The Birmingham age-herald., 1903-04-14

From the New York Mail and Express.
 HAVE seen the increasing attention to
 the subject of great mems birthdays
 attributed in an English literary perl odical to the influence in some measure of Frederic Harrisons ideas"-as if Frederic Harrison were likely to De willing to appropriate to himself the ideas which belonged to his master, Auguste comte. It was a part of the ingenious system of the founder of Positivism to celebrate pretty much every day of the year as the peculiar day of some saint of humanity-keeping the old saints of the church, if they were good enough (Huxley's definition of Comteism as ca tholicism minus Christianity" will be re- membered), and, if these were not truly universal geniuses and benefactors, re- placing them with real saints like Soc rates, Marcus Aurelius, George Wash ington, John Brown, Claude Henri de Saint Simon-and Auguste Comte
 Comte's scheme about birthdays was most interesting. It was designed to equip future generations with the virtues, ready made, of all the great men and women who ever lived. by the simple means of necessarily celebrat'-~ those great people and contemplating their particular good nesses and services as often as their birthdays came around.
 In many ways Comte's social and re- of human nature. He inferred from the fondness of Catholic Europe for saints days a demand In all people which must be answered with systematic and pious attention to the anniversaries of great men. There is a great deal of piety en- tirely outslae of religion. This sensitive ness to the example or thrill over the genius of a great man, cropping out on the day which Is remembered as the most vital of all days to him, is piety, and Comte knew this-as Frederic Harrison knows it after him. It exists in Anglo Saxons as well as in Frenchmen-perhaps all the r'7~ marked now, as a new de- velopment, since the current Anglo-Saxon has ceased to hare any great use for the saints of the church.
 DSS"h" lhis instinctiVe natural piety, which is the main cause, perhaps. of the prevailing conscientiousness about birth days, l fancy there is in America A sec ond and lesser influence working. of A very curious nature. There seems to be certain relation between the rage for birthdays and the revival of popular in- terest in astrological "calculations." Here Ia annfhar which men of science and letters are pretty nearly ignorant of, as they are ig- norant of so many other not noisy but yet potent things in the life of the thor oughly common place lower middle grade of the American people There has been in recent years a great development of interest In this so-called science, just as there has been in spiritualism and men tai or divine" healing
 These things there can be few statistics about, and the men of science of course never reckon with anything which cannot be estimated and measured through sta tistics. Nevertheless it Is a matter of real scientific interest that American news papers of large circulation have "astrolo- gical departments, conducted by profess ional persons who "cast horoscopes for subscribers, and inform correspondents who send them the dates of their birth days what days and months in the near future are going to be propitious or un- propitious to them. Outside of the real believers in this science" of astrol- ogy there are great many people who deny any belief in it, but who neverthe- less fool with 1t a great deal, and get their horoscopes cast, in an apparent spirit of banter, which has in 1t a consid- erable mixture of credulity.
 With all such believers and half-believ- CTS, the moment of a great persons birth acquires a special interest. His personal power was due to his being born under Taurus. and his happiness, or unhappi- ness, in life was due to the position of