Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

Mr. Arnold explains that to attain perfect culture, we must be perfectly religious, and for this, we must properly understand the Bible. This brings us to look at his darkened side. He is an _evolutionist_ in religion; that is, he holds that as the ages roll on, new religions unfold in newness of vigor and meaning, while the old decay and disappear. He tells us that to-day poetry is the true religion. In our time “every creed is shaken, every dogma questioned, every tradition dissolving.” “The strongest part of our religion to-day is its unconscious poetry, for poetry attaches its emotion to the _idea_, and all else is illusion.” Poetry has the highest truth, and the highest seriousness.

“Be ye perfect,” said the Great Teacher, and this, says Mr. Arnold, is a harmonious development of all sides of our humanity; a thing not found in our broken world. Therefore he calls the orthodox belief a failure; the working classes will have nothing to say to it. He will fix it for them. He takes out of it all its facts and leaves only its tone and its ideas—its poetry. The scheme of Christianity has never been understood until now a select few have grasped it.

“There is an enduring power, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness”—that is his cloudy piety. The “method” and “secret” of Jesus were commendable; the “method” was repentance, the “secret” was peace; but the Christian religion rests on the assumption of a Personal Ruler, “this cannot be verified.” Even the resurrection St. Paul poorly understood. It is in fact “rising to that harmonious conformity with the real and the eternal which is life and peace until it becomes glory.” Even the doctrine of the Trinity Mr. Arnold can speak of as “a fairy-tale of the three Lord Shaftburys,” a phrase that Ingersoll might quote. One can see—and it is a sad sight—how his religious views have been spoiled by a vain philosophy. How reassuring to know that Mr. Moody, preaching Jesus and the Resurrection at Oxford, in Arnold’s sight, found the working classes (and others) glad to hear. Where he had said,

Resolve to be thyself! And know that he
Who finds himself, loses his misery.

Many are learning “Deny thyself” and in finding the Savior, losing their misery.

This gifted disbeliever has longings that he cannot quite conceal. He does not believe Jesus divine, yet he seems to yearn for faith in him, such as his father had, and such as was easy when

Men called from chamber, church and tent,
And Christ was by to save.

He himself would gladly have been caught in the tide

Of love which set so deep and strong
From Christ’s then open grave.

Turning sadly away he says:

Now he is dead! Far hence he lies
In the lone Syrian town,
And on his grave, with shining eyes,
The Syrian stars look down?

At last we seem to find this scholar and poet, Christian born and Christian bred, sinking into the pantheism of heathenism, such as our missionaries confront in India.

Myriads who live, who have lived,
What are we all but a mood,
A single mood, of the life
Of the Being in whom we exist,
Who alone is all things in one?

Through all Mr. Arnold’s utterances there seems a certain air of condescension. To the masses, “the un-Hellenic public,” he seems to look from his own “islet” and say, “Cultivate your own spirit;” “Cherish light and sweetness,” and to add, “Look at me and aspire to your own best self.” This looks like a delicate self-worship, such as was in Goethe, and thither “self-culture” easily leads.

In Mr. Arnold as poet one finds enough to admire and enjoy. His first volume of poems was given anonymously to the world in 1849. It made some stir. We thought another of the immortals was among us, and so it proved. He followed in song the same who were his masters in culture, striving, “Wordsworth’s sweet calm, and Goethe’s wide and luminous view to gain.” He took up poetry seriously, for he thought that “poetry is the impassioned expression in the countenance of all science,” “the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge.” To him poetry is no idle warbling, but an intense criticism of life in which he works from sense of duty. In all his poems one finds dignity and grace of spirit, something of Goethe’s spiritual unrest, and of Wordsworth’s healing balm found in communion with nature.

Thus, after Rustum in desperate fight has unknowingly slain his son Sohrab, (who has disclosed himself in his last moments) with how quiet dignity does the Oxus move on, leaving on its bank Sohrab in his gore, and Rustum in his hot agony and blinding tears!

But the majestic river floated on
Out of the mist and hum of that low land
Into the frosted starlight, and there moved
Rejoicing through the hushed Chorasmian waste
Under the solitary moon, till at last
The longed-for dash of waves is heard, and wide
His luminous home of waters opens bright
And tranquil, from whose floor the new-bathed stars
Emerge and shine upon the Aral sea.

He comes to nature, not to bring anything, but to seek rest and refreshment. Byron pours out upon nature, as in Childe Harold, the “sparkling gloom” of his own spirit. Coleridge, as in the Hymn at Chamouni, fills nature with his own lofty rapture. Arnold’s poems all show how he asks of nature, not pleasure or exaltation—only relief. By the lake he says:

How sweet to feel, on the boon air,
All our unquiet pulses cease!

In his Summer Night,

The calm moonlight seems to say,
Hast thou, then, still the old, unquiet breast?

He turns to the

Heavens whose pure dark regions have no sign
Of languor, though so calm and though so great,
Yet so untroubled, so unpassionate!
A world above man’s head to let him see
How boundless might his soul’s horizon be;
How it were good to live there and be free.

In Kensington Gardens he says:

In the huge world that roars hard by
Be happy if they can!
Calm soul of all things! Make it mine
To feel, amid the city’s jar
That there abides a peace of thine
Man did not make and cannot mar.

Nowhere in all his pictures of nature, given in the most musical of English and in style flowing, bright and tender, do we find the deep gladness of Wordsworth, or the organ-toned joy of Milton. To each, as his heart is, nature gives. Arnold, sad, unbelieving, self-absorbed, looking at his own shadow, sees the beautiful and sings it, as he finds it, but, “life is wanting there.” As our human race appears in his poems, the men of to-day are of small account. “There has passed away a glory from the earth.” He has little to say of hope, so much in his eye is the past better than any possible future. Even his favorite metres are of Greek pattern. Admitting that the Pagan world, worn and weary, was revived by Christianity, he thinks this is in its turn “outworn,” and men are waning now. Therefore he goes to olden time for heroes, for Prometheus and Pericle, Tristam and Rustum. His only poem truly dramatic, a complete work of art, is The Sick King in Bokhara. The elements of the story bring out his genius, and he puts forth the best effort of his mind and art. Here are that dignified self-poise, that unrest akin to remorse that frames so strangely with the calm of helplessness, that lip-curling criticism and that transparent simplicity of which we have been speaking. All is brilliant in setting and rich in color. All his poems we might read (and we should then all the more watch for new ones) but in none shall find the whole of Mr. Arnold as we find it in this.

How beautiful is this from Tristam. It is Iseult after the death of her husband and rival, living with her children, as in a fading, misty, moon-lit dream:

Joy hath not found her yet, nor ever will,
Is it this thought that makes her mien so still?
Her features so fatigued, her eyes, though sweet,
So sunk, so rarely lifted save to meet
Her children’s? She moves slow; her voice alone
Hath yet an infantine and silvery tone,
But even that comes languidly; in truth,
She seems one dying in the mask of youth.

Mr. Arnold does not attain to the first rank of either men or poets, but there is a charm about him and his poetry. Too bad it is that he has not the joy and nerve that come of Christian faith “which worketh by love.” He would diffuse sweetness and light indeed. But is his poetry, _as poetry_, the worse for his lack of faith? Its plaintive utterance of the sadness of a soul whose wants are proudly shut from their true satisfaction, will long be read by those who strive to still the _heart_ with supplies from the _intellect_ and to make genius serve for Living Bread. No English poet has made the soul-hunger so attractive, or given airy negatives in forms and colors so fascinating.

* * * * *

It is often found that those feelings which are best, noblest, and most self-denying, are exactly those which lead to a disastrous issue. It is as if, by the command of a higher and wiser power, man’s fate were intentionally brought into variance with his inner feelings, in order that the latter might acquire a higher value, shine with greater purity, and thus become more precious by the very privations and sufferings to him who cherishes such feelings. However benevolent may be the intentions of Providence, they do not always advance the happiness of the individual. Providence has always higher ends in view, and works in a preëminent degree on the inner feelings and disposition.—_Humboldt._

ESTIVATION, OR SUMMER SLEEP.

By the REV. J. G. WOOD, M.A.

I have already mentioned that the peculiar condition which we term hibernation is one which can be produced by heat as well as by cold, and that the bat passes into that state daily throughout summer. The name, therefore, is not sufficiently definite. The German naturalists more properly use two distinct terms, and employ the words “winterschlaf,” _i. e._, winter sleep, and “sommerschlaf,” or summer sleep.

In order to maintain the same construction in the terms, I will call the summer sleep by the name of Estivation. This word is scientifically more correct than summer sleep, because, as I have already mentioned, the condition in question is not real sleep, but a kind of trance.

As Estivation is produced in consequence of the withdrawal of food by heat, we must naturally look for it within the tropics. Many of the lower vertebrates are subjected to Estivation, but, as far as is known, no mammal estivates. It has been said that the Taurde, or Madagascar hedgehog, does so, but it is evidently a mistake. It is really one of the hibernators, like our own hedgehog; and though it assumes the trance condition in June, that month is the beginning of winter in Madagascar, and not in the middle of summer, as in England.

I will only take two examples of true Estivation, one from Africa and the other from America. The first is the well known Lepidosiren, or mud-fish, a creature which has long been an enigma to zoölogists, as no one could say definitely whether it were a fish or a reptile. Professor Owen, however, states that the structure of its organs of smell proves that it is a true, though rather anomalous, fish. It is found in many parts of Africa, and inhabits the banks of muddy rivers, being plentiful in the Nile.

Nowadays, the systematic naturalists have changed its name and called it Protopterus, giving the old and equally appropriate name of Lepidosiren to an allied species which is found in the Amazon river and its tributaries. I have, however, retained the original name, and see no sufficient ground for altering it.

It is brownish grey in color, and eel-like in shape, but has four curious rudimentary limbs, apparently useless for locomotion, though they are seldom without movement. They are, in fact, soft single rays of the pectoral and ventral fins, which represent the limbs of beings more highly organized. Each ray carries a narrow strip of membrane along nearly the whole of its length.

Along part of the back there is a very soft fin, extending over the tip of the tail, and returning on the under surface of the body as far as the base of the hind limbs. The body is always covered with viscous slime, insoluble in water, and the creature seems to be able to secrete it as it is wanted.

Essentially predacious, it does not possess rank after rank of teeth, such as we see in the pike, and the wolf-fish, and the like, but is endowed with a most remarkable dental apparatus.

Instead of separate teeth, there is in each jaw what may be called a tooth-ribbon. Suppose that we imagine the dental matter, instead of being made into separate teeth, to be rolled out into a continuous ribbon, then “pleated” into folds like those of a ruff, and so set in the jaws. Then let us imagine the projecting edge of each tooth-ribbon to be as sharp as that of a chisel, and we can realize the formidable apparatus with which the mouth is armed.

These details are here briefly given, because without them the history of its estivation could not be understood.

That the Lepidosiren was carnivorous had long been known, but no idea was formed of its voracity until some living specimens were successfully reared in the Crystal Palace. One of them was placed in the large water basin which then adorned the center of the tropical department at the north end of the Palace, but which may now be seen in the open air between the Palace and the water tower.

Though confined in a tank, it contrived to escape into the basin, and straightway began to make havoc among the gold-fish. It swam gently under them, rose with open jaws, caught the fish just behind the pectoral fins, bit out a piece, its ribbon-like teeth cutting through scale, bone, and flesh, as if they had been shears, and sank out of sight with its prey. It never bit the same fish twice, and as long as it could find fish, declined to eat anything else.

As this mode of feeding involved a gold-fish for each mouthful, Mr. F. W. Wilson, who was then in charge of the Natural History Department of the Crystal Palace, had the tank emptied, and fenced off a portion with wire grating, so that the Lepidosiren could not get at the fish. The creature was then fed with frogs, which I have seen it eat; and by reason of the perpetual supply of food, it grew so fast that it attained a length of thirty inches and weighed six pounds and a quarter, a very giant of Lepidosirens, which seldom exceed eighteen inches in length.

It lived for more than three years, and might have grown to a much larger size, but for the neglect of an attendant who forgot on one winter night to keep up the fire which warmed the water, and in consequence this interesting creature was found dead next morning.

Here then we have a carnivorous being of more than ordinary voracity, and requiring a constant supply of fish. But, during the rainless summer, the water is rapidly evaporated under the sun’s rays, the fish die, and the muddy bed of the river becomes as dry and nearly as hard as brick. What then is the Lepidosiren to do?

By Divine Providence, the heat which withdraws its food acts upon it as cold acts upon hibernating animals in this country. As soon as the drying-up process has begun, the Lepidosiren wriggles itself into the mud while it is still soft, and by dint of turning round and round, makes a sort of chamber, the sides of which are preserved from collapsing by the slime which it pours from its body.

It then doubles itself up sideways in a most curious fashion, wrapping the membranous tail over its head so as to cover it entirely. The body is not coiled in a circle, as might be imagined, but the two inner sides (mostly the left) are pressed closely against each other, so that the animal occupies a wonderfully small space. The dimensions of the chamber are soon contracted by the weight of the superincumbent mud, until at last there is scarcely the eighth of an inch of free space round the body.

In this curious refuge the Lepidosiren passes into a state of Estivation. The mud is gradually dried, and then baked under the fierce rays of a tropical sun. But the Lepidosiren lies motionless and unconscious until the next rainy season refills the river, dissolves the hardened mud, and sets the creature free to resume its predatory life.

Were it not for the Lepidosiren, the inhabitants of these countries would often be hardly pressed for food. But they search the dry bed of the river, dig up the buried estivators and live on them. So here we have Estivation as well as hibernation, indirectly beneficial to man. I may mention that most of the Lepidosirens which have been kept alive in this country were brought while still buried in their mud cells.

There is little difficulty in finding the hidden Lepidosirens, as the aperture through which they entered the mud seems almost invariably to remain open, its smooth and slime-polished sides leaving no doubt as to its identity.

I have possessed for more than four years a large lump of dry Nile mud, a hole in one of its sides showing that a Lepidosiren ought to be inside it. This morning I carefully cut it open, and there found the inhabitant, doubled up, with its tail over its head just as when it gave itself up to slumber more than twenty years ago. I expected to have seen a nearly spherical chamber, but found that the cell is cylindrical, and only just large enough to hold the creature.

The slime with which the cell is lined has been hardened into a papery consistence, and is, in fact, about as thick as the paper on which this account is printed. When a piece is torn off and held in the flame of a spirit lamp, it takes fire and it gives out a very nauseous odor, like that of a beetle’s wing case when similarly burned. This thick coating of slime is only to be found in the cell itself, and surrounding the body of the animal. I imagine that the Lepidosiren must deposit many successive coats of slime after it has taken up its position. These cells are technically named “cocoons.”

As some time elapses between the falling of the rain, when the creature awakes, and the dissolving of the cocoon, there must be some peculiar structure of the respiratory organs. Otherwise, the Lepidosiren, being a fish, and breathing by gills, must die before it can reënter the water.

This structure is of a most unexpected character. The creature has rows of gills on either side of its head, and with these it breathes while it is in the water. The swimming-bladder, however, is modified so as to act as a substitute for a lung. A branch of the artery which supplies the gills is diverted to the swimming-bladder, and as there is a communication between the interior of the swimming-bladder and the external air, the creature is able to aerate its blood sufficiently to sustain life until it can assume its normal fish life.

I may here mention that these African and American Lepidosirens, together with the Australian Ceratodus are especially interesting as being one only living survivor of a vast family which in bygone ages were extremely numerous.

The Ceratodus is a comparatively new discovery, and came on naturalists by surprise. Until lately the only known examples of this fish were to be found in the earlier secondary rocks, and when it was announced that living specimens had been found, the discovery could hardly be believed. However, there the Ceratodus is. It looks like a resuscitated fossil, and is to our known fishes what the tree-fern is to our present vegetation.

There is another interesting point about this object, showing how Estivation is connected with Scripture.

The mud of which the cocoon is made is the same as that which the Israelites, while in captivity, were forced to make into bricks. It is so tenacious, that although merely dried by the Egyptian sun, it is so hard that I was obliged to employ mallet, chisel, saw, and butcher’s knife, while making the necessary sections.

Occasionally the difficulty was increased by vegetable fibers which had become mixed with it, and which bound it together just as the cow-hairs bind builder’s plaster when honestly made. The Egyptians mixed straw with the clay of which their bricks were made, so as to strengthen it, and in order to secure a supply of such straw they did not reap their corn near the ground as we do, but cut off the ears close to the stem, leaving the stubble to be cut separately. The reader will remember that one of the grievances of the captives was, that instead of being supplied with straw, as formerly, they had to cut and fetch the stubble for themselves, and yet were forced to deliver the same number of bricks daily.

So here is my lump of Nile mud acting as a link representing nearly four thousand years between the Christian world of the present day, and the long-perished Egyptian dynasty of the Pharaohs.

Now we will pass to the opposite side of the world.

In tropical America, as in tropical Africa, the rivers are dried up in the summer, and the mud which forms their banks and bed is baked as hard as that of the Nile and other African rivers. Many of these rivers are inhabited by a fish (_Callicthys_) popularly called the Hassar, or Hardback. The latter name is given to it in consequence of two rows of hard, narrow scales on each side of the body. There are four long, flexible tentacles on the upper lip. It is not nearly so large as the Lepidosiren, seldom exceeding eight inches in length. Its color is greenish brown.

Unlike the Lepidosiren, which can not travel on dry ground, the Hassar is as good a walker as the Climbing Perch, a fish which not only leaves the water and traverses dry land, but can ascend the trunk of trees. All rivers have some portions deeper than others, “holes” as we call them in our rivers at home. So, when the process of drying up is nearly completed, the river is converted into a ravine along which “holes” or pools are seen at irregular distances.

As long as the holes are capable of containing water, the Hassar makes its way to them over the dry ground. But, in process of time, even the pools are dried up, and just before this happens, the Hassar works its way into the mud, and acts after the manner of the Lepidosiren. The analogy between the two fishes is made still more remarkable, inasmuch as they both furnish food to man during the time of Estivation.

The Hassar has a further interest in being one of the few fishes which make nests and watch over their young. Our sticklebacks do this, but whereas with the stickleback the double task of making the nest and guarding the young is relegated to the male, with the Hassar the latter duty is shared by the female. It begins the task of nest-making almost as soon as it escapes from its cocoon, so as to insure plenty of time for nest-making, egg-hatching, and rearing the young.

The American Alligator, which, like the Hassar, is deprived of food when the rivers and swamps have been dried, allows itself to be buried in the mud, and there awaits the return of rain.

A curious instance of this habit occurred some years ago. A party of travelers had halted on a piece of hard, level ground, lighted a fire and began to cook their dinner. But that dinner was spoiled, for before the cooking was completed the ground began to heave and swell, and out burst the head of an alligator. The unfortunate reptile was estivating exactly under the spot where the fire had been placed, and where it would have remained asleep until the next rainy season, had it not been disturbed.—_London Sunday Magazine._

RECREATION.

By JAMES PAGET.

There are some rules regarding active recreations which it is well for all to observe: for all, at least, who must work, or who wish to work as well as play.

First, recreations should not only be compatible with the business or duty of life, but absolutely and far subordinate; and this, not only in kind, but in number and quantity. Their utility, and, sometimes, even their only justification is that they may increase the power and readiness for work; beyond this they should not be allowed to pass.

Then, they should chiefly exercise the powers which are least used in the work; and this, not only for pleasure but for utility. For there are few daily occupations which provide sufficient opportunities for the training of all the powers and dispositions which may be usefully employed in them and of which the full use, though not necessary for an average fitness, may be essential to excellence in the business of life. They, therefore, that work chiefly with their minds, should refresh themselves chiefly with the exercise of their muscles; manual workers should rather rest and have some study, or practice some gentle art, or strive to invent; or, for one more example, they whose days are spent in money speculations and excitement had better try to be happy in passionless thinking, in listening to sweet sounds, in quiet reading, and so on.

It adds to the utility of every recreation if its events can be often thought of with pleasure; so that the mind may be sometimes occupied with them not only in careful thinking, but in those gaps or casual intervals of time in which, both during and after work, it is apt to wander uselessly. Especially is this true of mental recreations; they may thus prolong their happiness and their utility from day to day or year to year; as often as they are remembered the mind may be refreshed far more than it is in the mere vacancy of thought. And there may be as much refreshment in looking forward; as, for example, in planning a good holiday, or at the best, in trying, by the light of either faith or science, to anticipate the final decision of the doubts which now beset us, or the wonders that will be revealed, or the new powers that will be exercised in the far distant future.

It is an excellence in recreations if they lead us to occupy ourselves in pursuits which give opportunities of gaining honest repute and personal success. Competition is good in all virtuous pleasures as well as in all work; the habit of being in earnest and of doing one’s best may be strengthened in recreations, and then employed in its still better use in work.

And in agreement with this it is a great addition to the happiness and utility of a recreation if it enables us to do or to acquire something which we may call our own. In this is a part of the advantage which any one may find in giving part of his spare time to some study, some branch of art, some invention or research which may be recognized, at least among his friends as being, in some sense, his own. The study itself must be the first and chief refreshment, but its pleasure is enhanced if with the knowledge or the skill which it attains there is mingled some consciousness of personal property.

Similarly, and for a like reason, the happiness of a recreation is increased if it leads us to collect anything; books, sketches, shells, autographs, or whatever may be associated with the studies or the active exercises of spare times or even with those of business. I think that none who have not tried it can imagine how great is the refreshment of collecting and of thinking, at odd moments, of one’s specimens and arranging and displaying them. There are few good recreations, few daily occupations with which something of the kind may not be usefully mingled.

Cricket matches, rowing matches, foot ball, and the like, are admirable in all the chief constituent qualities of recreations; but besides this, they may exercise a moral influence of great value in business or in any daily work. For without any inducement of a common interest in money, without any low motive, they bring boys and men to work together; they teach them to be colleagues in good causes with all who will work fairly and well with them. They teach that power of working with others which is among the best powers for success in every condition of life. And by custom, if not of their very nature, they teach fairness; foul play in any of them, however sharp may be the competition, is by consent of all, disgraceful; and they who have a habit of playing fair will be the more ready to deal fair. A high standard of honesty in their recreations will help to make people despise many things which are far within the limits of the law.

And, for one more general rule, it is an excellent quality in recreations if they will continue good even in old age. I think the experience of men would confirm this by the instances they see of unhappy rich old men who have retired from business and have no habitual recreations. None seem so unhappy as do some of these.

They used to enjoy the excitement of uncertainty in their business; now, everything is safe and dull; then, mere rest after fatigue was happiness; now, there is no fatigue, but there is restlessness in monotony; they used to delight in the exercise of skill and in the counting of its gains; now, the only thing in which they had any skill is gone; they have no work to do, and they do not know how either to play or to rest.

It is well, therefore, that all should prepare for the decline of power in recreations, as well as in much graver things. There are many that do not lose their charm or their utility as we grow older. One is in the refreshment of collections; for there are many whose value constantly increases as they become older, and with all of them the pleasure is enhanced the further we can look back in the memory of the events associated with each specimen, and can recollect the difficulty of obtaining it, and the joy of first possession. Or, there may be a change of active recreations; the elderly cricketer may take to golf and become sure that it is in every way the better of the two; the old hunting man may ride to cover more cautiously. Or, with less activity, there may be the happiness of reading or meditation, of music, or any of the fine arts; these, if they have been prudently cultivated, do not become wearisome in old age. If these and other like things fail, it may be a sign that it is time to leave off work; but so long as a man can work, so long will he be right if he will spend some of his leisure times, wisely and actively, in recreations; they may make him both more fit to do his work, and, at the last, more fit to leave it.—_The Nineteenth Century._

LUTHER.

By MRS. S. R. GRAHAM CLARK.

Truth is eternal. He who dares
To sign its deathless scroll
Dares to live ever, linked to light,
While ages onward roll.

O dauntless hero! At thy grave
A world uncovered stands!
And o’er thy dust all christendom
Clasps loving brother-hands.

Our brother, ours! A land unborn
When thou didst wage thy fight—
We reap thy labors—race entailed—
And in thy praise unite.

Hail Germany! The world is bound,
By fetters wrought from truth—
Earth’s mightiest smith, upon thy breast
Was cradled in his youth.

ECCENTRIC AMERICANS.

By COLEMAN E. BISHOP.

IV.—THE MATHEMATICAL FAILURE.

We do not often hear those who declare that “education does not educate,” trying to account for the failure charged against existing school systems. Are the alleged defects to be found in the unfit nature of the things studied, or in methods of study, or both? One of the chief exercises—indeed _the_ chief, in common schools—depended upon for mental development is numbers. Is the study of arithmetic worthy the place it holds in that regard? Does it do more than to cultivate a special faculty? Is that faculty one of the most important in the human mind? Is it related intimately to understanding, and does its culture imply a stimulation of the reasoning powers?

Answers to these questions would doubtless be colored by the mental characteristics or experience of the individual answering. To some minds mathematics is a general stimulant; to others only a useful tool; to still others, a stumbling block and an offense. Some one has declared that while all specialties followed exclusively, are narrowing in their influence on the mind, the two specialties which lead straightest toward imbecility are music and mathematics. This was probably the conclusion of a mind which could not master the extraction of the cube root, and did not know “Yankee Doodle” from “Old Hundred.” Oliver Goldsmith said “Mathematics is a study to which the meanest intellect is competent.” He remembered many floggings because of the multiplication table, and hardly had patience to count change for a sovereign. If we appeal to first-rate examples of achievement in music and mathematics—say to a Mozart and a Newton—we shall find well-balanced minds; but on the other hand we may be confounded by finding prodigies in these lines who possess mean intellects otherwise. Blind Tom and Zerah Colburn are illustrations. Zerah Colburn had mathematics in “the natural way.” His parents in Vermont were poor and ignorant; the father appears to have been both selfish and stupid, but the mother was rather a shrewd Yankee woman. If there was any special gift in the family it was for hard work and sharp trading—rather commonplace gifts in New England. Out of this unpromising stock came Zerah in 1804. One day, when he was six years old, he flashed out a mathematical meteor, a revelation. His father overheard him reciting in his play the multiplication table, having never learned it. Examination showed that he knew it all and more too; was, in fact, himself a walking, frisking multiplication table. He answered instantly the product of 13×97—1261. The gift seemed to have descended on him then and there miraculously; the fact probably was that it had always been there, but he had been too dull to exercise it until the whim struck the little animal.

The event created a sensation, which, inside of a year, was felt both in America and Europe. The popular wonder with which the child’s performance was received very speedily turned the head of his stupidly cunning father; he dropped his farm tools and rejecting all the offers of wealthy gentlemen to give the boy a complete education, set out to exhibit the prodigy through the land as a show. Thereafter, so long as both lived, the father was the evil genius of the son.

At the outset of their wanderings, President Wheelock, of Dartmouth College, offered to take the child and give him a thorough education, but the father declined the offer, not including even a honorarium for himself. In Boston a committee of wealthy gentlemen, headed by Josiah Quincy, offered to raise $5,000, one-half to be given to the father, the other moiety to be devoted to Zerah’s education, under their direction. The father acceded to this, but for some reason, when the contract of indenture was drawn, it was different in the important particular that the father and son were to be _permitted_ to exhibit the lad publicly until the proceeds should amount to $5,000, when the sum was to be apportioned as before stipulated. This arrangement the father very properly rejected, and the negotiations failed. Wrong versions of this affair were published, imputing to the father the rejection of the genuine benefaction first proposed. That these reports injured him and their success thereafter wherever they went, the son always asseverated.

They now went on “a starring tour” through the country, meeting with varied success, and in the early spring of 1811 returned to Vermont with about $600 as the proceeds thereof. The elder Colburn gave $500 of this to the mother, which, for the next twelve years, was all he contributed to the family support—the family then consisting of six children under fourteen years of age.

From the first Zerah’s performance was confounding to all spectators. Mathematically, nothing seemed impossible to this child of six years. Being asked, “What is the number of seconds in 2,000 years?” he readily and accurately answered 63,072,000,000. Again, “What is the square of 1,449,” he answered, 2,099,601. More intricate calculations based on concrete facts, were equally easy, as “Suppose I have a corn-field in which are seven acres, having seventeen rows to each acre, sixty-four hills to each row, eight ears on a hill, and one hundred and fifty kernels on each ear, how many kernels in the corn-field?” The answer, 9,139,200 kernels, came readily. Asked what sum multiplied by itself will produce 998,001, he replied in four seconds, 999; and in twenty seconds produced the correct answer to “How many days and hours have lapsed since the Christian era began?” viz.: 661,015 days, 15,864,360 hours. He gave the answer to this: What is the square of 999,999×49×25; the answer requires seventeen figures to express it. Being asked what are the factors of 247,483 he made this reply: “941 and 263, and these are the _only_ factors.” How could he know that?

These operations seemed the automatic action of mental power allied to instinct rather than to reason. The child had had absolutely no education in numbers and could neither read nor write; he would scarcely interrupt his infantile play to make his calculations. It was not till the spring of 1811 that he learned the names and the powers of the nine digits when written, and this he learned from a stranger who seemed to take this much more interest in his education than his father had ever taken. He was at this time a bright, playful, healthy boy. He answered mere puzzling questions with more than the ordinary shrewdness of his age, as, “Which is the greater, six dozen dozen or half a dozen dozen?” “Which is greater, twice twenty-five or twice five-and-twenty?” “How many black beans make six white ones?” He answered quickly, “Six—if you skin ’em.” During his calculations he would twist and contort like one in St. Vitus’ dance. If asked, as he often was, his method of calculation, he would cry at the annoyance of attempting to explain.

In April, 1811, father and son went to England, the child then being six and a half years old. The father tried (in vain, of course) to induce his wife to put their five little ones out in care of the neighbors and go abroad with him! Then, as at all other times, she seems to have monopolized the wit of the family. The same one-sidedness may have been detected in other families, for aught I know to the contrary.

In England he at first created a marked sensation. His receptions were attended by wondering multitudes, among them being members of the nobility and royal family and distinguished scientists and literati. Among his achievements at this time was to multiply the number eight by itself up to the sixteenth power, giving the inconceivable result, 281,474,976,710,656. He extracted the square and cube roots of large numbers by a flash of his genius. It had been laid down by mathematicians that no rule existed for finding the factors of numbers, but at the age of nine Zerah made such a rule; it was nearly as difficult to understand as his performance, however. Under this formula he gave the factors of 171,395, viz.: 5×34279; 7×22485; 59×2905; 83×2065; 35×4897; 295×581; 413×415. “It had been asserted,” he says, “by a French mathematician that 4294967297 is a prime number; but the celebrated Euler detected the error by discovering that it is equal to 641×6,700,417. The same number was proposed to this child, who found out the factors by the mere operation of his mind.”

The father was now happy. He was in the enjoyment of means and distinction through his child, all of which, with the usual conceit of a father, he arrogated to himself as the due reward of merit for having been the prodigious progenitor of so remarkable a child. Various money-making enterprises were started in connection with the “show,” from which others seemed to derive as much benefit as the father. Sir James Mackintosh, Sir Humphrey Davy (inventor of the safety lamp) and Basil Montague became a committee to superintend the publication of a book about the child; but though several hundred subscribers were obtained, many of whom paid in advance, the work was never published. A meeting of distinguished gentlemen was held to devise a scheme for his special education, which should develop his genius into a prodigy of matured intellectual powers, such as the world had never conceived. But all these plans were defeated by two circumstances—the boy’s general incapacity and the father’s special rapacity.

The “show business” seemed to be the elder Colburn’s forté and he took the boy on exhibition to Scotland and Ireland, and finally to Paris (1814). Here, too, the extraordinary interest in his extraordinary faculty resulted in a project for his proper education—La Place, the author of “Méchanique Celeste,” and Guizot, the historian, being conspicuous in his interest. It resulted in his being given a scholarship in the Lyceum by order of Napoleon, just then back from Elba on his little excursion to re-resubjugate the world; this intervention in behalf of the boy being one creditable act of his brief restoration, at least. The lad showed his gratitude to his imperial patron by ardently assisting in the entrenchments thrown up to resist the attack of the allied armies on Paris after the defeat at Waterloo.

The London admirers, spurred by pique at the French interest in and control of the boy, and by the father’s importunities, set about raising a purse to bring Zerah back and educate him in England. In furtherance of the enterprise, the father took his boy from the Lyceum and brought him to London in February, 1816. But this scheme fell through, owing, it is charged, to dissatisfaction with the father’s demand of a large endowment to himself as well as for the child; and soon both were living in poverty, unheeded and deserted.

In a fortunate moment the Earl of Bristol interested himself in young Colburn and made a provision of $620 a year for his education at Westminster school, where he was regularly entered, being then a few days over twelve years old. Here he spent two years and nine months. Though he made creditable progress in languages he disappointed those who had built expectations on his peculiar powers, by revolting against higher mathematics. It was found, in fact, that his special faculty was less susceptible of discipline than is the ordinary mathematical power of other youth.

But, I am gratified to state, the young Yankee made a stubborn resistance to the British form of white slavery in the school known as “fagging;” and what with his own obstinacy and the old man’s constant harassing the school authorities with remonstrances, the rule was suspended in the case of Zerah—probably the first and last case of such an alarming innovation on good old brutal British customs. Having won this emancipation the old father submitted with equanimity to being hooted off the “campus” with cries of “Yankee.”

But the elder Colburn next quarreled with his generous patron, and took the boy from school. We may venture to doubt if this was after all a great privation to the lad. The curriculum of Westminster school the first four years consisted of Latin and fagging; the next four years of Greek and fagging. They had made it elective in Zerah’s case to the extent of omitting the fagging, taking away the live part of the curriculum and leaving him only the dead. Zerah himself tells us that the same time which was thus spent in linguistic body-snatching if spent in the French seminary would have afforded an excellent general education. This fatuity regarding dead languages has been since well maintained in English high schools and colleges, and, what is more remarkable, has been pretty faithfully imitated in higher institutions in America.

Thrown on their own resources again, they found the novelty of Zerah’s performance had worn off, and he did not “draw.” The father now conceived the brilliant plan of making an actor of the boy. After four months’ training by Kemble, he appeared on the stage at Margate, with a little success; went with strolling companies through England and Ireland during four months more, and then returned to London and ended the histrionic career. Next Zerah was prompted by the fond father to attempt play-writing, but as he says himself, his compositions “never had any merit or any success”—though this is substantially his opinion of all his own efforts through life.[B] Extreme poverty followed, almost the only means of subsistence being genteel begging from former friends. The last and kindest of these was at length worn out, and directed his footman to slam the door in the poor boy’s face when he presented himself on some alleged errand from his father.

Zerah in his autobiography, subsequently written, speaks of these dark days with sorrow, but without one word of complaint of his father; indeed, the memoir seems to have been written more for the purpose of vindicating the father’s name than to do himself justice. He constantly laments that the mysterious faculty had been given him, and attributes to it and to his own general incapacity, all the misfortunes and sufferings of his father and himself. He called his gift “a peculiarly painful circumstance which destroyed all pleasing anticipations, blasted every prospect of social happiness, and after years of absence consigned the husband and father to a stranger’s grave.” Poor boy! He must have suffered more than he confesses. He hints at their want, his disgust with asking charity, the alienation of friends, and, above all his afflictions, he chafes at his idleness; and he naively sums up the whole experience as one of “comparative unhappiness!” How did Dickens ever miss these unique studies from real life?

A situation as usher in a school was now obtained for young Zerah (ætat 17) and he soon after set up a school on his own account. This was probably the first legitimate money he ever earned, and he mentions the chance, poor as it was, with more satisfaction than he does any of the achievements of his genius. It was far better than depending on patronage—which seems to have galled his pride. Before anything could come of school teaching, however, the father and son went off to other cities on a begging expedition. The usual humiliation and misery followed the undertaking, and they returned to London, where the young man reopened his school. Here, in 1824, his father died of consumption brought on by want and anxiety. One of Zerah’s biographers has said of the father: “Unhappily he had from the first discovery of his son’s extraordinary gifts, worked upon them with mercenary feelings, as a source of revenue. It is true he had a father’s love for his child, and in this respect Zerah, in the simple memoir of his own life, does his parent more than justice; but still it was this short-sighted selfishness which made him convert his child’s endowments into a curse to him, to his friends, and to Zerah himself. His expectations had been lifted to such a pitch that nothing could satisfy them. The most generous offers fell short of what he felt to be his due; liberality was turned in his mind to parsimony, and even his friends were regarded as little short of enemies. Such a struggle could not always last. His mind was torn with thoughts of his home and family, neglected for twelve years; of his life wasted, his prospects defeated; of fond dreams ending at last in failure, shame, and poverty.”

After the death of his father, Zerah’s course of life was not less vacillating and unsuccessful, however, so it seems that his failures were not altogether due to his father’s bad counsels. He remained a while in London, making astronomical calculations and doing other mathematical work, as chance offered it. Aided by his old benefactor, Lord Bristol, he at last set out to seek his mother and family. She had done better alone. “During the long absence of her husband, with a family of eight children, and almost entirely destitute of property, she had sustained the burthen with indomitable energy. She wrought with her own hands in house and field; bargained away the little farm for a better one; and as her son says, ‘by a course of persevering industry, hard fare and trials such as few women are accustomed to, she has hitherto succeeded in supporting herself, beside doing a good deal for her children.’” Lucky for the family that one of them was not a genius. Mathematics, however, seems to be a form of monomania from which her sex is generally exempt. In fact, in the long list of eccentric Americans from which I can choose subjects for this series of sketches, I fear there is not to be one eccentric woman. This can be taken as complimentary to the sex or not, according as the reader regards eccentricity.

Our arithmetical prodigy, now twenty years old, went to teaching a country school for a living, and at last fetched up in that other safe retreat of preaching the gospel. He followed this vocation with more persistence and credit than he had brought to any other of his numerous professions, though on his own modest representation he was not much of a preacher. His last venture was to become professor of—not mathematics—but languages in the “Vermont University” at Norwich. In this situation his life terminated, March 2, 1840. He plaintively, but in a somewhat pedantic style, sums up his career as follows:

“Perhaps it has fallen to the lot of very few, if any individuals, while attracting curiosity and notice, to receive at the same time so many flattering marks of kindness, and it is not unfrequently a sorrowful reflection to him that after all the sympathy and benevolence shown by the liberal and scientific, certain unforeseen and unfortunate causes have prevented and still prevent his reaching and sustaining that distinguished place in the mathematical literature of the age to which, on account of the singular gift bestowed on him, he seemed to be destined. Now, after possessing that talent twenty-two years, he feels unable to account for its donation, and is unaware of its object.”

Some facts regarding this singular gift may furnish suggestions to those who think upon educational matters.

1. His peculiar faculty was _arithmetical_, not generally mathematical. He had little or no taste for higher mathematics: those which, like geometry and surveying, appeal to the perceptions, those which, like algebra, appeal to the imagination, and those which, like pure mathematics, appeal to the analytical reasoning powers, he disliked. His gift was natural, rudimentary and unreasoning, and as he reached adult life it passed from him, either because he outgrew it or lost it by over-use or disuse. Constant and long continued practice in mental calculation brought the possessor of this special mathematical gift, as he says, neither intellectual growth nor better capacity for mental application. In fact, the more he used it the stupider he grew.

May we infer from this that arithmetic is a primitive, rudimentary and low branch of mathematics, having little or no relation to the perceptions of childhood, the imagination of youth and the reasoning powers of the matured mind, and hence of little or no value for the purpose of mental exercise and stimulation?

2. His whole process was that of _multiplication_, and its inversion (division). He seems not to have practiced addition, which is in reality the rudiments of multiplication, or its converse, subtraction, which is only the long process of division. In the multiplication of large numbers, which so astounded people, he performed mentally several operations to get the result.

May we infer from this analysis—arithmetic being assumed to be the most unintellectual form of mathematics—that multiplication is the least valuable part of arithmetic?