,^6o 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XVIII. No. 457 



can doubt that the stock of knowledge possessed by the human 

 race at large is rapidly increasing, and will continue to do so. 

 But in the second we meet with several difficulties. If, as Dr. 

 Paul Carus says, metaphysics is " a disease of philosophy " and 

 devoid of value, its decreased influence in the world of thought 

 would seem to indicate a progress of the human mind in the direc- 

 tion of healthy and fruitful activities. But the fact that all sci- 

 ence presupposes certain metaphysical concepts, — as that of the 

 trustworthiness of the instinct which attributes objectivity to 

 phenomena cognized by the senses, — would seem to belie the 

 dictum of the great monist; and, as the abstract notions of meta- 

 physics are much farther removed from sub-human psychological 

 conditions than are the concrete ones of natural science, the disuse 

 of metaphysics would appear from an evolutionary standpoint to 

 be, like the atrophy of the religious sense, au indication of retro- 

 grade development. Nevertheless, the widely diffused intellectual 

 activity of the present, in which even metaphysics is represented by 

 a greater number of schools than ever before, and which, for the 

 first time in the history of the world, has a broad basis of scien- 

 tific facts, cannot but tend towards a still higher intellectual con- 

 dition. One of the most important steps in this direction will 

 surely be a synthesis of the now comparatively isolated depart- 

 ments and schools of human knowledge and thought. 



No factor is more promising than the new scientific theories of 

 education; which ought of themselves, when their application has 

 become more general, to develop within a few generations a new 

 and superior type of mind. 



No theory about the psychological future of mankind can afford 

 to ignore the stranjje possibilities opened up by the science of 

 hypnotism. This is a most fruitful field of speculation. We live 

 in a period of esthetic decadence; but neither can esthetic develop- 

 ment be left out of account. The esthetic faculty contributes 

 more than any other to individual happiness, and it may be capa- 

 ble of being brought by systematic cultivation to a degree df per- 

 fection hitherto unknown. 



To sum up, it would seem that there is an undoubte'I material 

 progress under way, from which wonderful and startling results 

 .are to be anticipated, but which will not, unless accompanied by a 

 :great intellectual decadfince, terminate, as Dr. Shufeldt predicts, 

 in a total destruction of the forests, or, indeed, of any portion of 

 the flora or fauna of the globe which has even a picturesque or 

 decorative value. The wide spread idea that the development of 

 material resources is all there is of progress. Is both an effect and 

 a cause of a temporary tendency to physical, social, and psycho- 

 logical retrogression. 



Neither our senses nor our memories are as acute as those of our 

 barbarian ancestors; our taste and capacity for intellectual spec- 

 ulation is not as great as was possessed by our predecessors of the 

 -scholastic period, or by the south Asiatic Aryans of any historic 

 time; the ideals of strength and intensity embodied in the Niebe- 

 lungenlied, those of delicacy and grace which gave rise to the 

 Arthurian legends, and those of divine love and beauty which in- 

 spired the Old Masters, have alike become dim and distant to us; 

 and the low vice of avarice rules the day. 



But never before was the sum of human knowledge so vast; 

 never were all questions, physical, social, and psychological, stud- 

 ied so carefully and in so full a light; never was the importance 

 of education, -and of right education, so generally recognized and 

 insisted upon; and never has the race seemed so near to that fusion 

 into one great vi'orld-nation which is indispensable to a universal 

 distril^ution of the knowledge and ideas and materials which are 

 now of but local utility. 



The tendency of the times is to subordinate man to civilization ; 

 but civilization is useless except in so far as it promotes the happi- 

 ness or personal development of man. If any real improvement 

 is to be accompliiihed in the race itself, in contradistinction to its 

 material environment, there will evidently be necessary a sys- 

 tematic encouragement of that salutary inequality by which 

 favorable variations are husbanded and a specialization of function 

 in the social organism secured. 



I cannot venture, in view of the complexity of the problem, to 

 hazard a prediction even for the next stages of human evolution, 

 to say nothing of the millions of years over which Dr. Shufeldt so 



gaily gambols. His very dramatic picture of the last man can, 

 however, never be reahzed in fact unless the expected modifica- 

 tion in the human organism shall amount to a radical transforma- 

 tion. It is inconceivable that man should be the last of all living 

 forms to disappear during the process of the earth's cooling. As 

 at present constituted, he would succumb, even with all the appli- 

 ances of civilization, long before many of the lower species. 

 Most of the latter could, in no supposition, be exterminated by 

 him, and many of them, as the doctor well knows, possess in- 

 credible powers of resistance to unfavorable climatic and other 

 conditions. 



Speculations regarding so very remote a future are of doubtful 

 utility, especially in view of the daily possibility of one of those 

 celestial casualties familiar to astronomers, such as a collision with 

 a dead sun. I forbear to picture the sublime horrors of such an 

 event, but they may at any moment be realized, though with such 

 rapidity that before any human mind could guess the truth the 

 whole solar system would have been dissolved, by the heat result- 

 ing from the impact, into invisible vapor. 



Merwin Maeie Snell. 



Washington, D.C., Oct. 26. 



Government Science. 



The communication of Eugene Murray Aaron in the issue of 

 Science for Oct. 23, under the above heading, contains statements 

 and presents conclusions which I believe to be well founded. Like 

 that writer, I am warmly in favor of the i-ecent reforms in the 

 methods of filling vacancies in the various departments of the civil 

 service, in positions where technical and scientific knowledge is 

 not required. But I am firmly of the opinion that if the heads of 

 scientific bureaus were allowed to select their assistants, subject 

 of course to the approval of the Civil Service Commission, far 

 better results would be secured. 



An instance was recently reported to me similar to the case cited 

 by Mr. Aaron. A Washington daily contained the announcement 

 of a vacancy in a suhordinate position requiring special scientific 

 attainment. A few young men, hanging around Washington for 

 something to turn up, saw the advertisement as soon as it ap- 

 peared, and at once placed themselves under instruction to "cram " 

 for the examination. The one of their number who showed the 

 highe-'t average secured the position. 



A Mian far more competent to fill it, residing many miles from 

 Washington, was urged by friends to make application. His letter 

 of inquiry whs received too late, and thus a tyro was appointed 

 when an expert might have been secured, to the expressed disgust 

 of eminent scientists in government employ. C. 



Highlands, N.C., Oct. 30. 



Words of Algonkian Origin. 



Tlie Chinook jargon, that lingua franca of the region of the 

 Columbia, has recruited its vocabulary from many different 

 sources. Amongst others the Algonkian tongues have contributed 

 their share towards the formation of this linguistic mosaic. 



In the " Partial Vocabulary of the Chinook Jargon," j^iven in 

 1863, by Theodore Winthrop (Canoe and Saddle, Boston, 1863. 

 New ed., Peterson, Edinburgh, 1883, pp. 311-214), we find the 

 following words of Algonkian origin : 



Kinni-kinnih, = smoking-weed, 

 Tatoosh, = milk, cheese, butter. 

 Wapato, = potato. 



The word moos moos, "beef," "cattle," which also occurs, is 

 probably not Algonkian. It occurs in a vocabulary of the "Che- 

 nook " of Fort Vancouver, and the "Calapooa," collected before 

 the year 1840, by the Rev. Samuel Parker (see Journal of an Ex- 

 ploring Tour beyond the Pocky Mountains, Ithaca, 1840, pp. 393, 

 398). 



George Gibbs, in his " Dictionary of the Chinook Jargon, or 

 Trade Language of Oregon " (Smithson. Miscell. Coll. 161, Wash- 

 ington, 1863. pp. xiv., 44), attributes a Cree origin to two, and a 

 Chipi^eway .origin to one, of the 490 words of which the jargon 

 was then composed. These words, regarding which he o'f serves: 

 " The introduction of the Cree and Chippeway wor^ls is of course 



