silence with voices for the reader shut up in his study; which charm, exalt, and inspire those newly come to the intellectual world.

The opponents of printing may be classified in three groups. First, the copyists and illuminators whose means of livelihood it took away. Second, the political and religious authorities whose power over the people it diminished and threatened. Lastly, the monarchs and the ruling classes whose "divine right" it finally overthrew.

Industrial progress sweeps on, like a regiment of shock-troops over the bodies of those who fall in the trenches. The exasperation of all those who are sacrificed is translated into outery, indignation, and calumny. The first printers were called sorcerers, and children of the devil. As proof, it was pointed out that these printed copies which came from their mysterious workshops appeared with incredible speed and were exactly identical with one another. Would that be possible without infernal aid?

The theologians were prompt to take action. The bitter fight between the book and the church is the same as that between science and faith. It is the irreducible opposition of two methods; the one which accepts nothing that cannot be proved and which desires free investigation of the truth; and the other which proceeds by way of affirmations incapable of demonstration and which assumes to impose them in the name of divine authority incarnate in a holy text, a council, or a man.

There is no reason for being surprised if, in every country, the books and those who printed them, were exposed to interdiction, per- · secution, and the stake. They threatened to destroy, if not the spirit of religion, at least the blind belief in miracles and dogmas, which the contradiction of texts and the very diversity of the religions themselves, rendered suspicious to every reader endowed with reason and critical sense. Printing was a powerful worker for free thought, and their histories are closely linked. This is its honor, but a perilous honor, for which it has many times paid the price.

Kings and statesmen were not behind the prelates in feeling the menace. Urged on at first by ecclesiastical bodies, then stirred by a wish to defend themselves, they subjected the new art to rules, restrictions, censorship, and severe inflictions, among which were fines, imprisonments, and death. The booklet, pamphlet and newspapers when they were invented, were many times made to feel the judgment of the courts or the arbitrary will of governments. The

freedom of the press, often proclaimed, always incomplete, and always attacked, never reached its fullness except in rare moments during revolutionary epochs. Even then it was strangled, and in the calmest times has been able to maintain a legal existence only after heroic battles.

Truly enough, the press was many times used by scheming politicians, unprincipled scandal-mongers and other dishonorable people for purposes which brought printing into disrepute. People were disgusted by licentious novels, by monstrous books which dishonored literature, by the corrupting placards which covered the walls, and by the alluring drawings which attracted the eye and were a cynical invitation to debauchery. They protested against the flood of ink, which was too much like a river of mud. But must we condemn a thing because it may sink into abuse? If this were true, no human invention would escape. Must we abandon love because it can descend to a brutal and voluptuous appetite; or liberty because it can become license; or work because it ends in exhaustion; or life because it is full of sorrow and suffering?

Printing is an instrument of indefinite progress, which can, without any doubt, be turned from its true and beneficent function, but which, properly guided, has produced and will still produce that which will cheer and guide men, that which will render them masters of nature and of themselves, juster, better, and happier.

THROUGH SCIENCE UP TO GOD, OR COSMOLOGY

BY F. LINCOLN HUTCHINS

HERE is great need of a new synthesis, a new philosophy,

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a new orientation toward the cosmos in which we exist, a new statement of why and for what we live. This need is made imperative by the prodigious strides that the sciences have made during the past twenty-five years, which has made untenable the philosophies of the past. Particularly is this true of the science of psychology, which has brought into view an entirely new field that demands an entirely new synthesis. The application of Mendel's law; the flood of light that has been thrown upon the electron and its manifestations; the increased knowledge of the composition and effects of the endocrine glands; the investigations into the nature and operations of the nervous systems of all living things; all call for a new interpretation of the cosmos and of the impulses that control it. It is generally accepted that a revision of old philosophies is needed to bring them into line with the present state of knowledge the conflicts between science and religious creeds are a proof of this need. Every individual person lives in a world of his own, his interpretations differ from the interpretations of others in all cases that are not subject to identical experiences, moreover, we react differently to stimulations from the same environment. Those who have a wide range of knowledge of the facts of science and a wide acquaintance with the conceptual theories of the past and present, exist in a vastly different atmosphere from that of the uncultivated man; a realization of this comes when we compare the conditions of the savage with those of the most highly cultivated person. Such differences are equally true of individuals in every state of culture. The differences arise from variations in the makeup and operations of the sensory system, through which all ratinociation is possible. This system consists of the nerve stuff that ex

tends from the organs of the senses to cells in the spinal cord or cortex of the brain that have been organized by training or experience as focussing regions to receive the stimulations that are transmitted through the efferent nerves; thence the activity is transmitted to the efferent nerves which motivate the striped muscles and the energy is transformed into heat and motion. This system is a passive one, it merely transmits stimulations, it originates nothing of itself.

According to the latest discoveries in psychology the sensory operations may be briefly outlined as follows: a stimulation of the end organs of the senses induces an electro-chemical action which decomposes the fibrils that are affected; the energy existing in them is passed on to the synchronizing fibril in the connected neuron where a similar decomposition occurs and so on from neuron to neuron, the energy accumulating, from the series of decompositions and the sucking in of coadunate energies at every connection between nurons (synapses), until the accumulated energy reaches the centralizing cells that training and experience has established to receive them. By induction this energy is passed over from the afferent to the efferent system and passed on to the muscles where the energy is transformed into heat and motion. This transformation causes a feeling, an awareness of the activity and constitutes what we call "consciousness." The genesis of this sensory system is a purely environmental affair; the newly-born babe has no coördinated centres, he has no control of any definite movements of his muscles, his movements are uncontrolled, he has no conscious reaction to his surroundings, he knows not his father or his mother. Comprehension comes only through the establishment of focussing cells these are formed through habitual reactions to stimulations of the sensory nerve cells; this coördination of focussing cells with the impulses in the neurons is brought about by customary coadjuvancy that is, as the energy from the fibrils tends to excite certain centres every repetition increases the strength of the association and the power of the fibrils. This increased energy arises from the fact that in sucking from the blood-stream the elements that restore the fibrils to their active condition there is accumulated an extra amount of substance to meet the next stimulation, exactly as the muscles acquire strength from exercise.

Concomitant with the discharge of energy from the sensory system caused by the stimulation of other end organs there is a stimu

lation of certain of the auditory fibrils that actuate the vocal muscles, these serve to interpret the energy transformation. These interpretations take the form of words which are supposed to denominate sensations. These words are furnished by the language into which each person is born; it is inculcated by training in the home, school, contact with associates, reading, study and experience: it constitutes all of the knowledge we have, all that can be conceived. These auditory reactions are enmeshed with other reactions so that whenever either are stimulated the others are induced, that is, words will cause a reaction of the nerve fibres with which they have been closely associated, while the reactions from even the feeblest stimulation will draw into activity all of the reactions that have habitually been associated with it. This result has been named "memory which is a misnomer if considered a function that has an enduring place in the brain cells. A clear understanding of the working of the sensory system will drive many words out of the vocabularies of cultured people, or invest them with radically different significations. Such a clarification or interpretation will go far to correct many beliefs that hang over from a more ignorant age. No longer would the word "mind" stand for an entity or objective reality; no longer would "mental characters" have any meaning: the words "will," "attention," and "conscience" would attain new meanings. while convictions would be known as interpretations of neural activities that had been fixed or established by the training and experience of the person who held them.

The interrelationships among all parts of the sensory system and their resulting effects upon the body is stated by Watson in the following:

"The brain and spinal cord with their various peripheral connections may be looked upon as a unitary aggregation of simple and complex reflex conduction systems such as we have just considered. The brain and cord connected on the one hand with the sense organs and on the other hand with the muscles and glands afford a multiple connection system between the various receptors and the various effectors. No matter how minute the sense organ structure is which is stimulated, the impulse arising there can travel to the central system and produce a response of the whole organism which is entirely out of proportion to the actual energy applied at the sense organ. In other words, a stimulus applied anywhere on the body produces not only a local segmental reflex action,