January 14, 1921] 



SCIENCE 



35 



constitution with which, they are born. But 

 we can give them equality of opportunity and 

 more; for we can provide the best opportunity 

 for each and improve the environment for all. 

 Even though it may be difficult to alter people 

 after they are born, it may ultimately be iws- 

 sible to select the kind of people that we want 

 to be born. 



"The harvest truly is plenteous, but the 

 laborers are few." And this is in large meas- 

 ure because we limit ourselves to the solution 

 of St. Matthew : " Pray ye therefore the Lord 

 of lihe harvest, that he will send forth laborers 

 into his harvest." We do not use tested busi- 

 ness policies to organize our work, but wait 

 for the lords of the harvest to find us and to 

 care for us. 



The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, 

 But in ourselves, that we are underlings, 



or, in modern terminology, it is not the situa- 

 tion, but our failure to apply scientific meth- 

 ods to our own work, that makes us a feeble 

 group gathered in Chicago when we might be 

 a dominant force throughout the world. We 

 should be practical men and see to it that we 

 have a practical psychology. 



, J. McKeen Cattell 



JOHN NELSON STOCKWELL 



John ^Nelson Stockwell, mathematician 

 and astronomer, was bom in Northampton, 

 Massachusetts, April 10, 1832. When he was 

 a little more than a year old his parents 

 moved to Ohio, and at eight years of age he 

 went to live with an imcle and aunt on a farm 

 in Brecksville, not far from Cleveland. In 

 speaking of his early education, he says he 

 took very little interest in his studies imtil 

 just before the outbreak of the Mexican War, 

 when he became interested in history and, at 

 the same time, began to solve arithmetical 

 problems published in a weekly Philadelphia 

 paper which fotmd its way to Brecksville. It 

 soon appeared that he could solve these prob- 

 lems readily and for a number of years he 

 sent the answers to the paper week after week ; 

 he also worked every arithmetical problem he 



could find in old arithmetics which came into 

 his hands. Algebra was not studied in the 

 country schools in those days, and it was not 

 until 1849 that he was able to begin work on 

 this subject. He could find no teacher, but 

 the subject proved to be so easy that he did 

 not need one. 



A total eclipse of the moon which occurred 

 in ISTovember, 1844, first called his attention 

 to celestial phenomena. From that time ha 

 was an ardent student of old almanacs and 

 any other works which he could acquire deal- 

 ing with astronomical events. When he was 

 seventeen years of age, he secured a text-book 

 on practical geometry and a year later began 

 the study of general geometry, again without 

 a teacher. So absorbed was he in mathe- 

 matics that he found the work on the farm 

 irksome and arranged to give less time to 

 that and more to his studies. Olmsted's 

 "Astronomy" and Dr. Thomas Dick's works 

 gave him much practical information, but 

 failed to satisfy him because they did not give 

 enough theoretical work nor did they contain 

 the mathematics necessary to predict astro- 

 nomical events. The books he read frequently 

 spoke of "La Place" and the "Mecanique 

 Celeste." Young Stockwell, being determined 

 to own this work, ordered it of a bookseller 

 in Cleveland and received it in 1852, when he 

 was twenty years of age. He found then, to 

 his great surprise, that it consisted of four 

 large quarto volumes and the cost was far in 

 excess of anything he had imagined. But his 

 desire for the work was so great that he was 

 perfectly willing to give a half summer's work 

 to get the money to pay for it. Before this 

 time he had become somewhat familiar with 

 calciilus and was, therefore, able to under- 

 stand much, if not all, of the content of these 

 volumes. 



From 1849 to 1851 he devoted aU of his 

 leisure to the study of geometry, trigonometry 

 and higher mathematics, and in 1852 pub- 

 lished a " Western Reserve Almanac of the 

 Tear of our Lord, 1853." By a mistake of 

 the publishers his name was omitted from the 

 title page and few, if any, knew the author. 

 Soon after this he became acquainted with 



