POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



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Hermann Fol, of the University of Geneva, 

 described his studies on animal individual- 

 ity, embracing particularly his researches 

 into the origin of double beings, two-head- 

 ed monsters, and the like. Professor F. A. 

 Forel presented an interesting paper on 

 the variations of temperature of the Swiss 

 lakes, which he has made the subject of 

 several years of study. Professor Suess, of 

 Vienna, read a paper in exposition of the 

 modern theory of the upheaval of mount- 

 ains. Professor Clausius, of Berne, was 

 elected president of the society. 



False Knowledge. — Dr. Oliver Marcy, 

 geologist and classicist, and formerly Presi- 

 dent of the Northwestern University, has 

 some sensible remarks on educational fal- 

 lacies, in the Chicago " Evening Herald " : 

 " There is much wrong education. The hu- 

 man mind is burdened with false knowl- 

 edge. It comes to us in tradition. It con- 

 stitutes a large part of our libraries. All 

 the false notions of the ancients stand upon 

 our shelves. False knowledge is forced 

 upon us in the instruction we receive. We 

 are taught that we must go to school to the 

 ancients ; that they had the truth, and knew 

 more and were wiser than the people of this 

 age ; that in the art of composition, both in 

 prose and in poetry, the moderns are infe- 

 rior to the men of ancient time ; that it is 

 necessary, in order to acquire a good style 

 in English, to study composition in Greek, a 

 language whose structure is wholly unlike 

 that of the English. The Greek mythology 

 is represented as a beautiful blossom of the 

 human intellect, worthy of years of patient 

 study. We are taught that a man educated 

 in the knowledge that existed 300 years be- 

 fore Christ is better educated than a man 

 educated in the knowledge of the nineteenth 

 century. If these are not fallacies, what 

 ground have we for expecting that the hu- 

 man race will have any better mental con- 

 dition in the future ? If these are not fal- 

 lacies, what has become of the law of prog- 

 ress ? One of the most detrimental fallacies 

 imbibed with our education is the notion 

 that words have a potency of meaning in 

 themselves. The truth is, they have only 

 such meanings as we attach to them. They 

 stand for notions already in our minds. 

 When uttered or written they have no 

 power to generate the same notions in other 



minds as they represent to us, unless the 

 other parties have associated these same 

 notions with the sounds we utter or sets of 

 visible marks similar to those we write. 

 Meaning does not exist in a word by virtue 

 of its root or its history. Roots and word 

 histories are of interest in the study of 

 words as such in philology, but, in the se- 

 lection of a word to express an idea, the 

 question is not what the word has stood for 

 in the minds of persons long since dead, but 

 what it stands for now in the minds of the 

 living. The new meaning of every word is 

 different from its old meaning, and in some 

 cases the new meaning is directly contrary 

 to that of the old. No one can obtain the 

 new notion from the study of the old word ; 

 for instance, the notion which is now repre- 

 sented by the word animal. The Greek 

 anemos stood for wind and for a breath. 

 The Latin anima stood for spirit and life, as 

 then understood. The Latin animal stood 

 for a living being ; but no Roman or Latin 

 ever used this word to represent the idea 

 for which the word now stands in the mind 

 of the scientific man, for the modem idea 

 had no existence in those days. The man 

 whose vernacular is the English tongue takes 

 a very indirect route, and makes a very 

 unproductive journey, when he seeks the 

 meaning of the now English word animal 

 through its roots and its history. The pres- 

 ent meaning can be obtained only by ob- 

 serving and studying animals themselves in 

 connection with the thoughts and observa- 

 tions of modem investigators. Persons who 

 get into the habit of obtaining their ideas 

 from Latin and Greek roots generally have 

 no disposition to seek knowledge in any 

 other way. They are satisfied with the im- 

 perfect notions which they thus obtain from 

 the old words, and forever remain ignorant 

 of the real nature of the things for which the 

 new words stand. Agassiz was so impressed 

 with the fallacy of names that he never per- 

 mitted his students to know the name of an 

 object of study till they had formed a prop- 

 er notion of it by a minute study of the ob- 

 ject itself. Names to the ignorant convey 

 but very superficial notions. These fallacies 

 are affecting the education, the life, and 

 the thinking of all our people. We should 

 throw them off as we grow in clear think- 

 ing, as the growing lobster throws off his 

 shell. There is much confusion of mind 



