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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



ably the eager minds of the Boston Christian 

 young men overleaped these obstacles, as our 

 own youths clear hurdles. " Whole armadas of 

 materialistic fleets,'' says the inspired lecturer, 

 " have been wrecked on the hungry tusks of self- 

 contradiction." Why self-contradiction, also spo- 

 ken of as a reef, should have hungry tusks we 

 do not know, but the enemy of Bathybius him- 

 self seems scarcely to escape the ravenous tusks. 

 Not satisfied with a display, however brill- 

 iant, of acquaintance with the language of Hel- 

 las, Mr. Cook in his second lecture kindly adds 

 something to what we know of Socrates: "It 

 was in the endeavor to satisfy a distinctively 

 theological thirst that he smote the rocks at 

 the foot of the Acropolis, and caused to gush 

 forth there these crystalline head-springs of the 

 scientific method. Unless we think boldly — 

 north, south, east, and west — and syllogistically, 

 • and on our knees, we do not think at all. A Greek 

 teacher of morals first taught us to think in this 

 manner." Mr. Cook has sources of information 

 which we know nothing of, but we hardly think 

 he can be right in saying that Socrates taught 

 him to think in this manner. More probably the 

 devout though benighted Mohican of his native 

 prairies taught him to think in the manner ex- 

 pressed in this burning period. He wants to say 

 that Agassiz held some view with which Trof. 

 Dana agrees ; and this is how he says it : 



" He bent that colossal bow, and it dropped 

 out of his dying hand. On the English-speaking 

 globe, now that Lyell has gone hence, there is no 

 man but Dana that can take up that bow and bend 

 it. But what does Dana say? Go to Agassiz's 

 grave ; take with you these yet moist sheets of the 

 last number of the American Journal of Science 

 and Arts ; read over Agassiz's tomb the latest ut- 

 terance of the highest and gravest authority in 

 American geological science, and you may bring 

 solace to a hovering, mighty spirit for an unfin- 

 ished task." 



If some Boston Christian young man did not 

 take a moist copy of the American Journal of 

 Science, and read it over Agassiz's tomb, Boston 

 Christian young men must be very hard-hearted. 

 Who would not take a little trouble to solace a 

 hovering spirit ? Still, if Mr. Cook was in ear- 

 nest, his orthodoxy has a wondrous heathenish 

 air, and if the remark was only his fun, his fun 

 is not in the best taste. It seems that Trof. 

 Dana (p. 54), "over Agassiz's grave, joins hands 

 with Agassis in the Unseen Holy." Here is spread- 

 eagle philosophy indeed, and very edifying Mr. 

 Cook's lectures must be to young men with a 



sense of humor or a sense of reverence. " I do 

 not know where in America there is another 

 weekly audience with as many brains in it," says 

 the lecturer ; and we wonder what sort of trash 

 he would pour out before an audience which he 

 held in less respect. 



A number of these addresses have " preludes 

 on current events." An audience with ever so 

 many brains cannot always be tackling Bathybi- 

 us, or following Mr. Cook through what he calls 

 " the famous labyrinth of Minotaurus." He there- 

 fore began by talking about the observance of 

 Sunday, or about the election of Mr. Hayes, or 

 about " the custom of the doges of Venice to 

 symbolize the marriage of their city to the sea," 

 or about any other nonsense that chanced to 

 come uppermost in the Bathybius or deep sea of 

 his brain. Thence he would diverge to Hermann 

 Lotze, the new philosopher whose " star is in 

 the ascendant," while Mr. Spencer's, as we have 

 seen, is casting a mild iustre on the Western 

 pines. The lecturer revels in the Christian names 

 of his authorities. Herr Lotze would be nothing 

 if he were not Hermann, just as the Telegraph, 

 while Mr. Gladstone was in office, always wor- 

 shiped him as William Ewart. Herr Lotze's 

 philosophy, we are informed, " is the most brill- 

 iant, the most audacious, the most abreast of the 

 time, of all the philosophies of the globe." The 

 most abreast of the time — these words sum up the 

 popular conception of philosophy. Who is the 

 very newest man, people ask, what is the " last 

 novelty" in opinion? That is the faith to run 

 after, just as the last hideous color is the most 

 fashionable. People seem to think that Herr 

 Lotze, or Herr Haeckel, or Mr. Huxley, has found 

 something out, that proves or disproves the mys- 

 terious and eternal questions. If we have loops 

 at the end of our nerves, all is well ; there is a 

 God and a future life. If the horse is descended 

 from a pony no bigger than a fox — let us eat and 

 drink, for to-morrow we die ! The last speaker 

 is sure to know best ; the most recent work on 

 the microscope contains the secret of the uni- 

 verse. It is with pasteboard artillery, despite its 

 thundering noise, that our lecturer bombards 

 castles of Giant Doubting, themselves built cf 

 pasteboard. He quotes what we presume was an 

 absurd and vulgar hoax — a letter which Mr. Car- 

 lyle was said to have written about Mr. Darwin 

 — as if it were gospel, or as if it were an argu- 

 ment. He tells long stories about Daniel Web- 

 ster's death-bed, and about Rufus Choate. He 

 calls a copy of the New York Tribune " the last 

 whitc-and-mottled bird that flew to us out of the 



