spondent who is familiar with the whole civilized world, and who is instructed to write of matters as they are, and not as the editor thinks they should be. There are no sensations, no "scare heads" to increase the sale of copies; it wages war on no man or party because such man or party happens to disagree with the editor's private convictions, and it is regular in its size. With all these things, so contrary to the theory of the "great" daily, it prints all the news, so far as the present writer, who has served his apprenticeship on newspapers, can see. And yet this paper probably has a larger actual circulation than any journal in Chicago. Now if the people really went blanket-sheet sensationalism, why do they buy this paper? The answer is, they want it. Being given the opportunity to get news free from sensational and unclean trimmings, they grasp the opportunity, and the paper which gives it to them, with eagerness. We do not want sensational journals; we are only made to think that we do. There is no real demand for putridity in the form of printed sheets of large circulation. The herculean efforts made to keep up these large circulations are evidence of their instability, and the vast sums of money spent by the great" dailies in advertising themselves show that the demand for them is fictitious. These journals, in their vaulting ambition for greatness, have o'erleapt themselves and fallen into the ditch. There is a time in the future when the expenditure of money and the utterance of dogma will fail to keep up the circulations which constitute the sole value of these "great" dailies. When that time comes, and not until that time, will the public get what it really wants, and it will not secure such a prize until it begins to think that there is no real demand for sensational journals. THE IS HISTORY A SCIENCE? BY JOHN CLARK RIDPATH. HE phrase "Science of History" has entered into the philosophical language of the age. Whether such a phrase and the notions which it suggests are warranted in the present stage of inquiry is one of the profound questions which still remain unsolved at the end of a great and progressive century. James Anthony Froude, in one of his historical essays, referring to this question of a possible science of history, says: It is a dry subject; and there seems indeed something incongruous in the very connection of such words as Science and History. It is as if we were to talk of the color of sound or the longitude of the Rule of Three. Where it is so difficult to make out the truth on the commonest disputed fact in matters passing under our very eyes, how can we talk of a science in things long past, which come to us only through books? It often seems to me as if History is like a child's box of letters, with which we can spell any word we please. We have only to pick out such letters as we want, arrange them as we like, and say nothing about those which do not serve our purpose. On the other hand, the profound Buckle, who may be regarded as the first, after Bodin, to insist that the subjectmatter of human affairs may be treated as a theme in science, declares that history is the science of sciences; that philosophic history is the one great science which swallows up all the tributary streams of human knowledge, and that no other subject to which the intellect of man can be applied is so fit to be regarded as scientific in its nature. What, then, are we to believe? Is the history of mankind the science of sciences, as Buckle tells us? Or is it nothing more than a child's box of letters, out of which we can make any meaning we please, as Froude tells us? Is there or is there not such a thing as a Science of History? To my mind it appears clear that in answering such a question we must first define science. What is a science? A science is a systematic arrangement of the laws by which any group of facts or phenomena is governed. The term "law" used in the definition signifies no more than the observed order which the facts or phenomena hold constantly to one another. From this it is clear that we must have facts to begin with. Science begins with a fact; that is, with a thing, and not with nothing. It is folly to talk about the science of anything that is nothing. They must They must In order that there be a science, there must not only be facts, but the facts must be associated facts. be in sequence or correlation with each other. be bound together by some common principle. have a logical and a chronological relation. They must be of such sort as to yield to classification and arrangement into groups and categories; for without this quality of associa tion and relation, though the field of inquiry be piled with facts, even as the cañons of the Sierras are heaped with bowlders, there can be no science. If in the nature of things the facts stand apart, then the scientific principle cannot be established over them. If the facts be railroads, asteroids, and Mohammedans, we can have no science. If they be mountains, platinum, and wild-fowl, there can be no science. If they be ghosts, fortune-tellers, and dog-stars, there can be no science. The facts upon which science is built must be subject to classification under the laws of relationship, of causation, and of logical sequence. Otherwise there may be chaos and force, but no science. It is not enough that we have facts and a gathering of the facts in groups under the laws of logical association. There must also be an interpretation of the facts, else there is no science of them. This interpretation constitutes one of the essential principles of science. The old world was as full of facts as is the new world, but not as full of science. It was as an interpreter that the man of antiquity was so great a failure. Nature was as rich then as now; the seasons were as regular; the tides as endless; the constellations as inviting. But there was no interpreter. The interpretation of facts and phenomena out of the unknown into the known is the very substance of science. Science explains in terms of the known the thing that was before unknown. She discovers the law by which the things are bound together. She reveals the hidden relation which A bears to B. She gives us a clew by which to thread the chamber of the labyrinth. She puts into our hands the endless chain of causation, and teaches us to follow it link by link. Science uncovers the living principle of things; so that the facts around us which before seemed dead, inane, and chaotic, become quickened into a dramatic and beautiful life. Interpretation, however, is only one of several principles that enter into science. It is not enough that we have facts, that they be associated under the reign of law, that the vitalizing principle be discovered which binds them into a whole of symmetry and beauty, and that we interpret out of the unknown into the known the facts and the laws which govern them; for if here we stop, we have only the half of science, and that the poorer half. Science demands that we shall also be able to tell what will come to pass hereafter. Interpretation looks only at the present and the past. It is the office of interpretation to look around; to see and to record what is; to look behind and to see and record what has been. There the office of interpretation ends. She sees, If science stopped short with simple interpretation she would hardly be worthy of praise; but she also adds the gift of prophecy. Science understands the mysteries of the future. She reveals, at least in part, what is to be. Not satisfied with making plain the present and the past, she lifts the veil and reveals the secrets of the things to come. as if with prophetic eye, the facts of the universe, instinct with inherent forces, approximating and entering into union, or repelling and flying asunder. She sees collisions and catastrophes, the marriages and births and deaths of nature. She marks the waxing and waning moons of a thousand cycles. She sees the falling of next winter's snows, the coming of next year's Mayday, the blushing of next June's roses. She sees all the slow-shifting changes in the secular order of the world, until the final cataclysm, when, the floods of water having retired into the caverns below and cold having taken the throne of nature, the earth shall become a dead and icy clod in the silent orbit where once we travelled with our hopes and loves, Science is both an interpreter and a prophet. She lives in all three tenses: the past, the present, and the future. She reveals what has been, what is, and what is to be in the order of the natural world. The laws and processes which have prevailed among the phenomena of the past order furnish the unmistakable analogies by which the present is to be understood and the future revealed. If a given acid dissolved a given metal a year ago, we know that it will do the same to-day and to-morrow. This knowledge is science. If the positive end of a suspended magnetic needle turned poleward in the fifteenth century, it does so yet, and will do so in nineteen hundred. If the black powder discovered by Roger Bacon exploded by ignition in the laboratory of the philosopher, the same compound will explode to-day, and explode always. If the forest of fir gave place to a forest of oak in the prehistoric woods of Denmark, and the forest of oak to a forest of beech, the same metamorphosis will occur under like conditions to-day, and so on forever. It is the very nature and essence of science to discover not only what has been and is in the order and progress of the natural world, but also to discover by analogies and laws and tendencies and the uniformity of nature what is to be hereafter. This brief outline and these definitions and limitations may serve to show what science really is, and inferentially what it is not. The next question is whether under these definitions and limitations we may in the present state of man's knowledge properly apply the word science to any of the branches of human inquiry. No doubt we may do so. In not a few fields of investigation the inquiry has reached that stage at which we may fairly summarize the result as scientific. -- For instance, chemistry is a science. We have the facts in the elements of nature. The facts have been classified and arranged according to their peculiarities and tendencies. The laws of the facts have been established by demonstration and experiment. Induction faithfully performed has led up-to use Spencer's phraseology—from the heterogeneity of the facts to the homogeneity of the principle. The chemist has thus become the interpreter; he can explain in terms |