55o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



factory. The policy of the law in giving individuals power to prop- 

 agate their ideas for an indefinite period after death should be re- 

 versed, and their ideas should be put on the same footing as their 

 preferences for individuals, to whom property can be limited for a few 

 years only. In this case the monstrous egotism which leads to a 

 large number of endowments would be cut off ; and future genera- 

 tions would not be taxed in order that Jones or Robinson, dead fifty 

 years since, might have the posthumous pleasure of having a college 

 called after him. When competition and change in public sentiment 

 have brought about this state of things, educators will have to let go 

 of the cherished but unscientific idea that their judgment is better 

 than the inclination and judgment combined of the students, and that 

 it is their duty to force dull studies on unwilling minds. And the 

 social organism will then, in this department also, carry on its pro- 

 cesses of growth and development, waste and repair, in the same un- 

 fettered and natural manner in which the animal organism maintains 

 and enlarges its life.* 



SKETCH OF PAUL GERVAIS. 



PAUL GERVAIS was eminent as a zoologist and as a paleontolo- 

 gist. Born in Paris on the 16th of September, 1816, he died in 

 March, 1879, having lived a life exclusively devoted to science. By his 

 entire consecration to study, says M. Blanchard in his " Eulogy," he 

 reached the most enviable positions, conquering them with only his 

 natural talents, courage, perseverance, and assiduity in work ; for he 

 had at the beginning of his career neither the resources which make ex- 

 istence easy, nor the certainties which give confidence as to the future. 

 In early youth, yielding to his native tastes, he was accustomed to fre- 

 quent the woods around Paris, to observe and study natural objects. 

 His first scientific paper was published when he was seventeen years 

 old, in the " Magasin de Zoologie," and was an account of a new spe- 

 cies of Sou'i, the Cinnyris Adalberti. His attention was directed at 



* Any one possessing a reasonable knowledge of the general principles of evolution 

 will easily see that the above views as to the lines of future progress are merely corolla- 

 ries to the general doctrines of social evolution. Every social activity, like every indi- 

 vidual habit, passes from the stags where it is the act of the whole organism to that 

 wherein it is specialized and automatic. Every function soon evolves its special struct- 

 ure; and this structure, under normal conditions, automatically draws its nutrition in pro- 

 portion to its expenditure in the service of the organism. This process is inevitable be- 

 cause it results in a saving of force, and an increase of active power supporting the 

 organism, as an act by a part is less costly than an act by the whole. Increased heteroge- 

 neity and coherence in general evolution mean, in sociology, increased individualism and 

 free association on lines of spontaneous attraction that is to say, social evolution con- 

 sists in a change from socialism to what we call individualism. The recent noisy reaction 

 should not blind us to the great facts of the history of civilization, which is one long rec- 

 ord of the decline of the regime of status in favor of that of voluntary association. 



