EDITOR'S TABLE. 



in 



mental activity, were introduced. These 

 are invaluable in education, and if 

 shorn away, so that nothing but direct 

 results are imparted, the quickening, 

 arousing influence of science is lost to 

 culture. Karl Griin well observes : 

 " Science either enjoys perfect liberty, 

 or she is not free at all. Setting up 

 hypotheses and tracing their ultimate 

 consequences are part and parcel of 

 science, and of the liberty of science; " 

 and we may add that its use in this form 

 is a part of the liberty of education. 



It is one of the chief glories of sci- 

 ence that it has first taught men the 

 supreme value of truth, and the disci- 

 plines of character that the earnest pur- 

 suit of truth involves. Truth on its 

 own account and for its own sake is its 

 one great object, and, in proportion as 

 it can be incorporated in education and 

 made the incentive of mental activity, 

 will education attain its highest and 

 noblest object. A writer in the German 

 periodical Kosmos, replying to Prof. Vir- 

 chow, thus gives effective expression to 

 this idea : 



" Scientific research aims at the discov- 

 ery of truth, never inquiring who is to be 

 benefited thereby. The question, Qui pro- 

 dest? (Who is benefited?) is fortunately of 

 as little account in science as the other ques- 

 tion, Cui nocet? (Who is hurt?) Hence 

 whether the evolution doctrine favors the 

 Socialists or the Ultramontanes, the high 

 and dry Conservatives, the Moderates, the 

 Liberals, the Eadicals, or any other party, 

 must be a matter of entire indifference to the 

 earnest investigator, and must not be per- 

 mitted for a moment to lead him astray in 

 his researches. The truth must be established 

 for its own sake, and for no other purpose. 

 Any other consideration, even though it were 

 urged by a Virchow, must be absolutely re- 

 jected. Ever since science first began there 

 have been heard authoritative voices calling 

 ' Halt ! ' to the restless spirit of speculation, 

 and it were a grave injustice not to recognize 

 the value of such admonitions. They who 

 warn against danger, and they who engage 

 in scientific speculation, are both indispen- 

 sable for the development of science ; but 

 we must ever bear in mind that scientific 

 progress always, almost without an excep- 

 tion, has come from the labors of those who 



dared to give expression to thoughts which 

 were as a leaven to the minds of their con- 

 temporaries, and who were persecuted for 

 heresy, and laid under a ban by the authori- 

 ties. The most splendid triumphs of sci- 

 ence are the fruit of the empiric demonstra- 

 tion of ingenious hypotheses. Even in cases 

 where these hypotheses have proved un- 

 tenable they have caused men to think, and 

 that in itself constitutes a new advance of 

 science. We could as little dispense with 

 them as with the leaven in bread. All 

 honor, then, first of all to the men to whom 

 we are indebted for hypotheses which have 

 given a stimulus to research ; which, so to 

 speak, constitute a landmark in the histo- 

 ry of science ; finally, in the mastering of 

 which, in one sense or the other, a full gen- 

 eration or more has been employed ! Honor, 

 again, to those intellectual princes of whom 

 the German proverb is true that, 'when 

 kings build, there is work for cartmen ! '" 



PROFESSOR MAX MULLER ON " THE 

 ORIGIN OF REASONr 



And, while we happen to be on the 

 subject of evolution in Germany, we 

 may refer to another episode in rela- 

 tion to this subject. Prof. Max Muller, 

 well known as a philologist, has written 

 an ambitious paper on " The Origin of 

 Reason," in which he follows Prof. 

 Ludwig Noire, a German philologist, 

 and called a " rank evolutionist." Mul- 

 ler points out how Prof. Noire has laid 

 under contribution Spinoza, Descartes, 

 Leibnitz, Kant, Locke, Schopenhauer, 

 and Geiger, for materials to construct 

 an evolution theory, his own contribu- 

 tion being that the development of 

 mind is to be come at through the study 

 of language. Noire does not think 

 much of Darwin, but prefers Cuvier, 

 and works up his scheme out of meta- 

 physical materials, rather than the re- 

 sults of modern science. This Muller 

 indorses, saying, " Every system of phi- 

 losophy which plunges into the mys- 

 teries of Nature without having solved 

 the mysteries of the mind, the systems 

 of natural evolution not excepted, is 

 pre-Oartesian and mediaeval." It is 

 somewhat curious to characterize as 

 mediaeval that new spirit which arose 



