Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/535

Rh (attachment transferred to less inaccessible objects), and sometimes in religious fervor—yearning for a home which even an impecunious traveler may hope to reach. Pliny marvels "how greatly disappointed love inspires to deeds heroic"; yet heroism, in the ancient active sense, self-devotion to hard work and rough-and-tumble campaigns, is, in truth, the best cure for the ailments of sentimental sorrow. The mountain-mania of worn-out brain-workers, their passionate longing for the occupations of their nature-abiding ancestors—hunting, camping, and horticulture—are inspired by the instinctive desire to re-establish the structure of their organism on the basis of its original foundations, and recover, as an uprooted tree might revive in the mold of its native soil.

The purpose of such intuitions has rarely been fully recognized, and there is no doubt that the most useful contribution to the medical literature of this century would be a popular treatise on the Revelations of Instinct. The didactic significance of those revelations may even be destined to become the basis of a special science. That science would help the votaries of reform to atone for the grievous heresies of the past. It would make the healing art an ally of Nature: it would preserve us from manifold social and educational errors, by guiding progress along the lines of natural ordination. A science of instinct would be the commentary of a gospel which, in the language of man, has almost ceased to be its own interpreter.



INCE the year 1870, but more especially since 1874, the general war expenditure of Europe has increased enormously. This is partly a consequence of the Franco-German War which so greatly enhanced the military power of united Germany and led other nations to aim at a corresponding increase in their forces, and in part to the enormously increased cost of iron-clad ships, monster guns, torpedoes, and all the scientific appliances of modern warfare.

Up to the year 1875 our own army and navy had increased but little for many years, the total expenditure in 1874 being £24,604,000, which was somewhat less than that of 1864. But since the former date our outlay on the two services has risen greatly, and now amounts to £28,004,000, an increase of more than four millions. The number of men has increased from 189,000 in 1874 to 197,000 in 1884, exclusive of the Indian army.