474 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



fullness of life but by its indirect influence in increasing or diminishing 

 the totality of happiness. To quote again the words of the great teach- 

 er who is so often misquoted and so much misunderstood : 



" There is no escape from the admission that in calling good the 

 conduct which subserves life, and bad the conduct which hinders or 

 destroys it, and in so implying that life is a blessing and not a curse, 

 we are inevitably asserting that conduct is good or bad according as 

 its total" effects are pleasurable or painful." Knowledge, 







THE AUEOEA BOEEALIS. 



By M. ANTOINE De SAPOETA. 



HOW can we describe, how can an artist paint, the aurora borealis ? 

 We of temperate climates are not strangers to the phenomena ; 

 we know something of the arcs and radiating streaks of various-colored 

 light which frequently adorn our northern skies ; and we are occasion- 

 ally permitted to witness exhibitions in which the whole heavens shine 

 with their marvelous glow. Yet travelers from the far North say that 

 we can have no conception of the wonderful splendor of the phenome- 

 na as witnessed within the Polar Circle, and that nothing but the 

 actual sight can convey an adequate idea of it. 



The aurora borealis was well known to the ancients. The Greeks, 

 discovering graceful symbols in everything, thought it was the glory 

 of the Olympian gods holding council in a sky illuminated for the 

 occasion. The Romans, on the other hand, always looking for unlucky 

 omens, were in dread of it. Pliny, following Aristotle and Seneca, 

 speaks of celestial fires that tinged the sky with a blood-red, of beams 

 of light, of openings yawning in the starry vault, of fantastic lights 

 that changed night into day ; and he took care not to omit the politi- 

 cal events that accompanied such manifestations, without, however, 

 affirming that the phenomena were the cause of the catastrophes that 

 attended or followed them. 



* I have ventured to emphasize this word (though the emphasis is not necessary for 

 the ordinarily attentive), simply because so many have either actually misunderstood Mr. 

 Spencer's saying here, or else have pretended to do so. The word emphasized makes the 

 saying not only true, but (as it was intended to be) obviously true. Mr. Spencer is here 

 purposely stating a truism, or what ought to be a truism. No matter what a man's doc- 

 trine in religious matters may be, no matter what his views as to a future state, the say- 

 ing above quoted is absolutely true. It is true in small matters as well as in great. By 

 overlooking the word " total," or by treating the saying as though for the word " total " 

 the word " immediate " might honestly be substituted, the saying expresses what Carlyle 

 contemptuously called pig-philosophy; but Spencer's actual saying is about as remote 

 from pig-philosophy as any teaching well could be. It inculcates a philosophy more truly 

 regardful of self than the sheerest egoism, more justly and beneficently regardful of others 

 than the purest altruism. 



