan and put a wedding ring on his finger, and eleven days later gave birth to a daughter named Diana, from whom the Miss Diana Vaughan in question traced her descent. Several instances of similar commerce with incarnate demons are said to have occurred in the history of her family, so that she inherited a strong Satanic taint; even her own mother was guilty of the same criminal conduct. Her inherited qualities were carefully fostered by education, inasmuch as she was brought up by her father and uncle on strictly Luciferian principles. One day, when her instructors were praising Cain and Judas as ideals of excellence, she expressed some doubt of the superior worthiness of the fratricide and venal traitor. This dangerous unbelief was attributed to angelical possession, and it was soon ascertained that the archangel Raphael was the cause of the lapse from Luciferianism. Recourse was had to exorcism, the whole process of which, as described by Taxil, is a clever travesty of the ceremonial prescribed by the Romish Church for the expulsion of evil spirits. The dance performed by the father and uncle on this occasion consisted of the same saltatory movements that are executed by the "procession of jumpers" every year at the grave of St. Willibord, in Echternach, Luxemburg.[10] Devil's ointment took the place of holy oil, and the exorcism ended with the sacrifice of a black hen; thereupon "Raphael" went out of her, and simultaneously with his exit all the panes of glass in the house were broken into fragments and fell to the ground with a tremendous crash. The marvel is that bishops and priests accepted this ridiculous story as an authentic and edifying narration, instead of rejecting it with horror and disgust as a palpable burlesque of their own approved methods of casting out demons, and particularly of the _Exorcismus in Satanam et Angelos Apostatas_, composed by Leo XIII and issued by him November 19, 1890. It is evident that Taxil had this document in his eye, and intended to hold it up to derision; to calm the fears of the simple-minded, who were puzzled and perplexed by the striking resemblance of diabolic orgies to divine ordinances, he explained it on the general principle that "Satan is the ape of God."

After being freed from the influence of Raphael, Diana was placed under the tutelage of Asmodeus, who, as her guardian devil, watched over her, shielding her from bodily harm and helping her to resist the wiles of angels. One day when she was wandering in the woods she was attacked by negroes, but Asmodeus came to her rescue, and bore her safely to her home through the air. Another time he caught her mettlesome courser by the bridle as he was running away, and when the chief of Garibaldi's staff, Bordone, insulted her, Asmodeus twisted his neck so that his face looked backward. For three weeks he was obliged to take a retrospective view of life and of his own conduct, when Diana, in the kindness of her heart, set his head right again. On these occasions the tutelar demon usually appeared in the form of a fine young gentleman, and emitted an aroma of balsam, which seems to have been as inseparable from him as is the scent of musk from a modern dude or modish dame. He spoke of her as his bride, and often took her on pleasure trips to paradise, purgatory, and other remote regions; once when she was greatly depressed, because her Luciferian rival, Sophia Walder, had got the better of her, he consoled her by making an excursion with her to Mars, where they rode on Schiaparelli's canals, sailed on the Sea of the Sirens, and strolled like pygmies among the gigantic inhabitants of that planet.

[_To be concluded._]

Contrary to the common supposition that the astronomy of the ancients was based exclusively on the geocentric hypothesis, Mr. G. H. Bryan says in Nature: "Schiaparelli has shown that Heraclitus Ponticus, a disciple of Plato, had already accepted the theory that the sun is the center of the orbit of the planets, while the earth is the center of the universe and of the lunar and solar rotations--a theory substantially that of Tycho."

"RIBBON LIGHTNING."

BY ORANGE COOK.

In the summer of 1898, W. H. Osborne, of Chardon, Ohio, an amateur photographer of some experience, secured the accompanying photograph of a lightning flash which seemed to us to show certain peculiarities that entitle it to a public notice and a permanent record. The picture shows three flashes, of which the distant and faint one at the right and the bright one at the left were simultaneous, while the center one occurred a few seconds earlier. Nothing about the thunder that followed the last and bright flash suggested that it was specially near, but an examination of the picture when developed and a comparison with the features of the landscape showed that it had come to earth about fifteen rods from the place where Mr. Osborne stood with his camera. Mr. Osborne and myself carefully searched the locality indicated, but failed to find even the slightest mark caused by the discharge upon any object or in the earth.

Measurements at this place give the width of the ribbon of light, if it stood at right angles with the line of sight, about eight feet. This ribbon of light is seen to consist of six lines, approximately parallel, of unequal brightness, a pair being at each edge and a pair near the center. The space between these pairs is crossed by many nearly horizontal lines and a few oblique ones, while that between the right-hand pair is crossed by oblique lines only. The horizontal lines at the right of the center become curved downward, which, with the increased brightness of the whole toward that side, suggests to us that the ribbon of light did not lie in a plane, but was concave toward a point at the observer's left. That the ribbon did not stand at right angles with the line of sight, but was nearer the observer at the right-hand edge, is also shown by the inequality of the lower termination of the six vertical lines referred to above. The ones at the left either rest upon or are hidden behind a rise of ground, whose crest can be traced for a little distance each side of the flash, while those at the right come lower, falling between the observer and the ground at that point. Probably, when measured upon this diagonal and curved line, the width of the flash was fifteen or twenty feet.

Mention has already been made of the fact that the accompanying thunder was comparatively light, and not at all like that ordinarily heard when lightning occurs within so short a distance. Possibly this, as well as the absence of marks at the point where it reached the earth, might have been because the discharge was of very low tension.

* * * * *

[A very similar lightning flash was described and pictured in the issue of the Electrical World and Engineer for October 28, 1899, by A. E. Kennelly, who suggested the following explanation: A lightning flash passed through the air on the left-hand side of the ribbon of lightning (the wind was blowing from right to left) and broke a hole in the air along that line. This discharge may have been oscillatory, and may have lasted in all any time up to about 1/100 of a second. The discharge then ceased for lack of electricity, but a fresh charge from the cloud being gathered immediately afterward, or in about 1/30 of a second from the first rupture, a new discharge passed through the same hole in the air, which had not had time to seal up. There might thus be fourteen successive flashes (this was the number of distinct flashes making up the ribbon in the photograph), each averaging about 1/25 of a second apart, through the same hole, owing to the imperfect conducting qualities of the clouds overhead, meanwhile the hole having been carried from left to right in the picture, across the line of sight (by the wind), and thus producing the appearance of a broad ribbonlike flash. Professor Trowbridge, of Cambridge, has suggested the possibility that many of these apparently curious electrical phenomena may be of purely optical or physiological origin--that is, may arise through the abnormal behavior of the eye or the camera lens toward intense lines of light, such as lightning flashes.--ED.]

CROSS-EDUCATION.

BY E. W. SCRIPTURE,

DIRECTOR OF THE PSYCHOLOGICAL LABORATORY, YALE UNIVERSITY.

Some years ago I made the following simple experiment: I arranged a rubber bulb, like that used for releasing a photographer's shutter, to connect with a bottle, from which rose a long, vertical glass tube. The bottle contained mercury, and the long tube reached nearly to the bottom. Every part was air-tight, so that when anybody squeezed the bulb the mercury was forced up the vertical tube. It was what is known as a mercury-dynamometer.

During experiments with this dynamometer, what was more natural than to think of trying what would happen if one hand were practiced daily in squeezing the bulb? So one of our graduate students, Miss E. M. Brown, was set to work in the following manner: On the first day she squeezed the bulb as hard as possible with the left hand, while an assistant noted the height of the mercury; this was repeated ten times, and the results were averaged. Immediately thereafter she took ten records with the right hand. Then, on the following days, with some intermissions, she practiced the right hand by squeezing ten times on each occasion. On the last day she again tested the left hand, which had not been practiced in the meantime. The records ran as follows:

----------+--------------------------------------------------------------- | DAY. +------+------+------+------+------+------+-------+------+------ |First |Second|Third |Fourth|Fifth |Sixth |Seventh|Eighth|Ninth ----------+------+------+------+------+------+------+-------+------+------ |Inches|Inches|Inches|Inches|Inches|Inches|Inches |Inches|Inches Right hand| 28.8 | 33.7 | 35.6 | 36.6 | 40.9 | 44.7 | 47.0 | 48.8 | 48.6 Left hand | 29.6 | .... | .... | .... | .... | .... | .... | .... | 42.3 ----------+------+------+------+------+------+------+-------+------+------

Thus the left hand had gained about fifty per cent in strength through practice of the right hand. This peculiar phenomenon of transference of the effects of practice from one side to the other I have ventured to call "cross-education."

The phenomenon was curious enough to suggest other experiments. Another student, Miss T. L. Smith, was set to trying to insert the point of a needle at the end of a rod into a small hole in a drill-gauge without touching the sides. The first experiment consisted of twenty trials with the left hand, with a success of fifty per cent. Immediately thereafter twenty trials were made with the right hand, with a success of sixty per cent. On the following day and on each succeeding day two hundred experiments were made with the right hand, with successes of 61, 64, 65, 75, 74, 75, 82, 79, 78, and 88 per cent. On the last day the left hand, which had not been practiced in the meantime, was again tried, with a success of seventy-six per cent.

These last experiments remind us of certain familiar phenomena. It has frequently been noticed that persons taught to write with the right hand become able to write backward, but not forward, with the left hand. This is the so-called "mirror writing," which appears correct if seen in a mirror. The first published observation of this fact exists in a letter from H. F. Weber to Fechner, the founder of experimental psychology. Fechner, moreover, noticed that with the left hand he could make the figure 9 backward better than in the regular way.

Curiously enough, the principle of cross-education has been put to practical use. A letter (with permission to publish) has been received from Oscar Raif, Professor of Music in the Berlin Hochschule:

"In the spring of 1898 I made an experiment with twenty of my pupils. I began by taking the average speed of each hand with the metronome. The average of the right hand was [quarter note symbol] = 116 (= four times 116 in the minute) [464 beats], and for the left hand 112 [448 beats]. I gave them exercises for the right hand only (finger exercises, scales, and broken accords) to develop rapidity. After one week the average of the right hand was 120 [480]; after two weeks, 126 [504]; three weeks, 132 [528], etc. After two months the right hand yielded 176 [604]. Then I had them try the left hand, which averaged 152 [608], whereas in November the average was only 112 [448]. In two months' time, absolutely without practice, the left hand had risen from 112 [448] to 152 [608]. A few of my pupils had some difficulty in playing the scales in parallel motion, but were able to play them in contrary motion.

"The tenor of my work is that in piano playing the chief requirement is _not_ that each single finger should move rapidly, but that each movement should come at exactly the right time, and we do not work only to get limber fingers, but, more than that, to get perfect control over each finger. The source of what in German is called _Fingerfertigkeit_ is the center of our nervous system--the brain."

These facts, however, require further investigation, for it is evident that we must begin with the fact of cross-education and proceed to more complicated cases. Indeed, cross-education has shown itself to be one step of a ladder up which we must climb even if there were no other motive except that of curiosity as to what we could find at the top. If practice of one hand educates the other hand, will it not also educate the foot? Again, if practice of one hand in squeezing a dynamometer develops the strength of the other members of the body, will it not also develop their dexterity or their advance? Again, if the development of voluntary power--let us say, frankly, "will power"--in one direction brings about a development in other directions, why should we limit the transference to muscular activity? Why can we not expect, that the development should be extended to the higher forms of will power that go to make up character? The outlook begins to be stirring on account of its vastness. If the last principle be admitted, there seems no argument against the claim that some forms of manual training, such as lathe work and forge work, are just the things to develop moral character. By the same reasoning we would be obliged to admit the often-made argument that training in Latin, Greek, and mathematics furnishes a means of general mental development. If we admit the principle, we find ourselves at once involved in important educational controversies. However we may think in respect to these questions, it is plain that it is worth while to climb a ladder which has such an outlook at the top. Let us begin.

In the first place, the fact of cross-education is established. Let us ask in what this education consists. On this point some curious observations have been made by Prof. W. W. Davis,[11] now of Iowa College. The subject of the experiment began by raising a five-pound dumb-bell by flexing the arm at the elbow; this called into play chiefly the biceps muscle for lifting and the forearm muscles for grasping. This was done as many times as possible with the right arm, and then, after a rest, with the left arm. The subject then entered upon a practice extending from two to four weeks; this consisted in lifting the weight with the right arm only. At the end both arms were tested as at the start.

The results were strange enough. The unpracticed left arm gained in power as we expected, but it also gained in size. Careful measurements were made by Dr. J. W. Seaver, of the Yale Gymnasium, on the girths of both upper arm and forearm. Let us compare the gains in girth with the gains in power:

----------+------------------------------+------------------------------
| GAINS IN GIRTH. | GAINS IN POWER.
SUBJECT. +------+--------------+--------------+---------------
| Right biceps. | Left biceps. | Right arm. | Left arm.
----------+---------------+--------------+--------------+---------------
G | 5 mm. | -5 mm. | 820 flexions.| 200 flexions.
J | 2 " | 0 " | 400 " | 225 "
K | 4 " | 2 " | 724 " | 514 "
H | 13 " | 6 " | 950 " | 30 "
B | 6 " | 11 " | 900 " | 75 "
I | 8 " | 3 " | 750 " | 75 "
----------+---------------+--------------+--------------+---------------

All subjects had gained power in the unpracticed left arm, three of them largely and three slightly. All but one had gained in the size of the unpracticed left biceps. Strangely enough, those who had gained most in power had gained least in size. The case was quite similar in regard to the girth of the forearm. The gains in power were unquestionably mostly central--that is, in the nerve centers--and not in the muscles. Yet there was also a strange but unquestionable gain in the size of the muscles at the same time.

We have arrived at the second step of the ladder, which is: The gain by practice which shows itself in cross-education consists in a development of higher nerve centers connected with the two sides of the body. We must next ask: Is this effect of practice confined to the symmetrical organ, or does it extend to other organs? This question was answered by a peculiar experiment.

The experiment consisted in testing the effect of educating one of the feet to tap as rapidly as possible on a telegraph key. The apparatus is shown in Fig. 1. The clocklike instrument is really a piece of clockwork actuated by a magnet, so that it counts up one point every time the electric circuit is closed. The electric circuit is comprised of a battery and two keys. Any form of battery will do; the one in the figure is a "lamp battery"--that is, an arrangement of lamps in series and in shunt, such that the ordinary high-voltage city current is conveniently transformed into a low-voltage current. The key to the left is the experimenter's key, and that to the right the subject's key. When the subject is set to tapping on the latter key the counter will register whenever the experimenter keeps his key closed.

For the actual experiments by Professor Davis the subject's key was removed to a distant room. Here there were three keys of this kind, any one of which would register. One key each was arranged for tapping with the big toes; the third key could be tapped by either right or left index finger.

On the first day all four digits--right and left index fingers and right and left large toes--were carefully tested in tapping as rapidly as possible. Thereafter the right large toe was practiced daily in tapping for several weeks, the other digits being left unpracticed. At the end all four digits were again tested. Four of the six persons experimented upon showed a gain for the right large toe--that is, for the digit practiced; the other two showed a slight loss, due unquestionably to "over-practice," or "over-training." All of those who gained for the right large toe gained for the other digits also. Their average gains were: Right foot, thirty-three per cent; left foot, thirty-one per cent; right hand, twenty-one per cent; left hand, thirty-one per cent. Even both of the "over-trained" men gained for the left foot and one of them gained for the left hand. Thus we have reached the third step--the effects of practice are extended to various parts of the body.

Beyond the third step the experimental investigations have not yet advanced, but I believe that sooner or later we shall be able to establish the fact that development of those forms of the will involved in simple muscular activities does also develop the more complicated forms that express themselves in acts of a mental nature.

It has long been claimed that sports, games, and manual occupations are among the best developers of character. Football develops solidarity of feeling and action; running rapids or cross-country hunting develop coolness in danger and promptness and firmness of judgment; wood-turning requires boldness and foresight; forge work requires regulation and reserve of power, and so on. This is no place for an account of the psychology of sports and occupations, but if the reader has ever tried any of these things and failed he will easily recognize the lacking mental quality.

Yet there has never been but one attempt, as far as I can learn, to organize a system of manual occupations on the basis of this principle. The success of the attempt furnishes, I believe, the still-lacking laboratory proof of the principle itself. I refer to the remarkable experiment of Mr. Z. R. Brockway, Superintendent of the Elmira Reformatory.

Most of the young felons sent to the Elmira Reformatory are set to learning trades, by which they can support themselves on leaving. Those, however, who are too stupid to even learn the simplest trade are put into a manual-training school, in the hope that their brains can be sufficiently developed to enable them to keep out of the prison or the asylum. Those who are so stupid that they have difficulty in learning the alphabet or in counting their fingers are put into a kindergarten, where they practice on letter blocks and sticks and straws.

Those who are too stupid to learn a trade are the ones of interest here. Three main lines of defect are recognized in Superintendent Brockway's classification of them. Those who are intellectually weak, but of fair power of self-control, are classed as Group I; those who are reasonably bright, but are unable to get along because they can not control their impulses, are classed as Group II; those who fail on both sides are classed as Group III.

Group II is composed of those who are for the most part devoid of moral sense--those who fight, swear, assault officers, are licentious, and generally unresponsive to the usual reformatory measures. To this class belong some of the most intellectual inmates of the reformatory, but this intellectuality runs riot on account of weakness of character. How are their characters to be built up? They are required to devote most of their waking hours to athletics and calisthenics, wood-turning, making wooden patterns for castings, mechanical drawing, sloyd, clay modeling, and chipping and filing metal. These exercises have been selected on account of their character-building qualities.

The work is a great success. Nearly all inmates subjected to this building-up process finally graduate with sufficient self-control from the manual-training department into the trades school. A concrete example will give an idea of the change produced in the pupil. The record of No. 6,361 is instructive. The account is taken from a report by the manual-training instructor, R. C. Bates:

"The pupil, previous to his assignment to manual training, had earned for himself the sobriquet of 'dangerous man' among the officers and inmates. His offenses have been mostly threatening language, lying, contraband articles, talking, fooling, assaulting officers, and institutional crimes of that nature.

"We begin his record in September, 1895, when he was reduced to the second grade for fighting. October and November he lost three marks each for lying and threatening language, and, by the influence of September markings, caused his reduction to the third grade, or incorrigibles, a closely defined group. He was in the third grade two months and three days, when he was placed in the foundry, where, amid blinding smoke, stifling air, and the task system, it was thought he would tone down, upon the theory that the muscular demands of such a place on a 124-pound body would vitiate sufficiently to weaken the will and curb the disposition to riotous acts.

"From January 15th to February 15th he was on modified treatment. On February 18th he was unconditionally restored to the second grade. February and March he did fairly well, losing one mark each month, but in April his period of passably well-doing was checked by his committing an assault, along with assumption of authority, and on the 27th of April he was returned to the third grade for the second time, remaining in the same two months and three days, when he was again placed on modified treatment, and did well for three months, when he fell again, this time for fighting, losing six marks in October. In November he made a perfect month, securing promotion to second grade.

"On December 15, 1896, he was assigned to manual training, Group II; object, development of self-control, with subjects as follows: Athletics, drawing, sloyd, woodwork, chipping and filing, molding. Each subject one hour and a half per day, five days per week. The influence of the new environment sustained the effort made in November to improve, and, by securing a perfect month in December, all his past was blotted out and he was restored to the lower first grade again, through 'amnesty,' on December 25, 1896.

"Thus, on December 25, 1896, he was where he was institutionally classed at the time of his admittance two years and three months ago--viz., lower first grade, from which all who are committed begin the reformatory course of treatment, additionally thereto in the manual-training department. His development now begins. In January, 1897, he lost two marks as a result of school failures, but in February he secured a perfect demeanor record; in March he lost two marks; April and May were perfect months in all respects, and he was graduated from manual training in May, returned to institutional life, and assigned to the exercise squad in the morning and stone masonry in the afternoon. Later his daily assignment was changed, placing him in the molding class of the technological department to complete trade. His development was complete and permanent. He was returned to the manual training as _assistant instructor_ in the molding class, and is now doing well in all departments, having been promoted to the upper first grade in August and ranking as sergeant in 'I' company."

This record is only one example of many.

When manual-training schools organize their courses on the principle of adapting the exercise to the ability to be developed, we shall have abundance of similar proof. When these facts have been incontestably established, there will be a means of satisfying the complaints of those who are constantly attacking our schools because they develop intellect and ruin character. "What is the use," say they, "of teaching children to read and think if you do not make them honest and truthful? How is it better for the community to educate liars and thieves merely that they may lie and steal successfully in business and politics, where they can not be caught, rather than to leave them in the slums, where the police can get them?" The accusation is bitterly unjust in many ways, but its force can be met by introducing a system of character building based on a careful study of the means of developing truthfulness, honesty, carefulness, persistence, bravery, courage under defeat, and the other qualities that go to make up a true man. The foundation of this system is to be found, I believe, in the _principle of character-building by motor activity_.

The ladder of cross-education will be slowly climbed by psychological investigators; if they find at the top a principle of such value and wide application, surely the climb will have been worth the time and trouble.

THE MORBID "SENSE OF INJURY."

BY W. F. BECKER, M. D.

As a fog about a ship removes it from exact relations to surroundings, so, from the standpoint of morbid psychology, we may fancy the mind peering through a more or less misty envelope to the true adjustment to things--the "glass" through which we see "darkly." Were all action and reaction of the mind to surroundings perfectly adapted, there could be such a thing as _absolute_ sanity. So long, however, as evolution with continuous readaptation and the processes of dissolution with attempted adaptations continue, so long can there be but groping, imperfect relations to surroundings, so long must there be defective or morbid mental action, and sanity and insanity therefore but relative terms. Thus many symptoms of the insane appear to be but varying degrees of the morbid mental manifestations of health, and we may assume _a priori_ that they have a common genesis and can be identified for study. If we take, for example, one of the commonest of these--viz., the idea of persecution among the insane--we may safely identify it with the "sense of injury" equally common among the sane.

By this "sense of injury" is meant that vague sense which afflicts many of us at times of being the object of hostile feelings on the part of others. No doubt we often _are_, for, in the stress of necessary rivalry and conflict upon which progress depends, we give and take injuries. But there remains a large excess of this "injured" feeling which can not be so explained, or which is disproportionate to its cause or entirely gratuitous, and is thus shifted into the field of morbid psychology. This only is here treated--the _morbid_ sense of injury.

It seems to find an easy entrance to the mind from a mere feeling of being ill used or stinted in sympathy to the entertainment of serious grievances or persecutory ideas. In certain temperaments it is marked. On so-called "blue" days we are constantly moved to a "sense of injury" from fancied aloofness of our friends. Madam Lofty slights us, and our jaundiced imagination has it that she has heard something detrimental and dislikes us. But lo! to-day, when the liver is released, madam smiles sweetly, and never heard a thing.

So in suspicious people. They entertain a chronic state of mind, by which the acts of others are given an invidious construction. They anticipate ill will, carrying the _chip_ on the shoulder. Of two constructions of a given situation, they leap to the more offending. Some take on the vindictive attitude as a result, approaching that type of insanity known as _paranoia_, of which Guiteau and Prendergast were conspicuous examples; others are humiliated, as a consequence approaching the _melancholia_ type of insanity, each illustrating again how the sane and insane states are paralleled. Many come to bear the outward marks--the stigmata of this mental attitude, approaching sometimes the "asylum" face, like that of the insanely suspicious Rousseau. We all know such faces, with their hard, set expressions, as if forever sealed against any tender of good will.

By a curious fact, those who invite ill will seem often to get it. Society, based on a reciprocity of faith, seems to have no smiles to bestow upon the misanthrope. It bids him, "Laugh, and the world laughs with you." It so comes to pass that many of them acquire some real ground for their "sense of injury," and in the long run that real quarrels are precipitated from this atmosphere of suspiciousness. Indeed, this is the psychology of most quarrels. The _effect_ of imaginary grievances comes in turn to be the _cause_ of real ones. Thus into an incident between two persons, one of them mistakenly reads an affront to himself. He retaliates, and the other person, unconscious of having done anything to evoke any hostility, finds _himself_ affronted, and in _his_ turn retaliates. By this time real grievances have come, and the quarrel is on. Balzac, that master analyst, in alluding to friendship, in one of his stories, says: "It died" (the friendship) "like other great passions--by a misunderstanding. Both sides imagine treachery, pride prevents an understanding, and the rupture comes." Just as the malevolent feelings may arise _de novo_, so it is with the benevolent ones. Nordau shows how the nondescript state of being "in love" often arises. Some incident between John and Mary leads one of them--we will say John--to think mistakenly that Mary has been attracted to him. Pleased with the fact, he reciprocates. Mary, altogether unconscious of the reciprocal nature of John's attention, finds pleasure in it, and in _her_ turn reciprocates. Mutual reciprocity then follows.

In irritable persons we find the morbid sense of injury coupled with resentment. Quickly interpreting anything disagreeable to them as an affront by another, their first impulse is to resent it, which they do more or less violently, according to circumstances, their second thought often recognizing the irrational nature of the outbreak. This suggests the feral instinct. Examples are common in the lower animals, while in pain attacking those about them as if they were the cause of it. No doubt this resentment is a survival from evolutionary ancestry. It has probably served a necessary purpose in the conservation of animal life by causing the animal to attack what may, in the jealousy of self-preservation and its feeble discrimination, even be suspected of being inimical to its welfare. Blind and unjust, perhaps, but Nature hesitates at no apparent injustice to accomplish this. When we go higher, to the tribal relation of man, we find the same blind resentment. The Australian aborigines have no conception of death, except as vaguely associated with homicidal causes, and when a member of a tribe dies a most natural death a member of a hostile tribe is killed to avenge the supposed murder. The Africans, too, read homicidal forces into natural deaths. In civilized social relations it appears again in the very popular and usually irrational demand for a scapegoat when matters go wrong. The idea of religious sacrifice, too, is a practice by which the anthropomorphic God is credited with being aggrieved by human conduct and of wishing to be appeased therefor. Though the exercise of this indiscriminate resentment was probably greater and more necessary in the pre-social stage of human evolution, there is still ground for its activity to-day in the struggle for existence which has but changed its arena. Under a veneer of amity, laudable enough, there are till the suspicion and resentment of the tribal relation, as we may often see unveiled in a posse of boys, and that this resentment is yet of the blind kind, we still have proof if we have seen an enlightened man deliberately kick a harmless chair because he stumbled on it in the dark.