July 3, 1896.] 



SCIENCE. 



13 



lution. The watchword of modern scienti- 

 fic culture is independence of thought and 

 investigation, " Whatsoever is, may be 

 wrong ! " Its most cherished palladium is 

 freedom to think, freedom of research, free- 

 dom in teaching. 



To break a bond restricting liberty to 

 search and say the truth may be more im- 

 portant than killing a definite positive error. 

 The culture given by science can tolerate 

 no distinct dogmatic brand. 



A pertinent illustration is found in the 

 attitude of the highest culture now toward 

 language and language teaching. It is 

 found that language, like the expression of 

 numbers by symbols, has attained a higher 

 state by taking aid from space concepts, by 

 making definitely fixed use of position as 

 significant. 



The inflectional languages, such as Latin 

 and Greek, correspond to their writing of 

 numbers. There is a hint at some use of 

 position. Witness IV. and VI., or the dif- 

 ference of emphasis given by position in the 

 Latin sentence. But this is like confining 

 the use of steam to the blowing of whistles. 

 Compare 10 and .01, or a few English sen- 

 tences with their Latin translations. Like 

 the Hindoo discovery of the zero and con- 

 sequent modern arithmetic is the organic 

 use of position in language as typified by 

 English. 



Again, the number system of every child 

 is at first one, two, many. The third num- 

 ber, the indefinite, takes dificrent forms, 

 '■ some,' ' a few,' ' a lot,' etc. But the men- 

 tal step from knowing tivo up to knowing 

 three, recognizing a class or aggregate as 

 "just exactly possessing the distinctive qual- 

 ity three, as being triple or a triplet, is a 

 slow and long and difficult step. In the 

 high-bred, smart American child this step 

 represents roughly a whole year's develop- 

 ment, which cannot be much hastened. 



Now, just this child stage, with the enor- 

 mously undue importance which it attaches 



to the number two, is represented by the 

 whole Greek language and grammar. 

 This speech has a whole system of gram- 

 matical forms, called duals, whose creation 

 rests wholly on the baby mistake, the child 

 misconception of two. To babies and to 

 Greek grammar two is still a god in a 

 trinity. 



A modern writer speaks slightingly of 

 ' the aping and prolonged caw called gram- 

 mar, the cackling of the human hen over the 

 egg of language,' but may not the labo- 

 rious puerilities which have so long passed 

 current as Latin and Greek grammar be of 

 interest to the scientist in comparative 

 child study ? "A single scientific idea may 

 germinate into a hundred arts." 



George Bruce Halsted. 



Austin, Texas. 



CONVENTION OF THE AMEEICAN SOCIETY 

 OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERS. 



The American Society of Mechanical En- 

 gineers held its annual spring convention at 

 St. Louis recently, discussed a number of 

 valuable papers, visited many points of in- 

 terest and enjoyed informal meetings for 

 social purposes. The papers were less num- 

 erous than usual and included fewer very 

 striking or novel communications than or- 

 dinarily.* The convention was fairly well 

 attended and very greatly enjoyed by all 

 who took part. 



The Secretary of the Society, Prof. Hut- 

 ton, presented a discussion of the catalogue 

 system proposed for engineering libraries. 

 Dewey's ' Decimal Classification ' was con- 

 sidered a model difficult to excel for general 

 purposes. For an engineering collection, 

 however, further classification is required, 

 and the writer of the paper proposed a 

 special scheme including twenty-two heads, 

 each covering a division of engineering sci- 

 ence or art. To these were appended about 



* Tlie papers will appear in the Transactions of the 

 A. S. M. E., Vol. XVIL, 1896. 



