late that cowardice: it is the initial recognition of a moral law restraining desire, and checks the hard, bold scrutiny of imperfect thought into obligations which can never be proved to have any sanctity in the absence of feeling. "It is good," sing the 340 old Eumenides* in Eschylus, "that fear should sit as the guardian of the soul, forcing it into wisdom-good that men should carry a threatening shadow in their hearts under the full sunshine; else, how shall they learn to revere the right?" That guardianship may become needless; but only when all outward 345 law has become needless-only when duty and love have united in one stream and made a common force.

Aktualiz

THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT IN MODERN THOUGHT.

[INTRODUCTION.-The following extracts form the greater part of Huxley's lay sermon On the Advisableness of Improving Natural Knowledge. The writings of Huxley furnish, perhaps, the most striking illustration of the mod

ern union of science with literature, a union that commends science to the great laity by a flowing treatment and the graces of style.]

1. This time two hundred years ago-in the beginning of January, 1666—those of our forefathers who inhabited this great and ancient city took breath between the shocks of two fearful calamities:* one not quite past, although its fury had abated; the other to come.

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2. Within a few yards of the very spot on which we are assembled, so the tradition runs, that painful and deadly malady, the plague, appeared in the latter months of 1664; and, though no new visitor, smote the people of England, and especially of her capital, with a violence unknown before, in the course of the 10 following year. The hand of a master has pictured what happened in those dismal months; and in that truest of fictions, The History of the Plague Year, Defoe shows Death, with every accompaniment of pain and terror, stalking through the narrow streets of old London, and changing their busy hum into a si- 15 lence broken only by the wailing of the mourners of fifty thousand dead; by the woful denunciations and mad prayers of fanatics; and by the madder yells of despairing profligates.

3. But, about this time in 1666, the death-rate had sunk to nearly its ordinary amount; a case of plague occurred only here 20 and there, and the richer citizens who had flown from the pest had returned to their dwellings. The remnant of the people

LITERARY ANALYSIS.-1-31. Paragraphs 1-4 form the introduction to the essay to what class of composition does this exordium belong? (See Def. 7.)—The pupil will observe the skill with which an exposition strictly scientific is introduced in such a way as to challenge the attention of non-scientific, or lay, readers.

1-5. This... come. What kind of sentence rhetorically? (See Def. 58.)— Grammatical construction of "time?" (See Swinton's New English Grammar, p. 105, ix.) By "this great . . . city," London will, of course, be understood. What is the figure in "took breath?" (See Def. 20.)-Derivation of "calamity ?"

13, 14. Death . . . stalking, etc. What is the figure of speech? (See Def. 22.)

16, 17. fifty thousand dead. Observe the effectiveness of the use of a specific number, in contrast with the method of indefinite statement, as many thousands of dead, myriads of dead, etc.

19. this time in 1666: i. e., in January, 1666.

began to toil at the accustomed round of duty or of pleasure; and the stream of city life bid fair to flow back along its old bed, with renewed and uninterrupted vigor.

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4. The newly kindled hope was deceitful. The great plague, indeed, returned no more; but what it had done for the Londoners, the great fire, which broke out in the autumn of 1666, did for London; and, in September of that year, a heap of ashes and the indestructible energy of the people were all that re- 30 mained of the glory of five sixths of the city within the walls.

5. Our forefathers had their own ways of accounting for each of these calamities. They submitted to the plague in humility and in penitence, for they believed it to be the judgment of God. But towards the fire they were furiously indignant, interpreting 35 it as the effect of the malice of man,-as the work of the Republicans, or of the Papists, according as their prepossessions ran in favor of loyalty or of Puritanism.

6. It would, I fancy, have fared but ill with one who, standing where I now stand, in what was then a thickly peopled and 40 fashionable part of London, should have broached to our ancestors the doctrine which I now propound to you—that all their hypotheses were alike wrong; that the plague was no more, in their sense, Divine judgment, than the fire was the work of any political, or of any religious, sect; but that they were themselves 45 the authors of both plague and fire, and that they must look to themselves to prevent the recurrence of calamities, to all appearance so peculiarly beyond the reach of human control-so evidently the result of the wrath of God or of the craft and subtlety of an enemy.

LITERARY ANALYSIS.-24. the stream, etc. What is the figure of speech? (See Def. 20.) Show how the metaphor is carried out.

26-31. The... walls. In that delicate art, the transition from paragraph to paragraph, Huxley rivals Macaulay. An illustration is presented in paragraph 4, in which the anticipative thought in the previous paragraph is generalized in the first sentence, and specialized in the second.

35. But towards the fire, etc.

to the object of emphasis.

Remark on the order of words, with reference

39-50. It... enemy. The sentence constituting paragraph 4 should be studied both as regards structure and matter: it is a fine example of the maximum of thought in the minimum of words.

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7. Some twenty years before the outbreak of the plague, a few calm and thoughtful students banded themselves together for the purpose, as they phrased it, of "improving natural knowledge." The ends they proposed to attain cannot be stated more clearly than in the words of one of the founders of the organiza- 55 tion: "Our business was (precluding matters of theology and state affairs) to discourse and consider of philosophical enquiries, and such as related thereunto :-as Physick, Anatomy, Geometry, Astronomy, Navigation, Staticks, Magneticks, Chymicks, Mechanicks, and Natural Experiments; with the state of these 60 studies and their cultivation at home and abroad. We then discoursed of the circulation of the blood, the valves in the veins, the vena lactea, the lymphatic vessels, the Copernican hypothesis, the nature of comets and new stars, the satellites of Jupiter, the oval shape (as it then appeared) of Saturn, the spots on the 65 sun and its turning on its own axis, the inequalities and selenography* of the moon, the several phases of Venus and Mercury, the improvement of telescopes and grinding of glasses for that purpose, the weight of air, the possibility or impossibility of vacuities and nature's abhorrence thereof, the Torricellian experi- 70 ment in quicksilver, the descent of heavy bodies and the degree of acceleration therein, with divers other things of like nature, some of which were then but new discoveries, and others not so generally known and embraced as now they are; with other things appertaining to what hath been called the New Philos- 75 phy, which, from the times of Galileo at Florence, and Sir Francis Bacon (Lord Verulam) in England, hath been much cultivated in Italy, France, Germany, and other parts abroad, as well as with us in England." The learned Dr. Wallis, writing in 1696, narrates, in these words, what happened half a century be- so fore, or about 1645. The associates met at Oxford, in the rooms of Dr. Wilkins, who was destined to become a bishop; and sub

LITERARY ANALYSIS.-51-54. Some... knowledge. What kind of sentence rhetorically? Change into the direct order.

58-60. as Physick... Experiments. The author is here citing, verbatim et literatim, the language used by Dr. Wallis in setting forth the aims and procedure of the Royal Society: pupils will give the modern orthography and forms of words. The whole paragraph deserves careful study as outlining the state of science in the middle of the 17th century.