CORRESPONDENCE. AMHERST COLLEGE AND EVOLUTION. Messrs. Editors. A FTER the publication of President Seelye's peculiar statement with respect to the teaching at Amherst College regarding the law of evolution, feeling a graduate's interest in the matter, I made careful inquiry, and find that, at a meeting of the faculty held a few years ago, the present Professor of Geology was requested by President Stearns to deliver a course of lectures on evolution, and the faculty, without any audible dissent, seconded the request. At the time, this Professor was known to believe in the evolution law. Since then, evolution has been taught in the department of zoology, the Professor or instructor giving such an exposition of the facts favoring and seeming to militate against the doctrine as would be suitable to students. By vote of the faculty, also, Dana's and Le Conte's text-books are used, both of which accept evolution, the second very positively. There is now established an instructorship in biology. Moreover, I learn that every professor in the scientific departments of study believes in the doctrine in question. The following language, with which one of the professors is credited, shows quite a different state of feeling in the institution from what President Seelve would lead us to believe: "Taking all the relations, as I judge them from my standpoint, it must be concluded that the truth lies somewhere within the lines of the evolution theories. Such unquestionably is the teaching of real science in nearly all places where it has both freedom and intelligence. As to its materialistic or atheistic tendencies, I regard it as having none whatever, except in the hollow brains of those wouldbe sages who talk most concerning that of which they know the least. The most important point is to find out the truth in nature, and teach that, regardless of all bearing it may have on any of our preconceived notions." Upon this state of facts, certainly very different from that which the ordinary reader would infer from President Seelye's statement (it is not entirely clear what he means), it may be concluded that Amherst College is working along abreast of the best thought of the time, notwithstanding the unfavorable reflection cast upon it by its President's remarks. There was a period when Amherst College had a reputation for its achievements in the field of science. Latterly, it has ceased to have much in that direction, chiefly because dominated by the influence of the teaching in its senior class-room, under the name of mental and moral science, of a collection of bizarre doctrines, expressed in words which have no corresponding thoughts, wholly unscientific and without any philosophical substance or consistency. Since President Seelye thinks he believes in these doctrines, it is hardly to be expected that he could apprehend the truth of statements which express laws of nature scientifically ascertained and verified. The only way in which he could be made to see such truth would be for him to follow the course found necessary by some of his graduates, namely, to unlearn everything taught at Amherst as philosophy, before attempting to take a step forward in the path of true philosophical knowledge. Of course, to the world of scholars at large, President Seelye's strictures, if they were meant to have application broadly to the doctrine of evolution, will not have the slightest interest; but it ought not to be pleasant for those who have any especial regard for the college to see its president putting forth, in an apparently ill-tempered fling, a statement characterizing unfairly a doctrine which a large portion of the scientific and philosophical world accepts as a natural law abundantly verified, and creating an impression, with respect to the college teaching, which does not seem to be true, and which, if it were true, would only bring discredit upon the institution. DANIEL G. THOMPSON. NEW YORK CITY, February 10, 1880. A CONSIDERATION OF SUICIDE. Messrs. Editors. THE article under this heading, in your April number, is an ingenious discussion of the subject, and one which also, considering the solemn matter of which it treats, we must suppose to be ingenuous, although through the entire argument runs the flaw of an erroneous definition. "What is suicide?" asks the writer, and answers, "The voluntary termination of one's own life." Perhaps we should be content with calling this definition imperfect. It has certainly led the writer into error, and to a distinction between egoistic and altruistic suicide, which has no foundation either in ethics or in the definitions of criminal law. There is no such thing as altruistic suicide. Suicide is characterized by the intention to take one's own life. A voluntary death charac terized by the intention to save life is certainly not suicide. To constitute suicide there must be criminal motive, just as in the case of any other crime. It must be felo de se; in its simplest statement, selfmurder. This, in fact, is the definition of Blackstone: "The act of designedly destroying one's own life committed by a person of years of discretion and of sound mind; self-murder." It must be distinguished, that is, from simple voluntary death, as murder is distinguished from simple homicide. There must be the intent to destroy life from a selfish or malign motive. The unjustifiable motive in the case of the suicide is the selfish desire to terminate life, and thus avoid some present or threatened evil, without regard to the evil or unhappiness inflicted on survivors. In the strongest case that can be put, that of an aged man who feels that he is a burden on his friends (or those who should be such), a pure and unselfish motive would incline him rather to inflict that burden on them than the far heavier burden and disgrace of a (to him) criminal and (to them) criminating death. into consideration in imposing punishments upon wrong-doers. He says: "There appears to be something of this sort in the custom that will hold a man blameless if he shoot and kill the midnight robber who is merely trying to effect an entrance into his house, but will not hold him guiltless if he take the same sort of vengeance on the robber after he has once entered the house and stolen the goods and escaped with them." This law is based upon a principle as far as possible from the idea of gratifying the injured party's sense of revenge. When a man awakes in the night-time and finds another man trying to get into his house, he is not obliged to ask him if he intends to steal or murder. The man within may be timid; he may apprehend great personal danger; he may have the impres sion that an attempt is being made to murder him. The law protects him in acting upon such apprehension. This is simply self-defense. There is no question of anger or revenge about it. Now, when the robber has made off with the goods, and all possible fear of personal violence has vanished, or can not possibly arise, it then becomes a question, merely, of the "prevention of crime." Society ignores all idea of carrying out the spirit of revenge that may fill the breast of the injured party For the rest-and to embrace under one head all Mr. Hopkins's illustrations of altruistic suicides, viz., heroes, martyrs, and en--in fact punishes him, if he attempts to gineers-the man who dies defending or maintaining a trust is in no sense a suicide. His death is made to him, by moral reasons, inevitable. do so himself, as a criminal. Clearly, whatever may have been the guiding principle of the ancient law-giver, our present legislators do not attempt to administer to personal resentment. The object and reasons for the existence of government have been inquired into, and a scientific basis is gradually building for the great modern structure to rest upon. The passions are found to be the most unsafe guides. Only a few rules of law, relating almost wholly to domestic relations, rest upon them. The consequence is, that these relations figure most disgustingly in the proceedings of courts. Yours respectfully, W. C. ALBRO, LL. B. POUGHKEEPSIE, NEW YORK, March 19, 1880. that nobody's rights are violated, as there are no rights in the case. Mr. Arnold's point of view in regard to copyright is quite his own. Here, as everywhere else, he is haunted by the spirit of "Philistinism." The undesirable practice of appropriating an author's works is a miserable piece of middleclass indelicacy. "The spirit of the American community and Government is the spirit, I suppose, of a middle-class society of our race, and this is not a spirit of delicacy. One could not say that in their public acts they showed in general a spirit of delicacy; certainly they have not shown that spirit in dealing with authors." is that the bread and butter are both stolen, and because theft is bad for those who lose their property, and worse for those who get it. A nation can not tolerate palpable dishonesty without vital injury to itself. One injustice leads to another, and demoralization spreads. Selfish advantages openly override correct principles, and then, worst of all, come the mental obliquity and confusion resulting from attempts to palliate and excuse injustice. If a flagrant wrong is long and widely practiced, there will always be plenty to rally for its defense-some dishonestly, from interested motives, and others with a senseless sincerity from innate crookedness, cloudiness, or eccentricity of mind. These crotchety, whimsical, and erratic intellects are found both at home and abroad, and they often prove capable of doing con-munity gets the sense in a higher desiderable mischief. Matthew Arnold affords the last example of this mental freakishness, in his article on the copyright question, in the March "Fortnightly Review." The article has excited a good deal of comment, and no little commendation, but it seems to us eminently unsatisfactory. We find no fault with the conclusion at which he arrives, which was intimated years ago, when he joined fifty other English authors in recommending the scheme of international copyright, which originated in this country, and which there has been much reason for thinking could be practically carried out. But, while Mr. Arnold's decision is sound, we think it would have been wise if he had withheld his reasons for it. They are not such as will bring other men to the same result. They are such as will carry other men to the opposite conclusion. So far as logic is concerned, Mr. Arnold takes substantially the same ground as that taken by Mr. J. M. Stoddart, the Philadelphia publisher, who is engaged in pirating the "Encyclopædia Britannica." They both agree Mr. Arnold pursues this thought more fully. He says: "The interests of English authors will never be safe in America until the community as a com gree than it has now for acting with delicacy. It is the sense of delicacy which has to be appealed to, not the sense of honesty. Englishmen are fond of making the American appropriation of their books a question of honesty ; they call the appropriation stealing; if an English author drops his handkerchief in Massachusetts they say the natives may not go off with it, but if he drops his poem they may. This style of talking is exaggerated and false; there is a breach of delicacy in reprinting the foreigner's poem without his consent, there is no breach of honesty. But a finely touched nature, in men or nations, will respect the sense of delicacy in itself, not less than the sense of honesty." Now, there can not be the slightest objection to this appeal to the sense of delicacy and honor in the effort to secure legal protection to the property of authors. It may be that there are those who would be moved by this consideration and no other; and if Mr. Arnold had been content to devote his paper to this view of the case, there would have been no reason to complain of him. But, instead of strengthening the case,, he shifts its ground in such a way as completely to surrender it. It was not at all necessary to his argument from "delicacy" that he should deny the bearing of moral considerations upon the question; but this he has done in a way that, so far as it has any influence at all, will strengthen the hands of the inveterate enemies of copyright. He intensifies the discords upon a subject which many seem bent upon befogging and distracting by all the arts of ingenious sophistry. He professes to be friendly to copyright, and then reasons his way to the destruction of all copyright by denying that there is any right or wrong in the matter. This reasoning is as follows: "Now, for me the matter is simplified by my believing that men, if they go into their own minds and deal quite freely with their own consciousness, will find that they have not any natural rights at all. And as it so happens with a difficult matter of dispute, so it happens here: the difficulty, the embarrassment, the need for drawing subtile distinctions and for devising subtile means of escape from them when the right of property is under discussion, arise from one's having first built up the idea of natural right as a wall to run one's head against. An author has no natural right to a property in his production. But then neither has he a natural right to anything whatever which he may produce or acquire. What is true is, that a man has a strong instinct making him seek to possess what he has produced or acquired, to have it at his disposal; that he finds pleasure in so having it, and finds profit. The instinct is natural and salutary, although it may be over-stimulated and indulged to excess. One of the first objects of men in combining themselves in society has been to afford to the individual, in his pursuit of this instinct, the sanction and assistance of the laws so far as may be consistent with the general advantage of the community. The author, like other people, seeks the pleasure and the profit of having at his own disposal what he produces. Literary production, wherever it is sound, is its own exceeding great reward; but that does not destroy or diminish the author's desire and claim to be allowed to have at his disposal, like other people, that which he produces, and to be free to turn it to account." Mr. Arnold here discredits as groundless and illusory that whole order of ethical conceptions which we have been wont to regard as fundamental in relation to human conduct. Whether he scouts all morality does not appear, but he denies it at least in one class of human actions. Though dealing with transactions between man and man which involve the ideas of "possession," "appropriation of property," "robbery," "criminality," "penalty," etc., he never refers to such things as "justice," "equity," "duty," "right,” and "wrong," or any principles of obligation. Though all men recognize these conceptions, though the government of society is founded upon them, and though men are fined, imprisoned, and strangled, accordingly as their actions fail to conform to these fundamental ideas, yet Mr. Arnold airily waives them all aside as irrelevant and impertinent in relation to the subject he is discussing. The reader will notice the wordy circuits by which he avoids all the moral elements of the inquiry. To get rid of any question of rights in this matter, he plucks up by the roots and casts to the winds all natural rights. To him who claims a right to life he virtually says: "Oh! no; you have an instinct to live, which is natural and salutary. You find pleasure in life, but it is its own exceeding great reward, and society graciously allows you to have it at your disposal; but you have no natural right in the matter." He maintains that a man has no right of property in his productions, except "so far as the law may choose in this way. It is a great phase of man's mental progress and is destined to increase in influence in an accelerat to create one for him." But is there no | Physical science is not to be put down right or wrong in the nature of things by which the law itself is to be shaped, and to which it is the object of all law to give effect? A man creates a working ratio. There is no doubt, furtherof value into which he has put his time, exertion, substance, and his very blood. Has he a right to the property he has produced against those who covet it? It shall be as the politicians vote, argues Mr. Arnold: "If the ayes have it, he has; if the noes have it, he has not." This is not creditable. Mr. Arnold should cultivate a more intimate communion with the "power that makes for righteousness." Much is made in this article of the difficulty of securing property in books. Government is, of course, a very imperfect agency, and only partially secures any of its objects. But all other difficulties are as mole-hills to mountains compared with that which Mr. Arnold lends his influence to increase and strengthen. SCIENCE NOT ATHEISTIC. We recommend those thoughtless theologians who think they are doing God service by arraying modern physical science against him and charging that it is atheistic, to read the article entitled "God and Nature," by the Lord Bishop of Carlisle. He utters a timely and much-needed rebuke to his careless brethren on this subject. We have been amazed at the fatuity of many divines in the course they have pursued upon this question. Their predecessors have been more wise, and have generally recognized that "the study of nature led up to nature's God"; but now, on the contrary, we are assured that the study of nature leads to the denial of God. What on earth our theological friends are to gain by spreading the belief that physical science is fundamentally irreligious by renouncing and subverting all conception of the Deity, we are at loss to understand. more, that its growth is an invasion of the domain illegitimately held by theology in the past, and threatens the ascendancy of theological systems and ideas. It is hardly to be expected that professed theologians can view this change with complacency, but that affords no excuse for getting into a passion with science, and striving to array religious prejudices against it. Our friends should not forget that the "modern science" upon which they expend their denunciations is a great body of accredited and impregnable truth, and that it is a somewhat serious matter to declare and reiterate the accusation that it is atheistic in its spirit and influence. How far is this from asserting that the demonstrative truth of nature is against the existence of God!-and if scientific men reply to the theologian, "Very well, you know best," where will rest the responsibility? The Bishop of Carlisle sees that this is a mistaken policy. He says, "It is not desirable that the reproach of atheism should be thrown about rashly "; and, what is more important, he points out that as commonly done it is not true. A very slight examination of the conditions of thought in scientific pursuit forbids the current theological conclusions. He draws a valid distinction between the legitimate, proper, and logical attitude of the scientific mind toward the conception of Deity and the atheistic state of mind; and he strives to mark this distinction by the introduction of a new term. He says: "It seems to me that we want a new word to express the fact that all physical science, properly so called, is compelled by its very nature to take no account of the being of God; as soon as it does this it trenches upon theology and ceases to be physical science. If |