The Chautauquan, November 1884

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The Chautauquan.

A MONTHLY MAGAZINE DEVOTED TO THE PROMOTION OF TRUE CULTURE. ORGAN OF THE CHAUTAUQUA LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC CIRCLE.

Vol. V. NOVEMBER, 1884. No. 2.

Officers of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle.

President, Lewis Miller, Akron, Ohio. Superintendent of Instruction, Rev. J. H. Vincent, D.D., New Haven, Conn. Counselors, Rev. Lyman Abbott, D.D.; Rev. J. M. Gibson, D.D.; Bishop H. W. Warren, D.D.; Prof. W. C. Wilkinson, D.D. Office Secretary, Miss Kate F. Kimball, Plainfield, N. J. General Secretary, Albert M. Martin, Pittsburgh, Pa.

Contents

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REQUIRED READING FOR NOVEMBER.

THE BONDS OF SPEECH.

BY RICHARD GRANT WHITE.

Our inquiry in the first paper of this series led us to follow the emigration of the Aryan, or Indo-European, peoples from their original seat in Central Asia until we found them in possession of the whole of Europe;—the whole, from Siberia to the western shore of Ireland, from the Arctic Sea to the Mediterranean. The people who were there before them, they seem to have totally displaced, with the exception of a small remnant in the Pyrenees, now and long known as the Basques. That there were people in Europe before the Aryans has been clearly established by inquiries which here need only be thus referred to. Neither the inquiries nor the people are anything to our present purpose. As the Aryans began their westward march more than four thousand years ago, this fact of preëxisting European peoples is strong confirmatory evidence of the truth of a quaint line in a little song in “Twelfth Night” (not written by Shakspere, however),

A great while ago the world began.

That the Aryans killed all their predecessors in Europe is hardly credible, even if possible; but that they were very thorough in the performance of this function, is also more than probable. The improving of other people off the face of the earth is by no means an original American invention. It is a process which long antedates the introduction of the arts of civilization; and looking at the subject from the cold heights of history and social science, it seems to have been a necessity, preliminary to the introduction of those arts. The civilization which now fills the best part of the earth, although not the largest, and which seems destined to fill the whole, is in its origin and development altogether Aryan. Probably much the greater part of the primitive European peoples—primitive, if they indeed had not also predecessors—were destroyed. Certainly by the two processes of destruction and absorption they were extinguished. The Aryans, however, were not mere bands of armed men, armies large or small; they were emigrating nations. The men were accompanied by their women and children; and the probability therefore is that there was little mingling of the blood of the superior and conquering race with the blood of the inferior race, or races, whom they conquered and displaced. At least, of such an intermingling no appreciable traces have been discovered. There is in the language of any of the Aryan peoples now in possession of Europe no remnant, either verbal or constructive, of a language like that of the Basques. The consequences in this respect of the Aryan immigration into Europe were probably much like the consequences of the entrance of that people into this country. The American races have disappeared here before the European, and have not in the slightest degree affected, in the United States, at least, the blood, or the civilization or the speech of the latter. “Indians,” as we strangely call them (the real Indians being in Asia, and the “Indians” of America having been so called because America on its discovery was supposed to be the eastern part of Asia)—“Indians” should be treated with justice and with all the humanity that can be shown them; but it is a narrow and really an inhuman sentimentality which mourns their displacement from the great country which they once occupied as a savage hunting-ground.

We have now to inquire what English is; what is the substance and the structure of the language which within only two hundred and fifty years has choked and stilled even the echoes of the speech of Sitting Bull, Squatting Bear, and their forefathers and kindred. But before we go directly into this inquiry it may be instructive, and I hope interesting, to glance briefly at a few of the evidences which the discovery of Sanskrit, and the consequent development of the science of comparative philology, have revealed of the original identity of all the Aryan peoples (those in Europe and those in Asia—that is in Persia and India) and to make a rudimentary acquaintance with the modes and processes by which this identity was discovered.

No single word is so good an example of the testimony of language to the common origin of the Indo-European peoples as one of the commonest that we use, one which expresses the first, or at least the second, thought that enters the human mind—me. An infant, a worm, if it can think, has awakened in it on its first touch of another object the consciousness of something else and of itself:—that is not me, this is me. Now the expression in sound of this first perception of the human mind is the most widely diffused, and one of the most ancient, of existing words. In English, Frisian, Dutch, Icelandic, Swedish, Danish, Mæso-Gothic, German, Irish, Gælic, Welsh, Russian, French, Italian, Spanish, Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit, the word expressing the objective recognition of self-hood is either absolutely the same, or like with so little difference that the slightness of the variation is remarkable. When we get to the Latin and the Greek me (the accusative case—so-called—of ego, I, which is common to both languages) we have gone back more than two thousand years; and when we reach the Sanskrit mahyam, with its dative me and its accusative má, we are four thousand years in the past, and as many thousand miles in Central Asia.

This one word, it should seem, was sufficient to indicate identity of origin in all the European languages, ancient and modern; and if not to produce conviction, to arouse attention and stimulate investigation. When the word was found in Sanskrit, it is not too much to say that identity of origin in all the Indo-European tongues was so clear that further investigation could discover only an accumulation of evidence. For otherwise it would be necessary to assume some inherent, intrinsic, or, as we say, some natural, relations between the idea of objective self-hood and the sound me, or that very ancient original sound of which it is a slight modification. But there is no such relation. There is no such relation between any word and any thought. If there were, then all the peoples of the world would have expressed that idea, and would now express it, by this sound, or by some modification of it. This, however, is not true. It is and it has been so used only by the peoples of the great Aryan or Indo-European family. But what a tremendous fact it is, the use of this little word by hundreds and thousands of millions of people over half the civilized world for more than four thousand years, to express this first thought that enters the mind of man!—people who were strangers, and enemies, who were slaughtering each other as they fought through the dark cycles of centuries for land, for life, for supremacy; who hated each other as foreign and alien; and who were all calling themselves, each to himself and each to the other, me, and in doing so were telling each other that they were of one blood and one speech!

It should be very distinctly remembered that the me (with its variations) of the various European peoples is not derived from the Sanskrit mahyam, má, or me, but that the Sanskrit form, like the others, is derived from a root in the yet more ancient, and now wholly lost, original Aryan speech. That word, according to evidence which I believe is satisfactory to all the great comparative philologists, is the pronominal root ma, which, for reasons undiscovered, and which are probably undiscoverable, was used to express the first person. Many verbal roots have been thus satisfactorily unearthed; but in the consideration of our subject it must never be forgotten, that the Sanskrit, although it has proved to be the key that unlocks the mysteries of language, and makes them no longer mysteries, but mere successions of related facts, is not the original fact or form of Aryan or Indo-European speech. No word in Latin, Greek, in the Celtic, Teutonic, Slavic, or other European tongues is derived from a Sanskrit word, although the two may seem identical. Both are derived alike from an elder word or root. The supreme importance of Sanskrit in the study of language is in the fact that it is the oldest, very much the oldest, of all the existing Aryan languages, and that it has been preserved for thousands of years with a minute accuracy and a religious devotion.

Having made this discovery about the word for that very important, that most important, individual, I, we should naturally expect that the words expressive of the first and most important relation of that individual—that to his progenitors—would be in like manner general, and in like manner preserved among the various families of the Aryan race. This proved to be the case. The word for mother, is, with very slight variation, the same in all of them. For example, English mother, Anglo-Saxon moder, Dutch moeder, Icelandic mothir, Danish moder, German mutter, Celtic mathair, Russian mat-e, Latin mater, Greek meter,[A] Sanskrit matri; and on the other side, the male, we have, English father, Anglo-Saxon fæder, Dutch vader, Danish fader, Icelandic fathir, Mæso-Gothic fadar, German vater, Latin pater, Greek pater, Persian pedar, and Sanskrit pitri. Here again we have followed these household words through Europe and four thousand years into Central Asia. The root of mother, or mater, is assumed to be ma; although its significance is, I believe, yet unknown. That of father, or pater, is assumed by most of the best scholars (although on grounds which, with a hesitation only becoming in me, I venture to think not absolutely satisfactory) to be pa, conveying the idea of protection. In both cases, however, there can be no doubt of the radical positions of the syllables ma and pa; and thus we see a fact at once whimsically and touchingly significant; that the two childish household words ma and pa, so commonly, although not universally, used, are at least representatives of a speech of such hoary antiquity that it lies beyond the bounds of history and within the realm of conjecture. Ma and pa antedate not only mother and father, but the Sanskrit matri and pitri.

A difference between the historical forms of these two words will be remarked by the observant reader. In mother, mater, we have the initial consonant of the root preserved in all tongues, from the beginning (or as near the beginning as we can go); but in fa-ther, when we touch the Latin and the Greek, the f becomes p, pater; and this we find was the sound with which the word began in the elder speech,—Sanskrit pitri. This fact, so far from being at all inconsistent with the substantial identity of the word in its various forms, confirms that identity. The difference is the result of a phonetic change by which (according to well-established principles which can here be only thus mentioned) certain consonant sounds change to certain other sounds. The reason of this change is not known; but it is known as an observed fact, which observed fact is loosely called a law. We are in the habit of supposing that what always takes place does so because of a rule of law. But phonetic changes of this kind, which affect vowels and what are called semi-vowels, as well as consonants, take place in so regular a way that words can be traced through them with a certainty which is almost if not quite unerring. This change accounts not only for the f in father, but for the vowel difference between the Latin pater and the Sanskrit pitri. And in this word we have a good example in point as to the position of Sanskrit in relation to the other related Aryan languages. It is by no means certain, but rather the contrary, that the i in the pi of the Sanskrit pitri is older than the a in the Latin pater and the English father. The a in those words came not by any phonetic change from the i in the Sanskrit pitri and the Persian pidar. Probably, rather, it came directly down to the Teutonic, the Gothic, and the Celtic languages from that elder lost speech from which the Sanskrit as well as those others is derived.

One other family and household word is illustrative of our subject, and has a singular interest. Both son and daughter, like father and mother, are found in most of the Indo-European languages, and in Sanskrit. Son in Sanskrit is súnu, and is reasonably assumed to be derived from su, to beget, to bear, to bring forth. Daughter, the word just particularly referred to, is in Anglo-Saxon dohtor, Dutch dochter, Danish datter, Swedish dotter, Icelandic dôttir, Mæso-Gothic dauhtar, Russian do-che, German tochter, Greek thugater, Sanskrit duhitri. And if the generally accepted derivation of this word (which so conforms to all the required conditions that there is no reasonable ground of doubt about it) is correct, it records an interesting fact and tells a little story. Duhitri, the Sanskrit for daughter, is from duh or dhugh, which means, to milk; and daughter means the milker, a milk-maid. The milk-maid of the rural past has been gradually yielding place, first to an Irish lad in cowhide boots, and next to a machine more or less india-rubber in its structure; but within the memory of living men, not aged, New England, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania were filled with farmers’ daughters who performed a function which fell naturally to their share in the distribution of work, as it had done to their fore-mothers thousands of years before on the plateau of Central Asia; and every time that father or mother called one of them daughter, they heard unconsciously the name of their household place and office. Nor have these gentle milkers, these dugh-i-tri, I am glad to believe, quite disappeared before the march of Celtic emigration and machinery.

One of man’s first efforts at the orderly arrangement of things is numbering them, counting; and numeral words must have been among the earliest that were formed, and among those which, being most constantly used, would be most tenaciously preserved. So it proved. Most of the numeral words, one, two, three, etc., in all the Indo-European languages are found to be identical in origin, and some of them essentially so in form. For clearness and brevity of illustration let us take English two, which in Dutch is twe, Icelandic (in the objective) tvo, Danish to, Swedish tva, Mæso-Gothic twai, German zwei, Gælic da, Welsh dau, Russian dva, Latin duo, French deux, Italian due, Greek duo, Sanskrit dra:—so English three is in Dutch trie, Danish and Swedish tre, Icelandic thrir, in the Celtic tongues tri, in Russian tri, Mæso-Gothic threis, German drei, Latin tres, Greek treis, Sanskrit tri. It is unnecessary to continue the illustration of this point. Other numeral words are equally remarkable in their continuity; and all are traceable to a remote antiquity and through a wide dispersion.

One more pronoun may well be examined. The first thought of the human mind, as we have already seen, on the perception of something else than its own body is “me” and “not me:” a dual thought, both elements of which come into consciousness together:—this that I feel or see is not me. The second perception is of what we call the second person, for which the word in English until recently was, and among some English-speaking people still is, thou. This word, which supplies one of the commonest needs of life in language among people of all conditions, has been preserved among all the Aryan peoples for four thousand years almost without the signs of phonetic wear and tear. In Old Frisian (the language which, next to the so-called Anglo-Saxon, is nearest of kin to English) it is thu, in Dutch (which of spoken languages is next nearest) it has strangely disappeared, but in Icelandic it is thu, Danish and Swedish du, in Mæso-Gothic thu, in German du, in the Celtic tongues tu, in Russian tui, Latin, Italian and French tu, Greek su (for tu), Persian tu, Sanskrit tuam.

As the intelligent reader considers these lists of common words which are identical, or almost identical, in so many languages spoken through forty centuries, from a period extending far beyond historical records, the thought must arise that it was strange, almost unaccountable, that the close connection, the affiliation, of these languages was left to be clearly proved within only about fifty years. But it must be remembered that this affiliation in regard to some of them was as well known before that time as it is now. That the Scandinavian tongues were closely related, that English was connected with the Scandinavian and the Teutonic languages, that French, Spanish and Italian were close cousins, and were all direct descendants (with some mixture by inter-marriage) from Latin, was well known to all students of language. But beyond this line they were all abroad. Of the connection of the Celtic tongues—Welsh, Gælic, Erse (Irish) and Cornish—with the Teutonic and the Scandinavian, or even with the Latin and Greek (with which they are more nearly allied) there was no knowledge. Nor was it supposed that Greek and Latin had any other connection with English than that which existed through Greek words and Latin words transplanted into English. Latin was supposed to be derived from Greek, and indeed to be a debased form of that language; and as to the Sclavonic tongues, Russian, Polish, etc., they were the gabble of outside barbarians.

Besides all this, the influence of theology upon narrow and uninformed minds was felt in philology—if we can call the linguistic studies of those days philological. As the proclamation of the One God was made to the world in Hebrew, and as the grand generalities of the Mosaic record of creation were recorded in that language, it was assumed by many worthy and really learned men, at whose fond fancy we may smile but should not sneer, that Hebrew was the original speech of the human race; that it was bestowed upon man directly by divine beneficence; and that all the languages of the earth were derived from that in which the ten commandments were first written. Infinite labor, years of toilsome study, almost endless efforts of perverted ingenuity were given to the mistaken effort to establish this point, which was regarded by these in-the-dark-working linguists as one, almost if not quite, of religious importance. Now we know that the Hebrew language is totally, radically different from all the Indo-European languages; that they have no kinship whatever, and are as unlike as if they were spoken on two separate planets by creatures of different species. And besides, we know that Hebrew is not even in the position of a parent speech, but is one of a small, although very important family, the Semitic, and that in this family its position is that of a cadet.

The consequence in linguistic study of the discovery of Sanskrit, which was chief in importance, was not so much the establishment of kindred among all the languages of Europe, although that was very important, as the proof that they were not (with notable exceptions) derived the one from the other, but that they all were sprung from a common stock, to which the principal of them must be traced, not through one another, but directly. Thus the Danes and the Germans lie close together, and there is some likeness in substance between their languages, and a little in form; but it will not do to attempt to trace the Danish and the other Scandinavian languages to the German, or through the German to an older tongue. It is found that of the Scandinavian languages and the German, neither is derived from the other, but that both are the offspring of a lost elder speech, Teutonic or Gothic, of which the Mæso-Gothic is the oldest representative of which there are any remains. It is also found that the Latin language is not derived from the Greek, did not come through it, but that both Latin and Greek come independently from either a common branch of the old Aryan tongue, or directly from that tongue itself. Moreover it is now pretty well established to the total subversion of previous theories, that the Latin represents, or at least retains, older forms of the parent language than are to be found in Greek. This, however, is not true as to syntax, grammar, in which Latin diverges much more than Greek does from that approximation to the original language which we find in Sanskrit.

Let us glance at this subject of grammar; in doing which, without going into dry detail, or even into the niceties of construction, we may by the examination of one or two salient facts trace very clearly the connection of some of the most important and divergent branches of Indo-European speech. Every educated boy who has passed through a classical grammar school will remember his surprise, not to say his disgust, at finding, after mastering toilfully a little Latin, that when he entered upon the study of Greek, he found the Greek verb very unlike the Latin in its conjugation, and much more complicated. It has a middle voice which is reflective in its signification. For example, etupsa means I struck, etuphthen, I was struck, but etupsamen, I struck myself. It has in tenses not only present, perfect, future, and so forth, but a first perfect and a second perfect, a first plu-perfect and a second plu-perfect, a first future and a second future, and, moreover, two pestilential contrivances called the first and second aorists. Besides this, every tense has not only a singular and a plural number, but a dual number, by which the action or the being, or the suffering, is confined to two persons—a sort of grammatical buggy. The nouns, the pronouns, the adjectives, the very articles, have also this dual number. This is a fact, an oppressive, mysterious, unrelated fact with which the young student is brought face to face, and into conflict with which he enters, wondering at the cause of this bountiful dispensation of grammar. When Sanskrit was discovered, it was found that this middle voice, these first and second perfects, and futures, and first and second aorists, these dual numbers of verbs, nouns, and what not, were Sanskrit as well as Greek, and were nearly two thousand years older than any Greek writing that exists. But they are found not only in Sanskrit and in Greek. In the Mæso-Gothic, which, as we have seen is our earliest representative of one of the two great European divisions of Aryan speech, to the other of which the Greek belongs—it, the Greek, having separated itself at a time long before the historical period—in this Mæso-Gothic we have also the middle voice, the dual number, and tenses and inflections multitudinous. These grammatical facts bind, and without other evidence would bind, the Greek, the Teutonic or Gothic, and the Sanskrit languages in a bond of kinship.

It had been supposed by classical scholars, and the supposition yet lingers among them, that these Greek double perfects and futures, these aorists, and these middle voices and dual numbers, were the fruit of a great genius for language and literary expression, that they had been elaborated and painfully produced in the successive development of the Greek intellect—which indeed was one of the most remarkable phenomena in the history of the world. But the discovery of Sanskrit has shown us that these grammatical excrescencies were mere relics of a past; things that the Greek poets and philosophers found made to their hands, and which they must use whether they would or no. Nor are we relieved from the necessity of this inference and its consequences by the fact that Sanskrit is a highly elaborated language, and has been the object of religious care and veneration on the part of profound grammarians for many centuries. Its grammar has been thus solicitously preserved and minutely studied because it was involved with the Brahminical religion. Its origin dates back in the darkness of savagery. The Mæso-Goths, who had no Greek intellect or refinement, had in their language also the dual number, the middle voice, and the swarming inflections. Nor only so. In a corner of Scythian Europe, in Cimmerian darkness, were, and are, a rude people, the Lithuanians, who lie between the Prussians and the Russians, who had no literature, whose language was not even written until it was furnished with characters by strangers so late as the sixteenth century, who had not advanced intellectually beyond the making of folk-songs and ballads, whose very national existence was hardly more important than that of Comanches or Piutes; and yet these people had the dual number, the variety of inflection, and the complicated grammar of the old speech. It had merely come down to them as it had come to the Mæso-Goths, and to the Greeks, and to the Brahmins, from the early days of the Aryan people and their language. Simply this, and nothing more.

The fact upon this subject is that as we look backward through history we find that grammar increases as civilization and culture diminish; or, to put it conversely, that as culture increases and civilization becomes more elaborate and complex, grammar diminishes and simplifies, and gradually passes away. The traits once regarded as special and distinguishing excellencies of the Greek language, its dual number, its middle voice, its double tenses, and to the horror of some of the classical scholars among my readers, if I am honored by any such—I add, even the aorists, are not signs of a high development of language, but mere relics of barbarism. They are so in the Greek, just as they are so in the Mæso-Gothic and in the Lithuanian languages. They had no relation whatever to the power, the subtlety and the loftiness of the Greek intellect; they were not a necessary means nor even a happily adapted tool for the work of that intellect in literature, in art, and in philosophy; although it is not to be denied that the Greek intellect did leave its impress upon the Greek language. The Greeks were the great people that they were simply because they were Greeks; we know not why; just as the Lithuanians were and remained Lithuanians, we know not why. In the one case the complicated instrument of expression had no more to do with the splendid achievements of which it was the medium than in the other it had to do with the rudeness which it did not help to refine, or the obscurity to which it lent no luster.

It is proper that I should say to my readers that in proclaiming this I am teaching heresy. This is not orthodoxy, but my doxy. I am willing to confess, like one who went long before me, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose, that I speak as a fool; but I shall be content with the final verdict that shall be passed upon me, whatever it may be.

Emphasizing for the moment the fact that this grammar which increases with barbarism and which diminishes with civilization, coexists only with inflection and depends upon it, and that its diminution in the Latin development of Aryan speech as compared with the Greek, was a purely rational, although perhaps an unconsciously rational, movement, let us defer the further consideration of this subject until another occasion.

One minute but very largely significant fact connected with the Latin and Greek languages, which will be appreciated to a certain degree at least by every schoolboy who has studied those languages, may here properly be set forth and considered. In Latin, the name of the supreme god, whose name in Greek is Zeus, is Jupiter. Now Jupiter is no form of Zeus. It can not “come from” Zeus by any mode of phonetic modification or decay. Moreover, the declension of Jupiter through the various substantive cases is notably irregular. It is:

Now, Jovis, Jovi, Jovem and Jove can not be formed from Jupiter. Jovis is no more a real case of Jupiter than ours is a real case of we. How came the simple name of this god, used absolutely or in the way of invocation, to be Jupiter, and yet when used possessively to be Jovis, datively Jovi, etc.? To the young student of Latin this is a barren, brutal fact with which he is confronted, and which he is obliged to accept and to remember. It has no relation to any other fact. So at least it was forty years ago, as I and my contemporaries can testify.[B] But Jovis, although it can not be derived from Jupiter may be derived from or at least connected with Zeus. In fact it is so derived or connected. The supreme god of the Latin and the Greek mythology was the same god, and he had originally the same name, which was Dyus, or some like form. But the Latins did not derive this personage of their mythology from the Greeks, nor take his name from them, as it was once assumed they did. This is shown by the name they gave him, Jupiter; yet that very name, unlike as it is to Zeus, and impossible to be derived from it, has in it the witness of identity of origin. The fact is that the Latins and the Greeks derived both their conception of the supreme god and his name from a common source; a fact which has been revealed by the discovery of Sanskrit.

In the mythology of the Vedas, the sacred books of the Brahmins, which are written in Sanskrit, the supreme god, the primum mobile of divine power is Dyaus, which is from the root dyu, meaning to beam, to emit light. Dyaus is therefore the sky god, a record and an expression of the recognition of divinity in the heavens.[C] So both to the Greeks and the Latins the supreme divinity was originally the sky god. Now, Dyaus and Zeus are the same word with little phonetic modification. But whence comes Jupiter? Hence. We have seen above that the Sanskrit word for father is pitri, which seems to be corrupted from pàtri, a protector,[D] and the simple union of these two words gives us, Dyaus-patri, which, as an earlier, if not an original form, of Zeus-pater, or Ju-piter, would be an unexceptional etymology. We are however not left to conjecture nor to etymological construction for the origin of this name; for, according to Max Müller, in the Veda Dyaushpitar or Dyupitar become almost as much one word as Jupiter in Latin. Here we have the otherwise anomalous Latin Jupiter completely accounted for, not only in accordance with etymology and reason, but by positive historical evidence. To the Latins Jupiter was merely a name, coming to them they knew not whence nor how; but they had received it in a direct line of communication from their Aryan forefathers, who were also the forefathers of the writers of the Sanskrit Vedas. Yet more; when the Roman said Jupiter he merely called his supreme god the Heavenly Father. So near, in the very idea of divinity, does the evidence found in the history of language bring the modern Christian to the primitive pagan.

This name Dyaus, or Zeus, is also regarded by some of the most eminent philologists as identical with the name of the Eddic god Tyr and the Saxon word Tiw, and as present in our Tues-day or Tiws-daeg. It may be so; but specialists who may claim submissive deference as to matters of fact within their specialty are often led by enthusiasm into theory and speculation which respect for their learning does not oblige us to accept.

But space fails me, and with a brief exposition of a very few points of my previous paper this one must be closed.

The records of possession left in the names of places by advancing tribes of Aryans may be well illustrated by two names more widely known, perhaps, than any other two in the world—Thames and Avon. Now, both these names mean merely river, running water. Why, then, do we say the river Thames and the river Avon; which is merely to say in each case the river River. Simply because our English (or Anglo-Saxon) forefathers going to England and conquering it, found those streams so called by the natives. In the old Welsh (Celtic) which was spoken in ancient Britain both tam or tama and afon mean a river, and the rude and simple people naturally called the running water nearest them merely the river. When there was but one theater in London, and when there was but one in New York, in each case it was called merely the theater, without any other name, which indeed was needless. But when the Anglo-Saxons heard the stream on which London stands called tam, and that on which Stratford stands called afon, those words did not mean running water to them; they were mere names; and names they have remained. There are no less than nine rivers in England called Avon (merely because they were the river to the old Britons in their neighborhood); and tam is found in composition in names of places (Tamworth, Tamarton) with the same meaning. The Celts have left these name-traces upon hills, forests, and streams, not only in England, but all over southern and western Europe. Other families have left similar vestiges. A moderate illustration of this one point would require a paper by itself. In this way the march and the dwelling places of the principal divisions of the great race can be discovered.

It was said in the foregoing paper that the development and the various stages of knowledge attained by the Aryans had left traces in the history of their language; and it was remarked that the facts that words for boat and oars are common to all the languages of the race, while those which pertain to navigation are radically unlike, shows that before the great separation took place, the Aryans had rowed small boats on rivers, but knew nothing of ships and deep-sea sailing. From similar evidence we infer that they never saw salt water before the separation; for at that time they did not know the oyster, which is found in the Caspian Sea. The name oyster is common to all the European peoples, ancient as well as modern (Latin ostrea, Greek ostreon, with the meaning bone, shell); but in Sanskrit the word for the much eaten bivalve is pushtika. Plainly the southeastern moving and the northwestern moving Aryans severally named the oyster after they had parted. It is also remarkable that the only tree of which the name is common to all the Indo-European peoples, Asiatic as well as European, is the birch; the name of which in Sanskrit is bhúrja (observe how like in sound the two words are); and that this tree is the most widely dispersed of all the forest flora, and is found in great variety and large quantity in Central Asia.

In most of the examples of etymology given in this paper the likeness between the recent and the remote has been more or less apparent to eye or ear on slight examination. It must not however be supposed that the history of a word is limited by such palpable bounds. On the contrary etymology, which when trustworthy proceeds step by step accounting for, but accepting every clearly established change, leads the inquirer in numberless instances into regions at first far beyond his ken. One illustrative instance must suffice: The French word for water is O. It is spelled eau; but that is not to the purpose; a word is a sound, not the name of an assemblage of signs called letters. Now this sound O, or eau, comes directly from the Latin aqua, in which there is no trace of it; and in which, moreover, there are, as will be seen, sounds of a marked character which have been wholly swept away. The course of derivation or degradation was this: Aqua by the common change of u to v, became aqva, which passed by phonetic decay into ava, and this by a common vowel change become eve, which in turn, by a common diphthongal extension, broadened into eave, the v in which changing back again into u gave eaue, of which the body, au, came to represent the whole word, which at last reached the simple vowel sound o. In like manner the Greek pente, the French cinq, the English five, and the Sanskrit pancan may all be traced to the same root, pani, the hand, with its five fingers; the English tooth and the Latin dens are from the same root (indeed it has been extracted), and so are coucher and locus, and even galaxy and lettuce. That I may not seem to tantalize my reader I will give the easy explanation of the last paradox-like assertion. The bond between the two words is in the Latin word for milk, lac, and the kindred Greek word for the same fluid, gala; the old forms having been severally lact and galact. The galaxy is the milky-way, and lettuce is the juicy, milky plant; the Old French name of which (from which ours comes) was laictuce, which itself represented the Latin lactuca.

The reader having now seen some few characteristic illustrations of the methods, the course, and the revelations of philology in regard to the language of the Aryan peoples, we are ready to examine the history and the structure of English.

[A] Here and elsewhere I use italic letters to spell a Greek word; doing so because it is quite possible that many intelligent and inquiring readers who may look to me, as to a fellow-student, for a little help, may be unacquainted with the Greek alphabet, and the force of its various characters. We are obliged to use this letter in Russian and Sanskrit; why not in Greek? As to that however there is one notable and often recurring difficulty in the use of an alien alphabet: the short e is one letter, epsilon, and the long e another, eta (pronounced aytah). The sound and value of the latter is that of the French or Italian e; that is the name sound of English a, without the slight e sound, with which we close it. This sound—the long e (or a)—I have endeavored to indicate by using for it a Roman letter. Strictness would demand other like indications of sound which must be passed by with this allusion.

[B] And so I find it turning to a Latin grammar for schools published in 1871. I do not refer to grammars like Madvig’s.

[C] See Max Müller, “Science of Language,” vol. ii, pp. 468-472.

[D] Monier Williams’ Sanskrit Grammar, p. 70.

HOME STUDIES IN CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS.

BY PROF. J. T. EDWARDS, D.D.
Director of the Chautauqua School of Experimental Science.

WATER.—PHYSICAL PROPERTIES.

A glance at the map of our earth at once reveals the preponderance of water. Three-fourths of its surface is covered by the ocean, and if we divide the globe into northeastern and southwestern halves, one of the hemispheres will consist almost entirely of water. Yet there was a time when the ocean was still more extensive and covered islands and continents; even the loftiest mountain peaks were beneath the sea. We shall presently see how important an agency water became in moulding the earth and making it habitable for man. The lakes and rivers also constitute no small part of many lands, and even in the air, invisible streams are ever flowing, for “all the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come thither they return again.” The summer’s heat is the power, and the air its instrument, by which vapors, fogs, clouds and rain are lifted and borne back to the mountains and again scattered over the plains.

WATER SEEKING ITS LEVEL.

WATER AS AN ARCHITECT—WORLD-BUILDING.

In the divine hand water has been used as the material with which to shape the earth, even as a workman employs his files, emery and diamond dust to shape the objects upon which he labors. At first the earth was characterized by one dead level—a wide, desolate, fire-scarred plain; then the mountains were upheaved, the depths were broken up, and, no longer resting in their quiet beds, everywhere rolled down the slopes, and by mere attrition, wore away the firm rocks and bore the material into the plains below; all valleys have thus been made. Some are still in process of formation. Far out in the Gulf of Mexico, and in the Indian Ocean, the Mississippi and the Ganges are pouring their sediment and building future continents. Sometimes, where the volume of water was great, or the mountains steep, mighty gorges were carved out, like the river-bed below Niagara, the tremendous cuts of the Congo, or the awful cañons of the Colorado, some of which are five thousand feet in depth. Ceaseless waves beat upon the shore, powdered the rocks, and made the soft beaches; tides ebbed and flowed, and slowly wrought their changes. In addition to the wearing action of the water, which arises from the smoothness of its molecules, and the slight cohesion of its particles, thereby causing ceaseless motion, it possesses a wonderful solvent power. Solution arises from the fact that the adhesion between a liquid and a solid is greater than the cohesion between the molecules of the solid; whenever this is the case the latter will be dissolved. If water is heated, this action will be intensified; such was its condition in the early geologic ages, and this explains the extraordinary rapidity with which rocks were then dissolved. Beautiful grottoes were formed like that of Antiparos, vast caverns, such as those along the coasts of Scotland, the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky, and the Wyandotte of Indiana. It is a curious paradox which appears in this story of world-building that the New World was really the oldest in process of formation, and that the tallest mountains were the latest upheaved.

WATER TRANSMITS POWER EQUALLY IN ALL DIRECTIONS.

WATER AS AN ARTIST.

If we will stop and remember for a moment how often the painter and poet dwell upon variety in landscapes, we shall appreciate more fully the artistic work of water. We have already seen that by dissolving the rocks, the way was prepared for all verdure, and not less truly did it round the hills and carve the gorges, as well as smooth the outlines, which add so much to nature’s charms. Nor is this all. In the running brook, the sparkling cascade, the white foam of the cataract, the deep blue of the sea, the matchless variety and beauty of the clouds, we may behold the grandest exhibitions of color and form. There is endless variation in the tint, light and shade of water, owing to many causes. That this is true one will easily see in studying Church’s “Icebergs,” a picture of wonderful color and beauty, although one would scarcely expect these qualities in such a subject. Time would fail to describe the numberless forms of beauty displayed by water; it glitters in the dewdrop, shimmers in the wave, rounds the cheek of beauty, colors the rose, and paints the rainbow on the arching sky.

WATER AS A LABORER.

Water was early made to labor for man. Of the various forms of energy which he employs, animal, steam, electricity, wind, water, the last is probably the most inexpensive. It is a singular fact that all national progress and efficiency have depended largely upon proximity of water. Seas, indenting bays, sounds, rivers early bore the commerce of the world, and formed the medium for interchange of ideas, inventions, arts and literature. The little peninsulas of Italy and Greece, with their broken coast-line, developed a hardy race of seamen, who penetrated to the remotest parts of the then known world. The story of the Argonauts in search of the Golden Fleece is one of the earliest, as it is one of the most beautiful traditions of antiquity.

CAPILLARY ATTRACTION—WATER AND QUICKSILVER.

Look at that sturdy little island in the north Atlantic, whose people have so utilized the ocean that “she has dotted the surface of the whole globe with her possessions and military posts, whose morning drum beat, following the sun and keeping company with the hours, circles the earth daily with one continuous strain of the martial airs of England.” We build many hopes for the prosperity of our own country upon the fact of our extensive coast-line, which gives us one mile of shore-line to every one hundred and four square miles of surface, while that of Europe, which is far more favored in this respect than any other division of the world, has only one mile of coast for every two hundred and twenty-four square miles of surface. Water furnishes the most convenient and mobile instrument for applying gravity. As it flows on its way to the sea, everywhere it is made to turn the thousand busy wheels of industry, so that it used to be said that every pound of water in the Blackstone and Merrimac rivers did a pound of work before it reached the sea. The physical property of water which makes it in this connection so useful is, that it presses equally in all directions; it can therefore be adjusted with great ease to the sinuosities of tubes, water-wheels and kindred appliances. We also use it as a convenient power for obtaining pressure by means of the hydrostatic press.

THE HYDROSTATIC PRESS—PRESSING COTTON.

This depends upon the principle that water transmits force equally in all directions; therefore, strange as it may appear, we meet the paradox that a little water will accomplish as much as a great quantity. Thus, if a slender upright tube be connected with the bottom of a large tank the water will stand at the same height in both, and consequently the trifling amount of water in the tube supports and balances the vast amount in the tank. Suppose the area of the tube were as one to ten thousand. Now, if we should apply the force of one pound on the surface of the water in the tube, an uplifting force of one pound would be communicated to every equal area of a piston resting upon the surface of the water in the tank; so it is evident that with the pressure of one pound we might raise ten thousand pounds.

There are few more interesting proofs that “Peace hath her victories, no less renowned than war,” than that found in the completion of the Erie Canal, whereby a path was made for the vast agricultural products of the west to the metropolis, and thence to all countries.

Re-read the story of that magnificent commemoration of human genius and effort, when, in New York harbor, Governor DeWitt Clinton joined in perpetual wedlock the lake and the sea.

An interesting illustration of the upward pressure of water in seeking its level may often be seen in the dry docks of our great seaport cities, where old ocean is frequently compelled to do heavy work for man by lifting his ships out of water. A vessel is on the shoals; after the storm has subsided a great number of empty air-tight casks are sunk around the ship and fastened to it. The gradual pushing of the water lifting against the casks slowly raises the vessel until she floats.

SHOWING AN ORDINARY PUMP.

WATER AS A LAPIDARY.

Allusion has already been made to the erosive action of water. Every day observation will furnish us examples of this. The pebbles beneath our feet have been rounded and polished by this lapidary. The most beautiful specimens of its handiwork, however, are to be found in crystallization. Snow exhibits many lovely forms. If the flakes are caught on any dark surface we shall readily see that they are fashioned with great symmetry, starlike in form, on the plan of six diverging rays. There is an endless variety formed by additions made to these primaries. Not less beautiful are many of the forms of ice. The Mer-de-Glace of the Alps is pronounced by Prof. Tyndall one of nature’s most resplendent pieces of handiwork. If we may judge from all descriptions, the lofty spires and glittering sides of an iceberg furnish a spectacle sublime and terrible. The vast ice fields of the North, in spite of all their desolation, possess a mysterious charm.

The most favorable condition for the crystallization of any substance is its solution in water. It will thus appear that water is one great source of that marvelous beauty of form which we find in the mineral world. This process of nature may readily be repeated by dissolving alum, sugar, and similar substances, and crystallizing them on glass, or a string placed in the solution, and allowed to remain undisturbed. Bouquets of crystallized grasses are made in this way, often being colored afterward.

Almost all mineral substances can be crystallized, and some of the finest observations of the microscopist are made upon these objects.

Among the most interesting phenomena produced are those of polarized light, and many important deductions in medicine and chemistry are derived therefrom.

WATER AS A FARMER.

Solids are not the only substances which water is capable of taking to itself. Gases are also absorbed by it. A pint of water under one pressure of the atmosphere will absorb one pint of carbonic acid. It will take seven hundred pints of ammonia gas. This power of absorption belonging to water is of the greatest importance to agriculture. As the rain descends it frees the air from noxious gases, and carries them to the earth, where they are distributed to the rootlets of the plants; in this instance that which is death to the animal is life to the plant; it also rises in all vegetation, from cell to cell, by what is known as endosmosis. It moves freely through the porous earth by capillary attraction, the interstices of the earth really constituting a system of tubing through which the liquids freely circulate. When the earth becomes compact and hard the water can not so freely move through it; if the weather is dry, then follows another important result—the air, which always bears with it more or less moisture, especially in hot weather, can not pass through the soil and bring to the roots its gift of nutrition. Any one can perform the following experiment: Walk into the garden some morning when the season is dry and hot. You will often notice that the garden walk looks damp, while the spot that you hoed the day before, perhaps, seems dry, but if you will dig down a little way into each you will find that the loosened earth where you had worked, is moist, while the former is, below the surface, quite dry. Hence a practical inference of much value—the importance of frequently hoeing and loosening the earth, to facilitate the growth of plants, especially when the season is dry. The philosophy of this is, that the air freely passing through the loosened earth becomes cooled, and the moisture it contains is condensed, and remains to nourish the plant. A curious illustration of this fact is found in the prolific growth of watermelons, which are raised with the greatest success in dry sand, which is often so hot on the surface as to be painful to the hand; and yet a hundred pounds of watermelon contain ninety-eight pounds of water. The agricultural value of a country depends as much upon its water supply as upon the excellence of its soil. Here again we find one of the grandest endowments of “our heritage.” This is a land of sweet and abundant waters. Even those portions once considered worthless have been made of immense value by irrigation. Through our pastures flow crystal streams for the advantage of the dairy, as the production of good butter depends as much upon pure water as it does upon sweet grasses.

MANY FORMS OF SIPHONS.

Glance over one of the broad corn-fields of the West. What a wonderful contrivance is each stalk for gathering sunlight and moisture! Water constitutes eighty per cent. of that vast growth! The forces of the sunbeam, which are locked up in it, will be surrendered during the coming winter, to sustain and invigorate man and beast. Take two large goblets, one of which is nearly filled with water. Place on it a piece of card-board, through which a hole has been made, pass through the opening the roots of any growing plant, like a spray of bergamot. Cover the plant with the other goblet; in a few moments the inner surface of the upper goblet will be covered with moisture, showing that the roots have absorbed and the stomata or pores of the leaves have exhaled the moisture. In every land drouth is synonymous with want and famine. With glad festivals the Egyptians greet the rising of the Nile. The seven lean years of Joseph’s time were years of drouth. If M. De Lesseps should carry out his mighty project of overflowing the Sahara with the waters of the Mediterranean, that desert may yet bud and blossom like the rose. Growth is intimately connected with climate, and the latter depends not a little upon proximity to water. The beautiful lake region of the United States would be almost uninhabitable were it not for the gentle influence of these inland seas. They cool the air in summer and warm it in winter, thus forming a great equalizing influence and preventing extremes of temperature.

WATER AS PHILANTHROPIST.

Few things are more interesting and suggestive of a kind Providence than the plan by which water is supplied to the human family by underground currents, where it is kept cool in summer, and prevented from freezing in the winter. Natural pipeage is found almost everywhere in the earth, consisting of a layer of sand or gravel found between layers of clay or rock, which are practically impervious to water.

Where the upper layer is wanting springs appear. They often gush from the foot of the hills, but not unfrequently we find them on lofty summits. Human skill has sought for these hidden streams at great depths by means of Artesian wells, some of which are two thousand feet deep. It is claimed that the Chinese used them two thousand years ago for procuring gas and salt water. There is a famous Artesian well at Grenelle, Paris, which yields six hundred and fifty-six gallons of water per minute, while two of these wells in Chicago discharge four hundred and thirty-two thousand gallons a day. As Chicago is situated on a level prairie, this water must come from the high hills of Rock River, a hundred miles away. The water coming from these great depths is warm, one proof of the heated condition of the interior of the earth.

Horticulturists have in some places conducted this heated water by underground pipes through their gardens, and thus produced a semi-tropical vegetation.

Human contrivances for lifting water to higher elevations are various. Archimedes invented a screw for this purpose. The siphon, the chain pump, the ordinary lifting pump, the force pump, and some other inventions are applied to do this work. It would be a profitable exercise to study out the philosophy of these water lifters. You can also make them for yourself. The illustration of the forms of siphons and their various uses, for example, as given in this article, will well repay careful study.

SHOWING THAT PRESSURE DEPENDS UPON DEPTH.

Another way in which water acts as a friend to man, is in its hygienic effects. Think of the numberless uses of ice in summer, and how grateful to the fevered lips is ice! The invalid seeks in summer the cool sea breeze, freighted with its finely divided and stimulating salts and mineral vapors. In winter the genial atmosphere of Florida or the Gulf will fan the patient’s faded cheek. Or perhaps some health resort may be sought where there are mingled with the waters valuable medicinal restoratives. Vermont has the greatest number of these, but they are found at Sharon, Avon, Clifton, and Saratoga; while the hot springs of Arkansas have a great reputation, and who knows but what in some of the wonderful bath fountains of the West we may yet find what Ponce de Leon sought, the elixir which should transform old age into blooming youth. The latest new idea in medical practice is the hot water cure, which consists in drinking an indefinite amount of hot water whenever opportunity makes it possible. Public fountains are good temperance lectures.

SHOWING THE PRINCIPLE OF ARTESIAN WELLS.

One must travel in oriental lands, however, to learn all the sweet and beautiful significance of that one word, Water, which is so often used in the Bible as the best symbol of God’s abounding mercy.

Note.—The cuts in this article are from “Elements of Physics,” by Prof. A. P. Gage, the richest contribution to experimental philosophy printed in many years. Teachers as well as students will find it full of valuable suggestions.

SUNDAY READINGS.

SELECTED BY CHANCELLOR J. H. VINCENT, D.D.

[November 2.]

We read of Payson, that his mind, at times, almost lost sense of the external world, in the ineffable thoughts of God’s glory, which rolled like a sea of light around him, at the throne of grace.

We read of Cowper, that, in one of the few lucid hours of his religious life, such was the experience of God’s presence which he enjoyed in prayer, that, as he tells us, he thought he should have died with joy, if special strength had not been imparted to him to bear the disclosure.

We read of one of the Tennents, that on one occasion, when he was engaged in secret devotion, so overpowering was the revelation of God which opened upon his soul, and with the augmenting intensity of effulgence as he prayed, that at length he recoiled from the intolerable joy as from a pain, and besought God to withhold from him further manifestations of his glory. He said, “Shall thy servant see thee and live?”

We read of the “sweet hours” which Edwards enjoyed “on the banks of Hudson’s River, in secret converse with God,” and hear his own description of the inward sense of Christ which at times came into his heart, and which he “knows not how to express otherwise than by a calm, sweet abstraction of soul from all the concerns of this world; and sometimes a kind of vision … of being alone in the mountains, or some solitary wilderness, far from all mankind, sweetly conversing with Christ, and rapt and swallowed up in God.”

We read of such instances of the fruits of prayer, in the blessedness of the suppliant, and are we not reminded by them of the transfiguration of our Lord, of whom we read, “As he prayed, the fashion of his countenance was altered, and his raiment was white and glistening?” Who of us is not oppressed by the contrast between such an experience and his own? Does not the cry of the patriarch come unbidden to our lips, “Oh, that I knew where I might find Him?”

The scriptural examples of prayer have, most of them, an unutterable intensity. They are pictures of struggles, in which more of suppressed desire is hinted than that which is expressed. Recall the wrestling of Jacob: “I will not let thee go except thou bless me;” and the “panting” and “pouring out of soul” of David: “I wail day and night; my throat is dried: … I wait for my God;” and the importunity of the Syro-Phœnician woman, with her “Yes, Lord, yet the dogs under the table eat of the children’s crumbs;” and the persistency of Bartimeus, crying out, “the more a great deal,” “Have mercy on me;” and the strong crying and tears of our Lord, “If it be possible—if it be possible!” There is no easiness of desire here. The scriptural examples of prayer, also, are clear as light in their objects of thought. Even those which are calm and sweet, like the Lord’s prayer, have few and sharply-defined subjects of devotion. They are not discursive and voluminous, like many uninspired forms of supplication. They do not range over everything at once. They have no vague expressions; they are crystalline; a child need not read them a second time to understand them. As uttered by their authors, they were in no antiquated phraseology; they were in the fresh forms of a living speech. They were, and were meant to be, the channels of living thoughts and living hearts.—Phelps.

[November 9.]

It is the highest stage of manhood to have no wish, no thought, no desire, but Christ—to feel that to die were bliss if it were for Christ—that to live in penury, and woe, and scorn, contempt, and misery, were sweet for Christ. To feel that it matters nothing what becomes of one’s self, so that our Master is but exalted—to feel that though like a sear leaf, we are blown in the blast, we are quite careless whither we are going, so long as we feel that the Master’s hand is guiding us according to his will; or rather, to feel that though like the diamond, we must be exercised with sharp tools, yet we care not how sharply we may be cut, so that we may be made brilliants to adorn his crown. If any of us have attained to this sweet feeling of self-annihilation, we shall look up to Christ as if he were the sun, and we shall say within ourselves, “O Lord, I see thy beams; I feel myself to be—not a beam from thee—but darkness, swallowed up in thy light. The most I ask is, that thou wouldst live in me—that the life I live in the flesh may not be my life, but thy life in me; that I may say with emphasis, as Paul did, ‘For me to live is Christ.’” A man who has attained this high position has indeed “entered into rest.” To him the praise or the censure of men is alike contemptible, for he has learned to look upon the one as unworthy of his pursuit, and the other as beneath his regard. He is no longer vulnerable since he has in himself no separate sensitiveness, but has united his whole being with the cause and person of the Redeemer. As long as there is a particle of selfishness remaining in us, it will mar our sweet enjoyment of Christ; and until we get a complete riddance of it, our joy will never be unmixed with grief. We must dig at the roots of our selfishness to find the worm which eats our happiness. The soul of the believer will always pant for this serene condition of passive surrender, and will not content itself until it has thoroughly plunged itself into the sea of divine love. Its normal condition is that of complete dedication, and it esteems every deviation from such a state as a plague-mark and a breaking forth of disease. Here, in the lowest valley of self-renunciation, the believer walks upon a very pinnacle of exaltation; bowing himself, he knows that he is rising immeasurably high when he is sinking into nothing, and, falling flat upon his face, he feels that he is thus mounting to the highest elevation of moral grandeur.

It is the ambition of most men to absorb others into their own life, that they may shine more brightly by the stolen rays of other lights; but it is the Christian’s highest aspiration to be absorbed into another, and lose himself in the glories of his Sovereign and Savior. Proud men hope that the names of others shall but be remembered as single words in their own long titles of honor; but loving children of God long for nothing more than to see their own names used as letters in the bright records of the doings of the Wonderful, the Counselor.—Spurgeon.

[November 16.]

The peace of Christ, then, was the fruit of the combined toil and trust, in the one case diffusing itself from the center of his active life, in the other from his passive emotions; enabling him in the one case to do things tranquilly, in the other to see things tranquilly. Two things only can make life go wrong and painfully with us; when we suffer or suspect misdirection and feebleness in the energies of love and duty within us or in the providence of the world without us; bringing, in the one case, the lassitude of an unsatisfied and discordant nature; in the other the melancholy of hopeless views. From these Christ delivers us by a summons to mingled toil and trust. And herein does his peace differ from that which “the world giveth”—that its prime essential is not ease, but strife; not self-indulgence, but self-sacrifice; not acquiescence in evil for the sake of quiet, but conflict with it for the sake of God; not, in short, a prudent accommodation of the mind to the world, but a resolute subjugation of the world to the best conceptions of the mind. Amply has the promise to leave behind him such a peace been since fulfilled. It was fulfilled to the apostles who first received it, and has been realized again by a succession of faithful men to whom they have delivered it.

The word “peace” denotes the absence of war and conflict; a condition free from the restlessness of fruitless desire, the forebodings of anxiety, the stings of eternity.… The first impulse of “the natural man” is, to seek peace by mending his external condition; to quiet desire by increase of ease; to banish anxiety by increase of wealth; to guard against hostility by making himself too strong for it; to build up his life into a future of security and a palace of comfort, where he may softly lie, though tempests beat and rain descends. The spirit of Christianity casts away at once this whole theory of peace; declares it the most chimerical of dreams, and proclaims it impossible even to make this kind of reconciliation between the soul and the life wherein it acts. As well might the athlete demand a victory without a foe. To the noblest faculties of the soul, rest is disease and torture. The understanding is commissioned to grapple with ignorance, the conscience to confront the powers of moral evil, the affections to labor for the wretched and oppressed; nor shall any peace be found till these, which reproach and fret us in our most elaborate ease, put forth an incessant and satisfying energy; till instead of conciliating the world, we vanquish it; and rather than sit still, in the sickness of luxury, for it to amuse our perceptions, we precipitate ourselves upon it to mould it into a new creation. Attempt to make all smooth and pleasant without, and you thereby create the most corroding of anxieties, and stimulate the most insatiable of appetites within. But let there be harmony within, let no clamors of self drown the voice which is entitled to authority there, let us set forth on the mission of duty, resolved to live for it alone, to close with every resistance that obstructs it, and march through every field that awaits it, and in the consciousness of immortal power, the sense of ill will vanish; and the peace of God well nigh extinguish the sufferings of the man. “In the world we may have tribulation; in Christ we shall have peace.”—James Martineau.

[November 23.]

God is love; he who does not love him does not know him; for how can we know love without loving?… God who made all things in fact creates us anew every moment. It did not follow necessarily that because we were yesterday, we should exist to-day; we might cease to be, we might relapse into the nothingness from whence we came, if the same all-powerful hand who called us from it did not still sustain us. We are nothing in ourselves; we are only what God has made us to be, and that only while it pleases him. He has only to withdraw the hand which supports us in order to replunge us into the abyss of our nothingness, as a stone which one holds in the air falls from its own weight, as soon as the hand is unclosed which supports it. Thus do we hold existence only as the continual gift of God.…

It is not to know thee, oh God, to regard thee only as an all-powerful being who gives laws to all nature, and who has created everything which we see, it is only to know a part of thy being, it is not to know that which is most wonderful and most affecting to thy rational offspring. That which transports and melts my soul is to know that thou art the God of my heart. Thou doest there thy good pleasure.… Oh God! man does not know thee, he knows not who thou art. “The light shines in the midst of the darkness, but the darkness comprehendeth it not.” It is through thee that we live, that we think, that we enjoy the pleasures of life, and we forget him from whom we receive all these things.

Universal light! it is through thee alone that we see anything. Sun of the soul, who dost shine more brightly than the material sun! seeing nothing except through thee we see not thee thyself. It is thou who givest all things, to the stars their light, to the fountains their waters and their courses, to the earth its plants, to the fruits their flavor, to all nature its riches and its beauty, to man health, reason, virtue, thou givest all, thou doest all, thou rulest over all; I see only thee, all other things vanish as a shadow before him who has once seen thee. But alas! he who has not seen thee, has seen nothing, he has passed his life in the illusion of a dream; he is as if he were not more unhappy still, for as we learn from thy word, it were better for him if he had not been born.

For myself I ever find thee within me. It is thee who workest with me in all the good I do. I have felt a thousand times that I could not of myself conquer my passions, overcome my habits, subdue my pride, follow my reason, or continue to will what I have once willed. It is thou who gavest me this will, who preservest it pure; without thee I am like a reed, agitated by the wind. Thou hast given me courage, uprightness, and all the good emotions which I experience. Thou hast created within me a new heart which desires thy justice, and thirsts for thy eternal truth. I leave myself in thy hands; it is enough for me to fulfill thy all-beneficent designs, and in nothing to resist thy good pleasure, for which I was created. Command, forbid, what willest thou that I should do? What that I should do? Lifted up, cast down, comforted, left to suffer, employed in thy service, or useless to every one, I still adore thee, ever yielding my will, I say with Mary, “Be it unto me according to thy word.”—Fénelon.

[November 30.]

Remember what St. Paul saith, “Our life is hid with Christ in God.” … Five cordial observations are couched therein. First, that God sets a high price and valuation on the souls of his servants, in that he is pleased to hide them; none will hide toys and trifles, but what is counted a treasure. Secondly, the word hide, as a relative, imports that some seek after our souls, being none other than Satan himself, that roaring lion, who goes about seeking whom he may devour. But the best is, let him seek, and seek, and seek, till all his malice be weary (if that be possible), we can not be hurt by him whilst we are hid in God. Thirdly, grant Satan find us there, he can not fetch us thence; our souls are bound in the bundle of life, with the Lord our God. So that, be it spoken with reverence, God must first be stormed with force or fraud, before the soul of a saint sinner, hid in him, can be surprised. Fourthly, we see the reason why so many are at a loss, in the agony of a wounded conscience, concerning their spiritual estate: for they look for their life in a wrong place, namely, to find it in their own piety, purity, and inherent righteousness. But though they seek, and search, and dig, and dive never so deep, all in vain. For though Adam’s life was hid in himself, and he intrusted with the keeping of his own integrity, yet, since Christ’s coming, all the original evidences of our salvation are kept in a higher office, namely, hidden in God himself. Lastly, as our English proverb saith, “He that hid can find;” so God (to whom belongs the issues from death) can infallibly find out that soul that is hidden in him, though it may seem, when dying, even to labor to lose itself in a fit of despair.…

Surely as Joseph and Mary conceived that they had lost Christ in a crowd and sought him three days sorrowing, till at last they found him, beyond their expectation, safe and sound, sitting in the temple; so many pensive parents, solicitous for the souls of their children, have even given them up for gone, and lamented them lost (because dying without visible comfort), and yet, in due time, shall find them, to their joy and comfort, safely possessed of honor and happiness, in the midst of the heavenly temple and church triumphant in glory.—Fuller.

GLIMPSES OF ANCIENT GREEK LIFE.

Selected from J. P. Mahaffy’s “Old Greek Life.”

CHAPTER II.—THE GREEK—HIS PROPERTY.

All Greek property was divided both according to its use, and also according to its nature. If it was such as merely produced enjoyment to the owner it was called idle; if it was directly profitable, it was called useful or fruitful. But this distinction is less often mentioned than that into visible and invisible property, which nearly corresponded to our division into real and personal property. But the Greeks included ready money, lodged at a banker’s, as a part of real property. Its principal kind, however, was of course landed property, as well as town houses, country farms, and sometimes mining property held under perpetual lease from the state. Of all these public accounts were kept, and when special taxes were required they were paid on this kind of property and according to this estimate. Personal or invisible property consisted of all movables, such as furniture, factories, changes of raiment, cattle, and above all slaves, who were employed in trades as well as in household work. In days of war and of heavy taxing it was common for the Greeks to “make away with” their property, which then meant, not to spend it, but to make it invisible property, that is, invisible to the state, and therefore not taxable.

At every epoch of Greek history land was considered the best and the most important kind of wealth, and the landholder enjoyed privileges and rights not allowed to other men, however rich. This arose from the early form of Greek society. It is clear in Homer that the nobles possess the greater part of the land as their private property, and much of even the kings’ wealth was made up of estates. These were also presented to public benefactors and other distinguished persons. What land was possessed by the common people can only be judged from Hesiod, who describes what we should call tenant farming—the occupying of small pieces of land in poverty, without telling us whether it was freehold or rented from the nobles. It was probably the former, at least in Bœotia, where we can imagine the rough slopes unoccupied of old as they now are, or covered with trees. These farms could be held by any one who had the perseverance to clear and till them. In later days, when aristocracies prevailed, they also took for themselves the lands, so much so that at Syracuse and elsewhere they were called “the land-sharers” as opposed to laborers and tradespeople. In some states, such as Sparta, it was said that the nobles, or conquering race, divided the land so as to leave the greater portion in equal lots for themselves to be worked by their slaves or dependants, and a smaller portion to the former owners, who were obliged to pay a rent to the state. But of course no such equality of lots, if ever carried out, could last. In all states we find the perpetual complaint that property had come into the hands of a few, while the many were starving. The Athenians met this complaint by allotting the lands of islands and coasts which they conquered among their poorer citizens, who retained their rights at Athens while holding their foreign possessions.

Land was either bare or arable land, or planted with trees. There were also stony mountain pastures. In historical days, all these lands were either let by the state on leases, usually for ever (as was especially the case with mines), or were similarly let by political and religious corporations, or were worked by private owners for their own benefit by means of stewards and slaves. Such country farms are often mentioned in lists of property by the orators. The main produce has already been described. We have no means of fixing the value of landed property in Greece, as we generally hear of prices without being told of the amount of land in question. But the low average of the actual prices mentioned in Attica points to a great subdivision of such property.

As was before observed, the older Greek houses built in narrow irregular streets were of little value, being very plain and without any ornament. Leotychides, who was king of Sparta in B. C. 500, could not contain his wonder at a ceiling paneled in wood, which he saw at Corinth, and Demosthenes tells us that the houses of the most celebrated Athenians at the same period were so modest as to be in no way different from those of their neighbors. Such houses, which remained the ordinary fashion all through Greek history, were of course not very valuable, and we hear of one worth only three minæ (about $60 of our money), of another at Eleusis worth five, and Demosthenes speaks of what he calls a little house worth seven (about $140). But we know that Alcibiades and other fashionable men of his time began to decorate their houses with paintings—a fashion which became quite common at Tanagra later on; this and other improvements raised the price of some houses to forty or fifty minæ, and the rich banker, Pasion, possessed one which was let in lodgings and which was rated at one hundred.

All these prices are very low when compared with our standard, and can only be explained by the fact that at Athens, which was probably the most crowded and the dearest place in Greece, the circuit of the walls was greater than that required for the houses, so that there was always building ground to spare. It appears that Athenian citizens did not invest more than the fifth part of their property in dwelling houses, unless they kept them for letting out. The ordinary rent of country houses in Attica was from eight to eight and three-quarters per cent. of the total value, which is about the same that a builder now expects for the money he invests in houses. But when we reflect that the ordinary rate of interest was not five per cent. as among us, but twelve, we have another proof that houses and house-rent were cheap in Greece. But we should also remember the fact that as most of the day was spent abroad, the house was by no means so important as it is in our colder and harsher climate.

As to the other kinds of real property, that which we know most about, and which was perhaps the most important, was mining property. There were gold and silver mines in many parts of Greece, of which those of Thasos (gold) and Laurium (silver) are the best known. Both these were probably discovered by the Phœnicians. We are told that the Athenian state used to let the right of mining on leases for ever, for a fine at the outset, of which we can not tell the amount, and a rent of four per cent. on the profit. The shafts in pits were thus divided into lots, and the holder of the lease could sell it, or borrow money upon it, just as upon any other real property. Owing to the fixed yearly rent or tax upon the produce of the mine, the occasional taxes were not levied on this kind of property. There were officers appointed to watch the working of the mines and see that the rent was honestly paid, just as we have government officers constantly supervising distilleries, in order to see the taxes properly paid. The produce of the mines of Laurium was a great source of wealth to Athens; just as the gold mines of Thrace were an important gain to Philip of Macedon. This was especially the case, because they were worked not by free labor, which is subject to strikes and the raising of wages, but by slaves bought and hired out for that purpose.

By far the most important part of personal property was the possession of slaves and of ready money. There is indeed some doubt among Greek writers about the classing of the latter, and generally we find the money left by a citizen in bank counted as a part of his real property in the law courts. There can be no doubt that gold and silver were very scarce in Greece up to the time of the Persian wars, the first large quantities being presents from the Lydian and other Asiatic kings. Even in later days great fortunes were not frequent, and the Greeks always kept much of their wealth invested in slaves and in vessels of gold and silver or plate, as we should call it. These latter are always specially mentioned in inventories of property, and the ready money seems always a small fraction of the full value in these lists. States, on the other hand, kept large reserve funds of ready money, because of this general scarcity of it among private citizens, and the difficulty of borrowing it during a sudden crisis. Accordingly the ordinary rate of interest obtained on money was twelve per cent., which was of course greatly increased when the investment was risky. Thus it was very common to lend money to a ship-owner in order to enable him to lay in a cargo, and carry it to a foreign port. But as the money was lost if the ship foundered the lender expected twenty-five or thirty per cent. in case of its safe return. We are told that most of the trade in the Piræus was carried on in this way. Investments on the security of landed property, or of an established trade, were, of course, safer, and therefore made at a lower rate of interest.

The oldest banks in Greece had been the temples, in which all manner of valuables were deposited for safety. The priests had also been in the habit of lending money, especially to states, upon public security. But in later days we find banking, especially at Athens, altogether a matter of private speculation. Originally, the table of a money-changer was a banking office, and there accounts were kept in books by careful and regular entries. These private bankers often failed, and such failure was politely called rearranging his table. There was once an Athenian banker called Pasion, who had been originally a slave, but who received the freedom of the city, and was enrolled in one of the most important demes, because his bank had stood firm when all the rest failed, and he had thus sustained the public credit. We are told that letters from his house gave a man credit when traveling through all the Greek waters, as all the merchants had dealings with him, and he doubtless issued circular notes, like those of Coutts’s and other English banks, for the benefit of travelers.

Of the coinage of money I will speak hereafter. Though the Phœnicians, especially at Carthage, had invented the use of token money, like our notes, such a device was, as a rule, unknown to the Greeks, who did not advance beyond the use of formal bonds for the payment of money. We are told however that the people of Byzantium used iron money in this way.

It is difficult for us to put ourselves in the place of the ancients as regards slaves. They were looked upon strictly as part of the chattels of the house, on a level rather with horses and oxen than with human beings. No Greek philosopher, however humane, had the least idea of objecting to slavery in itself, which was, Aristotle thought, quite necessary and natural in all society; but there were Greeks who objected to other Greeks being enslaved and thought that only barbarians should be degraded to this condition. Hence, any Greek general who sold his prisoners of war as slaves, was not indeed thought guilty of any crime or injustice, but was sometimes considered to have acted harshly. Still a vast number of Greeks who might have been brought up in luxury and refinement, were doomed to this misfortune, in early days, by the kidnapping of pirates, as Homer often tells us; in later, through the many fierce civil wars; in both, by being taken up as foundlings, since the exposing of children was common, and most states allowed the finder to bring up such infants as his slaves. Frequently the men of captured cities were massacred, but in almost all cases the women and children were sold into slavery. There were some parts of Greece, such as Laconia and Thessaly, in which old conquered nations were enslaved under the conditions of what we call serfdom. They were attached to the land of their master, and supported themselves by it, paying him a very large rent out of the produce. These serfs, called by many names, helots at Sparta, penestæ in Thessaly, clarotæ in Crete, were also obliged in most places to attend their masters as light-armed soldiers in war. That they were subject to much injustice and oppression is clear from the fact that they repeatedly made fierce and dangerous insurrections, and a writer on the Athenian state significantly complains that such was the license allowed at Athens to slaves, that they actually went about dressed almost like free men, and showed neither fear nor cringing when met in the streets.

Still, though slaves were on the whole better treated at Athens than elsewhere, they were always liable to torture in case their evidence was required, as it was common for the accused to offer his slaves’ evidence if he was suspected of concealing any facts which they knew, and they were not believed without torture. So also the respectable and pious Nicias let them out by thousands to be worked in the Laurian silver mines, where the poisonous smoke and the hardships were such that half the price of the slave was paid yearly by the contractor who hired them—in other words, if they lived three years Nicias received one and a half times the value of his slaves. The contractor was also obliged to restore them the same in number, no regard being had of the individual slave. Again, we find women slaves deliberately employed by their masters in the worst kinds of traffic. The general price of slaves was not high, and seems to have averaged about two minæ (under $40); even in the case of special accomplishments it did not often exceed ten minæ. They wore a tunic with one sleeve, and a fur cap, in fact the dress of the lower class country people.

The most important domestic animal in Greece, as in the rest of Europe, was the horse. Among the Homeric nobles, who went both to war and to travel in chariots, the use of horses was very great, and one Trojan chief is said to have possessed a drove of three thousand. And yet their carts were drawn by mules. In later days, the use of chariots in war and carriages in traveling almost disappeared from Greece, and was practiced only in Asia Minor. I suppose this was owing to the scarcity and bad state of the roads. Cavalry and pack horses were used instead, and the cavalry of most Greek states was very trifling. The Athenians, for example, had no cavalry at all at Marathon; and at Platæa none which could even protect foragers from the Persians, as the Thessalians were not on the Greek side. The Lacedæmonians had no cavalry at all before the year 424 B. C. Thus horses (except in Thessaly and a few other places) were only kept for cavalry purposes, and also for such displays as the Olympic games and the state processions in religious festivals. At Athens to keep horses and to drive four-in-hand (in public contests only) was a proof of either great wealth or great extravagance. The knights or cavalry were of the richest class, and only kept one horse each as a state duty. We know that the very cheapest price for a bad horse was three minæ—that is to say, more than the average for a good slave, though not in itself a large sum. Twelve minæ seems about the average price for an ordinary horse. The enormous and perfectly exceptional sum of thirteen talents is said to have been paid for Alexander’s horse “Bucephalus.” This name was one used of a special breed called ox-headed, from their short and broad head and neck, and which were celebrated in Thessaly. Other good breeds came from Sicyon, Cyrene, and Sicily.

For draught purposes and for traveling with packs, much greater use was made of mules and donkeys, especially of the former, as is still the case all over Greece. We have no certain knowledge as to the prices given for these animals. The history of the use of oxen is, on the other hand, much better known. In Homeric times, and before the use of coined money, prices were fixed by the number of oxen a thing would cost, and this old practice is preserved in the Latin word pecunia (from pecus) for money, and in the English fee.

But according as men, and with them farming, increased, so much land was withdrawn from pasture that few more oxen were kept than what were wanted for field work and for sacrifices. Beef was thought heavy diet, except in Bœotia; and cow’s milk was never much liked by the Greeks. In out-of-the-way parts of Greece, such as Eubœa and Epirus, there were still large herds, and this was also the case about Orchomenus; but in general we hear that hides and even cattle were imported from the Black Sea and from Cyrene. The price of an ox at Athens in Solon’s time is said to have been five drachmæ (one dollar), though much more was sometimes given. This was not so much on account of the plenty or cheapness of oxen, as owing to the scarcity of coined money all through Greece. Accordingly about the year 400 B. C. we find the price greatly increased, and ranging from fifty to eighty drachmæ. An ox fit for a prize at games was valued at one hundred ($15.50).

We are told that in Solon’s days an ox was worth five sheep, but probably in later days the difference was greater, for while oxen became scarce, the feeding of sheep and goats must at all times have been a very common employment throughout Greece. Even in the present day, the traveler can see that from a country for the most part Alpine, with steep ravines and cliffs and wild upland pastures, unfit for culture and difficult of access, no other profit could ever be derived. But now, in the day of its desolation, shepherds with their flocks of sheep and goats have invaded many rich districts, once the scene of good and prosperous agriculture.

The old Greek peasant dressed in sheepskins, made clothes of the wool, used the milk for cheese and the lambs for feasting and sacrifice. We hear of no importing of wool into Greece, but find that the Ionian colonies in Asia Minor, such as Miletus and Laodicea, were most celebrated for fine woolen garments, which they made of the wool of the flocks of Mysia and Phrygia. Many districts all over Greece were also famed for their woolen stuffs, so much so that the woolen cloaks of Pallene were given as prizes to victors in some of the local games. Perhaps Arcadia has remained the least changed part of Greece in this and in other respects. Even now the shepherds go up in summer with great flocks to the snowy heights of Cyllene, and live like Swiss peasants in châlets during the hot weather. In winter they come down to the warm pastures of Argos and Corinth, where a tent of skins under an old olive tree affords them sufficient shelter, with a hedged-in inclosure protected by fierce dogs for their flocks. Such inclosures and even stalls are mentioned in Homer.

The price of a sheep at Athens in the fourth century B. C. seems to have varied from ten to twenty drachmæ, its chief value being the quality of the wool. There is nothing very special known about goats, which were kept, as they now are, very much in the same way as sheep, and their hair used for making ropes and coarse stuffs.

In the same way we know little of pigs beyond that their hides were used for rough coats, and that Homer’s heroes were very fond of pork. We hear of large droves being kept in the mountainous parts of Arcadia, Laconia, and Ætolia, where they fed on the acorns in the oak woods. Fowls were not a usual article of diet, and are therefore not prominent in our accounts of Greek property. The cock is spoken of as a Persian bird, the pheasant as a Colchian, and peacocks were an object of curiosity at Athens in Pericles’ day. The culture of bees, on the other hand, was of great importance, as it took the place of the sugar plantations of our day—all sweetmeats being flavored with honey.

It seems certain that the greatest part of the wealth of the Greeks consisted in these out-of-door possessions, which were managed by slave stewards and shepherds for their masters, if they lived in the city. There is reason to think that they neither laid up much money in banks, nor kept any great treasures in the way of changes of raiment, like the Orientals, nor in furniture and works of art, like the Romans and moderns. But owing to the many wars and invasions, this agricultural wealth was precarious, and liable to sudden destruction. House property, again, which in walled towns was pretty safe, is from its own nature perishable. Private wealth therefore was not great on the average, and the splendid monuments of Greek art in its best days were all the result of public spirit, and not of private enterprise or bounty. A fortune of $250,000 in all kinds of property is the extreme limit we know of, and is spoken of much as $250,000,000 would be now-a-days.

GREEK MYTHOLOGY.

CHAPTER II.

The early inhabitants of Greece, and of the islands in the beautiful Ægean, were an active race, sprightly, and highly imaginative. Though, as yet, uncultured and unaided, their vivid conceptions of things natural and supernatural, visible and invisible, found expression in legends that embodied their often crude ideas. After some progress in civilization, and the introduction of letters, these were perfected and embellished by men of poetic genius, to whom we are indebted for many a charming story. Are these stories true? Perhaps not, yet they are true types of the intelligence and thought of the men of that age and country.

Much is unreal. But, if to us with the diviner light, after centuries of progress, and habits of thought so different, some things appear childish, and others inexplicable if not absurdly false, we will not hastily condemn what we fail to understand. Modern writers have done much to remove from our common heritage of mythical tradition what seemed repulsive in it; while they preserve for us the exquisite poetry that breathes especially in Homeric lines, and will survive the most destructive criticism.

COSMOGONY.

The facts and problems of the visible universe have engaged the attention of thoughtful men in all ages. The outer sensuous world exists. Whence came it, and how? The early Greeks had, it seems, no idea of creation, or of an intelligent creator, yet felt bound to account to themselves for what they saw.

According to the most common account, the world, with all its solid, tangible things, was formed from chaos—and by chaos was meant, so far as appears, not a shapeless confused mass of things in any way objective to the senses, but merely space, a dark illimitable void wherein dwelt utter nothingness. As to how the world proceeded thence, there was little agreement. The most popular view is that, in some unaccountable manner, Gea (the earth) issued from the vast womb of chaos. The process once begun the development was surprisingly rapid. Tartarus, the abyss below, immediately severed itself. Eros (the love that forms and binds all things) sprung into existence. Gea then begot, of herself, Uranus (heaven), the mountains, and Pontus (the sea).

Their notions of the structure of the universe are a slight advance on their ideas of its origin. These give their coloring to many of their narratives.

“The Greek poets believed the earth to be flat and circular—their own country occupying the middle of it, the central point being either Mount Olympus, the abode of the gods, or Delphi, so famous for its oracle.” Those in the more remote parts, and having never seen the sacred mountain, supposed its summit quite in the heavens, and occupied by superior beings. Those who were nearer knew better, but fancied the gods, or immortals, often came down and frequented its grand solitudes, holding their councils, or having their pleasures apart from men.

The circular disc of the earth was crossed from east to west and divided into two equal parts by the “sea,” as they called the Mediterranean, and its continuation, the Euxine.

Around the earth flowed the “River Ocean,” its course being from south to north on the western, and in a contrary direction on the eastern side. It flowed in a steady, equable current, as was supposed, unvexed by storm or tempest. The sea and all the rivers on earth received their waters from it.

The northern portion of the earth they supposed inhabited by a happy race named Hyperboreans, dwelling in blissful bowers, and perpetual spring beyond the lofty mountains whose caverns were believed to send forth the piercing blasts of the north-wind, which chilled the people of Hellas (Greece). Their country was inaccessible by land or sea. They lived exempt from disease or old age, from toils and warfare. Moore has given us the “Song of a Hyperborean,” beginning—

“I come from a land in the sun bright deep,

Where golden gardens glow,

Where the winds of the north, becalmed in sleep,

Their conch-shells never blow.”

On the south side of the earth, close to that fancied stream, or “River Ocean,” dwelt a people happy and virtuous as the Hyperboreans. They were named Æthiopians. The gods favored them highly, and at times left their Olympian abodes, going down to share their sacrifices and banquets.

On the western margin of the earth, fast by the “River Ocean,” spread out a beautiful plain named Elysiam, whither mortals, favored by the gods, were transported without tasting death, to enjoy an immortality of bliss. This happy region was also called by them “Fortunate Fields,” and “Isles of the Blessed.”

It will be borne in mind by the young reader of their fables, or legends, that the Greeks of the mythological period were an isolated people, knowing but little of geography, and nothing of any real people except those to the east and south of their own country, or near the coast of the Mediterranean.

The western portion of this sea, of unknown extent, their imagination peopled with giants and enchantresses, while around them, at unknown distances, and perhaps but remotely connected with their own earthly habitation, they placed communities enjoying the peculiar favor of the gods, having serene happiness and longevity—human, but akin to the immortals.

Of the heavens above them still less was yet known, though they studied astronomy, and noted how some bodies moved, while others were apparently stationary.

Probably they had some vague notion of life and volition in things that move, and when the sun and moon were said to rise from the ocean and drive through the air, giving light to gods and men, the language was, to them, scarcely metaphorical.

Knowing nothing of the revolution of the earth, the succession of days and nights was accounted for by supposing the sun-god to descend into the “River Ocean,” and embark in his winged boat, which carried him swiftly around the northern part of the earth, back to his place of rising in the east.

Milton, in his “Comus,” thus translates their philosophy on the subject:

Now the gilded car of day

His golden axle doth allay

In the steep Atlantic stream;

And the slope sun his upward beam

Shoots against the dusky pole,

Pacing towards the other goal

Of his chamber in the east.

THE GODS OF OLYMPUS.

Zeus (Jupiter) was the supreme god of both Greek and Roman mythology. In our English literature on the subject the Latin names occur more frequently, are more familiar, and are used without further explanation.

Before Homer wrote the “Iliad” and “Odyssey,” Jupiter had come to be regarded by the Greeks as the father of all gods and men, but he had not always that distinction. The earlier myths gave his descent, and according to some legends there was a time when Cronos, father of Jupiter, was supreme; but even he was not first in the order of the gods. The imaginary line of their descent stretched far back till lost in deepest mystery, but it led not to the Everlasting Self-existent One. According to Hesiod their highest gods were really earth born. The first beings were Chaos and Gea. The latter gave birth to Uranus—whence sprang a race of twelve Titans, six males—Oceanus, Cœus, Crius, Hyperion, Japetus, and Cronus; six females—Thia, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phœbe, and Thetis.

The interpretation of these divinities is difficult, but they doubtless represented some real or supposed elementary forces of nature.

The different stories respecting things, not known but imagined, were often at variance, nor need we attempt to harmonize them, as each district or city had its own version. From other sources it would be possible to construct a different genealogy, but that here given was somewhat generally accepted.

Ouranos, or Uranus, is the heaven which is spread like a vail over the earth, and was much the same to the Greeks as the old Hindu god Varuna, whose name has a verbal root meaning to vail or conceal.

Having attributed some kind of intelligence and personality to the vast expanse stretching itself overhead, they represent this sovereign, Ouranos, as hurling the Cyclops with Bronte, Sterope (thunder and lightning), and other children of Gea, into the abyss called Tartarus; and that Gea, in her grief and anger, urged her other children to insurrection against their father, and to set Cronos instead on his throne.

When Cronos (time) became king he is represented as so voracious and cruel that all his children were devoured soon after each was born. The basis of this legendary fact is evident, as time swallows up the days and weeks, months and years, as they come each in its order, and thus “bears all its sons away.”

These acts of Cronos, the reputed cannibal among such as interpret the fable literally, connect with the history of Jupiter. Rhea, his wife, and the mother of Jupiter, anxious to save her child, having already lost five, determined to save her next son from a cruel fate by stratagem. A stone was given to the husband, wrapped in swaddling clothes, which he swallowed without examination or suspicion, and the little Jupiter, thus rescued, was reared by the nymphs in a cave on Mount Diete, or Ida, in Crete. He was nourished on goat’s milk, and the bees brought him honey to eat. That the cries of the child might not betray his presence, and the mother’s strategy, the Curetes, or attendant priests of Rhea, drowned his voice by the clashing of their weapons.

Jupiter thus remained hidden till he speedily became a young, but very powerful god. He then attacked and overthrew his father Cronos, whom he also compelled by a device of Gea, to bring forth the children he had already devoured. Some of the Titans, as Oceanus, Themis, Mnemosyne, and Hyperion, at once submitted to the dominion of the new ruler of the world. The others refused allegiance. But after a contest of years Jupiter, with the help of the Cyclops and Centimani, overthrew them. As a punishment they were cast into Tartarus, which was then closed by Poseidon with brazen gates.

Thessaly, which bears evident traces of having suffered much from natural convulsions, was supposed to have been the scene of this mighty war.

Jupiter and his adherents fought from Olympus, the Titans from the opposite mountain of Othrys. Thenceforward the victor shared the empire of the world with his two brothers, Poseidon and Hades. The former he made ruler of the ocean and waters, the latter he set over the infernal regions. This new order of things, however, was by no means at once securely established. The resentment of Gea led her to produce a younger and most powerful son, the great Typhœus, a monster with a hundred fire-breathing heads, whom she sent to attack the thunder-bearer. A great battle took place which shook heaven and earth, but Jupiter, by means of his crushing thunderbolts, at length overcame his antagonist, and cast him into Tartarus, or, according to others, buried him beneath Mount Ætna, in Sicily, whence at times he still breathes out fire and flames toward heaven.

“Some tell of another rebellion of the giants against the dominion of Jupiter. From the plains of Phlegra they sought to scale and storm Olympus, by piling, through their great strength, Pelion on Ossa; but after a bloody battle they too were overpowered, and shared the fate of the Titans. After that no hostile attack ever disturbed the peaceful ease of the inhabitants of Olympus.”

The character of the acknowledged chief of their deities, who is supposed against all opposition to control and rule the universe, is not drawn, in the earlier myths, as one of untarnished excellence. Yet the good predominates, and he is confessed a beneficent ruler. He was, in time, reverenced as Jupiter-pater, the source of all life in nature, and the almoner of abundant blessings for his obedient subjects and children. All the phenomena of the air were supposed to proceed from him. “He gathers and disperses the clouds, casts forth the lightnings, stirs up his thunder, sends down rain, hail, snow, and fertilizing dew upon the earth. With his ægis he produces storm and tempest, and at his pleasure stills the warring elements.”

“The ancients, however, were not content to regard Jupiter as merely a personification of nature. They regarded him also from an ethical stand-point, from which side he appears far more important and awful. They saw in him a personification, so to speak, of that principle of undeviating order and harmony, which pervades both the physical and moral world. The strict, unalterable laws, by which he rules the community of the gods, form a strong contrast with the capricious commands of his father Cronos.”

Hence Jupiter is regarded as the protector and defender of political order. From him the kings of the earth receive their sovereignty and their rights; to him they are responsible for a conscientious fulfillment of their duties. Those of them who pervert justice he never fails to punish. He also presides over their assemblies, keeps watch over their orderly course, and suggests to them wise counsels.

One of the most important props of political society is the oath; and accordingly he watches over oaths, and punishes perjury.

He also watches over boundaries, and accompanies the youths of the land as they go out to defend the borders of their country, and gives them victory over the invaders. All civil and political communities enjoy his protection; but he watches particularly over that association which is the basis of the political fabric—the family.

The head of every household was, therefore, in a certain sense, the priest of Jupiter, and presented his offerings in the name of the family. As Jupiter hospitalis, he protects the wanderer, and punishes those who violate the ancient laws of hospitality by mercilessly turning the helpless stranger from their door.

The superstition of early times saw in all physical phenomena manifestations of the divine will, and this, their earliest and chief deity, was naturally regarded as the source of inspiration, revealing his will to men in the thunder, lightning, flight of birds, and dreams. He not only had his oracle at Dodona, which was the most ancient in Greece, but also revealed the future by the mouth of his favorite son, Apollo. In hours of real trouble and grief, Achilles and other Achaians prayed to Jupiter, not only as irresistible in might, but also as just and righteous.

Yet others, and possibly the same persons under other circumstances, and in different moods, represented him as partial, unjust, fond of pleasure, changeable in his affections, and unfaithful in his love.

Greater inconsistencies and contradictions in character can scarcely be conceived of. How such confused and contradictory notions could occupy the same mind, may seem inexplicable. The Greek name of their deity, a corporeal being, was used by men having many excellent qualities, to express all they thought of, or felt, toward God, the greatest and best, worthy to be trusted and worshiped, but anthropomorphic still, having human instincts and passions, in the essential elements of his exalted nature, “altogether like unto themselves.” Their ethical conceptions were marred by unconsciously projecting their common humanity into the field of view in which their god was contemplated.

But the name that became sacred also meant the physical heaven, the sky with its clouds and vapor, and all embracing atmosphere; and as the earth by a beautiful metaphor was spoken of as the bride of the sky, which was said to overshadow the earth with his love, in every land causing the birth of all things that live and grow, so this idea of production—its primary application forgotten by a people gross and sensual—transferred to a deity of human form and passions, grew up into strange stories of license, or unlawful love. It is by no means certain that the poets and moralists, or ethical writers accepted the grosser myths as true or expressive of their own conceptions. The probability is against it. For, while Hesiod, following the popular theology describes the descent of the gods, their earthly loves, intrigues and gross immoralities, yet he, at times, turns sharply away from all such things as loathsome, to “thoughts of that pure and holy Zeus (Jupiter), who looks down from heaven to see if men will do justice, love mercy, and seek after God.”

Some regard the conceded goodness of the supreme beings as sufficient reason for misbelieving all the stories that were to their discredit; or if the stories were credited they would disprove their supposed divinity.

Euripides said:

“If the gods do aught unseemly, then they are not gods at all.”

The great poets did not invent the myths, but found them the only embodiment of the crude theology that was current among the masses, perfected them by eliminating some of the grosser parts, and sought to use them in the cause of virtue and civilization.

Even those seeming most irrational, when traced to their primary source and analyzed, were found to have something of truth, and the glimmer of their light was welcomed where without it the darkness had been yet more profound.

Dr. Ziller in his lecture on the development of Monotheism in Greece says: “The great Greek poets were her first thinkers, her sages, as they were afterward called. They sang of Zeus (Jupiter), and exalted him as the defender of righteousness, the representation of moral order.

“Archilocus says that ‘Zeus weighs and measures all the actions of good and evil men, as well as those of animals.’ ‘He is,’ said Terpandros somewhat later, ‘the source and ruler of all things.’ According to Simonides, ‘the principle of all created things rests with him, and he rules the universe by his will.’”

Thus, as time went on, ideas of the divinity were elevated, and Zeus, whose parentage and birth are chronicled as after the manner of men, became, in the general conception, the personification of the world’s government, which was delivered from the fatality of destiny, and from the promptings of caprice.

Destiny, which according to the early mythical representation, it was impossible to escape, is resolved into the will of Zeus, and the other gods, which were at first supposed to be able to oppose him, became his faithful ministers. Such is the teaching of Solon and Epicharmos.

“Be assured that nothing escapes the eyes of the divinities. God watches over us, and to him nothing is impossible.” This impulse of the imaginative faculty combined with the process of reason is most plainly seen in the conceptions of the three great poets of the fifth century, Pindar, Æschylus, and Sophocles. In the words of Pindar: “All things depend on God alone; all which befalls mortals, whether it be good or evil fortune, is due to Zeus; he can draw light from darkness, and can vail the sweet light of day in obscurity. No human action escapes him; happiness is found only in the way which leads to him; virtue and wisdom flow from him alone.”

We need not multiply quotations to show that as the Greeks advanced in civilization the earlier barbaric notions were left for those more elevating, and though mostly polytheists till visited by Christian teachers, their theology, or what was believed respecting the divine beings, was more worthy of them and had in general an elevating influence on their character. Apollo, Artemis, Ares, Hermes, Athene, Poseidon, Hera, Hephaistus, Hestia, Demeter, Aphrodite and Jupiter himself formed the body which in the days of Thucydides was worshiped, and called “the twelve gods of Olympus.”

This ordering or classification is not recognized in the poems of Homer. Hesiod more particularly describes the manner of their birth and the attributes of the Olympic gods, and hence that poem is called a Theogony.

Having mentioned the chief, the others may be briefly noticed in their order. Phœbus Apollo was called Phœbus, as being the god of light; in Homeric phrase the “Far glancing Apollo”—the last name meaning, some say, destroyer, because his rays, when powerful, can destroy the life of animals and plants. At first the name meant the sun, but in later times he was regarded as the god of light who was not confined to his habitation in the sun. “He is called the son of Zeus, because the sun, like Athene, or the dawn, springs in the morning from the sky—and son of Leto because the night, as going before his rising, may be considered as mother of the sun.”

One legendary story of his birth runs as follows: Leto, distressed, wandered through many lands seeking in vain for a resting place. At last she came to Delos (the bright land), and said if she could there find shelter it should become glorious as the birthplace of Phœbus, and that men should come from all parts to enrich his temple with their gifts. Here, then, Phœbus was born; heaven was propitious and the floating Delos, a hard and stony land, was anchored and covered itself with verdure and golden flowers. The nymphs clothed him with a spotless robe, and when Themis fed him with nectar and ambrosia, the food of gods, hating all things impure, he was at once prepared to battle with and drive away the evil powers of darkness.

With his bright arrows he slew the giant Tityus, and the Python, a monster near Delphi, that destroyed both men and cattle.

These and similar myths respecting his matchless conquering power forcibly declare the influence of the sun’s rays in scattering the night and dark gloom of winter. But though Phœbus Apollo thus appears as the foe of all that is evil or impure, other myths represent him as a terrible god of death, sending pestilences and dealing out destruction to men and animals by means of the arrows he scatters abroad.

Remembering the natural significance of the name this is perfectly consistent with the genial influence attributed to him. The sun’s rays do indeed put to flight the darkness of night and the cold of winter, but their intense heat also causes disease and death.

This is beautifully portrayed in the fable of the death of Hyacinthus that will be given in the next number. His reputation as a god of health, all powerful to protect against physical maladies is not damaged, though, in exceptional cases, his rays smite and destroy. But the healing that he brings is not alone for the outward “ills that flesh is heir to.” Diseases of the mind he cures or mitigates. Sin and crime flee from the light, and troubled souls, that escape from guilt, find consolation.

Even those pursued by the Furies he sometimes receives with tenderness and pity—a fine instance of which is found in the oft told story of Orestes.

Much of his healing power connects with his character as god of music, and from the fact of its soothing, tranquilizing influence on the soul of man.

His favorite instrument was the lyre, on which he played with masterly skill at the banquets of the gods, while the Muses accompanied him with their wondrous strains. He was regarded as the leader of the Muses and all the great singers of antiquity, as Orpheus and Linus, are mythically represented as his sons.

Of his prophetic character, statues, temples, and worship we will speak hereafter.

TEMPERANCE TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE;
Or, THE POISON PROBLEM.

BY FELIX L. OSWALD, M.D.

CHAPTER II.—THE CAUSES OF INTEMPERANCE.

The Discovery of the Cause is the Discovery of the Remedy.—Bichat.

The undoubted antiquity of the poison vice has induced several able physiologists to assume the hygienic necessity of artificial stimulation. But the not less undoubted fact that there have been manful, industrious and intelligent nations of total abstainers would be an almost sufficient refutation of that inference, which is sometimes qualified by the assertion that the tonic value of alcoholic drinks is based upon the abnormal demands upon the vitality of races exposed to the vicissitudes of a rigorous climate and the manifold overstraining influences of an artificial civilization. For it can, besides, be proved that the alleged invigorating action of alcoholic drinks is an absolute delusion, and the pathological records of contemporary nations establish the fact that endemic increase of intemperate habits can nearly always be traced to causes that have no correlation whatever to the increased demands upon the physical or intellectual energies of the afflicted community. Potentially those energies have lamentably decreased among numerous races who once managed to combine nature-abiding habits with a plethora of vital vigor.

The physiologically unavoidable progressiveness of all stimulant habits is a further argument in favor of the theory that the poison vice has grown up from very small beginnings, and the genesis of the fatal germ has probably been supplied in the hypothesis of Fabio Colonna, an Italian naturalist of the seventeenth century. “Before people used wine,” says he, “they drank sweet must and preserved it, like oil, in jars or skins. But in a warm climate a saccharine fluid is apt to ferment, and some avaricious housekeeper may have drunk that spoiled stuff till she became fond of it and learned to prefer it to must.”

Avarice, aided perhaps by dietetic prurience, or indifference to the warnings of instinct, planted the baneful seed, and the laws of evolution did the rest.

But the tendency of those laws has often been checked, and as certainly often been accelerated, by less uncontrollable agencies.

The first venders of toxic stimulants (like our quack medicine philanthropists) had a personal interest in disseminating the poison habit. Reform attempts were met by appeals to the convivial interests of the stimulant-dupe, by the seduction of minors, by charges of asceticism; later by nostrum puffs and opium wars. More than two thousand years ago the worship of Bacchus was propagated by force of arms. The disciples of Ibn Hanbal, the Arabian Father Mathew, were stoned in the streets of Bagdad. The persecutions and repeated expulsions of the Grecian Pythagoreans had probably a good deal to do with the temperance teachings of their master. In Palestine, in India, in mediæval Europe, nearly every apostle of Nature had to contend with a rancorous opposition, inspired by the most sordid motives of self-interest, and our own age can in that respect not boast of much improvement. In spite of our higher standard of philanthropic principles and their numerous victories in other directions, the heartless alliance of Bacchus and Mammon still stands defiant. In our own country a full hundred thousand men, not half of them entitled to plead the excuses of poverty or ignorance, unblushingly invoke the protection of the laws in behalf of an industry involving the systematic propagation of disease, misery and crime. Wherever the interests of the poison traffic are at stake the nations of Europe have not made much progress since the time when the sumptuary laws of Lorenzo de Medici were defeated by street riots and a shrieking procession of the Florentine tavern-keepers.

The efforts of such agitators are seconded by the Instinct of Imitation. “In large cities,” says Dr. Schrodt, “one may see gamins under ten years grubbing in rubbish heaps for cigar stumps; soon after leaning against a board fence, groaning and shuddering as they pay the repeated penalty of nature, yet, all the same, repeating the experiment with the resignation of a martyr. The rich, the fashionable, do it; those whom they envy smoke; smoking, they conclude, must be something enviable.”

Without any intentional arts of persuasion the Chinese business men of San Francisco have disseminated a new poison vice by smoking poppy gum in the presence of their Caucasian employes and accustoming them to associate the sight of an opium debauch with the idea of enjoyment and recreation. Would the opponents of prohibition attempt to deny that analogous influences (the custom of “treating” friends at a public bar, the spectacle of lager beer orgies in public gardens, etc.) have a great deal to do with the initiation of boy topers?

Ignorance does not lead our dumb fellow-creatures to vicious habits, and prejudice is therefore, perhaps, the more correct name for the sad infatuation which tempts so many millions of our young men to defy the protests of instinct and make themselves the slaves of a life-destroying poison. Ignorance is nescience. Prejudice is mal-science, mis-creance, trust in erroneous teachings. Millions of children are brought up in the belief that health can be secured only by abnormal means. A pampered child complains of headache, want of appetite. Instead of curing the evil by the removal of the cause, in the way so plainly indicated by the monitions of instinct, the mother sends to the drug-store. The child must “take something.” Help must come through anti-natural means. A young rake, getting more fretful and dyspeptic from day to day, is advised to “try something,” an aloe pill, a bottle of medicated brandy, any quack “specific,” recommended by its bitterness or nauseousness. The protests of nature are calmly disregarded in such cases; a dose of medicine, according to the popular impression, can not be very effective unless it is very repulsive. Our children thus learn to mistrust the voice of their natural instincts. They try to rely on the aid of specious arts, instead of trusting their troubles in the hands of nature. Boys whose petty ailments have been palliated with stimulants will afterward be tempted to drown their sorrow in draughts of the same nepenthe, instead of biding their time, like Henry Thoreau, who preferred to “face any fate, rather than seek refuge in the mist of intoxication.” Before the friends of temperance can hope for a radical reform they must help to eradicate the deep-rooted delusion of the stimulant fallacy; the popular error which hopes to defy the laws of nature by the magic of intoxicating drugs and thus secure an access of happiness not attainable by normal means. Our text-books, our public schools, should teach the rising generation to realize the fact that the temporary advantage gained by such means is not only in every case out-weighed by the distress of a speedy reaction, but that the capacity for enjoyment itself is impaired by its repeated abuse, till only the most powerful stimulants can restore a share of that cheerfulness which the spontaneous action of the vital energies bestows on the children of nature.

We have seen that the milder stimulants often form the stepping-stones to a passion for stronger poisons. A penchant for any kind of tonic drugs, nicotine, narcotic infusions, hasheesh, the milder opiates, etc., may thus initiate a stimulant habit with an unlimited capacity of development, and there is no doubt that international traffic has relaxed the vigilance which helped our forefathers to guard their households against the introduction of foreign poison vices. Hence the curious fact that drunkenness is not prevalent—not in the most ignorant or despotic countries (Russia, Austria, and Turkey), nor in southern Italy and Spain, where alcoholic drinks of the most seductive kind are cheapest—but in the most commercial countries, western France, Great Britain, and North America. Hence also the fallacy of the brewer’s argument that the use of lager beer would prevent the dissemination of the opium habit. No stimulant vice has ever prevented the introduction of worse poisons. Among the indirect causes of intemperance we must therefore include our mistaken toleration of the minor stimulant habits. The poison vice has become a many-headed hydra, defying one-sided attacks, and it is no paradox to say that we could simplify our work of expurgation by making it more thorough.

Polydipsia is a derangement of the digestive organs characterized by a chronic thirst, which forces its victims to swallow enormous quantities of stimulating fluids. The biographer of Richard Porson, the great classic scholar, says that his poison thirst was “so outrageous that he can not be considered a mere willful drunkard; one must believe that he was driven into his excesses by some unknown disease of his constitution.” … “He would pour anything down his throat rather than endure the terrible torture of thirst. Ink, spirits of wine for the lamp, an embrocation, are among the horrible things he is reported to have swallowed in his extremity.” Polydipsia is not always due to the direct or indirect (hereditary) influence of the alcohol habit, and the origin of the disorder was long considered doubtful; but it has since been traced to a morbid condition of the kidneys, induced by the use of narcotic stimulants (tea, coffee, tobacco), but often also by gluttony.

Like certain poison plants, the stimulant habit flourishes best in a sickly soil. Whatever tends to undermine the stamina of the physical or moral constitution helps to prepare the way for an inroad of intemperance, by weakening the resistance of the protective instincts. Hence the notorious fact that gambling dens and houses of ill-fame are rank hot-beds of the alcohol vice.

Asceticism has not yet ceased to be an indirect obstacle to the success of temperance reform. The children of nature need no special holidays; to them life itself is a festival of manifold sports. Hunting, fishing, and other pursuits of primitive nations become the pastimes of later ages. For the abnormal conditions of civilized life imply the necessity of providing special means of recreation, out-door sports, competitive gymnastics, etc., in order to satisfy the craving of an importunate instinct; and too many social reformers have as yet failed to recognize the truth that the suppression of that instinct avenges itself by its perversion; by driving pleasure-seekers from the play-ground to the pot-house, as despotism has turned freemen into bandits and outlaws. “Every one who considers the world as it really exists,” says Lecky, “must have convinced himself that, in great towns, where multitudes of men of all classes and all characters are massed together, and where there are innumerable strangers, separated from all domestic ties and occupations, public amusements of an exciting order are absolutely necessary, and that to suppress them is simply to plunge an immense portion of the population into the lowest depths of vice.”

“I am a great friend to public amusements,” says Boswell’s Johnson, “for they keep people from vice.” A home missionary in the character of a promoter of harmless recreations would double the popularity of our tenets, and by vindicating our people against the charge of joy-hating bigotry deprive our opponents of their most effective weapon. The free reading-rooms and gymnasium of the New York Y. M. C. A. have done more to promote the cause of temperance than the man hunts of Sir Hudibras and all his disciples. We must change our tactics. While our anchorite allies have contrived to make virtue repulsive, our opponents have proved themselves consummate masters of the art of masking the ugliness of vice; they have strewn their path with roses and left us the thorns. Yet I hope to show that we can beat them upon their own ground, for it is not difficult to make health more attractive than disease.

But the most obstinate obstacle to a successful propagation of total abstinence principles is the drug fallacy, a delusion founded on precisely the same error which leads the dram-drinker to mistake a process of irritation for a process of invigoration. During the infancy of the healing art all medical theories were biased by the idea that sickness is an enemy whose attacks must be repulsed à main forte, by suppressing the symptoms with fire, sword and poison—not in the figurative but in the literal sense, the keystone dogma of the primitive Sangrados having been the following heroic maxim: “What drugs won’t cure must be cured with iron” (the lancet), “if that fails resort to fire.” (Quod medicamenta non curant ferrum curat, quod non curat ferram ignis curat.) But with the progress of the physiological sciences the conviction gradually gained ground that disease itself is a reconstructive process, and that the suppression of the symptoms retards the accomplishment of that reconstruction. And ever since that truth dawned upon the human mind the use of poison drugs has steadily decreased. A larger and larger number of intelligent physicians had begun to suspect that the true healing art consists in the removal of the cause, and that where diseases have been caused by unnatural habits, the reform of those habits is a better plan than the old counter-poison method; when homœopathy proved practically (though not theoretically) that medication can be entirely dispensed with. The true effect of the more virulent drugs (opium, tartar emetic, arsenic, etc.) was then studied from a physiological stand-point, and experiments proved what the medical philosopher Asclepiades, conjectured eighteen hundred years ago, namely, that if a drugged patient recovers, the true explanation is that his constitution was strong enough to overcome both the disease and the drug. Bichat, Schrodt, Magendie, Alcott, R. T. Trall, Isaac Jennings and Dio Lewis arrived at the conclusion that every disease is a protest of Nature against some violation of her laws, and that the suppression of the symptoms means to silence that protest instead of removing its cause, so that we might as well try to extinguish a fire by silencing the fire-bells, or to cure the sleepiness of a weary child by pinching its eyelids—in short, that drastic drugs, instead of “breaking up” a disease, merely interrupt it and lessen the chance of a radical cure.

Are there reasons to suppose that alcohol or any other poison, makes an exception from that general rule? We must reject the idea in toto, and I hope to show that it is refuted:

1. By the testimony of our instincts.

2. By experience.

3. By the direct or indirect concessions of the ablest physiologists.

Our instincts protest against medication. Against ninety-nine of a hundred “remedial drugs” our sense of taste warns us as urgently as against rotten eggs, verdigris, or oil of vitriol. Shall we believe that nature repudiates the means of salvation? Or that our protective instincts forsake us in the hour of our sorest need—in the hour of our struggle with a life-endangering disease? And the same instincts that protest against other poisons warn us against all kinds of alcoholic drugs. Is it an exception to that rule that the depraved taste of a drunkard may relish a glass of medicated wine or a bottle of “Hostetter’s bitters” (rye brandy)? If it is certain beyond all limits of doubt that the health of the stoutest man is no safeguard against the bane of the wretched poison, shall we believe that he can encounter it with impunity when his vital strength is exhausted by disease?

Has the stimulus of alcoholic beverages any remedial or prophylactic effect? How does alcohol counteract the contagion of climatic fevers? In precisely the same way as those fevers arrest, or rather suspend, the progress of other disorders. The vital process can not compromise with two diseases at the same time. A fit of gastric spasms interrupts a toothache. A toothache relieves a sick headache. The severest cold in the head temporarily yields to an attack of small-pox. Temporarily, I say, for the apparent relief is only a postponement of an interrupted process. During the progress of the alcohol fever (the feverish activity of the organism in its effort to rid itself of a life-endangering poison) Nature has to suspend her operations against a less dangerous foe. But each repetition of that factitious fever is followed by a reaction that suspends the prophylactic effect of the stimulus, and sooner or later the total exhaustion of the vital energies not only leaves the system at the mercy of the original foe, but far less able to resist his attacks. “There is but one appalling conclusion to be deduced from hospital records, medical statistics and the vast array of facts which bear upon the subject,” says Professor Youmans, “it is that among no class of society are the ravages of contagious diseases so wide-spread and deadly as among those who are addicted to the use of alcoholic beverages.”

Is alcohol a digestive tonic? Can we cure an indigestion by the most indigestible of all chemical product! If a starving man drops by the roadside we may get him on his legs by drenching him with a pailful of vitriol, but after rushing ahead for a few hundred steps he will drop again, more helpless than before, by just as much as the brutal stimulus has still further exhausted his little remaining strength. Thus alcohol excites, and eventually tenfold exhausts, the vigor of the digestive system. We can not bully Nature. We can not silence her protests by a fresh provocation. Fevers can be cured by refrigeration; indigestions by fasting and exercise, and at any rate the possible danger of a relapse is infinitely preferable to the sure evils of the poison drug. A few repetitions of the stimulant process may initiate the alcohol vice and sow the seeds of a life-long crop of woe and misery. A single dose of alcoholic tonics may revive the fatal passion of half-cured drunkards and forfeit their hard-earned chance of recovery. That chance, and life itself, often depend on the hope of guarding the system against a relapse of the stimulant-fever, and I would as soon snatch a plank from a drowning man as that last hope from a drunkard.

Alcohol lingers in our hospitals as slavery lingers in South America, as torture lingers in the courts of eastern Europe. Quacks prescribe it because it is the cheapest stimulant; routine doctors prescribe it because its stimulating effect is more infallible than that of other poisons; empirists prescribe it at the special request of their patients, or as a temporary prophylactic; others because they find it in the ready-made formulas of their dispensatories. There is another reason which I might forbear mentioning, but I hold that a half truth is a half untruth, and I will name that other reason. Ignorant patients demand an immediate effect. They send for a doctor, and are to pay his bill; they expect to get their money’s worth in the form of a prompt and visible result. Instead of telling the im-patient that he must commit himself into the hands of Nature, that she will cure him in her own good time, by a process of her own, and that all art can do for him is to give that process the best possible chance, and prevent a willful interruption of it—instead of saying anything of the kind, Sangrado concludes to humor the popular prejudice and to produce the desired prompt and visible effect. For that purpose alcohol is, indeed, the most reliable agent. It will spur the jaded system into a desperate effort to expel the intruder, though the strength expended in that effort should be ever so urgently needed for better purposes. The dose is administered; the patient can not doubt that a “change” of some kind or other has been effected; the habitual drunkard perhaps feels it to be a (momentary) change for the better; at all events the doctor has done something and proved that he can “control the disease.” In some exceptional cases of that sort the influence of imagination may help to cure a believing patient, or Nature may be strong enough to overcome the disease and the stimulant at one effort. And if a doctor can reconcile it with his conscience to risk such experiments how shall we prevent it? As a first step in the right direction we can refuse to swallow his prescription. Physicians have no right to experiment on the health of their patients. They have no right to expect that we shall stake our lives on the dogmas of the old stimulant theory till they have answered the objections of the Naturalistic School.

Drastic drugs are not wholly useless. There are two or three forms of disease which have (thus far) not proved amenable to any non-medicinal cure, and can hardly be trusted to the healing power of Nature:—the lues venera, scabies and prurigo, because, as a French physiologist suggests, “the cause and the symptoms are here, for once, identical, the probable proximate cause being the agency of microscopic parasites, which oppose to the action of the vital forces a life-energy of their own.” Antidotes and certain anodynes will perhaps also hold their own till we find a way of producing their effects by mechanical means.

But with these rare exceptions it is by far the safer as well as shorter way to avoid drugs, reform our habits and not interrupt the course of nature, for, properly speaking, “disease itself is a healing process.” “It is not true,” says Dr. Jennings, “that the human system, when disturbed and deranged in its natural operations, becomes suicidal in its action …; such a view presents an anomaly in the universe of God’s physical government. It is not in accordance with the known operations and manifestations of other natural laws” (“Medical Reform,” p. 29). “The idea that the symptoms of disease must be suppressed,” says Wichat, “has led to innumerable fallacies and blunders.”

Dr. Benjamin Rush said in a public lecture: “I am here incessantly led to make an apology for the instability of the theories and practice of physic, and those physicians generally become the most eminent, who have the soonest emancipated themselves from the tyranny of the schools of physic. Dissections daily convince us of our ignorance of disease and cause us to blush at our prescriptions. What mischief have we done under the belief of false facts and false theories! We have assisted in multiplying diseases; we have done more, we have increased their mortality. I will not pause to beg pardon of the faculty, for acknowledging, in this public manner, the weakness of our profession. I am pursuing Truth, and am indifferent whither I am led, if she only is my leader.”

“Our system of therapeutics,” says Jules Virey, “is so shaky (vacillant) that the soundness of the basis itself must be suspected.”

“The success of the homœopathic practice has astonished many discerning minds,” says Dr. Jennings. “It is unnecessary for my present purpose to give a particular account of the results of homœopathy; … what I now claim with respect to it is, that a wise and beneficent Providence is using it to expose a deep delusion. In the result of homœopathic practice, we have evidence in amount, and of a character sufficient, most incontestably to establish the fact that disease is a restorative process, a renovating operation, and that medicine has deceived us. The evidence is full and complete. It does not consist merely of a few isolated cases, whose recovery might be attributed to fortuitous circumstances, but it is a chain of testimony fortified by every possible circumstance. All kinds and grades of disease have passed under the ordeal, and all classes and characters of persons have been concerned in the experiment as patients or witnesses; … while the process of infinitesimally attenuating the drugs was carried to such a ridiculous extent that no one will, on sober reflection, attribute any portion of the cure to the medicine. I claim then, that homœopathy may be regarded as a providential sealing of the fate of old medical views and practices” (“Medical Reform,” p. 247).

Since physiology was first studied methodically an overwhelming array of facts has, indeed, proved that the disorders of the human organism can be cured more easily without poison drugs; more easily in the very degree that would suggest the suspicion that our entire system of therapeutics is founded upon an erroneous view of disease. The homœopathists cure their patients with milk-sugar, the exponents of the movement cure with gymnastics, the hydropathists with cold water, the disciples of Dr. Schrodt with exercise and mountain-air, the primitive Christians with prayer, Nature cures her children with rest and a partial suspension of the digestive process (the fasting cure, indicated instinctively by a loss of appetite). Let all repudiate alcohol and all can record swifter, more numerous, and more permanent cures than the disciples of the nostrum school.

Considered in connection with the foregoing remarks, these facts admit only of one conclusion, and after giving the above-mentioned exception the benefit of a (temporary) doubt, we can assert with perfect confidence that drastic drugs have no remedial value, and that every drop of alcohol administered for medicinal purposes, has increased, instead of decreasing, the weight of human misery.

There is no doubt but these views will awaken the anathemas of the poison-worshipers; but it is equally certain that before the end of this century they will become truisms. We should regard the drift of the main current rather than the incidental fluctuations of scientific theories, and all the ripple of conflicting opinions can not conceal the progress of a strong tendency toward total abstinence from all virulent drugs.

STUDIES IN KITCHEN SCIENCE AND ART.

II. WHEAT, RYE AND CORN.

BY BYRON D. HALSTED.

The three grains here treated, viz.: wheat, rye and corn, belong to the vast order of plants known as the grass family (Gramineæ). This large group of plants, the members of which are so closely related as to be quickly recognized as such, contains many of the most valuable of all cultivated plants. It not only furnishes the cereals, namely: wheat, rye, corn, oats, barley and rice, which supply the world with the larger part of its starchy food, but clothes the pasture and meadow of the farmer with the herbage so essential to the sustenance of his live stock. There is a deep and weighty truth in the familiar expression: “All flesh is grass.” Blot out the grass family from existence and nearly all forms of life would suffer, and many kinds would soon perish from the earth.

The grasses are usually low and comparatively small plants—though the bamboos of the tropics are almost treelike, with jointed stems and alternate, slender leaves. The flowers are inconspicuous, usually in spikes or spreading clusters, with three stamens, anthers versatile, styles two, stigma feathery, ovary one-celled, becoming a grain.

Wheat has probably more intrinsic value than any other plant grown. It is probably a native of southwestern Asia, but like most grains and fruits cultivated from remote antiquity, its early history is extremely uncertain. Many varieties have been produced from the original Triticum vulgare—the scientific name of wheat—but they can all be placed in the two following groups: Those that are tender called spring wheats, sown in spring, and the winter sorts that are sown in autumn, remain on the ground through the winter and are harvested the subsequent summer. The winter wheats are the more valuable and bring a higher price than the spring varieties. Some wheats have long awns to the flowers, and are termed bearded, while other sorts are nearly or entirely awnless, and are sometimes styled bald. There is a great variation in the size and color of the grain. In some varieties it is long, others short; some are white, others brown, red, and amber; some are hard, others are soft. New sorts are produced yearly, and the varieties have become practically innumerable.

The area devoted to the growth of wheat in the United States is between thirty-five and forty million acres, and the yield of the present season (1884) will not be far from 500,000,000 bushels. The average yield per acre, take the whole country through, is not far from thirteen bushels per acre. Nineteen states (and territories) cultivate over a million acres each; six over two millions, and three over three millions, namely: Illinois, 3,218,542; Iowa, 3,049,288; and Minnesota, 3,044,670 acres, as given in the last census. In the order of the number of bushels produced, the leading states stand thus: Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota, Iowa, California. New York stands thirteenth, and Rhode Island last, with seventeen acres and 240 bushels. It will be seen that the wheat region, strictly speaking, is in the Mississippi Valley, centering around Illinois, with a secondary area in middle California. According to the report on the cereal production of the United States by Professor Wm. H. Brewer, in the statistics of agriculture in the tenth census, the yield and quality of the wheat crops is stated to depend upon five conditions: climate, soil, variety cultivated, method of cultivation and the liability to destruction by insects. The quality of the grain depends more upon the climate than the soil. A hot, dry and sunny harvest produces a grain of the highest quality. The ideal climate for wheat growing is most nearly reached during the best years in California, and it is then and there that we have records of the greatest yields of the best of wheat.

A good rich soil is needed for successful wheat growing. This may be preserved on any farm by a well regulated system of crop rotation. It must be borne in mind that wheat has a short season for its growth and needs to have food prepared and close at hand. One of the best preparatory crops is clover. The clover sod, including the vast amount of roots, furnishes a most acceptable feeding ground for the wheat. The soil itself is not one of the items most frequently overlooked in wheat growing. The importance of good plump seed of the best varieties is rarely overestimated. There is a vast deal in the sort of wheat grown, and no one can afford to grow any but the best.

The most common diseases of wheat are rust and smut, both of vegetable origin. These troubles, which appear so suddenly and are often very destructive, are minute microscopic plants of the order of fungi, and therefore related to the moulds and mildews common on various articles of food, etc. The insect enemies are somewhat numerous, but the Hessian fly, wheat midge, joint worm, chinch bug, army worms, and Rocky Mountain locust are the most destructive. There are a few insects that prey upon the grain after it is in the granary, and these are on the increase. Among the enemies we should not forget to mention various weeds that spring up in the fields and endeavor to choke out the legitimate occupants of the soil.

The nutritive value and chemical composition of wheat grain are important points worthy of consideration here, because this general article is to be followed by one upon the culinary aspects of the grain treated. The market value of a flour largely rests upon its appearance, while the nutritive value depends upon the results determined by the analytical chemist. The average of fifty-seven analyses of winter wheat in the kernel gave:

It will be seen that there is very little chemical difference between winter and spring wheats. The composition of the flour shows a removal of nearly all the woody fiber, two thirds of the ash, nearly half the fat and a small reduction of the albuminoids, while the water is somewhat and the carb-hydrates (starch, gum, etc.) considerably increased. It will be interesting to here give an analysis of wheat bran and shorts: