Februaky, 1903.] 



KNOWLEDGE. 



25 



Founded by RICHARD A. PROCTOR. 



Vol. XXVI.] LONDON : FEBRUARY, 1903. [No. 208. 



CONTENTS. 



Cfoss-Fertilisation in Sociology. — I. By J. Coilier ... 

 St. Sophia, Constantinople.— I. By E. M. Antoniadi, 



F.K.A s. {Illusfrated) 



The Church of the Immortal Wisdom. (Plate) 



The Chemistry of the Stars. — I. By .V. Fowler, F.Tt. A.. ^. 



(Illustrated) ... 



The Path of the Moon.— I. By A. C. D. Crommelin. 



(Illustrated) 



Letter : 



TnK Solar Distubbaxcks of September, October and 



November, 1902. By John M. Haro 



Notes 



Notices of Books 



Books Received 

 British Ornithological Notes. Conducted by Harrt F. 



WiTHERBT, F.Z.8., M.B.O.r. ... 



Animal Wind-Bags — Useful and Ornamental. — II. 



Wind-Bags as Voice Organs. By W. P. Ptchaft, 



A.L S., F.Z.S., etc. (Illustrated) 



A Giant among Seals. By K! Lydekkeb 



Microscopy. Conducted by M. I. Ceoss 



Notes on Comets and Meteors. By W. F. Denninq, 



F.B.A.8. (Illustrated) ... 

 The Face of the Sky for February. By W. 



Shackleton, f.e.a.s. ... ... ... 



Chess Column. By C. D. Locock, b.a 



CROSS-FERTILISATION IN SOCIOLOGY.~I. 



Bj J. Collier. 



The iisscrlion was perhaps first made by Niebiibr. rojieatcd 

 by Whately, and supposed to be very damaging to the 

 alleged evolution of the higher races of man from the 

 lower, that there is no instance on record of a savage 

 peo])le raising itself unaided from barbarism to civilisation. 

 Might not the criticism be generalised ? Can it not be 

 affirmed that tliei-e is no recorded example of aiiv people 

 rising consideiably in the scale of culture titherwise than 

 by receiving stiiiinlatiou, amicable or hostile, from other 

 peoples ? For it may happen in two ways. A man is 

 "made by his enemies," like Mr. Chamberlain, and nations 

 have been brought to the point of self-conscious individu- 

 ality, as hapiieiied to England and France, to France and 

 Germany, by mutual animosity. French and English 

 historians agree that the latter stages of the French 

 Eevolution were initiated by the hostility of coalised 

 Eurojie. But wrath and hatred are not at the base of 

 collective any more than of individual life; the chief social 



regenerator is love, and in its primary form. The floral 

 world has been finely shown to owe its beauty and 

 magnificence to cross-fertilisation ; the animal world 

 might likewise be shown to be indebted for its vigour and 

 variety to intercrossing. So might it lie proved that most 

 great advances in civilisatiim have been originated by the 

 blending of two stocks, the immigration of individuals 

 from one society to another, the temporary migration of 

 individuals to other societies, the transmission of germs 

 from one society to another by various agencies, or by the 

 reaction of one portion of a community on another, or of 

 one form of social life on another. These are, all of them, 

 robust or " degraded " modes of intercrossing or cross- 

 fertilisation. 



Cross-Breeding in Philosophy. 



A rapid sketch of a single line of development will 

 reveal something of the part that this great natural agency 

 has played in history. All the leading philosophies have 

 been born of the contact of alien ideas with native systems. 

 Platonism was begotten by the soaring speculations of the 

 Italian Eleates on the stubborn realism of Socrates. 

 Aristotle was formed by opposition to his master and by a 

 species of intercrossing ; in him metaphysic was, as it 

 has all along been, fertilised by contemporary science. 

 Pantheistic Stoicism was the offspring of Asiatic thought 

 on Greek thought ; Deistic Epicureanism of atomistic 

 science on the same basis. Greek Eclecticism consisted of 

 a medley of systems intermingled by Svrian, Phoenician, 

 Greek, and Roman thinkers. Neo-Platouism blended 

 Aristotelianism and Platonism with an Oriental admi.Kture. 

 Mediaeval Scholasticism was the outcome of Aristotelianism 

 ayjplied to Christian theology. The scientific discoveries of 

 the seventeenth century bred an original philosophy equally 

 on the sympathetic Scholasticism of Descartes and 

 on Hobbes's antagonism to Scholasticism. Cartesianism 

 generated Spiuozism on the traditions of the Cabbala. 

 Spinozism introduced the new element of immanence into 

 the philosophy of Europe. Kantism was begotten by the 

 scepticism of Hume on the metaphysic of Wolf and 

 Tetens. The cloudy transcendentalism of Schelliug was 

 the phantom produced by the union of Oken's pseudo- 

 science with Kantism. The old French philosophy took 

 on a new character in Eoyer-Collard under the influence 

 of Reid. Victor Cousin owed his originality to an early 

 infusion of German doctrines. Hamilton repaid Kant's 

 debt to Hume by affiliating himself on Kant, with Reid 

 for matrix. Ferrier reared a bright castle-in-the-air 

 under the inspiration of Berkeley. And Mr. Spencer 

 acknowledges that a formula of von Baer was the starting- 

 ]ioiiit of his evolutionary (and revolutionai-y) career. 



These ai-e the blue gentians and the gorgeous wat^r- 

 lilies of the speculative reason, and, like their vegetal 

 analogues, they owe their brilliancy to the mingling of 

 diverse stocks. What a self-fertilising philosojtby may 

 come to we see in later lifeless Scholasticism. Wooden 

 Dutch philosophy after Spinoza, the, sounding inanities 

 of Italian philosophy between Vico and Vera, the dull 

 j>latitudes of Scottish philosophy from Dugald Stewart to 

 McCosh, later Spanish philosophy, and the orthodox 

 official philosophy of all countries. These are the useful 

 grasses and useless sedges of thought, whose small, pale, 

 etiolated blossoms do not minister delight or attract the 

 wayfarer. 



Mass-Fertilisation. 



All through Nature the male seeks the female. The 

 masculine peoples — the Greeks for a time, the Romans pre- 

 eminently, the Spaniards of the sixteenth century, the 

 English of the last three centuries, and now the Russians 

 — have spread themselves over the world in search of 



