Major Prophets of To-Day

by Edwin E. Slosson

His language was particularly fluent and forcible when he came to discuss the question of teaching languages. The chief point in his indictment of the German Gymnasium, or secondary school, is the excessive time and excessive honor given to linguistics. He regards the new scientific school (Realschule) as almost as bad as the classical Gymnasium in this respect, for modern languages are there taught in much the same way as the ancient. The absorption of the student's attention during the impressionable years of his youth in the idiosyncrasies of German grammar, or the monstrosities of English spelling, does not cultivate, but actually impairs, the power of logical and original thinking. Ostwald ascribes Nietzsche's perverted ideas, his misconception of the struggle for existence and his hatred of the common people, to his training in classical philology. He brings forward as a cause of the failure of Austria-Hungary to produce its proportional share of great men, the linguistic struggle which absorbs the energy of its people. The barrier of local language is one of the causes of international friction and lost motion which grieves the mind of a physicist. As a means of overcoming this friction—a linguistic lubricating oil, as it were—he favors the formation of an international auxiliary language, especially for scientific and commercial purposes.[12] I suppose one reason why he thinks it possible to construct an artificial world language is because he has seen it done. The rapid expansion of the science of organic chemistry within the present generation has necessitated the invention, as the need for them arose, of more new words than Shakespeare's vocabulary contained. Some of these are cumbrous, it is true, rather formulas than words, but remarkable for their succinct significance and are largely common to all languages. Ostwald has recently constructed a complete new nomenclature of chemistry in Ido and proposes soon to use it for all the abstracts in his Zeitschrift für physikalische Chemie, so that the student, after a few hours spent in learning Ido, will have free access to all the literature of this science. Professor Ostwald assured me that he had tried putting his philosophy into the new language and found it of great benefit in giving clarity and definiteness to his thought. The adoption of an international language he regards as an important part of the peace movement in which he is now actively engaged. I asked him if he expected that arbitration treaties would put an end to war, and he explained that they would act like a block signal system on a railroad, not always preventing the disaster of war, but lessening the chances of it.

Ido is a simplified form of Esperanto, originating in the refusal of Dr. Zamenhof to allow any reforms in the language he had invented. It drops the accented letters and accusative form of Esperanto and utilizes a larger proportion of romance roots common to all European languages. The official organs are Progreso (Paris: 3 Rue le Gof) and The International Language (London: 32 Cleveland Square). Ostwald's new chemical nomenclature began in the May, 1910, number of Progreso. The volume by Ostwald, Jespersen, and three other professors entitled "International Language and Science" (London: Constable, 1910), contains an interesting test of the capabilities of the new language, the translation into Ido and back again into English by another person of a page of James's psychology with almost no loss in the process. A page of "Das Monistische Jahrhundert" appears each week in Ido.

In order to give effect to practical measures for breaking down the barriers between nations, he has established "An International Institute for the Organization of Intellectual Labor" known as Die Brücke, "The Bridge", or, as he would prefer to put it in Ido, La Ponto. This aims to serve the purpose of a world clearing house of information and a channel of intercourse for all forms of culture. A plan for a uniform system of page sizes for books and periodicals, "the hypotenuse oblong", has been here brought forward and is discussed in Printing Art, April and May, 1911, July, 1912.

So Ostwald, having won the Nobel chemistry prize in 1909, is in a fair way to become in time eligible for the Nobel peace prize. It is in fact characteristic of the man that, having achieved success in one field of human endeavor, he should turn his attention to another. It is part of his theory of the art of life. I was curious to know why he had left Leipzig and chemistry for Gross-Bothen and philosophy, had abandoned one of the greatest of universities and the most popular of the sciences for the Saxon village and a field of thought reputed as unproductive. He explained to me that in early years he had a leaning toward philosophy, but in those days the subject was looked upon with disfavor. Now things have changed. People realize that it is necessary to take a wide as well as a close view. Civilization advances by alternating periods of specialization and generalization. We are now entering upon the second phase.

Then, too, he had come to the conclusion from his study of great scientists that the men who had accomplished most through the prolongation of their productive period had done so by changing their occupation two or three times in the course of their lifetime; for example, Helmholtz, who devoted the first half of his adult life to physiology and medicine and the last to physics, being equally eminent in each; and Humboldt, who kept up his work to the close of his ninety years by shifting from one field of science to another. Having come to this conclusion, Ostwald, as an experimental scientist, was obliged to try it upon himself. The success of the experiment indicates that rotation of crops is a good plan in menticulture as well as agriculture.

He carries out the same principle in his daily life. When tired with philosophizing, he turns to painting. This he finds relieves the mind better than anything else, for it sends the blood to another side of the brain, while if he tries to secure rest by lying down, the brain goes on working in the same old lines. This absorption in artistic effort he has used in his Harvard lecture on "Individuality and Immortality", when he is arguing that the highest happiness is found rather in the obliteration of individuality than its persistence. This conclusion is familiar to us as that of the mystics, but Ostwald reaches it characteristically by another way, the second law of energetics. After speaking of the tendency of liquids and of heat toward diffusion and consequent loss of identity, he applies the principle to society and psychology. The passage is worth quoting because it is practically a direct contradiction of Spencer's fundamental theory that evolution is a progress from homogeneity to heterogeneity, both for matter and for energy. The difference results, I think, chiefly from the fact that Spencer's attention was fixed upon the first law, that of the conservation of energy, for the importance of the second law, that of the dissipation of energy, was not recognized till long afterward.[13] The reader will notice that the second law is decidedly democratic in its implications.

It is a strange thing indeed that by merely being associated with another thing of the same kind identity is lost. And still more strange is the fact that every being of this kind seems driven by an irresistible impulse to seek every occasion for losing its identity. Every known physical fact leads to the conclusion that diffusion, or a homogeneous distribution, of energy is the general aim of all happenings. No change whatever seems to have occurred, and probably none ever will occur, resulting in a concentration greater than the corresponding dissipation of energy. A partial concentration may be brought about in a system, but only at the expense of a greater dissipation, and the sum total is always an increase in dissipation.

While we are as sure as science can make us about the general validity of this law as applied to the physical world, its application to human development may be doubted. It seems to me to hold good in this case also, if it is applied with proper caution. The difficulty lies in the circumstance that we have no exact objective means of measuring homogeneity and heterogeneity in human affairs, and we can therefore not study any given system closely enough to draw a quantitative conclusion. It seems pretty certain that increase of culture tends to diminish the differences between men. It equalizes not only the general standard of living, but attenuates also even the natural differences of sex and age. From this point of view I should look upon the accumulation of enormous wealth in the hands of a single man as indicating an imperfect state of culture.

The property which has been described as an irresistible tendency toward diffusion may also be observed in certain cases in man. In conscious beings such natural tendencies are accompanied by a certain feeling which we call will, and we are happy when we are allowed to act according to these tendencies or according to our will. Now, if we recall the happiest moments of our lives, they will be found in every case to be connected with a curious loss of personality. In the happiness of love this fact will be at once discovered. And if you are enjoying intensely a work of art, a symphony of Beethoven's, for example, you find yourself relieved of the burden of personality and carried away by the stream of music as a drop is carried by a wave. The same feeling comes with the grand impressions nature gives us. Even when I am sitting quietly sketching in the open there comes to me in a happy moment a sweet feeling of being united with the nature about me, which is distinctly characterized by complete forgetfulness of my poor self. We may conclude from this that individuality means limitations and unhappiness, or is at least closely connected with them.

Professor Ostwald showed me the studio which now takes the place of the laboratory. It is still part laboratory, for he is experimenting in pigments and has invented new forms of crayons or pastels and methods of fixation. In painting, as in everything else, he works with rapidity and effectiveness. Three days at Niagara Falls gave him two dozen or more pictures. He has a good eye for picturesqueness and uses vivid and varied coloration. He utilized his time at the University of California to get some fine views of Berkeley and Professor Loeb's seaside laboratory. His stay at Harvard as exchange professor in 1905 gave him many scenes from Marblehead and Cambridge, among them a striking picture of the Harvard stadium seen across the river flats and looking as imposing as the Coliseum. Photography he has practiced from boyhood. It was by this and the manufacture of fireworks in his mother's kitchen that he took his first steps in chemistry. He has always been fond of music, both as listener and performer, playing the violin well, and, says his conscientious biographer, the bassoon very badly. We are also told that in his student days he composed a symphony, wrote much poetry, and applied himself diligently to the study of the laws of motion by experimenting for hours on the impact of elastic ivory balls upon a plane green surface.

Walking, however, has ever been his chief recreation, if we can call that a recreation which is the means of his most productive thought. After lunch he showed me about his estate, a wooded upland overlooking the village houses, clustered about kirk and Gasthaus, and, beyond, the level, orderly Saxon landscape, with its leisurely windmills. The winding walks appear to be sufficiently long to enable him to evolve undisturbed the most complicated German sentence. The stranger can find his way to Landhaus Energie by inquiring of a villager for "the house with the big post box", for when Ostwald took up his residence in Gross-Bothen, this provision had to be made for the enormous mail coming to him from all parts of the world.

One can generally tell in Germany the date of erection or occupancy of a country house by whether it is called a "Villa" or a "Landhaus." The Germanic movement is bent upon expelling all the foreigners from the language. So now we see Fahrkarte in place of Billet, formerly used; Fern-sprecher in place of Telefon; Zweikampf in place of Duell; and Einheitslehre in place of Monismus. The adoption of an international auxiliary language would, Professor Ostwald explained to me, facilitate this movement, for it would leave each local language to develop in its own way, free from the penalty of isolation.