would have us believe yours to be. Could there be offered better evidence of haste and unfairness than this uncalled-for assault upon those of whom you know absolutely nothing, and does it not show the scientific inclination to have theory with or without facts, but certainly theory?
| Yours very truly,A. J. Smith, |
| Superintendent of Schools. |
| St. Paul, Minn., January A, 1899. |
We took the report of Superintendent Smith's address which appeared in the St. Paul papers. If there were any "typographical errors" in our quotations, they were not of our making; and Mr. Smith admits that, such as they were, they did not affect the sense. Well, then, we found Mr. Smith using his position as Superintendent of Schools to disparage a man whom the scientific world holds in the highest honor, and for whom he now tells us he himself has "a great regard"—whose writings he has "read with much profit." We judged the speaker by his own words, and certainly drew an unfavorable inference as to his knowledge and mental breadth. If Mr. Smith did injustice to himself by speaking in an unguarded way, or by not fully expressing his meaning, that was not our fault; and we do not think we can properly be accused of having lapsed into abuse. The explanation he offers of his language regarding Mr. Spencer is wholly unsatisfactory. He gave his hearers to understand that there was an "old man" in London who had devoted all his energies to c.eating a system of thought which should entirely ignore the name of the Deity, and of whom, after his death, it would not be remembered that he had "ever performed an act or said a word that blessed or comforted or relieved his suffering fellows." The stress, he now says, should be laid on the word "suffering." He did not wish to imply that Mr. Spencer had not bettered the condition of his fellows generally; he only meant that he had done nothing for the suffering. On this we have two remarks to make: First, it is not usual, when a man is acknowledged to have given a long lifetime to useful work, to hold him up to reprobation because he is not known to have had a special mission to the "suffering"; and, second, that no man can, be of service to mankind at large without being of benefit to the suffering. It is mainly because Mr. Spencer believes so strongly in the broad virtues of justice and humanity, has so unbounded a faith in the efficacy of what may be called a sound social hygiene, that he has had, comparatively, so little to say upon the topics which most interest those who apply themselves specifically, but not always wisely, to alleviating the miseries and distresses of humanity.
As to the means by which Mr. Smith obtained his present position, we know nothing beyond what he now tells us. We saw his appointment criticised as an unsuitable one in the St. Paul papers; and his published remarks seemed to justify the criticism. There are "pulls"—the word is "scientific" enough for our purpose—even in school matters; and it seemed that this was just such a case as a "pull" would most naturally explain. We quite accept, however, Superintendent Smith's statement as to the facts; and we sincerely trust that the next address he delivers to his teachers will better justify his appointment than did the one on which we felt it a duty to comment.
EMERSON AND EVOLUTION.
Editor Popular Science Monthly:
Sir: The editorial in the December Popular Science Monthly on the relations of Emerson to evolution must have surprised many of the students of Emerson. A little over two years ago Moncure D. Conway pointed out (Open Court, 1896) that soon after his resignation from the pulpit of the Unitarian Church with which he was last connected, Emerson taught zoölogy, botany, paleontology, and geology, and that he was a pronounced evolutionist who used in his lectures the argument in favor of evolution drawn from the practical identity of the extremities of the vertebrates. That Emerson was an evolutionist of the Goethean type is clear from most of his essays. In an essay appearing before the Origin of Species, he wrote as follows:
"The electric word pronounced by John Hunter a hundred years ago, arrested and progressive development, indicating the way upward from the invisible protoplasm to the highest organisms, gave the poetic key to Natural Science, of which the theories of Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire, of Oken, of Goethe, of Agassiz and Owen and Darwin in zoölogy and botany are the fruits—a hint whose power is not exhausted, showing unity and perfect order in physics.
"The hardest chemist, the severest analyzer, scornful of all but the driest fact, is forced to keep the poetic curve of Nature, and his results are like a myth of Theocritus. All multiplicity rushes to be resolved into unity. Anatomy, osteology, exhibit arrested or progressive ascent in each kind; the lower pointing to the higher forms, the higher to the highest, from the fluid in an elastic sac, from radiate, mollusk, articulate, vertebrate, up to man; as if the whole animal world were only a Hunterian museum to exhibit the genesis of mankind."
The Darwin to whom reference is made in this essay is not Charles, but his grandfather, one of the poets of evolution, Erasmus. The essay also shows the belief in evolution held by both Owen and Louis Agassiz before theological timidity made them unprogressive. The names quoted illustrate further the factors which influ-
