from those who are able to give it, and whom but for some such unique and special occasion they might never have seen. In my dreams I have seen what good work for the homes and the schools and the homeless and the out-of-school multitudes of England might be accomplished by noble lords and men of princely fortune, whose ample palaces and gardens seem to have been, waiting these many years for a use and service which would make them pleasant and goodly places in the eyes of the Lord who loveth the children of men, and who loveth them also, and especially who love and help their kind.

But then, these are only the dreams of "A Stranger and a Foreigner."-J. H. VINCENT, D.D., in The Contemporary Review.

SCIENCE FALSELY SO CALLED.

A REPLY TO PROF. HUXLEY.

My sincere respect for Professor Huxley forbids me from following him into the field of personal polemics. There are, however, some points of general interest in his article on which I wish to say a few words.

The first of these concerns the use which Professor Huxley makes of the word "science." In common parlance this word is now very much confined to the physical sciences, some of which may be called specially experimental sciences, such as chemistry, and other exact sciences, such as astronomy. But Professor Huxley evidently uses it in that wider sense in which it in

cludes metaphysics and philosophy. Under cover of this wide sweep of his net, he assumes to speak with the special authority of a scientific expert upon questions respecting which no such authority exists either in him or in any one else. It seems to be on the strength of this assumption that he designates as pseudoscience any opinion, or teaching, or belief, different from his own.

I will illustrate what I mean by an example. One of the most elaborate of Professor Huxley's own works is his volume on The Elements of Comparative Anatomy, published some twenty-three years ago. Comparative anatomy is one of the branches of the larger science of Biology in which Professor Huxley is an expert; and, like all the other branches which grow out of the one great stem of "Life,' as a subject of physical investigation, it runs up into ideas and conceptions which belong to, or border on, the region of metaphysics. In that volume Professor Huxley deals with the well-known question of comparative anatomy whether the vertebrate skull can, or cannot, be “interpreted" as a developed vertebra. Through an elaborate argument,. strictly conducted on the observation and analysis of physical facts, Professor Huxley comes to the conclusion that this "interpretation" breaks down. "The vertebral hypothesis of the skull," he says,

seems to me to be altogether abolished." Yet, while rejecting this particular "interpretation," he accepts and enforces the general conception that there is a complete "unity of organization" between all vertebrate skulls, from the skull of a man down to the skull of a pike,

Now, if not absolutely in this conclusion, yet on all the physical facts leading up to it, Professor Huxley is an authority in the strictest sense of the word. He is an original investigator, and if any other man were to contest his facts, or even his interpretation of them, without independent observation, Professor Huxley would be entitled to pronounce his opinions to be "pseudo-science."

But Professor Huxley's scientific conclusion may become itself the basis of a farther investigation, and in this farther investigation he may be no authority at all. We are all entitled to ask as a question, not of physical science, but of philosophy, What are the conclusions involved in the mental recognition of a 'plan' as explaining an observed 'unity of organization in all vertebrate skulls?"

This is a question-of the very highest interest in which Professor Huxley as a biclogist is not necessarily an expert. That laboratory in which the mind analyzes its own operations is a laboratory accessible to us all-in which we can all work, though not with the microscope or the knife. And if in this higher sphere of investigation other men are able to reach conclusions which Professor Huxley disputes, it is at least possible that it is his contention, and not that of his opponent, which best deserves the "pseudo'

munity of organization of the vertebrate skeleton. Yet this term was applied to it by an expert in biological science quite as eminent as himself; and it needs no expert to see that his own word "plan" as the best word to express the facts, stands exactly on the same level with "archetype" as what he calls a "realistic figment."

I

I have dwelt upon this point because men are very apt to be intimidated by authorities in "science," when in reality no sort of authority exists. Professor Huxley talks about "intelectual sins" quite in the language and spirit of the Vatican. know a good many scientific men of the very highest standing who totally dissent from Professor Huxley's metaphysics and philosophy; and are by no means inclined to accept his expositions, even of physical science, when those expositions travel beyond the particular branch in which he is an original observer.

For example, Professor Huxley disputes the relation between the three laws of Kepler and the Newtonian law of gravitation, which in one. chapter of a book published now some twenty years ago I have represented to exist. As that chapter has stood the test of criticism fairly well on the whole, I was curious to know whether Professor Huxley's attack is founded on distinctions of any value. For this purpose I have applied to two mathematicians of the highest authority, not only in Britain but in the world. One of these says, "It is certainly true that the three famous laws of Kepler turned out to be the necessary result

of the Newtonian law of gravitation. Another of these authorities says, "The laws of Kepler tell us how a planet moves, but are absolutely silent as to the why. To Newton we owe the why. But this was a step not only of an infinitely higher order than that of Kepler, it was in a totally different field. The one was descriptive, the other explanatory. This is exactly the kind of difference which I indicated between the two; and it explains the sense in which one physical law may be said to be higher than another. Fortified by this authority, I feel quite safe in pronouncing Professor Huxley's verbal, distinctions upon this point to be worthless. The relation between "laws" such as those of Kepler and laws such as that of gravitation is a relation substantially such as I have represented it to be. Professor Huxley propounds some of those old logical difficulties which attach to all our conceptions, and still more to all our language, upon the relations between mind and matter, as if nobody else had ever heard of them, or as if nobody but a comparative anatomist can even handle them. He refers me to Dr. Foster's excellent text book of physiology-I can assure the Professor that I know it well, and have made some recent use of it* for the purpose of clearing up confusions of thought in which his own philosophy abounds.

In conclusion, let me express a hope that Professor Huxley will yet do an important service to science, by entering in some detail upon a subject to which I have only alluded

* Unity of Nature, chap. iii.

in passing, but in terms which have excited his astonishment. He says, most truly, that "as is the case with all new doctrines, so with evolution, the enthusiasm of advocates has sometimes tended to degenerate into fanaticism, and mere speculation has, at times, threatened to shoot beyond its legitimate bounds." These words indicate vaguely and tenderly, but significantly, a fact which I stated, and will again state with emphasis. There has been not merely a tendency to degeneration into fanaticism, but a pronounced development of it, and a widespread infection from it in the language of science. But it will be enough if Professor Huxley will explain fully what he means by this tendency, and if he will specify wherein it has been shown. This is a work which has yet to be done. The knowledge of a great expert would help Professor Huxley to do it sooner than it could be done by others. They can only work with the materials which are supplied by such as he. It is a work which has begun, and which his own warnings have encouraged. Since he has authority to deal with "intellectual sins," let him convict, and lay bare, and anathematize this one which he treats so gently. The tendency of new doctrines to degenerate into fanaticism is one of the "laws" to be traced in the long history of hunran follies, and all those who help to resist it are among the benefactors of their kind. I trust Professor Huxley may yet be with us for many years to come, and that he may expand and emphasize the hints and warnings he has given. THE DUKE OF ARGYLL, in The Nineteenth Century.

"

CURRENT THOUGHT.

THE COLLEGE OF WILLIAM AND MARY, VIRGINIA. Hon. N. H. R. Dawson, U. S. Commissioner of the Bureau of Education, thus describes the present condition of the once prominent seat of education:The College of William and Mary, 'founded in 1693 by royal grant, and long supported by popular legislation in Virginia, has been suffered to decline almost to ruin since the civil war, which destroyed the greater part of its property. The oldest college in the South, in fact the oldest in the country with the exception of Harvard University, has been left to decay. The old college at Williamsburg, which gave Washington his first degree as civil engineer and to which he gave his last public service as chancelor, the college which trained in law and politics Thomas Jefferson, Governor Randolph, Chief Justice Marshall, and nearly all of the Virginia statesmen of the revolutionary and formative periods in our Federal history, has not now a single student. Its classic halls are closed and deserted. From a once flourishing faculty, which early and ably represented both history and political science with other liberal arts, only the President, who is also Professor of Mathematics and Physics, now remains. At the opening of every academic year, in October, Doctor Ewell causes the chapel bell to be rung, reminding Williamsburg that the ancient college still lives. To friends of the higher education in all of our States this fact will echo as a note of warning against public neglect and legislative indifference toward higher institutions of learning."

DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE AND HISTORY.-The Edinburgh Review, apropos of the recently published Reminiscences of Count Vitzthum, the late Saxon Minister at the British Court, says:

"Not many years have passed since the discovery was made that diplomatic correspondence supplies the most valuable ma

terials of history. Indeed, until a com paratively recent date, the archives in which these records of competent contemporary witnesses and observers are deposited were so jealously closed in all countries that no use could be made of them. We think the late Professor Ranke, in his History of the Popes, was one of the first writers who penetrated these recesses, and showed what abundant stores of information they contain. But within the last fifty years all this is changed. The State papers of former ages have not only been ransacked by historical students, but published to a great extent by the governments to which they belong. Our own voluminous series of calendars, the magnificent collection of Documents inédits of the history of France published under the auspices of M. Guizot, and more recently the very complete and ingenious disclosure of the military and political papers of Frederick the Grea: ¡y the Prussian Government, have thrown a flood of light upon the transactions and the characters of former times, and the consequence is that the history of Europe has been rewritten. Much that was obscure has been explained; much that was false has been refuted; and we may now be said to know of many past events and negotia

tions as much as was known to well-informed persons at the time of their occurrence, and more than is known with certainty of eventful negotiations which are taking place under our own eyes. For at a period approaching the domain of present politics, these sources of information are closed. Our knowledge of contemporary events is derived from the newspapers and from the communications which it suits the governments of the day to lay before their respective parliaments; and although these communications have of late years become far more copious than of old, they seldom lay bare the inner causes of political change, and they pass as lightly as possible over the characters and motives of the principal actors in them. To trace these to their source, future generations will have recourse to the diplo matic correspondence of the period."