Part 16

What we may well consider seriously is whether our modern modes of life enable us to do that justice to children which evolutionary teaching requires. Can true health of body and mind be conciliated with social ambition or with commercial ambition? Are we not hampered at every turn by false schemes of education, the object of which is to turn out certain conventional products? How many of us can rise up in effective rebellion against the very fashions that in our hearts we most condemn? Before there can be anything like a perfect education for the young there must be a much more fully developed sense of duty than we see as yet in the older generation. The doctrine of evolution is putting the key to a true system into our hands; but to use that key aright requires courage and high purpose--qualities that are not of everyday occurrence. Still, it is matter of congratulation that the truth is not far from us. It is well established in our theories, and one of these days we may hope it will gain a wide and secure footing in our practice.

_DAVID AMES WELLS._

In the death of David A. Wells, which occurred at his home in Norwich, Connecticut, on the 5th of November, 1898, America has lost one of her ablest and most productive men of letters and science a distinguished representative. Out of a life of seventy years it may fairly be said that Mr. Wells gave fifty of them to intellectual pursuits, which were mainly devoted to the advance of science and its application to practical affairs. After passing the period of early study, and particularly since he became interested in economic questions, much of his work was in the line of original investigation, the results of which have from time to time been given to the public either through his books or in the magazines. Another and more conspicuous feature of his career, the one perhaps that made him best known at home and first gave him reputation abroad, was the valuable service that he rendered the country at large in straightening out the financial tangle the Government had got itself into during and after the civil war. In this undertaking his great store of learning, rare practical sagacity, and unwavering confidence in the final result, carried him through to a brilliant success, earning for him in high quarters the most flattering testimonials of admiration and respect.

Looked at in the light of what he actually achieved, Mr. Wells's preparation for his life work seems to have been almost an ideal one. Gifted with a strong love of Nature and having a decidedly practical turn of mind, he early showed a fondness for the study of science. This led him, soon after graduating from Williams College in 1847, to enter the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard University. Here he completed the course with the first class that was graduated by that institution in 1852. While studying in the scientific school young Wells became the special pupil of Agassiz, and, as the sequel shows, caught the enthusiasm with which that great master was wont to inspire the young men who were fortunate enough to come within the range of his influence. During this period Mr. Wells, in association with Mr. George Bliss, began the compilation and publication of the Annual of Scientific Discovery, which he continued for some sixteen years. That he was a clever student with quite exceptional endowments is seen in the circumstance that immediately after graduation he was appointed assistant professor in the scientific school and lecturer on physics and chemistry in Groton Academy, Massachusetts. He also, between 1857 and 1863, prepared a series of scientific school books embracing the subjects of physics, chemistry, and geology, and a volume on the Science of Common Things, all of which attained a wide circulation.

Thus for a period of nearly fifteen years Mr. Wells had devoted himself assiduously to the cultivation of the physical sciences. Beginning with the practical operations of the laboratory, where the value of experiment and observation is made apparent, his work was continued in the strengthening and developing experiences of the teacher, and thence led up to that wider knowledge and that clearness of exposition which a bright mind would acquire in the preparation of a number of successful scientific class books. It may be presumed that by this time he was thoroughly acquainted with scientific method in its applications to the investigation and explanation of physical phenomena. With the results this had yielded in building up the great body of verified knowledge composing the several sciences he must also have been familiar. Mentally alert and with sharpened powers of observation, he was able to seize and classify the facts bearing upon the problem in hand, and subject them to systematic processes of scientific reasoning.

Such, in brief, was the training and such the equipment brought by Mr. Wells to the study of economic questions when he first began to write upon them in 1864. A better preparation for the work to which he was to give the next thirty years of his life can scarcely be imagined. While it is quite true that in entering this new field he was to encounter a class of facts and variety of phenomena that were of a very different order from those with which he had previously been dealing, their apparently haphazard character did not deceive him. Well versed in the practice of tracing effects to causes, gifted with remarkable powers of insight, and thoroughly believing that the methods of science would prove as available in the study of economics as in other fields, he began his investigations without misgiving, patiently accumulated and studied the facts, and when conclusions were arrived at, no matter how contrary they might be to current teaching, fearlessly announced and defended them. Though half his life a firm believer in the doctrine of protection, when Mr. Wells went to Europe for the Government in 1867 to investigate the subject of tariff taxation, high and low tariff countries alike were visited, with the determination to leave nothing undone that would aid to a better understanding of the question. All the varied aspects of the problem were carefully studied in connection with the principal industries of the respective countries, and, finding reason in the facts thus obtained to revise his opinions, he came home a convert to free trade. For an account of what he had observed during the course of his investigations, and of the conclusions based thereon, the reader is referred to the fourth volume of his reports as commissioner of internal revenue, published in 1869. His book on Recent Economic Changes, and the papers on The Principles of Taxation, that have appeared in this magazine during the last two years, are records of equally painstaking research. Moreover, they are both excellent examples of what a strict adherence to scientific method has done and may yet be expected to do toward clearing up the knotty problems in economics that are now engaging public attention.

United with his great learning, and a rare power of generalization, Mr. Wells possessed in full measure that intellectual honesty which is the indispensable characteristic of the true man of science. This enabled him to follow without doubt or hesitation wherever the facts might lead; and with his clear perception of their real import, joined to his habit of independent thought, traits that are displayed throughout all his more formal writings, they are what in our opinion constitute his title to distinction. They give to his teachings, which have already done more than any other agency that we know toward placing the subject of political economy on a sound scientific basis, a high and enduring character.

_A BORROWED FOUNDATION._

"The central idea of Professor Giddings's Principles of Sociology, a work that has the honor of being the first independent attempt in English to treat of sociology as such, is that we must postulate on the part of human beings what he calls a _consciousness of kind_. Critics of his volume have naturally told him that this is essentially a philosophical idea, found in Hegel and in British ethical writers of the eighteenth century."

We quote the above from an article by Professor Caldwell, entitled Philosophy and the Newer Sociology, in the October Contemporary. We are not prepared to dispute Professor Caldwell's statement that the idea of the "consciousness of kind" may be found in the writers to whom he refers; but it would have been very much to the point if he had mentioned that it is to be found most clearly enunciated in Mr. Herbert Spencer's Principles of Sociology. In an article contributed to this magazine in December, 1896, Mr. Spencer took occasion to point out that what Professor Giddings seemed to regard as an _aperçu_ peculiar to himself had been distinctly formulated years before in his own writings. In proof of this he quoted the following passages:

"Sociality having thus commenced, and survival of the fittest tending ever to maintain and increase it, it will be further strengthened by the inherited effects of habit. _The perception of kindred beings, perpetually seen, heard, and smelt, will come to form a predominant part of consciousness-_-so predominant that absence of it will inevitably cause discomfort." "Among creatures led step by step into gregariousness, there will little by little be established a pleasure in being together--a pleasure in the consciousness of one another's presence--a pleasure simpler than, and quite distinct from, those higher ones which it makes possible."

The fact is that there is much more in Spencer than most recent writers have ever explored; and the newer sociologists would do well, before putting forward claims to originality, to make sure that they have not been anticipated by the veteran philosopher.

Scientific Literature.

SPECIAL BOOKS.

In _The Play of Animals_[59] we are offered a book upon an essentially new topic; for, although much has been written concerning the habits and intelligence of animals, no special consideration has been given to their play or its psychic significance. The survey of this virgin territory seems to the critical reader to have disclosed such limitless area to Professor Groos that he fails to indicate its legitimate boundaries. He confesses himself overcome by a sense of its vastness, stating that the "versatility needed for a thorough investigation is so comprehensive that it is unattainable by an ordinary mortal."

Play, he finds, is not "an aimless activity carried on for its own sake"; neither is it the product of surplus physical energy, as Mr. Spencer defines it, for in youth there is playfulness without this condition. Instincts useful in preserving the species appear before they are seriously needed, and are utilized in play, which serves as preparation for the tasks of life. "Animals do not play because they are young, but have a period of youth in order to play."

The special ends accomplished by play are control of the body, command of the means of locomotion, agility in pursuit of prey and in escaping danger, and prowess in fighting. The games pursued in attaining these ends are classified in nine groups, beginning with those of experimentation and ending with those referred to curiosity. They include plays of movement, hunting, fighting, love, construction, nursing, and imitation. For all of these Professor Groos finds but one instinct of play responsible, supplemented by the instinct of imitation. He enters into an elaborate discussion of instinct, giving an outline of Weismann's theory of heredity and the views of various writers. He adopts Herbert Spencer's definition of instinct as a complex reflex act, referring its origin to the operation of natural selection, acknowledging the process to be beyond our grasp. In seeking to explain bird song and the love play of animals, the theory of sexual selection is not accepted by him without qualification; a modification of the Darwinian principle is suggested in which the female exerts an unconscious choice. The psychic characteristics of play are the pleasure following satisfaction of instinct, energetic action and joy in the acquirement of power. The animal at first masters its own bodily movements, then seeks the conquest of other animals and inanimate objects. When a certain facility in play has been gained a higher intellectual stage is entered upon, that of make-believe, or playing a part. This state of conscious self-illusion is reached by many of the higher animals. Psychically, it indicates a divided consciousness, and occupies a place between the ordinary state and the abnormal ones of hypnosis and hysteria. To this condition Professor Groos ascribes the genesis of artistic production, an hypothesis that he has elaborated more fully in _Einleitung in die Aesthetik_.

The experimental plays of animals, divided into those of courtship, imitation, and construction, correspond to the principles of self exhibition, imitation, and decoration, which are claimed to be the motives of human art. The acquirement of power through play develops a feeling of freedom, and this the artist likewise seeks to realize in the world of ideals.

Artists will not probably acknowledge that "life is earnest, art is playful," nor moralists agree that "man is only human when he plays, for there is no real freedom in the sphere of experience," yet both may find food for thought in Professor Groos's analysis of play.

FOOTNOTE

[59] The Play of Animals. By Karl Groos. Translated by Elizabeth L. Baldwin. New York: D. Appleton and Company. Pp. 341. Price, $1.75.

* * * * *

In the spasm of unreasoning hostility to Spain which has come over the people of the United States, succeeding a period of effusive admiration, the public are apt to forget that that nation has done anything creditable for the promotion of civilization. Yet, leaving out other fields of culture for the present, it has produced two painters who rank among the great masters, besides numerous secondary artists, rivals of any of that grade in the world, and a voluminous literature which George Ticknor thought it worth while to make the study of his life, and which inspired the pens of Irving, Longfellow and Lockhart. One of the works of this literature ranks among the world's greatest classics, and has been, perhaps, after the Bible and Shakespeare more universally read than any other book; and numerous other works--chiefly romances--have furnished patterns or themes for the poets, novelists, and dramatists of other nations. Mr. _Fitz Maurice Kelly's_ excellent and convenient _History of Spanish Literature_[60] therefore comes in good time to refresh our memories concerning these facts. One does not have to go very far in the history to find that of the great Latin writers of the age of the Cæsars, the two Senecas, Lucan the poet of Pharsalia, Martial the epigrammatist, and Quintilian the rhetorician--still an authority--and many minor writers, "were Spaniards as well as Romans." It also appears that of what Gibbon declared to have been the happiest epoch of man's history--from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus, seventy of the eighty years, if we take the liberty, as Mr. Kelly does, of counting Marcus Aurelius as a Cordovan, were passed beneath the scepter of the Spanish Cæsars. Prudentius, a distinguished Latin Christian writer of a succeeding age, was also a Spaniard. Although there were "archaic" works of _trovadors_ before that time, traditionally preserved by _juglars_, Spanish literature proper began in the twelfth century. It owed much to French and Italian, and in course of time gave much back to them. Among its earliest signs was the development of the romance (ballad), while Arab writers (whose work Mr. Kelly considers of doubtful value) and Jews, who are better spoken of, were early contributors to it. The earliest works of importance were the Mystery of the Magian Kings, one of the first plays in any modern language, and the great heroic poem of the Cid, both anonymous. The first Castilian poet whose name has reached us was Gonzalo de Berceo, 1198 to 1264, who wrote much, and was, "if not an inventor, the chief of a school." Permanent form was given to Spanish prose by King Alfonso the Learned, 1226 to 1284, who, "like Bacon, took all knowledge for his province, and in every department shone pre-eminent." He had numerous collaborators, and "his example in so many fields was followed"--among others (in some of them) by his son and successor, Sancho IV. The Infanta, Juan Manuel, nephew of Alfonso, in one of the stories of his Conde Lucanor--"one of the books of the world"--created the germ of the Taming of the Shrew. Passing a numerous list of writers of respectable merit, for whose names even we have not room, we come to the age of the Catholic kings and Charles V, when for a hundred and fifty years literature most flourished in Spain. Among the features of this period are the Amadis de Gaul--"the best in that kind"--which inspired Cervantes; Columbus, who, though of Italian birth, "was probably the truest Spaniard in all the Spains," the poet Garcilaso de la Vega, and Bernal Diaz and other historians whose names dot Prescott's books. Passing a large number of writers of mark whose works appeared in this age, and stopping only to mention Alonzo de Ercilla y Zuñiga's Araucana as the first literary work of real merit composed in either American continent, we come to the age of Cervantes, whose story of Don Quixote--"the friendless people's friend," as Browning styles him--is not more distinguished for its satirical wit and humor than for its kindly humanity; and Lope de Vega, that most prolific of all dramatic authors, who "left no achievement unattempted," and died lamented by a hundred and fifty-three Spanish and fifty Italian authors, who sang his praises. Among other of the most distinguished writers of this and succeeding periods are Mariana, "the greatest of all Spanish historians"; Góngora, a famous poet in his day; Quevedo; Tirse de Molina, the creator of Don Juan; Calderon, second as a dramatist among Spaniards, if second, only to Lope de Vega, and Alarcón his compeer; and Velasquez, great in art and not small in letters. An interregnum came in during the reign of Carlos II, and French influence made itself felt. The age of the Bourbons produced among others the Benedictine Sarmiento, who as a botanist "won the admiration and friendship of Linné." The present century has been marked by the names of many authors of merit, novelists known to us in translations, by an active movement of historical composition developing brilliant monographs, and by a marked advance of scholarship and tolerance, led by Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo; with a tendency to produce "a breed of writers of the German type."

FOOTNOTE:

[60] A History of Spanish Literature. By James Fitz Maurice-Kelly. New York: D. Appleton and Company. (Literature of the World Series. Edited by Edmund Gosse.) Pp. 433. Price, $1.50.

GENERAL NOTICES.

The great importance of the problems of forestry and all that pertains to them can not fail to be appreciated by any one who has seen the devastation wrought in many sections of this country by the "wood chopper." Forestry is one of the subjects where natural science can step in and guide the way to economic success, and where, in default of scientific methods, economically fatal results inevitably ensue. The preservation of forests has been an important problem in Europe for many years, but until quite recently it has received little attention in the United States. One of the pioneers in the field of forestry in this country was Franklin B. Hough, whose Elements of Forestry is still a used and useful manual. Among his many schemes for attracting attention and study to this important subject was one of making actual sections of the wood of American trees, and arranging them in a compact and attractive manner for general distribution. This idea he never carried out, and it has remained for his son, Mr. R. B. Hough, to finally carry out the scheme, by publishing a complete series of such sections, carefully prepared and compactly bound.[61] In Part I of the series there are cuttings representing twenty-five species of American trees. The sections are sufficiently thin to allow of their study by transmitted light. There are three cuttings from each species, transverse, radial, and tangential to the grain. An accompanying text gives a condensed description of each tree, including its physical properties, uses, and habitat. These descriptions are preceded by a useful introduction to the study of general botany, describing the methods of distinguishing and naming the various parts of plants and trees, and giving an account of their structure and methods of growth. The actual wood sections, quite apart from their scientific value, are worthy of attention because of their great beauty. They are substantially mounted on black cardboard, each card containing the three sections of a species, and its common name in English, French, German, and Spanish. The thinness of the cuttings makes it possible to use them as transparencies, thus bringing out the texture of the wood in a very effective way.

Prof. _Charles Reid Barnes_ is impressed with the fact that while laboratory work has become nearly universal in botany, and laboratory manuals are numerous, there is still a lack of books giving an elementary account of the form and functions of plants of all groups. To supply this want he offers _Plant Life_[62] as an attempt to exhibit the variety and progressive complexity of the vegetative body; to discuss the more important functions; to explain the unity of plan in both the structure and action of the reproductive organs; and to give an outline of the more striking ways in which plants adapt themselves to the world about them. He has made the effort to treat these subjects so that, however much the student may still have to learn, he will have little to unlearn. The book is not intended to be memorized and recited, but to be intelligible to pupils from thirteen to eighteen years of age who are engaged in genuine laboratory study under the direction "of a live teacher who has studied far more botany than he is trying to teach." It is adapted to use supplementarily to any laboratory guide or to the directions prepared by the teacher. The directions are made fullest in relation to cryptogams and physiology, because these fields are at present most unfamiliar to teachers.

Attaching great importance to _Electro-Dynamics_, which he thinks will in the near future assume the same relation to the electric motor that the science of thermo-dynamics already bears to the steam engine, Mr. _Charles Ashley Carus-Wilson_ aims in the book of that name[63] to apply the principles of that science to the direct-current motor. Writing for electrical engineers particularly, he takes for granted a certain acquaintance with the use and design of motors, but avoids unexplained technicalities as far as possible. He has not deemed it necessary to deal with self-induction, except in connection with the question of sparking. The numerical accuracy attempted has been limited to that attainable with an ordinary ten-inch slide rule, on which all the examples have been worked out. Importance is attached to the graphic method of solution.