MENTALENERGY.EBy EDWARD ATKINSON.

CThe one-man hunting canoe of the Eskimo.

“Finally they came to a place where there were many people and many huts. He pointed out to her a certain hut made of the skins of yearling seals, and told her that it was his, and that she was to go there. They landed. The woman went up to the hut, while he attended to his kayak. Soon he joined her in the hut, and staid with her for three or four days before going out sealing again. Her new husband was a petrel.

“Meanwhile her father had left the dog, her former husband, at his house, and had gone to look for her on the island. When he did not find her, he returned home, and told the dog to wait for him, as he was going in search of his daughter. He set out in a large boat, traveled about for a long time, and visited many a place before he succeeded in finding her. Finally he came to the place where she lived. He saw many huts, and, without leaving his boat, he shouted and called his daughter to return home with him. She came down from her hut, and went aboard her father’s boat, where he hid her among some skins.

“They had not been gone long when they saw a man in a kayak following them. It was her new husband. Soon he overtook them, and when he came alongside he asked the young woman to show her hand, as he was very anxious to see at least part of her body, but she did not move. Then he asked her to show her mitten, but she did not respond to his request. In vain he tried in many ways to induce her to show herself; she kept in hiding. Then he began to cry, resting his head on his arms, that were crossed in front of the manhole of the kayak. Avilayuk’s father paddled on as fast as he could, and the man fell far behind. It was calm at that time and they continued on their way home. After some time they saw something coming from behind toward their boat. They could not clearly discern it. Sometimes it looked like a man in a kayak. Sometimes it looked like a petrel. It flew up and down, then skimmed over the water, and finally came up to their boat and went round and round it several times and then disappeared again. Suddenly ripples came up, the waters began to rise, and after a short time a gale was raging. The boat was quite a distance away from shore. The old man became afraid lest they might be drowned; and, fearing the revenge of his daughter’s husband,he threw her into the water. She held on to the gunwale; then the father took his hatchet and chopped off the first joints of her fingers. When they fell into the water they were transformed into whales, the nails becoming the whalebone. Still she clung to the boat; again he took his hatchet and chopped off the second joints of her fingers. They became transformed into ground seals. Still she clung to the boat; then he chopped off the last joints of her fingers, which became transformed into seals. Now she clung on to the boat with the stumps of her hands, and her father took his steering-oar and knocked out her left eye. She fell backward into the water and he paddled ashore.

“Then he filled with stones the boots in which the dog was accustomed to carry meat to his family, and only covered the top with meat. The dog started to swim across, but when he was halfway the heavy stones dragged him down. He began to sink and was drowned. A great noise was heard while he was drowning. The father took down his tent and went down to the beach at the time of low water. There he lay down and covered himself with the tent. The flood tide rose and covered him, and when the waters receded he had disappeared.”

This woman, the mother of the sea-mammals, may be considered the principal deity of the Central Eskimo. She has supreme sway over the destinies of mankind, and almost all the observances of these tribes are for the purpose of retaining her good-will or of propitiating her if she has been offended. Among the eastern tribes of this region she is called Sedna, while the tribes west of Hudson Bay call her Nuliayuk. She is believed to live in a lower world, in a house built of stone and whale-ribs. In accordance with the myth, she is said to have but one eye. She cannot walk, but slides along, one leg bent under, the other stretched forward. Her father lives with her in this house, and lies covered up with his tent. The dog watches the entrance, being stationed on the floor of the house.

The souls of seals, ground seals and whales are believed to proceed from her house. After one of these animals has been killed its soul stays with the body for three days. Then it goes back to Sedna’s abode, to be sent forth again by her. If, during the three days that the soul stays with the body, any taboo or prescribed custom is violated, the violation becomes attached to the animal’s soul. Although the latter strives to free itself of these attachments, which give it pain, it is unable to do so, and takes them down to Sedna. The attachments, in some manner that is not explained, make her hands sore, and she punishes the people who are the cause of her pains by sending to them sickness, bad weather and starvation. The object of the innumerable taboos that are in force after the killing of these sea animals is therefore to keep their souls free from attachments that would hurt their souls as well as Sedna.

The souls of the sea animals are endowed with greater powers than those of ordinary human beings. They can see the effect of the contact with a corpse, which causes objects touched by it to appear of a dark color; and they can see the effect of flowing blood, from which a vapor rises that surrounds the bleeding person and is communicated to every one and every thing that comes in contact with such a person. This vapor and the dark color of death are exceedingly unpleasant to the souls of the sea animals, that will not come near a hunter thus affected. The hunter must therefore avoid contact with people who have touched a body, or with such as are bleeding. If any one who has touched a body or who is bleeding should allow others to come in contact with him he would cause them to become distasteful to the seals and therefore also to Sedna. For this reason the custom demands that every person must at once announce if he has touched a body or if he is bleeding. If he does not do so, he will bring ill luck to all the hunters.

These ideas have given rise to the belief that it is necessary to announce the transgression of any taboo. The transgressor of a custom is distasteful to Sedna and to the animals, and those who abide with him will become equally distasteful through contact with him. For this reason it has come to be an act required by custom and morals to confess any and every transgression of a taboo, in order to protect the community from the evil influences of contact with the evil-doer. The descriptions of Eskimo life given by many observers contain records of starvation which, according to the belief of the natives, was brought about by some one transgressing a law and not announcing what he had done.

I presume this importance of the confession of a transgression with a view to warning others to keep at a distance from the transgressor has gradually led to the idea that a transgression, or we might say a sin, can be atoned for by confession. This is one of the most remarkable religious beliefs of the Central Eskimo. There are innumerable tales of starvation brought about by the transgression of a taboo. In vain the hunters try to supply their families with food; gales and drifting snow make their endeavors fruitless. Finally the help of theangakokDis invoked, and he discovers that the cause of the misfortune of the people is due to the transgression of a taboo. Then the guilty one is searched for. If he confesses, all is well, the weather moderates, and the seals will allow themselves to be caught; but if he obstinately maintains his innocence, his death alone will soothe the wrath of the offended deity.

DThe medicine-man or shaman of the Eskimo.

While thus the reason appears clear why the taboos are rigorouslyenforced by public opinion, the origin of the taboos themselves is quite obscure. It is forbidden, after the death of a sea mammal or after the death of a person, to scrape the frost from the window, to shake the beds, or to disturb the shrubs under the bed, to remove oil-drippings from under the lamp, to scrape hair from skins, to cut snow for the purpose of melting it, to work on iron, wood, stone, or ivory. Women are, furthermore, forbidden to comb their hair, to wash their faces and to dry their boots and stockings.

A number of customs, however, may be explained by the endeavors of the natives to keep the sea mammals free from contaminating influences. All the clothing of a dead person, more particularly the tent in which he died, must be discarded; for if a hunter should wear clothing made of skins that had been in contact with the deceased, these would appear dark and the seal would avoid him. Neither would a seal allow itself to be taken into a hut darkened by a dead body, and all those who entered such a hut would appear dark to it and would be avoided.

While it is customary for a successful hunter to invite all the men of the village to eat of the seal that he has caught, they must not take any of the seal meat out of the hut, because it might come in contact with persons who are under taboo, and thus the hunter might incur the displeasure of the seal and of Sedna.

It is very remarkable that the walrus is not included in this series of regulations. It is explicitly stated that the walrus, the white whale and the narwhal are not subject to these laws, which affect only the sea animals that originated from Sedna’s fingers. There is, however, a series of laws that forbid contact between walrus, seal and caribou. It is not quite clear in what mythical concept these customs originate. There is a tradition regarding the origin of walrus and caribou which is made to account for a dislike between these two animals. A woman created both these animals from parts of her clothing. She gave the walrus antlers and the caribou tusks. When man began to hunt them, the walrus upset the boats with his antlers and the caribou killed the hunter with his tusks. Therefore the woman called both animals back and took the tusks from the caribou and gave them to the walrus. She took the antlers, kicked the caribou’s forehead flat and put the antlers on to it. Ever since that time, it is said, walrus and caribou avoid each other, and the people must not bring their meat into contact. They are not allowed to eat caribou and walrus meat on the same day except after changing their clothing. The winter clothing which is made of caribou-skin must be entirely completed before the men will go to hunt walrus. As soon as the first walrus has been killed, a messenger goes from village to village and announces the news. All work on caribou-skins must cease immediately. When the caribou-huntingseason begins, all the winter clothing, and the tent that has been in use during the walrus-hunting season, are buried, and not used again until the following walrus-hunting season. No walrus hide, or thongs made of such hide, must be taken inland, where is the abode of the caribou.

Similar laws, although not quite so stringent, hold good in regard to contact between seal and walrus. The natives always change their clothing or strip naked before eating seal during the walrus season.

The soul of the salmon is considered to be very powerful. Salmon must not be cooked in a pot that has been used for boiling other kinds of meat. It is always cooked at some distance from the hut. Boots that were used while hunting walrus must not be worn when fishing salmon, and no work on boot-legs is allowed until the first salmon has been caught and placed on a boot-leg.

The fact that these taboos are not restricted to caribou and walrus suggests that the mythical explanation given above does not account for the origin of these customs, but must be considered as a later effort to explain their existence.

The transgressions of taboos do not affect the souls of game alone. It has already been stated that the sea mammals see their effect upon man also, who appears to them of a dark color, or surrounded by a vapor which is invisible to ordinary man. This means, of course, that the transgression also affects the soul of the evil-doer. It becomes attached to it and makes him sick. The shaman is able to see, by the help of his guardian spirit, these attachments, and is able to free the soul from them. If this is not done the person must die. In many cases the transgressions become attached also to persons who come in contact with the evil-doer. This is especially true of children, to whose souls the sins of their parents, and particularly of their mothers, become readily attached. Therefore when a child is sick the shaman, first of all, asks its mother if she has transgressed any taboos. The attachment seems to have a different appearance, according to the taboo that has been violated. A black attachment is due to removing oil-drippings from under the lamp. As soon as the mother acknowledges the transgression of a taboo, the attachment leaves the child’s soul and the child recovers.

The souls of the deceased stay with the body for three days. If a taboo is violated during this time the transgression becomes attached to the soul of the deceased. The weight of the transgression causes the soul pain, and it roams about the village, endeavoring to free itself of its burden. It seeks to harm the people who, by their disobedience to custom, are causing its sufferings. It causes heavy snows to fall and brings sickness and death. Such a soul is called a tupilak. Toward the middle of autumn it hovers around the doors of the huts. When ashaman discovers the tupilak he advises the people, who assemble, and prepare to free it of its burden. All the shamans go in search of it, each a knife in hand. As soon as they find it, they stab it with their knives, and thus cut off the transgressions. Then the tupilak becomes a soul again. The knives with which it was stabbed are seen by the people to be covered with blood.

The Central Eskimo believe that man has two souls. One of these stays with the body, and may enter temporarily the body of a child which is given the name of the departed. The other soul goes to one of the lands of the souls. Of these there are several. There are three heavens, one above another, of which the highest is the brightest and best. Those who die by violence go to the lowest heaven. Those who die by disease go to Sedna’s house first, where they stay for a year. Sedna restores their souls to full health and then she sends them up to the second heaven. Those who die by drowning go to the third heaven. People who commit suicide go to a place in which it is always dark and where they go about with their tongues lolling. Women who have had premature births go to Sedna’s abode and stay in the lowest world.

The other soul stays with the body. When a child has been named after the deceased, the soul enters its body and remains there for about four months. It is believed that its presence strengthens the child’s soul, which is very light and apt to escape from the body. After leaving the body of the infant, the soul of the departed stays nearby, in order to re-enter its body in case of need. When a year has elapsed since the death of the person, his soul leaves the grave temporarily and goes hunting, but returns frequently to the grave. When the body has entirely decayed it may remain away for a long time.

Evidently the Eskimo also believe in the transmigration of souls. There is one tradition in which it is told how the soul of a woman passed through the bodies of a great many animals, until finally it was born again as an infant. In another story it is told how a hunter caught a fox in a trap and recognized in it the soul of his departed mother. In still another tale the soul of a woman, after her death, entered the body of a huge polar bear in order to avenge wrongs done to her during her lifetime.

Almost the sole object of the religious ceremonies of the Eskimo is to appease the wrath of Sedna, of the souls of animals, or of the souls of the dead, that have been offended by the transgressions of taboos. This is accomplished by the help of the guardian spirits of the angakut. The most important ceremony of the Eskimo is celebrated in the fall. At this time of the year the angakut, by the help of their guardian spirits, visit Sedna and induce her to visit the village, and they endeavor to free her of the transgressions that became attached to her during the preceding year. One angakok throws her with his harpoon, anotherone stabs her, and by this means they cut off all the transgressions. The ceremony is performed in a darkened snow-house. After the ceremony the lamps are lighted again and the people see the harpoon and the knife that were used in the ceremony covered with blood. If the angakut should fail to free Sedna from the transgressions, bad weather and hunger would prevail during the ensuing winter. On the following day Sedna sends her servant, who is called Kaileteta, to visit the tribe. She is represented by a man dressed in a woman’s costume and wearing a mask made of seal-skin. On this day the people wear attached to their hoods pieces of skin of that animal of which their first clothing was made after they were born. It seems that the skins of certain animals are used for this purpose, each month having one animal of its own. It is said that if they should not wear the skin of the proper animal, Sedna would be offended and would punish them.

The angakut also cure sick persons and make good weather with the help of their guardian spirits. They discover transgressions of taboos and other causes of ill luck. One of the most curious methods of divination applied by the angakut is that of ‘head-lifting.’ A thong is placed around the head of a person who lies down next to the patient. The thong is attached to the end of a stick which is held in hand by the angakok. Then the latter asks questions as to the nature and outcome of the disease, which are supposed to be answered by the soul of a dead person, which makes it impossible for the head to be lifted if the answer is affirmative, while the head is raised easily if the answer is negative. As soon as the soul of the departed leaves, the head can be moved without difficulty.

Amulets are extensively used as a protection against evil influences and to secure good luck. Pregnant women wear the teeth of wolves on the backs of their shirts. These same teeth are fastened to the edge of the infant’s hood. The string which passes under the large hood of the woman who carries her child on her back is fastened at one end to a bear’s tooth, which serves to strengthen the child’s soul. When the child begins to walk about, this string and the bear’s tooth are attached to its shirt and worn as amulets. Pyrites, when thrown upon a spirit, are believed to drive it away.

As compared with the beliefs of the Greenlanders, the beliefs of the Central Eskimo are characterized by the great importance of the Sedna myth and the entire absence of the belief in a powerful spirit called Tonarssuk, which seems to have been one of the principal features of Greenland beliefs. There is an evident tendency among the Central Eskimo to affiliate all customs and beliefs with the myth of the origin of sea animals. This tendency seems to have been one of the principal causes that molded the customs and beliefs of the people into the form in which they appear at the present time.

MENTALENERGY.EBy EDWARD ATKINSON.EPresented before the New York meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.Accordingto the common conception, political economy is held to deal with material forces only; with land, labor and capital; with the production, distribution and consumption of the materials of human existence. These are food, clothing and shelter. It, therefore, bears the aspect of a purely material study of material forces. Yet no more purely metaphysical science exists, and there can be, in my view of the subject, no more ideal conceptions than those which are derived from the study of these purely material forces. Many of the errors commonly presented under the name of the ‘claims of labor’ have arisen from the limited and partial conception of the function of economic science.We have become accustomed to deal with the so-called material forces of nature and with the physical work and labor of man under the general term of ‘Energy’. What man does by his own labor or physical energy is to convert the products of land and sea, of mine and forest, into new forms from which he derives shelter, food and clothing. In a material sense all that any one can get in or out of life, be he rich or poor, is what we call our board and clothing. Such being the fact, what a man consumes is his cost to the community; what he spends yields to others the means of buying the supplies for their own wants; their consumption is then their cost to the community.The physical forces of nature are limited. The earth is endowed with a fixed quantity of materials that we call gaseous, liquid and solid. It receives a certain amount of heat from the sun which, for all practical purposes, may be considered a fixed quantity of energy, even if in eons it may be exhausted. The physical energy of man is devoted to the transformation of these physical forces under the law of conservation; he can neither add to nor diminish the quantity. He can transform solid into gas and gas into liquid. He can, according to common speech, consume some of these products, but his consumption is only another transformation. His own body is but one of the forms of physical energy on the way toward another form. These elements of nature, formerly limited to earth, air and water, are now listed under many titles of what are called elements; I believe over sixty that have not yet been differentiated, but all may yet be resolved into a unit of force.You will observe that in our arithmetic we have ten numerals which can be divided into fractions. In our music we deal with seven notes and their variants. In our alphabet we have twenty-six letters. These factors correspond in some measure to what we call elements in nature. There is a limit to the number of combinations that can be made of the numerals and their fractions, to the notes of music and their variants, and of the letters of the alphabet; but in each case this limit is so remote as to be negligible, like the exhaustion of the heat of the sun. May we not deal with the elements of nature in the same way? Can any one prescribe a limit to their conversion and reconversion to the use of mankind? Is it not in these processes of conversion that we derive our subsistence?We make nothing. All that we can do is to move something. We move the soil and we move the seed; nature gives the harvest. We direct the currents of falling water, of heat and of steam; nature imparts the force or energy to which man has only given a new direction. We are now imparting new directions to the force that we call electricity, and to what we call cold. What is the force from which we derive this power of transforming physical energy? May we not call it mental energy? Is not mental energy the factor in mankind by which he is differentiated from the beast? Does not man only accumulate experience, and is there any limit to the power of mind over matter?If these points are well taken, mental energy is the fourth and paramount factor in providing for material existence, and the science of political economy, which deals with land, labor and capital, becomes a purely metaphysical science when we admit the force of mental energy into the combination.We deal, as I have said, with sixty elements, so-called, more or less, but the unity of nature is the most important fact ever proved by science; the correlation of all forms of physical energy leading logically from the idea of manifold forces or gods to the unity of creation, necessarily ending in the conception of unity of a creator, or the one God. This modern development of mental science is but the Hebrew concept of the creation in a new form. The Hebrew race was the first one of the historic races with whom the unity of creation and the unity of the creator became an article of faith. I doubt not that it was in that concept and the power derived from it that the Hebrew intellect asserted its preëminence in the history of the world. According to that concept, to man is given “dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” By what force does man hold dominion unless it is through his mental energy and his capacity to accumulate experience?All the industrial arts are antedated by the industries of animals. The tailor finds his prototype in the tailor bird; the mason in thewasp; the farmer in the agricultural ant; the bridge-builder in the spider; the weaver in the weaver bird; the creator of water power in the beaver, and so on. Yet no other animal except man has developed or extended any of these arts. No other animal except man has learned to make and use fire and not to run away from it.If, then, man by his power of mental energy converts the original and crude forces with which the earth is endowed into new forms, and by giving them new direction increases his power of production of the means of his own subsistence and enjoyment of life,does it not follow that creation is a continuous procession in which man is a factor? “There is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them as we may.” The ideal of ‘an honest God the noblest concept of man’ becomes the converse of an honest man the noblest work of God—honest in a broad sense in his dealings with the forces of nature; true to his function.There is a painful side to statistical and economic study. The penalty of being able to read what is written between the lines and the columns of the figures is the conclusion that after we have all done the best work that the present conditions of science will permit, the entire product barely suffices to keep mankind in existence; his fixed capital, so-called, is at the mercy both of time and of the inventor who substitutes better methods which at less cost of effort or labor yield more abundance to the community as a whole. But on the other hand, no matter how hard the struggle for existence may be, we find the promise of future abundance even in the insufficient product which has been derived from the application of science and invention up to date. Witness the relative progress of the last century as compared with all the previous centuries; then attempt to conceive what will be the condition of humanity a century hence, knowing, as we do, that the applications of science through mental energy now proceed in geometric progression, reversing the dogma of Malthus and leading to the concept of production unlimited, consumption limited.If it be true that there is no conceivable limit to the power of mind over matter or to the number of conversions of force that can be developed, providing in increasing measure for the wants of the human body, it follows that pauperism is due to poverty of mental energy, not of material resources.The next step in the development of this theory may be presented in this form:No man is paid by the measure in time or physical effort, for the work or labor that he performs.No man can claim payment in money or in kind on the ground that he has done a day’s work of a greater or less number of hours. In all civilized countries we are members one of another; rich or poor; whether we work with our hands or our heads, or both combined. Material existence is supported by conversion of one form of physical energy into another. Social energyis maintained by the exchange of one form of service for another. The measure of compensation is not the number of hours of labor put into the product or service.The standard by which services are measured is what the buyer is saved from doing, not what the seller does.Each of us might possibly be able to house, clothe and feed ourselves if we were cast upon an island possessing sufficient natural resources. If a hundred persons representing all the classes in society were wrecked upon such an island, each adult or each person above ten years old would probably find a way to house, feed and clothe himself. Why do we not house, feed and clothe ourselves, and why would not the hundred representatives of different classes wrecked on an island each do his own part of the work for himself only? Simply for the reason that men are either endowed from birth with different aptitudes, or different aptitudes are developed in their environment. Each one finds out that by delegating to another certain kinds of work he saves his own time and energy. Each one finds out what he can do for the next man, while the next man finds out what he can do for him.There is in every transaction of life an unconscious cerebration or estimate of the services rendered to us, saving each of us mental or manual energy, whenever we buy any product or service from another. That unconscious cerebration affects the minds or habits or acts of both parties in every purchase and sale. There may be errors in regard to the service itself. The ignorant man will buy quack medicines that he had better let alone, but what he pays under the false impression of benefit to himself is his measure of what he hopes to save; while the quack medicine vender, taking advantage of the ignorance of others, filches from them the means of subsistence, even of wealth, under the pretext of service. As time goes on, however, false measures of service are eliminated with increasing intelligence, and true benefits constitute more and more the vast proportion of the exchanges.The same ignorance which leads the masses of the people of every country to submit to military dictation, even in a bad cause, also leads to the wars of tariffs among nations by which prejudice and animosity are kept up. The false conception that in international commerce what one nation gains another must lose, is promoted by the advocates of protection, many of whom very honestly believe that through the exclusion of foreign goods domestic industry may be promoted, wholly ignoring the fact that arts and industries are developed by intelligence and not by legislation.The advocates of bounties and of special legislation also ignore the fact that in this country, where mental energy is more nearly free in its action than in any other, manufactures and the mechanic arts develop in due proportion according to the age and the natural resources of the territory or state, nine-tenths or more of the occupations whichare listed under these titles being free in the nature of things from any possibility of foreign competition through the import of a product of like kind.There may be nothing new in this essay, but until my own observation had led me to the conclusion that land, labor and capital were alike inert and incapable without the cöordinating power of mental energy, the doubt continued to exist in my mind which is often expressed about the possibility of economic science having any real existence or right to the title. Also, until my own observation led me to the conclusion that the cost of a man to the community is what he consumes, and not what he secures in the way of income, the correlation of wealth and welfare had not been satisfactorily reconciled. I think that a very large part of what is written under the title of political economy would be greatly modified, and perhaps never have been written, had these concepts been derived by the writers from experience, as they have been in my own observation.I have not much patience with abstract orà prioritheories, my own method being one of observation, then referring to the various authorities in order to find out whether my observations or their abstract theories have been shallow and superficial.Again, I find in the ideal of the continuous miracle of creation in which man is a factor the solution of many intellectual difficulties. In the face of such a perception of the methods of the universe, the larger part of the dogmas that have been put forth under the name of religion take their place with much of the historic rubbish which passes under the name of history. When it becomes plain that every man has his place in the progress of continuous creation, and is a factor in it; that nothing is constant but change; that there is no such thing as fixed capital; all the doubts and fears regarding the future of humanity vanish in the light of sure progress.What greater stimulus can there be than for every man each in his own way rendering service for service, his objective point being only the welfare of himself and his family, when he attains the conviction that by so much as his mental energy adds to the sum of the utilities by which mankind lives, so may that part which he consumes and which represents his cost to the community be fully justified, even though it is earned with more apparent ease and less physical exertion than are called for from his poorer neighbors.Incomplete as his studies were, I have always found in the ‘Harmonies’ of Frederic Bastiat the greatest encouragement and the greatest incentive to the work which I have undertaken under the name of political economy, leading more and more to the conviction that war and warfare, whatever influence they may have had in developing progress in the past, are now due to ignorance and greed; the war oftariffs due to selfishness and stupidity; and the contest of labor and capital due to the errors of the ignorant workman and the ignorant capitalist alike. All interests are harmonious. The evolution of science and invention will surely bring them together on the lines of righteousness, peace and material abundance.This essay has been condensed from a lecture prepared and given before a Clergymen’s Club some months ago. In it I tried to show the necessary connection of religion and life as developed by economic study, the law of mutual service being the rule by which commerce lives and moves and has its being. This lecture has since been read to several clubs of very different types of men, and from the great interest excited I am led to think there is something in it fit for the student of facts and figures to say.I may, therefore, venture to repeat the statement of two principles which are presented in this treatise, which I think have been seldom if ever fully developed in any of the standard works upon political economy. To my own mind these are basic principles which when applied may profoundly modify many of the concepts of students of economic science. I join in the view that the family is the unit of society, the home the center. The end of all production is consumption. Nothing is constant but change, and there is no such thing as fixed material capital of any long duration in the progress of time. The two principles which I have endeavored to enforce are as follows:First. The cost of each person or head of the family is what he and his immediate dependents consume. His income, whether measured in terms of money or in products, is, therefore, no measure of his cost; what he distributes in payment for service rendered being expended by those who receive it in procuring the commodities which constitute their cost to the community.Second. No person who is occupied or is in the employment or service of others is paid for what he does. His work may occupy long hours and may be applied to arduous manual labor, or it may be done in a short number of hours per day, with but little physical effort. Neither the hours nor the effort constitute any measure on which payment can be based. The measure of payment is fixed by the measure of the work saved to him who makes the payment, consciously or unconsciously estimated.These two precepts or principles, coupled with the theory that there is no conceivable limit to the power of mind over matter, or to the number of transformations of physical energy to which direction may be given in the material support of humanity, bring the visions of the Utopians within the scope of a law of progress in material welfare to which no limit can be put in time or space.

EPresented before the New York meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Accordingto the common conception, political economy is held to deal with material forces only; with land, labor and capital; with the production, distribution and consumption of the materials of human existence. These are food, clothing and shelter. It, therefore, bears the aspect of a purely material study of material forces. Yet no more purely metaphysical science exists, and there can be, in my view of the subject, no more ideal conceptions than those which are derived from the study of these purely material forces. Many of the errors commonly presented under the name of the ‘claims of labor’ have arisen from the limited and partial conception of the function of economic science.

We have become accustomed to deal with the so-called material forces of nature and with the physical work and labor of man under the general term of ‘Energy’. What man does by his own labor or physical energy is to convert the products of land and sea, of mine and forest, into new forms from which he derives shelter, food and clothing. In a material sense all that any one can get in or out of life, be he rich or poor, is what we call our board and clothing. Such being the fact, what a man consumes is his cost to the community; what he spends yields to others the means of buying the supplies for their own wants; their consumption is then their cost to the community.

The physical forces of nature are limited. The earth is endowed with a fixed quantity of materials that we call gaseous, liquid and solid. It receives a certain amount of heat from the sun which, for all practical purposes, may be considered a fixed quantity of energy, even if in eons it may be exhausted. The physical energy of man is devoted to the transformation of these physical forces under the law of conservation; he can neither add to nor diminish the quantity. He can transform solid into gas and gas into liquid. He can, according to common speech, consume some of these products, but his consumption is only another transformation. His own body is but one of the forms of physical energy on the way toward another form. These elements of nature, formerly limited to earth, air and water, are now listed under many titles of what are called elements; I believe over sixty that have not yet been differentiated, but all may yet be resolved into a unit of force.

You will observe that in our arithmetic we have ten numerals which can be divided into fractions. In our music we deal with seven notes and their variants. In our alphabet we have twenty-six letters. These factors correspond in some measure to what we call elements in nature. There is a limit to the number of combinations that can be made of the numerals and their fractions, to the notes of music and their variants, and of the letters of the alphabet; but in each case this limit is so remote as to be negligible, like the exhaustion of the heat of the sun. May we not deal with the elements of nature in the same way? Can any one prescribe a limit to their conversion and reconversion to the use of mankind? Is it not in these processes of conversion that we derive our subsistence?

We make nothing. All that we can do is to move something. We move the soil and we move the seed; nature gives the harvest. We direct the currents of falling water, of heat and of steam; nature imparts the force or energy to which man has only given a new direction. We are now imparting new directions to the force that we call electricity, and to what we call cold. What is the force from which we derive this power of transforming physical energy? May we not call it mental energy? Is not mental energy the factor in mankind by which he is differentiated from the beast? Does not man only accumulate experience, and is there any limit to the power of mind over matter?

If these points are well taken, mental energy is the fourth and paramount factor in providing for material existence, and the science of political economy, which deals with land, labor and capital, becomes a purely metaphysical science when we admit the force of mental energy into the combination.

We deal, as I have said, with sixty elements, so-called, more or less, but the unity of nature is the most important fact ever proved by science; the correlation of all forms of physical energy leading logically from the idea of manifold forces or gods to the unity of creation, necessarily ending in the conception of unity of a creator, or the one God. This modern development of mental science is but the Hebrew concept of the creation in a new form. The Hebrew race was the first one of the historic races with whom the unity of creation and the unity of the creator became an article of faith. I doubt not that it was in that concept and the power derived from it that the Hebrew intellect asserted its preëminence in the history of the world. According to that concept, to man is given “dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” By what force does man hold dominion unless it is through his mental energy and his capacity to accumulate experience?

All the industrial arts are antedated by the industries of animals. The tailor finds his prototype in the tailor bird; the mason in thewasp; the farmer in the agricultural ant; the bridge-builder in the spider; the weaver in the weaver bird; the creator of water power in the beaver, and so on. Yet no other animal except man has developed or extended any of these arts. No other animal except man has learned to make and use fire and not to run away from it.

If, then, man by his power of mental energy converts the original and crude forces with which the earth is endowed into new forms, and by giving them new direction increases his power of production of the means of his own subsistence and enjoyment of life,does it not follow that creation is a continuous procession in which man is a factor? “There is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them as we may.” The ideal of ‘an honest God the noblest concept of man’ becomes the converse of an honest man the noblest work of God—honest in a broad sense in his dealings with the forces of nature; true to his function.

There is a painful side to statistical and economic study. The penalty of being able to read what is written between the lines and the columns of the figures is the conclusion that after we have all done the best work that the present conditions of science will permit, the entire product barely suffices to keep mankind in existence; his fixed capital, so-called, is at the mercy both of time and of the inventor who substitutes better methods which at less cost of effort or labor yield more abundance to the community as a whole. But on the other hand, no matter how hard the struggle for existence may be, we find the promise of future abundance even in the insufficient product which has been derived from the application of science and invention up to date. Witness the relative progress of the last century as compared with all the previous centuries; then attempt to conceive what will be the condition of humanity a century hence, knowing, as we do, that the applications of science through mental energy now proceed in geometric progression, reversing the dogma of Malthus and leading to the concept of production unlimited, consumption limited.

If it be true that there is no conceivable limit to the power of mind over matter or to the number of conversions of force that can be developed, providing in increasing measure for the wants of the human body, it follows that pauperism is due to poverty of mental energy, not of material resources.

The next step in the development of this theory may be presented in this form:No man is paid by the measure in time or physical effort, for the work or labor that he performs.No man can claim payment in money or in kind on the ground that he has done a day’s work of a greater or less number of hours. In all civilized countries we are members one of another; rich or poor; whether we work with our hands or our heads, or both combined. Material existence is supported by conversion of one form of physical energy into another. Social energyis maintained by the exchange of one form of service for another. The measure of compensation is not the number of hours of labor put into the product or service.The standard by which services are measured is what the buyer is saved from doing, not what the seller does.Each of us might possibly be able to house, clothe and feed ourselves if we were cast upon an island possessing sufficient natural resources. If a hundred persons representing all the classes in society were wrecked upon such an island, each adult or each person above ten years old would probably find a way to house, feed and clothe himself. Why do we not house, feed and clothe ourselves, and why would not the hundred representatives of different classes wrecked on an island each do his own part of the work for himself only? Simply for the reason that men are either endowed from birth with different aptitudes, or different aptitudes are developed in their environment. Each one finds out that by delegating to another certain kinds of work he saves his own time and energy. Each one finds out what he can do for the next man, while the next man finds out what he can do for him.

There is in every transaction of life an unconscious cerebration or estimate of the services rendered to us, saving each of us mental or manual energy, whenever we buy any product or service from another. That unconscious cerebration affects the minds or habits or acts of both parties in every purchase and sale. There may be errors in regard to the service itself. The ignorant man will buy quack medicines that he had better let alone, but what he pays under the false impression of benefit to himself is his measure of what he hopes to save; while the quack medicine vender, taking advantage of the ignorance of others, filches from them the means of subsistence, even of wealth, under the pretext of service. As time goes on, however, false measures of service are eliminated with increasing intelligence, and true benefits constitute more and more the vast proportion of the exchanges.

The same ignorance which leads the masses of the people of every country to submit to military dictation, even in a bad cause, also leads to the wars of tariffs among nations by which prejudice and animosity are kept up. The false conception that in international commerce what one nation gains another must lose, is promoted by the advocates of protection, many of whom very honestly believe that through the exclusion of foreign goods domestic industry may be promoted, wholly ignoring the fact that arts and industries are developed by intelligence and not by legislation.

The advocates of bounties and of special legislation also ignore the fact that in this country, where mental energy is more nearly free in its action than in any other, manufactures and the mechanic arts develop in due proportion according to the age and the natural resources of the territory or state, nine-tenths or more of the occupations whichare listed under these titles being free in the nature of things from any possibility of foreign competition through the import of a product of like kind.

There may be nothing new in this essay, but until my own observation had led me to the conclusion that land, labor and capital were alike inert and incapable without the cöordinating power of mental energy, the doubt continued to exist in my mind which is often expressed about the possibility of economic science having any real existence or right to the title. Also, until my own observation led me to the conclusion that the cost of a man to the community is what he consumes, and not what he secures in the way of income, the correlation of wealth and welfare had not been satisfactorily reconciled. I think that a very large part of what is written under the title of political economy would be greatly modified, and perhaps never have been written, had these concepts been derived by the writers from experience, as they have been in my own observation.

I have not much patience with abstract orà prioritheories, my own method being one of observation, then referring to the various authorities in order to find out whether my observations or their abstract theories have been shallow and superficial.

Again, I find in the ideal of the continuous miracle of creation in which man is a factor the solution of many intellectual difficulties. In the face of such a perception of the methods of the universe, the larger part of the dogmas that have been put forth under the name of religion take their place with much of the historic rubbish which passes under the name of history. When it becomes plain that every man has his place in the progress of continuous creation, and is a factor in it; that nothing is constant but change; that there is no such thing as fixed capital; all the doubts and fears regarding the future of humanity vanish in the light of sure progress.

What greater stimulus can there be than for every man each in his own way rendering service for service, his objective point being only the welfare of himself and his family, when he attains the conviction that by so much as his mental energy adds to the sum of the utilities by which mankind lives, so may that part which he consumes and which represents his cost to the community be fully justified, even though it is earned with more apparent ease and less physical exertion than are called for from his poorer neighbors.

Incomplete as his studies were, I have always found in the ‘Harmonies’ of Frederic Bastiat the greatest encouragement and the greatest incentive to the work which I have undertaken under the name of political economy, leading more and more to the conviction that war and warfare, whatever influence they may have had in developing progress in the past, are now due to ignorance and greed; the war oftariffs due to selfishness and stupidity; and the contest of labor and capital due to the errors of the ignorant workman and the ignorant capitalist alike. All interests are harmonious. The evolution of science and invention will surely bring them together on the lines of righteousness, peace and material abundance.

This essay has been condensed from a lecture prepared and given before a Clergymen’s Club some months ago. In it I tried to show the necessary connection of religion and life as developed by economic study, the law of mutual service being the rule by which commerce lives and moves and has its being. This lecture has since been read to several clubs of very different types of men, and from the great interest excited I am led to think there is something in it fit for the student of facts and figures to say.

I may, therefore, venture to repeat the statement of two principles which are presented in this treatise, which I think have been seldom if ever fully developed in any of the standard works upon political economy. To my own mind these are basic principles which when applied may profoundly modify many of the concepts of students of economic science. I join in the view that the family is the unit of society, the home the center. The end of all production is consumption. Nothing is constant but change, and there is no such thing as fixed material capital of any long duration in the progress of time. The two principles which I have endeavored to enforce are as follows:

First. The cost of each person or head of the family is what he and his immediate dependents consume. His income, whether measured in terms of money or in products, is, therefore, no measure of his cost; what he distributes in payment for service rendered being expended by those who receive it in procuring the commodities which constitute their cost to the community.

Second. No person who is occupied or is in the employment or service of others is paid for what he does. His work may occupy long hours and may be applied to arduous manual labor, or it may be done in a short number of hours per day, with but little physical effort. Neither the hours nor the effort constitute any measure on which payment can be based. The measure of payment is fixed by the measure of the work saved to him who makes the payment, consciously or unconsciously estimated.

These two precepts or principles, coupled with the theory that there is no conceivable limit to the power of mind over matter, or to the number of transformations of physical energy to which direction may be given in the material support of humanity, bring the visions of the Utopians within the scope of a law of progress in material welfare to which no limit can be put in time or space.

Itis a curious fact that the ancient astronomers, notwithstanding the care with which they observed the heavens, never noticed that any of the stars changed in brightness. The earliest record of such an observation dates from 1596, when the periodical disappearance of Omicron Ceti was noticed. After this, nearly two centuries elapsed before another case of variability in a star was recorded. During the first half of the nineteenth century Argelander so systematized the study of variable stars as to make it a new branch of astronomy. In recent years it has become of capital interest and importance through the application of the spectroscope.

Students who are interested in the subject will find the most complete information attainable in the catalogues of variable stars, published from time to time by Chandler in the ‘Astronomical Journal.’ His third catalogue, which appeared in 1896, comprises more than 300 stars whose variability has been well established, while there is always a long list of ‘suspected variables’—whose cases are still to be tried. The number to be included in the established list is continually increasing at such a rate that it is impossible to state it with any approximation to exactness. The possibility of such a statement has been yet further curtailed by the recent discovery at the Harvard Observatory that certain clusters of stars contain an extraordinary proportion of variables. Altogether at the time of the latest publication, 509 such stars were found in twenty-three clusters. The total number of these objects in clusters, therefore, exceeds the number known in the rest of the sky. They will be described more fully in a subsequent chapter. For the present we are obliged to leave this rich field out of consideration and confine our study to the isolated variable stars which are found in every region of the heavens.

Variable stars are of several classes, which, however, run into each other by gradations so slight that a sharp separation cannot always be made between them. Yet there are distinguishing features, each of which marks so considerable a number of these stars as to show some radical difference in the causes on which the variations depend.

We have first to distinguish the two great classes of irregular and periodic stars. The irregular ones increase and diminish in so fitful a way that no law of their change can be laid down. To this class belongthe so-called ‘new stars’, which, at various periods in history, have blazed out in the heavens, and then in a few weeks or months have again faded away. It is a remarkable fact that no star of the latter class has ever been known to blaze out more than once. This fact distinguishes new stars from other irregularly variable ones.

Periodic stars are those which go through a regular cycle of changes in a definite interval of time, so that, after a certain number of days, sometimes of hours, the star returns to the same brightness. But even in the case of periodic stars, it is found that the period is more or less variable, and, in special cases, the amount of the variation is such that it cannot always be said whether we should call a star periodic or irregular.

The periodic stars show wide differences, both in the length of the period and in the character of the changes they undergo. In most cases they rapidly increase in brightness during a few days or weeks, and then slowly fade away, to go through the same changes again at the end of the period. In other cases they blaze up or fade out, from time to time, like the revolving light of a lighthouse. Some stars are distinguished more especially by their maximum, or period of greatest brightness, while others are more sharply marked by minima, or periods of least brightness. In some cases there are two unequal minima in the course of a period.

Chandler’s third catalogue of variable stars gives the periods of 280 of these objects, which seem to have been fairly well made out. A classification of these periods, as to their length, will be interesting. There are, of periods:

It will be seen from this that, leaving out the cases of very short period, the greater number of the periods fall between 300 and 400 days. From this value the number falls off in both directions. Only three periods exceed 500 days, and of these the longest is 610 days. We infer from this that there is something in the constitution of these stars, or in the causes on which their variation depends, which limits the period. This limitation establishes a well-marked distinction betweenthe periodic stars and the irregular variables to be hereafter described.

Returning to the upper end of the scale, the contrast between the great number of stars less than fifty days, and the small number between fifty and one hundred, seems to show that we have here a sharp line of distinction between stars of long and those of short period. But, when we examine the matter in detail, the statistics of the periods do not enable us to draw any such line. About eight periods are less than one day, and the number of this class known to us is continually increasing. About forty are between one and ten days, and from this point upwards they are scattered with a fair approach to equality up to a period of one hundred days. There is, however, a possible distinction, which we shall develop presently.

Fig. 1. The Law of Change in a Variable Star.

The law of change in a variable star is represented to the eye by a curve in the following way. We draw a straight horizontal lineA Xto represent the time. A series of equidistant points,a,b,c,d, etc., on this will represent moments of time. One of the spaces,a,b,c, etc., may represent an hour, a day, or a month, according to the rapidity of change. We takeato represent the initial moment, and erect an ordinateaa’, of such length as to represent the brightness of the star on some convenient scale at this moment. At the second moment,b, which may be an hour or a day later, we erect another ordinatebb’, representing the brightness at this moment. We continue this process as long as may be required. Then we draw a curve, represented by the dotted line, through the ends of all the ordinates. In the case of a periodic star it is only necessary to draw the curve through a single period, since its continuation will be a repetition of its form for any one period.

We readily see that if a star does not vary, all the ordinates will be of equal length, and the curve will be a horizontal straight line. Moreover, the curve will take this form through any portion of time during which the light of the star is constant.

There are three of the periodic stars plainly visible to the naked eye at maximum, of which the variations are so wide that they mayeasily be noticed by any one who looks for them at the right times, and knows how to find the stars. These stars are:

Omicron Ceti, called alsoMira Ceti.Beta Persei, or Algol.Beta Lyræ.

It happens that each of these stars exemplifies a certain type or law of variations.

Omicron Ceti.On August 13, 1596, David Fabricius noticed a star in the constellation Cetus, which was not found in any catalogue. Bayer, in his ‘Uranometria’, of which the first edition was published in 1601, marked the star Omicron, but said nothing about the fact that it was visible only at certain times. Fabricius observed the star from time to time, until 1609, but he does not appear to have fully and accurately recognized its periodicity. But so extraordinary an object could not fail to command the attention of astronomers, and the fact was soon established that the star appeared at intervals of about eleven months, gradually fading out of sight after a few weeks of visibility. Observations of more or less accuracy having been made for more than two centuries, the following facts respecting it have been brought to light:

Its variations are somewhat irregular. Sometimes, when at its brightest, it rises nearly or quite to the second magnitude. This was the case in October, 1898, when it was about as bright as Alpha Ceti. At other times its maximum brightness scarcely exceeds the fifth magnitude. No law has yet been discovered by which it can be predicted whether it shall attain one degree of brightness or another at maximum.

Its minima are also variable. Sometimes it sinks only to the eighth magnitude; at other times to the ninth or lower. In either case it is invisible to the naked eye.

As with other stars of this kind, it brightens up more rapidly than it fades away. It takes a few weeks from the time it becomes visible to reach its greatest brightness, whatever that may be. It generally retains this brightness for two or three weeks, then fades away, gradually at first, afterward more rapidly. The whole time of visibility will, therefore, be two or three months. Of course, it can be seen with a telescope at any time.

The period also is variable in a somewhat irregular way. If we calculate when the star ought to be at its greatest brightness on the supposition that the intervals between the maxima ought to be equal, we shall find that sometimes the maximum will be thirty or forty days early, and at other times thirty or forty days late. These early or late maxima follow each other year after year, with a certain amount of regularity as regards the progression, though no definable law can belaid down to govern them. Thus, during the period from 1782 to 1800 it was from thirteen to twenty-four days late. In 1812 it was thirty-nine days late. From 1845 to 1856 it was on the average about a month too early. Several recent maxima, notably those from 1895 to 1898, again occurred late. Formulæ have been constructed to show these changes, but there is no certainty that they express the actual law of the case. Indeed, the probability seems to be that there is no invariable law that we can discover to govern it.

Argelander fixed the length of the period at 331.9 days. More recently, Chandler fixed it at 331.6 days. It would seem, therefore, to have been somewhat shorter in recent times. It was at its maximum toward the end of October, 1898. We may, therefore, expect that future maxima will occur in July, 1901; June, 1902; May, 1903; April, 1904, and so on, about a month earlier each year. During the few years following 1903 the maxima will probably not be visible, owing to the star being near conjunction with the sun at the times of their occurrence. The most plausible view seems to be that changes of a periodic character, involving the eruption of heated matter from the interior, of the body to its surface, followed by the cooling of this matter by radiation, are going on in the star.

The starAlgol, orBeta Persei, as it is commonly called in astronomical language, may, in northern latitudes, be seen on almost any night of the year. In the early summer we should probably see it only after midnight, in the northeast. In late winter it would be seen in the northwest. From August until January one can find it at some time in the evening by becoming acquainted with the constellations. It is nearly of the second magnitude. One might look at it a score of times without seeing that it varied in brilliancy. But at certain stated intervals, somewhat less than three days, it fades away to nearly the fourth magnitude for a few hours, and then slowly recovers its light. This fact was first discovered by Goodrick in 1783, since which time the variations have been carefully followed. The law of variation thus defined is expressed by a curve of the following form:

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