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 having been produced by secondary laws, this similarity would be an astonishing fact. But it harmonises perfectly with the view that there is no essential distinction between species and varieties.

Summary of Chapter.

First crosses between forms, sufficiently distinct to be ranked as species, and their hybrids, are very generally, but not universally, sterile. The sterility is of all degrees, and is often so slight that the most careful experimentalists have arrived at diametrically opposite conclusions in ranking forms by this test. The sterility is innately variable in individuals of the same species, and is eminently susceptible to action of favourable and unfavourable conditions. The degree of sterility does not strictly follow systematic affinity, but is governed by several curious and complex laws. It is generally different, and sometimes widely different in reciprocal crosses between the same two species. It is not always equal in degree in a first cross and in the hybrids produced from this cross.

In the same manner as in grafting trees, the capacity in one species or variety to take on another, is incidental on differences, generally of an unknown nature, in their vegetative systems, so in crossing, the greater or less facility of one species to unite with another is incidental on unknown differences in their reproductive systems. There is no more reason to think that species have been specially endowed with various degrees of sterility to prevent their crossing and blending in nature, than to think that trees have been specially endowed with various and somewhat analogous degrees of difficulty in being grafted together in order to prevent their inarching in our forests.

The sterility of first crosses and of their hybrid progeny has not been acquired through natural selection. In the case of first crosses it seems to depend on several circumstances; in some instances in chief part on the early death of the embryo. In the case of hybrids, it apparently depends on their whole organisation having been disturbed by being compounded from two distinct forms; the sterility being closely allied to that which so frequently affects pure species, when exposed to new and unnatural conditions of life. He who will explain these latter cases will be able to explain the sterility of hybrids. This view is strongly supported by a parallelism of another kind: namely, that, firstly, slight changes in the conditions of life add to the vigour and fertility of all organic beings; and secondly, that the crossing of forms, which have been exposed to slightly different conditions of life, or which have varied, favours the size, vigour and fertility of their offspring. The facts given on the

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 sterility of the illegitimate unions of dimorphic and trimorphic plants and of their illegitimate progeny, perhaps render it probable that some unknown bond in all cases connects the degree of fertility of first unions with that of their offspring. The consideration of these facts on dimorphism, as well as of the results of reciprocal crosses, clearly leads to the conclusion that the primary cause of the sterility of crossed species is confined to differences in their sexual elements. But why, in the case of distinct species, the sexual elements should so generally have become more or less modified, leading to their mutual infertility, we do not know; but it seems to stand in some close relation to species having been exposed for long periods of time to nearly uniform conditions of life.

It is not surprising that the difficulty in crossing any two species, and the sterility of their hybrid offspring, should in most cases correspond, even if due to distinct causes: for both depend on the amount of difference between the species which are crossed. Nor is it surprising that the facility of effecting a first cross, and the fertility of the hybrids thus produced, and the capacity of being grafted together — though this latter capacity evidently depends on widely different circumstances — should all run, to a certain extent, parallel with the systematic affinity of the forms subjected to experiment; for systematic affinity includes resemblances of all kinds.

First crosses between forms known to be varieties, or sufficiently alike to be considered as varieties, and their mongrel offspring, are very generally, but not, as is so often stated, invariably fertile. Nor is this almost universal and perfect fertility surprising, when it is remembered how liable we are to argue in a circle with respect to varieties in a state of nature; and when we remember that the greater number of varieties have been produced under domestication by the selection of mere external differences, and that they have not been long exposed to uniform conditions of life. It should also be especially kept in mind, that long-continued domestication tends to eliminate sterility, and is therefore little likely to induce this same quality. Independently of the question of fertility, in all other respects there is the closest general resemblance between hybrids and mongrels,— in their variability, in their power of absorbing each other by repeated crosses, and in their inheritance of characters from both parent-forms. Finally, then, although we are as ignorant of the precise cause of the sterility of first crosses and of hybrids as we are why animals and plants removed from their natural conditions become sterile, yet the facts given in this chapter do not seem to me opposed to the belief that species aboriginally existed as varieties.

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This template tried to use the magic word #titlepart to display an image, however as the Page: namespace does not have subpages, rather they are straight urls. Anyway, it means that there are no components to extract the /ddd components, hence we need to force the name and page with parameters. The bot is going to attempt the process. If all works well, we can then look to see if we can build a javascript to assist in the process. — billinghurst  sDrewth  12:29, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

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Rh to the tale of her misdoings. She is not contrite. Yes, maybe she did promise not to venture forth on the cold floors of daybreak, but she had risen for a moment only, and we just t'neaded her with our talk about draughts—there were no such things as draughts in her young days—and it is more than she can do (here she again attempts to rise, but we hold her down) to lie there and watch that beautiful screen being spoilt. I reply that the beauty of the screen has ever been its miserable defect: ho, there! for a knife with which to spoil its beauty and make the bedroom its fitting home. As there is no knife handy, my foot will do; I raise my foot, and then—she sees that it is bare, she cries to me excitedly to go back to bed lest I catch cold. For though, ever careless of herself, she will wander the house unshod, and tell us not to talk havers when we chide her, the sight of one of us similarly negligent rouses her anxiety at once. She is willing now to sign any vow if only I will take my bare feet back to bed, but probably she is soon after me in hers to make sure that I am nicely covered up.

It is scarcely six o'clock, and we have all promised to sleep for another hour, but in ten minutes she is sure that eight has struck (house disgraced), or that if it has not, something is wrong with the clock. Next moment she is captured on her way downstairs to wind up the clock. So evidently Rh

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Life and Works of Abraham Lincoln

 * Volume 1
 * Volume 2
 * Volume 3
 * Volume 4
 * Volume 5
 * Volume 6
 * Volume 7
 * Volume 8
 * Volume 9
 * Volume 10

title: Life and Works of Abraham Lincoln


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text: Life and Works of Abraham Lincoln/Volume 3


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102 [to] furnish a fair average under all other causes operating on prices, a period in which various modifications of higher and lower duties have occurred.—Protected articles only are embraced. Show that these only belong to the question.—The labor price only is embraced. Show this to be correct.

I suppose the true effect of duties upon prices to be as follows: If a certain duty be levied upon an article which by nature cannot be produced in this country, as three cents a pound upon coffee, the effect will be that the consumer will pay one cent more per pound than before, the producer will take one cent less, and the merchant one cent less in profits; in other words, the burden of the duty will [be] distributed over consumption, production, and commerce, and not confined to either. But if a duty amounting to full protection be levied upon an article which can be produced here with as little labor as elsewhere,—as iron,—that article will ultimately, and at no distant day, in consequence of such duty, be sold to our people cheaper than before, at least by the amount of the cost of carrying it from abroad.

First. As to useless labor. Before proceeding, however, it may be as well to give a specimen of what I conceive to be useless labor. I say, then, that all carrying, and incidents of carrying, of articles from the place of their production to a distant place for consumption, which articles could be produced of as good quality, in sufficient quantity and with as little labor, at the place of consumption as at the place carried from, is useless labor. Applying this principle to our own country by an example, let us suppose that A


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1847] and B are a Pennsylvania farmer and a Pennsylvania iron-maker whose lands are adjoining. Under the protective policy A is furnishing B with bread and meat, and vegetables and fruits, and food for horses and oxen, and fresh supplies of horses and oxen themselves occasionally, and receiving in exchange all the iron, iron utensils, tools, and implements he needs. In this process of exchange each receives the whole of that which the other parts with, and the reward of labor between them is perfect—each receiving the product of just so much labor as he has himself bestowed on what he parts with for it. But the change comes. The protective policy is abandoned, and A determines to buy his iron and iron manufactures of C in Europe. This he can only do by a direct or an indirect exchange of the produce of his farm for them. We will suppose the direct exchange is adopted. In this A desires to exchange ten barrels of flour—the precise product of one hundred days' labor—for the largest quantity of iron, etc., that he can get. C also wishes to exchange the precise product, in iron, of one hundred days' labor for the greatest quantity of flour he can get. In intrinsic value the things to be so exchanged are precisely equal. But before this exchange can take place, the flour must be carried from Pennsylvania to England, and the iron from England to Pennsylvania. The flour starts. The wagoner who hauls it to Philadelphia takes a part of it to pay him for his labor; then a merchant there takes a little more for storage and forwarding commission, and another takes a little more for insurance; and then the ship-owner carries it across the water, and takes a little more of it for


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 154 intellect must supply these itself. They constitute what Kant called "categories," the instruments which the mind must use when it works in that peculiar way which is called knowing. But it follows that they are not by themselves sufficient for knowledge. They cannot themselves be known in the ordinary way because they are what one knows with. And since they are instruments, it follows that they require some material to work upon; they cannot spin knowledge out of nothing. Hence the data of sense are indispensable also. In short, to know is to systematize, by the instrumentalities native to the mind, the content conveyed by the senses. This is the Kant of the first Critique, the Kant of technical philosophy who numbers many faithful devotees among the thinkers of to-day.

A second and more general tendency of seventeenth and eighteenth century philosophy was its comparative neglect of what are vaguely called the "spiritual" demands. These centuries themselves may be regarded as a reaction against what was thought to be the excessive anthropomorphism of earlier times. Man had erred by reading himself into his world; now he was to view it impersonally and dispassionately. He might prefer to record the findings of perception, or the necessities of reason, but in either case he was to repress his own interests and yearnings. Of course at the time it was confidently expected that morality and religion would in this way be served best. Men believed in the possibility of a "natural religion," without mystery or dogma, a rational morality without authority, and a demonstrable theology without either revelation or faith. But gradually there developed a sense of failure. Man had left himself too much out of it, and felt homeless and unprotected. Early in the seventeenth century Pascal had announced the religious bankruptcy of the mathematical rationalism of Descartes. Natural religion was readily converted into atheism by Hume. The most vigorous and stirring protest against the whole spirit of the age was made by Rousseau, who urged men to trust their feelings, make allowance for the claims of the heart, and return to the elemental and spontaneous in human nature. The same note was caught up by


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104 his trouble. Still, before it reaches C, it is tolled two or three times more for storage, drayage, commission, and so on; so that when C gets it there are but seven and a half barrels of it left. The iron, too, in its transit from England to Pennsylvania goes through the same process of tolling; so that when it reaches A there are but three quarters of it left. The result of this case is that A and C have each parted with one hundred days' labor, and each received but seventy-five in return. That the carrying in this case was introduced by A ceasing to buy of B and turning [to] C; that it was utterly useless; and that it is ruinous in its effects upon A, are all little less than self-evident. "But," asks one, "if A is now only getting three quarters as much iron from C for ten barrels of flour as he used to get of B, why does he not turn back to B?" The answer is: "B has quit making iron, and so has none to sell." "But why did B quit making?" "Because A quit buying of him, and he had no other customer to sell to." "But surely A did not cease buying of B with the expectation of buying of C on harder terms?" "Certainly not. Let me tell you how that was. When B was making iron as well as C, B had but one customer, this farmer A; C had four customers in Europe."

It seems to be an opinion very generally entertained that the condition of a nation is best whenever it can buy cheapest; but this is not necessarily true, because if, at the same time and by the same cause, it is compelled to sell correspondingly cheap, nothing is gained. Then it is said the best condition is when we can buy cheapest and sell dearest; but this again is not necessarily


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1847] true, because with both these we might have scarcely anything to sell, or, which is the same thing, to buy with. To illustrate this, suppose a man in the present state of things is laboring the year round, at ten dollars per month, which amounts in the year to $120. A change in affairs enables him to buy supplies at half the former price, to get fifty dollars per month for his labor, but at the same time deprives him of employment during all the months of the year but one. In this case, though goods have fallen one half, and labor risen five to one, it is still plain that at the end of the year the laborer is twenty dollars poorer than under the old state of things.

These reflections show that to reason and act correctly on this subject we must look not merely to buying cheap, nor yet to buying cheap and selling dear, but also to having constant employment, so that we may have the largest possible amount of something to sell. This matter of employment can only be secured by an ample, steady, and certain market to sell the products of our labor in.

But let us yield the point, and admit that by abandoning the protective policy our farmers can purchase their supplies of manufactured articles cheaper than by continuing it; and then let us see whether, even at that, they will upon the whole be gainers by the change. To simplify this question, let us suppose the whole agricultural interest of the country to be in the hands of one man, who has one hundred laborers in his employ; the whole manufacturing interest to be in the hands of one other man, who has twenty laborers in his employ. The farmer owns all the plow and pasture land, and the manufacturer all the


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106 and coal-banks and sites of water-power. Each is pushing on in his own way, and obtaining supplies from the other so far as he needs,—that is, the manufacturer is buying of the farmer all the cotton he can use in his cotton-factory; all the wool he can use in his woolen establishment; all the bread and meat, as well as all the fruits and vegetables, which are necessary for himself and all his hands in all his departments; all the corn and oats and hay which are necessary for all his horses and oxen, as well as fresh supplies of horses and oxen themselves to do all his heavy hauling about his iron-works and generally of every sort. The farmer, in turn, is buying of the manufacturer all the iron, iron tools, wooden tools, cotton goods, woolen goods, etc., that he needs in his business and for his hands. But after a while farmer discovers that were it not for the protective policy he could buy all these supplies cheaper from a European manufacturer, owing to the fact that the price of labor is only one quarter as high there as here. He and his hands are a majority of the whole, and therefore have the legal and moral right to have their interest first consulted. They throw off the protective policy, and farmer ceases buying of home manufacturer. Very soon, however, he discovers that to buy even at the cheaper rate requires something to buy with, and somehow or other he is falling short in this particular.

In the early days of our race the Almighty said to the first of our race, "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread"; and since then, if we except the light and the air of heaven, no good thing has been or can be enjoyed by us without


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1847] having first cost labor. And inasmuch as most good things are produced by labor, it follows that all such things of right belong to those whose labor has produced them. But it has so happened, in all ages of the world, that some have labored, and others have without labor enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits. This is wrong, and should not continue. To secure to each laborer the whole product of his labor, or as nearly as possible, is a worthy object of any good government.

But then a question arises, How can a government best effect this? In our own country, in its present condition, will the protective principle advance or retard this object? Upon this subject the habits of our whole species fall into three great classes—useful labor, useless labor, and idleness. Of these the first only is meritorious, and to it all the products of labor rightfully belong; but the two latter, while they exist, are heavy pensioners upon the first, robbing it of a large portion of its just rights. The only remedy for this is to, so far as possible, drive useless labor and idleness out of existence. And, first, as to useless labor. Before making war upon this, we must learn to distinguish it from the useful. It appears to me that all labor done directly and indirectly in carrying articles to the place of consumption, which could have been produced in sufficient abundance, with as little labor, at the place of consumption as at the place they were carried from, is useless labor. Let us take a few examples of the application of this principle to our own country. Iron, and everything made of iron, can be produced in sufficient abundance, and with as little labor, in the United States as


text: Life and Works of Abraham Lincoln/Volume 3/The Home Market and Other Advantages of a Protective Tariff


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108 anywhere else in the world; therefore all labor done in bringing iron and its fabrics from a foreign country to the United States is useless labor. The same precisely may be said of cotton, wool, and of their fabrics respectively, as well as many other articles. While the uselessness of the carrying labor is equally true of all the articles mentioned, and of many others not mentioned, it is perhaps more glaringly obvious in relation to the cotton goods we purchase from abroad. The raw cotton from which they are made itself grows in our own country, is carried by land and by water to England, is there spun, wove, dyed, stamped, etc., and then carried back again and worn in the very country where it grew, and partly by the very persons who grew it. Why should it not be spun, wove, etc., in the very neighborhood where it both grows and is consumed, and the carrying thereby dispensed with? Has nature interposed any obstacle? Are not all the agents—animal-power, water-power, and steam-power—as good and as abundant here as elsewhere? Will not as small an amount of human labor answer here as elsewhere? We may easily see that the cost of this useless labor is very heavy. It includes not only the cost of the actual carriage, but also the insurances of every kind, and the profits of the merchants through whose hands it passes. All these create a heavy burden necessarily falling upon the useful labor connected with such articles, either depressing the price to the producer or advancing it to the consumer, or, what is more probable, doing both in part.

A supposed case will serve to illustrate several points now to the purpose. A, in the interior of


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1847] South Carolina, has one hundred pounds of cotton, which we suppose to be the precise product of one man's labor for twenty days. B, in Manchester, England, has one hundred yards of cotton cloth, the precise product of the same amount of labor. This lot of cotton and lot of cloth are precisely equal to each other in their intrinsic value. But A wishes to part with his cotton for the largest quantity of cloth he can get. B also wishes to part with his cloth for the greatest quantity of cotton he can get. An exchange is therefore necessary; but before this can be effected, the cotton must be carried to Manchester, and the cloth to South Carolina. The cotton starts to Manchester. The man that hauls it to Charleston in his wagon takes a little of it out to pay him for his trouble; the merchant who stores it a while before the ship is ready to sail takes a little out for his trouble; the ship-owner who carries it across the water takes a little out for his trouble. Still, before it gets to Manchester it is tolled two or three times more for drayage, storage, commission, and so on; so that when it reaches B's hands there are but seventy-five pounds of it left. The cloth, too, in its transit from Manchester to South Carolina, goes through the same process of tolling; so that when it reaches A there are but seventy-five yards of it. Now, in this case, A and B have each parted with twenty days' labor, and each received but fifteen in return. But now let us suppose that B has removed to the side of A's farm in South Carolina, and has there made his lot of cloth. Is it not clear that he and A can then exchange their cloth and cotton, each getting the whole of what the other parts with?


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110 This supposed case shows the utter uselessness of the carrying labor in all similar cases, and also the direct burden it imposes upon useful labor. And whoever will take up the train of reflection suggested by this case, and run it out to the full extent of its just application, will be astonished at the amount of useless labor he will thus discover to be done in this very way. I am mistaken if it is not in fact many times over equal to all the real want in the world. This useless labor I would have discontinued, and those engaged in it added to the class of useful laborers. If I be asked whether I would destroy all commerce, I answer, Certainly not; I would continue it where it is necessary, and discontinue it where it is not. An instance: I would continue commerce so far as it is employed in bringing us coffee, and I would discontinue it so far as it is employed in bringing us cotton goods.

But let us yield the point, and admit that by abandoning the protective policy our farmers can purchase their supplies of manufactured articles cheaper than before; and then let us see whether, even at that, the farmers will upon the whole be gainers by the change. To simplify this question, let us suppose our whole population to consist of but twenty men. Under the prevalence of the protective policy, fifteen of these are farmers, one is a miller, one manufactures iron, one implements from iron, one cotton goods, and one woolen goods. The farmers discover that, owing to labor only costing one quarter as much in Europe as here, they can buy iron, iron implements, cotton goods, and woolen goods cheaper when brought from Europe than when made by their neighbors. They are the majority, and


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1847] therefore have both the legal and moral right to have their interest first consulted. They throw off the protective policy, and cease buying these articles of their neighbors. But they soon discover that to buy, and at the cheaper rate, requires something to buy with. Falling short in this particular, one of these farmers takes a load of wheat to the miller and gets it made into flour, and starts, as had been his custom, to the iron furnace. He approaches the well-known spot, but, strange to say, all is cold and still as death; no smoke rises, no furnace roars, no anvil rings. After some search he finds the owner of the desolate place, and calls out to him, "Come, Vulcan, don't you want to buy a load of flour?" "Why," says Vulcan, "I am hungry enough, to be sure,—haven't tasted bread for a week; but then you see my works are stopped, and I have nothing to give you for your flour." "But, Vulcan, why don't you go to work and get something?" "I am ready to do so. Will you hire me, farmer?" "Oh, no, I could only set you to raising wheat, and you see I have more of that already than I can get anything for." "But give me employment, and send your flour to Europe for a market." "Why, Vulcan, how silly you talk! Don't you know they raise wheat in Europe as well as here, and that labor is so cheap there as to fix the price of flour there so low as scarcely to pay the long carriage of it from here, leaving nothing whatever to me?" "But, farmer, couldn't you pay to raise and prepare garden stuffs, and fruits, such as radishes, cabbages, Irish and sweet potatoes, cucumbers, watermelons and musk-melons, plums, pears, peaches, apples, and the like? All these are good things, and used to


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112 sell well." "So they did use to sell well; but it was to you we sold them, and now you tell us you have nothing to buy with. Of course I cannot sell such things to the other farmers, because each of them raises enough for himself, and in fact rather wishes to sell than to buy. Neither can I send them to Europe for a market, because, to say nothing of European markets being stocked with such articles at lower prices than I can afford, they are of such a nature as to rot before they could reach there. The truth is, Vulcan, I am compelled to quit raising these things altogether, except a few for my own use; and this leaves part of my own time idle on my hands, instead of my finding employment for you."

If at any time all labor should cease, and all existing provisions be equally divided among the people, at the end of a single year there could scarcely be one human being left alive: all would have perished by want of subsistence. So, again, if upon such division all that sort of labor which produces provisions should cease, and each individual should take up so much of his share as he could, and carry it continually around his habitation, although in this carrying the amount of labor going on might be as great as ever so long as it could last, at the end of the year the result would be precisely the same—that is, none would be left living.

The first of these propositions shows that universal idleness would speedily result in universal ruin; and the second shows that useless labor is in this respect the same as idleness. I submit, then, whether it does not follow that partial


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1847]  and partial useless labor would, in the proportion of their extent, in like manner result in partial ruin; whether, if all should subsist upon the labor that one half should perform, it would not result in very scanty allowance to the whole.

Believing that these propositions and the conclusions I draw from them cannot be successfully controverted, I for the present assume their correctness, and proceed to try to show that the abandonment of the protective policy by the American government must result in the increase of both useless labor and idleness, and so, in proportion, must produce want and ruin among our people.

, The President of the United States, in his message of May 11, 1846, has declared that "the Mexican Government not only refused to receive him [the envoy of the United States], or to listen to his propositions, but, after a long-continued series of menaces, has at last invaded our territory and shed the blood of our fellow-citizens on our own soil."

And again, in his message of December 8, 1846, that "we had ample cause of war against Mexico long before the breaking out of hostilities; but even then we forbore to take redress into our own hands until Mexico herself became the aggressor, by invading our soil in hostile array, and shedding the blood of our citizens."

And yet again, in his message of December 7,


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Rh we must be up and doing, and as we have no servant, my sister disappears into the kitchen, having first asked me to see that "that woman" lies still, and "that woman" calls out that she always does lie still, so what are we blethering about?

She is up now, and dressed in her thick maroon wrapper; over her shoulders (lest she should stray despite our watchfulness) is a shawl, not placed there by her own hands, and on her head a delicious mutch. O, that I could sing the pæan of the white mutch (and the dirge of the elaborate black cap) from the day when she called witchcraft to her aid and made it out of snowflakes, and the dear worn hands that washed it tenderly in a basin, and the starching of it, and the finger-iron for its exquisite frills that looked like curls of sugar, and the sweet bands with which it tied beneath the chin! The honoured snowy mutch, how I love to see it smiling to me from the doors and windows of the poor; it is always smiling—sometimes maybe a wavering, wistful smile, as if a teardrop lay hidden among the frills. A hundred times I have taken the characterless cap from my mother's head and put the mutch in its place and tied the bands beneath her chin, while she protested but was well pleased. For in her heart she knew what suited her best, and would admit it, beaming, when I put a mirror into her hands and told her to look; but nevertheless the cap cost no Rh

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Rh the dinner, and she heard Lelechka suddenly cry "Tiu-tiu!" from under the table, a feeling of fear suddenly took hold of her. Though she reproached herself at once for this unfounded, superstitious dread, nevertheless she could not enter wholeheartedly into the spirit of Lelechka's favourite game, and she tried to divert Lelechka's attention to something else.

Lelechka was a lovely and obedient child. She eagerly complied with her mother's new wishes. But as she had got into the habit of hiding from her mother in some corner, and of crying out "Tiu-tiu!" so even that day she returned more than once to the game.

Serafima Aleksandrovna tried desperately to amuse Lelechka. This was not so easy because restless, threatening thoughts obtruded themselves constantly.

"Why does Lelechka keep on recalling the tiu-tiu? Why does she not get tired of the same thing—of eternally closing her eyes, and of hiding her face? Perhaps," thought Serafima Aleksandrovna, "she is not as strongly drawn to the world as other children, who are attracted by many things. If this is so, is it not a sign of organic weakness? Is it not a germ of the unconscious non-desire to live?"

Serafima Aleksandrovna was tormented by presentiments. She felt ashamed of herself for ceasing to play hide and seek with Lelechka before Fedosya. But this game had become agonising to her, all the more agonising because she had a real desire to play it, and because something drew her very strongly to hide herself from Lelechka and to seek out the hiding child. Serafima Aleksandrovna herself began the game once or twice, though she played it with a heavy heart. She suffered as though committing an evil deed with full consciousness.

It was a sad day for Serafima Aleksandrovna.

Lelechka was about to fall asleep. No sooner had she climbed into her little bed, protected by a network on all sides, than her eyes began to close from fatigue. Her mother


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114 1847, that "the Mexican Government refused even to hear the terms of adjustment which he [our minister of peace] was authorized to propose, and finally, under wholly unjustifiable pretexts, involved the two countries in war, by invading the territory of the State of Texas, striking the first blow, and shedding the blood of our citizens on our own soil."

, This House is desirous to obtain a full knowledge of all the facts which go to establish whether the particular spot on which the blood of our citizens was so shed was or was not at that time our own soil; therefore,

, By the House of Representatives, that the President of the United States be respectfully requested to inform this House—

First. Whether the spot on which the blood of our citizens was shed, as in his message declared, was or was not within the territory of Spain, at least after the treaty of 1819 until the Mexican revolution.

Second. Whether that spot is or is not within the territory which was wrested from Spain by the revolutionary Government of Mexico.

Third. Whether that spot is or is not within a settlement of people, which settlement has existed ever since long before the Texas revolution, and until its inhabitants fled before the approach of the United States army.

Fourth. Whether that settlement is or is not isolated from any and all other settlements by the Gulf and the Rio Grande on the south and west, and by wide uninhabited regions on the north and east.

Fifth. Whether the people of that settlement, or a majority of them, or any of them, have ever


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1848] submitted themselves to the government or laws of Texas or of the United States, by consent or by compulsion, either by accepting office, or voting at elections, or paying tax, or serving on juries, or having process served upon them, or in any other way.

Sixth. Whether the people of that settlement did or did not flee from the approach of the United States army, leaving unprotected their homes and their growing crops, before the blood was shed, as in the message stated; and whether the first blood, so shed, was or was not shed within the inclosure of one of the people who had thus fled from it.

Seventh. Whether our citizens, whose blood was shed, as in his message declared, were or were not, at that time, armed officers and soldiers, sent into that settlement by the military order of the President, through the Secretary of War.

Eighth. Whether the military force of the United States was or was not so sent into that settlement after General Taylor had more than once intimated to the War Department that, in his opinion, no such movement was necessary to the defense or protection of Texas.

Mr. Lincoln said he had made an effort some few days since, to obtain the floor in relation to this measure [resolution to direct Postmaster-General to make arrangements with railroad for


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 NOTES AND NEWS.

next number of, for June, will contain the conclusion of Dr. Gaster's paper on the Holy Grail; Mr. Jacobs's paper on "Childe Rowland"; Rev. F. Sibree on "The Folk-lore of Malagasy Birds"; and Mr. Cecil Smith's Report on Greek Archæology.

date of the Folk-lore Congress has been slightly advanced. The meetings will be held in the rooms of the Society of Antiquaries, which have been kindly placed at the disposal of the Congress by the Society. The first meeting will be held on Thursday, ist October.

of foreign folk-lorists have expressed their intention of attending the Congress, some coming from as far as Russia and Finland.

, the Finnish scholar, will shortly publish a work on Primitive Marriage. The learned Doctor writes in English, and publishes with Messrs. Macmillan. Dr. E. Tylor has been for some time engaged on a somewhat similar topic, and is also approaching a stage of his inquiries at which publication will be possible.

The Handbook of Folk-lore has nearly run out of print. Preparations are being made for a second edition. Copies are placed at the disposal of travellers to unexplored regions by the Royal Geographical Society.

are being made for closer relations being established between the Folk-Lore Society and the local antiquarian societies throughout the kingdom.


text: Life and Works of Abraham Lincoln/Volume 3/Spot Resolutions on Mexican War


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 Rh will shortly be held between representative members of the Folk-Lore Society and of the Anthropological Institute, to settle certain questions of common interest to the two Societies.

have been held on January 16th, when a paper was read by Rev. F. Sibree on "The Folk-lore of Malagasy Birds", and on February 18th, when Mr. Alfred Nutt discussed "Recent Theories on the Arthurian Romances". Members of the Cymmrodorion Society were also invited to attend Mr. Nutt's lecture.

is proposed in future to read short papers before the paper of the evening at the meetings of the Society. Members desiring to put queries on subjects they are studying may also adopt this method of making known their wants to the Society.

first number of the new journal of the new German Folk-lore Society, Zeitschrift der Vereins für Volkskunde, is now before us. It is practically a continuation of the Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie of Profs. Steinthal and Lazarus, but its scope has been widened till it includes all folk-lore, and more also. Thus, costume, philology, dialects, will receive attention in its pages, as well as customs, tales, institutions, and myths. The programme is wide, the workers are able, may the result be commensurate with their skill and lofty aims.

list of members of the new German Verein für Volkskunde reminds us that they do some things better in Germany. The list is crowded with names of professors, some of them, like Grimm (Hermann), Lazarus, Möbins, Steinthal, Virchow, of European reputation. Among the 150 names already enrolled, at least two-thirds are of Academic standing. Would that the English Universities would follow suit!


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 122 appearance of another part of Prof Child's exhaustive work on English and Scotch Ballads deserves additional record to the bare mention of the Bibliography. No other country of Europe has so complete a record of its ballad store so adequately commented upon.

Panjab Notes and Queries, which did such good work under Captain (now Major) Temple, but was discontinued in 1887, is to be revived under the title North Indian Notes and Queries.

for the next (June) number should reach the Office of, 270, Strand, W.C, before May 1st.


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Fellow-Citizens: I presume you all know who I am. I am humble Abraham Lincoln. I have been solicited by many friends to become a candidate for the Legislature. My politics are short and sweet, like the old woman's dance. I am in favor of a national bank. I am in favor of the internal improvement system, and a high protective tariff. These are my sentiments and political principles. If elected, I shall be thankful; if not it will be all the same.

Fellow-Citizens: Having become a candidate for the honorable office of one of your representatives in the next General Assembly of this State,


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2 in accordance with an established custom and the principles of true Republicanism it becomes my duty to make known to you, the people whom I propose to represent, my sentiments with regard to local affairs.

Time and experience have verified to a demonstration the public utility of internal improvements. That the poorest and most thinly populated countries would be greatly benefited by the opening of good roads, and in the clearing of navigable streams within their limits, is what no person will deny. Yet it is folly to undertake works of this or any other kind without first knowing that we are able to finish them,—as half-finished work generally proves to be labor lost. There cannot justly be any objection to having railroads and canals, any more than to other good things, provided they cost nothing. The only objection is to paying for them; and the objection arises from the want of ability to pay.

With respect to the County of Sangamon, some more easy means of communication than it now possesses, for the purpose of facilitating the task of exporting the surplus products of its fertile soil, and importing necessary articles from abroad, are indispensably necessary. A meeting has been held of the citizens of Jacksonville and the adjacent country, for the purpose of deliberating and inquiring into the expediency of constructing a railroad from some eligible point on the Illinois River, through the town of Jacksonville, in Morgan County, to the town of

 constituents, but not enough to induce them to elect so young a man (he had entered his twenty-third year a month before) to the Legislature.


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 THE SCOTCH FISHER CHILD.

T may be safely said that children's amusements, as distinguished from children's games, have not engaged the attention of the students of man to the extent they merit. Many of these amusements are imitations of the work of men, and thus become a training for the work of life. Others, again, are in all likelihood the survivals of what were once customs followed by men. For example, can it be that the amusement of imitating burying alive in the sand is the survival of any sacrificial custom, or of the custom of burying a victim below the foundation stone of any large building?

Another question of much weight is: Do these amusements shew the mental development of the children? If so, it becomes a matter of much moment to collect not merely civilised children's amusements to as wide an extent as possible, but the amusements of uncivilised tribes and nations, so as to form a comparison between the mental development of the uncivilised man and that of the civilised child.

Another point worthy of comparison is the amusements followed by different classes of children, e.g., those of the fisher-folks' children with those of the children of the rural population. Such a comparison would probably bring out modes of thought, and traits of character, peculiar to each class, as it would assuredly set in clear light the differences of their occupations.

An attempt has been made to set forth some account of the child-life of the fisher-folks of the north-east coast of Scotland. My information has come from only a few of the villages, so that one must not judge that, because only


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74 one or two villages are mentioned as the home of an amusement or game, it may not be found in the same, or in a somewhat different form in other villages.

M. Sébillot has devoted much attention to this subject, and has given the fruits of his labours in L'Homme, 2e Année, No. 16, 25 Aout 1885, pp. 481-90, and in Revue des Traditions Populaires, 1re Année, No. 1, 1886, pp. 5-12, in which he formulates a series of questions for the investigators of this branch of the knowledge of man.

There is a very striking agreement of the amusements of the children of the fisher-folks on the coast of France with those of the same class of children on the north-east coast of Scotland. Is it because both have sprung from the same home in the north? A collection of the amusements of the fisher-folks' children on the coasts of Denmark and the Scandinavian Peninsula would no doubt give results of considerable value. My wish is that others more competent for this interesting task may enter upon it, and work it out to a good end. Much remains to be done with regard to the manners, customs, work, and beliefs of a most useful, worthy, and interesting portion of the inhabitants of the British islands—the fisher-folks.

I have arranged the paper as follows:—

I.—.

A. The Baby.

(a) The "twalt oor" (twelfth hour), whether midday or midnight, is accounted an unlucky hour for the birth of a child (Pennan, Rosehearty)


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Rh less than so and so, whereas—— Was that a knock at the door? She is gone, to put on her cap!

She begins the day by the fireside with the New Testament in her hands, an old volume with its loose pages beautifully refixed, and its covers sewn and resewn by her, so that you would say it can never fall to pieces. It is mine now, and to me the black threads with which she stitched it are as part of the contents. Other books she read in the ordinary manner, but this one differently, her lips moving with each word as if she were reading aloud, and her face very solemn. The Testament lies open on her lap long after she has ceased to read, and the expression of her face has not changed.

I have seen her reading other books early in the day, but never without a guilty look on her face, for she thought reading was scarce respectable until night had come. She spends the forenoon in what she calls doing nothing, which may consist in stitching so hard that you would swear she was an over-worked seamstress at it for her life, or you will find her on a table with nails in her mouth, and anon she has to be chased from the garret (she has suddenly decided to change her curtains), or she is under the bed searching for bandboxes and asking sternly where we have put that bonnet. On the whole, she is behaving in a most exemplary way to-day (not once have we caught her trying Rh

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 Rh Jacobi and Herder. Finally Lessing, in his "Education of the Human Race" (1780), turned the attention of philosophy to the history of culture, to the significance of human life in its historical unfolding. It is a strange paradox that Immanuel Kant, valetudinarian and pedant that he was, should have represented this rising revolt of sentiment and faith. But such was the fact. Let us, then, view him in this light.

One of the most famous of Kant's remarks was that he proposed to effect a Copernican Revolution in thought. As Copernicus had established a new center for the planetary system, so he proposed to establish a new center for knowledge. This new center was to be the mind itself. The errors of the earlier period had been largely due, he thought, to the attempt to make knowledge center in the object, it being expected that the mind should reflect, either by perception or reason, the nature of an outward and independently existing thing. This method leads inevitably, said Kant, either to scepticism or to what is just as bad for philosophical purposes, dogmatism. The new way is to expect that the object shall conform to the mind. Thus nature, which in the earlier view was construed as an external order by which the mind is affected, or which the mind is somehow to reproduce by its own ratiocination, is now construed as the original creation of the mind. It owes all of its arrangements and connections, even its very distribution in space and time, to the constitution of the knower. The mind imposes its conditions on the object, and thus gets out of nature what it has already put into it. The bearing of this on man's spiritual claims is apparent. It is now nature that is creature; and man, in virtue of his intelligence, that is creator. The fatal world of fact and necessity, that seemed so alien to spirit, turns out to be but an expression of the intellectual part of spirit.

But a Rousseau might still complain that this victory of spirit over matter was dearly bought, since it left the rest of spirit in


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1832] field, in Sangamon County. This is, indeed, a very desirable object. No other improvement that reason will justify us in hoping for can equal in utility the railroad. It is a never-failing source of communication between places of business remotely situated from each other. Upon the railroad the regular progress of commercial intercourse is not interrupted by either high or low water, or freezing weather, which are the principal difficulties that render our future hopes of water communication precarious and uncertain.

Yet, however desirable an object the construction of a railroad through our country may be; however high our imaginations may be heated at thoughts of it,—there is always a heart-appalling shock accompanying the amount of its cost, which forces us to shrink from our pleasing anticipations. The probable cost of this contemplated railroad is estimated at $290,000; the bare statement of which, in my opinion, is sufficient to justify the belief that the improvement of the Sangamon River is an object much better suited to our infant resources.

Respecting this view, I think I may say, without the fear of being contradicted, that its navigation may be rendered completely practicable as high as the mouth of the South Fork, or probably higher, to vessels of from twenty-five to thirty tons burden, for at least one half of all common years, and to vessels of much greater burden a part of the time. From my peculiar circumstances, it is probable that for the last twelve months I have given as particular attention to the stage of the water in this river as any other person in the country. In the month of March,


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 156 harsh subjection to the intellectual part. What guarantee is there that the intellect, thus clothed with authority, will make due allowance for the claims of sentiment and conscience? Kant's answer lies in his famous doctrine of the "primacy of the practical reason." Nature, he says, is indeed the work of the theoretical faculties; and the theoretical faculties can recognize only facts and laws. But the theoretical faculties are themselves but the expression of something deeper, namely, the will. Thinking is a kind of action, and action in general has its own laws, revealed in conscience, and taking precedence of the rules that govern any special department of action, such as knowing. This does not mean that conscience over-rules the understanding, or that the will can violate nature; but that conscience reveals another world, deeper and more real than nature, which is the proper sphere for the exercise of the will. This is the world of God, freedom, and immortality. It cannot be known in the strict sense, only nature can be known; but it can and must be believed in, because it is presupposed in all action. If one is to live at all, one must claim such a world to live in. So Kant, who began by justifying science, ended by justifying faith.

I have said that it was the fate of epoch-makers to have their ideas promptly converted into something that they never meant. Kant was a cautious, or as he terms it, a "critical" thinker. He concerned himself with questions regarding the possibility of knowledge and the legitimacy of faith; and avoided so far as possible making positive assertions about the world. But his followers were fired with speculative zeal, and at once passed over from "criticism" to metaphysics.

There resulted the great Romantic and Idealistic movement that formed the main current of philosophical thought during the nineteenth century.

In the idealistic movement the Kantian theory of knowledge is united with a pantheistic tendency that may be traced continuously back even to Plato himself. According to this pantheistic view, nature and God are the same thing viewed differently. God,


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 80 A variant of the last line is:

The formula in Macduff is:

(b) The children amuse themselves by catching the green shore-crab (Carcinus Mænas) called "the craib" in Macduff, and the eatable crab, or "parten" (Cancer pagurus), and using them as horses. They tie pieces of cork, wood, or any other light substance behind him, in imitation of carts and coaches, and then set them off to pull them. They at times take a few of them, hold them in line, and then let them go, as if in a race, on a given signal (Macduff, Rosehearty, Portessie). They also use them as cows and horses, and tether them in imitation of the agricultural population.

{c) The boys and girls at times amuse themselves by catching fish among the rocks and pools, cooking them on fires they kindle on the beach, and then feasting on them (Rosehearty).

IV.—

(a) The children of Macduff have a custom of taking limpet shells, boring out the centre of them, and then sticking them on their eyes under the name of spectacles. They carry them in this way for a considerable time when amusing themselves.

(b) The girls often gather shells, bore them, and make necklaces of them (Rosehearty).

(c) They deck themselves in seaweed. Some of them, as "belly-waar" {Fucus nodosus, and F. vesciculosus), they use as curls for their hair. The larger ponds of "bather-lyocks" (Lanunavia digitata) are used as waistbands, whilst the smaller ones are formed into bands for the brow and


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4 1831, in company with others, I commenced the building of a flatboat on the Sangamon, and finished and took her out in the course of the spring. Since that time I have been concerned in the mill at New Salem. These circumstances are sufficient evidence that I have not been very inattentive to the stages of the water. The time at which we crossed the mill-dam being in the last days of April, the water was lower than it had been since the breaking of winter in February, or than it was for several weeks after. The principal difficulties we encountered in descending the river were from the drifted timber, which obstructions all know are not difficult to be removed. Knowing almost precisely the height of water at that time, I believe I am safe in saying that it has as often been higher as lower since.

From this view of the subject it appears that my calculations with regard to the navigation of the Sangamon cannot but be founded in reason; but, whatever may be its natural advantages, certain it is that it never can be practically useful to any great extent without being greatly improved by art. The drifted timber, as I have before mentioned, is the most formidable barrier to this object. Of all parts of this river, none will require so much labor in proportion to make it navigable as the last thirty or thirty-five miles; and going with the meanderings of the channel, when we are this distance above its mouth we are only between twelve and eighteen miles above Beardstown in something near a straight direction; and this route is upon such low ground as to retain water in many places during the season, and in all parts such as to draw two thirds or three fourths of the river water at all high stages.


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 Rh and taken in the limited perspectives defined by man's earth-bound intelligence, is nature; nature, consummated, seen in its fullness and harmony, is God.

Nature, on Kantian grounds, is the work of intelligence, and intelligence, in turn, obeys some deeper spiritual law. That law, when interpreted according to the Platonic-pantheistic tradition, is the perfection of the whole. There are many possible variations of the view. The perfection of the whole may be regarded as a moral perfection, the ideal of the moral will, as suggested by Kant, and more positively and constructively maintained by Fichte; or as the ideal of reason, as was maintained by Hegel and his followers; or as a general realization of all spiritual values, a perfection transcending moral and rational standards, and more nearly approached in the experience of beauty, or in flashes of mystical insight, as was proclaimed by the sentimentalists and romanticists. In the popular literary expressions of the view, these varieties have alternated, or have been indiscriminately mingled. But it is this view in some form that has inspired those English poets and essayists, such as Coleridge, Wordsworth, Carlyle, Emerson, Tennyson, and Browning, who so profoundly influenced the men of the last generation. There is thus a continuous current of thought from the closest philosophy of the sage of Königsberg to the popular incentives and consolations of to-day.


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1832] This route is on prairie-land the whole distance, so that it appears to me, by removing the turf a sufficient width, and damming up the old channel, the whole river in a short time would wash its way through, thereby curtailing the distance and increasing the velocity of the current very considerably, while there would be no timber on the banks to obstruct its navigation in future; and being nearly straight, the timber which might float in at the head would be apt to go clear through. There are also many places above this where the river, in its zigzag course, forms such complete peninsulas as to be easier cut at the necks than to remove the obstructions from the bends, which, if done, would also lessen the distance.

What the cost of this work would be, I am unable to say. It is probable, however, that it would not be greater than is common to streams of the same length. Finally, I believe the improvement of the Sangamon River to be vastly important and highly desirable to the people of the county; and, if elected, any measure in the legislature having this for its object, which may appear judicious, will meet my approbation and receive my support.

It appears that the practice of loaning money at exorbitant rates of interest has already been opened as a field for discussion; so I suppose I may enter upon it without claiming the honor, or risking the danger which may await its first explorer. It seems as though we are never to have an end to this baneful and corroding system, acting almost as prejudicially to the general interests of the community as a direct tax of several thousand dollars annually laid on each county for


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 V. EMERSON

E IS," said Matthew Arnold of Emerson, "the friend and aider of those who would live in the spirit." These well-known words are perhaps the best expression of the somewhat vague yet powerful and inspiring effect of Emerson's courageous but disjointed philosophy.

Descended from a long line of New England ministers, Emerson, finding himself fettered by even the most liberal ministry of his day, gently yet audaciously stepped down from the pulpit and, with little or no modification in his interests or utterances, became the greatest lay preacher of his time. From the days of his undergraduate essay upon "The Present State of Ethical Philosophy" he continued to be preoccupied with matters of conduct: whatever the object of his attention—an ancient poet, a fact in science, or an event in the morning newspaper—he contrives to extract from it a lesson which in his ringing, glistening style he drives home as an exhortation to a higher and more independent life.

Historically, Emerson marks one of the largest reactions against the Calvinism of his ancestors. That stern creed had taught the depravity of man, the impossibility of a natural, unaided growth toward perfection, and the necessity of constant and anxious effort to win the unmerited reward of being numbered among the elect. Emerson starts with the assumption that the individual, if he can only come into possession of his natural excellence, is the most god-like of creatures. Instead of believing with the Calvinist that as a man grows better he becomes more unlike his natural self (and


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6 the benefit of a few individuals only, unless there be a law made fixing the limits of usury. A law for this purpose, I am of opinion, may be made without materially injuring any class of people. In cases of extreme necessity, there could always be means found to cheat the law; while in all other cases it would have its intended effect. I would favor the passage of a law on this subject which might not be very easily evaded. Let it be such that the labor and difficulty of evading it could only be justified in cases of greatest necessity.

Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people can be engaged in. That every man may receive at least a moderate education, and thereby be enabled to read the histories of his own and other countries, by which he may duly appreciate the value of our free institutions, appears to be an object of vital importance, even on this account alone, to say nothing of the advantages and satisfaction to be derived from all being able to read the Scriptures, and other works both of a religious and moral nature, for themselves.

For my part, I desire to see the time when education—and by its means, morality, sobriety, enterprise, and industry—shall become much more general than at present, and should be gratified to have it in my power to contribute something to the advancement of any measure which might have a tendency to accelerate that happy period.

With regard to existing laws, some alterations are thought to be necessary. Many respectable


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1832] men have suggested that our estray laws, the law respecting the issuing of executions, the road law, and some others, are deficient in their present form, and require alterations. But, considering the great probability that the framers of those laws were wiser than myself, I should prefer not meddling with them, unless they were first attacked by others; in which case I should feel it both a privilege and a duty to take that stand which, in my view, might tend most to the advancement of justice.

But, fellow-citizens, I shall conclude. Considering the great degree of modesty which should always attend youth, it is probable I have already been more presuming than becomes me. However, upon the subjects of which I have treated, I have spoken as I have thought. I may be wrong in regard to any or all of them, but, holding it a sound maxim that it is better only sometimes to be right than at all times to be wrong, so soon as I discover my opinions to be erroneous, I shall be ready to renounce them.

Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or not, I can say, for one, that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow-men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem. How far I shall succeed in gratifying this ambition is yet to be developed. I am young, and unknown to many of you. I was born, and have ever remained, in the most humble walks of life. I have no wealthy or popular relations or friends to recommend me. My case is thrown exclusively upon the independent voters of the county; and, if elected, they will have conferred a favor upon me for which I shall be unremitting in my labors


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8 to compensate. But, if the good people in their wisdom shall see fit to keep me in the background, I have been too familiar with disappointments to be very much chagrined.

New Salem, June 13, 1836. To the Editor of the "Journal": In your paper of last Saturday I see a communication, over the signature of "Many Voters," in which the candidates who are announced in the "Journal" are called upon to "show their hands." Agreed. Here's mine.

I go for all sharing the privileges of the government who assist in bearing its burdens. Consequently, I go for admitting all whites to the right of suffrage who pay taxes or bear arms (by no means excluding females).

If elected, I shall consider the whole people of Sangamon my constituents, as well those that oppose as those that support me.

While acting as their representative, I shall be governed by their will on all subjects upon which I have the means of knowing what their will is; and upon all others I shall do what my own judgment teaches me will best advance their interests. Whether elected or not, I go for distributing the proceeds of the sales of the public lands to the several States, to enable our State,


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 Rh (b) If a child is born during the time the tide is "flowwin" (rising), the saying is, that "the warlde (world) flowws on't" (Pennan).

(c) When a new-born child is being washed, if a boy, he is rubbed gently to make him good-tempered. A girl is rubbed more roughly to make her firm (Portessie). If the child cries much when born, its wrist is at times scratched to draw blood, so that the "ill-natured" blood might escape. This was done not many years ago by a midwife in Rosehearty, and she said that unless she did so, the child would be ill-tempered.

(d) In nursing their babies, the mothers or nurses often dandle them in a way to imitate the rocking of a beat on the sea (Portessie, Macduff, Rosehearty). Here is a nursing rhyme—

This rhyme was repeated to the child, as the mother or nurse sat in front of a fire, from which a good deal of smoke was rising.

Does the rhyme refer to the custom of the trial by fire? When a child was "dwinin", it was suspected that the real child had been stolen by the fairies, and one of their own left in its room. It was tried by fire. A large fire of peat was heaped on the hearth, the child put into a basket, which was hung in the "crook" over the fire. If the "dwinin" child was one of fairy origin, it made its escape by the "lum" (chimney), and the true child was restored.

(e) A necklace of amber beads ("lamer") was worn round the child's neck to keep off ill-luck (Rosehearty).

(f) The belief in the influence of the planets on human life was at one time not uncommon. An old woman, that lately lived in Pennan, had an expression she used when she was nursing a child much given to crying: "Ye've been born aneth an ill planet", or "an unlucky planet".


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Rh therefore can become better only by an act of divine mercy), Emerson believes that as a man grows in excellence he becomes more like his natural self. It is common to hear the expression, when one is deeply stirred, as by sublime music or a moving discourse: "That fairly lifted me out of myself." Emerson would have said that such influences lift us into ourselves.

THE OVER-SOUL

For one of Emerson's most fundamental and frequently recurring ideas is that of a "great nature in which we rest as the earth lies in the soft arms of the atmosphere," an "Over-Soul, within which every man's particular being is contained and made one with all other," which "evermore tends to pass into our thought and hand and become wisdom and virtue and power and beauty." This is the incentive—the sublime incentive of approaching the perfection which is ours by nature and by divine intention—that Emerson holds out when he asks us to submit us to ourselves to all instructive influences. These instructive influences, according to Emerson, are chiefly Nature, the Past, and Society. Let us notice how Emerson bids us use these influences to help us into our higher selves.

NATURE

Nature, which he says "is loved by what is best in us," is all about us, inviting our perception of its remotest and most cosmic principles by surrounding us with its simpler manifestations. "A man does not tie his shoe without recognizing laws which bind the farthest regions of nature." Thus man "carries the world in his head." Whether he be a great scientist, proving by his discovery of a sweeping physical law that he has some such constructive sense as that which guides the universe, or whether he be a poet beholding trees as "imperfect men," who "seem to bemoan their imprisonment, rooted in the ground," he is being brought into his own by perceiving "the virtue and pungency of the influence on the mind of material objects, whether inorganic or organized."


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 Rh baby, she will have a son as her next child, and if she meets a girl, she will bear a girl (Portessie, Rosehearty).

II.—.

(a) Boys and young men construct boats and ships, commonly fashioning them with a knife. They rig them with much neatness. They are named and launched with due ceremony, and it is a source of much amusement to sail these boats and ships (generally round the coast). In many of the villages (Macduff, Pennan, Rosehearty) sailing matches or regattas were common, and betting was rife (Macduff). At the village of Pennan, not many years ago, there was a regatta on New Year's Day for some years in succession on the mill-pond of the farm of Clenterty, when many from the village, as well as many from the neighbouring farms, met to witness the race. Prizes were awarded for the victors. In Rosehearty, New Year's Day was specially devoted to the sailing of their ships by the boys.

(b) In sailing their ships they at times put small stones or shells on them to represent sailors. When the ships came to land they were carefully examined to see whether the men had been swept overboard. At times, two or more were launched in such a way as to run into each other, and so run one of them down. Great is the exultation of the owner of the stouter ship (Macduff).

(c) But almost anything that will float, a piece of cork, or wood, with a feather stuck into it, the carapace of a crab, a shell, etc., is used as a boat. Rock-pools, pools left by the tide, pools near streams, mill-ponds, if at hand and of convenient form.

(d) A favourite pastime is the making of canals and harbours in the sand. The children dig little ditches, allow the water to run into them, and then place in them as ships and boats small pieces of cork, wood, shells, the carapaces of crabs, paper boats. The water is confined,


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 78 and, when everything is ready, the sluice is removed, and the water flows away, carrying with it all the little craft. A wide space is often made at one end in imitation of a harbour, and at other times a harbour is made at each end. The children of Rosehearty used to make "bridges", that is, locks in their canals, in imitation of the Caledonian Canal. The boys of Macduff built harbours, filled them with water, and at times put pieces of wood across their mouths in imitation of booms. In Portessie such structures are called "shories". This name arises, likely, from the fact that there were in many of the fishing villages no built harbours, but only natural creeks, or well-sheltered pieces of shore, commonly called "the shore".

(e) The catching of fish is often imitated. So many of the players act as fish, and so many as fishermen. The lines are thrown, and the children that represent fish seize the line, sometimes in their teeth, and sometimes the line is thrown round them. They are pulled ashore, and then the whole process of cleaning the fish is gone through, the first step always being to imitate the cutting of the throat. After being dressed, sand is sprinkled over them for salt (Portessie, Macduff, Rosehearty).

(f) The boys and girls often imitate the arrival of the boats from the fishing ground. The fish, for which small stones are used, are divided in the usual way, and then carried up and dressed, and the "skulls", or baskets with the lines, are brought ashore with all formality (Portessie, Macduff, Rosehearty).

(g) A common amusement is the making of "houses" and gardens on the beach or smooth grassy spots convenient. This is done by laying stones in a line on the sand or grass in the form of a house. Porches are sometimes added, as well as other houses for other purposes. Furniture, in the shape of small stones, pieces of wood, limpets, or the bones of the larger fish are put into them. There are always two pieces of furniture, "the bench", a kind of open cupboard for holding stoneware, of which


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 160

Ranging over time and space with astonishing rapidity and binding names and things together that no ordinary vision could connect, Emerson calls the Past also to witness the need of self-reliance and a steadfast obedience to intuition. The need of such independence, he thought, was particularly great for the student, who so easily becomes overawed by the great names of the Past and reads "to believe and take for granted." This should not be, nor can it be if we remember what we are. "Meek young men grow up in libraries believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries when they wrote these books." When we sincerely find, therefore, that we cannot agree with the Past, then, says Emerson, we must break with it, no matter how great the prestige of its messengers. But often the Past does not disappoint us; often it assists us in our quest to become our highest selves. For in the Past there have been many men of genius; and, inasmuch as the man of genius has come nearer to being continually conscious of his relation to the Over-Soul, it follows that the genius is actually more ourselves than we are. So we often have to fall back upon more gifted souls to interpret for us what we mean but cannot say. Any supreme triumph of expression, therefore, should arouse in us not humility, still less discouragement, but renewed consciousness that "one nature wrote and the same reads." So it is in travel or in any other form of contact with the Past: we cannot derive any profit or see any new thing except we remember that "the world is nothing, the man is all."

Similar are the uses of Society. More clearly than in Nature or in the Past, we see in certain other people such likeness to ourselves, and receive from the perception of that likeness such inspiration, that a real friend "may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature."


text: Life and Works of Abraham Lincoln/Volume 3/I Am Humble Abraham Lincoln


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 76 (g) Shells form common playthings for little children. When the infant's teeth begin to cause trouble, a piece of "casle tangle"—the stem of Laminavia digitata is given, instead of a teething ring.

(h) On market-days, and at Christmas, many had the custom of giving a penny or half-penny to each child of the family. This coin went by the name of "the market bawbee", and "the Yeel bawbee". It was sometimes given by the grandfather, or grandmother, or aunt; and the children regularly, as the occasion came round, went to get the "bawbee" from the kind donor (Macduff).

(i) To frighten the children from going to the sea, they are told that a sea-otter or water-kelpie (Macduff), or otters or "selchs" (seals) (Portessie, Rosehearty) will come and take them.

B. The Cradle.

(a) If a cradle was borrowed, a fiery peat was thrown into it at the door by the borrower (Pennan).

(b) A cradle, if borrowed, was never sent empty, neither was it returned empty.

(c) The cradle is always carried with its head foremost, that is, the opposite way a coffin is carried (Rosehearty, etc.)

(d) In Buckie and Portessie a small wooden bowl,—"a cap"—lay constantly in the cradle. It was called "the craidle cap". My informant told me that her mother made her a present of one, and told her to keep it always in the cradle when in use. She did so, and when there was no baby the "cap" was laid up carefully till the next baby came.

(e) The cradle was sometimes called by old folks (Pennan) "the life-boat", and they spoke of putting the child into the life-boat when they laid it in the cradle.

(f) It is a common notion that if a mother meets a boy as her "first fit", the first time she goes out after having a


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 Rh Yet elsewhere Emerson has more than once urged us not to be "too much acquainted" : all our participation in the life of our fellows, though rich with courtesy and sympathy, must be free from bending and copying. We must use the fellowship of Society to freshen, and never to obscure, "the recollection of the grandeur of our destiny."

EMERSON'S UNIVERSALITY

Such, in some attempt at an organization, are a few of Emerson's favorite ideas, which occur over and over again, no matter what may be the subject of the essay. Though Emerson was to some degree identified, in his own time, with various movements which have had little or no permanent effect, yet as we read him now we find extraordinarily little that suggests the limitations of his time and locality. Often there are whole paragraphs which if we had read them in Greek would have seemed Greek. The good sense which kept him clear of Brook Farm because he thought Fourier "had skipped no fact but one, namely life," kept him clear from many similar departures into matters which the twenty-first century will probably not remember. This is as it should be in the essay, which by custom draws the subjects for its "dispersed meditations" from the permanent things of this world, such as Friendship, Truth, Superstition, and Honor. One of Emerson's sources of strength, therefore, is his universality.

HIS STYLE Another source of Emerson's strength is his extraordinary compactness of style and his range and unexpectedness of illustration. His gift for epigram is, indeed, such as to make us long for an occasional stretch of leisurely commonplace. But Emerson always keeps us up—not less by his memorable terseness than by his startling habit of illustration. He loves to dart from the present to the remotest past, to join names not usually associated, to link pagan with Christian, or human with divine, in single rapid sentences, such as that about "Scipio, and the Cid, and Sir Philip Sidney, and Washington, and every pure and valiant heart, who worshiped Beauty by word or by deed."


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The New International Encyclopædia/Arthropoda

ARTHROP'ODA (Gk., arthron, a joint + , pous, foot). One of the phyla of animals. They are bilaterally symmetrical, and the body is divided into segments, of which each typically carries a pair of jointed appendages. The brain lies dorsal to the food canal, and is connected with a ventral chain of ganglia. The body is covered with a fine chitinous cuticle, periodically molted. The Arthropoda are descended from the Annulata, from which they

differ chiefly in the jointed appendages, which are used largely as walking, instead of merely swimming, appendages, and they have advanced beyond the annelids in the specialization of the segments and appendages, so that in general, head, thorax, and abdomen may he distinguished. The head always bears a pair of jaws and at least one pair of antennæ, except when, as in spiders, these are rudimentary or altogether gone. The abdomen is usually devoid of developed appendages; when present, these have other functions than locomotion. Sense organs are usually well developed, except in the parasitic forms. The eyes are either simple and placed directly above the brain, or compound, and are sometimes placed on movable stalks. The mouth is usually provided with one or more pairs of appendages; the intestine may be coiled, and excretory organs occur chiefly either as specialized tracts or as diverticula of the midgut, or as tubular special glands. An incomplete blood system is present, but veins are often lacking, and the blood returns through the general body spaces. The dorsal vessel functions as a heart, and may become very short and specialized. Reproduction is usually bisexual, but parthenogenesis occurs. During development repeated moltings (ecdyses) occur, often associated with profound changes in form; from molt to molt constitutes a larval ‘stage.’

. Class I. Crustacea, divided into Entomostraca, of small size and a variable number of segments, and Malacostraca, usually of large size, with twenty segments in the trunk (excepting one small and rare group, Nebalia). Orders of Entomostraca: Phyllopoda (fairy-shrimps), Trilobita (fossil), Ostracoda, Copepoda (water-fleas), Cirripedia (barnacles). Chief orders of Malacostraca: Isopoda (sow-bugs), Amphipoda (beach-fleas), Cumacea, Stomatopoda (mantis shrimps), Schizopoda (shrimps and prawns), Decapoda (lobsters, crayfish, crabs).

Class II. Arachnida — Orders: Scorpionida (scorpions); Pseudoscorpionida (book scorpions); Pedipalpida (scorpion spiders); Solpugida (Galeodes); Phalangida (harvestmen); Araneida (spiders); Acarida (ticks and mites); Niphosura (king crab).

Class III. Onychophora, containing only Peripatus.

Class IV. Myriapoda (Centipeds, etc.).

Class V. Insecta — Orders: Aptera (spring-tails and silver-fish): Orthoptera (cockroaches, grasshoppers, etc); Neuroptera (dragon-flies, May-flies, caddis-flies, etc.); Hemiptera (bugs); Diptera (gnats and flies); Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths); Coleoptera (beetles); Hymenoptera (bees, wasps, etc.).

. References to books will be found under various articles describing groups or species of Arthropoda. Consult as general works, particularly the series “Cambridge Natural History,” and Parker and Haswell, Textbook of Zoölogy (London and New York, 1897); Lankester, Hutton, and others, “Are the Arthropoda a Natural Group?” in Natural Science, Vol. XI. (London, 1897); Kingsley, “Classification of the Arthropoda,” in American Naturalist, Vol. XXVIII. (Philadelphia, 1894).


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 162 Not less notable than his universality of thought, his compactness of style, and his swiftness and range of illustration, is Emerson's delightful benignity of tone. It would be hard to find any one whose opposition is so high minded, whose refusal is so gentle, whose good will—though perhaps never anxious—is so uniformly evident. The sweetness of Emerson's face, as we know it from his most famous portrait, is to be felt throughout his work. If, in spite of all these admirable qualities, Emerson's ideas seem too vague and unsystematic to satisfy those who feel that they could perhaps become Emersonians if there were only some definite articles to sign, it must be remembered that Emerson wishes to develop independence rather than apostleship, and that when men revolt from a system because they believe it to be too definite and oppressive, they are likely to go to the other extreme. That Emerson did go so far toward this extreme identifies him with a period notable for its enthusiastic expansion of thought. That he did not systematize or restrict means that he was obedient to the idea that what really matters is not that by exact terminology, clever tactics, and all the niceties of reasoning a system of philosophy shall be made tight and impregnable for others to adopt, but rather that each of us may be persuaded to hitch his own particular wagon to whatever star for him shines brightest.


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IOGRAPHY is the key to the best society the world has ever had. By the best society I do not mean those exclusive circles, based on wealth, privilege, or heredity, which have flourished at all times and in every place. I mean the men and women who, by the richness of their talents or the significance of their careers, or, it may be, by some special deed, have emerged from the throng. One of the strongest instincts planted in us is our aversion to bores. Biography, as by a short cut, admits us to the fellowship of the choice spirits of the past four thousand years, among whom we shall find entertainment in endless variety. And not entertainment only; for entertainment is not the end of life, but its sweetener and strengthener. To develop our talents for good, to build up character, to fit ourselves, like the cutwater of a ship, to cleave whatever seas of experience Fate may steer us into, to set ourselves a high, far goal and always consciously, through storm or shine, to seek that goal that is the real concern of life. On this quest biography shows the way by example. Most of us have intervals of tedium or depression when we try to get out of ourselves. Or it may be some stroke of ill-fortune, some sorrow, some moral lapse, some desperate blunder, locks us up within ourselves as in a dungeon. Then biography comes to our rescue, and we forget ourselves in following the career of other men and women who may have passed through similar ordeals. The loneliness of grief loses some of its poignancy, the agonizing isolation which sin creates round the sinner is broken in upon by the knowledge that others have suffered or failed, and yet found strength to endure and to return.


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 Rh fisher-folks are commonly very fond, and "the dresser", which in the fisherman's, as well as in the country kitchens, stands underneath the " bench". Shells of various kinds, broken pieces of stone and earthenware, often called "lehmns", are used for dishes. The fisher-girl seats herself inside the house, and busies herself with the arrangement of her furniture and crockery.

(h) Gardens or "yards" are enclosed with a row of stones, or with a line of sand thrown up by the hand, and planted with pieces of seaweed for flowers and trees (Portessie, Macduff, Pennan, Rosehearty). The children of the country do the same. Only they plant their gardens or "yards" with flowers.

(i) Keeping a shop, or acting the merchant, and buying and selling, are favourite pastimes. A house is made as a shop, and the various kinds of goods are put into it. Shells, chiefly, but often pieces of broken stone and earthenware are used for money. The penny is represented by a large shell, or piece of stone or earthenware, the halfpenny by a less piece or shell. Silver coins are represented by the smallest shells, or fragments of ware (Portessie, Macduff, Pennan, Rosehearty).

(j) In bathing, boys pretend to be salmon, eels, or any other fish; and in Rosehearty the boys have in bathing a leap called the salmon-leap. The boys of Macduff use the expression "to dive like an eel". They also use the expression "to dive like a scrath", and they speak of "scrathian" to indicate clever diving.

III.—.

(a) A great amusement is to catch eels and transfer them to other ponds, repeating the words:


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 164 Evidently, great fiction, whether it be in the form of drama, tragedy, or novel, serves the same purpose of taking us out of ourselves, by teaching us how imaginary persons plan and act, undergo joy or pain, conquer or fall. I do not wish to belittle any fiction which can justify itself by substantial charm or symbolical import; and as I shall discuss later some of the relations between fiction and biography, it will suffice to remark now that the highest praise that can be bestowed on the creations of fiction is that they are true to life. Achilles, sulking in his tent; Othello, maddened by jealousy; visionary Don Quixote, mistaking windmills for giants; Mephistopheles, Becky Sharp, Colonel Newcome, Silas Marner, and all the other immortals in the world of fiction live on by virtue of their lifelikeness. But life itself, and not its counterfeit, is the very stuff of biography.

One reason why biography dropped behind in the race for popularity with fiction is that it was taken for granted that the biographer must deal in eulogy only. His subjects were usually marvels—we may almost say monsters—of virtue. Most of us are so conscious of being a composite of good and bad that we are properly sceptical when we read of persons too pure and luminous to cast a shadow. We tolerate the pious fibs carved in an epitaph on a tombstone—the lapidary, as Dr. Johnson remarked, is not under oath; we discount the flattery of the avowed panegyrist, but when the epitaph or the eulogy is puffed out through a volume or two of biography, we balk and decline to read. Lives of this kind are seldom written nowadays. They are too obviously untrue to deceive any one. Candidates for political or other office may connive at pen portraits of themselves which no more resemble them than Apollo; but these productions, like the caricatures of the day, are soon forgotten. In earlier times, even among English-speaking folk, laudation was the accepted tribute which the lower paid to the higher. Among monarchs, prelates, nobles, generals, poets, artists, or persons of the smallest distinction whatsoever, modesty could not be called a lost art, because it had never been found. And only recently a prime minister, equally


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 Rh cynical and subtly subservient, divulged that even he could not appease his sovereign's appetite for adulation. In general, however, it is now commonly the fashion to assume the virtue of modesty by those who have it not, and the professional flatterer finds fewer opportunities than formerly. Yet we need only glance at the biographies which have come down to us from the ages most addicted to artificial manners and speech in order to see that these, too, bear the stamp of sincerity. There is always the unconscious record, the expression or tone peculiar to the time, to betray them; and then, few writers have ever been cunning enough to dupe more than one generation—their own. Nobody need forego the inestimable delights of biography from fear of being the dupe of some devious biographer. It requires no long practice to train yourself to sift the genuine from the false a branch of intellectual detective work which possesses the zest of mystery, abounds in surprises, and can be carried on at your own fireside. So inevitably does temperament register itself that it cannot be concealed even in autobiography, which some persons unwisely avoid because they suppose that those who write their lives set out with the deliberate purpose of painting themselves as more wise or virtuous, clever or courageous, than they really were. But though any special incident narrated by a Benvenuto Cellini cannot be verified, the sum of his amazing "Life" reveals to us Cellini himself, that perfect product of the Italian Renaissance in its decline—versatile, brilliant, wicked, superstitious, infidel, fascinating, ready to kill himself toiling to perfect a medal, or to kill a neighbor for some passing whim. Even Goethe, who wrote the most artificial of autobiographies, recomposing the events of his childhood and youth so as to give them sequence and emphasis that belong to a work of fiction, even he, Olympian poseur that he was, could not by this device have hidden, if he had wished, his essential self from us.

We may well dismiss, therefore, the suspicion which has sometimes hovered over biography. The best lives are among the most precious possessions we have; even the mediocre, or those less than mediocre, can furnish us much solid amusement; and there are


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 166 many biographical fragments which reveal to us the very heart of their subject, as surely as a piece of ore-bearing quartz the metal embedded in it.

THE PLEASURE OF BIOGRAPHY The delights of biography are those of the highest human intercourse, in almost limitless diversity, which no one could hope to enjoy among the living. Even though you were placed so favorably that you became acquainted with many of the most interesting personages of your own time, were it not for this magic art, which makes the past present and the dead to live, you would still be shut out from all acquaintance with your forerunners. But, thanks to biography, you have only to reach out your hand and take down a volume from your shelf in order to converse with Napoleon or Bismarck, Lincoln or Cavour. You need spend no weary hours in ante-chambers on the chance of snatching a hasty interview. They wait upon your pleasure. No business of state can put you off. They talk and you listen. They disclose to you their inmost secrets. Carlyle may be never so petulant, Luther never so bluff, Swift never so bitter, but they must admit you, and the very defects which might have interposed a screen between each of them living and you are as loopholes through which you look into their hearts. So you may come to know them better than their contemporaries knew them, better than you know your intimates, or, unless you are a master of self-scrutiny, better than you know yourself. The mixed motives which we seldom dissect in our own acts can usually be disentangled without difficulty in theirs. Through them we discover the true nature of traits, fair or hideous, of which we discern the embryos in ourselves; and however far they rise above us by genius or by fortune, we see that the difference is of degree and not of kind. The human touch makes us all solidaire. Were it not so, the story of their lives would interest us no more than if they were basilisks or griffins, phantasmal creatures having no possible relations with us. Just now I mentioned at random some of the very great statesmen and leaders in religion and letters, access to whom in the flesh would presumably have been impossible, but with whom the humblest of


text: Life and Works of Abraham Lincoln/Volume 3/The Improvement of Sangamon River


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 Rh the neck. Sometimes chaplets are woven and placed round the head.

The girls of Pennan make thimbles of the air-vessels of "belly-waar".

(d) The children amuse themselves with "carle tangles", the stems of Lanunavia digitata, in the following way. Each player selects a few; one holds up one, the others strike it crosswise. If it breaks, the player holds up the one that broke it, whilst it is in turn struck till it is broken. This is playing at "sodgers". Instead of tangle, "carle doddies" (Plantago lanceolata) are used. Country children, and sometimes grown-up folks, amuse themselves with playing at "sodgers" with "carle doddies".

V.—

(a) An amusement is to gather stones and build a little hillock, or to heap up one of sand, when the tide is rising, and then to take their stand upon it, and cry out:

Or

They wait till they are nearly surrounded by the rising tide, and then jump. Such a little mound is called a "lockie-on" (Macduff).

(b) In Rosehearty this hillock is called "a prop", and the formula is:

When the sea struck it, the player jumped and roared. Girls, in doing this, often took off their shoes and stockings, and tucked up their clothes to keep them dry.


text: The Harvard Classics Vol. 51/Philosophy III.


text: The Harvard Classics Vol. 51/Philosophy IV.


text: The Harvard Classics Vol. 51/Philosophy V.


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 82 (c) A similar amusement is for the children to run up to meet the rising tide, and then to run back out of the way of the wave, shouting the same words. In doing this, the girls often kilt up their clothes to keep them dry (Rosehearty).

During a storm the children run up to meet the wave, shouting:

(d) They plunge into the masses of foam that are thrown up during a storm, and shout and dance in face of the gale (Macduff).

(e) When the tide is rising, the children cast up dykes or ridges of sand to stem the water, and then watch their overthrow. They proceed to build another to meet the same fate, and so on for any length of time.

VI.—

(a) It is a great amusement to lie down on the soft sand and leave an impression of the body on it. The same thing is done when there is snow.

(b) Another amusement is for one to lie down on the sand, when it is damp or hard, and stretch out every limb to the widest, and for another to take a sharp-pointed stone or piece of stick and draw the outline of the figure. Sometimes it is an imprint of only a hand with the fingers fully spread out, or of a foot, that is taken. The same thing is done in snow.

(c) The children amuse themselves by imprinting their footsteps on the sand, and after a time returning to see if the impression still remains.

(d) Another amusement is to make drawings of houses, men, or of anything that strikes the fancy, on the firm sand. A boat is a very common object to be drawn. It