564 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



being trained to obey them any better, except in a few directions of 

 conduct, where the least resistance of opposing appetites and passions 

 is encountered. But still it must be true that all culture tends, first, 

 to develop the moral intelligence which forms right notions of con- 

 duct, and, finally, to perfect the moral discipline which makes conduct 

 obedient to them. 



It is upon that discipline chiefly that those qualities which I have 

 called the moral qualities of the personal order, and which have their 

 root in truthfulness and courage, depend for their evolution. I had 

 intended to recur to these for some discussion at tins point, but my 

 article is already too long. Perhaps it is enough to note the fact that, 

 being incident as they are to intrinsic relations, self-existing in man, 

 which undergo no complication and no change, the moral notions that 

 define them may easily have been quite as distinct at some earlier 

 stages of human culture as they are now. If they manifest themselves 

 no more potently in conduct than they did twenty centuries ago 

 which seems doubtful, upon the whole the fact must show us how 

 little our modern civilization has yet advanced the race in moral dis- 

 cipline, whatever gains in moral knowledge it may have brought. 







DOES IT TAKE TIME TO THINK? 



(SOME MEASUREMENTS OF THE PEESONAL EQUATION.) 



Bt T. F. BEOWNELL. 



MASKELYNE, the Koyal Astronomer of England, in August, 

 1795, had his attention called to the fact that his assistant, 

 Mr. Kinnebrook, was making errors in recording observations. He 

 noticed that Mr. Kinnebrook had fallen into the habit of making 

 his records half a second later than they should be. In the follow- 

 ing year this fault was found to have increased. All of Mr, Kinne- 

 brook's observations were recorded as about four-fifths of a second 

 too late. The assistant was a trained and skilled observer of long 

 experience, but, although the fault was pointed out to him, and 

 realized by him, it appeared impossible for him to overcome it. 

 The same error still appeared in all his work. The two astronomers, 

 it must be remarked, were working together observing and noting 

 the same events, such as the transits of the same stars across hair- 

 lines placed in the fields of vision of their telescopes or transit-instru- 

 ments. After observing side by side a large number of events, and 

 recording the times as accurately as they could to the second and 

 fraction of a second in each case, it was found by a comparison of 

 results that the events were almost invariably recorded by Mr.- Kin- 



