Billia, Michelangelo

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444 THE OPEN COURT.To this second essay I have added an appendix the chief aim of which isto give the sources at which may be found the original manuscripts writtenby Newton and Leibniz when they were discovering their respective calcu-luses. This has not been done hitherto and it is all the more necessary thatit should be done as modern authors, such as Moritz Cantor in his monu-mental Vorlesungen iiber Geschichte der Mathematik, neglect the fact thatany early manuscripts of Newton's on fluxions are extant or that some havebeen published—^by Rigaud, for example—and some still remain unpublished.In 1855 appeared Sir David Brewster's Memoirs of the Life, Writingsand Discoveries of Sir Isaac Nezvton, and De Morgan, in a critique of thiswork in the North British Reviezv, showed clearly that Sir David had falleninto hero-worship. Here the faults of Newton are pointed out with an un-wavering finger and the merits of Leibniz are recognized and his characterdefended against Brewster more at length than in De Morgan's biography ofNewton. This review is printed as the third of De Morgan's essays on New-ton. I have added two appendices to this third essay: the first is part of abiography of Leibniz which De Morgan wrote and which illustrates a lauda-tory reference to that great man in the third essay; the second is an extractfrom a later work of De Morgan's and deals with Newton's character andthe relation to it of the Royal Society down to De Morgan's own times.Numerous notes of either a bibliographical, explanatory or critical naturehave been added to all the essays but all that is not De Morgan's is put insquare brackets. Such notes have become necessary and it is hoped that thepresent ones will reply to all the calls of necessity and will make the book bothuseful and complete. Very little has to be criticized in De Morgan's historyor conclusions. Like everything he wrote, these essays of his are marked byscrupulous care, sanity of judgment and wide reading; and one hardly knowswhich to admire most—the breadth or the height of his mind.The frontispiece of De Morgan's Essays is from an engraving by E.Scriven of Vanderbank's portrait of Newton in the possession of the RoyalSociety of London. An engraving from this picture accompanied the originalof De Morgan's biographical sketch; but the present frontispiece is from amuch finer engraving prefixed to the biography of Newton in the first volumeof The Gallery of Portraits: tvith Memoirs, of 1833.THE PHILOSOPHY OF TAMERLANE.We have received from Prof. Michelangelo Billia of Pisa (formerly ofMilan) a pamphlet entitled Le ceneri di Lovanio e la Hlosoiia di Tamerlano("The Ashes of Louvain and Tamerlane's Philosophy"). It gives the textof a lecture delivered several times by Professor Billia in Milan and else-where. The spirit of the whole is characterized by the concluding pages whichread in English translation as follows:"Some barbarian has dared to compare Goethe to Dante, but what a gulfbetween them ! Marguerite is a caricature of Beatrice, or rather an abortion."Poor little German university professor" is the term Rosmini applied toMephistopheles. The redemption of Faust comes finally in the very last part(added as an afterthought) in the Lutheran fashion without either works orfaith. Although in the conception of Goethe Faust is supposed to be a Ger-man university professor he is nothing but an imbecile old man, a puppet inMISCELLANEOUS. 445the hands of the Evil One, and then finally (I might almost say in spite ofhimself) he is saved only because the patched-up work must needs end well—a spatial redemption, so to speak, crude and external. Faust is not trans-formed ; he goes up to heaven because the good angels simply must bringredemption to that poor Devil's devil. But the real devil is Goethe himself,the embodiment of German egotism and immorality. As he sacrificed "therestraint of art" in forced allusions and in sounds and words as hard andthankless as the Spezcreie in the song of the women at the sepulcher, so hesacrifices morality to the preconceived idea that the facts of history are justi-fied provided only that they serve to enhance the greatness of man, that is tosay, of the German ; and in this he anticipates Hegel and follows Spinoza.Baucis and Philemon, the two little old people around whom tradition hasthrown a halo, are burned alive in order to clear away the forest—and plantthe Krupp factory in its place."Compare this philosophy of history from the Frankfurter Zcitiing withthe first and second cantos of the Inferno and the thirtieth and thirty-firstcantos of the Purgatorio, and then tell me what German art and religion are!"The German by his own conduct puts himself beyond the pale of human-ity in wishing to impose on mankind his blighting domination, whence itnecessarily follows, as with the usurer, that he becomes subject by his verynature, since he has annihilated within himself the finer human elements."Who, if not the Prussian, has kept the Christians of the Orient infetters beneath the Ottoman ax? Thus would he bring about German in-dustry and expansion! Who is it that has kept the highway of nations inthe Hellespont closed for so many years and has obstructed all the av-enues of trade and commerce? Who has even made science—which is every-where universal and human—a harness of commercial domination in Europeby invading university chairs and the book market and scorning every sortof human worth which was not German? And this is almost worse thanpolitical oppression and the fury of war for it is the vice of the whole people;it is the fixed national purpose; it is the height of corruption by which thewhole nation is indeed dehumanized in its loftiest nature, the spiritual. Andwhen we were shuddering at the latest massacres in Armenia and at theother excesses of the Young Turks and felt that such infamy ought not tobe expected in our day, even from the Turks, we committed a grave error inoverlooking the explanation of this in the fact that the Turkish hordes re-ceived their instructions from Prussian officials."Belgium, then, has deserved well of the human race, of civilization itself,for by sacrificing herself for her sworn word she has delayed and to someextent frustrated the murderous attack of the enemy of the human race.Blessed are all the arms that are resisting and punishing him ; blessed arethe arms of commissioned men in the regular armies that are opposing theinvader and mowing him down ; blessed are the arms of the people who willmaintain the fixed purpose of laying him low in the ground he now so in-solently treads or will tread ; blessed are those who are sparing blood and re-fraining for the present, while preparing to vindicate Italian rights and todictate peace, a peace which may also be of the greatest benefit to the enemyhimself, for when his degenerate pride has been humiliated it will direct himto that regeneration and that grace by which a nature once human may berestored and transformed. May that day come; but for the present, in order446 THE OPEN COURT.to defend ourselves, in order to put an end to oppressions, in order to main-tain our existence, it is highly desirable, it is necessary, it is right, that we dis-regard the shock to our feelings and fix our attention on the apparent andindeed profound paradox that the German is not a human being; and this isnot alone due to his murderous arms, but also to the philosophy of Tamer-lane which for a century academic lackeys have been distilling in the serviceof the king of Prussia."STRIKES AND THE PUBLIC: THREE STAGES.The great and short-lived Chicago strike in the field of intramural trans-portation came unexpectedly, in spite of weeks of talk and futile negotiations.It came unexpectedly and as a shock, not because the people of the UnitedStates have not suffered from tie-ups of elevated and street railroads ; notbecause the paralysis, the losses, the hardships and inconveniences caused bysuch industrial conflicts have not been endured many times, but because theaverage man had somehow formed the flattering and comforting idea thatsuch things belonged to a closed era, and that in our own more enlightenedday they were practically impossible. Would either of the direct parties^the employees and the representatives of the capital invested in the publicutilities—dare to defy or even ignore the great "third party," the innocentpublic? Have we not had a moral awakening in this country? Have we nothad industrial investigations without number, commissions, new legislation,arbitration machinery, tremendous campaigns of education with referenceto the wastes and the criminal folly of labor wars, and the duty of promptand earnest resort to conciliation and arbitration? Why, then, neither capitalnor labor, at least in the field of public utilities, would venture to offend themoral sentiment and the common sense of the great public. Needless andcauseless strikes must therefore be regarded as impossible!The Chicago strike of over 14,000 motormen and conductors caught thecity and the public mentally unprepared ; for the strike talk had not been takenseriously. When the order to walk out was issued few outsiders actuallyknew what the trouble was about. The cheerful assumption that everythingwould end happily after more or less strategic jockeying and bargaining, hadrendered study and inquiry of the question altogether unnecessary.But the ugly and unpleasant fact shattered the public illusions. Herewas a great and needless strike ; here was deliberate disregard of the rightsand interests of the great public ; here was confusion worse confounded.Aldermen, members of the state legislature, official arbitrators, utility com-missioners, editors, civic reformers, were severally willing and anxious tohelp, but the calling of the strike found them bewildered and impotent. Theyhad to work in the darkIs there any lesson in the episode? There is. The developments ofthe short and sharp Chicago strike, when properly analyzed and interpreted,attested very considerable advance in social and public sentiment. The strikewas unfortunate—but it had new features, features that had not character-ized former strikes. The attitude of the public was changed ; the commentsof the average man as he ran—or walked—or pathetically tried to get intoa jammed "jitney bus"—were different from the old, conventional comment.

The Philosophy of Tamerlane.

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The Philosophy of Tamerlane.

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