It is impossible to hope that the United States can be an exception to the social law thus established. However pure the motive that may lie at the bottom of a war of aggression, it can not annul the law. The shedding of blood and the seizure of territory produce a callousness of feeling and a perverted view of the rights of others that are certain to turn the hands striking a foreign foe to the work of domestic strife. Already we have seen with what bitterness such men as Prof. Charles Eliot Norton and Mr. Edward Atkinson have been assailed. We have seen, too, how attempts have been made to discredit the principles of the Declaration of Independence, and to show that the Constitution must not be permitted to stand in the way of what has been politely called the fulfillment of the destiny of the United States. We have seen, finally, how proposals for the disfranchisement of American citizens have been listened to in all parts of the country with a toleration that must cause the old abolitionists to turn in their graves. But the spirit thus manifested has not, we may be sure, failed to contribute to the perpetration of the outrages that have shocked every right-minded observer of current events. It is not a difference of kind but only one of degree that separates the slaughter of Spaniards in Cuba and Tagals in Luzon from the slaughter of negroes in the South and the explosion of dynamite under street cars in the North. The inhuman instincts that impel to the one impel to the other.
Fragments of Science.
Zola’s Anthropological Traits.—Mr. Arthur MacDonald has published, originally in the Open Court, a minute anthropological study of the personality of Émile Zola. Passing all the physical points noted, we select a few only of the most peculiar mental traits mentioned by the author. Fear is spoken of as Zola’s principal emotion, connected in him with the instinct of self-preservation. He is not much afraid of the bicycle, but shrinks from a ride through a forest at night. He has no fear of being buried alive, yet sometimes when in a tunnel on a railroad train he has been beset with the idea of the two ends of the tunnel falling in and burying him. Some morbid ideas have developed in him, but they do not cause him pain when not satisfied. He lets them run into their “manias,” and is then contented. The idea of doubt is one. He is always in fear of not being able to do his daily task, or of being incapable of completing a book. He never rereads his novels, for fear of making bad discoveries. He has an arithmetical mania, and when in the street he counts the gas jets, the number of doors, and especially the number of hacks. In his home he counts the steps of the staircases, the different things on his bureau. He must touch the same pieces of furniture a certain number of times before he goes to sleep. Some numbers have a bad influence for him, and there are good numbers. In the night he opens his eyes seven times, to prove that he is not going to die. He is regarded by the author as a neuropath, or a man whose nervous system is painful but does not seem to affect the soundness of his mind. “In brief, the qualities of Zola are fineness and exactitude of perception, clearness of conception, power of attention, sureness in judgment, sense of order, power of co-ordination, extraordinary tenacity of effort, and, above all, a great practical utilitarian sense.”
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The Simplon Tunnel.—The following facts are taken from a brief account of this great engineering feat in the Engineering Magazine: There is at present no direct rail connection between western Switzerland and Italy, and to reach Milan it has been necessary to go around to Lucerne and so on through by the St. Gothard route. The distance by rail from Milan to Calais by the Mont Cenis is 665 miles, and by the St. Gothard 680 miles. The distance by way of the Simplon Tunnel will be only 585 miles. The Jura-Simplon Railway from Geneva around the lake and up the Rhone Valley ascends to Brieg at an altitude of about 2,300 feet, while on the Italian side the railway from Milan stops at Domodossola, at an altitude of 900 feet. Between the two, which are 41 miles apart and over an elevation of 6,590 feet, lies the famous Simplon Pass. Connection is now made by diligence, the trip occupying a whole day. The plan of the new railway includes the prolongation of the present line on the Italian side to Iselle, at an altitude of about 2,100 feet, where the Italian entrance to the tunnel was begun in August, 1898. On the Swiss side the entrance is at Brieg, and the tunnel will connect these two towns, being 12.26 miles long. This is nearly three miles longer than the St. Gothard, but the altitude is only 2,300 feet above the sea, instead of 3,800 feet, as at the St. Gothard. The tunnel is to be straight laterally, but higher in the middle than at either end, the grade being 1 in 143 on the Italian and 1 in 500 on the Swiss side. The principal difference between the Simplon Tunnel and those previously pierced through the Alps is that, instead of one single tunnel, two separate tunnels, fifty-five feet apart, are to be constructed, connected by lateral passageways every 650 feet. At first but one of these is to be completed to the full dimensions, the other being carried through at only about a quarter of the ultimate cross-section, and not enlarged and put into use until the traffic demands it. Both tunnels are now being bored by the use of the Brandt hydraulic rotary drills, water being supplied at a pressure of 70 to 100 atmospheres. The borings are through gneiss, limestone, and slate. Holes two inches and three quarters in diameter and four or five feet deep are bored and the rock dislodged by means of dynamite. A narrow-gauge railway is used to remove the débris. It is expected that the tunnel will be completed in five years and a half. At the close of 1898, 300 feet had been penetrated on the south side and 1,300 on the north. The estimated cost of the complete double-track tunnels is 69,000,000 francs. This does not include the construction of the permanent way. The Mont Cenis Tunnel cost 75,000,000 francs, and the St. Gothard 59,750,000 francs. The work is practically controlled by the Jura-Simplon Railway.
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Grant Allen.—The death of our contributor, Mr. Grant Allen, was mentioned in the last number of the Popular Science Monthly. Mr. Allen was born in February, 1848, the son of the Rev. J. A. Allen, of Wolfe Island, Canada. He attended schools in the United States, in France, and in Birmingham, England, and entered Merton College, Oxford, whence he took his degree of B. A. in 1870. He afterward spent a few years in Jamaica as principal of a college for the higher education of the negro, which had only a brief career. He returned to England and settled down in London for literary work, writing rather on social and scientific than political subjects, for various journals. While he loved and appreciated scientific truth, he rather regarded his subject from the æsthetic side, and this gave a peculiar charm to his articles. He published books on Physiological Æsthetics and The Color Sense, which did not prove profitable. Finding it hard to gain a livelihood from his scientific work, he turned to fiction, and soon found, as the London Times has it, “that his worst fiction was more profitable than his best science.” His love of science, however, “approached enthusiasm,” and he contributed frequent popular scientific articles to the magazines, so that “for years past hardly one of those publications has been reckoned complete” without contribution of this character from him. He removed from London to Dorking, and afterward went to southern France and Italy for his health. Then, having so far recovered that he could spend his winters in England, he made himself a home at Hindhead, Surrey. Here he died, October 25th, after several weeks’ suffering from a painful internal malady. Among his scientific works, his books on Physiological Æsthetics, The Color Sense, and the Evolution of the Idea of God deserve special mention.
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