Chapter VII: Part 7

This is so contrary to our ordinary experience and ideas, in which loss of heat tends to change from gas to fluid and solid, that we must look into it a little to make it sound reasonable. The recent brilliant work of P. W. Bridgman (contrary to the earlier speculations of Tammann) indicates that the effect of increased pressure, at high temperature, makes a substance solid and crystalline. Crowd any atoms close enough together, and no matter how fast they expand or contract under the influence of heat the crystalline atomic forces will get to work when they are crowded within their range, and the closest packing, hence that which will yield most to the pressure, hence that which is likely to take place, is when they are all regularly arranged facing the same way. Such an arrangement we call crystalline. Just so when they want to pack the most people into the car of an elevator they ask them to all face to the front. Keep this metaphor a moment. Any one who should try to penetrate such a crowd would find it a hard job. They would offer a very effective rigidity. Now suppose them to sweat in those confined quarters their fat away, their phlogiston, their caloric. If the walls of the car remained rigid while the individuals therein shrunk they might after a while be able to turn around or even move around in a car. Such is then the supposed condition of the atoms in the FOURTH, the central, layer of the earth's crust. This assumes that the middle layer is rigid and sustains itself, like the shell of a nut, as in the figure, while within the atoms are in a less rigid condition. That such a shell might be self-sustaining is suggested by an experiment of Bridgman, who put a marble with a gas bubble in it under a pressure of something like 150,000 pounds to the square inch without producing any perceptible change.

As loss of energy from the earth's interior went on this central core of gas would enlarge until the middle shell was hardly self-supporting. Then, probably at some time of astronomic strain when the earth's, orbit was extra elliptical, it would collapse, in collapsing generate heat, and so stop the process. The collapse would be transmitted to the viscous layer which might be increased, motions set up in it, and so a wrinkling of the outer thin crust on which we live.

Then there would be four layers to the earth like the butternut of the figure. First, the inner kernel of gas; second, the hard shell or endocarp; third, a viscous layer like the sarcocarp or pulp, and outside of all the wrinkled crust of exocarp. If such is the structure of the earth we may have in the very structure of the earth itself a reason why from time to time there are collapses of the middle layer leading to elevations of portions of the outer rind, and marking off the chapters in geological history, the lines between geological systems.

There are reasons in facts of observation for believing that such is the structure of the earth, of which I have as yet said nothing. We see the interior of a glass marble, I saw the bubble in the interior of Bridgman's glass marble, how? By waves, vibrations, which start from the sun or some other source, and going through it reach my eye. Though the earth is not penetrated by sunlight it is penetrated by the waves and vibrations that start from that jar produced by a crack which we call an earthquake. These vibrations can be received by that eye of the geologist called a seismograph. The seismologist tells us there are three kinds of waves sent out in an earthquake. If you notice the explosion of a blast at a little too close distance you will notice that you see it first, then hear it, and then perhaps a little later a few chips of rock may come flying past your ears. These three things correspond somewhat to the three kinds of waves which spread forth from an earthquake. But in the case of the explosion we see the blast first, then hear later. The waves which produce the sensation of sight are, we know, lateral disturbances, the waves which produce the sensation of sound are waves of condensation, whose motion is in the direction of their propagation and they come later. In the case of the jars of earth, the reverse is true. The first set of waves to arrive are the waves which are due to compression--vibrations in the direction in which the waves are produced--and correspond to sound waves. Later come waves which are transverse sidewise disturbances of the solid mass of the earth. As we can easily see, in an earthquake jar traveling from the opposite end of the earth, there should be no insurmountable difficulty in recognizing the jar, which is a direct upthrow from one which would tilt it to the right or left. Now there is a law of Laplace by which the velocity of spread of sound waves through gas may be calculated. That this law should hold at temperatures and pressures so high as those that must exist in the middle of the earth is, of course, a question, but it will be interesting to see how nearly the actual velocity of about 10 kilometers a second compares with the velocity which such waves should have in gas of a density and under a pressure such as a gas near the center of the earth must have. Using Oldham's figures (and they seem to be confirmed by the recent investigations of E. Rudolph and S. Szirtes[18]), we find that the time of transmission of these first and fastest preliminary compression tremors is about twice the velocity of such a jar according to Laplace's law in as dense a mass of gas, provided the ratio of the specific heat of a gas at constant pressure to that of a gas at constant volume remains 1.4, which is for many substances. But as it is 1.6 for mercury the discrepancy is not more than I had expected.

[5] Gerlands, "Beitrage zur Geophysik," XI., Band, 1 Heft, 1911, p. 132. "Das kolumbianische Erdbeben am 31 January, 1906."

The second preliminary tremors arriving later are due to the lateral disturbance. Their propagation is much less rapid when the point of origin is nearly opposite the point of receival. In other words there is a core within the earth about 0.4 of the radius in radius, in which according to Oldham, these lateral waves have much less velocity. Now in a gas there is less resistance to lateral displacement than in a solid, and the less the resistance the less the velocity, so that this fact fits in with the idea of a gaseous core perfectly. If there is such n core, moreover, of less rigidity it would have less refraction. Consequently waves not striking the border above the angle of total reflection would be totally reflected, and just as around a bubble there is a dark border where the light does not get through so at a certain distance from the source of an earthquake there would be a circle (it is really about 140 degrees of arc away), where no second tremors would be felt. Here again, though seismograph stations are as yet few, fact and theory are apparently going to correspond.

The last type of earthquake waves follow around the outer layer of the crust.

There is one farther line of verification to which I had addressed myself. Is it likely that the loss of heat and energy from the central nucleus, at the rate which we know at the surface from a central nucleus of anything like 0.4 the radius of the earth, would give a shrinkage of anything like the amount indicated by the mountain ranges, in anything like the time which we are led to assign on other grounds to the geologic periods?

Rudski has also attempted to connect the shrinkage and age of the earth. Both these methods depend on how fast the earth is losing heat, that is on the geothermal gradient. Since at present, owing to the apparently large but unknown contribution of radioactivity to that gradient we know very little about what the other portion is, it seems unwise to give any figures, especially as almost all the numerical data are largely guess work. It will, however, be fair to say that very long times for the age of the earth seem to be indicated, nearer millions of millions than millions unless the radius of the gaseous core was mainly small or its rate of contraction with loss of temperature high.

THE CASH VALUE OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH

BY PROFESSOR T. BRAILSFORD ROBERTSON

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

THERE can be no doubt that the average man and woman in Europe and America to-day professes a more or less nebulous feeling of respect and admiration for the scientific investigator. This feeling is not logical, for very few have ever met or seen a scientist, fewer still have ever seen the inside of a scientific laboratory, and hardly any have ever seen scientific research in the making.

The average man in the street or man of affairs has no very clear conception of what manner of man a "scientist" may be. No especial significance attaches in his mind to the term. No picture of a personality or his work arises in the imagination when the word "scientist" is pronounced. More or less indefinitely, I suppose, it is conceded by all that a scientist is a man of vast erudition (an impression by the way which is often strikingly incorrect) who leads a dreary life with his head buried in a book or his eye glued to telescope or microscope, or perfumed with those disagreeable odors which, as everybody knows, are inseparably associated with chemicals. The purpose of this life is not very clear, but doubtless a vague feeling exists in the minds of most of us that people who are willing to pursue such an unattractive career must be worthy of admiration, for despite all the triumphs of commercialism, humanity still loves idealism, even idealism which seems objectless because it is incomprehensible.

From time to time the existence of the scientific man is recalled to the popular mind by some extravagant headlines in the daily press, announcing some utterly impossible "discovery" or some extravagantly nonsensical dictum made by an alleged "scientist." The "discovery" was never made, the dictum never uttered, but no matter; to-morrow its place will be taken by the latest political or matrimonial scandal, and the public, with excellent good sense, will forget all about it.

From time to time, also, there creeps gradually into the public consciousness a sense that SOMETHING HAS HAPPENED. Brief notices appear in the press, at first infrequently and then more frequently, and an article or two in the popular monthlies. The public becomes languidly interested in a new possibility and even discusses it, sceptically. Then of a sudden we are awakened to the realization of a new power in being. The X-ray, wireless telegraphy or the aeroplane has become the latest "marvel of science," only to develop in a very brief period into a commonplace of existence.

Many indeed are aware that we owe these "marvels" to scientific research, but very few indeed, to the shame of our schools be it spoken, have attained to the faintest realization of the indubitable fact that we owe almost the entirety of our material environment, and no small proportion of our social and spiritual environment, to the labors of scientists or of their spiritual brethren.

Long ago, in ages so remote that no record of them survives save our heritage of labor well achieved, some pastoral savage, more reflective and less practical than his brethren, took to star-gazing and noting in his memory certain strange coincidences. Doubtless he was chidden by his tribal leaders who were hard-headed men of affairs, skilled in the questionable art of imposing conventional behavior upon unruly tribesmen. But he was an inveterate dreamer, this prehistoric Newton and the fascination of the thing had gripped his mind. In due time he was gathered to his fathers, but not before he had passed on to a few chosen ones the peculiar coincidences he had observed. And thus, from age to age coincidence was added to coincidence and the result of all this "unpractical" labor was, at long last, a calendar. Let who will attempt to estimate the cash value of this discovery; I will not attempt the impossible. I will merely ask you to picture to yourselves humanity in the condition of the Australian Aboriginal or of the South African Bushman; devoid of any means of estimating time or season save by the daily passage of the sun, and I ask you, "supposing that through some vast calamity, a calamity greater even than the present war, humanity could at a stroke evolve a calendar, would it be worth while?" I for one think it would.

The evolution of the calendar is not an inapt illustration of the methods of science, and of the part which it has played in shaping the destiny of man. Out of the unregarded labors of thousands of forgotten men, and a few whom we now remember, has sprung every detail of that vast complex of machinery, method and measurement in which to-day we live and move and have our being. In all ages scientific curiosity guided by the scientific discipline of thought has forced man into new and more complex paths of progress. Lacking the spirit of research, a nation or community is merely parasitic, living upon the vital achievements of others, as Rome based her civilization upon the civilization of the Greeks. Only an indefinite and sterile refinement of the existing environment is possible under such circumstances, and humanity stays stationary or sinks back into the semibarbarism of the middle ages.

The few scattered students of nature of that day picked up the clue to her secrets exactly as it fell from the hands of the Greeks a thousand years before. The foundations of mathematics were so well laid by them that our children learn their geometry from a book written for the schools of Alexandria two thousand years ago. Modern astronomy is the natural continuation and development of the work of Hipparchus and of Ptolemy; modern physics of that of Democritus and of Archimedes; it was long before biological science outgrew the knowledge bequeathed to us by Aristotle, by Theophrastus and by Galen.[1]

[1] T. H. Huxley, "Science and Culture."

If, therefore, we ask ourselves what has been the value of science to man, the answer is that its value is practically the value of the whole world in which we find ourselves to-day, or, at any rate, the difference between the value of our world and that of a world inhabited by Neolithic savages.

The sweeping nature of this deduction may from its very comprehensiveness fail to carry conviction to the reader. But concrete illustrations of the value which scientific research may add to our environment are not far to seek. They are afforded in abundance by the dramatic achievements of the past century of human progress, in which science has begun painfully and haltingly to creep into its true place and achieve its true function.

In the year 1813 many important events occurred. The power of Napoleon was crumbling in that year and countless historians have written countless pages describing innumerable events, great and small, which accompanied that colossal downfall. But one event of that year, of which we do not read in our historical memoirs and school books was the discovery by Sir Humphry Davy, in the humble person of a bookbinder's apprentice, of the man who will probably stand out forever in the history of science as the ideal scientific man--Michael Faraday. The manner of this discovery is revealed by the following conversation between Sir Humphry Davy and his friend Pepys. "Pepys, what am I to do, here is a letter from a young man named Faraday; he has been attending my lectures, and wants me to give him employment at the Royal Institution--what can I do?" "Do?" replied Pepys, "put him to wash bottles; if he refuses he is good for nothing." "No, no," replied Davy; "we must try him with something better than that." The result was, that Davy engaged him to assist in the laboratory at weekly wages.[2]

[2] J. Tyndall, "Faraday as a Discoverer."

Davy made many important discoveries, but none of his discoveries was more important than his discovery of Faraday, and of all the events which occurred in the year 1813, the entry of Faraday into the Royal Institution was not the least significant for humanity.

On the morning of Christmas day, 1821, Faraday called his wife into his laboratory to witness, for the first time in the history of man, the revolution of a magnet around an electric current. The foundations of electromagnetics were laid and the edifice was built by Faraday upon this foundation in the fourteen succeeding years. In those years and from those labors, the electro-motor, the motor generator, the electrical utilization of water power, the electric car, electric lighting, the telephone and telegraph, in short all that is comprised in modern electrical machinery came actually or potentially into being. The little rotating magnet which Faraday showed his wife was, in fact, the first electric motor.

What was the cash value to humanity of those fourteen years of labor in a laboratory?

According to the thirteenth census of the United States, the value of the electrical machinery, apparatus and supplies produced in this country alone, in 1909 was $221,000,000. In 1907, the value of the electric light and power stations in the United States was $1,097,000,000, of the telephones $820,000,000, and the combined income from these two sources was $360,000,000. Nor does this represent a tithe of the values, as yet barely realized, which these researches placed at our disposal. Thus in its waterfalls, the United States is estimated to possess 150,000,000 available horse-power, which can only be realized through the employment of Faraday's electro-motor. This corresponds, at the conservative figure of $20 per horse-power per annum to a yearly income of $3,000,000,000, corresponding at 4 per cent. interest to a capital value of $75,000,000,0000.[3]

[3] M. T. Bogert, "The Function of Chemistry in the Conservation of our National Resources," Journal of the American Chemical Society, February, 1909.

Such was the Christmas gift which Michael Faraday presented to the world in 1821.

Faraday died a poor man in 1867, neither for lack of opportunity nor for lack of ability to grasp his opportunities, but because as his pupil Tyndall tells us, he found it necessary to choose between the pursuit of wealth and the pursuit of science, and he deliberately chose the latter. This is not a bad thing. It is perhaps as it should be, and as it has been in the vast majority of cases. But another fact which can not be viewed with like equanimity is that of all the inexhaustible wealth which Faraday poured into the lap of the world, not one millionth, not a discernible fraction, has ever been returned to science for the furtherance of its aims and its achievements, for the continuance of research.

There is no regular machinery for securing the permanent endowment of research, and it is always and everywhere a barely tolerated intruder. In the universities it crouches under the shadow of pedagogy, and snatches its time and its materials from the fragments which are left over when the all-important business of teaching the young what others have accomplished has been done. In commercial institutions it occasionally pursues a stunted career, subject to all the caprices of momentary commercial advantage and the cramped outlook of the "practical man." The investigator in the employ of a commercial undertaking is encouraged to be original, it is true, but not to be too original. He must never transcend the "practical," that is to say, the infinitesimal rearrangement of the preexisting. The institutions existing in the world which are devoted to research and, research alone can almost be counted on the fingers. The Solvay Institute in Brussels, the Nobel Institute in Stockholm, the Pasteur Institute in France, the Institute for Experimental Therapy at Frankfort, The Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes at Berlin, The Imperial Institute for Medical Research at Petrograd, the Biologisches Versuchsanstalt at Vienna, the Biological Station at Naples, the Royal Institution in London, the Wellcome Laboratories in England and at Khartoum, the Smithsonian, Wistar, Carnegie and Rockefeller Institutes in the United States; the list of research institutes of important dimensions (excluding astronomical observatories) is, I believe, practically exhausted by the above enumeration, and many of them are woefully undermanned and underequipped. At least two of them, the Solvay Institute wholly, and the Frankfort Institute for Experimental Therapy in part, owe their existence and continuance to scientific men, Solvay and Ehrlich, who have contrived to combine the pursuit of wealth and of science, and have dedicated the wealth thus procured to the science that gave it birth.

In 1900 the value of the manufacturing industries in the United States which had been developed from patented scientific inventions was no less than $395,663,958 per annum,[4] corresponding to a capital value of about $10,000,000,000. It is impossible to arrive at any accurate estimate of the proportion of this wealth which finds its way back to science to provide equipment and subsistence for the investigator, who is creating the wealth of the future. But the capital endowment of the Rockefeller and Carnegie Institutes, the two wealthiest institutes of research in the world is, according to the 1914 issue of Minerva, only $29,000,000. The total income (exclusive of additions to endowments) of all the higher institutions of learning in the United States in 1913, was only $90,000,000, of which a minute percentage was expended in research.

[4] 12th census, Vol. 10, Part 4.

If science produces so much wealth, is there no contrivance whereby we can cause a small fraction of this wealth to return automatically to science and to furnish munitions of war for fresh conquests of nature? A very small investment in research often produces colossal returns. In 1911 the income of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry was only $21,000. In 1913 the income of the Institute for Experimental Therapy at Frankfort, where "606" was discovered, was only $20,000; that of the Imperial Institute for Medical Research at Petrograd was $95,000, and that of the National Physical Laboratory in England (not exclusively devoted to research) was $40,000. Yet these are among the most famous research institutions in the world and have achieved results of world-wide fame and inestimable value both from a financial standpoint and from the standpoint of the physical, moral and spiritual welfare of mankind.

In 1856, Perkin, an English chemist, discovered the coal-tar (anilin) dyes. The cost of this investigation, which was carried out in an improvised, private laboratory was negligible. Yet, in 1905, the United States imported $5,635,164 worth of these dyes from Europe, and Germany exported $24,065,500 worth to all parts of the world.[5] To-day we read that great industries in this country are paralyzed because these dyes temporarily can not be imported from Germany. All of these vast results sprang from a modest little laboratory, a meager equipment and the genius and patience of one man.

[5] U. S. Census Bureau Bull. 92.

W. R. Whitney, director of the research laboratory of the General Electric Company, points out that the collective improvements in the manufacture of filaments for electric lamps, from 1901 to 1911, have saved the consumer and producer no less than $240,000,000 annually. He adds with apparently unconscious naivete that the expenses of the research laboratory in his charge aggregate more than $100,000 annually![6] A handsome investment, this, which brings in some two hundred million for an outlay of one hundred thousand.

[6] "Technology and Industrial Efficiency," McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1911.

According to Huxley the discovery by Pasteur of the means of preventing or curing anthrax, silkworm disease and chicken cholera, a fraction of that great man's life work, added annually to the wealth of France a sum equivalent to the entire indemnity paid by France to Germany after the war of 1870.

Humanity has not finished its conquest of nature; on the contrary, it has barely begun. The discipline of thought which has carried humanity so far is destined to carry it further yet. Business enterprise and politics, the all-absorbing interests of the majority of mankind, work in an endless circle. Scientific research communicates a thrust to this rotation which converts the circle into a spiral; the apex of that spiral lies far beyond our vision. We have, not decades, not centuries, not thousands of years before us; but, as astronomy assures us, in all probability, humanity has millions of years of earthly destiny to realize. Barely three thousand years of PURPOSEFUL scientific research have brought the uttermost ends of the earth to our doors; have made civilization and excluded much of the most brutal and brutalizing in life. Not more than two hundred years of research have made us masters where we were slaves; masters of distance, of the air, of the water, of the bowels of the earth, of many of the most dreaded aspects of disease and suffering. Only for forty years have we practiced antisepsis; only for sixty years have we had anesthetics; yet life to-day is well-nigh inconceivable without them. And all of this has been accomplished without any forethought on the part of the acknowledged rulers and leaders of mankind or any save the most trumpery and uncertain provision for research. What will the millions of years which stretch in front of us bring of power to mankind? We can barely foreshadow things too vast to grasp; things that will make the imaginings of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells seem puny by comparison. The future, with the uncanny control which it will bring over things that seem to us almost sacred--over life and death and development and thought itself--might well seem to us a terrifying prospect were it not for one great saving clause. Through all that may happen to man, of this we may be sure, that he will remain human; and because of that we can face the future unafraid and confident that because it will be greater, it will also be better than the present.

What can we do to accelerate the coming of this future? Not very much, it is true, but we can surely do something. We can not create geniuses, often we can not discern them, but having discerned, surely we can use them to the best advantage. It is true that all scientific research has depended and will depend upon individuals; Simon Newcomb expresses the matter thus:

'It is impressive to think how few men we should have to remove from the earth during the past three centuries to have stopped the advance of our civilization. In the seventeenth century there would only have been Galileo, Newton and a few other contemporaries, in the eighteenth they could almost have been counted on the fingers, and they have not crowded the nineteenth.'[7]

[7] "Inventors at Work," Iles, Doubleday Page, 1906.

The first thing we have to do is to discover such men, to learn to know them or suspect them when we meet them or their works. The next is to give them moral and financial recognition, and the means of doing their work. Our procedure in the past has been the reverse of this. I quote from a letter of Kepler to his friend Moestlen:

'I supplicate you, if there is a situation vacant at Tubingen, do what you can to obtain it for me, and let me know the prices of bread, wine and other necessaries of life, for my wife is not accustomed to live on beans.'

The founder of comparative psychology, J. H. Fabre, that "incomparable observer" as Darwin characterized him, is now over ninety years of age, and until very recently was actually suffering from poverty. All his life his work was stunted and crippled by poverty, and countless researches which he was the one human being qualified by genius and experience to undertake, remain to this day unperformed because he never could command the meager necessary equipment of apparatus.

Once again, what can we do?

No small proportion of the population of a modern community are alumni of some institution of higher learning, and one thing that these can do is to see to it by every means in their power that some measure of the spirit of academic freedom is preserved in their alma mater. That the spirit of inquiry and research is not merely tolerated therein but fostered and substantially supported, morally and financially.

As members of the body politic, we can assist the development of science in two ways. Firstly, by doing each our individual part towards ensuring that endowment for the university must provide not only for "teaching adolescents the rudiments of Greek and Latin" and erecting imposing buildings, but also for the furtherance of scientific research. The public readily appreciates a great educational mill for the manufacture of mediocre learning, and it always appreciates a showy building, but it is slow to realize that that which urgently and at all times needs endowment is experimental research.

Secondly, it is vital that public sentiment should be educated to the point of providing the legal machinery whereby some proportion, no matter how small, of the wealth which science pours into the lap of the community, shall return automatically to the support and expansion of scientific research. The collection of a tax upon the profits accruing from inventions (which are all ultimately if indirectly results of scientific advances) and the devotion of the proceeds from this tax to the furtherance of research would not only be a policy of wisdom in the most material sense, but it would also be a policy of bare justice.

THE PHYSICAL MICHELANGELO

BY JAMES FREDERICK ROGERS, M.D.

NEW HAVEN, CONN.

You will say that I am old and mad, but I answer that there is no better way of keeping sane and free from anxiety than by being mad.

HAD Michelangelo been less poetic and more explicit in his language, he might have said there is nothing so conducive to mental and physical wholeness as saturation of body and mind with work. The great artist was so prone to over-anxiety and met (whether needlessly or not) with so many rebuffs and disappointments, that only constant absorption in manual labor prevented spirit from fretting itself free from flesh. He toiled "furiously" in all his mighty undertakings and body and mind remained one and in superior harmony--in abundant health--for nearly four score and ten years.

This Titan got his start in life in the rugged country three miles outside Florence: a place of quarries, where stone cutters and sculptors lived and worked. His mother's health was failing and it was to the wife of one of these artisans that her baby was given to nurse. Half in jest, half in earnest, Michelangelo said one day to Vasari:

'If I have anything good in me, that comes from my birth in the pure air of your country of Arezzo, and perhaps also from the feet that with the milk of my nurse, I sucked in the chisels and hammers wherewith I make my figures.'

He began his serious study of art (and with it his course in "physical training") at fourteen, when he became apprenticed to a painter. He was not vigorous as a child, but his bodily powers unfolded and were intensified through their active expression of his imagination.

His life was devoted with passion to art. He had from the start no time for frivolity. Art became his religion--and required of him the sacrifice of all that might keep him below his highest level of power for work. His father early warned him to have a care for his health, "for," said he, "in your profession, if once you were to fall ill you would be a ruined man." To one so intent on perfection and so keenly alive to imperfection such advice must have been nearly superfluous, for the artist could not but observe the effect upon his work of any depression of his bodily well-being. He was, besides, too thrifty in all respects to think of lapsing into bodily neglect or abuse. He was severely temperate, but not ascetic, save in those times when devotion to work caused him to sleep with his clothes on, that he might not lose time in seizing the chisel when he awoke. He ate to live and to labor, and was pleased with a present of "fifteen marzolino cheeses and fourteen pounds of sausage--the latter very welcome, as was also the cheese." Over a gift of choice wines he is not so enthusiastic and the bottles found their way mostly to the tables of his friends and patrons. When intent on some work he usually "confined his diet to a piece of bread which he ate in the middle of his labors." Few hours (we have no accurate statement in the matter) were devoted to sleep. He ate comparatively little because he worked better: he slept less than many men because he worked better in consequence. Partly for protection against cold, partly perhaps for economy of time, he sometimes left his high dog-skin boots on for so long that when he removed them the scarf skin came away like the skin of a moulting serpent.

He dressed for comfort and not to mortify the flesh. Upon the receipt of a present of some shirts from his nephew he writes:

'I am very much surprised ye should have sent them to me, for they are so coarse that there is not a farm laborer here who would not be ashamed to wear them.'

He is much pleased with a finer lot selected later by his nephew's new wife. Perhaps he did not come up to modern notions of cleanliness (he was early advised by his father never to bathe but to have his body rubbed instead) but he was clean inside, which can not be said of all who make much of a well-washed skin.

His intensity of purpose and fiery energy expressed themselves in his features and form. "His face was round, his brow square, ample," and deeply furrowed: "the temples projected much beyond the ears"; his eyes were "small rather than large," of a dark (some said horn) color and peered, piercingly, from under heavy brows. The flattened nose was the result of a blow from a rival apprentice. He evidently looked the part, though for such mental powers one of his colossal statues would seem a more fitting mold.

Michelangelo experienced some illnesses, all but two of them of minor moment. In 1531 he "became alarmingly ill, and the Pope ordered him to quit most of his work and to take better care of his health." That the illness was a storm merely of the surface is evidenced sufficiently in that his fresco of the "Last Judgment," probably the most famous single picture in the world, was begun years later and completed in his sixty-sixth year. In the work of this epoch there is more than ever the evidence of a pouring forth of energy amounting almost to what the critics call violence--to terribleness of action. It was not until the age of seventy that an illness which seemed to mark any weakening of his bodily powers came upon him. At seventy-five, symptoms of calculus (a disease common in that day at fifty) appeared, but, though naturally pessimistic, he writes, "In all other respects I am pretty much as I was at thirty years." He improved under careful medical treatment, but the illness and his age were sufficient to cause him to "think of putting his spiritual and temporal affairs in better order than he had hitherto done."

He wielded the brush and the chisel with consummate skill in his seventy-fifth year. With the later loss of cunning his energy found vent more in the planning and supervising of architectural works, culminating in the building of St. Peter's, but even in these later years he took up the chisel as an outlet for superfluous energy and to induce sleep. Though the product of his hand was not good, his health was the better for this mutual exercise of mind and body. In his eighty-sixth year he is said to have sat drawing for three consecutive hours until pains and cramps in his limbs warned him that he had not the endurance of youth. For exercise, when manual labor proved a disappointment, he often took horseback rides. There was no invalidism about this great spirit, and it was not until the day before his death that he would consent to go to bed.

In a poem of his last years he burlesques his infirmities in his usual vigorous manner.

'I live alone and wretched, confined like the pith within the bark of the tree.... My voice is like a wasp imprisoned within a sack of skin and bone. ... My teeth rattle like the keys of an old musical instrument.... My face is a scarecrow.... There is a ceaseless buzzing in my ears--in one a spider spins his web, in the other a cricket chirps all night.... My catarrh, which causes a rattle in my throat, will not allow me to sleep.--Fatigue has quite broken me, and the hostlery which awaits me is Death.'

Few men at his age have had less reason to find in themselves other than the changes to be expected with the passing of years and in prose he acknowledged that he had no more affections of the flesh than were to be expected at his age. Codiva pictures him in his last years as "of good complexion; more muscular and bony than fat or fleshy in his person: healthy above all things, as well by reason of his natural constitution as of the exercise he takes, and habitual continence in food and sexual indulgence." His temperance and manual industry and his "extraordinary blamelessness in life and in every action" had been his source of preservation. He was miserly, suspicious, quarrelsome and pessimistic, but the effects of these faults were balanced by his better habits of thought and action. That he, like most great men, felt keenly the value of health, is evidenced not only by his own practice, but by his oft repeated warnings to his nephew when choosing a wife to see that whatever other qualities she might have she be healthy. The blemish of nearsight he considered a no small defect and sufficient to render a young woman unworthy of entry into the proud family of the Buonarroti. To his own father he wrote: "Look to your life and health, for a man does not come back again to patch up things ill done."

One of those who look beneath unusual human phenomena for signs of the pathologic finds Michelangelo "affected by a degree of neuropathy bordering closely upon hysterical disease." What a pity that more of us do not suffer from such degrees of neuropathy--and how much better for most of us if we had such enthusiasm for perfection, and such mania for work, at least of that health-bringing sort in which there is absorbing colabor of brain and hand. True it is that "there is no better way of keeping sane and free from anxiety than by being mad."

THE CONSERVATION OF TALENT THROUGH UTILIZATION

BY PROFESSOR JOHN M. GILLETTE

STATE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH DAKOTA

TO raise the question of how to conserve talent is not an idle inquiry. We are in no immediate danger of famine. Yet there is an enormous interest being devoted to what is known as the conservation of soil. Our forests contain an abundance of timber for near purposes, and when they are gone we shall probably find a better substitute in the direction of concrete. Still agitation and discussion proceed relative to the conservation of our timber supply. We hear of conservation of childhood, of conservation of health, of conservation of natural scenery. It is a period of agitation for conservation of resources all along the line. This is all good. Real intelligent foresight is manifesting itself. Civilized man demonstrates his superiority over uncivilized man most in the exercise of anticipation and prescience.

As compared with other natural resources, genius and talent are relatively scarce articles. This is at least the popular impression as to their quantity. Even scientific men, for the most part, incline to this opinion. Unless we are able to demonstrate that they are quite abundant this opinion must be accepted. I shall seek to show that the estimate of the amount of talent in existence which is usually accepted is too small. However, we are in no peril of so inflating the potential supply of talent and genius in the course of our remarks that they may be regarded as universal. Nor are we likely to discover such a rich lode of this commodity that the world may run riot in its consumption of the visible supply. Talent promises to remain so scarce that, granting for the moment that it is a useful agent, its supply must be conserved.

I shall use the term talent so as to include genius. Both talent and genius are of the same kind. Their essential difference consists in degree. Increase what is commonly called talent in the direction of its manifestation and it would develop into genius. Genius is commonly thought of as something abnormal, in the sense that it is essentially eccentric. A genius is generally spoken of as an eccentric, erratic, unbalanced, person. The eccentricity is then taken as constituting the substance of the quality of genius. This is undoubtedly a mistake. Because some geniuses have been erratic, the popular imagination has formed its picture of all genius as unbalanced. The majority of the world's men of genius have been as balanced and normal in their judgments as the average man. We may think of a genius as like the ordinary man in his constitution. He has the same mental faculties, the same emotions, the same kind of determinizing ability. What makes him a genius is his power of concentration in his given field of work. The moral quality, or zeal to accomplish, or energy directed toward intellectual operations stands enormously above that of the average individual. If we could confer this quality of moral will on the common normal man possibly we would raise him to that degree which we term genius.

In order to determine the worth of conserving talent we must estimate its value as a commodity, as a world asset. I shall, therefore, turn my attention first to discovering a method of reckoning the value of eminent men.

One method open to us is what may be called the individualistic test. Under this method we think of the individual as individual or of his work as a concrete case of production. One phase of this is the individual's estimate of his own powers. We may inquire what is the man's appreciation of his own worth. This is precarious because of two difficulties. There is an egotistical element in individuals. It is inherent as a historical agent of self-preservation. Most of us are like primitive groups. The ethnologist expects to find every tribe or horde of savages claiming to be THE PEOPLE. They ascribe superior qualities to their group. In their names for their group they call themselves the people, the men, and so on, indicating their point of view.

Again, an individual, however honestly he might try, could not estimate his own worth accurately. Let any of us attempt to see ourselves as others see us and we shall discover the difficulty of the undertaking. We are not able to get the perspective because our personal feelings, our necessary selfish self-appreciation, puts our judgments awry. Others close to us may do little better. They are likely to either underrate us or to exaggerate our qualities and powers. In the United States we are called on to evaluate Mr. Taft and Mr. Roosevelt. Is either of them a great man? Has either of them been a great president? Opinions differ. We are too close to them. We do not know. We give them credit, perhaps, for doing things which the age would have worked out in spite of them. Or we think things would have come inevitably which their personal efforts, it will be found, were responsible for establishing. We have not yet been able to determine accurately just how great Abraham Lincoln was. It is almost half a century since he did his work. But we live in the presence of the personal relative to him yet. Sentiment enters in and obfuscates judgment.

If we turn to the product itself as mere product we are at a loss. Unless we ask what is the import of the work we confess we do not know. A man in Connecticut has made a manikin. It walks, talks, does many of the things which human beings do. But it is not alive, it is not serviceable, it can accomplish nothing. Suppose the maker passes his life in making probably the most intricate and perfect mechanism which has been made. Is he a genius? We may admit that the products manifest great ingenuity on the part of their creator, yet we feel repelled when we think of calling the maker a genius.

The community method of rating talent is far more satisfactory. The inventor is related to his time or to human society by means of the usefulness of his invention. The statesman is rated by means of the deep-seated influence for improvement he has had on his age. The educator finds his evaluation in the constructive spirit and method he displays in bringing useful spirit and methods to light. The scientist is measured by the uplift his discovery gives to the sum and substance of human welfare. If a product which some individual creates can not be utilized by society, its creator is not regarded as having made a contribution to human progress. As a consequence he does not get a rating as genius. To get the appraisal of mankind the product of the man of talent must get generally accepted, must fill the want of society generally or of some clientele. If a man produces something merely ingenious, something which does not serve a considerable portion of humanity in the way of satisfying a want, if his creation does not pass into use, he does not step into the current of the world's history as a fruitful factor, he fails to attain to the rank of talent.

This objective measure of the value of the producer puts talent into direct relation to the concept of social evolution and progress. Society has been an evolution. Collective humanity has gone through distinctive metamorphoses. Distinct strides in advance have been made, tendencies have manifested themselves, conditions have changed so that larger satisfactions have ensued, democracy in the essential wants of mankind has been wrought out. Society is more complex in its quantitative aspect. It is more serviceable by reason of its greater specialization. Since progress stands for improvement it has come to be regarded as a desirable thing.

In the sociological conception of things the genius possesses a specific social function. He is not a passing curiosity. He is not produced for amusement. He does not stand unrelated. He is the product of his age, is articulated with its life, performs an office which is of consequence to it. He is the connecting link between the past and the future. He takes what was and so combines it anew as to produce what is to be. He is the innovator, the initiator, the agent of transformation, the creator of a new order. Hence he is the exceptional man. The masses of men are imitators. They make nothing new, add nothing to the mechanism of social structure, introduce no new functions, produce no achievements, do nothing which changes the order of things. The common people are quite as important for the purposes of society as are the talented. Society must be conserved most of the time or we should all float down the stream of change too rapidly for comfort. Hence the function of the great mass of individuals is to seize and use the achievements which the creators, the talented have brought into existence. We may conclude, therefore, that if society is to be improved and if the lives of the great body of human beings are to be endowed with more and more blessings, material and spiritual, we must look to the men of talent, the men of achievement, and to them 'alone, for the initiation of these results.

We may say, then, that we have discovered not only the method of estimating the value of talent, but also in what its value consists. If progress is desirable, talent by means of which that progress is secured is likewise valuable. And, like other things, its value is measured by its scarcity. It is now incumbent on us to attempt to discover the extent of the supply of this commodity, both actual and possible.

I shall refer to two estimates of the amount of talent in existence which have been made because they differ so much in their conclusions as to the extent of talent, and because they exhibit quite different view-points and methods.

The great English scientist and benefactor of the race, Sir Francis Galton, in his work entitled "Hereditary Genius" made a computation of the number of men of eminence in the British Isles. This estimate was made nearly a half-century ago and has generally been accepted as representing actual conditions. One means of discovering the number was by taking a catalogue of "Men of The Times" which contained about 2,500 names, one half of which were Americans and Europeans. He found that most of the men were past fifty years of age. Relative to this he states:

'It appears that in the cases of high (but by no means in that of the highest) merit, a man must outlive the age of fifty to be sure of being widely appreciated. It takes time for an able man, born in the humbler ranks of life, to emerge from them and to take his natural position.'[1]

[1] Cattell's investigations of American men of science disproves this statement for Americans. He finds that only a few men enter the ranks of that class of men after the age of fifty, and that none of that age reach the highest place. The fecund age is from 35 to 45; ("American Men of Science," p. 575.)

After eliminating the non-British individuals he compared the number of celebrities above fifty with males of the same age for the whole British population. He found about 850 who were above fifty. Of this age there were about 2,000,000 males in the British Isles. Hence the meritorious were as 425 to 1,000,000, and the more select were as 250 to 1,000,000. He stated what he considered the qualifications of the more select as follows:

'The qualifications for belonging to what I call the more select part are, in my mind, that a man should have distinguished himself pretty frequently either by purely original work, or as a leader of opinion. I wholly exclude notoriety obtained by a single act. This is a fairly well defined line, because there is not room for many men to become eminent.'

Mr. Galton made another estimate by studying an obituary list published in The Times in 1868. This contained 50 men of the select class. He considered it broader than his former estimate because it excluded men dying before they attained their broadest reputation, and more rigorous because it excluded old men who had previously attained a reputation which they were not able to sustain. He consequently lowered the age to 45. In Great Britain there were 210,000 males who died yearly of that age. This gave a result of 50 men of exceptional merit to 210,000 of the population, or 238 to the million.

His third estimate was made by the study of obituaries of many years back. This led to similar conclusions, namely, that about 250 to the million is an ample estimate of the number of eminent men. He says:

'When I speak of an eminent man, I mean one who has achieved a position that is attained by only 250 persons in each million of men, or by one person in each 4,000.'