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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ones. The new writers give us the 

 last refinements and developments 

 of thought, the latest paradoxes, and 

 all that is up to date in style and ex- 

 pression ; the old ones are better in- 

 terpreters of primal Nature, and of 

 what is broad and fundamental in 

 humanity. In these pauses of life 

 we should try to take to heart the les- 

 son that Wordsworth teaches in his 

 celebrated sonnet : 



The world is too much with us ; late and soon, 

 Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers ; 



and which a later poet echoes when 

 he exclaims : 



The will to neither strive nor cry. 

 The power to feel with others give ; 



Calm, calm me more, nor let me die 

 Before I have begun to live ! 



The Roman satirist Persius gives this 

 pithy advice: "Dwell with yourself, 

 and find out how little you really re- 

 quire." In our holidays it would be 

 well, instead of pampering ourselves, 

 to try to reduce life to its simplest, 

 or at least to comparatively simple, 

 elements. Thus can we best renew 

 and rejuvenate our spirits, and bring 

 ourselves to feel how little the joy of 

 life depends upon the luxuries and 

 artificialities of advanced civilization. 

 These are old ideas and have been 

 much better expressed by many writ- 

 ers of note ; but we are all apt to for- 

 get the good counsels we receive, 

 and a timely reminder can do no 

 harm. Particularly in a civilization 

 so restless as ours and so avid of 

 novelty, is a period of rest far from 

 tlie hurry and turmoil of the city 

 a matter of necessity. Otherwise 

 what do we tend to become ? — mere 

 creatures of the moment, rushing 

 from task to task or from amuse- 

 ment to amusement, hurriedly scan- 

 ning the headlines of our papers or 

 the illustrations of our magazines, 

 constantly absorbed in the actuali- 

 ties and trivialities of life, and con- 

 stantly tending toward a soulless 



materialism in thought and senti- 

 ment. If our civilization, however, 

 is to count for anything serious in 

 the great chain of human history, 

 we must get more soul into it — we 

 must strive to rise above the routine 

 and mere mechanics of existence. 

 We must find out and take the truth 

 home to our hearts, that life is some- 

 thing more than meat, that the body 

 is of more dignity than its raiment, 

 and that the soul of man is destined 

 for other and higher uses than sim- 

 ply to reflect the shows of the pass- 

 ing moment. Let us in our holi- 

 days, if we are so fortunate as to 

 have any, try to baptize ourselves 

 anew in the fresh fountains of natu- 

 ral beauty which almost every coun- 

 tryside affords, let us attune our- 

 selves to the harmonies of Nature, 

 let us get sight of our own souls, 

 "our true deep-buried selves, being 

 one with which," as one whom we 

 all know has finely said, " we are 

 one with the whole world." 



MR. SPENCER AND THE METRIC 

 SYSTEM AGAIN. 



Mr. Herbert Spencer is not one 

 of those philosophers who think it a 

 duty to hold severely and loftily 

 aloof from practical and everyday 

 questions. He is keenly interested 

 in the daily life of the people in the 

 widest sense of the word; and we 

 may attribute to that fact the zeal he 

 has recently displayed in connec- 

 tion with the proposition to make 

 a radical change in the system of 

 weights and measures now and for 

 many generations established in 

 England. Since we last referred to 

 this subject Mr. Spencer has ad- 

 dressed two further communications 

 to the London Times in relation 

 thereto. The second of these we 

 quote entire, as being a brief yet 

 comprehensive statement, from the 

 writer's standpoint, of the whole 

 question. 



