SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 



4!5 



to common instead of special laws — 

 the will of rural officials; it is neces- 

 sary to give them liberty of educa- 

 tion, liberty of reading, liberty of 

 moving about, and, above all, to re- 

 move the power to torture brutally 

 by flogging grown-up people simply 

 because they belong to the peasant 

 class." But to give them such free- 

 dom means to deliver them not only 

 from excessive taxation but from 

 vexatious rules and regulations. It 

 is to apply to them the same remedy 

 that must be applied in the United 

 States to save the American people, 

 now so heavily taxed and so op- 

 pressed by countless laws, from the 

 same social decadence that afflicts 

 Eussia. 



THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE. 



The paper by Sir J. Norman 

 Lockyer, which we publish in this 

 number, recounts in an interesting 

 manner the steps by which science 

 gained a place for itself in the edu- 

 cational systems of the world. To 

 us, in the latter years of the nine- 

 teenth century, it is apt to seem 

 strange that the recognition of sci- 

 ence as an essential element in all 

 education should have come so late 

 in the world's history ; but reflec- 

 tion shows that it could not well 

 have been otherwise. To view and 

 examine any subject scientifically in- 

 volves not only a deliberate and pro- 

 longed mental effort, but the holding 

 in check of some of the most active 



propensities of the human mind, 

 such as imagination and what Bage- 

 hot has called "the emotion of be- 

 lief." In a certain sense imagina- 

 tion is the precursor of science; but, 

 in the early stages of human devel- 

 opment the precursor is mistaken for 

 the true teacher. The lesson that 

 there is no royal road to truth, 

 nothing but a highway on which 

 much wearisome plodding must be 

 done, is one which human nature 

 in general does not take to kindly. 

 Even in the present day how many 

 there are who chafe at the restraints 

 which Science imposes on belief, 

 whose disposition is to break her 

 bonds asunder and have none of her 

 reproof! When we think, indeed, 

 of what the intellectual condition of 

 the world is to-day, with the wonders 

 which science has wrought raising 

 their testimony on every hand, it is 

 hardly surprising that, a couple of 

 centuries ago, it was difficult to get 

 any systematic provision made for 

 the teaching of science. However, 

 that battle has been fought and won, 

 and Science has long since definitely 

 entered on her career of beneficent 

 conquest. Systems founded on im- 

 agination, or on merely abstract rea- 

 soning, come and go, wax and wane ; 

 but the empire of science once set 

 up can never be subverted. We 

 must hope that some day it will rule 

 in the realm of morals as now it does 

 in that of material things. Not till 

 then will its perfect work be done. 



^cictxiifijc %iUxxduxz. 



SPECIAL BOOKS. 



Prof. Dean C. Worcester', of the University of Michigan, spent eleven 

 months, beginning in September, 1887, in the Philippine Islands in connec- 

 tion with the second scientific expedition of Dr. J. B. Steere. He went 

 there again, with an expedition of which he was chief, in July, 1890, and 

 spent two years and eight months. His object in both expeditions was the 



