280 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



sons in prisons with more hardened crimi- 

 nals, where all the influences are demoraliz- 

 ing and not one healthful the ordinary 

 course is obviously not the best one or a 

 good one in any way. Prof. McClatchie, on 

 the other hand, looking upon the cases as 

 involving moral disease, outlines a reforma- 

 tory treatment based on principles similar to 

 those which rule at the Elmira institution. 

 The first precept to be observed in it is that 

 first offenses should never be overlooked ; 

 vigorous treatment in the beginning is really 

 a kindness to the subjects. Next, a system 

 of graded institutions is needed, so that 

 prisoners may be classified and segregated. 

 " Those guilty of different degrees of crimi- 

 nality should be placed in different institu- 

 tions and given entirely different treatment. 

 The sentence should in all cases be what is 

 called indeterminate that is, no one should 

 be sentenced for any given time. He should 

 be placed in the institution and should re- 

 main there until competent men pronounce 

 him cured. The treatment should all be 

 disciplinary. It should not consist of sim- 

 ply kind treatment, but should be firm and 

 vigorous. All three of their natures their 

 physical, mental, and moral must be treat- 

 ed simultaneously." The discipline must be 

 continued until it is easy for the subjects to 

 control their will and to use their hands and 

 their minds in the right manner. " They 

 must form the habit of doing right until it 

 has become a part of their nature, or the 

 work will not be thoroughly done. ... If it 

 is found that it is impossible to reform the 

 criminal, he should be kept confined indefi- 

 nitely." 



St. Augustine and the Days of Creation. 



St. Augustine of Hippo is said to have 

 been a diligent student of the Mosaic record 

 of the creation, and tried earnestly to find a 

 method of interpreting it consonant with what 

 he knew of the facts of Nature. In writing 

 of this feature of his career the Rev. John 

 A. Zahm, of the University of Notre Dame, 

 says that during the twenty-five best years 

 of his life the first two chapters of Genesis 

 were continually before his mind. What did 

 Moses mean by the word " days " ? he asked 

 again and again. " How could there be 

 days in the ordinary acceptation of the word 

 before the sun was created on the fourth 



day? Were not the first three days men- 

 tioned by Moses periods of time rather than 

 ordinary days of twenty- four hours each? 

 And what about the seventh day a day that 

 had no evening a day, therefore, that still 

 endures ? How explain, according to the 

 laws of Nature, which are the laws of God, 

 the production and development of the vari- 

 ous forms of plant and animal life in the short 

 period of six ordinary days ? The idea that 

 God, during the days of Genesis, operated 

 in a manner different from that which sub- 

 sequently characterized his providence, that 

 the laws which governed the material uni- 

 verse were not the same then that they were 

 afterward ; that the Hexaemeron was distin- 

 guished by a series of miracles and a succes- 

 sion of specific creations rather than by the 

 reign of law that the Creator himself had 

 imposed on matter, and by which it was en- 

 dowed with the power of gradual evolution 

 and differentiation, seemed so repugnant to 

 the keen and logical intellect of Augustine 

 that he could never bring himself to adopt 

 it, much less give it his support. . . . The 

 word ' days,' according to the illustrious doc- 

 tor, was not to be taken in a literal but in 

 a figurative sense. They meant not ordinary 

 days, but the works of creation which were 

 unfolded in time by a series of progressive 

 transformations. For a similar reason the 

 words ' evening ' and ' morning ' are to be 

 interpreted metaphorically as meaning not 

 dusk and dawn, but the beginning and end 

 of the divine works. God, according to St. 

 Augustine, as well as according to St. Grego- 

 ry of Nyssa, first created matter in an ele- 

 mentary or nebulous state. From this pri- 

 mordial matter created ex nihilo (from 

 nothing) was evolved, by the action of 

 physical laws impressed on it by the Creator, 

 all the various forms of terrestrial life that 

 subsequently appeared. In this process of 

 evolution there was a succession, but no di- 

 vision of time. The Almighty completed the 

 work he had begun, not intermittently and 

 by a series of special creations, but through 

 the agency of special causes, by the opera- 

 tion of natural laws causas rationes of 

 which he was the author." 



Wabbling of tlte Earth. Displacements 

 of the rotational axis of the earth, says Prof. 

 Forster in a paper read in the British Asso- 



