the play of economic forces as distinguished from the actual historical outcome of the confused intermingling of these forces. It is their example which has naturalized exact thinking in the domain of social phenomena. The Ricardian doctrine of rent, the Malthusian doctrine of population, the theory of value, the law of the flow of metallic money from country to country-not only are these things solid landmarks in the midst of a tangled maze, confused and apparently without a plan, but the student who has attained to a thorough understanding of the economic discussion of these subjects is sure to feel a consciousness of the nature of sound thinking on the play of social forces which will be the strongest possible safeguard against the crude errors that so easily befog undisciplined minds.

But no amount of discipline seems to be sufficient warrant against crude thinking when human interests or preferences or prejudices are concerned. The history of the discussion by scientific men of the question of the mental equality of the sexes furnishes many singular examples of a ludicrous disregard of the rules of scientific inquiry. It seems hardly credible that for a long time high authorities were in the habit of regarding the whole question settled by the amazingly crude test of the absolute weight of the brain. Later the relative weights of the brain as compared with the height or the weight of the body were looked upon as fairer tests; it happened fortunately that one of these comparisons gives the advantage to men and the other to women, so that not much could be made of this comparison. But perhaps the most amusing incident in this little

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history pertains to the distribution of the brain matter between the front and the sides of the brain. The frontal regions had always been regarded as the seat of the loftiest functions of the intellect; and investigators found, as was very natural, that men's brains were decidedly more developed in these regions than women's. Now, more accurate investigations in recent years have shown the reverse of this to be true; but, to quote Mr. Havelock Ellis, 'while it has recently become clear that women have some frontal superiority over men, it has at the same time been for the first time clearly recognized that there is no real ground for assigning any specially exalted functions to the frontal lobes." Doesn't this sound remarkably like politics? The fact is, when it comes to our desires and prejudices it goes against the grain to say we don't know; and if we are unwilling to say that, we are not in the attitude of the scientific man, and we are not likely to do exact thinking.

But of all forms of bad thinking the worst is that which makes a parade of the language of science and undertakes to settle difficult problems relating to mankind by the use of phrases which are supposed to have a magical efficacy in untying all kinds of knots and exorcising all kinds of troublesome spirits. There are people who think that instead of solving a problem by the patient and honest exercise of common sense they can dispose of it in a moment by appealing to some grand generalization of science. The doctrine of evolution and the theorem of the conservation of energy are the two main feeders of this kind of pseudo-scientific discussion. A writer

in the last number of the Popular Science Monthly gravely informs us that women have lagged behind men in the process of evolution, they being still at that low stage in which dress is worn for ornament and not exclusively for utility. It does not occur to this writer, apparently, to consider that only a hundred years ago gentlemen wore embroidered waistcoats, silk stockings and silver buckles, and that it can hardly be the slow process of evolution which has transformed them in this short time into the highly unpicturesque beings they now are, whose aspirations after the beautiful find their extreme limit in a swallow-tail coat. A distinguished professor of political economy in a recent work has apparently fancied that he was adding something to his argument when he said that his opponents were "denying the most obvious application of the conservation of energy to economic forces," whereas in reality any one who understands the doctrine of the conservation of energy knows that it is absurd to apply it outside of the domain in which it has a definite meaning and bears in a precise manner upon masses and velocities. And in another passage we find this author actually making the ridiculous assertion that elections are not a source of energy, and therefore can not cause anything at all." I once had the pleasure of reviewing a book entitled Statique des Civilisations, by a graduate of the Ecole Polytechnique. The author had succeeded in solving the problem of the progress of civilization from region to region and from age to age. One would think this problem was a very complex one indeed, but our friend had succeeded in getting its solution into

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a single delightfully compact mathematical formula; the state of civilization at any time and place was proportional to the square of the cosine of the latitude multiplied by a certain power of the sine of the latitude! He had apparently never heard the story of the visitors to whom Mr. Babbage had exhibited and explained his wonderful calculating machine. "This is all extremely interesting," said one of the party when Mr. Babbage had finished, "but there is one thing I am not quite sure I understand. If you put the question in wrong, will the answer come out right?"

But it is time that this talk should be brought to a conclusion. After all there is little to be said in general terms, except that we should not be content to argue on politics or economics or social questions in a manner in which a business man would be ashamed to argue on his own business, a lawyer on law, a physician on medicine, or a chemist on chemistry. And among the intellectual benefits of a general nature which a young man should carry with him from a university, none ought to be more surely found, and none is more important, than his elevation above the reach of puerile arguments on the great questions of the day. His college discipline has helped him little if it has not taught him to discriminate between honest thinking and wordy generalities however brilliant. I trust that all the young men who go out today with the degree of this University will help to raise the level of thought on public matters, not by insisting on impossible standards of accuracy, for after all we must remember that the struggle of life is too rough and too rapid