By SYDNEY C. D. ROPER.
When Sir W. Crookes, in his inaugural address as President of the British Association, startled a large number of people by stating that, unless some radical change was made in the present system of wheat cultivation, there would be a bread famine in 1931, because the world's supply of land capable of producing wheat would have been exhausted, there was undoubtedly a considerable feeling of uneasiness engendered, and more attention was paid to the address than is usual even to so valuable a contribution as the inaugural address of the President of that Association must always be. It was, therefore, with a feeling of relief that we found one person after another, well qualified to speak, coming, as it were, to the rescue, and pointing out that Sir W. Crookes's conclusions were not warranted; and in the minds of the majority, no doubt, the last feeling of uneasiness was dispelled by the able letter in The Times, in December last, in which Sir John Lawes and Sir Henry Gilbert, who arefacile principesas scientific agriculturists, and whose opinions carry greater weight than even those of the President of the British Association, gave most satisfactory reasons for being unable to believe in Sir W. Crookes's predictions.
It is true that, in a subsequent letter, Sir W. Crookes stated that his remarks were intended more as a serious warning than as a prophecy; but, seeing that his conclusions were based on definite statements of definite facts and figures, it is difficult to treat them as other than prophetic.
In order, however, to establish the probability of a wheat famine in the near future it became necessary for Sir W. Crookes to seriously misrepresent and underestimate the wheat resources ofsome of the principal countries most interested in producing that cereal, and it is to a large extent by exposing the magnitude of these misrepresentations that the validity of his conclusions is called in question and disproved. The two countries which, with perhaps the exception of Russia, are most concerned in the wheat production of the future, and therefore in the correction of these misstatements, are Canada and the United States.
Mr. Atkinson, the well-known writer on economic subjects, took up the cudgels for the United States, and their case could hardly have been in better hands; but so far no champion has appeared on behalf of Canada; and while Sir W. Crookes may not have been alone in his views about the possible exhaustion of the wheat area in the United States, he certainly stood quite alone when he committed himself to the remarkable statements that are to be found in the address, in order to decry the capabilities of the Canadian wheat fields. I did not immediately reply to them myself, thinking that some one better qualified would do so, but this has not been done, and as I feel that they can not be allowed any longer to remain unanswered, I propose to deal with them in the present article.
Mr. Atkinson's defense has been criticised, in the March number of The Forum, by Mr. C. Wood Davis, who naturally upholds Sir W. Crookes's views, seeing that they appear to have been largely induced by his own figures and agree with his own ideas, but his argument in that article is more one of fault finding with the statements of others than an attempt to justify his own position. As a specimen of his style of criticism, Mr. Davis takes Mr. Atkinson to task for saying that "the present necessities of the world are computed by Sir W. Crookes at 2,324,000,000 bushels," and says that in no part of his address was an estimate of the whole world's requirements so much as mentioned; and yet, on turning to the address, we find that Sir W. Crookes said: "The bread eaters of the whole world share the perilous prospect.... The bread eaters of the world at the present time number 516,500,000.... To supply 516,500,000 bread eaters will require a total of 2,324,000,000 bushels for seed and food." The requirements of the whole world are distinctly stated here, for bread is required only for the bread-eating population, and therefore the requirements of that population are, as far as bread is concerned, the requirements of the whole world. Mr. Atkinson, however, is well able to take care of himself, and he and Mr. Davis can fight out for themselves the question as to when, or if ever, the United States will cease to export wheat; but it is amusing to find Mr. Atkinson charged by Mr. Davis, of all men, with dealing in "purely speculative computations,"for if there is any one who has freely indulged in these same purely speculative computations it is Mr. Davis himself, as we shall presently see.
The value of the various calculations that statisticians indulge in is largely discounted by the fact that allowance is rarely made for changing conditions. Such has been the ratio, such is the ratio, and therefore in so many years' time such will be the ratio, is the burden of their calculations, so that while their figures for the past and present may be both correct and instructive, their calculations for the future are frequently of little practical utility; and it is this failure to allow for any variation in conditions that renders Mr. Davis's figures of so little value, and Sir W. Crookes's conclusions, which are based on them, of no greater importance.
It is surprising to find how much value Sir W. Crookes attaches to Mr. Davis's figures, and it leads one to the conclusion that he has either not examined them very closely, or shares with Mr. Davis a fondness for "purely speculative computations"; and while it is not seemly to accuse, as has been done, a man of Sir W. Crookes's standing and reputation of resorting to "bucket-shop" methods to support his conclusions, it is difficult to avoid thinking that the anxiety to establish those conclusions has not only led him to accept Mr. Davis's calculations without proper examination, but has also influenced the preparation of some of his antecedent data and led him to subordinate facts as a means to a required end. Since Sir W. Crookes thinks so highly of Mr. Davis's figures and upon them has based some of the most important conclusions of his address, and as Mr. Davis himself is so ready to find fault with the calculations of others, it might be well just here to see how some of Mr. Davis's own calculations have been verified and what amount of dependence should be placed upon his figures or on deductions from them.
In An Epitome of the Agricultural Situation, published by Mr. Davis in 1890, he predicted an annually increasing deficit in the world's wheat supply and the almost immediate inability of the United States to do more than grow enough wheat for home consumption, and, as a consequence, that "After 1895 we (United States) must either import breadstuffs, cease to export cotton, or lower the standard of living," this latter prophecy being emphasized by being printed in capital letters. These predictions were made ten years ago—ample time, surely, for at least some evidence of their fulfillment to be apparent. But what are the facts? The Chief of the Bureau of Statistics, in his report on the foreign commerce of the United States for 1898, says: "The total exportation of meats and dairy products amounted in the last fiscal year (1898)to $167,340,960, against $145,270,643 in the highest year prior to that date (1894), while the value of animals exported in 1898 was greater than that of any preceding year; of wheat the exports of the year were the largest in value, save the exceptional years of 1880, 1881, and 1892. Of cotton the exports of the year were the largest in quantity in the history of the country.... Thus, in the great agricultural products—breadstuffs, provisions, and cotton—the exports have been phenomenally large, while the total of products of agriculture exceed by $54,000,000 the exports of agricultural produce in any preceding year of our history." So much for exports; now for the imports of breadstuffs. The total value of breadstuffs, both dutiable and free, entered for consumption in 1898 was $957,455, of which $628,775 were for imports of macaroni, vermicelli, etc., articles not in any case manufactured in the country. I have not seen any explanation by Mr. Davis of the failure of his predictions, but it is probable that he had them in mind when he wrote in The Forum (March, 1899), "Had not the herds of hay- and maize-eating animals shrunk greatly since 1892, thus rendering vast areas of hay and maize lands available for wheat production, we should probably have reduced the wheat area, instead of adding ten million acres to it since 1895." This, however, is a purely arbitrary assumption, unsupported by anything more substantial than Mr. Davis's personal opinion. In the same article he says: "But herds being insufficient for present needs must be added to in the measure of the existing deficit, as well as in that of the animal products and services required by all future additions to the population. This will necessitate and force a restoration to other staples of acres recently diverted to wheat." But, in the face of the figures quoted above, the evidence is clear that herds are not only ample for present needs, but afford a larger margin than ever of exportable surplus. If herds were insufficient, there would have been a curtailment of exports and an increase in the consumption of breadstuffs, but neither have happened; neither has there been any reduction in the standard of living. Is not the inference irresistible that the country was carrying a larger number of animals than conditions absolutely required, since farm animals have declined from 169,000,000 in 1892 to 138,000,000 in 1898, without in any way disturbing the conditions of food supply or reducing the exports of provisions? In 1890, Mr. Davis assumed that 44,800,000 acres of hay would be required in 1895 and 49,200,000 acres in 1900, yet in 1898, 42,800,000 acres were found to be ample for the needs of the country.
Do not the foregoing figures clearly indicate that it is not safe to assume that the area employed in the cultivation of certain staplesat any given time, or the average of that area for any given period, must necessarily be the proportion always to be required for the cultivation of those articles, and that any calculations or predictions made on that assumption are liable to be completely upset by events unforeseen and unprovided for? Does it not seem probable that if Sir W. Crookes had examined Mr. Davis's figures more closely than apparently he did, he would have found that "average acre yields for long periods" are not "essential factors"; that "unit requirements for each of the primary food staples of the temperate zones" can not be so easily determined; that "the ratio existing during recent periods between the consuming element and acres employed in the production of each of such primary food staples" are not necessarily indicative of the ratio that will require to exist in the years to come; and that Mr. Davis's "scientific method" does not "enable him to ascertain the acreage requirements of the separate national populations and of the bread-eating world as a whole"?
In order to insure a famine in 1931 it was necessary for Sir W. Crookes to assume a given increase of population during the intervening period and no change in the existing conditions of wheat cultivation and consumption, and also to limit by hard-and-fast lines the sources of supply. It is to the manner in which Sir W. Crookes has limited and underestimated the wheat resources of Canada that we now propose to take exception; and it is difficult to understand how, with ample means of information available, he could have committed himself to the statements he has made. What does he say about Manitoba? "In the year 1897 there were 2,371,441 acres under cultivation in Manitoba, out of a total of 13,051,375 acres. The total area includes water courses, lakes, forests, towns and farms, land unsuitable for wheat growing, and land required for other crops." Now, the facts are that the total area of Manitoba is 73,956 square miles, and if from that area 9,890 square miles of water surface are deducted there remain 64,066 square miles, or 41,002,240 acres of land, so that even after making due allowance for forests, towns, etc., there are nearly three times the number of acres available than are given by Sir W. Crookes. Attempts have been made in vain to find out whence these figures were obtained, but there is apparently no clew; and while it is not to be supposed for a moment that the figures were purposely misstated, surely the important conclusions drawn from them deserved that some attempt at least should have been made to ascertain their accuracy. Sir W. Crookes claims to be indebted to the official publications of the Government of Canada, but it is certain that none of them ever contained the figures used by him.
"The most trustworthy estimates," says Sir W. Crookes, "give Canada a wheat area of not more than six millions of acres in the next twelve years, increasing to a maximum of twelve millions of acres in twenty-five years." Who prepared these estimates, and upon what are they based? Were they prepared by the same authority that supplied Sir W. Crookes with the figures of the area of Manitoba? If so, we may well dismiss them at once; but supposing that these estimates are, as far as the rate of increase is concerned, perfectly correct, and that the wheat area of Canada will be only twelve million acres in twenty-five years, there would still remain at least twelve million acres in Manitoba alone available for wheat. It is no exaggerated estimate to say that from sixty to seventy per cent of the land available for cultivation in Manitoba is well adapted for the production of wheat. Sir W. Crookes says that his area of Manitoba of 13,051,375 acres includes water courses, lakes, forests, towns, etc. Now, the water area alone of Manitoba is 6,329,600 acres, so that after deducting this area and the 1,630,000 acres already under wheat and making due allowance for the other conditions mentioned, he would have us believe that wheat-growing in Manitoba has already nearly reached its limit, which all who know anything about the province will unite in saying is absurd.
Now let us turn to the Northwest Territories, where, according to Sir W. Crookes, there is practically no amount of land of any consequence available for wheat, and let us remember that the same authority limits the wheat area of Canada to a maximum of twelve million acres. The area of the three provisional districts, with which alone we will deal, is as follows, viz.: Assiniboia, 57,177,600 acres; Saskatchewan, 69,120,000 acres; and Alberta, 63,523,200 acres (these figures being exclusive of water surface), making a total of 189,820,000 acres. Some of this large area is possibly not particularly well adapted for agricultural purposes, but a careful examination of all available data on the subject justifies one in saying that fully one half is suitable for successful wheat cultivation, while in eastern and southern Assiniboia there are some 20,000,000 acres, in the valley of the Saskatchewan 14,000,000 acres, and in northern Alberta 15,000,000 acres that are especially adapted for the production of wheat as a staple crop. The area is so large and settlement at present so sparse, that it is impossible to do more than give its capabilities in general terms, founded on the opinions of experienced men who have traveled over it. Professor Saunders, Director of the Experimental Farm at Ottawa, than whom there is no better authority on the subject in the Dominion, told me that, from what he saw of the country in drivingover it, he became more and more impressed every year with the vast area of good land in the Northwest, and no practical man has ever traveled through those regions but has been amazed at the prospect of their capabilities.
But we have not yet reckoned with the rich and fertile province of Ontario. This province has a land area of 140,576,000 acres, of which 11,888,853 acres were under cultivation in 1898, and of this latter quantity 1,437,387 acres, or twelve per cent, were in wheat, being an increase of 163,860 acres over the wheat area of 1897, and of 62,573 acres over the average of 1882-'98. According to the census of 1881 there were nearly 2,000,000 acres in wheat in 1880, but, under the influence of an unremunerative market, the area declined year by year until in 1895 there were but 967,156 acres so employed; since then, however, stimulated by a more profitable price, the area has increased by 470,471 acres, and an increase of twenty per cent upward is reported in the area for 1899. Fall wheat in this province is a very successful crop, having averaged in the last two years twenty-five bushels and twenty-four bushels per acre respectively, while the average for the period 1882-'98 has been 20.5 bushels per acre, so that nothing but a continuance of good prices is needed to largely increase the production of wheat in Ontario. In no part of the province, where agriculture is possible, has wheat failed to grow, but the area is so large that it would be unwise to put into figures the extent available for wheat cultivation, it being sufficient to show that a very large portion, if not indeed the whole, of the twelve million acres to which Sir W. Crookes has limited Canada could, other conditions being favorable, be supplied by Ontario alone.
The "trustworthy estimates" quoted by Sir W. Crookes limit, as has been stated, the wheat area of Canada to a maximum of twelve million acres under cultivation in twenty-five years; whence the estimates were derived or on what grounds they are entitled to be considered trustworthy there is no information; but is it of any consequence? Let them come from whatever source they may, are they not perfectly useless? The progress of wheat cultivation during the next twenty-five years does not depend upon any mathematical ratio of progression, but on the course of certain events absolutely unknown at the present time. The point is that Sir W. Crookes adopts these estimates and gives out to the world a statement, on the strength of them, that, in addition to the 3,500,000 acres at present in use, there are not more than 8,500,000 acres in Canada available for wheat cultivation—a statement calculated, if believed, to seriously damage Canada's prospects of settlement, and a statement that is as much at variance with the actual facts as itis possible for such things to be. Is it fair to the country for a man of such high standing and reputation to make such unfounded assertions? Five minutes' real consideration of the question would have convinced him that there are more than that number of acres in the province of Manitoba alone. The figures already given, which have been prepared from the most reliable available information, go to show that there are upward of seventy-five million acres of land in Canada especially adapted for the production of wheat, and this estimate is confined to those portions of the country which may be considered as essentially wheat-producing areas; and no account has been taken of the vast extent of land, not only in the provinces of Ontario and Manitoba and in the Northwest Territories, but also in the otherwise unnoticed provinces of Quebec, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and British Columbia, that is not only suitable for the production of wheat, but on which a large quantity of wheat will undoubtedly be grown, which, entering into home consumption, will increase the exportable surplus.
I am well aware that there are a number of people who will say that my figures underestimate the resources of the country, but I would rather that it were so than indulge in figures that seem too extravagant to be realized; and if, in the future, it appears that the wheat area is larger than I have stated, then so much the better for Canada. I do not mind how much evidence can be brought to increase my figures, as long as I am satisfied that they can not be truthfully reduced.
It is not intended to accuse Sir W. Crookes of deliberately misrepresenting Canada, but rather of almost criminal carelessness in the preparation of his case; but it is intended to accuse Mr. C. Wood Davis of the former offense and of intentionally garbling extracts from an official handbook issued by the Canadian Minister of the Interior in order to decry that country's wheat-bearing capabilities. By taking a line here and there which seems to serve his ends, and by leaving out everything that would have a contrary tendency, Mr. Davis, in his article in The Forum, makes it to appear that, according to the Minister of the Interior, the greater part of the Canadian Northwest is not only incapable of producing wheat, but is actually unfit for settlement, and summarizes his extracts by saying, "Available data do not show that any part of the Canadian districts named, except southern Manitoba and the eastern half of Assiniboia, is adapted to wheat culture, while they do show that over the greater part of these vast regions neither summer heats nor rainfalls are sufficient." This statement is false in every particular. The official handbook from which Mr. Davis professes to quote says of Manitoba that there are thirty-seven million acres available foractive farm cultivation, giving therefore no warrant for the limiting of the wheat area to the southern part of the province. Mr. Davis quotes a line here and there about southern Alberta in order to convey the impression that that part of the country is good for nothing, whereas, while it is essentially a ranching and dairying country, producing a most luxurious and nutritious growth of native grasses, with a bountiful supply of water for irrigation purposes, by which means most satisfactory crops of grain and fodder are produced, it has never been contended that it is particularly well adapted for wheat-growing; but, on the other hand, Mr. Davis carefully omits all mention of northern Alberta, and has no room for the following remarks about it which appear on the same page of the handbook: "Northern Alberta is essentially an agricultural district; ... the principal advantages of the district will insure settlement by immigrants who desire to engage in grain farming.... The rainfall in northern Alberta during the summer months is sufficient to insure good crops." Concerning the district of Saskatchewan, Mr. Davis quotes a remark about some of the wooded portion being unsuited to the immediate requirements of settlement, as if it applied to the whole district, and deliberately omits the following: "The southern half of the district" (Saskatchewan) "is traversed from east to west by the Saskatchewan River, and the valley of this important stream, with the country immediately adjacent thereto, has long been famed as a desirable field for immigration." With reference to precipitation, Mr. Davis has so garbled his extracts as to convey the impression that the handbook states that over the greater part of the Northwest the rainfall is not sufficient for the pursuit of agriculture, whereas what the book really says is, "So far as the Canadian Northwest is concerned, out of about two hundred million acres of land between the Red River of the North to the Rocky Mountains, available for agricultural and pastoral purposes, not more than about one fourth, or fifty million acres in all, require the artificial application of water."
Mr. Davis's attempts to prejudice the interests of the Northwest by remarks on the severity of the climate do not need serious attention; the experience of the inhabitants and the annual production of the country speak for themselves, and it is well understood that mere thermometer readings afford little indication in themselves of the nature of a climate, and that temperatures unendurable in some countries are enjoyable, salubrious, and advantageous in others. It seems difficult to believe that Mr. Davis ever wrote the following sentence, but having written it, it would be well if he would take it to heart: "Truly 'honesty is the best policy' in the employment of statistics, whether by scientists, by plainpeople, or by professional statisticians; while the ability to eschew bucket-shop methods, to read correctly, to state facts and to state them clearly, and to criticise with intelligence and entire fairness, is especially desirable."
Sir W. Crookes is not content with reducing Canada's wheat resources to an insignificant minimum, but he must also retard as much as possible the development even of the small area that he admits to exist, for he says: "The development of this promising area necessarily must be slow, since prairie land can not be laid under wheat in advance of a population sufficient to supply the needful labor at seed time and harvest. As population increases so do home demands for wheat." To say that prairie land can not be laid under wheat in advance of population, and that as population increases so do home demands for wheat, are mere truisms, but it is incorrect to say that therefore the development must be slow. The rate of development depends entirely upon the rate of increase of population, and that increase depends upon the price of wheat, and the area of production will increase concurrently with the demand. According to Mr. Davis—and we will assume that his figures are in this case correct—the population in the United States in fourteen years from 1871 increased forty-four per cent and the cultivated area one hundred and twelve per cent, and, if that was the case, no estimates, however trustworthy, could have provided for such results.
It has been perfectly true, as Sir W. Crookes says, that as the wheat area of Manitoba and the Northwest increased, the wheat area of Ontario and the eastern provinces decreased, but this was in consequence of the continued low price of wheat, which led the farmers of Ontario to turn their attention more and more to dairy and mixed farming, substituting hay and root crops for wheat and barley, until the province became a dairying rather than a cereal-producing country; but that this was a movement to suit the times, and that the area available for wheat is no less in consequence, is evidenced by the rapid increase in the wheat acreage in the last two years. The farmer produces what pays him best, and it is certain that before Sir W. Crookes's failure of the wheat supply comes to pass prices will have been such that every acre of land suitable for wheat and that can be spared from other uses will have been taken advantage of; and if this is not the case, then some other staple for food will have been substituted, which will necessarily change the whole economic situation as viewed at present.
It is also true that "thus far performance has lagged behind promise," but the reasons for this are the same, and in the lowvalues we find a ready explanation of the apparent lack of progress. What inducement has the immigrant had of late years to take up land for, or the farmer to grow, wheat that he could hardly sell for the actual cost of production? And yet Sir W. Crookes would argue that because the land has not been utilized for this particular purpose the land can not be there, and that land upon which wheat once was grown, but which is now employed for other purposes, can never again be included in the wheat-bearing area.
Progress may appear to have been slow, but it has kept pace with the demand, and in any case has been considerably more rapid than Sir W. Crookes allows. He says, "The wheat-bearing area of all Canada has increased less than 500,000 acres since 1884," whereas the actual increase since 1880 has been over 1,100,000 acres, and since 1890 upward of 760,000 acres. The area under wheat in Canada in 1898 was 3,508,540 acres, so that Sir W. Crookes only allows for an increase of 2,500,000 acres in the next twelve years. Perhaps it will not be as much, but if it is not, it will only be putting the predicted day of famine still farther away, and will prove nothing more than the fact that the state of the market has not warranted any more extended cultivation.
The statements made by Sir W. Crookes about the wheat acreage in the States are as incorrect as those about Canada, for he says, in his letter to The Times of December 8, 1898, that "the whole wheat acreage in the United States is less than it was fifteen years ago," whereas the official figures for 1897 and 1898, which were before him at the time, told him that the wheat acreage in 1897 was 3,000,000 acres in excess of the average of the preceding fifteen years, and in 1898 was in the neighborhood of 5,000,000 acres in excess of any year in the history of that country. Do not the fluctuations in the wheat acreage of the United States in recent years prove conclusively that they were solely the result of the movement of prices, and had no bearing whatever on the question of exhaustion of land? Under the depressing influence of an unprofitable market, the wheat area fell from 39,900,000 acres in 1891 to 34,000,000 acres in 1895, but, under the stimulus of a substantial appreciation, increased again, in three years, to 44,000,000 acres. If, in spite of a rising and remunerative market, the area had remained stationary or shown signs of decrease, it would have been in order to call attention to the fact as indicating exhaustion; but when, in immediate response to a rising market, the area increases by leaps and bounds, the question of exhaustion becomes less and less one of actual probability, and more and more one of theoretical possibility. A precisely similar line of reasoningis applicable to the fluctuations in the province of Ontario, and goes to show just as clearly that the decrease in area has had absolutely no bearing on the wheat-producing capabilities of the province.
"A permanently high price for wheat is, I fear, a calamity that ere long must be faced," says Sir W. Crookes; but, with due deference to so great an authority, I believe that the day of a permanent high price for wheat is yet far distant. There will be appreciations undoubtedly, but the sources of supply as yet undrawn upon are so great that it will be long before those appreciations are of any prolonged duration; but in the meantime they mean periods of great prosperity to the farmer and therefore to the world. Is a higher price for wheat such an unmixed calamity, after all? Has the average consumer of wheat benefited by the low price of wheat of late years in proportion to the hardships endured by the producer? I think not. Let those who are qualified by literary and scientific knowledge point out if they will the possibility, or even perhaps the probability, of at some period in the future the time coming when there may be, if present conditions continue to exist, a scarcity in the wheat supply, and urge as strongly as they like the advisability of taking steps in good time to prevent such a calamity; but nothing is to be gained by frightening the world with predictions of evil based only on a series of unfounded assertions, mathematical calculations, and "purely speculative computations." When, if ever, the day of scarcity will come is unknown. That it is yet far off appears to be tolerably certain; but it is sufficient for the purposes of this article that it should be understood that Sir W. Crookes's statements concerning the wheat area of Canada are absolutely unreliable and incorrect, and that there are millions of acres of good wheat land waiting for occupation by the surplus population of the world, which, when under cultivation, will assist in deferring for many years the threatened day of famine.
Dr. Sven Hedin, in his account of travel through Asia, mentions as the most remarkable feature in the central region of internal drainage (in which the rivers drain into inland lakes) "the process of leveling which goes on unceasingly. The detritus which results from the disintegrating action of the weather, and the more or less mechanical agency of the wind and water and gravity, is constantly being carried down from the mountains all round its borders toward the lower parts of its depressions, and being deposited there. In this way the natural inequalities in the configuration of the ground are being gradually smoothed away." Mr. Curzon refers to the same phenomenon in the central districts of the Pamirs—the process being the exact reverse to that where the streams hew out deep ravines in their course to the sea-going river.
Dr. Sven Hedin, in his account of travel through Asia, mentions as the most remarkable feature in the central region of internal drainage (in which the rivers drain into inland lakes) "the process of leveling which goes on unceasingly. The detritus which results from the disintegrating action of the weather, and the more or less mechanical agency of the wind and water and gravity, is constantly being carried down from the mountains all round its borders toward the lower parts of its depressions, and being deposited there. In this way the natural inequalities in the configuration of the ground are being gradually smoothed away." Mr. Curzon refers to the same phenomenon in the central districts of the Pamirs—the process being the exact reverse to that where the streams hew out deep ravines in their course to the sea-going river.
By the Late Hon. DAVID A. WELLS.
The universal and admitted failure of the general property tax to attain good results and the great difficulty, indeed the impossibility, of reducing it to a form in which it can operate with efficiency and an approach to justice, must lead to its abolition and the gradual substitution of other and more simple taxes. However well adapted to a community in which the taxable property was in evidence and easily assessed for purposes of taxation, it becomes antiquated, unequal, and inquisitorial in a people where credit and credit investments have been highly developed, and where the greater social activities, whether in commerce or industry, transportation or production, are conducted by corporations issuing various kinds of securities, none of which can easily be reached by a taxing authority away from the center of incorporation. To undertake to include these securities, evidences of debt, or obligations in a general property tax is to invite evasion, put a heavy inducement on concealment, and, whenever effective, to give rise to shocking inequalities of burden. The widow and orphan, whose property is in the hands of a trustee, pay the full tax; in any other direction the holder of stocks or bonds, money or notes, escapes according to the elasticity of his conscience. The very exemptions recognized by law give an opportunity for new evasions, based upon analogy or upon some technicality under which the business is conducted. Bonds of the United States, the legal-tender notes, or money are beyond the reach of State authorities for the purpose of taxation. In the same category come also all imported goods in original packages, in the possession of the importers, and all property in transit. These exemptions alone amount to thousands of millions of dollars, and the tendency has been to increase the number of items exempted. But every such exception under the law adds to the burdens of the honest taxpayer, and every evasion of taxation also renders his charge the greater. Here is not distributive justice, but concentrated injustice.
Another large proportion of the personal property owned by the citizens of the State is of the most intangible character, and in great part invisible and incorporeal, such, for instance, as negotiable instruments in the form of bills of exchange, State, municipal, and corporate bonds, and, if actually situated in other States, exempt from taxation where they are held; acknowledgments of individual indebtedness, and a number of similar matters. All property of thischaracter is, through a great variety of circumstances, constantly fluctuating in value; is offset by indebtedness which may never be the same one hour with another; is easy to transfer, and by simple delivery is, in fact, transferred continually from one locality to another, and from the protection and laws of one State to the sovereignty and jurisdiction of some other. It is not to be wondered, therefore, that all attempts to value and assess this description of property have proved exceedingly unsatisfactory, and that nearly every civilized community, with the exception of the States of the Federal Union, have long ago abandoned the project as something wholly inexpedient and impracticable.
The differences among the States in the interpretation of residence, of thesitusof the property taxed, are also an objection to this system and an obstacle to its application. The want of uniformity can not be abolished by enactments of law, because absolute uniformity of laws would not insure as uniform interpretation of their provisions. The rules for assessment are uniform for the officers of a State, but the returns made involve such differences in the application of the rules that one is forced to the conclusion that a misunderstanding of the spirit of the law exists, coloring differently the view of each returning officer. Discrimination against the county or municipality and discrimination against the individual are to be met at every turn. No wording of the law can eliminate this personal judgment of each assessing authority, and the supervision of the returns by State boards of equalization has introduced an even greater departure from justice, as a majority, based upon selfish interests, may be had, and its decision may readily be defended as based upon good and sufficient reasons. An appeal to the last resort, the higher courts, may produce redress against unjust assessments, but each case must be decided upon its merits, and only under very exceptional circumstances—as in the recent case at Tarrytown, New York, where striking and general, even personal, spite had been shown in the tax levy—can a number of taxpayers find it their interest to combine and carry the question into the courts for adjudication.
Imperfect in theory, the machinery of the general property tax is imperfect. With at present fully two thirds of the personal property of the State exempted from taxation by law or by circumstances growing out of its condition, or the natural depravity and selfishness of the average taxpayer, and with a large part of the other third exempted by competing nations or neighboring States, what becomes of the theory so generally accepted in the United States that in order to tax equitably it is necessary to tax everything? A very slight examination leads to the conclusion that it is the mostimperfect system of taxation that ever existed; that, with the exception of moneyed corporations, it is a mere voluntary assessment, which may be diminished at any time by an offset of indebtedness which the law invites the taxpayers to increasead infinitum, borrowing on pledge of corporate stocks, United States bonds, legal-tender notes, etc., all exempt from taxation; that its administration in respect to justice and equity is a farce and more uncertain and hazardous than the chances of the gaming table; and that its continuance is more provocative of immorality and more obstructive of material development than any one agency that can possibly be mentioned. A stringent enforcement only leads to greater perversions and a wider evasion. A lax enforcement does not reduce its inequalities and general want of application to actual conditions.[10]
The problem, then, is what taxes to introduce in place of this confessed failure of the general property tax.
There can be little doubt that the desire for greater simplicity in taxation is generally felt, and in part put into practice. The mass of various kinds of imposts, added without any system or real connection or relation one to another, has often resulted in so large a number of charges on Government account as to defeat itself. The French taxes at the end of the last century, with their added fault of inequality and injustice in distribution, led naturally to the theory of a single tax—theimpôt uniqueof the physiocrats—which did not become a fact, yet registered the protest against the multiplicity and crying oppressiveness of the remains of feudal dues and fiscal experiments undertaken under the stress of an empty treasury. So it has been noted at the present time that where an opportunity has offered there is a tendency in European countries to simplify their taxes, and, as in the case of Switzerland, prepare the way for income and property taxes. It is a greater dependence on such direct taxes in place of indirect taxes that has distinguished the great fiscal changes in recent years. Germany may have wished to establish a brandy monopoly, and Russia may resort to a monopoly of the manufacture and sale of distilled spirits. But England increases her death duties, France and the United States seek to frameacceptable taxes on income, and Switzerland succeeds in modifying her system in the line of direct taxes.
There is an earnest movement in favor of a single tax on the value of land, exclusive of other real property connected with it. As involving a question of abstract justice the proposition has much in its favor, but it can not be denied that practical obstacles oppose its adoption. The recent commission on taxation in Massachusetts thus treats of it: "It proposes virtually a radical change in the ownership of land, and therefore a revolution in the entire social body. In this form of taxation all revenue from land alone is to be appropriated—that is, the beneficial ownership of land is to cease. Whether or not this system, if it had been adopted at the outset and had since been maintained, would have been to the public advantage may be an open question, but it would certainly seem to be too late now to turn to it in the manner proposed. In any event, it involves properly not questions of taxation, but questions as to the advantage or disadvantage of private property in land."[11]
If securities are to be taxed, the methods adopted should avoid a double taxation, and an attempt to reach capital outside of the State. It is evident that a State, like Massachusetts, which taxes the foreign holder of shares in its corporations as well as the shares of foreign corporations held by its own citizens, is inviting a dangerous reprisal from other States. "Wherever the owner may be, if the corporation is chartered within the State the Commonwealth collects the tax on the shares. Wherever the corporation may be, if the owner is within the State the Commonwealth also collects the tax (in theory of law at least)." If this be the best possible system, and it is supposed Massachusetts assumes it to be, general double taxation would follow its adoption by the other States. The effort to carry this rule into practice proves its injustice as well as futility. The most searching and inquisitorial methods of seeking such property will not avail to reach a good part of it, and this results in adding inequality of burden to its other difficulties. Evasion is too simple a process to be unused, and the heavier the rate of tax the greater will be the resort to evasion and even to perjury, express or implied. The fundamental cause of the failure lies in this, "the endeavor to tax securities, which are no more than evidences of ownership or interest in property, and which offer the easiest means of concealment and evasion, by the same methods and at the same rate as tangible property situated on the spot."
This inherent difficulty can be cured only by abandoning the attempt to tax directly securities or evidences of debt, representing ownership or interest in property beyond the limits of the taxingauthority. In the case of the securities of home companies they may be readily taxed at the source, but in the case of foreign corporations it is only by methods almost revolting in their injustice and treatment of the taxpayer that even a partial success can be secured. The dependence upon the sworn statement or declaration of the taxpayer is known to be extremely faulty and to offer a premium on untruthfulness. So long as this dependence is retained in whole or in part in a system for taxing personal property, the results must be unsatisfactory. The most judicious, even if it seems the most radical, remedy is to abandon the taxation of securities. Certainly it would be well to put an end to the Massachusetts plan of taxing securities representing property outside of the State, for that involves double taxation wherever it has been possible to impose the tax. What can be reached only by methods at all times trying and difficult, and sometimes very demoralizing, should not be permitted to remain a permanent feature of the revenue system of a State.
The New York commission of 1870 proposed to limit the State taxes to a very few number of objects. That they be "levied on a comparatively broad basis—like real estate—with certainty, proportionality, and uniformity on a few items of property, like the franchises of all moneyed corporations enjoying the same privileges within the State, and on fixed and unvarying signs of property, like rental values of buildings"—such was the scheme proposed. The leading object to be attained was equality of burdens, and a second object of quite as great importance, was simplicity in assessment and collection. Granting that real estate, lands, and buildings were taxed on a full and fair market valuation, and that corporations contributed their share toward the expenses of the State, it remained to devise a tax that should reach all other forms of property that could be properly and easily assessed. This tax was to be known as the "building-occupancy" tax, and was to be levied on an additional assessment of a sum equal to three times the annual rent or rental value of all the buildings on the land.[12]Nearly thirty years laterthe Massachusetts commission proposed a modified form of this tax. An annual rental value of four hundred dollars was to be exempt from taxation, but ten per cent was to be levied on all rental values in excess of that amount.
"The advantages of a tax on house rentals," said the commission, "can be easily stated. It is clear, almost impossible of evasion, easy of administration, well fitted to yield a revenue for local uses, and certain to yield such a revenue. It is clear, because the rental value of a house is comparatively easy to ascertain. The tax is based on a part of a man's affairs which he publishes to all the world. It requires no inquisition and no inquiry into private matters; it uses simply the evidence of a man's means which he already offers."[13]If this tax were to be given it would be possible to wipe out all the tax on incomes from "profession, trade, or employment," to abolish the existing assessments on personal property. The effects would be far-reaching. If loans of money are free from taxation, the purchasing power of money in the same degree must diminish, which simply means that the purchasing power of farms and products of farms for money must to the same extent increase; hence, the borrower on bond and mortgage will not be subject to double taxation—first, in the form of increased rate of interest, and then in taxation of his real estate—and hence the farmer or landowner who is not in the habit of either lending or borrowing money will find his ability to meet additional taxation on his land increased in additional value of land and products of land in proportion as the tax is removed from money at interest. Also, the exemption of the products of farms and things consumed on farms from taxation will give a corresponding increased value to compensate for the "building-occupancy" tax. Tenants controlled by all-pervading natural laws can and will give increased rents, if their personal property is exempt primarily from taxation. The average profits of money at interest or of dealings in visible personal property free from taxation can not exceed, for any considerable length of time, the average profits of real estate, risk of investment and skill in management taken into consideration; and therefore the real pressure of taxation under the proposed system will finally be, like atmospheric pressure or pressure of water, on all sides, and by a natural uniform law executed upon all property in every form used and consumed in the State. Persons must occupy buildings and business must bedone in buildings, and through these visible instrumentalities capital can be reached by a rule of fractional uniformity, and by a simple, plain, and economical method of assessment and collection.
This building-occupancy tax, or tax on rental value, does not preclude a supplementary tax on corporations.
Much has been said of the onerous burdens of taxation endured by individuals compared with those of corporations, and especially corporations enjoying certain rights or franchises in public streets and highways or corporations of a more or less public character. The phenomenal growth of municipalities has been one of the notable social movements of the last twenty-five years. The drift of population from the country districts to cities has increased with each year, and finds an explanation in many causes. The opportunities offered in a city for advancement are greater and more numerous; the monotony of the farm life does not keep the young at home, but drives them for excitement and profit to the great centers of population. The economic changes of a half century also have their influence. The competition of new regions, better adapted for certain cultures on a commercial scale, has reduced the profitableness of older and more settled localities, where comparatively costly methods must be resorted to if the fertility of the land is to be maintained. The wheat fields of the West narrowed the margin of profit in New England farming, while the sheep and cattle ranges of the West made it impossible for the same quality of live stock to be raised for profit in the East. Farms were abandoned, and the younger blood went West to grow up with the country, or into the cities to struggle for a living. Further, the advances in agriculture, the application of more productive methods, and the introduction of machinery have reduced the demand for labor in the rural districts, and this has led to a migration to the cities.
The result of this has been an immense development of city life, and with it an ever-increasing field for investment in corporate activities. The supply of water is usually in the city's control, but the manufacture and sale of gas, the production and distribution of electricity, the street railways, telegraph, and telephone interests are private corporations formed for profit and using more or less the public highways in the conduct of their various enterprises. A grant of a street or highway for a railway or electric-wire subway generally involves a monopoly of that use, and the privilege or franchise may become more valuable with the mere growth in the population of the cities. Assured against an immediate competition, there is a steady increment in the value of the franchise, and in the case of a true monopoly there seems to be no limits to its possible growth.
An instance of this nature is so striking in its relations and so pertinent to the present discussion that attention is asked to it. In the reign of James I water was supplied by two or three conduits in the principal streets of London, and the river and suburban springs were the sources of supply. Large buildings were furnished with water by tapping these conduits with leaden pipes, but other buildings and houses were supplied by "tankard bearers," who brought water daily. A jeweler of the city, Hugh Myddleton by name, believed something better could be done, and he proposed to bring water from Hertfordshire by a "new river." He embarked in the undertaking, sank his fortune in its conduct, and appealed to the king for assistance. James granted this aid, taking one half of the shares of the company—thirty-six out of the seventy-two shares into which it was divided. The shares that remained received the name of "adventurer's moiety." The work was completed in 1613, and water was then let into the city.
So little was the measure appreciated that its first years were troublous ones for the shareholders. The squires objected to the river, believing it would overflow their lands or reduce them to swamps and destroy the roads. The city residents adopted the use of the water slowly. The shares were nominally worth £100 apiece, but for nearly twenty years the income was only 12s., or $3, per share. In 1736 a share was valued at £115 10s., and by 1800 it had risen to £431 8s.With the first years of this century the company prospered, and its benefits were widely applied, reflecting this change in the value of its capital. In 1820 a share was worth £11,500 and in 1878 the fraction of a share was sold at a rate which made a full share worth £91,000. In 1888 the dividend distributed to each share was £2,610. Eleven years later, in July, 1889, a single share was sold for £122,800, or nearly $600,000. The nominal capital of the company in 1884 was £3,369,000, and besides its water franchise it holds large estates and valuable properties. While the actual real estate controlled by the corporation accounts for some of this remarkable rise in the value of the shares, a greater and more lasting cause was the possession of an almost exclusive privilege or franchise which assured a handsome and ever-increasing return on the investment. Had all the other property been deducted from the statement of the company's assets, there would have remained this intangible and immeasurable right created and conceded by its charter and long usance.
A definition of a franchise has been given by the Supreme Court in terms of sufficient general accuracy to be adopted: "A franchise is a right, privilege, or power of public concern which ought not to be exercised by private individuals at their mere will and pleasure,but which should be reserved for public control and administration, either by the Government directly or by public agents acting under such conditions and regulations as the Government may impose in the public interest and for the public security."[14]A necessary condition, then, is a public interest in the occupation or privileges to be followed. The good will of a person or individual trader is not a franchise in this sense, though a franchise may be enjoyed by an individual as well as by a corporation, and good will may rest upon the privilege implied in the franchise.
The recognition of franchises, a species of property "as invisible and intangible as the soul in a man's body," as a proper object for taxation is now beyond any dispute. It is peculiarly appropriate as a source of revenue for the exclusive use of the State, inasmuch as the grant of franchises emanates from the State in its sovereign capacity. In the case of Morganvs.the State of Louisiana, Justice Field, of the Supreme Court of the United States, said: "The franchises of a railroad corporation are rights or privileges which are essential to the operation of the corporation and without which its roads and works would be of little value, such as the franchise to run cars, to take tolls, to appropriate earth and gravel for the bed of its road, or water for its engines, and the like. They are positive rights or privileges, without the possession of which the road or company could not be successfully worked. Immunity from taxation is not one of them."[15]Further, the extent to which this taxation of franchises may be carried rests entirely in the discretion of the taxing power, subject only to constitutional restrictions.
The great difficulty in applying such a tax lies in the methods of reaching an understanding on the value of the franchise. How can this indefinite something be made visible on the tax books? In many instances the franchise may be regarded as inseparable from the real property of the corporation. The rails of a tramway, the poles and wires of a telegraph company, the pipes and conduits of a gas company, are real and tangible things, necessary to a proper conduct to the respective functions of the corporations. But the right to lay tracks in the public streets, to sink pipes under the streets, or to string wires overhead is as necessary a possession and as essential to the performance of what the corporation was created to accomplish. Whether this permits the franchise to be regarded as "real estate" and so offers it for taxation is a question of some theoretical interest, but of little practical importance.[16]Unless thefranchise is regarded in this way, as belonging to real estate, or as forming a taxable entity apart from other property, it would be simpler to reach it through a corporation tax in one of the many ways open for applying that tax.
Enough has been said to demonstrate the extremely faulty condition of tax methods in the United States. Uniformity is highly desirable, but equality of burden is even more to be desired. The advances in this direction have been few, and accomplished only partially in a few States. The machinery for making assessments is only a part of the problem, as the intention of the law, the spirit of the act, is of even higher importance in securing justice and moderation. If these essays, incomplete as they must of necessity be, have led to a better comprehension of the chaotic condition existing now and of the difficulties to be overcome, their object will have been attained. The remedy may be left for time to effect.
In connection with the celebration of the centenary of the death of the naturalist Lazaro Spallanzani, at Reggio, Italy, in February last, a booklet has been published containing articles on various aspects of the life and work of Spallanzani and matters associated with him. Among the authors represented are Mantegazza, Ferrari, and others well known in Italian science.
In connection with the celebration of the centenary of the death of the naturalist Lazaro Spallanzani, at Reggio, Italy, in February last, a booklet has been published containing articles on various aspects of the life and work of Spallanzani and matters associated with him. Among the authors represented are Mantegazza, Ferrari, and others well known in Italian science.
By WILLIAM HENRY HUDSON,
PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY.
In the first book of theNovum Organonthe great leader of the new philosophy undertook to set forth the dangers and difficulties which stand always in the way of clear and fruitful thought. Conscious that he was breaking entirely with the schools of the past, and ambitious of laying the firm foundations on which all future inquirers would have to build, it was natural that Bacon should pause on the threshold of his vast enterprise to take stock of the mental weaknesses which had rendered futile the labors of earlier thinkers, and which, if not carefully guarded against, would jeopardize the efforts of times to come. That the understanding may direct itself effectively to the search for truth it is necessary, he insisted, that it should have a full apprehension of the lapses to which it is ever liable, the obstacles with which it will constantly have to contend. A vague sense of peril is not enough. As a first condition of healthy intellectual activity we must learn to know our frailties for what they really are, estimate their consequences, and probe the secrets of their power.
Bacon's statement of the sources of error and vain philosophizing is regarded by him as merely thepars destruensor negative portion of his work—as it were, "the clearing of the threshing floor." But his aphorisms are packed close with solid and substantial thought, and well deserve the attention of all who would seriously devote themselves to the intellectual life. "True philosophy," as he conceived it, "is that which is the faithful echo of the voice of the world, which is written in some sort under the direction of things, which adds nothing of itself, which is only the rebound, the reflection of reality." To reach for ourselves, as nearly as we may, a philosophy which shall meet the terms of this exigent definition is, or should be, one chief purpose of our study and our thought. We may very well ask, then, what help so great and suggestive a thinker may give us on our way.
With his characteristic fondness for fanciful phraseology, Bacon describes the causes which distort our mental vision asIdola—idols or phantoms of the mind.[17]Of such he distinguishes four classes, which he calls, respectively: Idols of the Tribe (Idola Tribus); Idols of the Cave (Idola Specus); Idols of the Market Place (Idola Fori); and Idols of the Theater (Idola Theatri). It is not to be claimed for Bacon's analysis that it is exhaustive or always scientifically exact. In many places, too, it opens up difficult philosophic questions, which for the present must be disregarded. But, as Professor Fowler has said, there is something about his diction, "his quaintness of expression, and his power of illustration which lays hold of the mind and lodges itself in the memory in a way which we can hardly find paralleled in any other writer, except it be Shakespeare."[18]Moreover, though he often deals with matters of merely technical and temporary interest, his leading thoughts are of permanent and universal applicability. Let us see, then, what suggestions we can gather from a brief consideration of his Idols, one by one.
Idols of the Tribe are so called because they "have their foundation in human nature itself"; in other words, they are the prepossessions and proclivities which belong to men as men, and as such are common to the whole race or tribe. "Let men please themselves as they will," says Bacon, "in admiring and almost adoring the human mind, this is certain: that as an uneven mirror distorts the rays of objects according to its own figure and section, so the mind, when it receives impressions of objects through the sense, can not be trusted to report them truly, but in forming its notions mixes up its own nature with the nature of things." In many lines of thought there is no more pregnant source of fallacy and confusion than the tendency, innate in all and seldom properly checked, to accept man as the measure of all things, and to translate the entire universe into terms of our own lives. Theology, though it is slowly outgrowing its cruder anthropomorphism, still talks about the "will" of God, an "intelligent" First Cause, the "moral governor," and "lawgiver"; and outside theology we have ample evidence of the persistency with which we humanize and personify Nature by endowing it with attributes belonging to ourselves. Darwin confessed that he found it difficult to avoid this tendency.[19]It is a pitfall into which men constantly stumble in their attempts to interpret the processes at work about them.
One important result of our habit of thus forcing the universe to become "the bond-slave of human thought" is to be found, as Bacon notes, in our proneness to "suppose the existence of more order and regularity in the world" than is actually to be discovered there. While we read design and purpose into the phenomena of Nature because we are conscious of design and purpose in our own activities, thus allowing ourselves to drift into the metaphysical doctrine of Final Causes, we also do our best to bring Nature'smultitudinous operations into such definite formulas as will satisfy our love of plan and symmetry. We are not content till we can systematize and digest, whence our continual recourse to loose analogies and fanciful resemblances. We start from an imagined necessity of order, or from some conception of things attractive because of its apparent simplicity, and then reason out from this into the facts of Nature. Mill furnishes some telling examples. "As late as the Copernican controversy it was urged, as an argument in favor of the true theory of the solar system, that it placed the fire, the noblest element, in the center of the universe. This was a remnant of the notion that the order of the universe must be perfect, and that perfection consisted in conformity to rules of procedure, either real or conventional. Again, reverting to numbers, certain numbers wereperfect, therefore these numbers must obtain in the great phenomena of Nature. Six was a perfect number—that is, equal to the sum of all its factors—an additional reason why there must be exactly six planets. The Pythagoreans, on the other hand, attributed perfection to the number ten, but agreed in thinking that the perfect numbers must be somehow realized in the heavens; and knowing only of nine heavenly bodies to make up the enumeration, they asserted 'that there was anantichthon, or counter-earth, on the other side of the sun, invisible to us.' Even Huygens was persuaded that when the number of heavenly bodies had reached twelve it could not admit of any further increase. Creative power could not go beyond that sacred number."[20]Do these concrete illustrations of perverse reasoning strike us as ludicrous? It is because they are taken from an order of ideas long since outgrown. The tendencies they exemplify have not been outgrown. We have only to keep a vigilant eye on our own mental conduct to be convinced that we are very apt to begin with some general notion of "the fitness of things," or what "ought to be," and to argue thence to conclusions not a whit less absurd essentially than those just referred to.
While these universal mental habits are conspicuous enough in the higher regions of thought and begin to play tricks with us the moment we undertake on our own accounts any serious speculation, there are other Idols of the Tribe whose influence is perhaps more commonly fatal. We all jump at conclusions, the mind feigning and supposing "all other things to be somehow, though it can not see how, similar to those few things by which it is surrounded"; we all allow ourselves to be unduly "moved by those things most which strike and enter the mind simultaneously and suddenly, and so fill the imagination." Hasty judgments are thus daily and hourly passed on men and things, and rash generalizations permitted tocirculate untested. Even more disastrous, perhaps, in the long run, is the power of prepossessions. When once, says Bacon, the human understanding has "adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion, or as being agreeable to itself)" it straightway "draws all things else to support and agree with it." Illustrations may be found in every direction. Note, for instance, the vitality, even in the teeth of positive disproof, of many long-accepted and often-challenged ideas—belief in dreams, omens, prophecies, in providential visitations and interpositions, in the significance of coincidences, in popular saws about natural phenomena, in quacks and quackery, in old wives' tales, vulgar and pseudo-scientific. The story of witchcraft is only another example of the same kind, though written large in the chronicles of the world in letters of fire and blood; the human understanding had "adopted" a belief in witches, and drew "all things else to support and agree with it." In all such cases of prepossession the mind obstinately dwells on every detail that favors its accepted conclusions, while disregarding or depreciating everything that tells against them; it is always, in Bacon's phrase, "more moved and excited by affirmatives than by negatives." Thus, we hear much of the one dream that is fulfilled, and of the ninety and nine that are unfulfilled—nothing. Bacon illustrates this perversity by the well-known anecdote of the ancient cynic, which may be left to convey its own moral: "And therefore it was a good answer that was made by one who, when they showed him hanging in a temple a picture of those who had paid their vows as having escaped shipwreck, and would have him say whether he did not now acknowledge the power of the gods—'Ay,' asked he again, 'but where are they painted that were drowned after their vows?'"
Finally, among these Idols of the Tribe we must include the disturbance caused by the play of feeling upon the mind. "The human understanding is no dry light, but receives an infusion from the will and affections, whence proceed sciences which may be called 'sciences as one would.'" We all know, to our cost, how passion will warp judgment; how difficult it is to see clearly when the emotions are thoroughly aroused; how tenaciously men cling to opinions they are familiar with, or would fain have to be true; how fiercely they contest ideas that are unfamiliar or repugnant. Had it been contrary to the interest of authority, observed shrewd old Hobbes, that the three angles of a triangle should be equal to two angles of a square, the fact would have been, if not disputed, yet suppressed.[21]Similarly, if the passions of men had been called into play over the most clearly demonstrable of abstract mathematicaltruths, we may be sure that furious controversy would have attended the issue, and some way found to overthrow the demonstration. That two and two make four would have been denied had any strong emotion been excited against the proposition. "Men," said Whateley, "are much more anxious to have truth on their side than to be on the side of truth." And the danger is greater because we are frequently not aware of the bias given by feeling. There are cases in plenty where men more or less consciously and deliberately espouse "sciences as one would," but there are many others in which the emotional interference is insidious and obscure. "Numberless, in short, are the ways, and sometimes imperceptible, in which the feelings color and infect the understanding."
These Idols of the Tribe are of course inherent in our intellectual constitution, and are ineradicable. The simple consideration that all knowledge is relative—that by no effort and under no circumstances can we escape beyond the conditions and limitations of our own minds—suffices to show that intelligence must ever mix up its own nature with the nature of things, though this fact need not make us doubt the validity of knowledge as is sometimes hastily inferred. For the rest, clear recognition of these common obstacles to thought should put us in the way of anticipating and withstanding their more serious effects. In practice it must be our object to maintain watchfulness and a careful skepticism; to test evidence and check passion; to cultivate candor, flexibility, and alertness of mind; to avoid loose generalizations; and to be ever ready to accept, revise, reject. Above all must we steadily resist the seductions of what is called common sense, and overcome that mental inertness which too often leads us to drift unthinking along the current of popular opinion.[22]
But, in addition to errors arising from the common intellectual nature of men, there are others, the sources of which are to be found in the idiosyncrasies of the individual mind. These Bacon calls Idols of the Cave;[23]for every one, he says, "has a cave or den of his own, which refracts and discolors the light of Nature, owing either to his own proper and peculiar nature; or to his education and conversation with others; or to his reading of books, and the authority of those whom he esteems and admires; or to the differences of impressions, accordingly as they take place in a mind preoccupied and predisposed, or in a mind indifferent and settled; and the like." This summary is comprehensive enough to indicate the character and point to some of the causes of individual aberrations of judgment;that it does no more than this is due to the simple fact that the personal bias is as varied as humanity itself, and that the deflecting impulses in any given case are to be referred to a complex of factors almost eluding analysis. To follow this part of the subject into detail would, therefore, manifestly be impossible. But certain of the larger and more widely influential of these disturbing forces may be roughly marked out by way of illustration.
In the first place, there is what we may call the professional bias. Exclusive devotion to separate lines of activity, study, or thought inevitably gives the mind a particular set or twist. Bacon complains that Aristotle, primarily a logician, made his natural philosophy the slave of his logic. Few specialists can escape the insulation consequent upon living too continuously in a confined area of problems and ideas. Their intellectual outlook is necessarily circumscribed, facts are seen by them out of proper perspective, and one-sidedness of training and discipline renders their judgment of things partial and incomplete. The lawyer carries his legal, the theologian his theological, the scientist his scientific bent of mind into every inquiry; with what grotesque results is only too frequently apparent. Accustomed to move in a single narrow groove, and wholly absorbed in the contemplation of certain isolated classes of phenomena, they unconsciously allow their particular interests to dominate their thought, and impose disastrous restrictions upon their view of whatever lies outside their own chosen field.
Secondly, we have the bias of nation, rank, party, sect. Here the mental disturbances are too numerous to permit and too obvious to require special exemplification. Intellectual provincialism of any kind is fatal to large and fertile thought, alike by limiting the range of our knowledge and sympathies and by inducing mental habits and implanting prejudices which prevent us from seeing things in wide relations and under a clear light. So long as our point of view is simply that of our country, our class, our party, or our church, so long, it is evident, our minds will lack the breadth and flexibility necessary for free inquiry, fruitful comparisons, sane and balanced judgments.[24]