The most skeptical questioner of the pretensions of old art could not for the life of him have more effectually demolished those pretensions than this "well-known art-connoisseur" has done. If we grant what he says to be even no more than approximately true, then the claim put forth for old art is the veriest piece of charlatanry in the world. Let us follow a few of this gentleman's assertions to their logical consequence. We are assured that, amid all the artists and art-students in this country, amid all the connoisseurs and amateurs, all those who have repeatedly studied the works of the old masters in the galleries of Europe, there is not one person "competent to decide whether or not the Dürr collection contains valuable old masters." There is no person who "could go into the Dürr gallery and say, That picture is a Rembrandt, that a Titian, that a Veronese." Now, if among all the instructed artclasses in America there is no one who can do this thing, what in the name of wonder does it matter whether the pictures are genuine or not? If every characteristic, every quality, every element of worth in a Rembrandt, a Titian, or a Veronese, can be so successfully copied that no one can tell the difference, then, for every practical reason and every artreason, copies are exactly as good as originals. "But we want to know that a painting is an original," says some one. Why? If a painting is to go into a museum as a relic, as a memorial, distinctly as something rescued from the past, then we want to know that the relic is genuine. But in an art-gallery the case is very different. Here pictures are collected for the pleasure they give, the sentiments they awaken, and as a means of instruction in the principles of art; and each of these results all copies that can not be distinguished from originals must inevitably produce as effectually as originals. There is no disputing this conclusion. If the "well-known art-connoisseur" is right, everything that is really valuable in old art may be transferred to new canvases with entire success, and the great works of the past be repeated in every gallery in the world. But this is not all. The art-connoisseur goes on to say that the principle of selection with the Dürr pictures should be that of artistic merit, rather than by names. "Are they useful for purposes of study? -that is the important point." Having asked this question, he declares that even here there are no competent judges- no one capable of deciding whether these paintings have artistic merit or not. That is to say, no one here can discern between a genuine old master and a copy, and yet no one can tell whether a painting by an old master, genuine or not, has any artistic merit-which means that old art has such occult qualities that no one can detect them, and yet anybody can imitate them! Old art, as thus presented by one of its best friends, would seem to a wholly ignorant person about the sorriest humbug and emptiest piece of pretension on the surface of the globe. But, of course, this presentation is not true. It is simply impossible for a copyist to reproduce any picture so successfully that it can not be distinguished from the original-impossible even to do this with any picture of to-day, let alone one of the past. A master himself even can not make copies of his own pictures that will be of equal quality. It is mentally and physically impossible for an imitation ever to express every quality of an original; and hence a very little knowledge of a master ought to enable one to detect counterfeits, however well executed. If counterfeits can not be easily detected, it is simply because the originals possess no individual quality, no method of expression peculiar to the painter. As to the charge that no one in America can detect the artistic merit of the paintings under consideration, this is as wild as all the rest. The old masters do not exhibit anything more than art itself exhibits, and art is universal in its principles. Principles do not change with place or period; a colorist must know color wherever he sees it; and the laws of drawing and composition are the same to-day as they were in the past. It is thus wholly certain that, if one can detect artistic merit in one set of pictures, old or new, he can detect it in any other set of pictures, old or new-a principle which effectually vacates the final allegation of our "wellknown art-connoisseur." MENTAL APTITUDES. IN a recent article bearing the title of "Health in Education," Dr. B. W. Richardson, who has recently made himself an acknowledged leader in hygiene and kindred things, deplores the plan which now prevails of treating every boy and girl as if every boy and girl had the same nervous construction and mental aptitude. He says: As it seems to me, there are as distinctly two grand divisions of mental aptitudes as there are two grand divisions of sex, and any attempt to convert one into the other is a certain failure. The two divisions I refer to are the analytical and the synthetical, or, in other words, the examining and the constructive types of mind. In our common conversation on living men with whom we are conversant in life we are constantly observing upon them in respect to these two qualities of mind. We say of one man that he has no idea or plan of looking into details; he can not calculate accurately; he can not be intrusted with any minute labor of details; but he can construct anything. Give him the tools and materials for work, and he will build a house; but, if he had to collect and assort the tools and materials, he would never construct at all. We say of another man that he is admirable at details, and can be intrusted with any work requiring minute definition, but he has no idea of putting anything together so as to produce a new result or effect. Moreover, we assign to these different men distinctive services in the world. We understand them perfectly, and by an unwritten and, I may almost say, by a spontaneous estimate we reckon them up and give them their precise place in the affairs of life with which they are connected. It is as if by design of nature these classes of men, and it may be of women also, exist as pure types of intellectual form, have always existed and are always being repeated. In other words, it is as if they are definite families, and that out of them, as out of a dual nature, that human organization of thought, which we call history, is educed. The elements of the analytical and synthetical minds appear on a large scale in the pursuits which men follow. The mathematician is analytical, and he, in whatever science his powers are called forth, is always working on the analytical line. He may be an astronomer, a chemist, a navigator, an engineer, an architect, a physician, a painter; but, whatever he is, all his work is by analysis. We often wonder at his labor, at his accuracy, at his fidelity. We may say of him that he approaches Nature herself in the magnitude and perfection of his results, but we never say of him that he is inventive or constructive. From him much that is quite new comes forth, but it is always something that he has hauled out of the dark recesses: he lays his treasures at our feet, and we are content to admire and wonder. We may be entranced with our view of the produce of this man, but he very rarely kindles our enthusiasm for him as a man, and very often we find that no credit has been given to him as himself deserving of it. We praise only his industry. The poet is, as a rule, synthetical. This does not always follow, but it usually does, and I think we may fairly say that every man of a purely constructive mind is a poet, albeit we may not be able to say that every poet is constructive. But in whatever particular phase of life and action he exists he shows his synthesis distinctively. His tendency is naturally to drift into such labors as are inventive and constructive. Frequently he avails himself of the labors of the analyst whom he unconsciously follows, believing meantime in himself alone. He makes for us romance in literature; mechanical instruments in handicraft; pictures in art; tunes and melodies in music; plays and epics and songs in poetry; strategies in war; laws in Parliament; speculations in commerce; methods in science. The two orders of men are often as distinct in feeling as they are in work. They do not love each other, and they admire each other little. Jealousy does not separate them, but innate repulsion. The analytical looks on the synthetical scholar as wild, untrustworthy, presuming, hasty, dangerous. The synthetical looks on the analytical with pity, or it may be contempt, as on one narrow, conceited, and so cautious as to be helpless; a bird that has never been fledged, or, being fledged, has not dared to stretch out his wings to fly. It has in rarest instances happened that the two natures have been combined in one and the same person. It is, I think, probable that this combination has been the reason for the appearance of the six or seven greatest of mankind. As a general fact, however, the combination has not been fortunate. It has most frequently produced startling mediocrities, whose claims to greatness have been sources of disputation rather than instances of acknowledged excellence. These orders of mind, distinctive of the distinct, are in their primitive forms so essential to the course of progress that it is difficult to assign priority of value to either. The analytical mind seems to be most industrious and soundest in practice: the synthetical, the most brilliant, and, when on the right track, the most astounding, in the effects it produces. The analytical is the first parent of knowledge, the synthetical the second-both necessary. To apply this reasoning to our present argument, I maintain that, as the child is the father of the man, so in every child there is always to be detected, if it be a child of any parts at all, the type of mind. I will undertake to say that every experienced teacher could divide his school into these two great analytical and synthetical classes. He might have a few who combine both powers, and he would no doubt have a residuum, a true caput mortuum, that had no distinctive powers at all; but he would have the two distinctives. He would have the scholars who could analyze as easily as they could run or walk, and to whom the mathematical problem and all that may be called analytical is as easy as play, but who have little inventive or constructive power. He would have the scholars whose minds are ever open to impressions from outer natural phenomena, who have quick original ideas, who have, it may be, the true poetic sentiment, but who can not grasp the analytical and detailed departments of learning at all. . . . The moral I draw from these outlines of natural fact is that in teaching it is injury of mind, and thereby injury of body, to try to force analytical minds into synthetical grooves, or to try to force synthetical minds into analytical. It must be admitted that Dr. Richardson has great theoretical and practical knowledge of the subjects which he discusses, and that he is generally wise and discriminating; but assuredly in the passage quoted above his generalization is much too broad. There are, it is true, just such distinct characteristics of mind as he describes; but we imagine that, instead of being commonly manifested in two distinct groups of individuals, they generally are more or less effectually combined in the same person. Perhaps it would be better to say ineffectually combined, for the majority of mankind appear to have neither analysis nor synthesis, but live on with a minimum of intellectual force. In all cases, when clearly separated, where the individual is distinctly either analytical or synthetical, he becomes conspicuous for his successes and his failures, for the mistakes he makes in one direction and the achievements that crown him in another. This separation gives us what the world so much delights in-the man of individuality, of strong likes and dislikes, of narrow but vehement purpose. The aptitudes of such individuals are too manifest for any mistake as to their character of mind; and we may well believe that, if people generally fell into two such obvious tendencies, education would long since have been adapted to their manifest needs. But the average human mind is far too complex to admit of such easy diagnosis. A great majority of people seem to have no vocation whatever, and fall readily into whatever groove circumstances may place them; with others, analysis and synthesis dispute for sovereignty, leaving it difficult to determine which tendency is the most marked. The points of contact and sympathy are, as it is, few enough, but if the world were generally divided into two opposing groups, such as Dr. Richardson describes, social life and coöperation would be almost impossible. No one would love poetry but poets, no one be in sympathy with art but artists; there would be no students of philosophy but philosophers; a line of demarkation would exist more distinct even than that of race, for races do commingle, while these two mental forces would always stand hostile or dead to each other. Fortunately, our mentality is catholic enough to bring us all within, at least, a measure of appreciation. There is one other consideration. If it were true that the human mind is separated into two such distinct classes, then ought not education endeavor to correct this one-sidedness rather than administer to it? It would be unwise, doubtless, to teach mathematics to one absolutely incapable of mathematics; but commonly it is not so much incapacity as distaste that afflicts the person, and education would perform its very best purpose if it succeeded in developing that person's latent powers, and establishing a balance and harmony of intellectual forces. Power of analysis is exactly what the synthetical mind needs in order to fit it for the world's work; why, then, should not education endeavor to strengthen the constitutional defect? And, of course, the same principle is true of the exclusively analytical mind. The masters of education have not been so blind as Dr. Richardson implies. No doubt the curriculum of the schools is commonly too rigid, and there are probably, now and then, individuals wholly unfitted by mental constitution for the studies there set down; but, inasmuch as the real purpose of education is to develop powers, bring forth latent talents, and produce harmony and balance of parts, the system pursued has not, as a whole, been altogether wrong. WESTERN TORNADOES. THE destructive tornadoes that occur now so frequently in the West open the question whether a very serious mistake has not been made in the style of building in that section. The West, for the most part, has in its houses followed the example of the Eastern States, without regarding the modifications that difference of climate and other changes of conditions require. In the East the country is un dulating and generally well protected, but in the West the open plains, over which fierce winds sweep at frequent intervals, show that a style of house well adapted to one section is wholly unsuited to the other; and yet we find commonly the same kind of structure in both. In earthquake-countries houses are built with the danger to which they are exposed kept specially in view; and now the liability of the West to tornadoes indicates the necessity of a similar adaptation of architecture. So far, indeed, from there having been any modification to meet the peculiar danger to which they are liable, the Western houses are generally peculiarly slight in structure, being constructed of boards on light frames that are merely pinned to their foundations. With rightly constructed houses we should scarcely hear of such destructive work as occurred recently in Missouri, where a whole village was nearly destroyed and many lives sacrificed. Low houses with broad walls, and with their roofs weighted after the manner of the Swiss with heavy stones, would, we should judge, resist even tornadoes with success. But, of course, the best method can be arrived at only after a due examination of all the facts; and such material must be selected as can be readily obtained. But The West is subject, as we all know, to great extremes of heat and cold, as well as to terrible winds; and yet houses are ordinarily constructed with no idea of adequate protection against heat, cold, or wind. The summer suns pierce the thin clapboards and turn the interior into an oven, while the winter cold as readily penetrates the slight screen which it encounters. He would render that section a great service who devised a house that would adequately protect its inmates against each of these evils. Houses with open, interior courts, after the manner of those in use in tropical countries, would give comfortable domiciles in the summer season. thick walls are the main thing for summer as well as for winter, for resistance against the rays of the sun as well as against blasts of wind and the insidious approaches of frost. To secure these might not earth be employed, especially in sections where stone is scarce and bricks are costly? All that we can do, however, is to urge upon the attention of our Western friends the necessity of some radical change in their architecture; and, once this is fully realized, it is certain that suggestions will abound, and properly conducted experiments be entered upon in order to secure the desired result. THE Books of the Day. HE orderly and consecutive publication of the successive parts of Mr. Herbert Spencer's "Synthetic Philosophy" has been so often deviated from of late, that with the appearance of each new volume it is necessary to explain its proper place in the general scheme and the relation which it bears to the other portions of the exposition. The newly published "Ceremonial Institutions," then, is the first division of the second volume of the "Principles of Sociology," and belongs to an earlier place in the * Ceremonial Institutions: Being Part IV. of the Principles of Sociology. (The first Portion of Vol. II.) By Herbert Spencer. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 12m0, pp. 237. system than the "Data of Ethics," which was the volume last issued, and which formed the first division of the "Principles of Morality." For deciding to issue by itself this and each succeeding division of the "Principles of Sociology," Mr. Spencer has found several reasons. "One is that each division, though related to the rest, nevertheless forms a whole so far distinct that it may be fairly well understood without the rest. Another is that large volumes (and Vol. II. threatens to exceed in bulk Vol. I.) are alarming; and that many, who are deterred by their size from reading them, will not fear to undertake separately the parts of which they are composed. A third and chief reason is that postponement of issue until completion of the entire volume necessitates an undesirable delay in the issue of its earlier divisions: substantially independent works being thus kept in manuscript much longer than need be." Portions of the present work have already been published as articles in various periodicals in England and on the Continent, and in "The Popular Science Monthly" in America; but the last five chapters, composing nearly half the volume, have 'not hitherto appeared either at home or abroad, and the whole has been subjected to a most careful and minute revision. In deference to a criticism passed by friends upon the published articles that they were overweighted by illustrative facts, Mr. Spencer has diminished in many cases the amount of evidence offered in support of his propositions; but he admits in advance that the defect may still be alleged. “That, with a view to improved effect," he says in his preface, "I have not suppressed a larger number of illustrations is due to the consideration that scientific proof, rather than artistic merit, is the end to be here achieved. If sociological generalizations are to pass out of the stage of opinion into the stage of established truth, it can only be through extensive accumulations of instances; the inductions must be wide if the conclusions are to be accepted as valid. Especially while there continues the belief that social phenomena are not the subject-matter of a science, it is requisite that the correlations among them should be shown to hold in multitudinous cases. Evidence furnished by various races in various parts of the world must be given before there can be rebutted the allegation that the inferences drawn are not true. Indeed, of social phenomena more than all other phenomena, it must, because of their complexity, hold that only by comparisons of many examples can fundamental relations be distinguished from superficial relations." We have followed Mr. Spencer's example in touching upon this point at the outset, because, to the general reader coming unprepared to the work, it would be apt to seem little more than an aggregation of facts and instances, the vast number and infinite variety of which confuse the judgment and bewilder the memory. The principles with which Mr. Spen cer sets out and the conclusions at which he arrives are comparatively few and simple, but his method of proof is by what we may call cumulative evidence drawn from an infinite multiplicity of sources. To keep the head clear in merely reading the interminable procession of facts is a task of no small difficulty; and, in collecting them and marshaling them in their due order and relations, Mr. Spencer has performed one of the most impressive of the Herculean labors involved in his long and arduous task. So closely interlinked are the various stages of the author's argument, and so dependent upon each other are the several portions of his exposition, that it would be impossible to detach a series of passages which should serve to exemplify and illustrate the whole. We must perforce content ourselves with indicating briefly the aim and purport of the book, since it would be almost frivolous in dealing with a work of this character merely to quote a number of disconnected passages because they seemed curious or interesting. The fundamental proposition with which the book opens, and to the establishing of which the rest of the book is devoted, is laid down in the following passage: If, disregarding conduct that is entirely private, we consider only that species of conduct which involves direct relations with other persons; and if, under the name of government, we include all control of such conduct, however arising; then we must say that the earliest kind of government, and the government which is ever spontaneously recommencing, is the government of ceremonial observance. More may be said. This kind of government, besides preceding other kinds, and besides having in all places and times approached nearer to universality of influence, has ever had, and continues to have, the largest share in regulating men's lives. The next most important proposition, which is nowhere so distinctly formulated by Mr. Spencer, but which is implied throughout, is that these ceremonial observances which constitute the primary and most comprehensive form of government, and which are now distinguished as political, religious, and social, had a common origin; and that this origin is to be found not in conventions at one time or other deliberately made, as people tacitly assume, but in usages that are the natural products of social life which have gradually evolved. Adhering tenaciously to all his elders taught him, the primitive man deviates into novelty only through unintended modifications. Every one now knows that languages are not devised but evolve; and the same is true of usages." The process by which spontaneously arising customs gradually crystallize into laws is traced by Mr. Spencer along many converging lines of evidence; and the following passage from his closing chapter contains, perhaps, as convenient a summary of the evidence and the conclusion to which it leads as can be quoted: In primitive headless groups of men, such customs as A few regulate conduct form but a small aggregate. certain cases bodily mutilations, and some interdicts on naturally prompted actions on meeting strangers, in foods monopolized by adult men, constitute a brief code. But, with consolidation into compound, doubly compound, and trebly compound societies, there arise great accumulations of ceremonial arrangements regulating all the actions of life-there is an increase in the mass of observances. Originally simple, those observances become progressively complex. From the same root grow up various kinds of obeisances. Primitive descriptive names develop into numerous graduated titles. From aboriginal salutes come, in course of time, complimentary forms of address adjusted to persons and occasions. Weapons taken in war give origin to symbols of authority, assuming, little by little, great diversities in their shapes. While certain trophies, differentiating into badges, dresses, and decorations, eventually in each of these divisions present multitudinous varieties, no longer bearing any resemblance to their originals. And, besides the increasing heterogeneity which in each society arises among products having a common origin, there is the further heterogeneity which arises between this aggregate of products in one society and the allied aggregates in other societies. Simultaneously there is progress in definiteness; ending, as in the East, in fixed forms prescribed in all their details, which must not under penalty be departed from. And in sundry places the vast assemblages of complex and definite ceremonies thus elaborated are consolidated into coherent codes set forth in books. "When The entire book is substantially devoted to furnishing detailed proofs of these propositions; and to showing, furthermore, that the growth of ceremonial or governmental institutions conforms in every particular to the laws of evolution at large. we observe," says Mr. Spencer, "the original unity exhibited by ceremony as it exists in primitive hordes, in contrast with the diversity which ceremony, under its forms of political, religious, and social, assumes in developed societies, we recognize another aspect of the transformation undergone by all products of evolution." It may be numbered among the curious incidents of literary history that after nearly twenty years have elapsed since the first publication of Gautier's "Le Capitaine Fracasse," without any one thinking it worth while to introduce it to American readers, two rival translations of the story have been issued simultaneously by different houses in the same city.* This is partly explained, no doubt, by the very high praise which Mr. Henry James, Jr., has bestowed the work in his "French Poets and Novelists"; upon and, this being so, it may be interesting to the reader to know precisely what Mr. James has to say about it. In his charming essay on Gautier occurs the following passage: If, as an illustration, we could transfuse the essence of one of Gautier's best performances into this colorless report, we should choose the "Capitaine Fracasse." In this delightful work Gautier has surpassed himself, and produced the model of picturesque romances. The story was published, we believe, some twenty-five years after it * Captain Fracasse. From the French of Théophile Gautier. By M. M. Ripley. With Illustrations by Gus tave Doré. Leisure Hour Series. New York: Henry Holt & Co. 16m0, pp. 411. Captain Fracasse. By Théophile Gautier. Translated by Ellen Murray Beam. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 16mo, pp. 532. was announced-and announced because the author had taken a fancy to the title and proposed to write "up" to it. We can not say how much of the long interval was occupied with this endeavor; but certainly the " Capitaine Fracasse" is as good as if a quarter of a century had been given to it. Besides being his most ambitious work, it bears more marks of leisure and meditation than its companions. M. Meissonier might have written it, if, with the same talent and a good deal more geniality, he had chosen to use the pen rather than the brush. The subject is just such a one as Gautier was born to appreciate-a subject of which the pictorial side emphasizes itself as naturally as that of "Don Quixote." It is borrowed, indeed, but as great talents borrow-for a use that brings the original into fashion again. Scarron's "Roman Comique," which furnished Gautier with his starting-point, is as barren to the eye as "Gil Blas" itself, besides being a much coarser piece of humor. The sort of memory one retains of the "Capitaine Fracasse" is hard to express, save by some almost physical analogy. We remember the perusal of most good novels as an intellectual pleasure-a pleasure which varies in degree, but is, as far as it goes, an affair of the mind. The hours spent over the "Capitaine Fracasse " seem to have been an affair of the senses, of personal experience, of observation and contact as illusory as those of a peculiarly vivid dream. The novel presents the adventures of a company of strolling players of Louis XIII.'s timetheir vicissitudes, collective and individual, their miseries apportionment of worldly comfort-very much in that and gayeties, their loves and squabbles, and their final symmetrical fashion in which they have so often stood forth to receive it at the fall of the curtain. It is a fairytale of Bohemia, a triumph of the picturesque. In this case, by a special extension of his power, the author has made the dramatic interest as lively as the pictorial, and lodged good human hearts beneath the wonderfullypainted rusty doublets and tarnished satins of his maskers. The great charm of the book is a sort of combined geniality of feeling and coloring, which leaves one in doubt whether the author is the most joyous of painters or the cleverest of poets. It is a masterpiece of goodhumor-a good-humor sustained by the artist's indefatigable relish for his theme. In artistic "bits," of course, the book abounds; it is a delightful gallery of portraits. The models, with their paint and pomatum, their broken plumes and threadbare velvet, their false finery and their real hunger, their playhouse manners and morals, are certainly not very choice company; but the author handles them with an affectionate, sympathetic jocosity of which we so speedily feel the influence that, long before we have finished, we seem to have drunk with them, one and all, out of the playhouse goblet to the confusion of respectability and life before the scenes. If we incline to look for deeper meanings, we can fancy the work in the last analysis an expression of that brotherly sympathy with the social position of the comedian which Gautier was too much what the French call an homme de théâtre not to entertain as an almost poetic sentiment. The "Capitaine Fracasse" ranks, in our opinion, with the first works of the imagination produced in our day. |