999 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[August 1, 1887. 



force. Impetus was given to more personal and permanent 

 relationships by the longer period of infancy in man as 

 compared with the same period in the man-like apes, in 

 whom, again, it is much longer than in monkeys.* For as 

 the maternal instinct " sublimes the passions, quickens the 

 invention, and sharpens the sagacity of the brute creation," f 

 so this period of helplessness would draw parent and chOd 

 closer together, evolving love and sympathy, and developing 

 those endui-ing and exalting relations of the family which 

 widened into tribal life. Struggles against common foes 

 brought the bravest to the front as leaders, turbulent ele- 

 ments within involved the rule of the ablest, disputes called 

 for the settlement of the wisest, and thus the foundations 

 of law and oi-der were laid. 



Evolution of Language, the useful Arts, and Science. — 

 Two things markedly separate man from brute — his erect 

 attitude, whereby the hand, no longer an organ of 

 support, is left free to carry out the behests of the 

 mind ; and language. Not that the " dumb " animals, as 

 they are called, are all voiceless : many of them have no 

 small or inexact gamut of sounds by which to express their 

 emotions, their love-calls, and their danger-cries. But 

 although these may be not more unintelligible to us than 

 the language of savages like the Fuegians, which Captain 

 Cook compared to a man clearing his throat, the fact abides 

 that language, as the symbol of ideas, as the means of con- 

 veying thought from mind to mind, marks the impassable 

 gulf between the mental capacity of man and all lower 

 animals. Its origin lies in his need to communicate with 

 his fellows, and but for it all attempts after social union 

 would have been as the weaving of a rope of sand. 



Words themselves reveal under analysis the history of 

 their origin from a few formless root-sounds, which were 

 instinctive cries or imitations of various natural sounds, 

 very largely aided at the outset by signs and gestures. To 

 this day, gesture-language is the sole mode of communica- 

 tion between certain wandering tribes of American Indians, 

 and there are other tribes whose stock of sound-signs is so 

 limited that they cannot understand each other in the dark. 

 We can never know what the first sound-signs were like, 

 but their choice and currency obviously depended on the 

 success with which they conveyed the meaning of t'lose 

 who invented them, which, of course, applies to every stage 

 of language, from the simple names of objects with which it 

 began to the ultimate transfer of those names to ideas. 

 For all abstract terms have a concrete base. Certain it is 

 that from mimetic sounds, with their boundless variety of 

 modulation, there have been developed not merely the 

 scanty and shifting speech of the lower races, but the 

 wondrously rich, copious and ever-growing languages of 

 civilised races, the sound-carriers not only of man's common 

 wants, but of the lofty conceptions which are enshrined in 

 prose and poetry, and without which, now made the common 

 intellectual wealth of nations through the arts of writing 

 and printing, how poor and dwarfed would human life 

 have been I Language has, therefore, followed the common 

 law of Evolution in advance from the simple to the com- 

 plex, proving itself to be one of the many instruments 

 which the skill of man has perfected from raw materials as 

 his social needs have multiplied and as his intelligence has 

 inci'eased. 



And the like adaptation of means to ends applies to the 

 development of the useful arts, as well as of those arts in 

 which the head is more concerned than the hand. The 

 primal needs of clothing and shelter, of weapons of war and 

 of the chase — for the sword and bow precede the spade and 



• Cf. Fiske's " Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy," li. 342-346. 

 ■j- White's " Selborne." Letter xiv. to Mr. Barrington. 



hammer — the need, under more settled conditions, of 

 implements for the household and the field, set man's wits 

 at work to supplement and improve that which nature sup- 

 plies in the rough. Every instrument of his culture bears 

 traces of its development from simple forms : the spear and 

 knife-blade from the sharp-edged flint flake ; the saw from 

 the jagged-edged flake ; the matchlock from the crossbow ; 

 the warrior's armour from the scaly hide of beasts; the 

 plough from the stag's antlers or the tree-branch ; the mill 

 from pounding-stones ; the ship from the scooped-out trunk; 

 the oar from the hands or feet as primitive paddles ; the 

 house from the sun-baked clay hut, or, as in China, from 

 the Tatar tent; the pyramid from the earth-mound or 

 cairn ; the alphabet from picture-writing ; sculpture and 

 painting from rude scratchings on bone and horn ; stringed 

 instruments from the twang of the hunter's bow ; wind in- 

 struments from the blast of his horn ; poetry and song from- 

 the rude but impassioned savage chant of love and war ; 

 arithmetic from primitive perception of more or less; count- 

 ing and measuring, as shown in our words cubit, ell, foot, 

 hand, digit, span, and in cognate terms from other languages, 

 from using the fingers, toes, and other parts of the body ; 

 geometry, or fa«fi-measuring, from early perceptions of 

 space ; all science from crude and false guesses about the 

 nature and causes of things, from illusions of alchemist and 

 astrologer, which made attainment of the truth more 

 possible to chemist and astronomer ; and so on through the 

 whole range of man's social and intellectual development. 



COAL. 



By W. Mattieu Williams. 



NDERGROUND ventilation presents pro- 

 blems of great practical difficulty, A tho- 

 rough searching and abundant flow of air 

 through every main road, cross road, and 

 by-way in a coalpit is a stern necessity, a 

 matter of life and death. Not only the 

 exhalations from the lungs and bodies of the 

 men and horses, and the products of combustion of the 

 lights have to be removed, but also the gases from the coal 

 itself. These at times burst out in violent jets ; some of 

 them are inflammable, others suffocating, and all must be 

 swept away. 



If we should judge by the usual failure of our architects 

 and Iniilders to secure the steady and uniform ventilation of 

 public and private buildings, the satisfactory ventilation of 

 a coal mine would appear practically impossible. The air 

 for the mine has to be all carried down artificially ; in some 

 cases to perpendicular depths of a quarter of a mile below 

 the surface, and has to proceed in a complex, zigzag, 

 winding journey, all round every side — north, south, east, 

 west, and all intermediate points ; down the middle and up 

 again ; through low- roofed passages extending to an 

 aggregate length measurable in miles ; and then it must 

 climb up again, bearing with it all the pestiferous gases 

 and vapours it has encountered in the course of its long 

 journey. 



As an illustration of this, I will repeat the figures I have 

 already quoted when writing on " Domestic Ventilation " in 

 an early number or Knowledge. They are from the Report 

 of the Lords' Committee on Coal Mine Accidents in 1849. 

 At the Hetton Colliery the quantity of air carried down 

 amounted to 108,560 cubic feet per minute. Its rate of 

 motion was 1 2 miles per hour. The main current was cut 

 into 16 splits or subdivisions of about 11,000 cubic feet 

 per minute each, and having on an average a course of 



