12 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and these again to the eddying vapors which had been mingling and 

 parting in endless ways as they drifted over the Atlantic, he sees that 

 this single mouthful of water contains molecules which, a little time 

 ago, were dispersed over hundreds of square miles of ocean-swell 

 Similarly tracing back the history of each solid he has eaten, he finds 

 that his body is made up of elements which have lately come from all 

 parts of the Earth's surface. 



And what thus holds of the substance of the body, holds no less 

 of the influences, physical and moral, which modify its actions. You 

 break your tooth with a small pebble among the currants, because the 

 industrial organization in Zante is so imperfect. A derangement of 

 your digestion goes back for its cause to the bungling management in 

 a vineyard on the Rhine several years ago ; or to the dishonesty of 

 the merchants at Cette, where imitation wines are produced. Because 

 there happened a squabble between a consul and a king in Abyssinia, 

 an increased income-tax obliges you to abridge your autumn holiday ; 

 or, because slave-owners in North America try to extend the " peculiar 

 institution" farther west, there results here a party dissension which 

 perhaps entails on you loss of friends. If from these remote causes 

 you turn to causes at home, you find that your doings are controlled 

 by a plexus of influences too involved to be traced beyond their first 

 meshes. Your hours of business are predetermined by the general 

 habits of the community, which have been slowly established no one 

 knows how. Your meals have to be taken at intervals which do not 

 suit your health ; but under existing social arrangements you must 

 submit. Such intercourse with friends as you can get is at hours and 

 under regulations which everybody adopts, but for which nobody is 

 responsible ; and you have to yield to a ceremonial which substitutes 

 trouble for pleasure. Your opinions, political and religious, are ready 

 moulded for you; and, unless your individuality is very decided, your 

 social surroundings will prove too strong for it. Nay, even such an 

 insignificant event as the coming of age of grouse affects your goings 

 and comings throughout life. For has not the dissolution of Parlia- 

 ment direct reference to the 12th of August? and does not the disso- 

 lution end the London season ? and does not the London season de- 

 termine the times for business and l-elaxation, and so affect the making 

 of arrangements throughout the year ? If from coexisting influences 

 we turn to influences that have been working through past time, the 

 same general truth becomes still more conspicuous. Ask how it hap- 

 pens that men in England do no work every seventh day, and you have 

 to seek through thousands of past years to find the initial cause. Ask 

 why in England, and still more in Scotland, there is not only a cessa- 

 tion from work, which the creed interdicts, but also a cessation from 

 amusement, which it does not interdict ; and for an explanation you 

 must go back to successive waves of ascetic fanaticism in generations 

 long dead. And what thus holds of religious ideas and usages, holds 



