Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, February, 1885

• The Elements of Moral Science, Theoretical and Practical.

• By Noah Porter, D.D., LL.D., President of Yale College.

• New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.

The remarkable President of Yale College, whose name is treasured up in the hearts of thousands of the alumni of Yale as one of the wisest, most genial, and lovable of the many distinguished instructors associated with the history of the college, gives us in this study of ethics the ripe and mellowed fruit of his thought and work. For many years President Porter was the professor of mental and moral philosophy before he assumed the headship of the college. The substance of the book before us was originally given in the shape of lectures before the senior classes. We are told that the book is not designed for a scientific treatise, but to meet the wants of those students and readers who, though somewhat mature in their philosophical thinking and disciplined in their mental habits, still require expanded definitions and abundant illustrations involving more or less of repetition. Dr. Porter has in his own line of investigation great clearness of statement, and the power, perhaps growing out of the needs of the class-room, of familiarizing and simplifying abstruse reasonings. We find this strikingly illustrated in the book before us. It is masterly in its lucidity of reasoning, and in its applications often so practical as to make us feel that the object of the author is not merely to lay bare the scientific theory of ethics, but to bring its principles home to the heart and sympathy of his readers. As a dialectical exposition the cut-and-dried philosopher who revels in the abstract formulas of Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer and others may find occasion to criticise Dr. Porter’s methods. But to the general reader the speculations of Dr. Porter will prove none the less interesting because he brings them down to the sympathies and interests of men.

FOREIGN LITERARY NOTES

Dr. Stratmann, the compiler of the excellent “Dictionary of the Old English Language,” has died at Cologne at the age of sixty-two.

The engagement is announced of Mr. G. E. Buckle, the editor of the Times, to Miss Alice Payn, the third daughter of the distinguished novelist and editor of the Cornhill Magazine.

There is the unusual number of three vacancies at this moment in the ranks of the French “Immortals.” Two of the seats, however, are as good as filled by M. Joseph Bertrand and M. Victor Duruy. For the third there are several candidates, of whom M. Ludovic Halévy is first favorite. It was believed that M. Alphonse Daudet was standing, but he has authorized the Figaro to say that he never has offered himself, and never will offer himself to the Academy.

A new novel by Georg Ebers, upon which he has been at work for two years, is to be published at Christmas. The subject is taken from the last struggles of Paganism against Christendom, and the scene is laid in Egypt.

The new and enlarged edition (the third) of Hermann Grimm’s “Essays,” includes articles on Lord Byron and Leigh Hunt, Frederick the Great and Macaulay, and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Henrik Ibsen’s “Vildanden” to which all Scandinavia has been looking forward for months past, proves on the whole a disappointment to his admirers. It is a five-act social satire, full of strong scenes and pregnant sayings, and containing at least two masterly characters; but there is no shirking the fact that as a drama it is ill-digested and formless. Nor is the apologue of “The Wild Duck,” from which it takes its name, by any means so luminous or of such general application as is commonly the case with this great satirist’s inventions. It will certainly not add to the fame of the author of “A Doll’s House” and “Ghosts.” Björnsen, too, in his new novel, “Det Flager,” is not at his best. It is an earnest and well-meant protest against false delicacy in education; but unfortunately it proves its author to be distinctly deficient in true delicacy. The youngest of the three great Norwegian poets, Alexander Kielland, has not yet issued his promised novel “Fortuna,” but it is to be hoped that he may redeem the credit of a season which has as yet proved by no means the annus mirabilis that was anticipated.

MISCELLANY

Women as Cashiers. – The movement in favor of employing women in all kinds of work that was formerly done by men only is one that should be carried on with caution; for women and girls have sometimes been put into situations for which their sex is unfit – the Government clerkships in America for instance – and the result has been a reaction against their employment in capacities where they are really useful. But of all the posts to which women’s aptitudes are the least open to question, that of cashier must be cited first. Women are excellent money-keepers. While male cashiers form a grievously large percentage among the prisoners brought to trial for embezzlement, women and girls being seldom exposed to the same temptations as men in the matter of dissipation, betting, gambling, or speculation, have very rarely been known to misappropriate moneys entrusted to them. An honest woman is very honest; “an honest man is too often,” as Lord Palmerston bitterly said, “one who has never been tempted.” A man once applied to an Italian banker for a cashiership, and was asked to state his qualifications. “I have been ten years in prison,” he said, “and so shall not mind being locked up in a room by myself, and having my pockets searched when I go out and come in.” The banker admired his impudence, took him at his word and used to say that he made a splendid cashier. We are not affirming that antecedents like this rogue’s are required to fit a man for a post of trust; but we do maintain that it is very difficult to find a thoroughly trustworthy male cashier, even among applicants provided with a mass of testimonials; whereas careful, honest, and well-educated women, in whom full confidence can be placed, exist in great numbers. —Graphic.

The House of Lords: Can it be Reformed? – We look to a second Chamber to improve the work of the first, not simply to foil it. We do not expect to have to do the work over again, as has been the case with nearly every measure submitted to the ordeal of passing the House of Lords. Why is this? How comes it to happen with a House in which, without doubt, there are men of acknowledged capacity – men fully coming up to the idea of what an assembly of notables should be – there is this constantly recurring, mischievous meddling? How is it that beneficent legislation has almost invariably had to be wrung from them, and that an inordinate waste of time, coupled with an utterly unnecessary and irritating friction, has been the result? An answer to these questions is to be found in the fact that the members of the House of Lords feel themselves entitled to legislate according to their own sweet will, and without reference to the wishes or wants of the people of this country. They look upon all political and social questions from the point of view of their own order – an order which at the best must be regarded as exclusive and privileged. This tendency is a perfectly natural one, and they are to be no more blamed for exhibiting it than any other class, whether rich or poor, professional or commercial, for looking at matters from their own point of view. We must condemn the system which not only enables the Lords to do this, but gives effect to their views by according to them privileges for which practically the country gets no return. We have no right to expect a Peer to place himself outside his surroundings: we have a right to demand that the needs of the many shall be preferred to the interests of the few. Observe the tendency of those interests, and note one result, at least, which is in itself productive of ill. The tendency among the Peers towards the principles of Conservatism increases every year. Even Peers who in the House of Commons were apparently sound Liberals rarely maintained their strictly Liberal attitude; and where the original possessor of the title proves true to his early faith, it is rarely that his successor walks in his steps. The consequence is that the Conservative majority in the House of Lords has for many years gone on steadily increasing, and the addition of fresh recruits does little to stem the tide; one result of which is that a Liberal Ministry comes into power very heavily handicapped; it has this hostile majority always to contend with, and has to shape its measures, not so much with an eye to the wants of the people, as to the possibility of mollifying this majority. It further throws the burden of legislative work on the House of Commons unduly, because a Liberal Ministry knows full well that it will require the force of a large majority in the Lower House to induce the Upper House even to consider its measures. Much of the difficulty experienced in the House of Commons, by the Government as well as by private Members, in getting their measures passed, is due to that House being overworked; the reason of this being that the other House does not get its fair share of work, owing to its attitude towards all Liberal legislation. I am far from saying that Conservatives, or Conservative Peers, have no sympathy with their fellow-countrymen. But their feeling towards the masses is that of desiring to act for them rather than of wishing to get them to act for themselves; in other words they show a tendency to maintain the power of beneficial legislation in their own hands, and not to entrust it to those who are likely to feel its effects the most. It is this want of confidence rather than a lack of sympathy which is so unfortunate. It makes the Peers anxious to retain power in their own interests; and thus their action in the House of Lords is taken without the slightest sense of responsibility, or without the slightest pretence of representing the views and wishes of the people at large. What, then, is the remedy for all this? Clearly, to make the second Chamber truly a representative one – representative of the great interests of the people, of the State, of the empire. —British Quarterly.

A Revolving Library. – The idea of applying the principle of revolution to simplify religious duties seems to have originated in the feeling that since only the learned could acquire merit by continually reciting portions of Buddha’s works, the ignorant and hard working were rather unfairly weighted in life’s heavenward race. Thus it came to be accounted sufficient that a man should turn over each of the numerous rolled manuscripts containing the precious precepts, and considering the multitude of these voluminous writings, the substitution of this simple process must have been very consolatory. Max Müller has told us how the original documents of the Buddhist canon were first found in the monasteries of Nepaul, and soon afterwards further documents were discovered in Thibet and Mongolia, the Thibetan canon consisting of two collections, together comprising 333 volumes folio. Another collection of the Wisdom of Buddha was brought from Ceylon, covering 14,000 palm leaves, and written partly in Singalese and partly in Burmese characters. Nice light reading! From turning over these manuscripts by hand, to the simple process of arranging them in a huge cylindrical bookcase, and turning that bodily, was a very simple and ingenious transition; and thus the first circulating library came into existence! —Contemporary Review.

A Child’s Metaphors. – The early use of names by children seems to illustrate the play of fancy almost as much as the activity of thought. In sooth, have not thought and imagination this in common, that they both combine elements of experience in new ways, and both trace out the similarities of things? The poet’s simile is not so far removed from the scientific discoverer’s new idea. Goethe the poet readily became Goethe the morphologist, detecting analogies in structures which to the common eye were utterly unlike. The sweet attractiveness of baby-speech is due in no small measure to its highly pictorial and metaphorical character. Like the primitive language of the race, that of the child is continually used as a vehicle for poetical comparison. The child and the poet have this in common, that their minds are not fettered by all the associations and habits of mind which lead us prosaic persons to separate things by absolutely insuperable barriers. In their case imagination darts swiftly, like a dragon-fly, from object to object, ever discovering beneath a surface-dissimilarity some unobtrusive likeness. A child is apt to puzzle its elders by these swift movements of its mind. It requires a certain poetic element in a parent to follow the lead of the daring child-fancy, and it is probable that many a fine perception of analogy by children has been quite thrown away on the dull and prejudiced minds of their seniors. To give an example of this metaphorical use of words by the child: C. when eighteen months old was one day watching his sister as she dipped her crust into her tea. He was evidently surprised by the rare sight, and after looking a moment or two, exclaimed “Ba!” (bath), laughing with delight, and trying, as was his wont when deeply interested in a spectacle, to push his mother’s face round so that she too might admire it. The boy delighted in such figurative use of words, now employing them as genuine similes, as when he said of a dog panting after a run, “Dat bow-wow like puff-puff” and of the first real ship he saw sailing, “Dat ship go majory daw” (i. e. like marjory-daw in the nursery rhyme). Like many a poet he has had his recurring or standing metaphors. Thus, as we have seen, “ship” was the figurative expression for all objects having a pyramidal form. A pretty example of his love of metaphor was his habit of calling the needle in a small compass of his father’s “bir” (bird). It needs a baby-mind to detect the faint resemblance to the bird form and the bird movement here. The same tendency of the child-mind to view things metaphorically or by the aid of analogies to what is already familiar, shows itself in the habit of personifying natural objects. It has been said by a living philosopher that children do not attribute life, thought, and purpose to inanimate things; but observation of their use of words is, I think, decidedly against this view. C. had a way from a very early date of looking at natural objects as though by their actions they specially aimed at affecting his well-being. Thus he would show all the signs of kingly displeasure when his serenity of mind was disturbed by noises. When, for example, he was taken to the seaside (about when twenty months old), he greatly disappointed his parent, expectant of childish wonder in his eyes by merely muttering “Water make noise.” Again, he happened one day in the last week of his second year to be in the garden with his father while it was thundering. On hearing the sound he said with an evident tone of annoyance, “Tonna mâ Ninghi noi,” i. e. thunder makes noise for C., and he instantly added, “Notty tonna!” (naughty thunder). He was falling into that habit of mind against which philosophers have often warned us, making man the measure of the universe. The idea that the solemn roar of thunder was specially designed to disturb the peace of mind of so diminutive a person seems no doubt absurd enough; yet how many of us are altogether free from the same narrow, vain, egoistic way of looking out into the vast and boundless cosmos? —English Illustrated Magazine.

Has England a School of Musical Composition? – We suppose the question must be answered in the affirmative; but with the knowledgment that the insularity of England reduces the idea to a minimum. Our insular position is a natural obstacle to the complete development of our music. We pursue music with all activity, but that of itself is but the physique, as it were, of vitality. It is an evident truth that, besides that the artistic and intellectual development of this great human art necessitates a wide area for its growth, its vital or emotional being demands a more southern country than England. Central Europe is the seat of music’s history. Our aspirations, intelligent activity, and association with the Continent, lead to our reflecting the workmanship of southern art in our serious compositions; this is not a struggle, as that to find vitality, but an achievement. This stage of imitation greatly characterizes modern English music effort. Even Arthur Sullivan, our modern land Dibdin, shows the intellectual side of his genius in imitation. The great mass of our modern melody is too conscious of structure to be true, too sentimental to be real. These are relative descriptions, but the whole condition of English music is relative. The musical faculty – the spontaneous creation of music is national – is natural, yet is not equally developed. Individual instances of its truthful, vital, genuine (whatever expression signifies relationship to southern developments) existence in our history are so rare and isolated, that we might surely wonder how they came to be, and the influence of their example on us has had proportionately small consequences. But the typical English activity and work – which is quite another thing – goes on. We may certainly allow a national style of English Church music in the past, but must remember that religion was its raison d’être– a wider development of music was absent. Thus, in asking ourselves if we have or have not a school of English music – taking “school” to mean the mould of music’s expression determined by the circumstances and men of the time – we must acknowledge that, though we doubtless have something of the sort, it is only in the slightest degree perceptible. —Musical Opinion.

Booty in War. – Charles, as soon as he had finished conquering Lorraine, gathered his host at Besançon, and marched to Granson on the Neuchâtel Lake. Here a garrison of 500 Swiss was betrayed to him; he hanged or drowned every man of them, including the monks who came as chaplains. Justly enraged, the Federation gathered its whole strength, and with 24,000 men fell upon Charles unawares and defeated him utterly. The booty was something fabulous; Burgundy, taking taxes from all the rich Netherland towns, was then the richest Power in Europe. The spoil was valued at a quarter of a million. You may calculate what that would be worth now. The big diamonds – one is now in the Pope’s tiara, another was long the glory of the French regalia – were among the valuables. The Duke’s throne was valued at 11,000 gulden; all his plate, his silver bedstead, his wonderfully illuminated prayer-book, were taken, besides 1,000,000 gulden in his treasure chest, 10,000 horses, and a proportionate quantity of all kinds of stores. No wonder the Swiss never recovered Granson; there were long and bitter quarrels about the division of the booty, and the coming in of so much wealth amongst a simple people demoralised them sadly, and led the way to their becoming the chief mercenaries of Europe. —Good Words.

Sir Henry Bessemer. – Among his early contrivances may be noted a method by which basso-relievos were copied on cardboard, and also a machine for producing bronze-dust at a low price. Knowing well the inefficiency of the Patent Laws, Bessemer was careful to conduct his operations as secretly as possible, and the manufacture of gold bronze powder is still invested with much of the mystery of mediæval alchemy. After inventing a system for improving the Government stamps on deeds and other documents, so as to render forgery impossible, saving the country several millions (for which he received no reward or acknowledgment whatever from the Government), he submitted to the authorities at Woolwich a novel form of projectile. On its rejection in England he exhibited it to the emperors of France and Austria, who acknowledged its value, and gave the inventor every assistance for its improvement. It was incidentally remarked, however, that some stronger metal than any then in use would be necessary for the construction of the guns, to enable them to resist so heavy a charge. It is said that this remark first led Bessemer to turn his attention to the improvement of the method of smelting iron. He established and maintained at his own expense a foundry in the north of London, where he continued for several years to expend nearly the whole of his private fortune. At length, in 1856, at the Cheltenham meeting of the British Association, the scientific world was startled, and almost a panic created at Birmingham, by the announcement of the discovery of the process, since known as the Bessemer process, which was to effect a revolution in the metal industry. The invention, however, remained incomplete till the year 1859, when it first began to be adopted by the Sheffield and Birmingham manufacturers. Recent improvements – more particularly the Gilchrist-Thomas process – have since greatly increased its value and removed, or at least diminished, its earlier defects. Bessemer steel is now used for every purpose in “hardware,” and has almost entirely supplanted wrought iron. For rails it has proved invaluable. Then its extreme tenacity and toughness render it most suitable for the purposes of ship-building and boiler construction. It has been adopted by Krupp in Prussia, and Elpstrand in Sweden, for the manufacture of their celebrated ordnance; and even Sir William Armstrong, in designing his coiled steel guns, resorted to the Bessemer metal. Mr. W. D. Allen, of Sheffield, who was the first to adopt the process practically and commercially, declared recently that he had made every conceivable article with the metal, from an intermediate crank shaft to a corkscrew or table-knife. In 1878 a Commission of the Admiralty adopted Bessemer steel as the most serviceable material for anchors. The inventions of Sir Henry Bessemer are embodied in no less than 114 patents, and the drawings of these alone, all from his own pencil, fill seven volumes. Some of these refer to the casting of printing types, and various improvements in the management of a type foundry; to railway brakes; to the improved manufacture of glass; the silvering of glass; to improved apparatus in sugar refining; and to producing ornamental surfaces on leather and textile fabrics. In 1875 he invented the Bessemer saloon steamer for preventing sea-sickness. A company was formed, he himself subscribing £25,000 towards the capital, but unfortunately it failed. The institute of Civil Engineers was the first body to recognise the merits of Mr. Bessemer’s work, and in 1858 conferred upon him the Telford gold medal. The interposition of the British Government prevented him receiving from the Emperor Napoleon III. the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor. From the Emperor of Austria he received the Cross of a Knight Commander of Francis Joseph. In 1871, he was elected President of the Iron and Steel Institute, and in the following year was awarded the Albert Gold Medal by the Society of Arts. In 1879 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and a few months afterwards was knighted at Windsor. —Science.

notes

1

The best summary of the benefits which the Christian religion has historically wrought for mankind is, I think, to be found in that eloquent book “Gesta Christi,” by the great American philanthropist, Mr. Charles Brace.

The author has made no attempt to delineate the shadowy side of the glowing picture, the evils of superstition and persecution wherewith men have marred those benefits.

2

He says: “The leading doctrines of theology are noble and glorious;” and he acknowledges that people who were able to accept them are “ennobled by their creed.” They are “carried above and beyond the petty side of life; and if the virtue of propositions depended, not upon the evidence by which they may be supported, but their intrinsic beauty and utility, they might vindicate their creed against all others” (p. 917). To some of us the notion of “noble and glorious” fictions is difficult to accept. The highest thought of our poor minds, whatever it be, has surely as such some presumption in favor of its truth.

3

“Agnostic Morality,” Contemporary Review, June, 1883.

4

British tonnage increased from 4,272,962 in 1850 to 5,710,968 in 1860; American tonnage from 3,485,266 in 1850 to 5,297,177 in 1860. On the 30th of June, 1883, twenty years after the civil war, American tonnage stood at 4,235,487!

5

“The poet doubtless here refers to his Priory of St. Cosme-en-l’Isle; of which, Duperron, in his funeral oration on Ronsard, has said: ‘This Priory is placed in a very agreeable situation on the banks of the river Loire, surrounded by thickets, streams, and all the natural beauties which embellish Touraine, of which it is, as it were, the eye and the charm.’ Ronsard, in fact, returned thither to die.” – Sainte-Beuve, ‘Poésie Française au XVI

. Siècle’ (Paris, 1869), p. 307.

6

I give a brief sketch of this in my book, “La Prusse et l’Autriche depuis Sadowa,” vol. i., p. 265.

7

“It is absolutely necessary for Dalmatia to become connected with Bosnia. As a Montenegrin guide one day remarked to Miss Muir Mackenzie, ‘Dalmatia without Bosnia, is like a face without a head, and Bosnia without Dalmatia is a head without a face.’ There being no communication between the Dalmatian ports and the inland villages, the former with their fine names are but unimportant little towns stripped of all their former splendor. For instance, Ragusa, formerly an independent Republic, has a population of 6,000 inhabitants; Zara 9,000; Zebeniko 6,000; and Cattaro, situated in the most lovely bay in Europe, and with a natural basin sufficiently spacious to accommodate the navy of all Europe, has but 2,078 inhabitants. In several of these impoverished cities, beggars have taken up their abode in the ancient palaces of the princes of commerce, and the lion of St. Mark overlooks these buildings falling into ruins. This coast, which has the misfortune to adjoin a Turkish province, will never regain its former position until good roads and railways have been constructed between its splendid ports and the fertile inland territory, whose productiveness is at present essentially hampered by the vilest imaginable administration.” —La Prusse et l’Autriche depuis Sadowa, ii. p. 151. 1868.

8

Lives of the Archbishops, iii, 76.

9

Camden’s Britannia.

10

Church History, Book IV. I.

11

Ibid., Book III. century xiii.

12

Causa Dei – the title of Bradwardine’s great work.

13

A Catalogue of the Bishops of England, by Francis Godwin, now Bishop of Landaff: 1615.

14

Cotton’s Abridgment of Records, p. 102, quoted by Lewis, in his Life of Wycliffe, p. 19.