CORRESPONDENCE. 



555 



would have us believe yours to be. Could 

 there be offered better evidence of haste and 

 unfairness than this uncalled-for assault 

 upon those of whom you know absolutely 

 nothing, and does it not show the scientific 

 inclination to have theory with or without 

 facts, but certainly theory ? 



Yours very truly, A. J. Smith, 



Superintendent of Schools. 

 St. Paul, Minn., January A, 1899. 



We took the report of Superintendent 

 Smith's address which appeared in the St. 

 Paul papers. If there were any " typograph- 

 ical errors" in our quotations, they were not 

 of our making; and Mr. Smith admits that, 

 such as they were, they did not affect the 

 sense. Well, then, we found Mr. Smith 

 using his position as Superintendent of 

 Schools to disparage a man whom the scien- 

 tific world holds in the highest honor, and 

 for whom he now tells us he himself has " a 

 great regard" — whose writings he has "read 

 with much profit." We judged the speaker 

 by his own words, and certainly drew an un- 

 favorable inference as to his knowledge and 

 mental breadth. If Mr. Smith did injus- 

 tice to himself by speaking in an unguarded 

 way, or by not fully expressing his meaning, 

 that was not our fault ; and we do not think 

 we can properly be accused of having lapsed 

 into abuse. The explanation he offers of his 

 language regarding Mr. Spencer is wholly 

 unsatisfactory. He gave his hearers to un- 

 derstand that there was an "old man" in 

 London who had devoted all his energies to 

 c.eating a system of thought which should 

 entirely ignore the name of the Deity, and of 

 whom, after his death, it would not be re- 

 membered that he had " ever performed an 

 act or said a word that blessed or comforted 

 or relieved his suffering fellows." The stress, 

 he now says, should be laid on the word 

 "suffering." He did not wish to imply that 

 Mr. Spencer had not bettered the condition 

 of his fellows generally ; he only meant that 

 he had done nothing for the suffering. On 

 this we have two remarks to make : First, it 

 is not usual, when a man is acknowledged to 

 have given a long lifetime to useful work, to 

 hold him up to reprobation because he is not 

 known to have had a special mission to the 

 " suffering " ; and, second, that no man can, 

 be of service to mankind at large without 

 being of benefit to the suffering. It is 

 mainly because Mr. Spencer believes so 

 strongly in the broad virtues of justice and 

 humanity, has so unbounded a faith in the 

 efficacy of what may be called a sound social 

 hygiene, that he has had, comparatively, so 

 little to say upon the topics which most in- 

 terest those who apply themselves specific- 

 ally, but not always wisely, to alleviating the 

 miseries and distresses of humanity. 



As to the means by which Mr. Smith ob- 

 tained his present position, we know nothing 

 beyond what he now tells us. We saw his 



appointment criticised as an unsuitable one 

 in the St. Paul papers ; and his published 

 remarks seemed to justify the criticism. 

 There are "pulls" — the word is "scientific" 

 enough for our purpose — even in school mat- 

 ters ; and it seemed that this was just such a 

 case as a " pull " would most naturally ex- 

 plain. We quite accept, however, Superin- 

 tendent Smith's statement as to the facts ; 

 and we sincerely trust that the next address 

 he delivers to his teachers will better justify 

 his appointment than did the one on which 

 we felt it a duty to comment. 



EMERSON AND EVOLUTION. 



Edito?- Popular Science Monthly : 



Sir : The editorial in the December Popu- 

 lar Science Monthly on the relations of Em- 

 erson to evolution must have surprised many 

 of the students of Emerson. A little over 

 two years ago Moncure D. Conway pointed 

 out (Open Court, 1896) that soon after his 

 resignation from the pulpit of the Unitarian 

 Church with which he was last connected, 

 Emerson taught zoology, botany, paleontol- 

 ogy, and geology, and that he was a pro- 

 nounced evolutionist who used in his lectures 

 the argument in favor of evolution drawn 

 from the practical identity of the extremities 

 of the vertebrates. That Emerson was an 

 evolutionist of the Goethean type is clear 

 from most of his essays. In an essay appear- 

 ing before the Origin of Species, he wrote 

 as follows : 



" The electric word pronounced by John 

 Hunter a hundred years ago, arrested and 

 progressive development, indicating the way 

 upward from the invisible protoplasm to the 

 highest organisms, gave the poetic key to Nat- 

 ural Science, of which the theories of Geof- 

 frey Saint-Hilaire, of Oken, of Goethe, of 

 Agassiz and Owen and Darwin in zoology and 

 botany are the fruits — a hint whose power is 

 not exhausted, showing unity and perfect or- 

 der in physics. 



" The hardest chemist, the severest analy- 

 zer, scornful of all but the driest fact, is 

 forced to keep the poetic curve of Nature, 

 and his results are like a myth of Theocritus. 

 All multiplicity rushes to be resolved into 

 unity. Anatomy, osteology, exhibit arrested 

 or progressive ascent in each kind ; the lower 

 pointing to the higher forms, the higher to 

 the highest, from the fluid in an elastic sac, 

 from radiate, mollusk, articulate, vertebrate, 

 up to man ; as if the whole animal world 

 were only a Hunterian museum to exhibit the 

 genesis of mankind." 



The Darwin to whom reference is made 

 in this essay is not Charles, but his grand- 

 father, one of the poets of evolution, Eras- 

 mus. The essay also shows the belief in 

 evolution held by both Owen and Louis 

 Agassiz before theological timidity made 

 them unprogressive. The names quoted il- 

 lustrate further the factors which influ- 



