September 13, 1889.] 



SCIENCE. 



185 



mation has its proper effect upon our intelligent judgments of the 

 position of things about us, and these judgments are the only 

 thing, in the whole process, which we know ourselves to be think- 

 ing about. 



What is the nature of the mechanical stimulation which excites 

 the nerves of the semicircular canals under ordinary circum- 

 stances ? . Brener produces the motions by making a small incision 

 in the canals, and drawing out the liquid contained in them by a 

 piece of blotting paper. If, when the head is moved, the endo- 

 lymph remained behind for a short time by inertia, and then rubbed 

 against the hairs of the ampullae as it moved forward, that might 

 be a means for producing a sensation in the nerve. This retarded 

 movement can actually be seen to take place in artificial glass 

 tubes made of the same shape as the semicircular canals, but of a 

 larger size. But when the tubes are made of the same small size 

 as the actual canals, no effect of inertia can be detected. It is not 

 by any means sure that in the real tubes the retardation would not 

 take place, for they differ in many respects from tubes of glass ; an 

 actual retardation, moreover, would very naturally explain the illu- 

 sion of an after-motion in the opposite direction which is, under 

 some circumstances, very persistent after a rotation has ceased. 

 Mach, however, considers that changes of pressure are quite suffi- 

 cient to produce the required effect ; on calculating their amount 

 he found it to be not so inconsiderable, compared with the energy 

 necessary to affect other organs of sense, as might have been ex- 

 pected. But whether due to changes of pressure, or to rubbing, it 

 is no longer possible to doubt that it is to sensations in the semi- 

 circular canals, for the most part unconscious, that we owe that 

 exact knowledge of how far and in what direction we have turned 

 the head at any moment which is necessary to our safe progress 

 every time we attempt to move about in space. 



Christine Ladd Franklin. 



HARVARD OF TO-DAY.' 



I THANK you with all my heart for this kind reception ; but as I 

 look round me and remember how few there are in this large as- 

 semblage who have not borne the infliction of my lectures, I am 

 abashed to think how widely my weaknesses and shortcomings 

 must be known. It is fortunate for us old teachers that time so 

 far alters the perspective under which the incidents of college life 

 are seen that our mistakes become less prominent, and our devo- 

 tion to truth and duty more evident, as we advance in years. Be- 

 fore another generation has passed, I trust that old Father Time 

 will have dealt as graciously with the college work of to-day as he 

 has with our own weak endeavors in the past ; but it has seemed 

 to me that many of her friends have of late been criticising Alma 

 Mater very much in the same spirit which her students showed to 

 their teachers in former times, exaggerating her failures and mini- 

 mizing her successes. In a community of nearly two thousand 

 young men it must be that offences come ; and he can have known 

 little of human nature in opening manhood who thinks that by any 

 system of restrictions he can build a wall around the college high 

 enough to keep evil out ; and, however much he may dread the 

 conflict, who does not know that no force of character can be at- 

 tained and no manly virtue won except by meeting the enemy and 

 slaying him ? 



The discreditable stories which have been so widely circulated 

 about our college have brought upon us the scrutiny of a whole 

 army of reporters ; and, whatever of truth or of falsehood there 

 may have been in the sensational paragraphs they have published, 

 of this I am sure, that few societies of men, however sacred their 

 object, could have borne the scrutiny as well. When I have indig- 

 nantly repelled the scandals, I have been told that I knew nothing 

 about that phase of college life. Thank God I do know nothing 

 about it ; and I am in constant association with hundreds on hun- 

 dreds of young men who know as little about it as I do. We do 

 not expect to solve the problem of evil at Harvard in this genera- 

 tion ; but there is this very marked difference between the evil influ- 

 ences of to-day and those of only a few years back. Then the evil 

 was everywhere pervasive. The classes were so small that all the 

 members were brought into more or less intimate association, and 



* Address by Josiah Parsons Cooke, LL.D. at the commencement dinner at Har- 

 vard University, on June 26, i88g. 



one could not avoid meeting the hateful forms of vice, however 

 greatly he might be repelled by the sight. Now associations are 

 determined to a far greater extent by mutual tastes and affinities; 

 the bad influences are confined to a limited class, and the great 

 majority of our students in passing through college see as little of 

 degrading vice as they would at their homes. 



Several years ago an anxious mother consulted me about send- 

 ing her son to this college. The son was anxious to study in our 

 laboratory, but the mother feared the evil influences of the place. 

 Nevertheless the boy came, as I afterward learned, in consequence 

 of my representations, graduated with highest honors, and is now 

 one of the most promising of the younger members of his profes- 

 sion. The mother followed her son to Cambridge. After she had 

 lived among us for some time, she said to me one day : " I am so 

 much delighted with this place. Things are so different from 

 what I expected. I was told such horrid stories, and not one word 

 of them is true." We have at least one sincere advocate, who has 

 been convinced by experience ; and there are numbers of young 

 men who graduate from Harvard every year as guileless as this 

 earnest woman's son. 



My friends, I can assure you that the great danger of our dear 

 college at the present time is not over dissipation, but over work. 

 Sixty thousand dollars cannot be distributed in prizes every year 

 without producing an enormous strain ; and those of us who are 

 directing the workers know how intense the activity is. We may 

 know little of the evil around us, but we do know a great deal of 

 the good. We know of lofty purposes and of earnest endeavor. 

 We know of perseverence under great discouragements, and of 

 victories won against heavy odds. We know of self-control and of 

 self-devotion. We know of Christian duties habitually practised, 

 and of truth and right manfully upheld ; and we maintain that the 

 character of a community of scholars is to be judged by such 

 traits as these, and not by the occasional lapses of its weaker mem- 

 bers. 



Moreover, I am not one of those who think that a man is neces- 

 sarily condemned because he is born with a gold spoon in his 

 mouth, or that educated leisure is an unmitigated evil. The col- 

 lege has done a good work in educating rich men, and it owes a 

 great part of its present influence to the noble use which many of 

 its alumni have made of inherited wealth. Such men are educated 

 more by association than by direct instruction ; and, as a former 

 president of the college once said, they gain something if they 

 merely rub their backs against the college walls ; and if this was 

 true in the past, how much more is it true in the present, when the 

 intellectual life of the college is so much more active, the standard 

 of scholarship so much higher, and the opportunities of cultivating 

 special tastes so greatly enlarged. You cannot expect of such men 

 the asceticism of an anchorite, or the plodding diligence of a 

 scholar ; but the university owes them an education, and the duties 

 and obligations are not wholly on one side. 



During the last twenty- five years the life at the university has 

 been rendered safer and more healthy, in every respect, by a greatly 

 increased enthusiasm for learning, which extends to almost every 

 department of this large institution. In no one respect has the 

 improvement in the college been more striking than in this ; and 

 probably no officer of the college has had better opportunities of 

 observing the change than myself. For forty years I have lectured 

 to the successive freshman classes, beginning with the class which 

 entered in 1S49; and many of the older men around me will re- 

 member the boyish pranks which in their college days not infre- 

 quently amused the class, and greatly tried the temper of the 

 teacher. The lecture was always an up-hill work, — a duty to be 

 enforced on the one side, a task to be endured on the other. The 

 lecturer was always waiting on disturbance, the class always wait- 

 ing on deliverance. Not only was there no general enthusiasm, 

 but the first suspicion of such a thing in a college lecture-room 

 would have been regarded as a dangerous precedent, alike com- 

 promising the dignity of the teacher and violating the traditions of 

 the place. Now, although the classes have so outgrown the ac- 

 commodations that not only all the seats, but all the approaches to- 

 my lecture-room, are crowded almost to suffocation, a more orderly^ 

 a more attentive, or a more enthusiastic audience cannot be found. 

 This change is due not simply to our elective system, but far more 



