PRACTICE AND HABIT.
We are born with faculties and powers capable almost of anything, such at least as would carry us farther than can be easily imagined: but it is only the exercise of those powers which gives us ability and skill in anything, and leads us toward perfection.
A middle-aged ploughman will scarce ever be brought to the carriage and language of a gentleman, though his body be as well proportioned, and his joints as supple, and his natural parts not any way inferior. The legs of a dancing-master, and the fingers of a musician, fall, as it were, naturally without thought or pains, into regular and admirable motions. Bid them change their parts, and they will in vain endeavor to produce like motions in the members not used to them, and it will require length of time and long practice to attain but some degrees of a like ability. What incredible and astonishing actions do we find rope-dancers and tumblers bring their bodies to! not but that sundry in almost all manual arts are as wonderful; but I name those which the world takes notice of for such, because, on that very account, they give money to see them. All these admired motions, beyond the reach and almost the conception of unpractised spectators, are nothing but the mere effects of use and industry in men whose bodies have nothing peculiar in them from those of the amazed lookers-on.
As it is in the body, so it is in the mind; practice makes it what it is; and most even of those excellencies which are looked on as natural endowments, will be found, when examined into more narrowly, to be the product of exercise, and to be raised to that pitch only by repeated actions. Some men are remarked for pleasantness in raillery, others for apologues and apposite diverting stories. This is apt to be taken for the effect of pure nature, and that the rather, because it is not got by rules, and those who excel in either of them never purposely set themselves to the study of it as an art to be learnt. But yet it is true, that at first some lucky hit which took with somebody, and gained him commendation, encouraged him to try again, inclined his thoughts and endeavors that way, till at last he insensibly got a facility in it without perceiving how; and this is attributed solely to nature, which was much more the effect of use and practice. I do not deny that natural disposition may often give the first rise to it; but that never carries a man far without use and exercise, and it is practice alone that brings the powers of the mind as well as those of the body to their perfection. Many a good poetic vein is buried under a trade, and never produces anything for want of improvement. We see the ways of discourse and reasoning are very different, even concerning the same matter, at court and in the university. And he that will go but from Westminster Hall to the Exchange will find a different genius and turn in their ways of talking; and one can not think that all whose lot fell in the city were born with different parts from those who were bred at the university or inns of court.
To what purpose all this, but to show that the difference so observable in men’s understandings and parts does not arise so much from the natural faculties as acquired habits? He would be laughed at that should go about to make a fine dancer out of a country hedger at past fifty. And he will not have much better success who shall endeavor at that age to make a man reason well, or speak handsomely, who has never been used to it, though you should lay before him a collection of all the best precepts of logic or oratory. Nobody is made anything by hearing of rules, or laying them up in his memory; practice must settle the habit of doing without reflecting on the rule; and you may as well hope to make a good painter, or musician, extempore, by a lecture and instruction in the arts of music and painting, as a coherent thinker, or strict reasoner, by a set of rules, showing him wherein right reasoning consists.
This being so, that defects and weakness in men’s understandings, as well as other faculties, come from want of a right use of their own minds, I am apt to think the fault is generally mislaid upon nature, and there is often a complaint of want of parts, when the fault lies in want of a due improvement of them. We see men frequently dexterous and sharp enough in making a bargain, who if you reason with them about matters of religion appear perfectly stupid.
[THOUGHTS AND APHORISMS.]
By JONATHAN SWIFT.
If the men of wit and genius would resolve never to complain in their works of critics and detractors, the next age would not know that they ever had any.
Imaginary evils soon become real ones by indulging our reflections on them, as he who in a melancholy fancy sees something like a face on the wall or the wainscot can, by two or three touches with a lead pencil, make it look visible and agreeing with what he fancied.
Men of great parts are often unfortunate in the management of public business, because they are apt to go out of the common road by the quickness of their imagination. This I once said to my Lord Bolingbroke, and desired he would observe that the clerks in his office used a sort of ivory knife with a blunt edge to divide a sheet of paper, which never failed to cut it even, only requiring a steady hand; whereas if they should make use of a sharp penknife, the sharpness would make it often go out of the crease and disfigure the paper.
“He who does not provide for his own house,” St. Paul says, “is worse than an infidel;” and I think he who provides only for his own house is just equal with an infidel.
I never yet knew a wag (as the term is) who was not a dunce.
When we desire or solicit anything, our minds run wholly on the good side or circumstances of it; when it is obtained, our minds run wholly on the bad ones.
The latter part of a wise man’s life is taken up in curing the follies, prejudices, and false opinions he had contracted in the former.
Would a writer know how to behave himself with relation to posterity, let him consider in old books what he finds that he is glad to know, and what omissions he most laments.
One argument to prove that the common relations of ghosts and spectres are generally false, may be drawn from the opinion held that spirits are never seen by more than one person at a time; that is to say, it seldom happens to above one person in a company to be possessed with any high degree of spleen or melancholy.
It is pleasant to observe how free the present age is in laying taxes on the next: “Future ages shall talk of this;” “This shall be famous to all posterity:” whereas their time and thoughts will be taken up about present things, as ours are now.
I never heard a finer piece of satire against lawyers than that of astrologers, when they pretend by rules of art to tell when a suit will end, and whether to the advantage of the plaintiff or defendant; thus making the matter depend entirely upon the influence of the stars, without the least regard to the merits of the cause.
I have known some men possessed of good qualities, which were very serviceable to others but useless to themselves: like a sun-dial on the front of a house, to inform the neighbors and passengers, but not the owner within.
If a man would register all his opinions upon love, politics, religion, learning, etc., beginning from his youth, and so go on to old age, what a bundle of inconsistencies and contradictions would appear at last!
The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.
The reason why so few marriages are happy is, because young ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making cages.
The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable, for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit. Complaint is the largest tribute heaven receives, and the sincerest part of our devotion.
The common fluency of speech in many men, and most women, is owing to a scarcity of matter, and a scarcity of words: for whoever is a master of language, and hath a mind full of ideas, will be apt in speaking to hesitate upon the choice of both; whereas common speakers have only one set of ideas, and one set of words to clothe them in; and these are always ready at the mouth: so people come faster out of church when it is almost empty than when a crowd is at the door.
Johnson’s Opinion of his Roughness.—While we were upon the road, I had the resolution to ask Johnson whether he thought that the roughness of his manner had been an advantage or not, and if he would not have done more good if he had been more gentle. I proceeded to answer myself thus: “Perhaps it has been of advantage, as it has given weight to what you said: you could not, perhaps, have talked with such authority without it.” Johnson: “No, sir; I have done more good as I am. Obscenity and impiety have always been repressed in my company.” Boswell: “True, sir; and that is more than can be said of every bishop. Greater liberties have been taken in the presence of a bishop, though a very good man, from his being milder, and therefore not commanding such awe. Yet, sir, many people who might have been benefited by your conversation have been frightened away. A worthy friend of ours has told me that he has often been afraid to talk to you.” Johnson: “Sir, he need not have been afraid, if he had anything rational to say. If he had not, it was better he did not talk.”—Boswell.
[THE COMET THAT CAME BUT ONCE.]
By E. W. MAUNDER, F.R.A.S.
Not quite a year ago the “Threatening Comet,” which some too-imaginative writers foretold would return in fifteen years, and occasion the entire destruction of our earth, by rushing into the sun, and exciting it to a terrible degree of heat was foretold. How little reason there was to fear such a catastrophe! We never expected that, so far from having fifteen years to wait before the truth or error of the prediction was demonstrated, in less than six months a glorious stranger would present himself to our gaze, and reveal that, in one way or another, the dismal prophecy had been wrong. The message which the wonderful comet, that was so impressive an object in the morning sky of last October, had to convey has been interpreted in various senses. Perhaps the most probable is, that he and his bright predecessors of 1880 and 1843, which had been supposed to be one and the same object, were not really so, but only members of the same family. If so, then the very groundwork of the theory, on which the return in 1897 was foretold, would be cut away, and in its place a whole vista of marvellous possibilities would be opened out to us.
But our present purpose is not to dwell on these, nor to enlarge on the history, past or future, of any comet which from time to time has returned, or may return, to our skies, but to read the lesson conveyed in the marvellous fact that there are comets which visit us but once.
The devout Kepler, after his last great discovery, sat down content “to wait a century for a reader.” He had not long passed away ere the reader was sent, one who read his book to good purpose indeed. Kepler had been able to discover three laws to which the planets were obedient, but as to whether there was any connection between those laws, why the planets followed them rather than any others which might have been framed, and what laws the satellites and comets of the system were subject to, Kepler could not tell. Newton, on the contrary, discovered the great underlying principle, of which the laws of Kepler were only some of the necessary consequences, and showed not merely how the planets moved, but also to a great extent why they did so.
Newton had not long established his law of gravitation before he arrived at a strange discovery. Assuming his theory to be correct, he worked out by rigid mathematical processes the shape of the orbits which the planets must follow. Since we know that they travel in ellipses, we should naturally have expected that an ellipse would be the resulting orbit, but instead Newton found he had arrived at an expression which embraced not one curve but four.
Of these four, one was the oval or ellipse, another the circle, but the other two were curves of a very different shape indeed, curves which did not enclose a space, but which had each two ends, which, however far they were prolonged, could never meet. And directly this fact was recognized, an unlooked-for truth was made plain. Comets, which had hitherto been regarded as perfectly lawless bodies, as irregular and uncontrolled as the thoughts of an opium-dreamer seem to be, were now seen to be integral parts of our solar system. For though so many of them enter our system but once, never having visited it before, never to visit it again, yet since these all travel, in obedience to the sun’s attraction, in one or other of these strange unending curves, curves which are a necessary consequence of the law of gravitation, they are manifestly members of the solar family; without them it would be imperfect, without them the law of gravitation were but partially illustrated.
Let us follow in imagination the travels of one such comet through the untold ages of its life. It may have started on its tremendous voyage whilst the earth was yet a star, or rather a miniature sun, instinct with fire and light, and all through the long ages during which the earth was cooling down and becoming fitted to be the habitation of living things, the comet slowly but steadily pursued its way. On the earth one form of life succeeded another, the sea overcame the land time after time, and time after time the continents flung off the yoke, and emerged with ampler borders and fairer scenes. At length the predestined prince came to his heritage, and Man was made ruler over the perfected earth—too soon, alas! to forfeit his vice-regal crown by an act of flagrant rebellion. And still through all these ages, compared with which the whole lifetime of our race is but a moment, that distant comet held on its course, never swerving by a hair’s breadth from the appointed path, obedient to the law, the self-same law that decrees the fall of the ripened fruit. But it was still far away, and still it pressed slowly but steadily forward, whilst kingdoms rose and fell, and nations multiplied and decayed. But gradually a quicker energy began to throb within it, and a stronger impulse drew it forward. The old slow pace could not suffice for its growing impatience, and it pressed forward with ever-increasing speed. At length it dashes across the orbit of Neptune; it has entered the solar system at last. No lingering now, no slow and halting pace; quicker and quicker it presses on, and Uranus is past. A shorter interval still, and glorious Saturn, with his noble rings and numerous satellites, is left behind, and a few years more and it shoots across the path of the giant planet Jupiter. The asteroids and Mars are passed by next, and now, filled with a passionate desire, it whirls along, brightening as it speeds, and flaming streamers flying behind it. Moving more quickly still, it crosses the orbit of the Earth. Venus is reached next; traversing now in a moment of time space it once took a year to travel over, it rushes past Mercury. And now the bright goal is at hand, and quivering through all its mighty length with the fierce excitement, it speeds forward at a swifter pace still. And now, glorious with jets streaming ten thousand miles before it, and tail ten million leagues behind, it hurls itself into the corona, the region of that strange pearly glow which in total eclipses is seen to surround the Sun. And still it hurries forward, but not into the Sun, its headlong speed is now far too great for even that mighty attraction to be able to check it in its course, and draw it in to itself. It ploughs its way perhaps even at the rate of a million miles an hour, round nearly half of the circumference of the sun, through the regions where the prominences play—those rosy flames that rise and rush with such terrific heat and force from the Sun’s glowing bulk; and its brief period of splendor is over. Away from the Sun, it falls back through the corona, across the orbits of Mercury, Venus, and the Earth, with ever-slackening speed, and fading as it goes, it recedes toward outer unknown space. Never again in all eternity will it approach our Sun, never again will it know the fierce throbbings of that four hours’ sojourn in the home of the prominences; never, too, will it revisit those places where it was wandering in the outer darkness when it first heard the imperious summons which it had thus obeyed. Slower, ever slower will it travel, out in the fathomless night, the solar system left far behind. Once and once only has it entered it, once and once only could it enter. The Earth, with its attendant Moon, has revolved for millions of years, enjoying without cease spring, summer, autumn, and winter. But this strange body, whose winter was from creation, whose summer lasted but a few short hours, and whose second winter, so far at all events as it derives heat and light from our Sun, shall last till heaven and earth depart like a vesture that is rolled together, whose movements are so unlike our evenly moving earth, is no mere lawless wanderer—is no intruder on the happy family of the solar system; it is ruled in its every movement by the self-same law that guides our earth. Without it, or bodies like it, gravitation would be but imperfectly illustrated, and but part of the homage due would be paid to our Sun.
How great a change has taken place in our views since the time when men looked upon comets as miracles and portents, as special acts of creation, obedient to none of the ordinary laws of nature! And since Newton’s day, changes as great as that which he effected in astronomy have been effected in other sciences; and the unity of law, and the universality of its reign, are acknowledged on every side. The idea of special acts of creation, or that God interferes with the regular working of his laws, is discredited, and creation itself is pushed far back into the unfathomed past.
But this view opens out a most serious question. If God’s only work was to make the world at the beginning, and give it wholesome laws, leaving it then to itself, what room is there for religion and prayer—for faith and hope? And indeed, arguing in this very manner, there are men of science who tell us expressly that the only good which prayer can do is to make the petitioner feel more at ease in his mind; that Elijah praying for rain was no whit wiser than a Kaffir or Ashanti conjuror.
But God has not left his world to itself, and every law of nature is nothing but the expression of his all-pervading, ever-acting will. How else can the sun, which can not, according to Newton’s first law, of itself move a single inch, make the earth spin round it, at the rate of many miles a second? It explains nothing, it is only to put the fact into other words, if, when an apple falls, we say “the earth attracted it.” But “it is the will of God” is an explanation and a sufficient one, and we may be well assured that unless he expressly ordered it, not even a toy, released from a baby’s feeble grasp, could ever move downwards toward the ground. Were he to cease to will, the universe would cease to be, for in the beginning it came into existence by his simple word, and from that time “he upholdeth all things by the word of his power.” And in these words revelation teaches us what science never could—behind dead nature to see an ever-living, ever-acting God.
The mistake men made was this: Some things seemed to them to be orderly and regular, others disorderly and irregular; and they foolishly fancied the latter to be therefore more immediately God’s work than the former, thinking him “altogether such an one as themselves.” And so, when further knowledge showed that those things which had seemed irregular were as fully ordered by law as any of the others, it appeared as if God’s authority and power were diminished, since, in their ignorance, men had thought disorder a proof of his more immediate acting. But “God is not the author of confusion,” nor is he touched with caprice or change, for he hath declared “I am the Lord, I change not.” Perfect law and perfect harmony, are what the Scriptures teach us to expect in all God’s works, and that every advance of science shows such perfection far to transcend all our previous conceptions, should surely not shake our faith in him and in his word, but strengthen and confirm it.
But yet another difficulty remains. If everything in the universe is ordered according to law, how is it possible for miracles, and in a more general sense, answers to prayer, to take place? Perhaps the comet may help us here. Could anything seem more miraculous, more to contradict the general experience of the solar system, with its planets ever revolving in closed orbits round the sun, than the appearance of a body which rushed straight toward the sun, took one half-turn round it, and then receded from it by a different path, never, never to return? Could anything seem more like an interference by the Maker with the laws which he had made? It did seem so until the underlying law was discovered, and then the seeming discord was perceived to be really the note needed to complete the perfect harmony. We at best only stand where Kepler stood, we know only little fragmentary laws, and we can not affirm that occurrences which seem as much outside their scope as comets are outside Kepler’s laws, are not really necessary members of the greater system of which we have no knowledge as yet. That miracles are ruled by law may be gathered from many a passage in the Holy Word. Miracles are “set” in the Church, as much as apostles and teachers. “This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting;” “he could do no mighty works there because of their unbelief,” are not obscure hints of such a law—a spiritual law, it is true, but none the less a law.
We can watch the progress of science, then, without anxiety or fear; “rooted and grounded in faith,” believing that the Lord is King.—London Sunday Magazine.
[End of Required Reading for March.]
[MY WINTER GARDEN.]
By HARRIET MABEL SPALDING.
The frost lies thick upon the pane,
The fields are white with falling snows,
O’er frost-bank, in meadow-lane,
The drifted ice of winter glows.
The buds that crowned the mountain-side,
The moss that fringed the lakelet’s shore,
Passed with the fleeting summer-tide,
And spring’s fair graces are no more.
I trace the pictures on the pane,
Then turn, where in my quiet room
The summer lives for me again,
And June’s sweet gifts in freshness bloom.
’Mid emerald moss and growing vines,
The fair lobelia’s lifted face,
Nestled among the lilies shines,
That blossom in their snowy grace.
With tender hands I lift them up,
Sweet flowers, no breath of winter dimmed!
How pure each radiant jeweled cup,
Each vase with sparkling nectar brimmed.
The aloe’s flood of molten flame,
The vervain with its crimson hue.
The rose that with the spring-time came,
And in the mountain’s fastness grew.
The white alyssum, small and fair,
The red camelia’s blushing dyes,
The jasmine’s golden blossoms rare,
The larkspur, blue as summer skies,
The sweet narcissus’s yellow blooms,
The zinnia, with its violet rays,
The pink, with all its rich perfumes,
The crowning charm of August days.
Without the snowflakes softly fall,
An airy mist from cloud and sky,
Within, their perfume over all,
The buds in rosy fragrance lie.
The pale acacia’s tinted gleams,
The white carnation’s heart of gold,
The phlox that grows beside the streams
That gem the forests dim and old.
I wonder when life’s spring is past,
And snows are falling soft as now,
When autumn glories fade at last,
And frosts lie thick upon the bough,
If some true deed that I have wrought,
May, like the flowers, its blooms unclose,
Some fair and unforgotten thought
Grow grand beneath life’s winter snows.
[SCIENCE AND COMMON SENSE.]
By CHARLES KINGSLEY.
The scientific method needs no definition; for it is simply the exercise of common sense. It is not a peculiar, unique, professional, or mysterious process of the understanding; but the same which all men employ, from the cradle to the grave, in forming correct conclusions.
Every one who knows the philosophic writings of Mr. John Stuart Mill, will be familiar with this opinion. But to those who have no leisure to study him, I should recommend the reading of Professor Huxley’s third lecture on the origin of species.
In that he shows, with great logical skill, as well as with some humor, how the man who, on rising in the morning finds the parlor-window open, the spoons and teapot gone, the mark of a dirty hand on the window-sill, and that of a hob-nailed boot outside, and comes to the conclusion that someone has broken open the window, and stolen the plate, arrives at that hypothesis—for it is nothing more—by a long and complex train of inductions and deductions of just the same kind as those which, according to the Baconian philosophy, are to be used for investigating the deepest secrets of Nature.
This is true, even of those sciences which involve long mathematical calculations. In fact, the stating of the problem to be solved is the most important element in the calculation; and that is so thoroughly a labor of common sense that an utterly uneducated man may, and often does, state an abstruse problem clearly and correctly; seeing what ought to be proved, and perhaps how to prove it, though he may be unable to work the problem out for want of mathematical knowledge.
But that mathematical knowledge is not—as all Cambridge men are surely aware—the result of any special gift. It is merely the development of those conceptions of form and number which every human being possesses; and any person of average intellect can make himself a fair mathematician if he will only pay continuous attention; in plain English, think enough about the subject.
There are sciences, again, which do not involve mathematical calculation; for instance, botany, zoölogy, geology, which are just now passing from their old stage of classificatory sciences into the rank of organic ones. These are, without doubt, altogether within the scope of the merest common sense. Any man or woman of average intellect, if they will but observe and think for themselves, freely, boldly, patiently, accurately, may judge for themselves of the conclusions of these sciences, and may add to these conclusions fresh and important discoveries.
Let me illustrate my meaning by an example. A man—I do not say a geologist, but simply a man, ’squire or ploughman—sees a small valley, say one of the side-glens which open into the larger valleys in any country. He wishes to ascertain its age.
He has, at first sight, a very simple measure—that of denudation. He sees that the glen is now being eaten out by a little stream, the product of innumerable springs which arise along its sides, and which are fed entirely by the rain on the moors above. He finds, on observation, that this stream brings down some ten cubic yards of sand and gravel, on an average, every year. The actual quantity of earth which has been removed to make the glen may be several million cubic yards. Here is an easy sum in arithmetic. At the rate of ten cubic yards a year, the stream has taken several hundred thousand years to make the glen.
You will observe that this result is obtained by mere common sense. He has a right to assume that the stream originally began the glen, because he finds it in the act of enlarging it; just as much right as he has to assume, if he find a hole in his pocket, and his last coin in the act of falling through it, that the rest of his money has fallen through the same hole. It is a sufficient cause, and the simplest. A number of observations as to the present rate of denudation, and a sum which any railroad contractor can do in his head, to determine the solid contents of the valley, are all that are needed. The method is that of science: but it is also that of simple common sense. You will remember, therefore, that this is no mere theory or hypothesis, but a pretty fair and simple conclusion from palpable facts; that the probability lies with the belief that the glen is some hundreds of thousands of years old; that it is not the observer’s business to prove it further, but other persons’ to disprove it, if they can.
But does the matter end here? No. And, for certain reasons, it is good that it should not end here.
The observer, if he be a cautious man, begins to see if he can disprove his own conclusions; moreover, being human, he is probably somewhat awed, if not appalled, by his own conclusions. Hundreds of thousands of years spent in making that little glen! Common sense would say that the longer it took to make, the less wonder there was in its being made at last: but the instinctive human feeling is the opposite. There is in men, and there remains in them, even after they are civilized, and all other forms of the dread of Nature have died out in them, a dread of size, of vast space, of vast time; that latter, mind, being always imagined as space, as we confess when we speak instinctively of a space of time. They will not understand that size is merely a relative, not an absolute term; that if we were a thousand times larger than we are, the universe would be a thousand times smaller than it is; that if we could think a thousand times faster than we do, time would be a thousand times longer than it is; that there is One in whom we live, and move, and have our being, to whom one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. I believe this dread of size to be merely, like all other superstitions, a result of bodily fear; a development of the instinct which makes a little dog run away from a big dog. Be that as it may, every observer has it; and so the man’s conclusion seems to him strange, doubtful: he will reconsider it.
Moreover, if he be an experienced man, he is well aware that first guesses, first hypotheses, are not always the right ones: and if he be a modest man, he will consider the fact that many thousands of thoughtful men in all ages, and many thousands still, would say, that the glen can only be a few thousand, possibly a few hundred, years old. And he will feel bound to consider their opinion; as far as it is, like his own, drawn from facts, but no further.
So he casts about for all other methods by which the glen may have been produced, to see if any one of them will account for it in a shorter time.
1. Was it made by an earthquake? No; for the strata on both sides are identical, at the same level, and in the same plane.
2. Or by a mighty current? If so, the flood must have run in at the upper end before it ran out at the lower. But nothing has run in at the upper end. All round above are the undisturbed gravel-beds of the horizontal moor, without channel or depression.
3. Or by water draining off a vast flat as it was upheaved out of the sea? That is a likely guess. The valley at its upper end spreads out like the fingers of a hand, as the gullies in tide-muds do.
But that hypothesis will not stand. There is no vast unbroken flat behind the glen. Right and left of it are other similar glens, parted from it by long narrow ridges: these also must be explained on the same hypothesis; but they can not. For there could not have been surface-drainage to make them all, or a tenth of them. There are no other possible hypotheses; and so he must fall back on the original theory—the rain, the springs, the brook; they have done it all, even as they are doing it this day.
But is not that still a hasty assumption? May not their denuding power have been far greater in old times than now?
Why should it? Because there was more rain then than now? That he must put out of court; there is no evidence of it whatsoever.
Because the land was more friable originally? Well, there is a great deal to be said for that. The experience of every countryman tells him that bare or fallow land is more easily washed away than land under vegetation. And no doubt, when these gravels and sands rose from the sea, they were barren for hundreds of years. He has some measure of the time required, but he can tell roughly how long it takes for sands and shingles left by the sea to become covered by vegetation. But he must allow that the friability of the land must have been originally much greater than now, for hundreds of years.
But again, does that fact really cut off any great space of time from his hundreds of thousands of years? For when the land first rose from the sea, that glen was not there. Some slight bay or bend in the shore determined its site. That stream was not there. It was split up into a million little springs, oozing side by side from the shore, and having each a very minute denuding power, which kept continually increasing by combination as the glen ate its way inwards, and the rainfall drained by all these little springs was collected into the one central stream. So that when the ground being bare was most liable to be denuded, the water was least able to do it; and as the denuding power of the water increased, the land, being covered with vegetation, became more and more able to resist it.
So the two disturbing elements in the calculation may be fairly set off against each other, as making a difference of only a few thousands or tens of thousands of years either way; and the age of the glen may fairly be, if not a million years, yet such a length of years as mankind still speak of with bated breath, as if forsooth it would do them some harm.
I trust that every scientific man will agree with me, that the imaginary ’squire or ploughman would have been conducting his investigation strictly according to the laws of the Baconian philosophy. You will remark, meanwhile, that he has not used a single scientific term, or referred to a single scientific investigation; and has observed nothing and thought nothing, which might not have been observed and thought by any one who chose to use his common sense, and not to be afraid.
But because he has come round, after all this further investigation, to something very like his first conclusion, was all that further investigation useless? No—a thousand times, no. It is this very verification of hypotheses which makes the sound ones safe, and destroys the unsound. It is this struggle with all sorts of superstitions which makes science strong and sure, and her march irresistible, winning ground slowly, but never receding from it. It is this buffeting of adversity which compels her not to rest dangerously upon the shallow sand of first guesses, and single observations; but to strike her roots down, deep, wide, and interlaced, into the solid ground of actual facts.
It is very necessary to insist on this point. For there have been men in all past ages—I do not say whether there are any such now, but I am inclined to think there will be hereafter,—men who have tried to represent scientific method as something difficult, mysterious, peculiar, unique, not to be attained by the unscientific mass; and this not for the purpose of exalting science, but rather of discrediting her. For as long as the masses, educated or uneducated, are ignorant of what scientific method is, they will look on scientific men, as the middle age looked on necromancers, as a privileged, but awful and uncanny caste, possessed of mighty secrets; who may do them great good, but also may do them great harm. Which belief on the part of the masses will enable these persons to install themselves as the critics of science, though not scientific men themselves: and—as Shakspere has it—to talk of Robin Hood, though they never shot in his bow. Thus they become mediators to the masses between the scientific and the unscientific worlds. They tell them, You are not to trust the conclusions of men of science at first hand. You are not fit judges of their facts or of their methods. It is we who will, by a cautious electicism, choose out for you such of their conclusions as are safe for you; and them we will advise you to believe. To the scientific man, on the other hand, as often as anything is discovered unpleasing to them, they will say, imperiously and ex cathedrâ, Your new theory contradicts the established facts of science. For they will know well that whatever the men of science think of their assertion, the masses will believe it; totally unaware that the speakers are by their very terms showing their ignorance of science; and that what they call established facts scientific men call merely provisional conclusions, which they would throw away to-morrow without a pang were the known facts explained better by a fresh theory, or did fresh facts require one.
This has happened too often. It is in the interest of superstition that it should happen again; and the best way to prevent it surely is to tell the masses, Scientific method is no peculiar mystery, requiring a peculiar initiation. It is simply common sense, combined with uncommon courage, which includes uncommon honesty and uncommon patience; and if you will be brave, honest, patient, rational, you will need no mystagogues to tell you what in science to believe and what not to believe; for you will be just as good judges of scientific facts and theories as those who assume the right of guiding your convictions. You are men and women: and more than that you need not be.
[THE SORROW OF THE SEA.]
By ALEXANDER ANDERSON.
A day of fading light upon the sea;
Of sea-birds winging to their rocky caves;
And ever with its monotone to me,
The sorrow of the waves.
They leap and lash among the rocks and sands,
White lipp’d, as with a guilty secret toss’d,
For ever feeling with their foamy hands
For something they have lost.
Far out, and swaying in a sweet unrest,
A boat or two against the light is seen,
Dipping their sides within the liquid breast
Of waters dark and green.
And farther still, where sea and sky have kiss’d,
There falls, as if from heaven’s own threshold, light
Upon faint hills that, half enswathed in mist,
Wait for the coming night.
But still, though all this life and motion meet,
My thoughts are wingless and lie dead in me,
Or dimly stir to answer at my feet
The sorrow of the sea.
[ANECDOTES OF FASHION.]
By I. D’ISRAELI.
The origin of many fashions was in the endeavor to conceal some deformity of the inventor; hence the cushions, ruffs, hoops, and other monstrous devices. If a reigning beauty chanced to have an unequal hip, those who had very handsome hips would load them with that false rump which the other was compelled by the unkindness of nature to substitute. Patches were invented in England in the reign of Edward VI by a foreign lady, who in this manner ingeniously covered a wen on her neck. Full-bottomed wigs were invented by a French barber, one Duviller, whose name they perpetuated, for the purpose of concealing an elevation in the shoulder of the Dauphin. Charles VII of France introduced long coats to hide his ill-made legs. Shoes with very long points, full two feet in length, were invented by Henry Plantagenet, Duke of Anjou, to conceal a large excrescence on one of his feet. When Francis I was obliged to wear his hair short, owing to a wound he received in the head, it became a prevailing fashion at court. Others, on the contrary, adapted fashions to set off their peculiar beauties; as Isabella of Bavaria, remarkable for her gallantry, and the fairness of her complexion, introduced the fashion of leaving the shoulders and part of the neck uncovered.
Fashions have frequently originated from circumstances as silly as the following one. Isabella, daughter of Philip II, and wife of the Archduke Albert, vowed not to change her linen till Ostend was taken; this siege, unluckily for her comfort, lasted three years; and the supposed color of the archduchess’s linen gave rise to a fashionable color, hence called l’Isabeau, or the Isabella; a kind of whitish-yellow-dingy. Sometimes they originate in some temporary event: as after the battle of Steenkirk, where the allies wore large cravats, by which the French frequently seized hold of them, a circumstance perpetuated on the medals of Louis XIV, cravats were called Steenkirks; and after the battle of Ramillies, wigs received that denomination.
The hair has in all ages been an endless topic for the declamation of the moralist, and the favorite object of fashion. If the beau monde wore their hair luxuriant, or their wig enormous, the preachers, as in Charles the Second’s reign, instantly were seen in the pulpit with their hair cut shorter, and their sermon longer, in consequence; respect was, however, paid by the world to the size of the wig, in spite of the hair-cutter in the pulpit. Our judges, and until lately our physicians, well knew its magical effect. In the reign of Charles II the hair-dress of the ladies was very elaborate; it was not only curled and frizzled with the nicest art, but set off with certain artificial curls, then too emphatically known by the pathetic terms of heart-breakers and love-locks. So late as William and Mary, lads, and even children, wore wigs; and if they had not wigs, they curled their hair to resemble this fashionable ornament. Women then were the hair-dressers.
The courts in all ages and in every country are the modelers of fashions, so that all the ridicule, of which these are so susceptible, must fall on them, and not upon their servile imitators the citizens. This complaint is made even so far back as in 1586, by Jean des Caures, an old French moralist, who, in declaiming against the fashions of his day, notices one, of the ladies carrying mirrors fixed to their waists, which seemed to employ their eyes in perpetual activity. From this mode will result, according to honest Des Caures, their eternal damnation. “Alas!” he exclaims, “in what age do we live: to see such depravity which we see, that induces them even to bring into church these scandalous mirrors hanging about their waists! Let all histories divine, human, and profane be consulted; never will it be found that these objects of vanity were ever thus brought into public by the most meretricious of the sex. It is true, at present none but the ladies of the court venture to wear them; but long it will not be before every citizen’s daughter, and every female servant, will wear them!” Such in all times has been the rise and decline of fashion; and the absurd mimicry of the citizens, even of the lowest classes, to their very ruin, in straining to rival the newest fashion, has mortified and galled the courtier.
[LANGUAGE IN ANIMALS.]
By RICHARD BUDD PAINTER.
No one who has clearly observed animals, birds, bees, and other creatures, can possibly deny their possession of a faculty of communicating ideas to one another.
Admitting this fully, my object therefore will be, while elicitating some of the facts concerning animal language, to maintain the consistency of my argument in regard to man, as contrasted with animals, by showing that such animal language is not of an intellectual kind, but only such as is necessary for the conduct, and use, of the highest phases of the animal “instinctive mind,” according to its ordained capacity in each species.
In my opinion, every kind of animal possesses a different sort of language; and which is peculiar to its genus; just as in the case of different races of man, a language which though capable of interpretation by a member of the group which speaks it, can not be generally understood by other races in minute detail; although among both men and animals there are a few cries, etc., that can be generally understood; as those of alarm communicated by screams, stamping of the ground, etc. But we must note that whatever may be the kind and extent of language in animals, it is in them always expressive only of animal sensations and sense impressions and reasonings.
Particular animals, birds, insects, etc., bark, gibber, bray, sing, crow, grunt, rub their wing-cases (crickets), etc., showing that each has a different language, and different modes of expressing emotion: showing, too, by these differences that their sorts of minds must vary much more from one another, than do the minds of men in their different human varieties; for men do not employ such immensely different modes of conveying their ideas and feelings by sounds as is the case in animals with their lowing, snorting, barking, etc.
The making of these very different sounds by different animals is therefore to me the clearest possible proof that different animals possess different sorts of mind; yet of course there is some general resemblance, as is the case in so many of God’s works made diversely in specific instances, yet on the same general plan in the main. I said just now that, while fully admitting the possession of a kind of language by animals, I should maintain strictly that it is not of an intellectual character, and I may be asked what I mean by this assertion.
My answer is that I believe the language of the animal is limited chiefly to the expression of animal needs; and animal sensations; and the conveyance of such requirements, and feelings to their kind; although it can doubtless be used also for communicating in some slight degree such ideas concerning animal experiences and feelings as their feeble reasoning powers enable them to arrive at; such as the devices for protection, and escape from danger; and the manifestation and interpretation of the sort of questionings, and answerings which occur when two dogs meet, as shown by the wagging of tails, and pleased looks, or the reverse; and which seem to indicate as if the dogs could by gesture, etc., ask, and reply to one another, whether it is to be peace, or war.
My belief is that the mind of the mere animal is in no ease able to reach beyond the limit of simple ministration to the animal needs, and animal feelings, and instincts of the creature according to its kind; and that it can never form pure intellectual ideas, such as those of intellectual love; intellectual hatred; intellectual ideas as to time; space; God, etc. Nor can it form the mental abstractions—words—and by the use of these arrive at the intellectual operation of mind which their employment renders possible.