Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, July 1899: Volume LV, No. 3, July 1899Various
Religion
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, July 1899: Volume LV, No. 3, July 1899
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
A few years ago an acquaintance of my own, himself an accomplished
psychologist, brought with him to Washington a young man, a native of
north Greenland, that he might take into his life the best substitute
for St. Marks at Venice that this country affords. While limited in
range, the results were as definite as one could wish, for two of the
most refined delights of our wonderful civilization--rum and
horses--were at once taken into the life of Eskimo Joe with all the
fresh enthusiasm of youth. In his boyish impetuosity he could not see
why a hired horse should not have the fleetness of Santa Claus's
reindeer and the endurance of wild dogs; and as few horses survived
the first lesson, the psychologist soon reconstructed the curriculum,
for Joe's progress in rum and oysters was most gratifying. You who
have attended my lectures in anthropology will remember that Nature
has bestowed on the Eskimos two endowments which are not elsewhere
found united, although they are exhibited separately in high
perfection by the anaconda and the camel. Joe was able to load himself
with food and drink like a pirate ship victualed for a long cruise,
and he became so proficient in three months that a two-year course
seemed unnecessary, so he was shipped off to Labrador at the first
opportunity, and was left there to carry St. Marks at Venice into the
homes of Greenland as best he might. It is clear that our
psychological reformer's plan is not new, but he says our curriculum
is some thousand years behind the times, and he asks, "Will somebody
one day have the wisdom to perceive that the education which sufficed
for the mediæval England of the Plantagenets is not absolutely adapted
to the America of the nineteenth century?" I myself know so little of
the curriculum of that day that this charge may, for all I know, be
well founded, and if so it were a grievous fault. For all I know the
dead-and-gone priests of the twelfth century may have read Homer in
the original Greek, and carried on their studies in trigonometry and
navigation with the aid of logarithms and the nautical almanac,
although it has come in my way to know something of their method of
teaching zoölogy, for my studies have led me to examine a text-book on
this subject, which was written early in the twelfth century for the
education of the young Queen Adelaide, who was married to Henry I of
England in 1121. The dedication is as follows:
"Philippi de Thann into the French language has translated the
Bestiary, a book of science, for the honor of a jewel, who is a very
handsome woman, Aliz is she named, a queen is she crowned, Queen she
is of England, may her soul never have trouble! In Hebrew in truth
Aliz means praise of God. I will compose a book, may God be with the
commencement!"
As a sample of the zoölogical curriculum of the twelfth century take
this chapter:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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