more than one of expediency, the better it will be in every respect. We can not view the matter in the same light. We are quite prepared to apply the test of expediency; but we hold that, if it can be shown that there is a large class of subjects which it is not expedient for the State to touch, then it may be said that there is ground which it is not lawful for the State to enter. In applying the test of expediency, however, we would apply it in the broadest sense. We should be careful not to mistake a good intention for a good tendency; nor should we ever consent to overlook the probable effect of any given law upon the character of the community. We should claim to judge it not by its immediate and direct effects only, but by its remote and indirect ones as well, ever keeping in view the principle that the well-being of the community must in the last resort depend on the personal qualities of the men and women composing it. Let others aim, if they will, at the protection of everybody against everything, and the reducing to a minimum the energy, caution, judgment, and courage required for the conduct of life; we shall join in no such crusade. We believe that society possesses, and that individuals possess, powers of adaptation to varying contingencies which the protective spirit in contemporary legislation is greatly tending to obscure and overlay. We want to see individual character more and more brought into prominence as a condition of success, and public opinion developed and educated into a force that can act for good independently of legislative support. As things are going at present, it looks as if the "coming slavery," foretold by a great philosopher, might be hastened beyond the measure of his fears. It behooves all who believe in individual liberty and individual responsibility as conditions of social well-being to raise their voices against a tendency which certainly is hostile to both.
THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION.
The thirty-sixth meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which was held in this city in August, was well attended, and made a good record of work. While it was not marked by any papers of unusual brilliancy, or by the announcement of any discoveries or theories of startling import, the papers presented, as a rule, bore evidence of careful, intelligent thought, and had their justification either in embodying discussions of public interest and utility, or as being real contributions to some department of scientific research. That the proportion of papers in which the public is interested was liberal, is shown by the fact that while the daily press selected these for notice, carefully excluding all that was technical, they gave fairly full reports, and such as would be likely to impress their readers that the Association was earnestly engaged in the consideration of living questions. Yet, besides these subjects, the daily programmes of the meeting were laden with topics and investigations in pure science, to which the sections equally gave attention.
The address of retiring President Morse, which we publish, takes up the question of what American zoölogists have done for evolution at the point where the author had left it in his address before the Biological Section of the Association in 1876, and brings it down to the present date. In the sectional vice-presidential addresses, Dr. Brinton reviewed the data for the study of the prehistoric chronology of North America; Professor Alvord, in the Economic Section, talked of the way in which we are wasting the substance of our land in our agricultural exports; Professor Gilbert reviewed the work of the "International Congress of Geologists," which, it appears, is the fruit of a suggestion made at the American Association in 1876; and Professor W. A. Anthony spoke of the
