678 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Europe and America. With a clear insight into the causes of 

 social phenomena, he possesses great independence of mind and 

 judgment. Though temporarily withdrawn from official connec- 

 tion with the association, he continues his membership, and is in 

 thorough sympathy with its work and aims. 



Mr. Herbert Spencer has manifested his sustained interest in 

 the objects and work of the association by frequent correspond- 

 ence and generous commendation of its efforts and accomplish- 

 ments. After declining membership in the French Academy and 

 the leading scientific bodies of Europe, he paid the Brooklyn 

 Ethical Association the high compliment of accepting its corre- 

 sponding membership. The cordial feeling on his part is heartily 

 reciprocated by every member of the association, and it has fallen 

 to the lot of some of its representatives to be honored by the 

 privilege of defending Mr. Spencer against the unjust assaults of 

 his critics on this side of the Atlantic. Happily, he has lived to 

 see his great work almost accomplished, and its purport much 

 better understood than it was two decades ago. Nowhere has it 

 found firmer or more appreciative friends than in America. That 

 the Ethical Association has been able in a modest way to take up 

 and carry on the work of popularizing evolution views so ably 

 begun by the founder of The Popular Science Monthly is not the 

 least among the sources of congratulation in the judgment of its 

 members. 



To continue this work, and by means thereof to aid in the sci- 

 entific solution of those vast and impending problems of our social 

 and political life in the discussion of which, under the prevailing 

 a priori and empirical methods, wisdom has often been obscured 

 by a multitude of unscientific and conflicting counsels, is their 

 continued ambition, and to this end they solicit the sympathy and 

 co-operation of all consenting minds. 



Several travelers in Africa remark upon the better condition of the negroes 

 in proportion as they are remote from the white men. Mr. Alfred Coode Hone, 

 in his book, Tanganyika, which records his eleven years' experiences in central 

 Africa, says that along almost any section of the continent, from coast to center, 

 "the farther the traveler advances into the interior, the better is the condition of 

 the natives found to be; less drunkenness, less immorality, more industry and 

 independence." Mr. Wilmot Brooke, says the London Spectator, writing of the 

 west coast, tells us the same story, with a more severe reference to the exterior 

 influences inimical to the African peoples. Describing the degradation of the coast 

 tribes and its causes, he adds, " Last of all, they are dragged lower still by their 

 contact with the white man." As he ascended the Niger, the squalid villages 

 were seen no more ; they were replaced by fine, clean, open towns, with thou- 

 sands of inhabitants, and he entered a new world, physical, political, social, and 

 religious. 



