556 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



krgely analogous to those of employes 

 in private firms or corporations; what 

 we are afraid of is the really irrespon- 

 sible action of our legislators who are 

 sent to Congress almost solely as repre- 

 sentatives of local interests, wholly un- 

 embarrassed by local consciences. Our 

 real Government is not the executive — 

 it is the Legislature ; and if Prof. Hen- 

 derson will take the responsibility of 

 stating that the private business of the 

 country is carried on on less honest 

 principles than the business of legisla- 

 tion, we think he will surprise most 

 well-informed readers. 



We must demur altogether to Prof. 

 Henderson's identification of liberty w ith 

 power or faculty. If a man can not 

 swim, we do not say he is not at liberty 

 to swim. If, on the other hand, a boy 

 can swim, but is not allowed to by his par- 

 ents, we say he is not at liberty to swim. 

 The business of Government, according 

 to Herbert Spencer, to whom Prof. Hen- 

 derson refers, is to protect individuals 

 in the exercise of already acquired fac- 

 ulties and powers, not to take measures 

 for enlarging their faculties and pow- 

 ers: that, he holds, they should look 

 after for themselves. Liberty means 

 nothing else than freedom from external 

 restraint ; and to assume, as Prof. Hen- 

 derson seems to, that a man free from 

 external restraint is not truly free unless 

 he has also a wide range of action is 

 abont as logical as to say that a man can 

 not be truly sane unless he has a very 

 wide range of knowledge. Yet it is on 

 the strength of this apparent confusion 

 of thought that Prof. Henderson asks 

 us, in the name of liberty, to intrust the 

 Government with a great diversity of 

 functions for the purpose of "making 

 desirable individual action possible " ! 

 We sincerely trust that university-ex- 

 tension lecturers will not be found teach- 

 ing this doctrine, and arguing that a 

 man's freedom is increased when he 

 gets cheap'er postage, or any other 

 added facilities for action. In the sense 

 in which Prof. Henderson is using the 



word " liberty," it would surely be the 

 duty of the Government to see that 

 every man was well supplied with 

 pocket-money, since nothing so circum- 

 scribes action as poverty. 



Finally, we fail to see much force in 

 the paragraph in which our contributor 

 sums up his case: "A governmental ac- 

 tion which compels is mischievous; an 

 activity which says, 'Thou mayst; lol 

 here are the menns,' is helpful." Sure- 

 ly it is obvious that before the Govern- 

 ment can say "Thou mayst; lo! here 

 are the means," it must have taken 

 those means from somebody else. The 

 one great form of compulsion which 

 governments nowadays have it in their 

 power to exercise is this one of ta:sa- 

 tion. The business of Government is 

 not to say "Thou mayst" to any one, 

 but to say " Thou mnst not " to every 

 one who shows a disposition to encroach 

 on the liberties of his neighbor. " Thou 

 mayst" in the mouth of the Govern- 

 ment is almost, if not quite, an imper- 

 tinence. "Thou must not," if uttered 

 in the right quarter, is the watchword 

 of individual liberty. 



LITERARY NOTICES. 



The Cause of an Ice Age. By Sir Robert 

 Ball, LL. D., F. R. S., Royal Astronomer 

 of Ireland, author of Starland. Modern 

 Science Series, Vol. I. New York : D. 

 Applcton & Company. 1891. 16mo. 

 Pp. xii 4-180. Price, $1. 



As a mathematician, Dr. Ball has a high 

 reputation, and he has at the same time 

 rare ability in popularizing his themes. 

 Even those who have little mathematical 

 knowledge will find no difficulty in under- 

 standing the main points of this volume, 

 while the abstruse formulas upon which hia 

 theory depends are relegated to a short ap- 

 pendix, where they can be examined at lei- 

 sure by those who are competent to carry on 

 extended mathematical calculations. 



In his opinion, the discovery which Dr. 

 Ball has made lends strong support to the 

 theory of Adhemar and Croll, namely, that 

 the great Ice age was produced by the pre- 

 cession of the equinoxes during a period of 



