whole page, left and right, there are various scribblings; Mr. Frauncis Bacon two or three times, Ashmund and Cornelia and William Shakespeare seven or eight times more, with other words, verses, and phrases, Latin and English, and single letters. Not a single word is in Bacon's handwriting. Some of the pieces entered in the contents are not found in the volume, and some of the pieces in the volume are not in the contents." Amongst the missing pieces besides the two Shakespeare plays, are Nashe's “Isle of Dogs," and "Ashmund and Cornelia." Judge Holmes suggests that the Shakespeare plays were purposely destroyed by Bacon. This is untenable, for (1) several other pieces are missing from the volume; (2) the titles of the plays are left in the contents; (3) the name William Shakespeare is left written on the page. The writers of this MS. had obviously no secret to keep.

Section 9.-It cannot be pretended that Davies knew the mystery that was to be buried in the grave: that Bacon wrote Shakespeare's plays. Bacon, in his Apology, says, "I am no poet." That he occasionally wrote verses and speeches for his friends, however, was well known within his circle. Hence, writing to a poet and claiming his kind offices, he pleasantly • adds, be “good to concealed poets."

GREAT AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES. PRESIDENT CHARLES W. SUPER, OHIO UNIVERSITY.

FON

School and College, Boston, November.

ONDNESS for what is big and bulky is a characteristic trait of the people of the United States. This statement is true, not only of what is natural, but also of what is artificial. We are given to boasting of our long rivers and railroads, our vast plains, and our great bridges. For some of these things we deserve credit; others were here long before we were. In this world a good many things owe their value and importance to their size, but size is not always a reliable test. Nowhere is discriminating judgment more necessary than in estimating the relative value and influence of educational institutions. Unfortunately here, too, mere bigness has come to be regarded by many as fixing rank and precedence.

There are, perhaps, half a dozen "universities" in the land, East and West, that have an annual enrollment of over two thousand. Shall we class these together and place them at the front? We fear the Faculties of some of them would be not a little surprised at the company in which they would find themselves. There is especial need of caution with our easy way in the admission of students. Where an educational system like the German has been established the case is different. There most of those in attendance on the different grades have already attained the rank of college graduates before admission. But so long as our universities graduate young people in law, medicine, theology, and what not, who have had no academic training previous to admission, it is the veriest farce to make the size of the graduating class or the total enrollment the test of rank among similar institutions. It does not require a very close examination of the work of several of our most populous universities to be convinced that they are largely preparatory departments, unless they can make professional men and women of persons who have not acquired the rudiments of an English education. When two young men of equal attainments enter school life, the one in an academy to prepare for college, the other in a university to get a medical diploma by the shortest way, are they not both preparatory students, and nothing more? In two or three years one graduates as M.D., the other into the freshman class of a reputable college; yet we are asked to regard the one as a university student, the other as a "Prep." In this case things are evidently not what they seem, and there is need of the revision of our educational nomenclature.

The question may be asked, "Which of our higher institutions of learning approach nearest to what may properly be

considered the true university standard of our time?" We answer, That body of teachers will attain the nearest approach to such a standard, who will admit to their classes such students only as have spent the equivalent of four years of study beyond the requirements for admission to the Freshman class adopted by the Ohio College Association, or its equivalent, and grant professional or academic degrees solely on the basis of such post-graduate study." A few institutions are striving to reach this goal, but no one has, probably, as yet, quite attained it. The question is pertinent whether it will be easier of attainment by State or private institutions. On the whole, the latter seem to be the most untrammeled and least amenable to public opinion. State institutions being dependent on the public purse are, to a considerable extent, dependent on the public standard of judgment as to the value of an educational establishment to the community, and that standard is, in most cases the numerical one. Those of our higher institutions, the endownments of which are contingent on the title "university," cannot be expected to forfeit these in order to take their real rank. The wisest thing they can do is to limit their work to one or two departments, and there is no reason that it should not be equal to the best. They can always count on a certain amount of patronage although it will be more or less local. Our country is still too new to enable one to form a just estimate of the relative effect of our colleges upon the thought of the world. The time will probably never come in this democratic country of ours when universities that are such in name only, will have ceased to exist. There will no doubt always be men ready to accept a diploma given by an institution of their own denomination in preference to any other. On the other hand, school-boards and trustees, in spite of the objectionable methods by which they are often chosen,, are becoming more and more discriminating. A college diploma, as such, no longer carries the weight it did in days gone by. The young men and women who are candidates for positions, will be quick to recognize whose endorsement carries the most weight, and will direct their steps accordingly.

IN

A SWISS AUTHOR.

LAURA MASHOLM. Samtiden, Bergen, No. 10.

III.

N his delineations of women, Gottfried Keller simplifies every case with which he deals; he reduces his feminine characters to a few elementary forms. This is no fault. His treatment of character prevents these simple forms from becoming monotonous; on the contrary, they show by contrast how tiresome and limited are the female characters in German, French, and Scandinavian literature. Keller brought into his stories, first of all, healthy women. The French depict women as sickly, the Scandinavians as emancipated. A poet must know how to reduce woman's outward life to its physiological basis, and show by her physical conditions that she is the most dependent, yet the most self-willed of creatures. Keller regards woman's physiological nature as of chief import. We find this exemplified in Judith, Meretlein, and all the women in the "Seven Legends." The physiological variations may be seen in every one of his female characters, particularly in his Lux (Ein Sinngedicht) in the sickly Afra Zigonia (Grüner Heinrich, Geschichte des Herrn Zwiehahn), in Frau Lumlei, and in Frau Amrain.

Keller's men are weak and passive. In his novel, "Der grüne Heinrich," which is full of his own life-experiences, the hero does not make love, but walks like a somnambulist among the women who are making love to him.

Judith is Keller's greatest revelation of woman. She is emblematical of tropical fruitfulness. She represents his widest and most intense conceptions, and is a bold embodiment of love, probably the boldest in all German literature.

At

She is ten or twelve years older than Heinrich, but Keller is not troubled by that. There are no high motives in her attractions for Heinrich. She is a mature and sensuous woman; he an immature and sensuous lad. She has lived among the vulgar peasants and is a coarse-grained creature. But she can be moulded for the better. She is not brutal in her instincts, nor are her passions so vulgar or coarse as to ruin Heinrich. first she is bold, aggressive, and very direct, but her association with Heinrich softens her and makes her a loving woman; she learns to submit, to wait, and to receive. After a separation they meet, only to find that they are deeper in love than ever. She asks only to be with him; she demands nothing but his love. He comes and goes when he pleases. There is no contract, no justification, no marriage, nothing to satisfy the world. Thus they love, and are satisfied.

The little Meretlein is a still subtler portrait of feminine nature. Meretlein is a Judith in bud. She is the most precious bit of female child-psychology in all German literature. What in her Keller has brought to the light of day from the abysses of the female nature, I doubt if any man can understand or woman fully express. Meretlein is a revelation such as only those who are intuitive seers receive. In this sorely tried and tortured child, woman's inmost nature is laid bare. Observe the one trait in Meretlein, the one only trait which shows how much nearer woman stands to Nature than to Man, and which separates her from him-her inherent wildness, savageness, and unruliness! It is a subtle and carefully hidden trait which only few discover, but, in its various modifications, it is the key to the charm she exercises. The average woman is capable of education, culture, and civilization, but woman in her true nature is ungovernable, and her instinct leads her to do those things which society condemns. But if a regeneration of humanity is to take place, it must arise from the uncultivated natural capacity which is woman's preeminent quality and her sovereignty. Her charm, her power over man, her mysterious love-faculty, and her power over souls, lie rooted in this hidden nature, in her undiscoverable depth. Physiologically, woman is a world of desire. This fullness of desire is her most precious quality, and the heir-loom of the race. It raises her to heaven and it lowers her to hell. Keller's Judith and Meretlein are illustrations of woman's heavenward course: most of Strindberg's women are on the way to the infernal. Meretlein will not submit to the hum-drum of daily life, the restraint and brutality of man's matrimonial rights. She flies, and is found frozen to death in the garden.

то

A BOGUS BIMINI. :

CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER.

Harper's Magazine, New York, December.

O the northward of Hispaniola lies the island of Bimini. It may not be one of the spice islands, but it grows the best ginger to be found in the world. In it is a fair city, and beside the city a lofty mountain, at the foot of which is a noble spring called the Fons Juventutis. This fountain has a sweet savor, as of all manner of spicery, and every hour of the day the water changes its savor and its smell. Whoever drinks of this well will be healed of whatever malady he has, and will seem always young. It is not reported that women and men who drink of this fountain will be always young, but that they will seem so, and probably to themselves, which simply means, in our modern accuracy of language, that they will feel young. This island has never been found. Many voyages have been made in search of it in ships and in the imagination, and Liars have said they have landed on it and drank of the water, but they never could guide any one thither.

In the credulous centuries when these voyages were made, other islands were discovered, and a continent much more important than Bimini; but these discoveries were a disappointment, because they were not what the adventurers wanted. They did not understand that they had found a new land in

which the world should renew its youth and begin a new career. In time the quest was given up, and men regarded it as one of the delusions which came to an end in the sixteenth century. In our day no one has tried to reach Bimini except Heine. Our scientific period has a proper contempt for all such superstitions. We now know that the Fons Juventutis is in every man, and that if actual juvenility cannot be renewed, the advance of age can be arrested, the waste of tissues be prevented, and an uncalculated length of earthly existence be secured, by the injection of some sort of fluid into the system. The right fluid has not yet been discovered by science, but millions of people thought that it had the other day, and now confidently expect it. This credulity has a scientific basis, and has no relation in the old belief in Bimini. We thank goodness that we do not live in a credulous age.

Yet the island in the West Indies which so far has been visited by Liars only, is not the only Bimini. There are others. It is worth noting in regard to them all, that in searching for them we have always got better things than we sought or imagined; developments on a much grander scale.

One of these Biminis, visited by Liars only, which has been looked for during a long time, is an American Literature. There was an impression that there must be such a thing somewhere on a continent that has everything else. We gave the world tobacco and the potato, perhaps the most important contributions to the content and the fatness of the world made by any new country, and it was a noble ambition to give it new styles of art and literature also. There seems to have been an impression that a literature was something indigenous or ready-made, like any other purely native product, not needing any special period of cultivation or development, and that a nation would be in a mortifying position without one, even before it staked out its cities or built any roads.

Captain John Smith, if he had ever settled here and spread himself over the continent, as he was capable of doing, might have taken the contract to furnish one, and we may be sure that he would have left us nothing to desire in that direction. The vein of romance he opened was not followed up. Other prospectings were made. Holes, so to speak, were dug in New England and in the middle South, and along the frontier, and such leads were found that again and again the certainty arose that at last the real American ore had been discovered. Meantime, a certain process, called civilization, went on, and certain ideas of breadth entered into our conceptions, and ideas also of the historical development of the expression of thought in the world, and with these a comprehension of what America really is, and the difficulty of putting a bushel measure into a pint cup.

So, while we have been expecting the American Literature to come out from some locality, neat and clean, like a nugget, or, to change the figure, to bloom any day like a centuryplant, in one striking, fragrant expression of American life, behold something else has been preparing and maturing, larger and more promising than our early anticipations. In history, in biography, in science, in the essay, in the novel and story, there are coming forth a hundred expressions of the hundred aspects of American life; and they are also sung by the poets in notes as varied as the migrating birds. The birds, perhaps, have the best of it thus far, but the bird is limited to a small range of performances while he shifts his singing-boughs through the climates of the continent; whereas the poet, though a little inclined to mistake aspiration for inspiration, and vagueness of longing for subtlety, is experimenting in a most hopeful manner. And all these writers, while, perhaps, not consciously American or consciously seeking to do more than their best in their several ways, are animated by the free spirit of inquiry and expression that belongs to an independent nation, and so our literature is coming to have a stamp of its own that is unlike any other national stamp. And it will have this stamp more authentically and be clearer and stronger as we drop the selfconsciousness of the necessity of being American.

SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY.

RECENT ASTRONOMICAL DISCOVERIES.

HENRI DE PARVILLE.

Le Correspondant, Paris, November 10.

́N January, 1410, Galileo discovered, at Padua, four satellites

Earth. He named them "The Stars of Medicis." More than 280 years had passed since this discovery, and no astronomer had found anything more in the vicinity of Jupiter. Naturally, all the classic treatises mention the four satellites, and no more. Moreover, various considerations tended to raise a conviction that the number of satellites of each planet increases regularly from Mars to Jupiter and Saturn. Mars has two satellites, Saturn has eight, Jupiter has four. So the rule is demonstrated. Well, no; not exactly, for an observer in the United States has just discovered a fifth satellite of Jupiter. The news was sent to Europe at the beginning of last month. It was received with incredulity, although it came from a skillful observer. Yet have not the environs of Jupiter for 280 years been explored in vain? Was not Herschel, the great Herschel, himself deceived? Did he not wrongly announce the existence of six satellites of Uranus, believing that he had discovered two new ones? Perhaps there is an illusion of the same sort in the case of Jupiter. Contrary to what was supposed at first, the fifth satellite of Jupiter exists. Mr. Barnard has found it. There is no room for doubt. We shall have to modify the notions set forth in the classic treatises.

How does it happen that for such a long time this fifth satellite has not been seen? That is easily explained by the fact that this small, very small star, is generally invisible in the light of the planet. Mr. Perrotin searched for it at Nice and saw nothing. The brothers Henry searched for it at Paris; they could distinguish nothing. Doubtless there was need of the dry and pure atmosphere at the summit of Mount Hamilton, in California, to get a glimpse of this minute star The Lick Observatory, where the discovery was made, is nearly 4.500 feet above the sea; and Mr. Barnard, the worthy observer, has at his disposal the largest telescope in the world—a telescope with a glass three feet in diameter.

The new satellite, moreover, gives but a very weak light, like that of a star of the thirteenth magnitude. It revolves quite near Jupiter, between the planet and its old first satellite, which is now relegated to the second place. The length of its revolution is but eleven hours and fifty minutes. Its distance from the centre of the planet is two and a half times the equatorial radius of Jupiter. When it is farthest from the planet, it is not distant from the edge of the disk more than about threefourths of the diameter of the disk and consequently revolves in the midst of the light diffused around Jupiter. Mr. Barnard admits that his new star is much more difficult to see than the satillites of Mars, which are, however, much smaller in size than the fifth satillite, one of them being but forty miles in diameter. The new Jovian attendant cannot measure more than 100 miles in diameter. Its distance from the centre of Jupiter is about 117,000 miles. The old first satellite is more than twice as far from the centre of the planet and revolves around it in one day, eighteen hours and twenty-seven minutes.

It may be asked, if we are at last acquainted with all the satellites of Jupiter? It is not certain that we are. For satellites as for planets, there have been imagined certain chimerical formulas, like those of Bode. Mr. Tisserand, the new Director of the Observatory of Paris, has applied to Jupiter the formula of Mr. Gaussin, which generally gives good results. The application of this formula seems to indicate the existence of a sixth satellite.

The same Mr. Barnard of the Lick Observatory last month discovered a comet by means of photography. It had passed unobserved; but traces of it were found on a photographic plate. The find was interesting, but still more so from the

way in which the new wandering star was found. When the comet was photographically recognized, Mr. Schulhof, a colleague of Mr. Barnard, followed it in the sky, watched it for some time, and after nine nights of observation was able to determine its orbit and course. In nine nights! It is the first time that the orbit of a comet has been determined by so few data. Mr. Schulhof concludes that the new traveler was following the identical route of the comet discovered three years ago by Mr. Wolff of Heidelberg. Like that, the Schulhof comet has a period of about six years and a half.

There is no doubt, then, that we have to do with a comet which has been broken in two pieces. Each portion, becoming independent of the other, follows exactly the same road in space. By the action of Jupiter the comet will be more and more broken up, and will end by separating into bits holding together more or less, which we shall find in the form of shooting stars. Schiaparelli was the first to make known that shooting stars follow the orbits of comets, and are, in fact, the wreckage of comets. In that way the Wolff comet, already broken, will come to an end. This, however, is not the first example of a comet going to pieces. The Biela comet has been broken, having first become two comets like the star studied by Mr. Schulhof at the Lick Observatory. Then it scattered bits of itself on its way, and has strewn them a little everywhere. Still more recently the Brooks comet surprised us in the same way. It broke into two, three, four parts, and finally went to pieces altogether. Comets are not only wandering, nebulous stars which fly about erratically, but stars surrounded by overheated vapor which is dispersed, without ceremony, under the influence of the planets in the circle of action of which they fall some day, and are destroyed. They are enormous gnats attracted by the light of the big stars, where they burn their wings and end their vagabond existence.

At the Observatory of Nice, Mr. Charlois has discovered, by the aid of photography, three new little planets of the group between Mars and Jupiter. The instrument used was small in diameter and focal distance. By this discovery we have made acquaintance with about 327 small planets. The number of these asteroids will not go on increasing forever. It is probable that we now know them nearly all. If we finally discover 500 of them, we shall have already done very well, for careful search for them has been made for thirty years, and by photography we can find them much quicker than the most experienced observer.

Of all

GENERAL PARESIS OF THE INSANE.
HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS, M.D.

North American Review, New York, December.

F all the diseases that menace the race only a few are surely fatal. Indeed there is but one common disease that invariably brings its victims speedily to the grave. This most ruthless of maladies is that terrible form of insanity technically called general paresis or paretic dementia, and known to the layman as "softening of the brain." Its unvarying history places it peerless in bad preëminence. And, as if this were not enough, its malignity is emphasized by the way in which it juggles with its victim before it extinguishes his life. It changes his personality, dethrones reason, almost eliminates the mind, and, steadily weakening the body, leaves toward the last a mere skeletal, vegetative being, scarce recognizable as the vestige of his former self; unknowing, unfeeling, mindless; to his friends, at once a tearful memory and a terrible objective presence. Finally death comes in a form horrible enough to be a fitting climax to so awful a disease.

by his actions. Let me, then, tell the way of life that leads to it.

Imagine, if you please, a strong man of exuberant temperament; one of those buoyant souls who carry into middle life, the spirit of perennial adolescence; to whom at forty, as at fifteen, every goose is a swan, every lass a queen. You all know the type; a large-hearted, generous, thrifty man; active, energetic, successful, usually good-humored, at times irritable, excitable; who speaks and lives always in superlatives, whose pathway lies always on high mountains or in deep valleys.

But there comes a time in which his exuberance seems to forsake him. He is often depressed, even hypochondriacal. His memory fails, his judgment lapses; he commits indiscretions that are " unlike him." He himself becomes alarmed, and consults a physician. Rest and recreation are prescribed; he goes to the mountains or the seashore, and comes back new man."

a

For half a year, perhaps, he is like his old-time self. Then some day he surprises his friends by announcing magnificent schemes for making millions. His idea may be a feasible one or altogether Utopian. In either case it presents itself to him as an absolute certainty. He breaks out into lavish expenditure which persists as long as his money or credit lasts. Finally his judgment is altogether in abeyance, and he becomes the prey of chaotic emotions.

Attempts to restrain him at home proving futile, the patient is sent to an asylum. Here, perhaps, he becomes at first raving, maniacal, or, perhaps, the embodiment of happy fatuous

ness.

After a time excitement subsides, and apparent convalescence supervenes. He may be well enough to return to his business, and to fulfill the ordinary relations of life, but such remissions are only a common feature of the disease, and afford not the faintest ground for hope of recovery, the inevitable relapse announces itself sooner or later. He may rally again and again, but the inevitable end is that he sinks into a vegetative, soulless existence, with his mind so vacuous that while he will instinctively swallow food and water placed in his mouth, he would starve with food by his side, and choke with water before him. His senses, too, are destroyed, and he will swallow soap as readily as bread.

So much for the disease-paresis. Now as to its cause. It can be epitomized in two words-excessive action. Paresis is a protest of nature against abuse of function. Whatever tends to bring too great or too continuous a strain upon the blood-vessels of the brain tends to weaken them, and thus invites paresis. Mental overwork is rare. Business stress and worry are far more common factors. Alcohol is a yet more potent accessory; but in the vast majority of cases, though these accessory causes have their effect, the chief causes of paresis are habits and excesses which I need not name, working on a foundation laid by a disease that I may not name because it is in itself a synonym for immorality.

Now, above most other things, I would regret to pose as an alarmist, hence I close by reiterating what is everywhere implied in this paper: If you have lived a measurably temperate life, you need not fear paresis.

KEELEY'S PRESENT POSITION.

MRS. BLOOMFIELD MOore.

Lippincott's Magazine, Philadelphia, December. Facts are the body of science, speculation is its soul.

T has been said that there is nothing more sublime in the

IT history of said that the lonely struggles which generate

and precede success. After the admission made by Professor Rücker, M. A., at the last meeting of the British Association, that the ether may be "the material of which all matter is composed," and that, we may, perhaps, be able to use and control the ether as we now use and control steam," there would seem to be grounds for hoping that Keeley's lonely and prolonged struggle to utilize, in mechanics, the ether product which he obtains by his method of dissociating the elements of water will be more generally recognized and appreciated than they have yet been. Discovery may be unsought and

instantaneous, but the inventions for utilizing discoveries may be, and generally are, the work of years."

Keeley first imprisoned the ether in 1872, when its existence was denied, or, if admitted by a few, it was called the "hypothetical" ether. In 1888 Professor Henri Hertz made the discovery that the ether is held in a state of bondage in all electro-magnetic engines. Not until this fact had been made known were there any scientific men, with one notable exception, who were willing to admit the possibility that Keeley might have "stumbled over" the manner of effecting its imprisonment.

"

The genuineness of Keeley's claims as a discoverer rests upon a correct answer to the question, Is hydrogen an element or a compound?" The accepted view is that it is an elementary substance; that its atoms are indivisible; and that latent energy is not locked in the interstitial spaces of all forms of matter, from their birth or aggregation. Keeley's system of Vibratory Physics confutes these canons of science. It seems absurd to suppose that he is right, and the schools all wrong; but the history of science shows us that she has never been infallible,. and that she has no frontiers. Keeley teaches that an unknown potency is held in the atom's tenacious grasp until released by an introductory impulse given by a certain order of vibration, depending upon the mass-chord of the aggregation; which impulse so increases the oscillation of the atoms as to rupture their etheric capsules.

In 1885, before Keeley's scientific explorations had taught him that no engine can ever be constructed by which the ether can be used and controlled as we now use and control steam, he wrote, in a letter to a friend:

I shall not forestall an unproved conclusion, but fight step by step the dark paths I am exploring, knowing that should I succeed in proving one single fact in science, heretofore unknown, I shall, in so doing, be rewarded in the highest degree. I have been classed with such dreamers as the perpetual-motion seekers; but I find consolation in the thought that it is only by men who are utterly ignorant of the great and marvelous truths which I have devoted my life to demonstrate and to bring within the reach of all. I believe the time is near at hand when the theory of etheric revolution will be established and when the world will be eager to recognize and accept a system that will certainly create a revolution of the highest benefit to mankind and inaugurate an era undreamed of by those who are now ignorant of the existence of this force of nature.

These views, which have governed Keeley in all his researches, cannot be made known to any just, discerning mind, without an accompanying perception of the gross way in which he has been misrepresented by his defamers, as well as some appreciation of the scientifically cautious manner in which he has pursued his investigations since he abandoned his efforts to construct an engine that would hold the ether in rotation. At the present time Keeley is concentrating his efforts on the perfection of his mechanical conditions to that point where, according to his theories, he will be able to establish on the "Ninths," a sympathetic affinity with pure polar negative attraction, minus magnetism. In his own opinion he has so nearly gained the summit, or completion of his system, as to feel that he holds the key to the infinitely tenuous conditions which remain to be conquered, before he can gain control of the group of depolar discs that he is now working upon. Twenty-six groups are completed, and when the twenty-seventh shall be under equal control, he expects to have established a circuit of vibratory force for running machinery both for ærial navigation and for terrestrial use. If this result be obtained, Keeley will be in a position to give his system to science, and to demonstrate the outflow of the Infinite mind, as sympatheti

In com

cally associated with matter, visible and invisible. mercial use he asserts that when the motion has been once set up in any of his machines, it will continue until the material shall be worn out. It is this claim which has caused him to be classed with perpetual-motion seekers.

It needed, however, the abstract of Keeley's philosophy, written by Dr. Brinton, to render it intelligible. Dr. Brinton's penetrating mind perceived the ideas to be defined in all their relations, his clear, logical acumen separated and classified them in their order, in a true, sound, and scientific manner. This synopsis, in the words of Sir James Critchton Browne, "able, lucid, and logical," has won for Keeley all the support necessary to the working out of his discovery to practical ends, and to the restoration, by religious science, of the faith which material science has been robbing the world of.

THE

INSTIN. C T.

C. F. AMERY.

Science, New York, November.

HERE are few words in common use as loosely applied as instinct. Treating of it in the abstract, every scientist recognizes it as an impulse, but when instincts of animals are discussed in the concrete, the discussion is generally limited to the special activities common to the several species. In the present paper I propose firstly to define the nature of instinct, and to indicate its place and the importance of its function in the general economy of animal life, and, secondly, to consider whether the accepted application of the term is admissible with any scientific propriety.

All the voluntary activities of men and animals are reflex or intelligent, the one set originating in sensation, the other in perception.

The reflex activities are automatic responses of the neuromuscular organism to sensations, and are under the dominion of the will to a limited extent only. The most common reflex activities are laughing, crying, sucking, masticating, swallowing, voiding the fœces and urine, coughing, sneezing, withdrawal from contact with external objects, purposeless bodily exercise, etc. Laughing and crying may result from sensation, but they are sometimes reflex activities of the brain prompted by ideas.

Intelligent activities result from the perception of objects, their properties, and relations. Every effort for the adjustment of the organism to external conditions apprehended through the senses is intelligent. Touch is the connecting link between sensation and sense.

Instincts are not activities, but impulses to action. They are due to the sensations being transmitted from their several local seats to the brain, where they present themselves as cravings, desires, appetites, imperatively calling for relief. They prompt to both classes of activities, those which can be performed by reflex action, and those which require the adoption of intelligent means. Voiding the fœces and urine is a type of the former, the providing of food is a type of the latter. The more important instincts are the craving for food, the sexual and the maternal instincts.

Instinct impels to action, but does not guide to its performance. If reflex action will appease it, the animal has only to will, if intelligent measures are required, it is the function of the intellect to adopt them.

The most important instincts originate in the local action of proper secretions, as the contents of stomach and bladder, the gastric juice, the spermatorrhoeal, and lacteal secretions, etc. No less important to man's intellectual development is the impulse to purposeless activity, generated by the irritation of the waste particles of the tissues on their way to the skin. All warni-blooded vertebrates have the same instincts as man. In birds the eggs take the place of the fœtus in mammalia, and the inflammatory condition of the blood at close of laying, which impels to incubation, takes the place of the

lacteal secretion. But innumerable insects have special proper secretions generating special impulses, which result in some utilitarian application of the material secreted. But before entering on this subject I want to make a few remarks on the function and importance of instinct in the economy of life.

Instinct is not a lower order of intelligence nor a substitute for it. It is an impulse or spur, and may be called the schoolmaster, or the wet-nurse of the intellect. Primitive man looked round on the general phenomena of his environment vacuously. There was nothing to interest him excepting the food which the cravings of hunger imperatively called for, and in his selection of this he was guided by inherited experience from prehuman ancestors. Subject to the spur of hunger, his perceptive faculties were promptly aroused to the observation and, study of every fruit, grain, root, etc., capable of appeasing his appetite. In this matter, and in the observation of the character and habits of other living creatures around him, he was fairiy rivaled by the lower animals. Man's hand was the wonderful organ which soon raised him above the intellectual level of the beast, and the impulse to purposeless activity the spur which brought it into requisition. Subject to this instinct he was under the imperative necessity of constantly exercising every group of muscles, and every organ, in every direction in which it was capable of being used. In these exercises man at once became a being apart by virtue of his hand. He was impelled to lay hold of everything he saw within the compass of his grasp. He hurled stones and wielded sticks, reveling in the enjoyment of the exercise of his physical powers until gradually he acquired that experience of the properties of sticks and stones in their relation to living bodies, which suggested their application to the ever-present necessity of providing food, and for offense and defense. Between brain and other organs there is always coördination, and man, once started on his career of progress, developed other wants which extended his perceptions over a wider range of objects until he gradually awoke to the idea that he could make everything in nature minister to his desire, and thus made everything the subject of his observation and study,

As regards everything which affects personal preservation and food supply, all the evidences point to the conclusion that the perception and reasoning powers of other animals are as keen and sure as savage man's. The beaver alone among mammals has achieved anything remarkable in constructive labor; but in his case, the materials used in construction were the waste products of his food which he had to manipulate under conditions which compelled his perception of such of their properties as he uses. Given the beaver's primitive habits, and the suitable environment, the direction of his evolution was as mueh a matter of constitutional necessity as man's. Fewer faculties were called into requisition in his case, but these, concentrated on special labors, attained greater natural facility of application, and this added facility become in time constitutional in the species.

The wonderful constructive powers of insects have been developed subject to the same law, and for the most part these creatures, too, enjoy special facilities for the development of their special capacities. They not only have special instincts due to special secretions, but in these secretions they have the materials of construction. The thread of the spider and silkworm, the wax of the bee, the viscid, and other special secretions of a hundred other insects, are all materials which would not excite their attention if they existed apart from themselves, but being under the daily necessity of manipulating them, and being under a constitutional necessity of manipulating them in certain ways determined by the structure of their brain and manipulating organs, the species is forced to a perception of the uses they subserve, and educated by experience to the point of engaging in their manipulation intelligently and with design. And just as the hand has played an important part in the evolution of man's intellectual faculties, so have the special