QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ON “COLLEGE GREEK COURSE IN ENGLISH,” “CHEMISTRY,” AND “HOW TO HELP THE POOR.”

BY A. M. MARTIN,
General Secretary C. L. S. C.

I.—TWENTY-FIVE QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ON “COLLEGE GREEK COURSE IN ENGLISH”—FROM PAGE 83 TO PAGE 187.

1. Q. Who is foremost among Greek philosophers? A. Socrates.

2. Q. Who is foremost of Greek philosophical writers? A. Plato.

3. Q. What four works have been the fruit, direct or indirect, of Plato’s “Republic?” A. Cicero’s “De Republica,” St. Augustine’s “City of God,” Sir Thomas More’s “Utopia,” and Bacon’s “New Atlantis.”

4. Q. In any just representation of Plato, who could not but be a very conspicuous figure? A. Socrates.

5. Q. In the first extract given from Plato’s “Republic,” what does the speaker, Glaucon, undertake to set forth for Socrates to overthrow? A. A notion which he avers to be current and accepted among men, that injustice is better policy than justice.

6. Q. From the discussion of the nature of justice and injustice, to what does Plato make a very unexpected passage? A. To that form of discussion which has given its name to the “Republic”—the ideal state.

7. Q. Who has recently made a scholarly and adequate translation of Plato’s entire works into English? A. Mr. Jowett.

8. Q. How is the so-styled “Platonic love” defined in the “Republic?” A. “A friend should use no other familiarity to his love than a father would use to his son, and this only for a virtuous end, and he must first have the other’s consent.”

9. Q. What was the “Socratic dÆmon” to which Plato alludes in his “Republic?” A. A benign and beneficent influence—a kind of divinity within him that governed the conduct of Socrates.

10. Q. How is the TimÆus of Plato described? A. As of all the writings of Plato the most obscure and most repulsive to modern readers, while the most influential of all over the ancient and mediÆval world.

11. Q. What are some of the other best known works of Plato? A. “The Laws,” the “Symposium,” the “PhÆdrus,” the “Gorgias,” and the “Parmenides.”

12. Q. What is the name of the dialogue in which Plato tells of the end of Socrates? A. The “PhÆdo.”

13. Q. What was the sentence of antiquity in regard to Plato? A. That Zeus, if he had spoken Greek, would have spoken it like Plato.

14. Q. Who was a distinguished pupil of Plato? A. Aristotle, and in influence on human thought he equaled and rivaled his master.

15. Q. How does our author state the difference between ancient tragedy and modern, in a single antithetical sentence? A. Modern tragedy presents real life idealized; ancient tragedy presents an ideal life realized.

16. Q. What did Greek tragedy have for its chief purpose? A. To teach.

17. Q. How were Greek tragedies represented? A. By daylight, in the open air, before assemblages that numbered their tens of thousands of spectators.

18. Q. What is said of the dress of the actors? A. The actors wore masks on their faces and buskins on their feet. Beside this they wore a kind of wig designed to make them look taller, and dressed with padding to make them look larger.

19. Q. Who were the three masters of Greek tragedy? A. Æschylus, Sophocles and Euripides.

20. Q. When and where was Æschylus born? A. In 525 B. C., in an Attic village near Athens.

21. Q. In the present volume, from what tragedy of Æschylus are selections presented? A. “Prometheus Bound.”

22. Q. Who was Prometheus? A. A mythical being of superhuman rank, who stole fire from heaven and brought it to men. For this offense against Zeus he was condemned to be chained alive to a rocky cliff in the Caucasus.

23. Q. What other great tragic poet was contemporary with Æschylus? A. Sophocles.

24. Q. From what masterpiece of Sophocles are the selections of the present volume made? A. “Œdipus Tyrannus, or Œdipus the King.”

25. Q. How is this tragedy considered by, perhaps, the majority of qualified critics? A. To be not only the best work of Sophocles, but the “bright, consummate flower” of all Greek tragedy.

II.—TWENTY-FIVE QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ON “CHEMISTRY”—FROM BEGINNING OF BOOK TO PAGE 84.

26. Q. Of what does chemistry treat? A. All kinds of material substances.

27. Q. What is said of the number of the various kinds of matter already existing on our earth? A. The number is so great that the various kinds have never been so much as counted, much less described, in any list or volume.

28. Q. Of what are all things known to chemists made up? A. A few simple substances, either existing alone or in richly various combinations.

29. Q. What are called chemical elements, and what compounds? A. The simplest substances when alone are called the chemical elements, or elementary substances; the things resulting when different elements are united are called compounds.

30. Q. What does the two-fold character of chemical study involve? A. First, the examination of elementary substances and their compounds. Second, a consideration of the many general and special laws and forces which determine the various possible combinations.

31. Q. How many elementary substances are there now generally recognized as such? A. Sixty-six.

32. Q. About how many of the elements possess names that are familiar to ordinary readers? A. About one sixth of them.

33. Q. Of what two elementary substances is it probable that three fourths of our globe is composed? A. Of oxygen one half, and of silicon one fourth.

34. Q. What general name is given to most of the elements? A. Metals.

35. Q. What symbol and what weight has each element? A. An atomic symbol and an atomic weight.

36. Q. How is an atom of each elementary substance designated? A. By a symbol, usually the initial letter of the native or Latin name of the substance.

37. Q. What are three properties an elementary substance accepted as a metal should possess? A. It must possess the property of existing in a solid condition; it should possess the metallic luster; and it should possess the power and tendency to readily form a chemical union with oxygen.

38. Q. What are called binary and what ternary compounds? A. Compounds having only two kinds of elements are called binaries. Compounds having three kinds of elements are called ternaries.

39. Q. What four binary compounds are given as examples? A. Hydric chloride, sulphur di-oxide, sulphur tri-oxide, and plumbic oxide.

40. Q. Under what two heads are the principal ternaries grouped? A. Acids and salts.

41. Q. What are the two principal ternary acids used by chemists? A. Nitric acid and sulphuric acid.

42. Q. What is meant by the term atom? A. It is that portion of any kind of matter that is to human beings indivisible in fact.

43. Q. With what invisible, occult power is each atom and each molecule endowed? A. A power called chemical affinity.

44. Q. What are three of the peculiarities of chemical affinity? A. Each kind of atom has its peculiar chemical affinities. Each atom has a certain equivalence or atom-fixing power. Chemical changes produce striking results.

45. Q. What is the most common way of producing hydrogen? A. By bringing together sulphuric acid and zinc.

46. Q. What are some of the properties of hydrogen as a gas? A. It is colorless, odorless, tasteless, and, bulk for bulk, it is the lightest substance known in nature.

47. Q. What is the most interesting chemical property of hydrogen? A. Its power to unite with oxygen.

48. Q. What is said of the uses to which hydrogen may be put? A. As an elementary gas it finds but few applications in the arts.

49. Q. For what standards is hydrogen used by chemists? A. As the standard of equivalence or atom-fixing power; the standard of atomic weight, and the standard of density for gases.

50. Q. What did the remarkable lightness of hydrogen early suggest? A. The fitness of that gas for the inflation of balloons.

III.—TWENTY-FIVE QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ON “HOW TO HELP THE POOR.”

51. Q. What is the aim of the book, “How to Help the Poor?” A. To give a few suggestions to visitors among the poor, and to lead all such visitors to attend the conferences which are now held weekly in almost every district of our large cities.

52. Q. What is one of the most direct commands in the Christian Scripture? A. “Give to him that asketh.”

53. Q. Why need there be no beggars in our American cities? A. Labor is wanted everywhere, especially educated labor; nowhere is the supply of the latter equal to the demand.

54. Q. What do the people crying continually “give to us” really need? A. A chance to learn how to work, and sufficient protection in the meantime from the evils of idleness, drunkenness and vice.

55. Q. What is “out-door relief?” A. It is the giving of money (or its equivalent) which is raised by taxing the people, if the applicants come under certain rules and laws.

56. Q. To what conclusion does Mr. Seth Low, of Brooklyn, N. Y., come in regard to “out-door relief?” A. That out-door relief, in the United States as elsewhere, tends inevitably and surely to increase pauperism.

57. Q. Of what three parts is the conference of a district composed? A. First, the district committee; second, the representatives of societies and officers; third, the visitors.

58. Q. How does one writer state that the disciplining of our immense poor population must be effected? A. By individual influence; and this power can change it from a mob of paupers and semi-paupers into a body of self-dependent workers.

59. Q. What does not, and what does visiting the poor mean? A. Visiting the poor does not mean entering the room of a person hitherto unknown to make a call. It means that we are invited to visit a miserable abode for the purpose, first, of discovering the cause of that misery.

60. Q. What does Dr. Tuckerman say of every child who is a beggar? A. Every child who is a beggar, almost without exception, will become a vagrant and probably a thief.

61. Q. What is the only just reason for taking children from their natural homes? A. To lift them out of moral poverty. Material poverty, alone, is not sufficient cause.

62. Q. What do the statistics of the Labor Bureau show in regard to homeless young women in Boston? A. That there are twenty thousand homeless young women in Boston whose wages average only four dollars per week.

63. Q. What is the first suggestion made for the better care of the aged? A. By patient study of each individual, and by ingenious experiment of one plan after another, some fit occupation can often be found which shall bring both happiness and profit.

64. Q. When does not private charity do its full part? A. While any other than almshouse cases are allowed to fall into the care of the city authorities.

65. Q. What does experience, as the opportunities for observation widen, induce the writer to believe? A. That every human being can do something if he has a chance, and is intended to fill some gap in the universal plan.

66. Q. What does Edward Denison say of the crime of begging? A. It does not consist in the mere solicitation of alms. The gist of the offense is the intention of preying upon society; and of this intent the asking alms is only evidence—not proof.

67. Q. What is the root of a very large proportion of the suffering of the poor in the cities of America? A. Drunkenness.

68. Q. What is one of the first duties of a visitor in entering a tenement house? A. To use his senses.

69. Q. What knowledge means physical salvation, and thus a better prospect for understanding the spiritual? A. How to make even the smallest home clean and attractive, and to get the largest return from every dollar earned.

70. Q. What is one of the earliest and most important topics which should engage the attention of the visitor? A. That of helping people to save.

71. Q. What drives people into solitude? A. Trouble of any kind, and especially any misfortune which has a tendency to lower a person in the social scale.

72. Q. What is said of many of the poor who most deeply need visitors? A. They are lonely persons, and the fact of finding a friend at last is encouragement to them and the beginning of better times.

73. Q. What is almost the only true help of the worldly sort which it is possible to give the poor? A. To teach them how to use even the small share of goods and talents intrusted to them.

74. Q. What truth has been made clear in regard to the expenditure of money and goods alone? A. That it does not alleviate poverty.

75. Q. What has experience taught differently from the assertions that certain evils can not be helped, and that we may as well let things alone? A. That evils can be helped, and to let things alone is to lend ourselves to wrong.