^i6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



istence tlirough. tliermal springs and volcanic exhalations, to all 

 appearance is slowly and silently engendering considerable and 

 permanent effects in the interior of the globe, and is giving birth 

 to various minerals as it did in former days. 



In the same way as in our organism all the parts of the body 

 owe their development to the support which they receive from 

 the circulation of the blood, so in the crust of the earth, water, by 

 its incessant subterranean circulation and its predominantly chem- 

 ical work, accomplishes a kind of vital action which is perpetuated 

 through ages. May we not justly apply to these mineral ogical 

 and geological results, so worthy of our curiosity and derived from 

 a single cause, Leibnitz's favorite epigraph, In varietate unitas ? — 

 Translated for the Popular Science Montlily from the Revue des 

 Deux Mondes. 



THE ORIGIN OF HOLIDAYS. 



By HAELOW gale. 



AS ballads are the essence of a people's history, so holidays 

 are the free utterance of their character. Spontaneity is 

 always valuable evidence, and holidays are in their beginnings 

 purely spontaneous. They furnish psychically an excellent exam- 

 ple of reflex action. The stimuli which come to us from the outer 

 world of things as well as from the inner world of sensation find 

 three channels for the expenditure of their force, viz., thought, 

 feeling, and involuntary or reflex action, Man's position in the 

 scale of life is determined in general by the proportion in which 

 stimulus is distributed among these three outflows. The less of 

 conscious life a creature has, the nearer will it approach to the 

 existence of an automaton. 



Now, though we can not precisely construct the psychical life 

 of the primitive man, yet the law of evolution enables us to pict- 

 ure him as exercising little reflective thought, rather dull feelings 

 of the bodily pain and pleasure sort, and a comparatively large 

 amount of reflex action ; so that stimulus, following the line of 

 least resistance or greatest traction, will in a majority of cases end 

 in reflex action. Even if the incoming sentient current does flow 

 on or over into feeling and even thought, the smallness of their ca- 

 pacity prevents much egress through these intellectual channels, 

 and the restricted current must again find its exit in expressive 

 muscular action. Let us briefly review the historical beginnings 

 and development of this spontaneous demonstrative life. 



The primitive holiday was occasional — i. e., prompted by un- 

 usual events of domestic or tribal life. Births, marriages, and 

 deaths are almost universally celebrated by primitive man, and 



