ness and disgust from the present forms of avaricious strife, rivalry, and fraud. If the best of these could be gathered in one community, a better state of society could be organized.

Horace Greeley sympathized with such movements, and about forty years ago gave much space in the Tribune to the illustration of this subject. Although the co-operative principles of Fourier, then widely discussed, have not resulted in any great success in community life in the United States, it can also be said that experiments have not shown the doctrines of Fourier to be impracticable. The best thinkers have not lost their faith, and the example of M. Godin at Guise in France, with a population of 1,800 in the Social Palace enjoying the very Utopia of happy and prosperous co-operative life, is a splendid demonstration of what is possible, and a standing rebuke to the churches of civilized nations which have not even noticed this grand demonstration of the possibilities of humanity.

The grandest and most hopeful co-operative scheme yet proposed is that of Mr. Albert K. Owen, entitled the "Credit Foncier of Sinaloa," which has been established at the harbor of Topolobampo, in the state of Sinaloa, on the western coast of Mexico, where a large and liberal grant has been obtained from the Mexican government for the Credit Foncier Company, chartered by the state of Colorado, Mr. Owen being chairman of the Board of Directors. Its headquarters were at rooms 7 and 8, 32 Nassau Street, New York, and the members of the community are already gathered in considerable numbers at Topolobampo. The Credit Foncier of Jan. 11 reports over 4,800 persons enlisted for the colony, and over sixteen thousand shares of stock sold.

This is not a unitary community, in which the individuality of the members is lost, but a co-operative corporation, owning its lands as a society, and abolishing at once the primary evils of land monopoly and a false financial system. As stated by Mr. E. Howland, "the community is responsible for the health, usefulness, individuality, and security of each member, and at the same time each will feel secure in his social and individual rights in the existence of the collective ownership and management for public utilities and conveniences, instead of the disorganized chaos in which to-day we live."

A system of distribution will be adopted, doing away with the immense cost of trade as at present conducted. The laborer will be protected against misfortune by a system of insurance and a pension in old age. Employment and opportunity will be provided for all, and education provided for all children. It is upon this education that the ultimate success of the society must depend, for it is impossible to organize a perfect society of those whose characters have been moulded by the present antagonistic condition of society. All grand ideals must look to the future for their realization. That such realization may occur in the Sinaloa colony is indicated by the following quotation from the exposition of the Credit Foncier by Mr. Howland.

"As we shall have to, at least during this generation depend upon the colonization of persons who have been subject to the influences of society as it is, we would only say, that the new truths concerning moral education contained in The New Education' by Mr. J. R. Buchanan, have been carefully examined by the writer of this, and its most important lessons shall be applied in the organization of our schools; for the power of love can be unquestionably applied, not only as a cure for the evils produced inevitably by the system of competition, but also as a miraculous agent in aiding the progress of society to an inconceivably higher plane of human life."

A

The newspaper in exposition of the society entitled, "The Credit Foncier of Sinaloa," published at $1 a year, at Hammonton, New Jersey, will be issued hereafter at Topolobampo, Mexico. report descriptive of the site of the colony and the surrounding country (price six cents) and a map of the colony's site (price ten cents) may be obtained by addressing the editor, E. Howland, at Topolobampo, Mexico.

While the Journal is going through the press, the colonists are gathering in large numbers, and by our next issue we may have some account of the commencement of this noble enterprise.

Its founder, Mr. A. K. Owen, is a gentleman of great energy and enterprise, guided by noble principles, a skilful surveyor and engineer. About fourteen years ago he made extensive exploration in Mexico, especially on its Pacific Coast, discovered and reported Topolobampo Bay, and introduced the scheme of the Norfolk & Topolobampo Railroad, which he urged upon the attention of Congress, winning the approbation of committees, but finally defeated by the great railroad corporations. He took an active part in Mexican affairs, forming gigantic plans for the public welfare, by a syndicate at the head of which was Gen. Torbert, which were defeated by a shipwreck in which Gen. Torbert was lost, and himself narrowly escaped death. He then organized with the co-operation of Gen. Grant, Gen. Butler, and other distinguished men, the "Texas, Topolobampo & Pacific Railroad and Telegraph Company," and obtained a concession of 2,000 miles of railroad and a subsidy of $16,000,000. Hon. Wm. Windom was president, and Mr. Owen chief engineer. In 1873 he located a hundred miles of the road from Topolobampo eastwardly, and two years ago the construction commenced. Thus in the midst of a life of great activity and experience in engineering, finance, politics, reform, and travel, Mr. Owen, as a practical and skilful manager of great undertakings, inspired by a strong democratic philanthropy, has laid the plan of a co-operative colony on the basis of liberal concessions from the Mexican government, and opened a field in which his democratic ideas of human rights, of land, labor, finance, hygiene, freedom, and general reform, can have full scope.

Mr. Owen's ideas and plans are stated in a book of two hundred pages, published by Jno. W. Lovell, 14 Vesey Street, New York, and sent by mail for thirty cents. It is not a systematic treatise, but a

miscellaneous collection of documents which give a good deal of information.

The Topolobampo scheme is one requiring great skill and executive ability in the directors, as well as a harmonious and energetic spirit in the colonists. The, climate, soil, and opportunities are no doubt the best that have ever been accorded to a scheme of co-operation, and when its success has been realized, it may be accounted the most important social event of the century, for it will be the dawn of peace to a warring world, the promise of harmony between all the restless and convulsive elements of civilized society.

Health and Longevity.

UPON these subjects the JOURNAL OF MAN has a new physiological doctrine to present, which may be stated in the initial number, and will be illustrated hereafter.

In the volume of "Therapeutic Sarcognomy," which was so speedily and entirely sold upon its publication, it was clearly demonstrated that the doctrine of vitality taught at this time in all medical colleges is essentially erroneous, and that human life is not a mere aggregate of the properties of the tissues of the human body, as a house is an aggregate of the physical properties of bricks and wood, but is an influx, of which the body is but the channel and recipient.

That demonstration need not be repeated just now, as my object is merely to state the position of the JOURNAL. Life is an influx from the world of invisible power, aided by various forms of influx from the material world, without which it would promptly cease. If this naked statement should seem fanciful or erroneous to any reader, he may be just to himself by suspending his opinions until he shall have received the demonstration. We have all been educated into false opinions on this subject, and it is almost as difficult for the American scholar to release himself from the influence of education and habit in such matters, as for the Arab to release his mind from the influence of the Koran.

It has been only within the last ten years, and as the sequel of investigations of the seat of life beginning in 1835, that I succeeded in ascertaining the absolute falsity of the doctrines on this subject maintained by all scientific biologists at the present time, and demonstrating that the human body is only a tenement, of which life is the builder, and which drops into decay when life deserts it to meet its more congenial home in a nobler realm.

It is not therefore in the physical but in the spiritual constitution that the real basis of his character, his health, and longevity is to be found, for the primitive germ or protoplasm of man cannot be distinguished from that of a quadruped or bird. It is the invisible and incalculable life element that contains the potentiality or possibility of existence as a quadruped or a man, as a virtuous or

vicious, and as a long lived or short lived, being. The life element of the germ limits the destiny of the being. That life element is invisible.

This truth, however, does not contradict the truth of development and the capacity of science to estimate the probable health or longevity of an individual from his organization, for the life force organizes a body in accordance with its own character; and the development of the entire person shows the character of the vital force as modified by the environment of food, air, motives, and education. The brain, no less than the body,-indeed, more fully than the body, shows the elements of the life and the tendency to health and longevity, or the reverse, upon which an expert cranioscopist can give an opinion.

In accordance with the doctrine of influx and in accordance with the functions of the brain we are compelled to recognize health and longevity as more closely associated with the higher than the lower faculties, the moral rather than the animal nature. This is the reason that woman, with a feebler body but a stronger moral nature, ranks higher in health and longevity than man; and although from four to sixteen per cent more males are born, women are generally in predominance, often from two to six per cent. The researches of the Bureau of Statistics of Vienna show that about one third more women than men reach an advanced age. De Verga asserts that of sudden deaths there are about 100 women to 780 men. The inevitable inference is that the cultivation of virtue or religion is the surest road to longevity, and the indulgence in vice and crime the most certain ruin to the body and soul.

There is a curious illustration of these principles in the evidence of life insurance companies in reference to spirit drinking and abstinence. The oldest two life insurance companies of England, the General Provident and the United Kingdom, have made records for forty-five years which distinguish the total abstainers and the moderate drinkers. Drunkards they do not insure at all. The care with which lives are selected for insurance results in a smaller rate of mortality among the insured than in the entire population. This gain was but slight among those classed as moderate drinkers, for their mortality was only three per cent less than the average mortality; but among the total abstainers it was thirty-one per cent less. Thus the proportion of deaths among moderate drinkers compared to that of total abstainers is as 97 to 69.

men.

The temperance advocate would assume that this was owing entirely to the deleterious effects of alcohol, and that is partially true; but there is a deeper reason in the difference of the two classes of The man in whom the appetites are well controlled by the higher energies of his nature, and who has therefore no inclination to gluttony or drunkenness, has a better organization for health and longevity than he in whom the appetites have greater relative power, and who seeks the stimulus of alcohol to relieve his nervous depression. The inability or unwillingness to live without stimulation is a mark of weakness, which is an impairment of health; and this

weakness predisposes to excessive and irregular indulgence, though it may not go so far as intoxication.

The effects of marriage furnish a parallel illustration. It is wellknown that bachelors are more short lived than married men, but this is not owing entirely to the hygienic influence of marriage. It is partly owing to the inferiority of bachelors as a class. The men who remain celibate are either too inferior personally to win the regard of women, or are generally deficient in the strong affections which seek a conjugal life, and the energies which make them fearless of its responsibilities and burdens. Evidently they have not as a class the robust energies of the marrying men, and the urgent motives to compel them to regular industry and prudence. Everything which stimulates men to exercise the nobler qualities of their nature is promotive of health and longevity; and the true religion which anthropology commends will increase human longevity in proportion as it prevails.

In future numbers the true basis and indications of longevity in man will be fully illustrated.

The attainable limits of human longevity are generally underrated by the medical profession and by popular opinion. Instead of the Scriptural limit of threescore and ten I would estimate twice that amount, or 140 years, as the ideal age of healthy longevity, when mankind shall have been bred and trained with the same wise energy that has been expended on horses and cattle. Of the present scrub race, a very large number ought never to have been born, and ought not to be allowed to transmit their physical and moral deficiencies to posterity.

The estimate of 140 years as a practicable longevity for a nobler generation is sustained by the number of that age (fourteen, if I recollect rightly) found in Italy by a census under one of the later Roman emperors. But for the race now on the globe a more applicable estimate is that of the European scientist, that the normal longevity of an animal is five times its period of growth, - a rule which gives the camel forty years, the horse twenty-five, the lion twenty, the dog ten, the rabbit five. By this calculation man's twenty years of growth indicate 100. But growth is not limited to twenty, and if we extend the period of maturing to twenty-eight, the same rule would give us 140 as an age for the best specimens of humanity, which has been attained in rare cases, its general possibility in improved conditions being thus demonstrated.

There are many fine examples of longevity at this time. The famous French chemist Chevreul has just completed his hundredth year at Paris, in the full vigor of his intellect.

The Novosti, a Russian journal, recently mentions the death in the almshouse of St. Petersburg of a man aged 122 years, whose mental faculties were preserved up to his death, and who had excellent health to the age of 118.

We have similar examples in the United States. Mrs. Celia Monroe, a colored woman, who died a few weeks ago at Kansas City was believed to be 125. She was going about a few days before her death.