XXXIX. Charles Darwin and the Development of Science…

XXXIX. Charles Darwin and the Development of Science

[=Progress of Scientific Discovery in the Past=]

Science by no means belongs to the nineteenth century. It has been extant upon the earth ever since man began to observe and consider the marvels of the universe. We can trace it back to an age possibly ten thousand years remote, when men began to watch and record the movements of the stars in the heavens above the broad Babylonian plain. It grew active among the Greeks of Alexandria in that too brief period before the hand of war checked for centuries the progress of mankind. It rose again in Europe during the mediæval period, and became active during the later centuries of this period. In the centuries immediately preceding the nineteenth numbers of great scientists arose, and many highly important discoveries were made, while theoretical science achieved a remarkable progress, its ranks being adorned by such names as those of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, and various others of world-wide fame that might be given. Thus at the dawn of the nineteenth century there existed a great groundwork of scientific facts and theories upon which to build the massive future edifice.

[=Scientific Activity of the Nineteenth Century=]

This building has been going on with extraordinary rapidity during the present century, and to-day our knowledge of the facts of science is immensely greater than that of our predecessors of a century ago; while of the views entertained and theories promulgated previous to 1800, the great sum have been thrown overboard and replaced by others founded upon a much wider and deeper knowledge of facts.

New and important theoretical views of science have been reached in all departments. Recent chemistry, for instance, is a very different thing from the chemistry of a century ago. Geology has been largely transformed within the century. Heat, once supposed to be a substance, is now known to be a motion; light, formerly thought to be a direct motion of particles, is now believed to be a wave motion; new and important conceptions have been reached concerning electricity and magnetism; and our knowledge of the various sciences that have to do with the world of life is extraordinarily advanced. As for the practical applications of science, it may suffice to present the startling fact that the substance of the atmosphere, scarcely known a century ago, can now be reduced to a liquid and carried about like water in a bucket.

In view of the facts here briefly stated it might almost be said that science, as it exists to-day, is a result of nineteenth century thought and observation; since that of the past was largely theoretical and the bulk of its theories have been set aside, while the scientific observations of former times were but a drop in the bucket as compared with the vast multitude of those of the past hundred years. As regards the utilization of scientific facts, their application to the benefit of mankind, this is almost solely the work of the century under review, and in no direction has invention produced more wonderful and useful results.

[=Wallace's "Wonderful Century"=]

[=Epoch-Making Discoveries of Past Times=]

Alfred Russell Wallace, one of the most distinguished scientists of recent times, in his work entitled "The Wonderful Century," has made a careful inventory of the discoveries and inventions to which the progress of mankind is mainly due, and he divides them into two groups, the first embracing all the epoch-making discoveries achieved by men previous to the present century, and the second taking in the steps of progress of equal importance which have been made in the nineteenth century. In the first list he finds only fifteen items of the highest rank, and the claims of some even of these to a separate place are not beyond question, since they may not really be of epoch-making character. He puts first in the list the following, viz.: Alphabetic writing and the Arabic notation, which have always been powerful engines of knowledge and discovery. Their inventors are unknown, lost in the dim twilight of prehistoric times. As the third great discovery of ancient times he names the development of geometry. Coming after a vast interval to the fourteenth century A. D., we find the mariner's compass, and in the fifteenth the printing press, both of which beyond question are of the same character and rank as alphabetic writing. From the sixteenth century we get no physical invention or discovery of leading importance, but it witnessed an amazing movement of the human mind, which in good time gave rise to the great catalogue of advances of the seventeenth century. To this he credits the invention of the telescope, and, though not of equal rank, the barometer and thermometer (which he classes as one discovery), and in other fields the discovery of the differential calculus, of gravitation, of the laws of planetary motion, of the circulation of the blood, and the measurement of the velocity of light. To the eighteenth century he refers the more important of the earlier steps in the evolution of the steam engine and the foundation of both modern chemistry and electrical science. This completes the list. To the above many would add Jenner's discovery of vaccination and probably several others. Each writer, in making up such a list, would be governed in a measure by his personal range of studies, but no one would be likely to deviate widely from the above list.

[=Great Discoveries of the Nineteenth Century=]

Now what has been the record since 1800? How does the nineteenth century compare with its predecessors? In Wallace's view it is not to be compared, as regards scientific progress and discovery, with any single century, but with all past time. In fact, it far outstrips the entire progress of mankind in the ages preceding 1800.

Estimating on the same basis as that which he previously adopted, Wallace finds twenty-four discoveries and inventions of the first class that have had their origin in the nineteenth century, against the fifteen enumerated from all previous time.

Of the same rank with Newton's theory of gravitation, which comes from the seventeenth century, stands out the doctrine of the correlation and conservation of forces, one of the widest and most far reaching generalizations that the mind of man has yet reached. Against Kepler's laws of planetary motions from the seventeenth century we can set the nebular theory of the nineteenth. The telescope of the seventeenth is matched by the spectroscope of the nineteenth. If the first reveals to us myriads of suns, otherwise unseen, scattered through the illimitable fields of space, the second tells us what substances compose these suns and maintain their distant fires, and, most wonderful of all, the direction and the rate in which each is moving. Harvey's immortal discovery of the seventeenth century finds a full equivalent in the germ theory of disease of the nineteenth. The mariner's compass of the fourteenth century easily yields first place to the electric telegraph of the nineteenth, while the barometer and thermometer of the seventeenth century are certainly less wonderful, though perhaps not less serviceable, than the telephone and phonograph and the Röntgen rays of our own day.

[=Useful and Scientific Steps of Progress=]

We may more briefly enumerate the remaining discoveries cited by Wallace, partly, as will be perceived, mechanical, but mainly results of scientific research. Early in the century came the inestimable inventions of the railway engine and the steamboat, and somewhat later the minor but highly useful discoveries of the lucifer match and of gas illumination. These were quickly followed by the wonderful discovery of photography, than which few things have added more to the enjoyment of man. Equally important in relation to his relief from suffering are the remarkable discoveries of anæsthetics and the antiseptic method in surgery. Another of the great discoveries of the age is that of the electric light, with its remarkably rapid development and utilization.

More purely scientific in character are Mendeljeff's discovery of the periodic law in chemistry, the molecular theory of matter, the direct measurement of the velocity of light, and the remarkable utility of floating dust in meteorology. The list concludes with the geological theory of the glacial age, the discovery of the great antiquity of man, the cell theory and the doctrines of embryological development, and last, but, in pure science, perhaps the greatest, Darwin's famous theory of organic evolution--developed by Spencer into universal evolution.

It is quite possible that other nineteenth century scientists would be tempted to expand this list, and perhaps add considerably to Wallace's twenty-four epoch-making discoveries. Indeed, since his book was written, a twenty-fifth has arisen, in the discovery of wireless telegraphy, the scientific marvel of the end of the century, too young as yet for its vast possibilities to be perceived. We might also mention the electric motor and liquid air as of equal importance with some of those enumerated.

[=Foster's Views on Recent Progress=]

An interesting review of the advances made in science during the nineteenth century was offered by Sir Michael Foster, President of the British Association in its 1899 meeting, from which we may quote. He first touched upon chemistry. The ancients, he said, thought that but four elements existed--fire, air, earth, and water. Anything like a correct notion of the composition of matter dates from the latter part of the eighteenth century, when Priestley and Lavoisier revealed to the world the nature of oxygen, and thus led to a long series of fruitful discoveries.

The whole history of electricity as a servant of man is confined to the last sixty or seventy years, and really springs from Volta's invention of the galvanic battery. Frictional electricity had long been known, but nothing beyond curious laboratory experiments were conducted with it. The investigations and discoveries of Oersted and Faraday, which made possible the telegraph, dynamo, trolley car and telephone, followed Volta's discovery of the means of producing a steady current of electricity--first announced in 1799.

Geology, too, he states to be a new born science. Although numerous ingenious theories were entertained in regard to the origin and significance of the strata rock, it was only at the close of the eighteenth century that men began to recognize that the earth's crust, with its various layers of rock, was a vast book of history, each leaf of which told of periods of thousands or millions of years. The slow processes of formation, and the embedding of the remains of the animal and vegetable life of those ancient times, were only interpreted aright after Hutton, Playfair and Cuvier had wrestled with the problem.

[=Headlights of Progress=]

With these interesting views of prominent scientists, we may proceed to a more detailed consideration of the scientific triumphs of the century. To present anything other than the headlights of its progress, in the space at our command, would be impossible, in view of the extraordinary accumulation of facts made by its many thousands of observers, and the multitude of generalizations, of the most varied character, offered by the thinkers in the domain of science. These generalizations vary in importance as much as they do in character. Many of them are evidently temporary only, and must fall before the future progress of discovery; others are founded upon such a multitude of significant facts, and are of such inherent probability, that they seem likely to be as permanent as the theories of Galileo, Kepler, Newton, and others of the older worthies.

[=Discoveries in Astronomy=]

Beginning with astronomy, the oldest and noblest of the sciences, we could record a vast number of minor discoveries, but shall confine ourselves to the major ones. Progress in astronomy has kept in close pace with development in instruments. The telescope of the end of the century, for instance, has enormously greater space-penetrating and star-defining powers than that used at the beginning, and has added extraordinarily to our knowledge of the number of stars, the character of their groupings, and the constitution of solar orbs and nebulæ. These results have been greatly added to by the use of the camera in astronomy, the photograph revealing stellar secrets which could never have been learned by the aid of the telescope alone. This has also the great advantage of placing on record the positions of the stars at any fixed moment, and thus rendering comparatively easy the detection of motions among them.

[=Revelations of the Spectroscope=]

But it is to a new instrument of research, the spectroscope, that we owe our most interesting knowledge of the stars. This wonderful instrument enables us to analyze the ray of light itself, to study the many lines by which the vari-colored spectrum is crossed and discover to what substances certain groups of lines are due. From studying with this instrument the substances which compose the earth, science has taken to studying the stars, and has found that not only our sun, but suns whose distance is almost beyond the grasp of thought, are made up largely of chemical substances similar to those that exist in the earth. A second result of the use of this instrument has been to prove that there are true nebulæ in the heavens, masses of star dust or vapor not yet gathered into orbs, and that there are dark suns, great invisible orbs, which have cooled until they have ceased to give off light. A third result is the power of tracing the motions of stars which are passing in a direct line to or from the earth. By this means it has been found that many of the double or multiple stars are revolving around each other. A late discovery in this direction, made in 1899, is that the Polar star, which appears single in the most powerful telescope, is really made up of three stars, two of which revolve round each other every four hours, while the two circle round a more distant companion.

[=New Facts in the Solar System=]

Late astronomy has revealed to us many marvels of the solar system. Before the nineteenth century it was not known that any planetary bodies existed between Mars and Jupiter. On the first day of the century--January 1, 1801--Ceres, the first of the asteroids or planetoids, was discovered. Three others were soon discovered, and later on smaller ones began to be found in multitudes, so that by the end of the century not less than four hundred and fifty of these small planetary bodies were known. Of other discoveries we may briefly refer to the new facts discovered concerning comets and meteors, planets and satellites, the condition of the sun's surface, the detailed knowledge of the surface conditions of Mars and the Moon, the character of Saturn's rings, the discovery of the planet Neptune etc., all due to nineteenth century research.

[=The Advance of Chemistry=]

In the group of sciences known under the general title of Physics--chemistry, light, heat, electricity, and magnetism--the progress has been equally decided and many of the discoveries of almost startling significance. Chemistry, as it exists to-day, is almost wholly a child of the century. Many chemical substances were known in the past, but their number sinks into insignificance as compared with those of late discovery. Of chemical conceptions of earlier date, Dalton's theory of atoms is the only one of importance that still exists. The view long maintained--until late in the nineteenth century, in fact--that organic and inorganic chemistry are separated from each other by a wide gap, is no longer held. Hundreds of organic substances, some of them of great complexity, have been made in the chemist's laboratory, and can now be classed as properly with inorganic as with organic substances. The gap has been closed, and there is now but one chemistry. Only the most intricate chemical compounds still lie beyond the chemist's grasp, and the isolation of these may be at any time overthrown. Organic chemistry has become simply the chemistry of carbon-compounds.

One chemical theory of recent date, the vortex atom theory of Lord Kelvin, has quickly met its fate, being abandoned by its author himself, but the study of it has been rich in results. It is now widely held that the universe is made up of two great basic elements, ether and matter, or perhaps one only, since it seems highly probable that the atom of matter is a minute, self coherent mass of ether. It is further held as doubtful that atoms ever exist alone, they being combined by their attractions into small bodies known as molecules, which are in incessant motion, and to whose activity the physical force of the universe is largely due.

One of the most important chemical discoveries of the century was that of the "periodic law" of the chemical elements, advanced by the Russian scientist Mendeljeff, under which the weights of the atoms of the elements were for the first time placed in harmony with each other, and a fixed numerical relation shown to exist between them. We may conclude this brief glance at the science by mention of the very high temperature which the electric furnace has now placed at the command of chemists, and the equally great refrigeration now attainable, by which the air itself can easily be liquified and even frozen into a solid mass.

[=Light and Its Phenomena=]

Light, naturally one of the earliest of the phenomena of nature to attract the attention of man, was little understood until after the advent of the nineteenth century. It was of old supposed to be a substance of so rapid motion as to be practically instantaneous in its movement through space. Even Newton looked upon it as a substance given off by shining bodies, and it remained for Young, in the beginning of the nineteenth century, to prove that light is not a substance but a motion, a series of rapid waves or undulations in a substance extending throughout space, and known as the lumeniferous ether. The idea that light is instantaneous in its motion also vanished when Roemer discovered, by observing the eclipses of Jupiter's moons, that it takes about eight minutes for the ray of light to travel from the sun to the earth. A cannon ball moving at the rate of 1,700 feet per second would take about nine years to make the same journey, the wave of light traveling at the extraordinary speed of over 186,000 miles in a second. Yet immensely rapid as is this rate of movement, we do not need to go to the sun and planets to measure the speed of light, but can now do so, by the use of delicate instruments, on a few miles of the earth's surface. This is one of the great discoveries enumerated by Wallace.

[=Late Discoveries in Optics=]

The discoveries in relation to the constitution and characteristics of light made during the century have been so numerous that we must confine ourselves to those of major importance. Much might be said about the phenomena of polarization, refraction, diffraction, photography, and the development of the power of lenses, to which the great advance in telescopic and microscopic observation is due. Among these steps of progress perhaps the most interesting is the development of instantaneous photography, a striking result of which is the power, by aid of photographs taken in rapid succession, of portraying objects in motion--living pictures, as they are called--an exhibit now so common and so marvelous. But among all the advances in the science of optics the most important are spectrum analysis and the Röntgen ray. The remarkable discoveries made in astronomy by the former of these have been already stated. The Röntgen ray, which has the power of rendering ordinarily opaque substances transparent, has become of extraordinary value in surgery, as showing the exact location of foreign substances within the body, the position and character of bone fractures, etc.

[=Heat as a Mode of Motion=]

Heat, once looked upon as a substance, and known by the now obsolete name of Caloric, has been demonstrated to be, like light, a motion, the incessant leaping about of the molecules of matter, this motion being readily transferable from one substance to another, and forming the great substratum of power in the universe. This theory, first promulgated by Count Rumford, an American by birth, was fully worked out by others, and put in popular form by Professor Tyndall, an English scientist, in his "Heat Considered as a Mode of Motion," published in 1862. Radiant heat is identical with light, being a vibration of the ether. It may be further said in relation to heat phenomena that remarkable power in producing very high and extremely low temperatures is now possessed. By the former the most refractory substances may be vaporized. By the latter the most volatile gases may be liquified and even frozen. The point of absolute zero, that in which all heat motion would disappear, is estimated to be at the temperature of 274 degrees 6 minutes centigrade below the freezing point of water. A degree of cold within some forty degrees of this has been reached in the liquefaction of hydrogen. In 1889 the climax in this direction was reached in the reduction, by Professor Dewar, of the very volatile element hydrogen to the solid state.

[=Conservation and Correlation of Forces=]

Electricity, formerly, like heat and light, looked upon as a substance, is now known to be a motion, being, in fact, identical in origin with light and radiant heat. All these forces are considered to be motions of the lumeniferous ether, their principal distinction being in length of wave. In fact, it is easy to convert one of them into the other, and the great doctrine of the conservation and correlation of forces means simply that heat, light and electricity may be mutually transformed, and that no loss of motion or force takes place in these changes from one mode of motion to another. In the operation of the electric trolley car, to offer a familiar example, the heat power of coal is first transformed into engine motion, then into electricity, then again into light and heat within the car, then into mass motion in the motor, and finally passes away as electricity. No better example of the "correlation of forces" than this familiar instance could be adduced.

[=Applications of Electricity=]

As regards the nature of electricity, though innumerable observations have been made during the nineteenth century and a vast multitude of facts put upon record, we know little more than is above stated. But if we turn to the practical applications of electric power, it is to find these standing high among the great advances of the century. To it we owe the highly important discoveries of the telegraph and the telephone; the conversion of engine power into electricity by the dynamo and the use of this in moving cars, carriages and machinery; the storage battery, with its similar applications; the use of electricity in lighting and heating, the latter remarkably exemplified in the electric furnace, which yields the highest temperature known on the earth; the welding of metals by electricity; the electrotype and electro-plating; the conversion of water power into electric force and its transportation by wire for long distances; the therapeutic uses of the electric current, and other applications too numerous to mention.

[=The Principles of Magnetism=]

In regard to the magnet, the handmaid of electric power, we know little other than that the force displayed by it seems to be a result of some mode of rotation in the atoms or molecules of matter, since all the effects of magnetism can be produced by the rotary motion of the electric current in spirals of wire. From this it is thought that the molecular motion to which magnetism is due may be of an electric character, though the permanence of the magnetic force renders this very doubtful. It seems most probable that magnetism is a result of some special condition of the ordinary, inherent motions of atoms--not their fluctuating heat activities, but those fixed motions upon which their organization and persistence depend. The readiness with which soft iron can be magnetized and demagnetized by the use of the electric current is of extraordinary value in the practical applications of electricity. To this fact we owe the dynamo and the electric motor, with all their varied uses.

With this passing glance at the physical forces, we may proceed to the consideration of the great science of geology, which, as above stated by Foster, is a new-born science, almost wholly of nineteenth century development. Geology as it now exists may be said to date from 1790, when William Smith published his "Tabular View," in which he showed the proper succession of the rock strata and pointed out that each group of rocks is marked by fossils peculiar to itself. With his work began that great series of close observations which still continue, and which have laid the constitution of the earth's crust open before us in many of its intimate details.

[=Progress in Geology=]

Among the many geologists of the century Sir Charles Lyell stands prominent, his "Principles of Geology" (1830-33) forming an epoch in the advance of the science. Before his time the seeming breaks in the series of the rocks were looked upon as the results of mighty catastrophes, vast upheavals or depressions in the surface, which worked widespread destruction among animals and plants, these cataclysms being followed by new creations in the world of life. Lyell contended that the forces now at work are of the same type as those which have been always at work; that catastrophes have always been local, as they are now local; that general forces have acted slowly, and that there has been no world-wide break, either in rock deposits or the progress of human beings.

His views gave rise to a conception of the unbroken continuity of organic life which was greatly strengthened by the publication of Charles Darwin's "Origin of Species," which went far to do away with the old belief that each new life-form has arisen through special creation, and to replace it by the theory now widely held that all new forms of life arise through hereditary descent, with variation, from older forms. In this conception we have the basis of the recent theory of evolution, so thoroughly worked out and widely extended since Darwin's time--a theory including the doctrine that man himself is a result of descent, and not of special creation.

[=The Nebular and Meteoric Hypotheses=]

With geology is closely connected the Nebular Hypothesis of Kant and Laplace, of eighteenth century origin, to the effect that all the spheres of space originated in the condensation and rotation of immense volumes of nebulous vapor, similar to the nebulæ now known to exist in the heavens, and that each planet began its existence as a great gaseous globe, its evolution being due to the gradual process of cooling and condensing, by which its surface, and perhaps its whole mass, were in time converted into solid matter. This interesting doctrine of world evolution does not remain unquestioned. A new hypothesis was advanced by Professor Lockyer in the final decade of the nineteenth century, to the effect that spheral evolution is not due to the condensation of gaseous nebulæ, but of vast aggregations of those meteoric stones with which space seems filled, and which are drawn together by their mutual attractions, become intensely heated through their collisions, and are converted into liquids and gases through the heat thus evolved. It is possible that the visible nebulæ, like the comets, are great volumes of such meteors. This is the meteoric theory referred to in Wallace's category of great discoveries. It is still, however, far from being established.

[=The Science of Meteorology=]

Meteorology, the study of the atmosphere and its phenomena, is another science to which much attention was given during the century under review. A vast number of facts have been learned concerning the atmosphere, its alternations of heat and cold, of calm and storm, of pressure, of diminution of density and loss of heat in ascending, and of its fluctuations in humidity, with the variations of sunshine and cloud, fog, rain, snow, hail, lightning and other manifestations.

The study of the winds has been a prominent feature in the progress of this science, and our knowledge of the causes and character of storms has been greatly developed. The theory that storms are due to great rotary movements in the atmosphere, immense cyclonic whirls, frequently followed by reverse, or anti-cyclonic, movements, has gone far to clear up the mystery of the winds, while the destructive tornado, the terrific local whirl in the winds, has been closely studied, though not yet fully understood. These close observations of atmospheric changes have given rise to the Weather Bureau, by which the kind of weather to be looked for is predicted for the United States. Similar observations and predictions have been widely extended among civilized nations. This is a practical application in meteorology which has been of immense advantage, particularly in the field of navigation.

[=Progress in the Biological Sciences=]

Of the sciences with which the nineteenth century has had much to do, those relating to organic life, classed under the general title of biology, stand prominent, which includes botany and zoology. Subsidiary to these are the sciences of anatomy, physiology, embryology, psychology, anthropology, and several others of minor importance. We have, here laid out before us a very large subject, which has made remarkable progress during the past hundred years, much too great to handle except in brief general terms.

In botany and zoology alike, the development of the cell theory is one of the most conspicuous advances of the century. It has been shown clearly that all plants and animals are made up of minute cells, semi-fluid in consistency, and principally made up of a highly organized chemical compound known as protoplasm, which Huxley has denominated the "physical basis of life." These cells are the laboratories of the system. Motions and changes take place within them. They increase in size and divide in a peculiar manner, thus growing in number. Many of them have self-motion like that of the low forms known as amoebæ. Various chemical substances are elaborated in them, such as the osseous structure of animals, the wood-fibre of plants, and others which are given off into the sap or the blood. In short, they are the foundation stones of life, and the physical operations of the highest beings are made up of the combined and harmonized activities of these myriads of minute cells.

[=Classification of Plants and Animals=]

It would be impossible, unless we should devote a volume to the subject, to do justice to the progress of botany and zoology in the nineteenth century. This progress consists largely in observation and description of a vast multitude of varied forms, with the consequent study of their affinities, and their classification into family groups, ranging from species and varieties to orders and classes, or from minor and local to major and general groups. Both plants and animals have been divided up into a number of great orders, ranging in the former instance from the microscopic bacteria to the great and highly organized exogens, and in the latter from the minute unicellular forms to the mammalia. We have here, aside from the cell-theory, and the great progress in classification, nothing of epoch-making significance to offer, and are obliged to dismiss these subjects with this brief retrospect.

[=Division of the Cell=]

There are, however, two fields in which an important accumulation of facts in reference to organic life has been made, those of embryology and palæontology. The study of the organic cell by the microscope is one of the basic facts of embryology, since living operations take place within this cell. The network of minute fibres, of which it is largely made up, is seen to gather into two star-shaped forms with a connecting spindle of fibres, the division of which in the centre is followed by the division of the cell into two. This is the primary fact in reproduction, new cells being thus born. In higher production two cells, arising from opposite sexes, combine, and their growth and division give rise to the organs and tissues of a new living being. It is the development of these organs and tissues that constitutes the science of embryology.

[=The Sciences of the Embryo and the Fossil=]

The observation, under the microscope, of the stages of this development, has been of the highest value in the study of animal origin, and has aided greatly in the classification of animals. Many old ideas died out when it was clearly shown that all life begins in a single cell, from which the organs of the new being gradually arise. The most important lesson taught by embryology is that the embryo in its development passes through various stages of its ancestry, resembling now one, now another, of the lower animals, and gains for a brief time organs which some of its ancestors possessed permanently. Of these facts the most significant is that the embryo of man develops gill-slits like those which the fish uses in breathing. These are of no use to it and soon disappear, but their appearance is very strong evidence that the fish form lay in the line of man's ancestry, and that man has developed through a long series of the lower animals.

In palæontology, or the study of fossil forms of animals and plant life, we have the embryology of races as contrasted with that of individuals. The study of the multitude of these forms which has been collected within the past century has enabled man to fill many of the gaps which formerly appeared to divide animal forms, and has furnished very strong arguments in favor of the descent of new species from older ones. One of the most striking of these facts is that in relation to the horse, of which a practically complete series of ancestral forms have been found, leading from a small five-toed animal, far back in geological time, through forms in which the toes decrease in number and the animal increases in size until the large single-toed horse is reached.

Two other organic sciences, those of anatomy and physiology, have added enormously to our knowledge of animated nature. Anatomy, which is of high practical importance from its relation to surgery, is a science of ancient origin, many important facts concerning it having been discovered by the physicians of old Greece and Rome. This study continued during later centuries, and by the opening of the nineteenth the gross anatomy of the human frame was fairly well known, and many facts in its finer anatomy had been traced. In later anatomical work the microscope has played an active part, and has yielded numbers of important revelations.

[=Comparative Anatomy=]

What is known as comparative anatomy has formed perhaps the most important field of nineteenth century study in this domain of science. Though this branch of anatomical study is as old as Aristotle, little was done in it from his time to that of Cuvier, who was the founder of the science of palæontology, and the first to show that the forms and affinities of fossil forms could be deduced from the study of existing animals. If a fossil jaw were found, for instance, with the teeth of a ruminant, it could be taken for granted that it came from an animal whose feet had hoofs instead of claws. It is often said that Cuvier could construct an animal from a single bone, and though this is saying much more than the facts bear out, he did make some marvelous predictions of this kind.

[=Predictions Concerning Fossil Animals=]

A notable triumph of the science of comparative anatomy was the prediction made by Cope, Marsh, and Kowalewsky, from the fact that specialized forms are preceded by others of more generalized structure, that an animal must once have existed with affinities, on the one hand, with hoofed animals, and on the other with the carnivores and the lemurs. This prediction was fulfilled in the discovery of the fossil Phenacodus in the Eocene deposits of the western United States. The study of comparative anatomy, particularly in its application to fossil forms, has aided greatly in the acceptance of the doctrine of evolution, and has been specially valuable in classification, as showing how nearly animals are related to each other. To classify animals and plants, in short, may be simply stated as a method of sorting them over and placing together those which have similar characters, just as in arranging a library we keep together books which relate to similar subjects. We may, for instance, make one general branch of history, a smaller branch of American history, and yet others relating to states, to counties, to cities and towns, and, most special of all, to particular families.

[=Discoveries in Physiology=]

The science of physiology differs from that of anatomy in dealing with the functions of life instead of with its forms. The study of these functions has gone on for many centuries, covering the various operations of motion, nutrition, respiration, nervous action, growth, and reproduction, with the many minor functions included under these. Though many of the facts of physiology were discovered in earlier centuries, the scientists of the nineteenth have been busy in adding to the list, and a number of important discoveries have been made. Prominent among these is that of anæsthesia, the discovery that by the inhalation of certain gases a state of temporary insensibility can be produced, lasting long enough to permit surgical and dental operations to be performed without pain; and that of antiseptical surgery, in which, by the employment of other chemical substances, wounds can be kept free from the action of deleterious substances, and surgical operations be performed without the perils formerly arising from inflammation,--the disease--producing germs and poisons being kept out.

[=Living Threads of the Brain=]

One of the great gains of the century, says Sir Michael Foster, from whom we have already quoted, is in our insight into nervous phenomena. "We now know that what takes place along a tiny thread we call a nerve fibre differs from that which takes place along its fellow threads; that differing nervous impulses travel along different nerve fibres; and that nervous and psychical events are the outcome of the clashing of nervous impulses as they sweep along the closely woven web of living threads, of which the brain is made. We have learned by experiment and observation that the pattern of the web determines the play of the impulses; and we can already explain many of the obscure problems, not only of nervous disease, but of nervous life, by an analysis, tracking out the devious and linked paths of the nervous threads."

[=Brain Surgery=]

This observation links together the sciences of physiology and psychology, the latter the science of mental phenomena, the exact study of which largely belongs to the nineteenth century. Broad as this subject is, and much as has been done in it, few facts stand out with sufficient distinctness to call for special mention here. The most famous psychical experiments are those made on the brains of some of the animals below man, and especially on that of the monkey, by which the functions of the several sections of the brain have been to some extent mapped out, the important fact being discovered that each function is confined to a fixed locality in the brain, and with it the accordant fact that certain regions of the brain control the muscular movements of certain parts of the body. In consequence, a particular affection of the hand, foot, or other region has often been traced to a diseased condition of some known part of the brain, and the trouble has been removed by a surgical operation on that organ.

[=The Study of Man's Past=]

The sciences last named refer specially to man, in whom they have been particularly studied. Other sciences relating to him exclusively are those of ethnology and anthropology, which belong almost solely to the nineteenth century. Ethnology, the study of the races of mankind, has been carefully and widely studied, and though the problems relating to it have not yet been solved, a very fair conception has been gained of the diversities and relations of mankind. Anthropology, embracing, as it does, archæology, has been prolific in discoveries. Archæological research has laid out before us the pathway of man through the ages and shown his gradual and steady development, through the successive periods of chipped stone and polished stone implements, of bronze and iron tools and weapons, with his gradual development of pottery, ornament, art, architecture, etc.

The most striking and notable fact in anthropological science is the total reversal of our ideas concerning the length of time man has dwelt upon the earth. The old limitation to a few thousand years, everywhere held at the beginning of the century, fails to reach back to a time when, as we now know, man had reached a considerable degree of civilization. Back of that we can trace him by his tools and his bones through a period many times more distant, leading back to the glacial age of geology and possibly to a much more remote era. Instead of man's residence upon the earth being restricted to some 6,000 years, it probably reached back not less than 60,000, and possibly to a much earlier period.

[=Development of the Science of Medicine=]

Among the minor sciences, there is one that has deserved that name only within the past thirty or forty years, the science of medicine. Formerly it was an art only, and by no means a satisfactory one. Nothing was known of the cause of the most virulent and destructive diseases--the infectuous fevers, the plague, cholera, etc. And the treatment of these, and in fact of nearly all diseases, was wholly empirical, depending solely upon experiment, not at all upon scientific principles. Experience showed that certain drugs and chemical compounds produced certain effects upon the system, and upon this physicians depended, with no conception of the cause of diseases and little knowledge of the physiological action of medicines.

[=Pasteur and His Discoveries=]

This state of affairs was materially changed during the final third of the nineteenth century, as the result of an extensive series of observations, set in train in great part by Louis Pasteur, Professor of chemistry at the Sorbonne in Paris, who was in large measure the originator of the germ theory of disease. The discovery that the fermentation which produces alcohol is due to a microscopic organism, the yeast-plant, gave Pasteur the clue, and he soon was able to prove that other fermentations,--the lactic, acetic, and butyric,--are also due to the action of living forms. It had further been found that the putrefaction of animal substance was caused in the same way, and it has since been abundantly demonstrated that if these minute organisms can be kept out of animal and vegetable substances these may be preserved indefinitely. This fact has given rise to one of the most important industries of the century, the keeping of fruits, meats, etc., by the process of air-tight canning.

Pasteur next extended his observations to the silkworm, which was subject to an epidemic disease that had almost ruined the silk industry in France. Others before him had discovered what were supposed to be disease germs in the blood of these worms. He proved positively that these bacteria, as they are called, are the cause of the disease, and that infection could be prevented by proper precautions. From the insect Pasteur proceeded to the higher animals, and investigated the cause of splenic fever, a dangerous epidemic among farm cattle. This he also proved to be caused by a minute form of life, and that fowl cholera is due to still another form of micro-organism. At a later date he studied hydrophobia, which he traced to a similar cause, and for the cure of which he established the Pasteur Institute in 1886.

This was not the whole of Pasteur's work. He discovered not only the cause of these diseases, but a system of vaccination by which they could be cured or prevented. By "cultivating" the bacteria in various ways, he succeeded in decreasing their dangerous properties, so that they would give the disease in a mild form,--acting in the same way as vaccination does in the case of small-pox, by enabling the animals to resist virulent attacks of the disease.

[=Koch and the Comma Bacillus=]

Pasteur's work was performed largely on the lower animals. Others have devoted themselves to the infectuous diseases which attack the human frame, and with remarkable success. Robert Koch, a German physician, applied himself to the study of cholera, which he proved in 1883 to be due to a germ named by him, from its shape, the comma bacillus. He discovered about the same time the bacterial organism which causes the fatal disease of tuberculosis, or consumption. Other investigators have traced typhoid and yellow fevers, diphtheria, and some other infectuous diseases to similar causes, and the study of diseases of this character has at last gained the status of a science.

Methods of cure are also becoming scientific. These minute organisms, once introduced within the body, tend to increase in number at an amazing rate, feeding on the blood and tissues, and giving off substances called toxines which in some cases are of highly poisonous character. To overcome their effect inoculation of anti-toxines is practiced. These are yielded by the same bacteria as produce the toxines, and inoculation with them enables the system to resist the action of the toxin poisons.

[=Antiseptic Surgery=]

We must dismiss this broad subject with this brief consideration, saying further that it is still largely in the stage of experiment, and that many of its theories must be left to the twentieth century for proof. Its study, however, has been of inestimable value in another direction, that of antiseptic surgery, a mode of treatment of surgical wounds introduced by Sir Joseph Lister, and now used by all surgeons with the most beneficial effects. It being recognized that inflammation and putrefactive action in wounded tissues are due to the action of disease germs introduced by the air or by the hands and instruments of the operators, the greatest care is now taken, by the use of chemical substances fatal to those germs, to prevent their entrance. As a result many diseases once common in hospitals--pyæmia, septicæmia, gangrene and erysipelas--have almost disappeared, fever and the formation of pus are prevented, and healing is rapid and continuous, while surgeons now daringly and successfully undertake operations in the most secret recesses of the body, which formerly would have led to certain death.

[=The Science of Hygiene=]

A secondary result of the germ theory of disease is the great advance in hygiene, which, formerly almost non-existent, has now reached the status of a science. It is still against these perilous germs that continuous battle is kept up, absolute cleanliness being the ultimatum at which physicians aim. Disease germs lurk everywhere, and can only be combatted by incessant care. The bacteria of cholera and typhoid fever, for example, are known to be conveyed in water, and the former epidemics of these diseases were in great measure due to the free use of polluted water for drinking. Their ravages have been largely arrested by boiling, filtering or otherwise purifying drinking water, while the free use of carbolic acid and other antiseptics in hospitals has put an end to the reign of infection which once made those places hives of disease.

We may fitly conclude this chapter with reference to a subject several times referred to in its pages, and which is looked upon as the greatest scientific theory of the century, that of evolution. The belief that new species of animals and plants arise through development from older ones is not of recent origin, but is at least as old as Aristotle. It was taught by Harvey, Erasmus Darwin, Goethe, and others in the eighteenth century, but the first attempt to develop a general theory of organic evolution was made by Lamarck, in the early part of the succeeding century. Lamarck's view, however, that the variations in animals are the result of efforts on their part to gain certain results,--the neck of the giraffe, for instance growing longer through its attempt to browse on leaves just out of reach,--did not gain acceptance, and it was not until after the middle of the century that a more satisfactory theory was presented.

[=Darwin and Natural Selection=]

The theory of evolution, as now understood, was arrived at simultaneously by Alfred Russell Wallace and Charles Darwin, it being fully worked out by the latter in his "Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection," published in 1859. This theory--that the changes in animals are due to the struggle for existence among vast multitudes, and the survival of those whose natural variations in form give them an advantage over their fellows in the battle of life--is now accepted by the great body of scientists, while the general idea of evolution has been extended to cover all changes in the universe, inorganic as well as organic. This extension has been the work of Herbert Spencer and many other scientific and philosophical writers, and no domain of nature is now left outside of the range of evolutionary forces. The argument which makes man himself a result of evolution, and not a product of special creation, was the final one presented by Darwin, and has given point to a multitude of observations in the science of anthropology made since his day.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XL. Literature and Art in the Nineteenth Century

[=The Literary Giants of Former Times=]

For ages the world has swarmed with writers. Almost since man first began to think he has been actively engaged in literary labor; long, indeed, before he had learned the art of writing, and when the work of his mind could be preserved only in his memory and that of his fellows. And the progress of man down the ages is starred with names that gleam like suns in the firmament of thought, those of such great magicians of the intellect as Homer, Virgil, Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, and a host besides. In this field of human effort therefore, the nineteenth century has nothing peculiar to show. Its finest labors are surpassed by those of others who lived centuries or ages ago. Here, almost alone in the circle of human labors, the century we deal with stands on the level of many of its predecessors and below that of others. Its single claim to distinction is an extraordinary activity in literary production, and especially in the field of novelistic fiction, which it may in great measure claim as its own. The novel before the nineteenth century was a crude pioneer; within the century it has grown into a product of the most advanced culture.

[=The Standing of the Fine Arts in the Past and the Present=]

What has been said about literature may be repeated about art. That, too, seemingly reached its culmination in the past, and the artists of to-day can merely seek to emulate, they cannot hope to surpass, those of former centuries. Sculpture, for instance, reached its highest stage of perfection in Greece, and painting in mediæval Europe; and strive as our artists may, they seem incapable of producing works of superior beauty and charm to those of the long ago. The architecture of to-day is largely a rescript of that of the past, the original ideas are few, nobler and more beautiful conceptions are wanting. Of the remaining fine arts, music and poetry--if we may class the latter in this category--the work of former centuries remains unsurpassed, and the best that can be done with the nineteenth century authors and artists is to mention their works and speak of their styles: it is impossible to place them on a pedestal overlooking that of their predecessors.

[=Early American Writers=]

Yet while what has been said is true as a whole, the literature of at least one country is almost wholly a product of the nineteenth century. This is the United States, which had writers, but little which fairly deserves the name of literature, prior to 1800. Aside from the famous papers of the Federalist, the work of the great statesmen of the Constitutional Convention, the writings of one or two authors of the Revolutionary period, and some of those of Benjamin Franklin, this country possessed hardly any literature, truly so-called, before the days of Washington Irving, whose polished "Sketch Book" essays, popular histories of Columbus and Mahomet, and humorous "History of New York," first taught the English critics that Americans could write as well as fight and work, and that a new world of thought was likely to arise beyond the waters. Irving was not alone. Contemporary with him were a number of graceful poets, chief among them being William Cullen Bryant, whose "Thanatopsis," still an American classic, is perhaps unequalled in depth of reflection and grandeur of thought by the work of any other author of nineteen years of age.

[=The Poets of the United States=]

Bryant, however, did not rise above this early effort, but rather declined, and he has been far surpassed in poetic fervor and richness of diction and conception by a number of his successors, notably Whittier, Longfellow and Lowell, men worthy to occupy a place beside the famous English poets of the century. Of these, Longfellow has gained the widest reputation, not, however, through force of superior genius, but from the sweetness, grace and ease of his diction and the popular character of his themes and handling, which have fitted his verse to touch the heart of the people in all lands. Lowell was not only a poet of rare depth of thought, but stands as the first of American satirists, his "Biglow Papers" being among the keenest and most humorous works of satire of the century, while they rank with the most purely national of American works. Of other American poets, of whom many of fine powers might be named, we shall mention only Edgar Allan Poe, the most original in style and musical in tone of all our writers of verse; the witty and genial Oliver Wendell Holmes; and Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose verse, while lacking polish and smoothness, is rich in poetic thought.

It was rather in his philosophy than in his poetry that the rich imagination and fine powers of reflection of Emerson made themselves manifest, and his essays stand prominent among the finest thought products of the century. They are expressed in telling apothems, of which many are little poems in themselves, while his works are instinct with the finest spirit of altruism and optimism, taking the most hopeful and cheerful views of the future of man and his institutions.

[=American Novelists=]

Among popular American novelists James Fenimore Cooper stands as the pioneer, his tales of ocean and Indian life, while of no superior merit as literature, holding a wide audience by their spirit of adventure and careful elaboration. Most original of our writers is Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose "Scarlet Letter," "Marble Faun," and other novels stand in a field of their own among the productions of the century, and take rank with the best of European productions. For the sensational and lurid tale Poe stands first, and his genius in this direction still brings him readers, despite the impossible incidents of many of his plots. Of other novelists we may name Harriet Beecher Stowe, with her famous "Uncle Tom's Cabin;" Howells, our leading naturalistic novelist; Edward Everett Hale, made famous by his "Man Without a Country;" Edward Eggleston, with the flavor of frontier life in his "Hoosier Schoolmaster," Lew Wallace, who touched a deep vein of popular approval in his "Ben Hur;" Henry James, too scholarly perhaps to be highly popular, but of the finest literary skill; Helen Hunt Jackson, whose "Ramona" depicts in thrilling idealism the wrongs of the Indians; and--but we must stop here, for as we approach the present day novelists of merit so throng the field of view that we cannot venture even to name them.

[=Historians of the United States=]

Not the least notable field of American literature lies in the domain of history, in which the authors of our country hold their own with the best of those abroad. Irving's graceful, though not critical, works of history we have mentioned. Greatest in this field stands Bancroft, whose history of our country is a classic of world-wide fame. Close beside him may be placed Prescott, with his glowing pictures of Spanish and Spanish-American life; Motley, the skilled and popular historian of the Netherlands; Parkman, who brilliantly pictures for us the romance of French enterprise in America; McMaster, who may fairly pose as the historian of the American people; and Parton, whose historical biographies are among the most readable of American books of this character.

[=American Orators=]

Our greatest orators, men whose speeches have become literature, hold a place in the history of our country. The famous Webster and Clay and Calhoun we have already described. Close after those come Sumner, Seward and others who stood high in the stirring period of the Civil War and of reconstruction. Aside from public speakers devoted to statesmanship are many others of fame, including the eloquent Edward Everett; the daring anti-slavery orator, Wendell Phillips; the earnest platform apostle of temperance, John B. Gough; the greatest of our pulpit orators, Henry Ward Beecher; the advocate of the "New South", Henry W. Grady; the most amusing of our recent orators, Chauncey M. Depew, and others of fine powers whom the need of brevity forbids our naming. The mention of Depew's vein of humor calls to mind this domain of literature, of which our country has had many popular representatives, chief among whom stands the rollicking and favorite Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain).

It has not been proposed here to present more than a passing review of the authors of the United States, or to attempt to name all those of leading merit. We might have named in political economy Henry C. Carey; in American history, John Fiske; in European church history, Henry C. Lea; and, in addition, eminent authors in legal lore, in science, in philosophy, in theology, and in other fields, all aiding to show the vast advance our people have made in this important direction since their feeble beginnings in the early days of the century.

[=The Poets of Great Britain=]

Unlike the United States, Great Britain came to the nineteenth century with a great galaxy of famous writers, leading back through many centuries. The eighteenth century is rich in great names, including among its poets Pope, Burns, Cowper, Gray and Thompson; among its essayists, Addison, Swift and Johnson; among its novelists, Richardson, Fielding, Smollet, Sterne, and Goldsmith; among its historians Gibbon, Hume and Robertson. It crossed the portals of the nineteenth century with a galaxy of poets more brilliant than has appeared in any equal period of English literature, including the world-famous Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Moore, Keats, Scott and Campbell, a group of writers which, taken as a whole, it would be difficult to match in any age. These sweet singers have been followed by others who have kept up the standard of British poetry, including Tennyson, one of the rarest of artists in words, the two Brownings, Matthew and Edwin Arnold, William Morris, Swinburne, the Rossettis, and various others of lesser note, among whom we must include Alfred Austin, the latest though not the most admired poet-laureate. These are but the elder flight of singing birds of the century, many younger ones being on the wing, among whom at present Rudyard Kipling leads the way.

[=British Novelists and Historians=]

In the second field of imaginative literature, that of the novel, the British isles are abundantly represented, and by some of the most famous names anywhere existing in this domain of intellectual activity. The names alone of these writers form a catalogue rarely equalled in the world's literature. It will suffice to name Scott, Thackeray, Dickens, Bulwer, Charlotte Bronte and Marion Evans as the most prominent among a multitude of able writers, containing many names high in merit and rich in variety of style. At the end of the century the field was crowded with writers of conspicuous skill.

[=Other British Writers=]

History has reached a high level in the hands of some of the ablest writers in this field known in any age, including Macaulay, Freeman, Froude, Grote, Thirwall, Hallam, Merivale, Buckle, Leckey, Carlyle and Green. Two of these, Carlyle and Macaulay, have won as high a place in the field of criticism and biography as in that of history. In art criticism Ruskin occupies a unique position, while theological subjects and religious thought are represented by such able exponents as Cardinal Newman, Dean Stanley, Canon Liddon, Dean Farrar, Martineau, Whately, Drummond, Spurgeon and many others. The great reviewers include Jeffrey, Lydrely, Smith, Hazlitt, De Quincey, Foster; the wits Sheridan, Hook, Jerrold, Smith and Hood; the philosophers Stewart, Bentham, Brown, Hamilton, Spencer and Stuart Mill; and the scientists Owen, Faraday, Murchison, Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall and various others.

[=French Novelists and Historians=]

The above named are merely some of the best known English writers of the century. If it were attempted to name all those of merit the list would be wearisomely long. The same may be said of the literary men of France, of whom many of world-wide fame flourished during the nineteenth century. At the beginning of the new age appeared the versatile Madame de Staël, and Chateaubriand with his famous "Genius of Christianity." These ushered in a host of able writers, of whom the leading lyric poets were Victor Hugo, Béranger, Lamartine and Alfred de Musset, and the most prominent novelists Hugo, Dumas, Sue, Balzac, Dudevant (George Sand), succeeded in later years by the younger Dumas, Feuillet, Murger, Zola, About and a host besides. Dramatic writers have been little less numerous, and essayists and literary critics of merit might be named by the dozen, among them the well-known names of Renan, St. Beuve, Gautier, Taine, Girardin and Rémusat.

Perhaps the most successful branch of recent French literature is history, around which a brilliant galaxy of great names has gathered. Prominent among these are Guizot, Thierry and Thiers, to whom may be added, as able writers of the history of their country, Sismondi, Michelet, Martin, Barante and Mignet. Other workers in this field are Lamartine and Villemain, while in philosophy, sociology and the various branches of science the writers have been numerous, and many of them of high ability.

[=German Poets and Novelists=]

The writers of Germany have been as prolific as those of England and France, though the greatest names of that country, such giants of thought as Goethe, Schiller, and Kant, belong to the closing period of the eighteenth century, and have found no equals in the nineteenth. Kant was succeeded by three other great metaphysical philosophers, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, the four forming a group nowhere matched for depth of thought in any similar period of time. In poetry, Goethe and Schiller were succeeded by the song writers Körner, Arndt, Rückert, and Uhland, while of the poets of later date Heine undoubtedly ranks first. Fiction was enormously developed during the century, Gustav Freytag being one of the most eminent novelists, while others of note were Hackländer, Spielhagen, Heyse, Ebers, Auerbach, and of women writers Ida von Hahn-Hahn, Fanny Lewald, Schopenhauer, and Marlitt. Famous authors who have dealt with the mysterious agencies of nature are De la Motte Fouque, the author of the charming "Undine," Chamisso, with his fantastic "Peter Schlenühl," and Hoffmann, whose tales of wonder and fantasy are of the first merit. Best known among fantastic and imaginative writers is Jean Paul Richter, whose satirical and humorous novels had a striking effect upon German thought at the beginning of the century. Of German humorists, Fritz Reuter occupies perhaps the highest rank.

[=German Scientists and Historians=]

In the field of science and exploration the literature of Germany is rich. Scientific travel was given a great impetus by the famous works of Alexander von Humboldt,--"Cosmos," "Views of Nature," etc.,--and his example has been abundantly followed. Among his more famous successors are Martins, the learned traveler in Brazil; Tschudi, in Peru; Lepsius and Brugsch, in Egypt; Gützlaff, in China; Barth, Vogel, and Schweinfurth, in Africa; and Leichhardt, in Australia.

In scientific literature of high value Germany is strong, its writers including Bessel, Encke, Mädler, and Struve, in astronomy; Müller, Ehrenberg, Liebig, Virchow, Vogel, Helmholtz, Haeckel, Kirchhoff, von Baer, and many others in natural science. The historians are of unsurpassed critical excellence, and embrace Von Ranke, Curtius, Mommsen, von Müller, Heeren, Niebuhr, Neander, Menzel, and many more. In philology and critical study may be named Wolf, Hermann, the brothers Grimm, Bopp, Benecke, and Haupt. Critical essayists include the two Schlegels, von Hardenberg (Novalis), Tieck, Schelling, and Wilhelm von Humboldt.

[=The Literature of Russia=]

This is by no means an exhaustive list of the prominent German authors of the nineteenth century, and we must deal still more briefly with the other nations of Europe. Russia may fairly be ranked with the United States, as being, in a literary sense, largely confined to the nineteenth century. It had some writers of merit of earlier date, largely poets and fabulists, but the first prose writer of excellence of style was Nicholas Karamzin, whose famous "History of the Russian Empire" began to appear in 1815. Poetry also became more meritorious in this period, Alexander Pushkin, the greatest of Russian poets, giving to the world some charming narratives in verse. Ivan Kriloff won fame as a writer of fables, while other poets of merit appeared, among them Koltsov, the writer of Russian national songs.

In the field of fiction the first of special merit was Nicholai Gogol, one of the most powerful of Russian novelists; but the first to gain a European fame was Ivan Turgeneff. Greatest among his successors is Count Leo Tolstoi, who entered this field with "War and Peace," the record of his experience in the Crimean war. His radical studies of the problems of social life have since led to a number of works of striking character, which have won him a world-wide fame. In romantic fiction Russian writers have gained much celebrity, and they include able authors in history, science and other fields.

[=The Authors of Sweden=]

The three Scandinavian nations, Denmark, Sweden and Norway, have been active in literary production, and possess many authors of national fame, and several who are read and admired throughout the world. Of high standing among the poets of Sweden is the popular poet Runeberg, born in Finland in 1804, who possessed a poetic genius of the highest quality. But the most celebrated poet of Sweden is Esaias Tegnér, whose "Frithiof's Saga" has won him a world-wide fame, it having been translated into the principal modern languages, though with great loss of the beauty of the original. Almquist, a man of fine genius and wide knowledge, was a poet and novelist of the romantic school, his novels including "Book of the Rose," "The Palace," etc. Stagnelius, another poet of eminence, obtained fame by his epic of "Wladimir the Great." The novelists include several well-known women writers, the productions of Fredrika Bremer and Emilie Carlén having gained popularity in English translations. Fredrika Runeberg, wife of the poet, was also a popular novelist, while favorite male writers of historical novels include Mellin, Sparre, Topelius, and Rydberg, the last also a popular poet. Wetterbergh (Uncle Adam) gained reputation by his humorous tales of Swedish home life.

[=Literature of Sweden and Norway=]

Most famous of the poets of Norway is Wergeland, the Schiller of his country, his works including tragedies, poems and satires. Various later writers followed in his line, including Moe, Jensen, Kjerulf and Thomsen. Chief among Norwegian novelists is Björnson, the author of a series of charming studies of the peasant life of his country, all which are popular in English speaking countries. Others who have wrought in the same field are Thoresen and Lie. But most famous of the recent writers of Norway is the dramatist Ibsen, a thorough playwright on historical and romantic themes, and on social problems. It is the striking and radical character of his productions in the last named field, including "A Doll's House" and various others, to which he owes his widespread fame, and the severe criticism with which his works have been assailed.

The Danish literature of the nineteenth century opened with Jens Baggesen, whose lyrics, mock-heroic poems, and "Comic Tales" are much admired. The great poet of Denmark, however, is Oehlenschläger, who produced tragedies of the highest merit, while his splendid epic poem, "The Gods of the North," is one of the noblest modern works of this character. Of the many other Danish writers of the century we shall name only the famous Hans Christian Andersen, whose folk-tales are household words throughout the world.

[=Writers of Italy=]

The literary fame of Spain rests with its authors of the past, there being few of notable merit of recent date. Much the same must be said in regard to Italy, the latest of its great poets and dramatists, Alfieri, dying in 1803. One of its most famous nineteenth century writers was Ugo Foscolo, whose political romance, "Letters of Jacopo Ortis," published about 1800, became immensely popular. His finest work is considered to be "The Monuments," an admirable lyric poem. Count Leopardi also attained to high eminence as a poet, and Manzoni as a novelist and dramatist, his "Betrothed Lovers" ("I Promessi Sposi"), having a wide reputation as a vivid picture of Italian society of the seventeenth century. We shall speak of only one other, Silvio Pellico, whose work, "My Prisons," descriptive of his own sufferings in Austrian prisons, is a classic of its kind and has been widely translated.

[=Other Celebrated Authors=]

This rapid review by no means exhausts the meritorious nineteenth century authors of Europe, whose smaller countries possess their writers of fame. Hungary, for instance, presents to us the prolific novelist Jokai, whose works are read in all civilized lands. Poland, no longer a country, merely a people, has its famous novelists, chief among them being H. Sienkiewicz, author of the popular "Quo Vadis." The same may be said of the Netherlands and of Switzerland, to the latter of which the United States was indebted for one of its most eloquent scientific writers, the celebrated Louis Agassiz. Of course, the literature of merit in the nineteenth century has not been confined to Europe and the United States. Canada, for instance, has produced able writers, and the same may be said of the British colonies of Australia and South Africa, while the nations of Spanish-America have also produced noted authors.

[=Merit of the Literature of the Past=]

[=Scientific and Historical Literature=]

We have said in the beginning of this chapter that literature has made no recent advance, writers of conspicuous merit reaching far back into the past. The "Iliad" of Homer, for example, dates back some three thousand years, and Dante belongs to an early era of mediæval Europe. Yet this assertion is true only in a general sense, that of the comparative merit of authors in style and depth of thought, without regard to the character of their works. In a more special sense, that of the distinctive varieties of literature, we may credit the nineteenth century with several marked steps of progress. The most meritorious works of the past ages were in the fields of poetry, drama, philosophy, oratory, and other branches of imaginative and metaphysical thought. The practice of accurate observation and the literature arising from it are very largely of nineteenth century development. The literature of travel, for instance, is confined in great measure to the past century, and the same may be said of that of science, the comparatively few scientific treatises of the past having been replaced by a vast multitude of scientific works. These are in great measure confined to records of scientific observation and discovery. Theoretical science, while very active in the past century, has yielded no works of higher merit than those of such older writers as Aristotle, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton and others of the older worthies. But the gathering of facts has been enormous, and great libraries of works of science to-day replace the scanty volumes of a century ago.

A second field of nineteenth century advance is in the domain of history. The history of the past is largely the annals of kings and the story of wars. Thucydides, the philosophical historian of Greece, had few successors before the century in question, within which written history has greatly broadened its scope, reaching to heights and descending to depths unattempted before. Histories of the people have for the first time been written, and the outreach of historical research has been made to cover institutions, manners and customs, morals and superstitions, and a thousand things neglected by older authors. History, in short, has at once become philosophical and scientific, efforts being made in the latter direction to sweep into its net everything relating to man, and in the former to discover the forces underlying the downward flow through time of the human race, and to trace the influences which have given rise to the political, social and other institutions of mankind.

[=The Novel and Its Development=]

A still more special field of nineteenth century literary development is that of the novel. Imaginative thought has existed for long ages, and fictitious tales are as old as civilization, but in the ancient world these were couched in the form of poetic and dramatic literature, of fable, fairy tale, and the like. The first steps of approach towards the modern novel began in late Greek times, and the development of the tale continued through the Middle Ages, though it failed to reach the level of what may be distinctively called the novel until the middle of the eighteenth century. The novel, specially so called, is the character tale, the development of human personality under the guise of fiction. This was scarcely attempted in the prose works of the past, character drawing being then confined to the drama. Abundant works of romance and adventure were written, but it was left to Richardson, Fielding, and the contemporary French authors to produce character novels, works of fiction peopled by individual men and women, instead of by speaking puppets, shows of man in the abstract, as in earlier years.

The novel attained some promising development in the latter part of the eighteenth century, but was still in a crude state at the opening of the nineteenth, when it was taken up by the powerful hand of Scott, whose remarkable works first fairly opened this new domain of intellectual enjoyment to mankind. Since his time the literature of the novel has grown stupendous in quantity and remarkable in quality, reaching from the most worthless and degraded forms of literary production to the highest regions of human thought. The novel, as now developed, covers almost the entire domain of intellectual production, embracing works of adventure, romance, literal and ideal pictures of life, humor, philosophy, religion, science,--forming indeed a great drag-net that sweeps up everything that comes in its way.

[=The Text-Book and Progress in Education=]

There is another field of literary production, more humble but not less useful than those named, which has had an immense development in the past century, that of the school text-book. The text-books of earlier periods were of the crudest and most imperfect character as compared with the multitude of works, admirably designed to smooth the pathway to knowledge, which now crowd our schools. In connection with these may be named the great development in methods of education, and the spread of educational facilities, whose effect has been such that, whereas a century ago education was confined to the few, it now belongs to the many, and ignorance is being almost driven beyond the borders of civilized nations. Those who cannot read and write are becoming a degraded minority, while a multitude of colleges and universities are yielding the advantages of the higher education to a constantly increasing multitude.

[=Vast Increase in Books and Newspapers=]

By no means the least among the triumphs of the nineteenth century has been the enormous development of book-making. The wide-spread education of the people in recent times has created an extraordinary demand for books, there being a thousand readers now to the one of a century or two ago. This demand has given rise to as extraordinary a supply, which is not offered in books alone, but in periodicals of the most varied character and scope, including a multitude of newspapers almost beyond comprehension. The United States alone, in addition to its numerous magazines, issues more than twenty thousand different newspapers, of which the aggregate circulation reaches daily far up into the millions.

[=Wide-Spread Use of Books=]

The demand for reading matter could not have been a tenth part supplied with the facilities of a century ago, but man's powers in this direction have steadily increased. From the intellectual side, the advance in education has provided a great number of men competent to cater to the multitude of readers, as authors in various fields, editors, reporters, etc., an army of able men and women being enlisted in this work., From the mechanical side, invention has served a similar purpose; the paper-making machinery, with the use of wood as raw material, the mechanical type-setters, the rapid printing-presses, and other inventions having not only enormously increased the ability to produce books and newspapers, but cheapened them to such an extent that they are now within the reach of the poorest. A century ago such a thing as an one-cent newspaper was not known. Now a daily that sells for more than a cent is growing rare. A century ago only a few dictionaries, encyclopedias, and other works of reference were in existence, and those were within the reach only of the well-to-do. Now works of this kind are very numerous, and they are being sold so cheaply and on such easy terms of payment, that they are widely spread through the families of artisans and farmers.

In truth, the number of books possessed by wage-earners and agriculturists to-day is very much greater than those classes could possess a century ago, and the character of these works has improved so greatly that they serve a highly useful purpose in the advancement of popular education. In addition to the actual ownership of books, there has been so great an increase in libraries, and such an improvement in methods of distribution, that books of all kinds are within the reach of the poorest of city people, and measures are being taken to place them at the disposal of country people as well.

[=The Development of Libraries=]

At the opening of the century the free library was almost unknown. At its close there was not a large city in the United States without its free library, and many small ones were similarly provided. In truth, the great library development in this country has been within the latter half of the century. In 1850 there were only eighty-one libraries in the United States that contained over 5,000 volumes, and the total number of books in them was less than a million, a much smaller number than could be found in the libraries of Paris alone. No single American library at that date contained over 75,000 volumes. In 1900 there were more than a dozen with over 100,000 volumes each, some of these possessing considerably over half a million books. Thus the Boston Public Library contained over 600,000 volumes, while a still larger number was housed within the Congressional Library at Washington, in what is the finest and most magnificently decorated library building in the world, with room to accommodate as many as 4,000,000 volumes. The great libraries of the United States are far surpassed in number of books by those of the leading capitals of Europe, and particularly by that of Paris, which contains the enormous number of more than 2,500,000 volumes.

[=Art in Past Centuries=]

What has been said about literature can scarcely be repeated about art. The nineteenth century has developed no new species of fine art, and in its productions in sculpture, painting, architecture and music has given us no works superior to those of the earlier centuries. Many names of artists of genius in this century could be given, if necessary, but as these names indicate nothing original in style or superior in merit there is no call to present them. The advance of the nineteenth century has been rather in the cheap production and wide dissemination of works of art than in any originality of conception.

[=Great Progress in Pictorial Art=]

In this direction the greatest advance has been made in pictorial art. Methods of engraving have been very greatly cheapened, and the photograph has supplied the world with an enormous multitude of faithful counterparts of nature. Among the many ways in which this form of art has been applied, one of the most useful is that of book illustration. The ordinary "picture-book" of the beginning of the century was an eye-sore of frightful character, its only alleviation being that the cost of illustrations prevented many of them being given. The "half-tone" method of reproduction of photographs has made a wonderful development in this direction, pictures that faithfully reproduce in black and white scenes of nature or works of art being now made with such cheapness that book illustrations of superior character have grown very abundant, and it has become possible to illustrate effectively the daily newspaper, laying before us in pictorial form the scenes of events that happened only a few hours before.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter XLI

The American Church and the Spirit of Human Brotherhood.

[=Division of Labor=]

As the century draws toward its end, and men make careful survey of the work it has wrought in the many and varied fields of human activity, it is natural that each observer should take a special interest in the department which constitutes his specialty. The statesman studies the social and political phenomena and forces of the age. The scientist, the educator, the manufacturer, the financier, the merchant, find in their respective spheres problems to be taken in hand and carefully investigated, that the experience of the past may become wisdom for the future. While this division of labor may tend to develop one-sidedness in the individual, it provides ample material for the true student of history, who, by collecting the data furnished by these various investigators, may make wide and wise generalizations, and thus contribute to a more complete study of human nature and human history. The increase of general interest among special observers and students will ensure in due time co-operation, increased intelligence, and enthusiasm in the promotion of the highest civilization.

As the procession of the years which form the most wonderful century of human history closes its solemn march, those who look on time as deriving its chief worth from its relations to eternity, and who estimate civilization as it bears upon the immortal character of man, will of necessity judge a century by its religious quality and results, asking: What place has religion held, what work has it wrought, what errors have weakened it, what are the tendencies which now dominate it, what are the opportunities which open before it?

[=American Type of Christianity=]

The American type of Christianity is in advance of all other Christian types, since it grows among and permeates political and social ideas and institutions which give it larger and fuller opportunities than it has ever before known, opportunities to develop humanity on all sides and in all relations. The American Church is made up of all individuals, classes, societies, and agencies which bear the Christian name or hold the Christian thought. It is not a "State Church." It is not a "union Church"--constituted by the formal unification of diverse sects or denominations. It embraces all believers (and in a sense all citizens) without visible consolidation; it favors all without legislative interference; it gives freedom to all without partiality or discrimination.

[=Distinguishing Feature of American Life=]

The distinguishing feature of American life--which makes what we call "freedom" mean more and promise more than does the civil, political, and religious freedom of any other land, and which therefore gives a distinctive character to the American Church--is that the liberty of the individual has large and unhampered opportunity for growth and action. Individual liberty here is actual liberty; unhindered by governmental provisions for privileged classes, who, by the accident of birth, leap into place and prerogative without merit of their own, and whose unearned advantage is detrimental to the well-being of the multitude. It is liberty which carries with it opportunity,--the liberty of the lowest in the nation to reach the rank of the highest; of the poorest to become the richest; of the most ignorant to become the most learned; of the most despised to become the most honored; the liberty of every man to know all that he can know, to be all that he can be, and do all that he pleases to do, so long as he does not interfere with the right of any other man to know all that he can know, to be all that he can be, and to do all that he pleases to do. It is the liberty among brothers, who, with all the prerogatives of individuality, need not forget the brotherhood of man, and who have every inducement not merely to guarantee to each other this regal right of full personal development, but who easily learn how to render mutual aid--every man helping every other man to know all that he can know, be all that he can be, and to do all that he pleases to do.

This, then, is the ideal of American civilization: A nation of equals, who are brothers. This is the doctrine of the closing American century; the root of the goodly tree that covers such ample area with its fruitful and bending branches; the vine which the right hand of the Lord our God hath planted; this the lesson running along the bars and shining out of the stars of our national flag. It is necessary that the race experiment with this great idea of freedom and fraternity. It is an idea that sounds well in rhyme and song, but it must stand the test of practice as well; and is it capable of this? May this large Gospel of the Christ be realized by a nation, and this nation become in spirit and fact a church? This is the glorious thought running through the civilization of our century, and this we believe to be the purpose of the God of nations.

The distinctive feature of the nineteenth century in America is the struggle for the recognition of these two noble ideas: The freedom of the individual and the brotherhood of the race. And this thought is thoroughly religious. It is pre-eminently Christian. It was taught, enforced, and illustrated by the Nazarene. It is asserting itself in our civilization. The work is now going on. It has not gone far, but it is bound to go on to the blessed end. The leaven is working every day. We are in the midst of the great experiment.

[=Development of the American Church=]

The American Church is not a State Church. It is supported not by law, but by love. No large subsidies corrupt it. No political complications weaken it. Church and State serve each other best when the only bond between them is one of individual conviction and mutual confidence. The beginnings of the Republic were made by religious men, who organized religious communities. They sought our shores to secure religious liberty. Some of them may have been narrow, but they were true and brave. Some of the fetters that bound them had been severed, but some still remained. They had not yet conceived the idea of an emancipated and responsible individuality. Protestants fled from the severities of Roman rule, and Romans from the oppressions of Protestants. And it took a long time for Protestants to become free. But the founders and fathers of the Republic were religious and God-fearing men. They were simply pupils ("primary pupils" at that) in the school of human rights and human brotherhood. The lessons were long and hard. It has taken more than a century to get half through the "first reader," and there is ample work for the century ahead, but as a people we are coming to see the life of the Church in the aims and order of the State, and to learn that God is in all history, that His claims upon men extend to all social relations, sanctifying all secular and political life, and embracing charity, sympathy, and justice in the minutest details of life, as well as awe, reverence and worship.

[=The Sunday-school System=]

Simultaneously with the rise of the Republic began the great Sunday-school system, which went everywhere with the open Bible and the living teacher, with inspiring Christian songs, attractive books for week-day reading, juvenile pictorial papers, social gatherings, and the stimulating power of friendly fellowship in religious life. It brought the people together, old and young, learned and unlearned, rich and poor. It did more to "level up" society than any other agency in the Republic. It made the adult who taught susceptible and affectionate childhood a better citizen. It prepared the children to be wiser, more conscientious, and more loyal citizens in the next generation. In the widely extended Methodist revival, and in the all-embracing Sunday-school movement, we see the hand of God fashioning the Nation and the Church, that they might be one in aim and spirit, and that through them might be promoted liberty, equality, and fraternity.

[=Union Church Associations=]

The various branches or denominations of the American Church are influenced by these ruling ideas of the century; the freedom and unrestricted opportunity of the individual and the spirit of generous fraternity. The old warfare between the Protestant denominations has virtually ceased. Co-operation in religious and reformatory effort--the Young Men's Christian Association, the Women's Christian Temperance Union, the Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor, the International Lesson system, the State and International Sunday-school Conventions, the Evangelical Alliance, the Chautauqua Assemblies, the exchange of pulpits, the frequent union revival meetings held by representative evangelists, the ease with which ministers pass from one denomination to another, the warm, personal friendships between representative leaders of the several Churches, the growth and enrichment of non-denominational periodical literature--these are some of the signs of the larger thought now controlling our people.

[=The Value of Religion in Politics=]

The American Church, which imposes no creed but the creed of the Republic, which knows no lines of division--sectarian, political, or territorial--but which seeks the well-being of the individual and the fellowship of all true citizens, will soon wield an immense influence in matters political. It will discuss great ethical questions; it will carry conscientiousness and independence into political action; it will dissipate the weak heresy that Christians are not to take part in national affairs. In the days of Christ and the Apostles, the governing powers, the rulers of this world, were beyond the touch and control of the people. It was for them humbly to serve and uncomplainingly to suffer. But now all this has been changed. The people to-day stand where Cæsar used to stand; and to be a thoughtful, conscientious, active, consistent politician, is to be doing God's service. The church member who neglects political duty is guilty of sin against both God and the neighbor. The power of the people will be felt for good when the people begin to know and to defend the true and the good. They have during the century expressed the purpose of the American Church on the subject of slavery. At its declaration the shackles have fallen. They pronounced against and destroyed the Louisiana Lottery. Through the press, the ballot, and the authority of law, the moral force of the nation expresses itself and the base conspirators surrender. So must it be with the saloon, and with all political evil. If politicians carry moral questions into the political arena, the pulpit and all other agencies of the church must go with the question before the people, and lead them to consider it no less from the moral than from the political point of view.

Aside from the development of the Christian religion as distinctively displayed in the United States, its progress in the world at large has been great and encouraging. Particularly has the spirit of sectarianism, strongly manifested a century ago, decreased in force and fanaticism diminished, while the sentiment of union and brotherhood between churches of different sects has developed to a highly encouraging degree.

[=Missionary Activity=]

Outside of Christendom the influences of the religion of Christ have been widely spread by the active and enthusiastic labors of missionaries, who have carried the lessons of the Gospels to all lands, and established Christianity among numerous tribes formerly in the lowest stages of heathenism and idolatry. The success of these devoted men has been much less among peoples possessed of a religious faith of a higher grade, as the Mohammedans, Hindoos, and Chinese, and perhaps the most important results of their labors everywhere have been those of education and civilization, necessary preliminaries, in the case of ignorant and undeveloped peoples, to a just comprehension of the principles of Christianity and the inculcation of advanced moral sentiments and the high standard of the Golden Rule.

[=New Religious Movements=]

The religious history of the century does not end with the relation of the progress of Christianity. There has indeed been some degree of reaction of heathenism upon Christian countries, particularly in the case of Buddhism, whose doctrines have made their way into Europe and America, and gained there a considerable body of adherents. This infiltration from without has developed into what is known as the Theosophical Society, which claims over 100,000 members in the United States alone. In addition may be named various new religious outgrowths of home origin, including the Mormons, the Spiritualists, the Christian Scientists, and others of less prominence. Similar new sects have arisen in Mohammedan and Hindoo countries, such as the Babists in Persia and the Brahmo Somaj in India, these latter being distinctive reforms on the more ancient religious creeds and practices.

[=The Religion of Fear and of Love=]

What has been said above does not show the full extent of the religious movement within the century. There has been an active spirit of progress within the lines of denominational religion itself, and liberal sentiment has made a marked and promising advance. The former insistence upon creed as the essential factor in religion has greatly weakened in favor of its ethical element, and the supremacy of conduct over creed is openly taught. Again, the old religion of fear is giving way before a new religion of love. The doctrine of future punishment, and the attempt to swell the lists of church members by insistence upon the horrors of Hades, are rarely heard in the pulpits of to-day, the old Hell-fire conception having become at once too preposterous and too alien to the character of the All Wise and All Good to be any longer entertained except by the most ignorant of pulpit orators. In truth, the doctrines of the modern pulpit are rapidly rising towards the level of Christ's elevated teachings, and inculcating love and human brotherhood as the essential elements of the Christian faith.

[=The Spirit of Liberalism=]

The growing spirit of liberalism has given rise to a large body of moralists who repudiate the idea that faith in a creed is essential to salvation, and claim that moral conduct is the sole religious element that is likely to influence the future destiny of mankind. Persons of this class are specially numerous in the ranks of the scientists, whose habit of close observation, and rigorous demand for established facts as the basis of all theoretical views, unfit them for acceptance of any doctrines insusceptible of rigid demonstration from the scientific standpoint. This requirement of hard and fast evidence, appealing directly to the senses, and discarding all reliance upon the ideal or upon the broad consensus of ancient belief, has no doubt been carried too far, and has yielded a narrowness of outlook which will be replaced by broader conceptions as psychological science develops. That it exists now, however, cannot be denied, and its adherents constitute a very large and influential body. Yet it must be said that science and religion, for a time widely separated, are growing together, and that in all probability the final outcome of modern thought and research will be an alliance between these two great forces, a religion which science can accept and a science in full accord with religious views and principles.

[=The Movement in Ethics=]

If we now turn aside from religion as a whole, and consider only its ethical side, it is to find an immense advance within the nineteenth century. The standard of right conduct may not have risen, but the sentiment of human sympathy and of the brotherhood of mankind has very greatly developed, and human charity and fellow feeling, a century or two ago largely confined within the limits of a nation or a city, are now coming to embrace all mankind.

[=Child Labour in Factories=]

There has been a great amelioration in manners and customs within the century, a great decrease in barbarity and cruelty. A few examples will suffice to point this out. The barbarous practices in regard to child labor which existed in 1800 and much later have often been depicted in lurid colors, the selfish greed of employers giving rise to a "massacre of the innocents" as declared and even more cruel in its methods than that of the time of Christ. Thousands of children in the days of our grandfathers were simply tortured to death in dark and dank mines or gloomy and unhealthy workshops, at an age when they should have been alternating between the useful confinement of the schools and the healthful freedom of the playgrounds and the fields. This state of affairs happily no longer exists, and in the present condition of public sentiment could not be reproduced. The world has grown decidedly beyond the level of such heartless cruelty.

[=Prevention of Cruelty to Animals=]

The development of sympathy has not confined itself to a redress of the wrongs of children, but has made itself manifest in attention to the wrongs of workmen as a whole, factory inspection having put an end to many unhealthful and oppressive conditions formerly prevailing, and saved thousands of workmen from being poisoned in the midst of their daily labors. And not only human beings, but dumb animals, have been reached by the awakened sympathy of modern communities. A century ago the noble and patient horse was frequently treated with the utmost brutality, without a hand or a voice being raised in its defence. This barbarity was accepted as a part of the established and necessary order of things, and dismissed with a shrug or perhaps without a thought. To-day, in the more enlightened nations, this state of things has ceased to exist. Societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals keep a close watch upon the brutally inclined, and have almost put an end to cruel practices which formerly prevailed without a word of protest, domestic animals being now protected as carefully as human beings.

[=Prison Reform=]

In no direction did the lack of kindly sentiment of a century ago show itself more decisively than in prison management. We do not mean to say that philanthropy did not then exist, but that it was far from being the active sentiment it has become to-day, and was largely without effect upon legislators; the condition alike of convicted criminals, of debtors, and of those held for trial being in many cases almost indescribably horrible. The first effective movement towards prison reform was made by John Howard, in the latter part of the eighteenth century, but public sentiment was so dulled towards the condition of prisoners that the horrors painted out by him were in great measure permitted to continue. The legislators of England could not be awakened to any active interest in the inmates of the gaols.

[=Prison Life a Century ago=]

When Elizabeth Fry made her first visit to the female department of Newgate, the city prison of London, in 1813, she found a state of affairs whose horrors, words are weak to convey. The women inmates "were limited to two wards and two yards, an area of about one hundred and ninety-two superficial yards in all, into which some three hundred women with their children were crowded, all classes together, felon and misdemeanant, tried and untried; the whole under the superintendence of an old man and his son. They slept on the floor, without so much as a mat for bedding. Many were very nearly naked, others were in rags; some desperate from want of food, some savage from drink, foul in language, still more recklessly depraved in their habits and behavior. Everything was filthy beyond description. The smell of the place was quite disgusting."

The condition of affairs on the men's side, unless they were able to pay for better accommodations, was similar to that here described. Their treatment, indeed, depended largely on the amount of money they could pay the jail officials and they were fleeced without mercy. The practice of fettering them was so common that nearly every one wore irons, even the untried being often laden with fetters, while their limbs were chafed into sores by the weight of these useless instruments of torture.

The report of the Prison Discipline Improvement Society, at as late a date as 1818, shows the existence of an almost incredible state of things in English prisons. Many of the gaols were in the most deplorable condition, and crowded far beyond their powers of accommodation. All prisoners passed their time in absolute idleness, or spent it in gambling and loose conversation. The debtors were crowded into the narrowest quarters conceivable. Twenty men were forced to sleep in a space twenty feet long by six wide--accomplishing this seemingly impossible feat by "sleeping edgeways." In the morning the stench and heat were something terrible; "the smell on first opening the door was enough to knock down a horse." The jail hospitals were filled with infectious cases, and in one room, seven feet by nine, with closed windows, where a boy lay ill with fever, three other prisoners, at first perfectly healthy, were found lodged. It is no wonder that the deadly jail fever raged as an epidemic in such pest holes, and even communicated itself to the judges before whom these wretches were brought for trial.

[=Improvement in Prison Life=]

We have by no means told all the horrors of prison life at that period, but will desist from giving any more of its painful details. It need scarcely be said that an utterly different state of affairs now exists in all civilized lands, prisoners being treated as human beings instead of wild beasts; and so warm is the feeling of public sympathy with the wretched that any of the horrors here depicted would raise a universal cry of deprecation in the land. Kindness is now the rule in dealing with criminals of all grades, and every effort is made to supply them with employment, and to attend to the requirements of comfort and cleanliness. Prisons are rapidly developing into schools for reform, and with remarkable success where systems of this kind have been fully developed.

[=Capital Punishment in 1800=]

The laws of a century ago were barbarous almost beyond conception at the present day. Capital punishment, now confined to murderers, was then inflicted for some twenty-five separate crimes, including forgery, coining, sheep or horse stealing, burglary, cutting and maiming, rick-burning, robbery, arson, etc. There were, in fact some two hundred capital crimes on the statute books, but most of these had grown obsolete. Yet such a minor offence as stealing in a dwelling house was a crime punishable by hanging, and men were occasionally executed on the gallows for a small theft that would now subject them to only a few months of imprisonment. It was not until after 1830 that an amelioration in these severe laws began, and with such effect that the number of persons sentenced to death in England decreased from 458 in 1837 to fifty-six in 1839. After 1841 the death penalty was inflicted only for murder, though seven other crimes remained capital by law until 1861.

[=Public Executions=]

The practice of public executions was another barbarous feature of the code, and the scenes around the gallows at Tyburn, on the occasion of the execution of any criminal of note, were so disgraceful that it seems incredible that they could exist in any civilized land. Other relics of the dark ages were the public exhibition of the bodies of the executed, and hanging in chains on a gibbet, a practice in vogue until 1832. In one case mentioned, at that late date, "a sort of fair was held, gaming tables were set up, and cards were played under the gibbet, to the disturbance of the public peace and the annoyance of all decent people."

It will suffice to say here that this state of affairs has been reformed out of existence. Executions, restricted solely to murderers, now take place wholly in private, and so great is the public desire to prevent suffering to the condemned that the first electrical execution in New York raised a cry of horror when it was announced that life did not cease within the few seconds expected, but that the power of sensation continued for perhaps a minute. In truth, in this instance, there was something of a hyper-sensibility manifested, but one of a kind creditable to human nature.

[=The Spirit of Sympathy=]

The development of the spirit of sympathy with the poor and suffering is by no means confined to the instances stated, but has gained an extraordinary extension. The rapid progress of railroad and steamship communication, the enormous increase in travel, and the bringing of the ends of the earth together by means of the telegraph wire have made of all mankind one great family, and the instinct of charity and benevolence reaches to the most remote quarters of the globe. Notable results of this feeling, of recent date, have been the efforts to ameliorate the suffering in India during the late famine, the war instigated by sympathy in Cuba, the earnest efforts to supply food to the starving in Porto Rico, and the fervent feeling aroused in favor of the unjustly punished Dreyfus.

[=The Growth of Charity=]

In regard to charity at home, the instances of it are voluminous beyond our power to record. Hospitals, asylums, institutions of benevolence of the most varied character, have been everywhere instituted, alike in Europe and America, mainly through public donations, and there is no form of want or suffering which is not met by some attempt at alleviation. Homes for the afflicted of every kind are rising in all directions; charity is organized and active to a degree never before seen; the bettering of the condition of the poor by improved residences, methods of recreation and instruction, and other acts of aid and kindness is actively going on, and in a hundred ways benevolence is striving to lift man from want and degradation into comfort and advanced conditions.

What is known as altruism, the sentiment of fellow feeling, is, in part, coming to be one of the active conditions of the age, and is among the most promising signs of the times. Selfishness, indeed, is abundantly prevalent still, yet altruistic feeling is rapidly on the increase, and gifts for benevolent purposes of all kinds are becoming remarkably abundant. Hundreds of instances might be named, but we shall confine ourselves to one, Andrew Carnegie's wise and kindly devotion of the income of his great fortune to the founding of public libraries, than which nothing could serve better to bring man into a condition of mind which will prevent him from becoming a willing object of charity.

[=An Advanced Spirit of Benevolence=]

Certainly the Golden Rule is bearing fruit in these later days, and men are widely doing unto others as they would wish to be done by. The old, narrow idea of patriotism is being replaced by a growing sentiment of the brotherhood of all mankind, and altruism is making its way upward through the dense mass of selfism which has so long dominated the world. It is still only in its pioneer stage, but the indications of its growth are encouraging, and we may look forward with hope to a day in which it will become the leading influence in the social world, and selfishness lose its long and strong hold upon the heart of man.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XLII. The Dawn of the Twentieth Century

[=The Nineteenth Century and the Era of Mediævalism=]

The nineteenth century saw the modern world in its making. At its opening the long mediæval era was just ceasing to exist. The French Revolution had brought it to a sudden and violent termination in France, and had sown the seeds of the new ideas of equality and fraternity and the rights of man widely over Europe. In the new world a great modern nation, instinct with the most advanced ideas of liberty and justice, had just sprung into existence, a nation without royalty or nobility, and whose leaders were the chosen servants, not the privileged masters, of the people.

This grand political revolution, with which the century began, was paralleled with as notable an industrial revolution. The invention of the steam engine had brought to an end the mediæval system of industry. The old, individual, household era of labor, where every man could be his own master and supply his own capital, ceased to exist; costly labor-saving machines, needing large accumulations of capital, came into use; great buildings and the centralization of labor became necessary; and the factory system, which has had such an immense development in the nineteenth century, began its remarkable career.

[=The Century's Wonderful Stages of Progress=]

With the opening and progress of the nineteenth century came other conditions of prime importance. Invention, which first became active near the end of the preceding century, now flourished until its results seemed rather the work of magic than of plain human thought and work. Science, which already had made some notable triumphs, gained an undreamed-of activity and hundreds of the deep secrets of the universe were unfolded. Discovery and exploration achieved surprising results. At the beginning of the century half the world was unknown. At its end only the frozen realms of the poles remained unexplored, and civilization was making its way into a hundred haunts of ancient savagery. Literature and art, while they can claim no works of acknowledged superiority as compared with the master pieces of past centuries, have displayed a remarkable activity, and the number of meritorious books now annually issued is one of the most extraordinary events of the century.

[=Progress in Education=]

Not less important is the immense progress in education. The schoolhouse forms the great mile-post on the highway of progress. It is everywhere in evidence. Free schools extend throughout the civilized world, and reach upward to a plane far beyond the highest level of public education a century ago, linking the common school with the college, and forming a direct stepping stone to university education, which has widened out with similar activity. In methods of education a marked advance has been made, while the text-books of to-day are almost infinitely superior to those of the earlier period. And education is turning its attention in a highly encouraging degree towards practical subjects and away from that incubus of the dead languages which was so strenuously insisted upon in the past. Man is going back to nature in education, observation is supplementing book knowledge, and experiment taking the place of authority. In short, education, with its handmaids, the book and the newspaper, is making its way into the humblest of homes, and man is everywhere fitting himself for an intelligent discharge of his social, industrial and political duties.

As regards the development of the spirit of charity and human brotherhood, it has been spoken of in the preceding chapter and does not need recapitulation here. Yet there is one stage of advance of which nothing has so far been said, but which is of high and significant importance, namely, the great progress made in the educational, industrial and political position of woman.

[=The Education of Women=]

In the beginning of the nineteenth century education, except of the most elementary character, was in great measure confined to boys. In 1788 the village fathers of Northampton, Mass., where Smith's College for women is now situated, voted "not to be at the expense of schooling girls;" and in 1792 the selectmen of Newburyport decided that "during the summer months, when the boys have diminished, the Master shall receive girls for instruction in grammar and reading, after the dismission of the boys in the afternoon, for an hour and a half." The site of this schoolhouse, to which, as is believed, women were first admitted on this continent to an education at public expense, is still shown with pride to visitors. The same town established in 1803 four girls' schools, the first on record, to be kept six months in the year, from six to eight in the morning and on Thursday afternoon.

[=Women's Colleges=]

Step by step the free school was opened to girls, and gradually institutions for the higher education of women were established, the pioneer college which opened its doors to the fair sex being Oberlin, in Ohio, in 1833. The advance since then has been great, and at the opening of the twentieth century there was not a college west of the Alleghanies which denied to woman the full advantages of education, while the same was the case in many of the older colleges of the East. In 1865 Matthew Vassar founded in Poughkeepsie, N. Y., the first college exclusively for women. To this is now added Smith, Wellesley and Bryn Mawr Colleges, within whose doors the highest advantages of education are to be obtained. The distinction between boys and girls in education, in short, has nearly ceased to exist in this country, and is in a fair way of vanishing in Europe.

In industrial occupation the advance of woman has been as great. A century ago few avenues of labor were open to them outside the household, and such work as was performed was miserably paid for. At present there is not an industry which they desire or are suited to follow from which they are debarred, and the last census enumerated four thousand different branches of employment in which women were engaged. This was not only in the lower, but in many of the higher employments. Women physicians are numerous, women lawyers and preachers are coming into the field, women professors teach in schools and colleges, and women authors have given us some of the best books of the century.

[=Occupation and Suffrage for Women=]

Politically the progress, while not so great, has been encouraging. In the middle of the nineteenth century no woman had a right to vote, and the thought of woman suffrage was just being evolved. At the end of the century women possessed the fullest privileges of the suffrage in the four states of Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming and Utah, and partial suffrage in many other states, while a much wider extension of this privilege seemed not far distant. In many European countries, and in the British colonies of Australia, New Zealand, Cape Colony, Canada, and parts of India, woman had won the right to vote, under various restrictions, for municipal and school officers. Such has been the progress in this direction of a half century.

[=Peace Propositions of the Emperor of Russia=]

What else shall be said of the state of affairs at the dawn of the twentieth century? Perhaps one of the most significant and promising movements of the time is that taken with the object of bringing war, which has raged upon the earth since the primitive days of mankind, to an end. The movement in this direction, singularly enough, emanated from the monarch of the most unprogressive of civilized lands, but one whose size and power give prominence and influence to any proposition coming from its court. On August 24, 1898, Count Muravieff, Foreign Minister of Russia, by order of the Emperor Nicholas II., handed to the representatives of foreign governments at St. Petersburg copies of a proposition of such importance, that we give it below in full:

"The maintenance of general peace and the possible reduction of the excessive armaments which weigh upon all nations present themselves in existing conditions to the whole world as an ideal toward which the endeavors of all governments should be directed. The humanitarian and magnanimous ideas of His Majesty the Emperor, my august master, have been won over to this view in the conviction that this lofty aim is in conformity with the most essential interests and legitimate views of all the powers; and the Imperial Government thinks the present moment would be favorable to seeking the means.

"International discussion is the most effectual means of insuring all people's benefit--a real durable peace, above all, putting an end to the progressive development of the present armaments.

"In the course of the last twenty years the longing for general appeasement has grown especially pronounced in the consciences of civilized nations; and the preservation of peace has been put forward as an object of international policy. It is in its name that great states have concluded between themselves powerful alliances.

"It is the better to guarantee peace that they have developed in proportions hitherto unprecedented their military forces, and still continue to increase them, without shrinking from any sacrifice.

"Nevertheless, all these efforts have not yet been able to bring about the beneficient result desired--pacification.

"The financial charges following the upward march strike at the very root of public prosperity. The intellectual and physical strength of the nations' labor and capital are mostly diverted from the natural application, and are unproductively consumed. Hundreds of millions are devoted to acquiring terrible engines of destruction, which, though to-day regarded as the last work of science, are destined to-morrow to lose all their value in consequence of some fresh discovery in the same field. National culture, economic progress, and the production of wealth are either paralyzed or checked in development. Moreover, in proportion as the armaments of each power increase, they less and less fulfil the object the governments have set before themselves.

"The economic crisis, due in a great part to the system of armaments a l'outrance, and the continual danger which lies in this massing of war material, are transforming the armed peace of our days into a crushing burden which the peoples have more and more difficulty in bearing.

"It appears evident that if this state of things were to be prolonged it would inevitably lead to the very cataclysm it is desired to avert, and the horrors whereof make every thinking being shudder in advance.

"To put an end to these incessant armaments and to seek the means of warding off the calamities which are threatening the whole world--such is the supreme duty to-day imposed upon all states.

"Filled with this idea, His Majesty has been pleased to command me to propose to all the governments whose representatives are accredited to the Imperial Court the assembling of a conference which shall occupy itself with this grave problem.

"This conference will be, by the help of God, a happy presage for the century which is about to open. It would converge into one powerful focus the efforts of all states sincerely seeking to make the great conception of universal peace triumph over the elements of trouble and discord, and it would, at the same time, cement their agreement by a corporate consecration of the principles of equity and right whereon rest the security of states and the welfare of peoples."

[=The Peace Conference at The Hague=]

[=The Court of Arbitration=]

This hopeful proposal did not, unfortunately, produce the result hoped for by its distinguished promulgator. Doubt of the honesty of the czar and his advisers, and mutual jealousies of the powers of Europe, stood in the way of an acceptance of the proposition to reduce the enormous armaments of the great nations. Yet, despite this, it was not without important results in the direction of doing away with the horrors of war and bringing about the reign of peace upon the earth. A peace conference of representatives of the nations, in accordance with the suggestion of the czar, was held at The Hague, the capital of the Netherlands, in the spring of 1899, and resulted in the adoption of a scheme of international arbitration which is full of promise for the future, as an important step in the direction of settling international disputes in the high courts of the nations instead of on the bloody field of war. It proposes to adopt in regard to the nations the principle long since in vogue in regard to their people, that of the legal in place of the violent redress of wrongs and settlement of disputes. A permanent court of arbitration is to be established, composed of men amply competent to deal with the questions likely to come before them, and enjoying the public confidence, to deal with national disputes which previously had no other ready arbiter but the sword. There is, it is true, no legal obligations upon nations to submit their differences of opinion to this tribunal, but there is a high moral obligation, whose force is sure to grow as the years pass on, and in the establishment of this court we have the most promising step yet taken towards the abolition of the barbaric custom of war.

[=Labor Saving Machines=]

With the question of the development of the peace sentiment comes that of the advance of industry, which has been one of the most important results of nineteenth century progress. This, as already indicated in these pages, has made an enormous advance within the century, the invention of labor-saving machinery having so enhanced man's powers of production that the results of each person's labor is very much greater than that of a century ago. Where slow hand processes then widely prevailed, now the whirr of wheels, the intricate play of almost human-like machines, which need the eye rather than the hand of the mechanic, turn out products in astonishing profusion and phenomenal cheapness, while the "man with the hoe" of the past is everywhere making way for the man with the machine.

[=Industrial Expositions=]

The rate of progress in this direction has been well shown in the successive fairs of the nations, of which, as we have already stated, the first was held in Paris in the first year of the century, while the last was held in 1900, the closing year of the century. Between these two dates a large number of fairs, international and national, have been held in Europe and America, each surpassing its predecessor in size and in the variety and originality of its exhibits, and each showing new and important steps of advance. It was the middle of the century before the ideas of mankind expanded to the conception of an international exhibition, or "world's fair," the first of which was held in London in 1851. Since then many others on this extended scale have been held, the first in the United States being the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia in 1876. The Columbian Exposition, which followed at Chicago in 1893, was full of indications of great progress in the intervening seventeen years, especially in the department of electricity, which had made a remarkable advance in the interval. Still more significant, as showing the vast industrial progress of the United States, was the National Export Exposition at Philadelphia in 1899, a display of commercial products significant of the great development of American commerce in the final decade of the century, and justly held in the city which had established the first great commercial museum in the world.

[=Development of American Commerce=]

As indicative of the progress in American commerce, a few statistics may be of importance. In 1873 the exports of the United States amounted to $522,479,922, a sum surpassed by that of the imports, which reached $642,136,210. In 1892 the exports had increased to $1,030,278,148; the imports reaching $827,402,462. In 1898 the total exports aggregated the great sum of $1,231,482,330; while the imports fell to a lower figure than in 1873, the total being $616,050,654, almost exactly one half the sum of the exports. It must further be said that these exports are no longer predominately agricultural, as in the earlier period, but that the mechanical products of the United States are being sent abroad in a constantly increasing ratio. And a significant fact in this relation is that of our growing sum of exports to England herself, long the dominant lord of manufacture and commerce. This is strikingly indicated in the shipment of locomotives for use on English railroads, and of iron bridges for English use by the British authorities in Egypt, the rapidity and cheapness with which American workshops can turn out their products being the ruling elements in this remarkable diversion of trade.

[=Progress in Science=]

The progress in other fields of human endeavor, as indicated at the dawn of the twentieth century, has been equally pronounced. Science, for example, manifests a wonderful activity, and displays results of bewildering variety and great importance; while the rapid and varied applications of scientific discoveries to useful purposes is one of the most significant signs of the age. Striking recent examples of this have been the Röntgen ray and wireless telegraphy.

[=Political Evolution=]

Politically the world has been by no means at rest during the century. In 1800 despotisms, of greater or less rigidness, controlled most of the countries of the world. The republic of the United Netherlands had been overthrown, that recently established in France was sinking under the autocracy of Napoleon, and the small mountain-girdled republic of Switzerland alone remained. Beyond the seas this was matched by a new republic, that of the United States, at that time small and of little importance in the councils of the world. In 1900 a vast change manifested itself. The whole double continent of America was occupied by republics, Canada being practically one under distant supervision, France had regained its republican institutions, and Great Britain had all the freedom of a republican form of government. Through all Western Europe autocracy had vanished, constitutional governments having succeeded the absolutism of the past, and the only strongholds of autocracy remaining in Europe were Russia and Turkey, in both of which the embers of revolution were smouldering, and might at any moment burst into flame.

[=Great Development of Great Britain=]

These are not the only significant signs of progress which present themselves to us at the dawn of the twentieth century. In truth, in a hundred directions the world has been equipping itself for the new century, which seems to have before it a destiny unequalled in the history of the world. It is of special importance to observe how prominent the Anglo-Saxon peoples have been in the great advance which we have chronicled. Great Britain, and, following in her footsteps, the United States, have occupied the position of the leading manufacturing and commercial nations of the world. The contracted boundaries of the British Islands long since proved too narrow to contain a people of such expanding enterprise, and they have gone forth, "conquering and to conquer," settling and developing, until, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the empire of Great Britain and its colonies covered an area of 11,336,806 square miles, inhabited by 381,037,374 human beings. This area is nearly one fourth that of the habitable land surface of the earth, and its population quite one fourth of all mankind. The East Indian possessions of this great empire are larger than all Europe without Russia, and the North American ones, if their water surface be included, are larger than the whole of Europe.

[=Territorial Progress of the Nations=]

The other nations which have made a great advance in territory are Russia, with its 8,644,100 square miles of territory, and the United States with its 3,602,990. But in both the latter cases these are compact territories, held not as colonies, which at any time may break loose, but as integral parts of the national domain. This is particularly the case in the United States, whose territory is inhabited by a patriotic and largely homogenous population, and is not made up of a congeries of varied and dissatisfied tribes like those of Russia. The remaining great territorial nation is France, which, with its colonial acquisitions, covers 3,357,856 square miles of territory. But France herself is only 204,177 square miles in extent, and her immense colonial dominions in Africa are held by so weak and uncertain a tenure as to count for little at present in the strength of the nation.

[=Probable Future of English Speech=]

A significant fact, in respect to the recent proposition to establish a universal language, is that the English form of speech, spoken in 1801 by 20,000,000 people, is now used by 125,000,000. Russian comes next, with 90,000,000, German with 75,000,000, French with 55,000,000, Spanish with 45,000,000, and Italian with 35,000,000. The rate of increase in the use of English has far surpassed that of any other language, and it is said that two-thirds of the letters that pass through the post-offices of the world are written and sent by people who speak this cosmopolitan tongue.

This immense advance of the English form of speech is full of significance. If it goes on, the question as to which is to become the dominant language of the world will settle itself by a natural process, and the necessity of inventing a special form of speech will be obviated. English is to-day the chief commercial language of the world, and is fast becoming the polite tongue of Europe, a position held a century ago by French. By the end of the twentieth century it may well have become the only language besides their own which the peoples of the earth will find it necessary to learn. And its marked simplicity of grammatical form adapts it to this destiny beyond any other of the prominent languages of mankind.

[=Influences Aiding Development=]

To return to the subject under consideration, that of nineteenth century progress, it may be claimed as due to several influences, materially to the extended use of the forces of nature in mechanical processes, in which it went far beyond any of the earlier centuries; scientifically to the rapid extension of observation and the vast collection of facts. While there was no superior faculty of generalization, this accumulation of scientific facts added greatly to the probability of the theoretical conclusions thence derived. Again, this activity in investigation, and the great increase of the numbers engaged in it, are legitimate results of the extension of education, and in a large measure of the replacement of classical by scientific instruction. The progress in ethical sentiment is doubtless largely due to the same cause, that of educational development. This has gone far to dispel the cloud of ignorance which formerly hung heavily over the nations, to ripen human intelligence, to broaden man's outlook, to extend his interest far beyond the range of his immediate surroundings, and, by increasing his information and widening his mental grasp, to develop his sympathies and enhance in him the sentiment of the universal brotherhood of mankind.

The intense activity of the human mind in those late days, and the quickness with which men take practical advantage of any new suggestion of workable character, are strikingly exemplified in an example that is well worth relating. In the famous sociological novel by Edward Bellamy, entitled "Looking Backward," in which the author describes an ideal community placed at a date near the end of the twentieth century, he pictures a number of advanced conditions which he evidently hopes will exist at that coming period. One of these is a newspaper on a new type, a spoken instead of a written paper. By aid of telephone connections running in all directions, the events of the day in all parts of the world are to be "phoned" to subscribers in their homes, while great orations, theatrical entertainments, concerts, etc., may be enjoyed without leaving their rooms.

[=A Telephone Newspaper=]

Whether suggested by this imaginative picture or not, it is said that something of this kind has been already introduced, a century in advance of its appointed time. We are told that the city of Budapest, Hungary, has had for several years a spoken newspaper named the Telephone Gazette, in which all the news of the day are transmitted by telephone to the subscribers, who are constantly growing in numbers. It has a corps of forty reporters and literary men for the collecting and preparing of material, and sends its news to clubs, restaurants, cafés, public and private residences, the hours of publication beginning at 8.30 A.M., and continuing without interruption until 11 P.M. Each hour is devoted to some special class of news, beginning with telegraphic dispatches from abroad, following with local and provincial news, etc., while at 8 P.M. there are given concerts, lectures, recitations, or other forms of instruction or entertainment.

We have hitherto dealt solely with the progress of the nineteenth century. Now, standing like Bellamy at the dawn of the twentieth, it may be well to take a long look ahead, and strive to trace some stages of the probable progress of the coming time, looking forward from this summit of the ages and stating what this outlook into the dim and distant future brings to our eyes.

[=Limits of Nineteenth Century Progress=]

Before making this effort there is one thing that needs to be said. The progress of the nineteenth century, great as it has been in various directions, must be considered as confined within comparatively narrow limits of space, its effects rapidly diminishing as we pass into the remoter lands of semi-civilization and barbarism. The United States, Western Europe, and such British colonies as Canada, Australia, and Cape Colony have been the seats of most active progress; Spanish America, Russia, and Southeastern Europe have played secondary parts in this movement; Asia, with the exception of Japan, has taken very little part in it; and Africa almost no part at all, except in a few of its European settlements.

[=Progress in China and Hindostan=]

This is one of the important directions in which we may look for a declared exercise of twentieth century activity, that of the planting of the results of recent civilization in all the regions of the earth. This work, as above said, has been done in Japan, whose people have responded with wonderful alacrity to the touch of the new civilization. In the great empire of China the response has been much less encouraging, not from lack of intellectual activity in its people, but from self-satisfaction in their existing institutions and culture. At the close of the nineteenth century, however, this resistance to the thought and mechanical inventions of the West was rapidly giving way, and doubtless one of the triumphs of the twentieth century will be the rejuvenation of China, which we may look to see rivalling Japan on the path of progress.

Of the other great centre of intellectual activity in Asia, the populous land of Hindostan, its progress is likely to depend far more on its British overlords than on the people themselves. While as mentally active as the Chinese, the Hindoos are far less practical. The Chinaman is natively a man of business, and needs only to be convinced that some new method is to his advantage to take active hold of it. The Hindoo is a dreamer, remarkably lacking in the business instinct, and is so deeply imbued with the ancient religious culture of his land that it will not be easy to rouse him from the fatalistic theories in which his whole nature is steeped. National progress in that land must be the work of British energy. But it has already made such marked advance that India may be trusted to wheel into line with the West in the new century.

[=Among the Dull-Minded Peoples=]

The future of the remainder of the world is less assured. The slow thinking peoples of the remainder of Asia, the fanatical populations of Mohammedan lands, the negroes of Africa, the natives of Brazil and Patagonia, the inhabitants of the islands of the Pacific, the peoples of the tropics in general, all are likely to act as brakes upon the wheels of progress, and the "white man's burden" with these tribes and races during the twentieth century is certain to prove an arduous one.

Yet it is not well to be too pessimistic in regard to this problem. It must be remembered that the work of the nineteenth century in these lands has been largely one of discovery. The labor of settlement and development has only fairly begun; what the results will be it is not safe to predict. To make thinkers of these dull-minded savages and barbarians will perhaps be the work of many centuries. To make workers of them is a far easier task, and civilized processes may be active in all these lands long before the nations are in condition to appreciate them. One method of solving the problem is already under way. In the Hawaiian Islands the native population is rapidly disappearing and being replaced by a new one. In New Zealand it has in great measure disappeared and British immigrants have taken its place. The natives are diminishing in numbers elsewhere, as in Australia. The problem of civilization in many of the new lands is likely to be solved in this easy way. But in the thickly settled countries this radical solution of the problem is not to be looked for, and the white man has before him the burden of lifting these unprogressive populations into a higher state.

[=Conditions of Twentieth Century Development=]

To come back to the question of the general advance of the world during the twentieth century, we find ourselves facing a difficult and varied problem. That the great progress of the nineteenth century will be continued cannot well be questioned, but the directions this progress will take is far from easy to decide. In some of its phases progress seems approaching its limiting point, in others its rapidity is likely to decrease, while in still others it may be enormously enhanced. It is by no means improbable that the development of human institutions during the century at hand will be in quite different lines from those of the century just closed, less mechanical perhaps and more moral, less scientific and more philosophical, less political and more industrial, less laborious and more artistic.

In some branches of invention and discovery we seem approaching a termination. It is not easy to see, for instance, how telegraphy can advance in the future as it has in the past. Its powers seem nearing their ultimate measure of ease and rapidity. Yet it is dangerous to predict. Here at the end of the century comes wireless telegraphy, with untold powers. And by its side appears telepathy, mental telegraphy,--the direct action of mind upon mind in a manner analogous to that of telegraphing without wires--of which as yet we know little, yet which may have in it great possibilities of development.

[=Limitations to Progress=]

Other discoveries which seem approaching their ultimate condition are telephony, photography, illumination, and apparently labor-saving machinery in some of its fields, since the performance of some machines appears to have practically reached perfection. Transportation may well be one of these. The rapidity of railroad travel will, no doubt, be increased, yet natural limitations must check its indefinite increase. The same may be said in regard to steamship travel, it appearing that any great future increase of speed must be at an increased ratio of cost so considerable as to bring development in this direction to a speedy termination.

Of course, we are speaking only from our present point of view. It is quite possible that some new and luminous conceptions may break down the bars which now appear to be erected and open the way for new progress in all these directions. Yet it seems safe to assert, as a general principle, that development in any one direction can go on only unto a certain point, and that the limitations of nature must check it at that point.

[=Probable Lines of Future Activity=]

We cannot, indeed, well conceive of a greater activity of invention and a more rapid unfoldment of new processes than we have had before us in the nineteenth century. But an equal activity may long continue. While invention appears to have yielded practically perfect results in some fields, great imperfection exists in others, and in these the minds of inventors have still abundant room for exercise. Thus while the bicycle seems almost to have attained perfection, the automobile is only in its pioneer stage and may be capable of extraordinary improvement. It is quite possible that the horse may in the near future end his long career as man's chief instrument of carriage and traction. Navigation of the air is still in embryo, but it may in time supplant travel on land and sea.

The possibilities in these and some other directions seem immense. At the beginning of the nineteenth century wood was the chief fuel, and had in great measure to serve the needs of household and workshop. At the dawn of the twentieth century coal had taken its place, and the forest had been replaced by the mine. We look back with pity, not unmixed with contempt, on the slowness of our ancestors, slaves to the axe and the firebrand. Our descendants of a century hence may look back with like feelings upon us, and marvel how we could content ourselves with delving in the deep rocks of the earth's crust for fuel when far more abundant and useful resources lay everywhere about us.

[=Employment of the Forces of Nature=]

We are beginning to perceive, somewhat dimly still, the immensity and inexhaustibility of these powers and are prospecting among them with the footsteps of pioneers. The powers of falling water have long been employed, but only recently has it been discovered that they could be conveyed to a distance by means of the electric conductor and applied to motors for the movement of machinery. The electric plant at Niagara Falls is the greatest nineteenth century installation in this direction. Thousands of such plants may be installed in the near future, and the flowing currents of electricity yield light, heat and power in a profusion and with a cheapness that will quite throw coal out of the race, and release the slaves of the mine from their age-old fetters.

Falling water is only one of these sources of natural power. The tidal rise and fall of the seas is another. The movement of the winds is a third. The vast heat contents of the sunlight is a fourth. The variable and periodical character of these is capable of being overcome by methods of storing energy, electrical or other, already somewhat developed and doubtless capable of much further development.

This is one of the most promising directions that appear before us for the exercise of twentieth century invention. Yet, despite this and other fields of inventive activity, what we have said appears to hold good, that one by one each of the varied lines of invention will reach its ultimatum, and gradually the activity of man in this direction decrease. While the twentieth century may be as active in the development of mechanism as the nineteenth has been, it seems unlikely to be more so, and in succeeding centuries, inventive activity must decline for want of fields in which to exercise itself.

[=Possible Decline in Mechanical and Scientific Progress=]

In some other fields of mental activity a similar slackening of energy may appear. Science has been as active as mechanics in the century just closed, but in some of its fields of exercise an approach towards a limiting point seems evident. Observational science has been phenomenally busy, and the multitude of facts collected has been extraordinarily great; so great indeed that in some lines the facts remaining to be observed have become limited. Such is the case in zoology and botany. The species of animals and plants are by no means all known, but only the inconspicuous and those existing in lands yet unexplored remain to be discovered. There is much room for work still in this field, but future labors must be more difficult and results less abundant. The same can be said of several other fields of scientific observation, such as chemistry, mineralogy, anatomy and physiology, and others that could be named. Doubtless there is still large room for observation, but it must be in the finer and less evident domains of science, the surface facts having been largely gathered in. In theoretical science great progress has also been made by such men as Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, Young, Darwin and a host of others. But many important problems remain to be solved, and human thought may profitably be exercised in this direction for a long time to come.

[=New Lines of Mental Activity=]

Yet it may be that the progress of the twentieth century will be directed most largely towards fields of research or improvement which have been secondary considerations, or have made only partial advance, in the century we have been considering. These will perhaps be intellectual rather than physical in character, and the advance social rather than material. Man has been struggling actively with inanimate substances and physical forces and adapting them to his ends. There lie before him the world of the animate and the forces of society and the intellect, to be treated with similar activity. The political, moral, educational, and industrial problems of the day need to be taken hold of more decisively than ever before, and the reign of fraud, injustice, autocratic power, unnatural inequality, ignorance, unnecessary want and suffering, etc., brought to an end.

[=Purity in Politics=]

There has been, as above stated, very considerable political evolution during the recent century, but the political condition of the world remains very far from satisfactory, even in civilized lands, and there is abundant room for progress in this field. Man will not be satisfied until every vestige of autocratic power and hereditary rank is swept away and the rulers of the nations have become the chosen servants of the people, as in the republic of the United States, and what we may call the prime-ministry of Great Britain--for the so-called monarchy of that kingdom has sunk to a title without power. Nor will man be satisfied until the rule of the political boss is similarly swept aside and honesty in office and in elective methods secured. This state of affairs cannot be reached under the present condition of public opinion. In the educational activities of the age political instruction is sadly needed. The masses need to be taught their duties and their rights. If they can once be brought to act together for their own interests and their own ideas of right and wrong, and cease to be led astray by the shibboleth of party or partisanship, there will be a rapid change in the state of public affairs, and men be chosen for official positions who can be trusted to act for the good of those who sent them there.

[=The Vice of Intemperance=]

Advance in education is not alone needed for this, but its accompaniment, advance in moral standards, is equally requisite. The moral progress of mankind, which has been so marked during the past century, is sure to go on to higher levels, and with every step upwards there will doubtless be demanded a higher standard of action in those who are called upon to act as servants of the public. We have not mentioned in this work one of the great evils of the age, the vice of intoxication, which has done so much to degrade and pauperize mankind, and has been one of the leading influences in the retention of the unworthy in power. Legal enactments have failed to put an end to this indulgence in a debased appetite, but public opinion is beginning to succeed where law has failed. Drunkenness has ceased to be respectable, and as a result open intoxication among respectable people is growing more and more rare. At the same time the desire to be considered respectable is making its way downward among the people, and widening the field of its effect. Drinking in moderation is prevalent still. Drinking in excess is plainly on the decrease. And with every step in this direction the self-respect of the people must grow, pauperism decrease, and an enlightened conception of public duty develop. Whatever else the twentieth century brings about, we may reasonably look for a great revolution in the political status of the world.

[=Industry in the Twentieth Century=]

There is one farther field of twentieth century progress to be reviewed, the industrial. The nineteenth century has reached its end leaving this great domain of human interests in a highly unsatisfactory condition. The progress of labor during the century under review has been considered in a preceding chapter, and brought down to its existing state. What the character of its progress will be in the twentieth century is open to conjecture. While nothing concerning it can be stated positively, some deductions from the present condition of things may be made.

[=The King, the Priest, and the Cash Box=]

Mankind for some thousands of years past has been subjected to tyranny of various kinds, and in particular to the tyranny of the king, the priest, and the cash box; the first controlling him by the power of the sword, the second by that of superstition, the third by that of material wants. The control of the first two of these have long been slipping away from them. That of the king has quite vanished in the most advanced lands, and the political equality of all men has been assured. That of the priest has similarly vanished in these lands and is diminishing everywhere, liberty of thought being made secure. That of the cash-box, on the contrary, has grown as the authority of its rivals has decreased, and it stands to-day as the great power in the most advanced communities, it being particularly dominant in the United States.

Shall this third of the great tyrants of the world retain its supremacy? Shall it not in its turn be overthrown, and liberty and equality in this direction be also attained? Certainly great progress is likely to be made in this direction, whatever the final outcome may be. For ages a state of protest and quiet or active revolt against kingcraft and priestcraft prevailed. This state now exists in regard to the money power, the industrial classes of all lands struggling bitterly against it, and combining with a view to its overthrow. Such a state of revolt, bitter, persistent, unrelenting, indicates something innately wrong in the industrial situation, and cannot fail in the end to have its effect. We may safely look forward to an amelioration in the situation, even though we cannot tell how it is to be brought about.

[=The Vast Growth of Wealth=]

The extraordinary activity of productive industry within the century is the cause of the state of affairs which now exists. The wealth of the world has increased enormously, and has fallen largely into the hands of individuals. A century ago there was not a millionaire in our land, and few in any land. Now they exist by the thousands, and millionaires two hundred fold multiplied are not unknown. This vast accumulation of wealth in single hands does not satisfy its owners. They are eager for more, and capital is widely combining into great corporations for the purpose of reducing expenses, so that the cost of manufacture may be decreased, and doing away with competition, so that prices of goods may be augmented. This is but one result of the trust combination. A second and highly important one is a great reduction of the opportunity for individual business operations, the tendency being to reduce the great mass of the community to the position of employees.

[=National and Municipal Ownership=]

This problem has been already considered in Chapter xxxviii., with the suggestion there made that it is apt to strengthen the force of Socialism, the purpose of which, as there indicated, is to put an end to individualism in productive enterprises, and place all workshops, stores, railroads, etc., under government control, to be conducted for the good of the people as a whole, not for that of individual capitalists. A step in this direction somewhat widely taken in Europe, is the control of railroads and telegraphs by the government. Another step is the control of all municipal functions, including street railways, electric lights, etc., by the city authorities. The latter system, adopted by many European cities, is being actively advocated in the United States, and is gathering to its support a vigorous public opinion which promises to be strong enough in the end to achieve its purpose.

Abroad the forces of Socialism are organizing themselves actively, and are gaining a political strength vigorous enough to create much alarm in the ruling powers. Whether this cult of Socialism has come to stay, and has in it sufficient force of growth to give it an eventual supremacy, or whether it is to be classed with the many popular movements which have played their parts for a time and passed away, is not for us to say, only the arbitrament of time can decide.

[=The New Psychology=]

We might consider the question of the twentieth century progress from other points of view, such as agriculture, architecture, household art, literature, medicine, surgery, social relations, etc., though in doing so we should be considering simply developments of existing conditions. Perhaps the most promising line of progress is in experimental psychology, the study of the brain and nervous system, the instruments of the mind from the scientific point of view, in distinction from the old, theoretical psychology. This, the latest of the sciences, has recently begun its development, and is full of promise of important discoveries concerning the conditions of mental phenomena. It must suffice here, however, to refer to it as one of the lines in which science has before it a broad field of research, and with this mention we shall bring to an end the long journey we have made in this work through the stirring history and marvelous events and discoveries of the wonderful nineteenth century.

* * * * * *

Transcriber's note:

The many illustrations have been moved to fall on paragraph breaks.

A number of illustrations are composite portraits. Each name is listed in the caption.

Punctuation has been made consistent.

Proper names, especially Russian, were not spelled consistently, and are generally given here as printed. The exceptions are noted below.

Compound words that are hyphenated on a line break are given here with or without a hyphen, following the most frequent appearance elsewhere in the text.

Diacritical marks are frequently missing either in the text or in captions. The variants are retained. The name 'Blücher' appears twice as 'Blucher' (p. 66 and the caption of the illustration on p. 91). The variants are retained. The word 'insistent' was consistently spelled 'insistant' (pp. 168, 172, 305), all of which are retained. The given name of Canadian Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier appears twice (pp 515-516) as 'Wilfred', and is retained.

The following table itemizes the various (and numerous) textual issues encountered in preparing this version of the text, and their resolutions. Corrections have been made, as noted, when it is obvious that a printer's error has been made, or when other instances of a misspelled word appear correctly elsewhere. The words 'indispensible' or 'indispensable' appears once each as 'indispensible' or 'indispensibly' and were corrected here. 'Dispatch' and 'despatch' are used interchangeably, and are retained. Any errors appearing in quoted matter are retained as printed. The word 'infectuous', an obsolete form of 'infectious', appears on pp. 586-587. Although 'infectious' appears several times as well, the obsolete form is retained.

p. 7 General Hayna[n/u] Corrected.

p. 8 2[59] Page number completed. Sir Arthur Wel[l]esley Added.

p. 13 Andrée[']s Fatal Balloon Venture Added.

p. 14 a[min/nim]als Transposed.

p. 24 great continent of[,]America. Removed.

p. 27 ind[e/i]spensible Corrected.

p. 49 persist[a/e]nce Corrected.

p. 51 two forces[,/.] Decaen Corrected.

p. 56 D[e/i]vised Corrected.

p. 58 despa[i]ring Added. persist[a/e]nt Corrected.

p. 66 simultaneo[u]sly Added. Demor[i/a]lization Corrected. Generl Benni[n]gsen Removed.

p. 68 northe[r]ners] Added.

p. 70 Benni[n]gsen's troops Removed.

p. 71 hind[e]red Added.

p. 74 sovereign[i]ty Removed.

p. 76 Austr[ai/ia]ns Transposed.

p. 78 more[o]ver Added.

p. 88 stubborn[n]ess Added.

p. 107 Westmin[i]ster Removed. Nap[a/o]leon Corrected.

p. 117 delib[e]rations Added.

p. 122 the absolute kings[.] Added.

p. 124 arbit[r]ary Added.

p. 141 their daring[s] keels Corrected.

p. 142 persist[a/e]nt Corrected. William of Norman[d]y Added.

p. 143 Dardanell[e]s Added.

p. 145 su[p/r]pass Corrected. Great Brit[ia/ai]n Corrected.

p. 162 perc[ie/ei]ved Transposed.

p. 166 persist[a/e]nt Corrected.

p. 168 di[s]missed Added.

p. 174 out[b]reak Added.

p. 176 desp[a/e]rate Corrected.

p. 191 enthusia[s]tic Added.

p. 193 engag[e]ments Added.

p. 198 sovereign[i]ty Removed.

p. 204 twice[d] rammed Removed.

p. 205 strengthened with a [a] new French Removed.

p. 222 [h/b]eheld Corrected.

p. 239 the various state[s] Added.

p. 244 state[s]manship Added.

p. 248 announ[c]ed Added.

p. 250 Gladstone[e] Removed.

p. 260 ac[i]tivity Removed.

p. 261 massacres on both sides[,/.] Corrected.

p. 262 occas[s]ion Removed.

p. 264 forstalled Sic.

p. 265 enthu[is/si]astic Transposed.

p. 267 gradual[ly] repayment Removed.

p. 268 Wellesl[e]y Added. Eve[r/n] there Corrected.

p. 269 A[l/f]ghans Corrected. Bri[s]tish Removed.

p. 273 he[or/ro]ic Transposed.

p. 279 Repu[b]lican gover[n]ment Added.

p. 284 Th[ei/ie]rs had just performed Corrected.

p. 285 fort[r]ess Added.

p. 287 streng[t]h Added.

p. 288 cause celèbre Sic.

p. 305 for[e]seeing Added.

p. 311 I[t] indicates Added.

p. 324 re[gco/cog]nize Transposed. remar[k]able Added.

p. 326 possesses[s] Removed.

p. 329 impor[t]ant Added. its innumerable affluents Sic.

p. 331 Egyptian[s] troops Removed.

p. 335 The S[ei/ie]ge of Sontay Transposed.

p. 337 h[re/er]oic Transposed.

p. 341 the ruined fort[r]ess Added. enterp[r]ise Added.

p. 345 inaptitude Sic.

p. 347 Right of Suff[e]rage Removed.

p. 348 Massac[h]usetts Added. which the[,] crushing Removed.

p. 350 in hundreds [of] libraries Added.

p. 353 eno[u]rmously Removed.

p. 354 Mer[r]iwether Lewis Sic.

p. 356 Actio[h/n] Corrected.

p. 370 proc[c]eed Removed.

p. 381 concentration of [d/p]ower Corrected.

p. 384 suc[c]eeded Added.

p. 388 war-[w/v]essels Corrected.

p. 412 and he did force it.["] Added.

p. 418 I decline [acceeding] to your request Sic.

p. 421 [batallions/battalions] Corrected. irresist[a/i]ble Corrected.

p. 429 Lou[i]siana Added. disfellowship[p]ed Added.

p. 435 orator has a [a] special significance Removed.

p. 441 Assas[s]ination Added.

p. 457 Virginia Campai[g]n Added.

p. 460 with [t]he utmost Added.

p. 461 resis[t]ance Added.

p. 464 cap[ti/it]al Transposed.

p. 469 d[i/e]spite Corrected.

p. 473 Indian Territor[r]y Removed. came [n/u]pon them Corrected.

p. 474 commis[s]ion Added.

p. 479 unin[i]tiated Added.

p. 481 responsibilit[i]es Added.

p. 486 Curaçoa Sic.

p. 491 Hampton R[h]oads Removed.

p. 504 while hundreds[,] of their crews Removed.

p. 506 a yell f[or/ro]m the sentinel Transposed.

p. 507 [u/i]neffectively Corrected.

p. 511 suprema[n]cy Removed.

p. 514 commer[ic/ci]al Transposed (twice).

p. 518 mount[ia/ai]n Transposed. ac[c]ross Removed. fr[ie/ei]ght Transposed.

p. 519 vis[i]tor Added.

p. 532 Robe[r]t E. Peary Added. near the 81st parallel[,/.] Corrected.

p. 533 walrusses Sic. unsuc[c]essful Added.

p. 536 Del[a]ware Added.

p. 543 compet[it]ion Added.

p. 546 telegrap[h]y Added.

p. 552 millionairs Sic.

p. 554 For a centur[e/y] Corrected.

p. 564 to prevent its[,] ever Removed.

p. 565 conspira[r/c]y Corrected. F[r]ance Added.

p. 574 signifi[c]ance Added.

p. 578 pheno[n/m]e[m/n]a Transposed. d[e/i]stinction Corrected.

p. 581 Subsid[u/i]ary Corrected.

p. 582 pal[a/æ]ontology Corrected.

p. 585 ever[y]where Added.

p. 592 the people in all lands[,/.] Corrected.

p. 593 "Scarlet Letter,['/"] Corrected.

p. 594 "New South["] Added.

p. 595 "Genius of Christianity.[']" Removed.

p. 597 the poets [a/o] Norway Corrected.

p. 598 Litera[t/r]ure Corrected. ninete[e]nth Added. Sienkiewi[e/c]z Corrected.

p. 599 sc[ei/ie]ntific Transposed.

p. 600 Th[e/o]se who cannot read Corrected.

p. 609 insist[a/e]nce Corrected.

p. 618 the selectmen[t] of Newburyport Removed.

p. 620 prop[a/o]rtions Corrected.

p. 621 eco[m/n]omic Corrected.

p. 628 possibilit[i]es Added.

p. 635 persist[a/e]nt Corrected. accum[m]ulation Removed. sati[s]fy Added.

p. 636 phenom[en]a Added. a[r]bitrament Added.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us