674 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XIX. No. 486. 



out, the body all the while being rapidly drawn 

 through this figure 8, so that the head and tail 

 are constantly changing places, etc. 



Surely these interesting phenomena are 

 valued too much ' for the literary effects ' to 

 be got out of them; there is an unconscious 

 heightening of the description, with the result 

 that the eyes are described as ' closed,' where- 

 as the snakes are characterized, and distin- 

 guished from the lizards, by the absence of 

 eyelids. Nor is there a nictitating membrane 

 present. Hence their eyes are set in a per- 

 petual stare; although it is conceivable that 

 their appearance might be (slightly) altered by 

 certain movements, yet by no figure of speech 

 could they be properly described as closed.* 

 Mr. Burroughs's writings are of such service 

 as to warrant correction; they are of such 

 merit as to deserve it.f 



While it is not my purpose here to sit in 

 judgment in re Burroughs vs. Long, a char- 

 acteristic difference between the two men may 

 be noted, in passing, as it is revealed in their 

 respective attitudes toward the great natural- 

 ists, Darwin and Wallace. Mr. Burroughs is 

 always deferential, seeking, sometimes inade- 

 quately perhaps, to verify their results and to 

 apply their conclusions, while Mr. Long dis- 

 tinctly implies that these observers labored 

 under a serious disadvantage by reason of 

 their limited opportunities for the study of 



* The anatomical fact alluded to might easily 

 have been overlooked, but no knowledge of anat- 

 omy would have been necessary to a faithful rec- 

 ord of observed fact. One of the ablest of our 

 yoimger zoologists, and a college professor, when 

 his attention was called to this curious statement 

 of Mr. Burroughs, promptly replied in all serious- 

 ness, ' Perhaps he refers to the nictitating mem- 

 brane ' ! Another zoologist humorously suggested 

 that 'possibly the pineal eye was meant!'- — but 

 surely this hypothesis is barred by Mr. Bur- 

 roughs's use of the plural. 



t It is to be regretted, however, that Mr. Bur- 

 roughs has brought telepathy into his animal 

 psychology. See his article ' On Humanizing the 

 Animals,' in The Century Magazine, Vol. LXVII., 

 No. 5, pp. 773-780, March, 1904, especially pp. 

 776-777. One of the consolations of the com- 

 parative psychologist has always been his sup- 

 posed freedom from the ' confidences ' of the 

 telepathists ! 



animal life, as compared with his own un- 

 usual facilities, ' with Indian hunters ' to his 

 aid I* 



The controversy between these gentlemen, 

 as has been said, would not of itself warrant 

 the sacrifice of so much space in your journal. 

 '■ Where there is a manifest disproportion be- 

 tween the powers and forces of two several 

 agents, upon a Maxime of reason, we may 

 promise the Victory to the Superiour," as Sir 

 Thomas Browne quaintly observes in his ' Re- 

 ligio Medici ' ; but, as he further reminds us, 

 ' unexpected accidents ' may ' slip in ' and 

 ' unthought of occurrences intervene,' which 

 ' proceed from a power that owes no obedience 

 to those Axioms' [of reason]. And surely in 

 the case under consideration, such ' accidents ' 

 (if not ' unthought of occurrences ') as pop- 

 ular prejudice, nourished by the indiscrim- 

 inating leaders of the ' Christian Endeavorers 

 of literature ' and fed upon by shrewd publish- 

 ers, have intervened, ' to make the worse appear 

 the better reason,' and to gain, or momentarily 

 to threaten to gain, the ascendency in the offi- 

 cial instruction of youth. 



In so far as I have seemed to take Mr. 

 Long's case seriously, it has been only by way 

 of warning, not against the particular ex- 

 travagances of an individual, but against the 

 unchecked diffusion of the false conceptions 

 and meretricious standards, of which Mr. 

 Long's teaching is typical and his following 

 the unfortunate outcome. It is already too 

 late and must needs be impossible, in our 

 democratic civilization, for men of science to 

 leave ' the public ' out of account. If ' a little 

 learning is a dangerous thing ' for the indi- 

 vidual, it assumes multiple proportions when 

 the bulk of the community becomes infected. 

 This business of popular education is in some 

 respects a grand nuisance! It leads to a. 

 thousand blatancies — of bigotry, of cocksure- 

 ness, of an assumed appearance of superiority 

 without the reality, taking protean forms 

 throughout the entire range of our public ac- 

 tivities. Yet, on the whole, ' the greatest 

 good to the greatest number ' probably flows 

 from just such an ' equality of opportunity ' 



* See The North American Review, article cited, 

 page 695. 



