728 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



land to advance scientific knowledge than has ever been done in a like 

 interval, at any time, in any country, I should think his inference less 

 wide of the truth than that which, strange to say, Mr. Arnold draws 

 from the same data. 



And now to consider that which more immediately concerns us 

 the effect produced by the bias of anti-patriotism on sociological spec- 

 ulation. Whether in Mr. Arnold, whom I have ventured to take as a 

 type, the leaning toward national self-depreciation was primary and 

 the overvaluing of foreign institutions secondary, or whether his ad- 

 miration of foreign institutions was the cause and his tendency to de- 

 preciatory estimates of our social state the effect, is a question which 

 may be left open. For present purposes it suffices to observe that the 

 two go together. Mr. Arnold is impatient with the unregulated, and, 

 as he thinks, anarchic state of our society ; and everywhere displays a 

 longing for more administrative and controlling agencies. "Force 

 till right is ready," is one of the sayings he emphatically repeats ; ap- 

 parently in the belief that there can be a sudden transition from a 

 coercive system to a non-coercive one ignoring the truth that there 

 has to be a continually-changing compromise between force and right, 

 during which force decreases step by step, as right increases step 

 by step, and during which every step brings some temporary evil 

 along with its ultimate good. Thinking more force needful for us, and 

 lauding institutions which exercise it, Mr. Arnold holds that even in 

 our literature we should benefit by being under authoritative direc- 

 tion. Though he is not of opinion that an academy would succeed here, 

 he casts longing glances at the French Academy, and wishes we could 

 have had over us an influence like that to which he ascribes certain 

 excellences in French literature. 



The French Academy was established, as he points out, " to work, 

 with all the care and all the diligence possible, at giving sure rules to 

 our language, and rendering it pure, eloquent, and capable of treating 

 the arts and sciences." Let us consider whether it has fulfilled this in- 

 tention, by removing the most conspicuous defects of the lano-uao-e. 

 Down to the present time, there is in daily use the expression qu'est ce 

 que c'est, and even qu'est ce que c'est que cela f If in some remote 

 corner of England is heard the analogous expression " What is that 

 there here ? " it is held to imply entire absence of culture : the use of 

 two superfluous words proves a want of that close adjustment of lan- 

 guage to thought which even partially-educated persons among us have 

 reached. How is it, then, that though in this French there are five 

 superfluous words (or six, if we take cela as two), the purifying criti- 

 cism of the French Academy has not removed it from French speech 

 not even from the speech of the educated ? Or why, again, has the 

 Academy not condemned, forbidden, and so expelled from the language, 

 the double negative ? If among ourselves any one lets drop the sen- 



