Buchanan's Journal of Man, December 1887 Part 1

Buchanan's Journal of Man, December 1887.

by Various.

THE WORLD'S NEGLECTED OR FORGOTTEN LEADERS AND PIONEERS.

Leif Ericson, the long-forgotten Scandinavian discoverer of North America, nearly five hundred years before Columbus, has at last received American justice, and a statue in his honor has been erected, which was unveiled in Boston, on Commonwealth Avenue, before a distinguished a.s.semblage, on the 29th of October.

The history of the Scandinavian discovery and settlement was related on this occasion by Prof. E. Horsford, from whose address the following pa.s.sages are extracted:

"What is the great fact that is sustained by such an array of authority? It is this: that somewhere to the southwest of Greenland, at least a fortnight's sail, there were, for 300 years after the beginning of the 11th century, Norse colonies on the coast of America, with which colonies the home country maintained commercial intercourse. The country to which the merchant vessels sailed was Vinland.

"The fact next in importance that this history establishes is, that the first of the Northmen to set foot on the sh.o.r.es of Vinland was Leif Ericson. The story is a simple one, and most happily told by Prof. Mitch.e.l.l, who for forty years was connected with the coast survey of the United States in the lat.i.tudes which include the region between Hatteras and Cape Ann. Leif, says Prof. Mitch.e.l.l, never pa.s.sed to the south of the peninsula of Cape Cod. He was succeeded by Thorwald, Leif's brother. He came in Leif's ship in 1002 to Leif's headquarters in Ma.s.sachusetts Bay and pa.s.sed the winter. In the spring, he manned his ship and sailed eastward from Leif's house, and, unluckily running against a neck of land, broke the stem of the ship. He grounded the ship in high water at a place where the tide receded with the ebb to a great distance, and permitted the men to careen her in the intervals of the tide, to repair her.

When she was ready to sail again, the old stem or nose of the ship was set up in the sand. Thorwald remained a couple of years in the neighboring bay, examining sandy sh.o.r.es and islands, but not going around the point on or near which he had set up his ship's nose. In a battle with the Indians he was wounded and died, and was buried in Vinland, and his crew returned to Greenland. A few years later, Thorfinn and his wife, Gudrid, set out with a fleet of three ships and 160 persons, of whom seven were women, to go to Vinland, and in two days' sail beyond Markland they came to the ship's nose set upon the sh.o.r.e, and, keeping that upon the starboard, they sailed along a sandy sh.o.r.e, which they called Wunderstrandir, and also Furderstrandir. One of the captains, evidently satisfied that they were not in the region visited by Leif and Thorwald, turned his vessel to the north to find Vinland. Thorfinn and Gudrid went further south and trafficked, and gathered great wealth of furs and woods, and then returned to Greenland and Norway."

Prof. Horsford refers next to various geographic names on the New England coast which are of Scandinavian origin.

"What do all these names mean? They are certainly not Algonquin or Iroquois names. They are not names bestowed by the Plymouth or Ma.s.sachusetts Bay colonies. Of most of them is there any conceivable source other than the memories lingering among a people whose ancestors were familiar with them? Are they, for the most part, relics of names imposed by Northmen once residing here?

"I have told you something of the evidence that Leif Ericson was the first European to tread the great land southwest of Greenland. His ancestry was of the early Pilgrims, or Puritans, who, to escape oppression, emigrated, 50,000 of them in sixty years, from Norway to Iceland, as the early Pilgrims came to Plymouth. They established and maintained a republican form of government, which exists to this day, with nominal sovereignty in the King of Denmark, and the flag, like our own, bears an eagle in its fold. Toward the close of the 10th century a colony, of whom Leif's father and family were members, went out from Iceland to Greenland. In about 999, Leif, a lad at the time of his father's immigration, went to Norway, and King Olaf, impressed with his grand elements of character, gave him a commission to carry the Christianity to which, he had become a convert to Greenland. He set out at once, and, with his soul on fire with the grandeur of his message, within a year accomplished the conversion and baptism of the whole colony, including his father.

"To Leif a monument has been erected. In thus fulfilling the duty we owe to the first European navigator who trod our sh.o.r.es, we do no injustice to the mighty achievement of the Genoese discoverer under the flags of Ferdinand and Isabella, who, inspired by the idea of the rotundity of the earth, and with the certainty of reaching Asia by sailing westward sufficiently long, set out on a new and entirely distinct enterprise, having a daring and a conception and an intellectual train of research and deduction as its foundation quite his own. How welcome to Boston will be the proposition to set up in 1892, a fit statue to Columbus.

"We unveil to-day the statue in which Anne Whitney has expressed so vividly her conception of this leader, who, almost nine centuries ago, first trod our sh.o.r.es."

The statue, however, is purely fanciful, and gives no idea either of the personal appearance or costume of the great sailor, who has waited for this justice to his memory much longer than Bruno and many other heroes of human progress.

Columbus may have been original in his ideas, but it was the Northmen who led in exploration. It was they who changed the old flat-bottomed ships of the Roman Empire to the deep keels which made the exploration of the Atlantic ocean possible.

This act of justice has been prompted by the appreciative sentiments of the late Ole Bull, and the efforts of Miss Marie Brown, who has lectured on the subject. Miss Brown says that Columbus learned of the discovery of America at Rome, and also at Iceland, which he visited in 1477. Indeed, Columbus was not seeking the America of the Nors.e.m.e.n, but was sailing to find the Indies.

But now that historic justice is done, we realize that as Bryant expressed it of Truth, "the eternal years of G.o.d are hers," and she needs a good many centuries to recover her stolen sceptre. The triumph of truth follows battles in which there are many defeats that seem almost fatal. What is the loss of five centuries in geographic truth to the loss of a thousand years in astronomic science? It was for more than a thousand years that the heliocentric theory of the universe, developed by the genius of PYTHAGORAS, was ignored, denied, and forgotten, until the honest scholar, COPERNICUS, revived it by a mathematical demonstration, which he did not live long enough to see trampled on; for the great astronomer that next appeared, Tycho Brahe, denied it, and the Catholic Church attempted to suppress it in the person of Galileo, who is said to have been forced by imprisonment and torture to succ.u.mb to authority (the torture may not be positively known, but is believed with good reason). Even Luther joined in the theological warfare against science, saying, "I am now advised that a new astrologer is risen, who presumeth to prove that the earth moveth and goeth about, not the firmament, the sun and moon--not the stars--like as when one sitteth on a coach, or in a ship that is moved, thinketh he sitteth still and resteth, but the earth and trees do move and run themselves. Thus it goeth; we give ourselves up to our own foolish fancies and conceits. This fool (Copernicus) will turn the whole art of astronomy upside down; but the Scripture showeth and teacheth another lesson, when Joshua commandeth the sun to stand still, and not the earth."

The att.i.tude of Luther in this matter was the att.i.tude of the Church generally, in opposition to science, for it a.s.sumed its position in an age of dense ignorance, and claimed too much infallibility to admit of enlightenment. Nevertheless, the Church feels the spirit of the age and slowly moves. At the present time it is being _slowly_ permeated by the modern spirit of agnostic scepticism, which is another form of ignorance.

Mankind generally occupy the intrenched camp of ignorance within which they know all its walls embrace; outside of which they look upon all that exists with feelings of suspicion and hostility, and alas, this is as true of the educated as of the uneducated cla.s.ses. It was the French Academy that laughed at Harvey's discovery and at Fulton's plan of propelling steamboats, and even at Arago's suggestion of the electric telegraph, as the Royal Society laughed at Franklin's proposed lightning rods. It was Bonaparte who treated both Fulton and Dr. Gall with contempt. It was the medical Faculty that arrayed itself against the introduction of Peruvian bark, which they have since made their hobby; and it was the same Edinburgh Review which poured its ridicule upon Gall, that advised the public to put Thomas Gray in a straight-jacket for advocating the introduction of railroads. Equally great was the stupidity of the French. The first railroad was constructed in France fifty years ago. Emil Periere had to make the line at his own expense, and it took three years to obtain the consent of the authorities. Their leading statesman, Thiers, contended that railroads could be nothing more than toys. We remember that a committee of the New York Legislature was equally stupid, and endeavored to prove in their report that railways were entirely impracticable. English opposition was still more stupidly absurd. Both Lords and Commons in Parliament were entirely opposed. "The engineers and surveyors as they went about their work were molested by mobs.

George Stephenson was ridiculed and denounced as a maniac, and all those who supported him as lunatics and fools." "George Stephenson although bantered and wearied on all sides stood steadfastly by his project, in spite of the declarations that the smoke from the engine would kill the birds and destroy the cattle along the route, that the fields would be ruined, and people be driven mad by noise and excitement."

Nothing is better established in history than the hostility of colleges and the professional cla.s.ses to all great innovations. "Truly (says Dr. Stille in his Materia Medica) nearly every medicine has become a popular remedy before being adopted or even tried by physicians," and the famous author Dr. Pereira declares that "nux vomica is one of the few remedies the discovery of which is not the effect of mere chance."

The spirit of bigotry, in former times, jealously watched every innovation. Telescopes and microscopes were denounced as atheistic, winnowing machines were denounced in Scotland as impious, and even forks when first introduced were denounced by preachers as "an insult on Providence not to eat our meat with our fingers."

It is not strange that the last fifty years have sufficed to cover with a cloud of collegiate ignorance and bigotry the discoveries of the ill.u.s.trious Gall, for whom I am doing a similar service, to that of Copernicus for Pythagoras.

This is nothing unusual in the progress of Science. There was no brighter genius in physical science at the beginning of this century than Dr. Thomas Young, who died in 1829, whose discoveries fell into obscurity until they were revived by more recent investigation. He had that intuitive genius which is most rare among scientists.

He was a great thinker and discoverer, who knew how to utilize in philosophy discovered facts, and was not busy like many modern scientists in the monotonous repet.i.tion of experiments which had already been performed.

"At no period of his life was he fond of repeating experiments or even of originating new ones. He considered that however necessary to the advancement of science, they demanded a great sacrifice of time, and that when a fact was once established, time was better employed in considering the purposes to which it might be applied, or the principles which it might tend to elucidate."

He says, in his Bakerian lecture, "Nor is it absolutely necessary in this instance to produce a single new experiment; for of experiments there is already an ample store."

In a letter to his sister-in-law, Mrs. Earle, he says, "Acute suggestion was then, and indeed always, more in the line of my ambition than experimental ill.u.s.tration," and on another occasion, referring to the Wollaston fund for experimental inquiries, he said, "For my part, it is my pride and pleasure, as far as I am able, to supersede the necessity of experiments, and more especially of expensive ones." The famous Prof. Helmholtz said of Young:

"The theory of colors with all their marvellous and complicated relations, was a riddle which Goethe in vain attempted to solve, nor were we physicists and physiologists more successful. I include myself in the number, for I long toiled at the task without getting any nearer my object, until I at last discovered that a wonderfully simple solution had been discovered at the beginning of this century, and had been in print ever since for any one to read who chose. This solution was found and published by the same Thomas Young, who first showed the right method of arriving at the interpretation of Egyptian hieroglyphics."

"He was one of the most acute men who ever lived, but had the misfortune to be _too far in advance of his contemporaries_.

They looked on him with astonishment, but could not follow his bold speculations, and thus a ma.s.s of his most important thoughts remained buried and forgotten in the 'Transactions of the Royal Society,' until a later generation by slow degrees arrived at the re-discovery of his discoveries, and came to appreciate the force of his argument and the accuracy of his conclusions."

This half century of pa.s.sive resistance to science, in the case of Dr.

Young and Dr. Gall, is nothing unusual. It was 286 years from the day when Bruno, the eloquent philosopher, was burned at the stake by the Catholic Church, before a statue was prepared to honor his memory in Italy.

What was the reception of the ill.u.s.trious surgeon, physiologist, and physician, John Hunter? While he lived, "most of his contemporaries looked upon him as little better than an enthusiast and an innovator,"

according to his biographer; and when, in 1859, it was decided to inter his remains in Westminster Abbey, it was hard to find his body, which was at last discovered in a vault along with 2000 others piled upon it.

Harvey's discoveries were generally ignored during his life, and Meibomius of Lubeck rejected his discovery in a book published after Harvey's death.

When Newton's investigations of light and colors were first published, "A host of enemies appeared (says Playfair), each eager to obtain the unfortunate pre-eminence of being the first to attack conclusions which the unanimous voice of posterity was to confirm." Some, like Mariotte, professed to repeat his experiments, and succeeded in making a failure, which was published; like certain professors who at different times have undertaken to make unsuccessful experiments in mesmerism and spiritualism, and have always succeeded in making the failure they desired.

Voltaire remarks, and Playfair confirms it as a fact, "that though the author of the _Principia_ survived the publication of that great work nearly forty years, he had not at the time of his death, twenty followers out of England."

If educated bigotry could thus resist the mathematical demonstrations of Newton, and the physical demonstrations of Harvey, has human nature sufficiently advanced to induce us to expect much better results from the colleges of to-day--from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and the rest?

If such a change has occurred, I have not discovered it.

Neglect and opposition has ever been the lot of the original explorer of nature. Kepler, the greatest astronomical genius of his time, continually struggled with poverty, and earned a scanty subsistence by casting astrological nativities.

Eustachius, who in the 16th century discovered the Eustachian tube and the valves of the heart, was about 200 years in advance of his time, but was unable, from poverty, to publish his anatomical tables, which were published by Lancisi 140 years later, in 1714.

Not only in science do we find this stolid indifference or active hostility to new ideas, but in matters of the simplest character and most obvious utility. For example, this country is now enjoying the benefits of fish culture, but why did we not enjoy it a hundred years ago? The process was discovered by the Count De Goldstein in the last century, and was published by the Academy of Sciences, and also fully ill.u.s.trated by a German named Jacobi, who applied it to breeding trout and salmon. This seems to have been forgotten until in 1842 two obscure and illiterate fishermen rediscovered and practised this process. The French government was attracted by the success of these fisherman, Gehin and Remy, and thus the lost art was revived.

Even so simple an invention as the percussion cap, invented in 1807, was not introduced in the British army until after the lapse of thirty years.

The founder of the kindergarten system, Friedrich FROEBEL, is one of the benefactors of humanity. How narrowly did he escape from total failure and oblivion.

The "Reminiscences of Frederich Froebel," translated from the German of the late Mrs. Mary Mann, gives an interesting account of his life and labors, upon which the following notice is based:

"Froebel died in 1852, and it is possible that his system of education would have died with him--to be resurrected and reapplied by somebody else centuries later--only for a friend and interpreter who remained to give his teachings to the world.

This friend, disciple, and interpreter was Madame Von Marenholz.

His system of education had this peculiarity which made it different from any other plan of teaching ever given to the world--it was first grasped in its full significance by women.

They, sooner than men, saw its truth to nature, and its grand, far-reaching meaning, and became at once its enthusiastic disciples. But the German women are in a bondage almost unknown to their sisters of the other civilized races, therefore Froebel's reform progressed only slowly. Had his principles been given to the world in the midst of American or English women, they would most likely have been popularly known and adopted long ago.

"Froebel did not see any very magnificent practical results flow from the "new education" in his time. While he lived the ungrateful tribe of humanity abused, misrepresented, and laughed him to scorn, as it has done everybody who ever conferred any great and lasting benefit on it. A touching ill.u.s.tration of this is given in the anecdote narrating Frau Von Marenholz's first meeting with the founder of kindergartens. The anecdote begins the book, and it is the key-note of the sorrowful undertone throughout.

"In 1849 Frau Von Marenholz went to the baths of Liebenstein.

She happened to ask her landlady what was going on in the place, and in answer the landlady said that a few weeks before a man had settled down near the springs who danced and played with the village children, and was called by people "the old fool." A few days afterwards Madame Von M. was walking out, and met "the old fool." He was an old man, with long gray hair, who was marching a troop of village children two and two up a hill. He was teaching them a play, and was singing with them a song belonging to it. There was something about the gray-haired old man, as he played with the children, which brought tears into the eyes of both Madame Von M. and her companion. She watched him awhile, and said to her companion:

"'This man is called 'old fool' by these people. Perhaps he is one of those men who are ridiculed or stoned by contemporaries, and to whom future generations build monuments.'"