Progress in 1892

The good year 1892 is drawing to the end, bearing its sheaves. It is not too soon to begin taking stock in anticipation of opening books with the year's successor. Just what has 1892 added to the civilized man's store of permanent possessions? What superstitions, if any, have been exploded? What abuses, if any, eradicated? What additions made to knowledge? What new applications of knowledge previously acquired?

The first two questions do not admit of any answer having reference to so brief a period as one year. Man does not change his beliefs. As each generation dies, its particular shade of error disappears along with it, to be succeeded by a different shade. Abuses, too, are rarely uprooted by a process of convulsion. The more usual process may be likened to a steady chipping at root after root. Finally the tap root itself is severed, and there topples over another institution that had long been revered and cherished as a witness to the wisdom of our ancestors.

Hence, any schedule of the performances of a single year must be confined to specific Increments to the permanent sum of knowledge or of new applications of old knowledge. Amid the first, Tesla's experiment easily holds the first place for 1892. We shall probably not err in assigning it a place beside the Torricellian experiment, for its significance in the state of science as this will be found a generation hence. For it initiates a new departure. By showing that rapidity of alteration is capable of producing first, light without heat, and, second, that the animal nervous system is insensible to it. Tesla has opened a door to the study of the light phenomena of insects. This path seems to point to ascertaining the nature of the nerve discharge in animal economy. These last steps may be reserved for a new Harvey, but it would not be rash to pronounce their significance, when taken, as fundamental as the discovery of the circulation of the blood.

This direction is only one among many along which a strong beam of light radiates from the Tesla experiment. In astronomy, the year 1893 has presented us with the interesting inner satellite of Jupiter. In geography, Peary's expedition has not only resulted in a contribution to positive knowledge: it has probably established the right method in Arctic exploration on a basis that will shortly result in a complete exploration of those regions. The year 1802 has witnessed the beginning of a systematic investigation of the "speech" of an animals, from which some curious modifications of man's way of looking at those fellow creatures may be destined to ensue in due season.

In education of the young, perhaps the most significant incident of 1892 has been the fact that a silence significant of acquiescence instead of a clamor of dissent greeted Virchow's pronouncement at his Installation as rector of Berlin University. "A grammatical education," he said, "is not the means of progressive development demanded by our youth. Mathematics, philosophy and the natural sciences give young minds so firm an intellectual preparation that they can easily make themselves at home in any department of learning."

To a French Government advertisement for teachers, the applications for a grammatical mastership numbered over 1,700; for the corresponding position in natural science, exactly one solitary candidate appeared. This superb demonstration of the fact that competent teachers of science do not exist for the purposes of secondary schools, is of universal implication. Scarcely less significant is its showing that competent teachers of grammar are rather more superfluously numerous than competent domestic servants. — New York Evening Sun.