Kitabı oku: «Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, April 1899», sayfa 12

Editor's Table

SCIENCE AND CULTURE

We do not know from whom the philosopher Locke quotes the saying, "Non vitæ sed scholæ discimus," but he translates it well, "We learn not to live, but to dispute." The adage has reference to the old systems of education which had for their aim neither the discovery of truth nor the perfecting of the human faculties in any broad sense, but the fitting of the individual to take his place in a world of conventional ideas and discuss conventional topics upon conventional lines. In other words, the preparation was for school, not for life, the whole subsequent career of the individual being regarded simply as a prolongation of the intellectual influences and discipline of the school. That system, which was ecclesiastical in its origin, has now, save for strictly ecclesiastical purposes, passed away. We consider life as the end of school and not school as the end of life.

It may be questioned, however, whether we have as yet thoroughly adapted our educational methods to this change of standpoint. Do we as yet take a sufficiently broad view of life? If we conceive life narrowly as essentially a business struggle, and adapt our procedure to that conception, the results will show very little relation to the larger and truer conception according to which life means development of faculty, activity of function, and a harmonious adjustment of relations between man and man. If, again, we make too much of knowledge that has only a conventional value, having little or no bearing on the understanding of things or the accomplishment of useful work, we are so far falling into the old error of "learning for school." The address by Sir Archibald Geikie, which we published last month, gives a useful caution against undervaluing "the older learning." The older learning can certainly be made an effective instrument for the cultivation of taste, of sympathy, and of intellectual accuracy along certain lines. It tends further, we believe, to promote a certain intellectual self-respect, which is a valuable quality. In the study of language and literature the human mind surveys, as it were, its own peculiar possessions, and thus acquires a sense of proprietorship which a study of the external world can hardly give. Still, it is well to cultivate a consciousness of the essentially limited and arbitrary nature of such knowledge. It is important, we may admit, to have a good text of such an author as Chaucer; but the minutiæ into which critics of his text enter can not be said to possess any broad human interest. Whether he wrote this word or that word, adopted this spelling or that, can not be a question on which much depends; and could one know the exact truth on a thousand such points, he would not really be much the wiser. Among Chaucer scholars he could speak with a good deal of confidence; but the knowledge of these details would not really help to round out any useful system of knowledge, nor could any single fact possess the illuminating power which sometimes belongs to some single and, at first sight, unimportant fact in the realm of natural knowledge.

This is not said with any intention of disparaging the culture that comes of literary study. It is a culture that tends to brighten human intercourse and to sweeten a man's own thoughts. It is a culture eminently favorable to flexibility of mind and quick insight into human character. So far it is a culture "for life"; but too often it tends to become a culture "for school" – that is to say, when things are learned simply to meet conventional demands and conform to the fashion of the time.

A true and sufficient culture can never, as we conceive, be founded on literature and language alone. No mind can be truly liberalized without imbibing and assimilating the fundamental principles of science. There is darkness in the mind that believes that anything can come out of nothing and which has never obtained a glimpse of the exactness with which Nature solves her equations. In the region of mechanics alone there are a thousand beautiful and varied illustrations of the unfailing constancy of natural laws. It is a liberal education to trace the operation of one law under numberless disguises, and thus arrive at an ineradicable conviction that the same law must be reckoned with always and everywhere. The persistence of force, the laws of the composition and resolution of forces, the laws of falling bodies and projectiles, the conservation of energy, the laws of heat, to mention only a few heads of elementary scientific study, are capable, if properly unfolded and illustrated, of producing in any mind open to large thoughts a sense of harmony and a trust in the underlying reason of things, which are constitutive elements of the very highest culture. Only, care must be taken to approach these studies in a right spirit. There is a way of regarding the laws of Nature which tends to vulgarize rather than refine the mind. If we approach Nature merely as something to be exploited, we get no culture from the study of it; but if we approach it as the great men of old did, and feel that in learning its laws we are grasping the thoughts which went to the building of the universe, and, by so doing, are affirming our own high calling as intelligent beings, then every moment given to the study of Nature means intellectual, moral, and spiritual gain. When we look into literature there is much to charm, much to delight and satisfy; and doubtless, in relation to what any one man can accomplish, the field is infinite; but still we know we are looking into the limited. On the other hand, when we are face to face with Nature, we know we are looking into the infinite, and that, however many veils we may take away, there is still "veil after veil behind."

It is needless to say that there are thousands of minds in the world possessed of good native power, but laboring under serious disability for the want of that culture which science alone can bestow. Some of these are sick with morbid longings for unattainable knowledge, and openly or secretly rebellious at the limitations of a Nature whose powers they have never even begun to explore. To such persons anything like an adequate insight into the harmony amid diversity of Nature's laws would come with all the force of a revelation, and would, we may well believe, clear their minds of the feverish fancies which have made them so restless and dissatisfied; but, alas! it is rarely that such enlightenment comes to those who have not in youth imbibed a portion of the scientific spirit. In this class are to be found the victims of spiritualism, of the Keeley motor, and even of that grotesque satire, the success of which we remember almost with fear and trembling, the "sympsychograph." Still, to all such we would say:

 
"Come forth into the light of things;
Let Nature be your teacher."
 

The "Nature" which we require to teach us for the peace and tranquillity of our souls is the Nature of everyday phenomena, the Nature that forms the clouds and rounds the raindrops, that springs in the grass and pulses in the tides, that glances in the sunbeam and breathes in the flower, that works witchery in the crystal and breaks into glory in the sunset. The mind that knows what can be known of these things has feasted full of wonder and beauty, and makes no greedy demand for higher grace or mightier miracle.

Then again there are those who for want of a little elementary scientific knowledge, and particularly for want of an assured conviction that Nature gives nothing for nothing, are continually attempting the impossible in the way of projected inventions. They catch at a phrase and think it must represent a fact; they fall victims to a verbal mythology of their own manufacture. If there was much hope of their learning anything of value through disappointment, they might be left to the teaching of experience, costly as the lessons of that master are. But they do not learn: their hopes are blasted, their fortunes, if they had any, are wrecked, but their infatuations survive. Where is the inventor of a perpetual motion who ever ceased to have confidence in his peculiar contrivance? The thing may be as motionless as a tombstone, save when urged by external force into a momentary lumbering activity; but all the same, it only needs, its misguided author thinks, a little doctoring, a trifling change here or there, to make it tear round like mad. And so with other inventors of the impossible: they take counsel not with Nature, but with their own wholly incorrect notions of what the operations of Nature are. The least power of truly analyzing a natural phenomenon, and separating the factors that produce it, would show them the falsity of their ideas; but that power they do not possess.

We can not, then, plead too strongly for the teaching of science, not with a view to results in money, but with a view to the improvement of the mind and heart of the learner, or, in other words, as a source of culture. Literature introduces us to the world of human thought and action, to the kingdom of man; and science shows us how the thought and powers of man can be indefinitely enlarged by an ever increasing acquaintance with the laws of the universe. Literature alone leaves the mind without any firm grasp of the reality of things, and science alone tends to produce a hard, prosaic, and sometimes antisocial temper. Each helps to bring out the best possible results of the other; and it is only by their joint action that human faculties and human character can ever be brought to their perfection.

SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

It is singular what a propensity some writers have to misunderstand and misrepresent the views of Mr. Herbert Spencer, even upon points in regard to which he has made every possible effort to avoid occasion for misapprehension. The term "survival of the fittest" is one which Mr. Spencer himself introduced as being, perhaps, a little less open to misunderstanding than the Darwinian expression "natural selection." The latter seemed to imply purposive action, and Mr. Spencer thought that this implication would be less prominent if the phrase were changed to "survival of the fittest." From the very first, however, he recognized that the difference between the two terms in this respect was, if we may so express it, purely quantitative; and he took care to make it clear that by "the fittest" he did not in the least intend to signify any form of ideal or subjective fitness, but simply a superior degree of adaptation, as a matter of actual fact, to environing conditions. The conditions at any given moment are as they are, and the "fitness" of any particular organism is such a correspondence with those conditions as permits and favors its perpetuation. The conditions do not create fitness; they merely eliminate unfitness; nor does Mr. Spencer conceive any agency as producing ab extra the fitness which enables an organism or a number of organisms to survive. He differs, however, from what is perhaps the dominant school of biology to-day, in holding that the higher forms of organic life are, as he expresses it, "directly equilibrated" with their surroundings through the inheritance of physical features resulting from effort and habit.

To whatever cause it may be attributed, few writers whose intellectual activity has extended over so long a term of years as Mr. Spencer's have been so consistent in their utterances at different stages as he. The "Synthetic Philosophy" is the realization of a scheme of thought no less wonderful in its coherence and solidity than in its compass, the author having planted himself from the first at a point of view which gave him a clear command of his entire field. To say that no other system of thought equally comprehensive and equally coherent exists in the world to-day would be to make a statement which few competent and dispassionate authorities would deny. Notwithstanding this, there are writers not a few, particularly of the class "who write with ease," who, as we said at the outset, have a propensity for misunderstanding Mr. Spencer, and who consequently accuse him of inconsistencies and self-contradictions for which nothing that he has ever said affords any warrant. One of these gentlemen is the Duke of Argyll, who has lately offered the world another superfluous book under the title of Organic Evolution Cross-examined. The duke particularly concerns himself with Mr. Spencer's teaching in regard to the "survival of the fittest," and Mr. Spencer, in the columns of Nature, replies to him in a brief but sufficient manner. It is safe to say that Mr. Spencer's philosophy will show Cyclopean remains generations after the name of his ducal critic shall have passed forever into the mists of oblivion; and the "survival of the fittest" will thus be illustrated in a sense in which Mr. Spencer himself never used the words.

Scientific Literature

SPECIAL BOOKS

The study of the methods through which the topographical features and rock forms of particular districts have been worked out, as presented in numerous popular monographs, is a fascinating one; and we can hardly doubt that many persons who would never otherwise have thought of it have been made interested in geology by some of these masterly picturesque descriptions of regions with which they were superficially familiar. Other treatises on the origin of surface features, dealing with the subject more fundamentally, but likewise of limited scope, are not wanting. Yet, as Prof. James Geikie well says, there is no English work to which readers not skilled in geology can turn for a general account of the whole subject. Professor Geikie has therefore prepared his elaborate book on Earth Sculpture¹⁴ to supply this want, to furnish an introductory treatise for those persons who may be desirous of acquiring some broad knowledge of the results arrived at by geologists as to the development of land forms generally. A vast number of geological questions are involved in the exhaustive treatment of the subject. All the forces with which geologists become acquainted in the study of the earth, and their operation, come into consideration. The effects of these forces assume aspects that vary according to the nature of the material on which they operate, and they are again modified according to the peculiar combinations of forces at work. The subject is therefore not the easy one it may be supposed at first sight to be, and the reader who peruses Professor Geikie's work with the intention of mastering it will find he has some studying to do. Yet Professor Geikie is clear, and it is only because he has gone deeper than the others that he may be harder. The first point he insists upon is that in the fashioning of the earth's surface no hard-and-fast line separates past and present. The work has been going on for a long time, and is still in progress, under a law of evolution as true for the crust of the globe as for the plants and animals. In setting out upon our inquiry we must in the first place know something about rocks and the mode of their arrangement, of the structure or architecture of the earth's crust. This leads to the distinction between the igneous and the subaqueous, the volcanic, plutonic, and metamorphic, and the derivative rocks on which epigene agencies have performed their shaping work. These rocks have been modified in various ways, and the surface appearance of the earth has been affected by forces operating from the interior, and by external factors, the work of which is called denudation. The agents of denudation are described – air, water, heat, frost, chemical action, plants, and animals – often so closely associated in their operations that their individual shares in the final result can hardly be determined. The various influences of these factors as exerted upon different forms of geological structure and different sorts of rocks are then taken up and described as applied to land forms in regions of horizontal, or gently inclined, and of highly folded and disturbed strata, and in regions affected by normal faults or vertical displacements. Land forms due directly or indirectly to igneous action and the influence of rock character on the determination of land forms are subjects of special chapters. Glacial action is one of the most important factors in modifying the forms of northern lands, and is treated with considerable fullness. Æolian action – of the air and wind – has peculiar and important effects in arid regions, and underground water in limestone districts, and these receive attention. Then come basins – those due to crustal deformation, crater lakes, river lakes, glacial basins, and others, and coast lines. Finally, a classification is given of these land forms as plains or plateaus of accumulation and of erosion, original or tectonic and subsequent or relict hills and mountains, original or tectonic and subsequent or erosion valleys, basins, and coast lines, and the conclusions are reached that we do not know, except as a matter of probability, whether we have still visible any original wrinkles of the earth's crust; and that some of the estimates of the time it has taken to produce the changes of which we witness the results have been very much exaggerated.

The curious conclusions obtained by Dr. Le Bon in his psychological investigations,¹⁵ delivered to us in startling language, are said to be the fruit of extensive travel and of the personal measurement of thousands of skulls. His memoir on cervical researches, published in 1879, upholds the theory that the volume of the skull varies with the intelligence. This theory has perhaps suffered a permanent adumbration. Facts seem to prove that the bony structure of the skull, or even its cranial capacity, gives no positive indication of intellect.

In the present volume the theme of discussion is the soul of races. Anthropological classification is set aside and mankind is divided into four groups according to mental characteristics: the primitive, inferior, average, and superior races – the standard of judgment being the degree of their aptitude for dominating reflex impulses. It is perhaps worthy of note that while the Frenchman belongs to a superior race, the Semitic peoples are placed in the class below, or the average sort. For the primitive varieties it is not necessary to observe a South Sea islander, the lower strata of Europeans furnishing numerous examples. When greater differentiation is reached, the word "race" is used in a historical sense. It requires, however, more complete fusion than some nations exhibit to earn this title; for, although there are Germans and Americans, "it is not clear as yet that there are Italians." The race having been once evolved, acquires wondrous potentialities with Dr. Le Bon. He compares it to the totality of cells constituting a living organism, asserts that its mental constitution is as unvarying as its anatomical structure, that it is a permanent being independent of time and founded alone by its dead. It is a short step to endow this entity with a soul consisting of common sentiments, interests, and beliefs – what in brief, robbed of hyperbole, we should call national character. He states that the notion of a country is not possible until a national soul is formed. This, in time, like germ-plasm, becomes so stable that assimilation with foreign elements is impossible. Like natural species, it has secondary characteristics that may be modified, but its fundamental character is like the fin of the fish or the beak of the bird. The acquisition of this soul marks the apogee of the greatness of a people. Psychological species, however, are not eternal, but may decay if the functioning of their organs is troubled profoundly.

The soul of the race is best expressed in its art, not in its history or institutions, and, as it can not bequeath its soul, so it can not impress its civilization or art upon an alien race. It was on account of this incompatibility of soul that Grecian art failed to be implanted in India. The unaltering constituent of the soul corresponds to character, while intellectual qualities are variable. By character is meant perseverance, energy, power of self-control, also morality. The latter is hereditary respect for the rules on which a society is based. This definition would make polygamy a moral notion for Mormons. The knowledge of character "can be acquired neither in laboratories nor in books, but only in the course of long travel." Whence it is learned that different races can not have mutual comprehension. Luckily for the student who is unable to travel, the same phenomenon may be observed in the gulf that separates the civilized man and woman. Although highly educated, "they might converse with each other for centuries without understanding one another." These differences between races and individuals demonstrate the falsity of the notion of equality. Indeed, through science "man has learned that to be slaves is the natural condition of all human beings." Naturally he becomes dispirited, anarchy seizes upon the uneducated and sullen indifference the more cultivated. "Like a ship that has lost its compass, the modern man wanders haphazard through the spaces formerly peopled by the gods and rendered a desert by science." In France morality is gradually dying out, while the United States is threatened by a gigantic civil war. What to do is problematical, since we are informed "that people have never derived much advantage from too great a desire to reason and think," and what is most harmful to a people is to attain too high a degree of intelligence and culture, the groundwork of the soul beginning to decline when this level is reached. The remedy suggested to us is "the organization of a very severe military service and the permanent menace of disastrous wars." But if we fail to see the improving tendency of this advice, it is probably because we are like historians, "simple-minded," while Dr. Le Bon is much too complex for our understanding. According to his own theory, there is no hope that we may comprehend him, since the outpourings of a soul of the Latin race can not be transferred by a simple bridge of translation to the apprehension of an Anglo-Saxon mind, separated, as he would term it, by "the dead weight of thousands of generations."

GENERAL NOTICES

In preparing the new edition of his Text-Book of Mineralogy¹⁶ first published in 1877, Prof. E. S. Dana has found it necessary to rewrite the whole as well as to add much new matter and many new illustrations. The work being designed chiefly for use in class or private instruction, the choice of topics discussed, the order and fullness of treatment, and the method of presentation have been determined by that object. The different types of crystal forms are described under the thirty-two groups now accepted, classed according to their symmetry. In the chapters on physical and chemical mineralogy, the plan of the former edition is retained of presenting somewhat fully the elementary principles of the science on which the mineral characters depend, and the author has tried to give the student the means of becoming practically familiar with the modern means of investigation. Especial attention is given to the optical qualities of crystals as revealed by the microscope; and frequent references are introduced to important papers on the different subjects discussed. The descriptive part of the volume is essentially an abridgment of the sixth edition of Dana's System of Mineralogy, published in 1892, to which the student is referred for fuller and supplementary information. A full topical index is furnished in addition to the usual index of species.

The title, The Story of the Railroad,¹⁷ carries with it the suggestion of an eventful history. The West, in the author's view, begins with the Missouri River. The story of its railroad is the story of the line, now very multiple, that leads to the Pacific Ocean. The beginning of white men's travels in these routes is traced by the editor to the Spanish adventurers of the sixteenth century, who made miserable journeys in search of gold or visionary objects, through regions now traversed by some of the more southern lines. Then came trappers; next costly and painfully undertaken Government expeditions into the then regions of the unknown, the stories of which were the boyhood delight of men now living. The period of practical traversing of the continent began with the raging of the California gold fever, when the journey of many weeks was tiresomely made with ox teams, in the face of actual perils of the desert, starvation, thirst, and the Indians. After California became important, stage and express lines were put on; but still, at the time Mr. Warman takes up the story, less than sixty years ago, the idea of building a railroad to the Pacific was regarded as too visionary to be entertained, and Asa Whitney sacrificed a fortune trying to induce somebody to take it up. The first dreams were for a short route to the Orient. Eventually the idea was developed that the American West might be worth going after, and then the idea of a railroad to it began to assume practical form. Young Engineer Dodge, afterward Major General, began surveys before the civil war; after it General Sherman gave the scheme a great impulse, and the Union Pacific Railroad was built – when and how are graphically and dramatically told in Mr. Warman's book. Next came the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fé, and other transcontinental lines, the histories of all of which are related in similar style, with stories of adventures, perils encountered, and lively incidents, including the war between two of the lines for the possession of the Arkansas Cañon; financial mishaps, and political scandal. Then came the settlement of the plains, road-making in Mexico, and the opening of Oklahoma, all of which were made possible by the railroads, and have in turn contributed to support them. The beginnings and growth of the express business are described, and the later lines that have penetrated the plains are mentioned.

Prof. William Benjamin Smith's treatise on the Infinitesimal Analysis¹⁸ has been written, the author says, on what appeared, in the light of ten years' experience in teaching the calculus, to be lines of least resistance. The aim has been, within a prescribed expense of time and energy, to penetrate as far as possible into the subject, and in as many directions, so that the student shall attain as wide knowledge of the matter, as full comprehension of the methods, and as clear consciousness of the spirit and power of this analysis as the nature of the case would admit. The author has accordingly often followed what seemed to be natural suggestions and impulses toward near-lying extensions or generalizations, and has even allowed them to direct the course of the discussion. In accordance with the plan and purpose of the book as given, "Weierstressian rigor" has been excluded from many investigations, and the postponement has been compelled of some important discussions, which were considered too subtle for an early age of study. Real difficulties, however, have not been knowingly disguised, and pains have been taken on occasion to warn the reader that the treatment given is only provisional, and must await further precision or delimitation. Where the subject has been found too large for the compass of the intended work, or too abstruse or difficult for the contemplated students, the treatment has been compressed or curtailed. The book is, in fact, written for such as feel a genuine interest in the subject; and the illustrations and exercises have been chosen with frequent reference to practical or theoretic importance or to historic interest.

Mr. George Jacob Holyoake has written with much enthusiasm the Jubilee History of the Leeds Industrial Co-operative Society.¹⁹ Many schemes have been started on lines similar to those of this one, but very few besides it have grown from the very beginning, and, having become to all appearance a permanent institution, can look back upon a career of fifty years with complete satisfaction. The society began in times of public distress. The ground was prepared for it by the "Redemption" Society, which was founded at Leeds in 1845, by admirers of Robert Owen, after the experiment at Queenswood had failed. It practiced a kind of co-operation and had some distinguished friends to wish it well. Among the speakers at its meetings was Dr. Frederic Hollick, still living, now a resident of New York city. The co-operative society was started as a means of getting cheaper flour for its members. On February 25, 1847, an appeal headed "Holbeck Anti-Corn Mill Association" was issued to the working classes of Leeds and vicinity by the "working people of Messrs. Benyon & Co.'s mill," Holbeck, inviting combination and subscriptions for establishing a mill to be the property of the subscribers and their successors, "in order to supply them with flour and flour only." Meetings were held, an organization was effected, and the mill was started. The history of the society and how it grew, how "flour only" was stricken from its scheme and other things were added and it branched out, how co-operative stores were established, how it gained the confidence of the public and the respect of rivals in business, its successes and its mistakes, its triumphs and failures, are told by Mr. Holyoake, year by year, in a detail in which everything is set down and nothing covered up. In 1897 the cooperative society had productive departments of flour, bakery, bespoke clothing, boot and shoe factory, brush factory, cabinet making, building, millinery, and dressmaking, employing 541 hands and turning over £26,949; 80 large stores for the sale of these and various other kinds of goods in Leeds and vicinity; drapery branches and boot and shoe stores; 43 butchering branches; and 37,000 subscribing purchasers. Its capital stood at £447,000; and its sales for the year amounted to £1,042,616.