< Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 55.djvu
This page has been validated.

552

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

glories of his country and of the present epoch," Perhaps one of the most significant of recent testimonials of appreciation of the Synthetic Philosophy is the announcement of the publication of a complete translation of First Principles into Japanese by Mr. Fujii, who has devoted several years to the work. "Mr. Spencer's works," it is added, "have long had a great attraction for Japanese translators." Mr. Spencer is now engaged upon the second volume of the Biology.

It was formerly Mr. Spencer's custom to spend about nine months of the year in London and the three summer months in the country, but for several years past he has found the fogs and other gloomy winter conditions of the metropolis too trying. The confinement enforced upon him by increasing feebleness has, moreover, precluded his enjoyment of the social privileges, particularly of the Athenæum Club, which were one of the attractions that made a town residence tolerable. He therefore, at the beginning of 1898, took up his residence in Brighton, where he has a house looking upon the sea, and giving him the benefit of the flood of light which that place enjoys.

At present Mr. Spencer is able to give very little time to work, and being confined to the house most of the time, the routine of his daily life admits of little variety. His first business in the day is to hear the morning paper read; then he attends to his correspondence, and if well enough does a little work. If any matter is going through the press he will generally be seen with a proof close by. His afternoon is spent in such relaxation as is afforded by scanning the illustrated papers and magazines, listening to music, which must always be classical, or, if sufficiently well, a drive; and he retires at ten o'clock.

It is often asked, Miss Mary H. Kingsley says in her West African Studies, whether Christianity or Mohammedanism is to possess Africa—"as if the choice of Fate lay between these two religions alone. I do not think it is so, or at least it is not wise for a mere student to ignore the other thing in the affair, fetich, which is, as it were, a sea wherein all things suffer a sea change. For, remember, it is not Christianity alone that becomes tinged with fetich, or gets ingulfed and dominated by it. Islam, when it strikes the true heart of Africa, the great forest belt region, fares but little better, though it is more recent than Christianity, and though it is preached by men who know the make of the African mind."

President Charles W. Dabny, Jr., of the University of Tennessee, once said in an address that when in school, where the work was all done "at the point of the hickory, so to speak," the best teacher he had "was the kindly old neighborhood loafer," who roamed the woods with him, told him of the times of the wild flowers and the habits of the birds, and taught him to shoot the long rifle. He followed the "natural method, and showed a pupil how to do a thing by doing it."

This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.