558 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



We certainly can not refuse all 

 sympathy to people who make it a 

 principle to enjoy good health. Of 

 course, if they were thoroughly con- 

 sistent, they might do mischief in 

 direct proportion to their numbers. 

 A " Christian Science " school board 

 who did not believe in ventilating or 

 adequately warming school rooms, 

 holding that it made no difference 

 whether the children breathed pure 

 air or air laden with carbon dioxide 

 and ptomaines, or whether or not 

 they were exposed to chills and 

 draughts, would be about as mis- 

 chievous a body of men as could well 

 be imagined. If u Christian Sci- 

 ence " in the house means an indif- 

 ference to the ordinary physical safe- 

 guards of health, it will quickly 

 make a very evil repute for itself. 

 But, as we have already said, we do 

 not anticipate these results. Having 

 undertaken to avoid and to cure dis- 

 eases by "thinking truth," we be- 

 lieve our friends of the new persua- 

 sion will think enough truth to get 

 what benefit is to be got from clean- 

 liness, fresh air, and wholesome food 

 — and that will be quite a quantity. 



EMERSON. 



We publish on another page a 

 letter from a correspondent who 

 thinks that much injustice is done 

 to Emerson in the remarks we 

 quoted in our December number 

 from Mr. J. J. Chapman's recent 

 volume of essays. What Mr. Chap- 

 man said was, in effect, that Emer- 

 son had not placed himself in line 

 with the modern doctrine of evolu- 

 tion — that he was probably " the last 

 great writer to look at life from a 

 stationary standpoint." Mrs. Alex- 

 ander says in reply that Emerson 

 was an evolutionist before Darwin, 

 having learned the doctrine from 

 Goethe and made it a fundamental 

 principle of his philosophy. No one 



who has read Mr. Chapman's essay 

 could think for a moment that there 

 was any intention on his part to 

 deal ungenerously or unfairly with 

 the great writer of whom America 

 is so justly proud ; nor would many 

 readers be disposed to question his 

 competence to pronounce a sound 

 judgment upon his subject. There 

 must, therefore, it seems to us, be 

 some way of reconciling the verdict 

 of Mr. Chapman with the claims set 

 forth in our correspondent's letter. 



The true statement of the case 

 doubtless is that Emerson received 

 the doctrine of evolution — so far as 

 he received it — as a poet. He wel- 

 comed the conception of a gradual 

 unfolding of the universe, and a 

 gradually higher development of 

 life ; but it dwelt in his mind rather 

 as a poetical imagination than as a 

 scientific theory. The consequence 

 was that he was still able to speak 

 in the old absolute manner of many 

 things which the man of science can 

 only discuss from a relative stand- 

 point. When, for example, Emer- 

 son says, "All goes to show that the 

 soul in man is not an organ, but ani- 

 mates and exercises all the organs ; 

 is not a function, like the power of 

 memory, of calculation, of compari- 

 son, but uses these as hands and 

 feet ; is not a faculty, but a light ; 

 is not the intellect or the will, but 

 the master of the intellect and the 

 will ; is the background of our 

 being in which they lie — an im- 

 mensity not possessed and that 

 can not be possessed" — he may be 

 uttering the sentence of a divine 

 philosophy, or the deep intuition of 

 a poet ; but he is not speaking the 

 language of science, nor evincing 

 any sense of the restrictions which 

 scieuce might place on such expres- 

 sions of opinion. Certainly he is 

 not at the standpoint of evolution ; 

 and it is very hard to believe that 

 the views he announces could in 



