by the ancient Greeks for tuning purposes and for measuring the scale arithmetically. The monochord, as it travelled westwards during the middle ages, consisted of a long board, or narrow rectangular box, over which was stretched the single string; along the edge of the sound-board was drawn a line divided according to simple mathematical ratios to show all the intervals of the scale. A movable bridge was so contrived as to slide along over the string and stop it at will at any of the points marked. The vibrating length of string, being thus determined as on the guitar, lute, violin, &c., yielded a note of absolutely correct pitch on being twanged by fingers or plectrum. In order the better to seize the relation of various intervals, a second string tuned to the same note, but out of reach of the bridge, was sometimes added to give the fundamental. (K. S.)
MONOD, ADOLPHE (1802–1856), French Protestant divine,
was born on the 21st of January 1802, in Copenhagen, where
his father was pastor of the French church. He was educated
at Paris and Geneva, and began his life-work in 1825 as founder
and pastor of a Protestant church in Naples, whence he removed
in 1827 to Lyons. Here his evangelical preaching, and especially
a sermon on the duties of communicants (“Qui doit
communier”?), led to his deposition by the Catholic Minister of
education and religion. Instead of leaving Lyons he began
to preach in a hall and then in a chapel. In 1836 he took a
professorship in the theological college of Montauban, removing
in 1847 to Paris as preacher at the Oratoire. He died on the
6th of April, 1856. Monod was undoubtedly the foremost
Protestant preacher of 19th-century France. He published
three volumes of sermons in 1830, another, La Crédulité de
l’incrédule in 1844, and two more in 1855. Two further volumes
appeared after his death. His elder brother Frédéric (1794–1863),
who was influenced by Robert Haldane, was also a distinguished
French pastor, who with Count Gasparin founded the Union
of the Evangelical Churches of France; and Frédéric’s son
Théodore (b. 1836) followed in his footsteps.
MONOD, GABRIEL (1844–), French historian, was born at Havre on the 7th of March, 1844. Adolphe Monod (q.v.) was his uncle. Having studied at Havre, he went to Paris to complete his education, and whilst there lived with the family of De Pressensé. The influence of Edmond de Pressensé, a pastor and large-minded theologian, and of Madame de Pressensé, a woman of superior intellect and refined feeling, who devoted her life to educational works and charity, made a great impression on him. In 1865 he left the école normale supérieure, and went to Germany, where he studied at Göttingen and Berlin. The teaching of George Waitz definitely directed his studies towards the history of the middle ages. Returning to France in 1868 he was nominated by V. Duruy to give lectures on history, following the method used in German seminaries, at the école des hautes études. When the Franco-Prussian War broke out, Gabriel Monod, with his cousins, Alfred and Sarah Monod, organized an ambulance with which he followed the whole campaign, from Sedan to Mans. He wrote a small book of memoirs of this campaign, Allemands et français (1871), in which he spoke of the conquerors without bitterness; this attitude was all the more praiseworthy as his mother was an Alsatian, and he was unable to resign himself to the loss of Alsace and Lorraine. The war being over he returned to teaching. At this period of his life he wrote Grégoire de Tours et Marius d’Avenche (1872); Frédégaire, whose history, taken from original MSS., he published in 1885; a translation of a book of W. Junghans, Histoire critique des règnes de Childerich et de Chlodovech, with introduction and notes (1879); Études critiques sur les sources de l’histoire carolingienne (1898, 1st part only published); and Bibliographie de l’histoire de France (1888). He himself said that his pupils were his best books; he intended to teach them not so much new facts as the way to study, endeavouring to develop in them an idea of criticism and truth. They showed their gratitude by dedicating a book to him in 1896, Études d’histoire du moyen âge, and after his retirement in 1905 by having his features engraved on a slab (see À Gabriel Monod, en souvenir de son enseignement: école pratique des hautes études, 1868–1905, école normale supérieure, 1880–1904. May 26, 1907). In 1875 he founded the Revue Historique, which rapidly became a great authority on scientific education. Some of his articles in this and other periodicals have been put together in book form, Les Maîtres de l’histoire: Renan, Taine, Michelet (1894); Portraits et souvenirs (1897: on Hugo, Fustel de Coulanges, V. Duruy, &c.).
MONODELPHIA (i.e. “single uterus,”—in allusion to the fusion of at least the basal portions of this organ, and in contradistinction to their duality in the Didelphia, or Marsupialia), Cuvier’s name for the group which includes all the orders of mammals (See Mammalia) except the Marsupialia and Monotremata; other titles for this group being Placentalia and Eutheria. With the Monotremata (q.v.) this group has no near affinity; and while more nearly related to the Marsupialia (q.v.), in which an imperfect allantoic placenta is sometimes developed, it is broadly distinguished therefrom by the invariable presence of a functional placenta by the aid of which the foetus is nourished throughout the greater portion of intra-uterine life. Other distinctive features by which marsupials are separated from monodelphians or placentals will be found in the article last mentioned. (R. L.*)
MONOGENISTS, the term applied to those anthropologists
who claim that all mankind is descended from one original
stock (μόνος single, and γένος, race), and generally from a
single pair; while polygenists (πολύς, many) contend that
man has had many original ancestors. Of the older school
of scientific monogenists J. F. Blumenbach and J. C. Prichard
are eminent representatives, as is A. de Quatrefages of the more
modern. The great problem of the monogenist theory is to
explain by what course of variation races of man so different
have sprung from a single stock. In ancient times little difficulty
was felt in this, authorities such as Aristotle and Vitruvius
seeing in climate and circumstance the natural cause of racial
differences, the Ethiopian having been blackened by the tropical
sun, &c. Later and closer observations, however, have shown
such influences to be, at any rate, far slighter in amount and
slower in operation than was supposed. M. de Quatrefages
brings forward (Unité de l’espèce humaine, Paris, 1861, ch. 13)
his strongest arguments for the variability of races under change
of climate, &c. (action du milieu), instancing the asserted
alteration in complexion, constitution, and character of negroes
in America, and Englishmen in America and Australia. But
although the reality of some such modification is not disputed,
especially as to stature and constitution, its amount is not enough
to countervail the remarkable permanence of type displayed
by races ages after they have been transported to climates
extremely different from that of their former homes. Moreover,
physically different races, such as the Bushmen and the pure
negroid types in Africa, show no signs of approximation under
the influence of the same climate: on the other hand, the coast
tribes of Tierra del Fuego and forest tribes of tropical Brazil
continue to resemble each other, in spite of extreme differences of
climate and food. Darwin, than whom no naturalist could be
more competent to appraise the variation of a species, is moderate
in his estimation of the changes produced on races of man by
climate and mode of life within the range of history (Descent
of Man, pt. i. chs. 4 and 7). The slightness and slowness of
variation in human races having been acknowledged, a great
difficulty of the monogenist theory was seen to lie in the shortness
of the chronology with which it was formerly associated. Inasmuch
as several well-marked races of mankind, such as the
Egyptian, Phoenician and Ethiopian, were much the same
three or four thousand years ago as now, their variation from
a single stock in the course of any like period could hardly be
accounted for except by a miracle. This difficulty was escaped
by the polygenist theory (see Georges Pouchet, Plurality of
the Human Race, 1858, 2nd ed., 1864, Introd.). Two modern
views have, however, intervened which have tended to restore,
though under a new aspect, the doctrine of a single human
stock. One has been the recognition of the fact that man has
