74 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



to the full success of the experiment. To this end, special instruction 

 in methods of personal hygiene and the hygiene of the house will be 

 given to all, while the training of experts in public sanitation will be 

 provided for by the public. On account of his special acquaintance 

 with the principles of physiology and their hygienic applications, the 

 physician will naturally become the teacher of the people in these 

 matters, thus acting the part of a reformer in the best sense of that 

 much-abused word, since he is the true representative of modern sci- 

 ence as applied to the art of living in a manner alone worthy of human 

 beings. 



The moral training of children will make a part of the daily edu- 

 cation of all their faculties, by methods which conform, in a. general 

 way, with Froebel's system. Public instruction in practical methods 

 of moral training of children will also be provided for parents, who 

 may not themselves have experienced the advantages of such training, 

 and who may not fully realize that the foundations of the moral char- 

 acter, as of the physical health, are laid in early infancy and childhood. 



To the necromancer of old was attributed the power of subverting 

 the forces of Nature and setting her laws at defiance ; but modern 

 science has realized the pretensions of these charlatans, not by defying 

 but by investigating the laws of Nature, and she has not only read the 

 secrets of the stars in her magic mirror, but has penetrated to the hid- 

 den sources of human character ; and while recognizing the constrain- 

 ing influence of external conditions in human development, she also 

 discerns the power of human invention, human energy, and, above all, 

 human sympathy in modifying the environment, not only by subduing 

 the natural forces, but by directing and controlling social conditions. 

 Under the guiding star of science, human nature reacts upon Nature, 

 remolding her forms and redirecting her forces in accordance with its 

 own desires and needs. 



But the triumph of the scientific method is, as yet, far from com- 

 plete ; and not until a science of morals is as definitely recognized as 

 a science of eclipses, or of any physical jmenomenon whatever, can the 

 era of science be said to have more than begun. When she shall have 

 mastered the principles of morals, as she already has the principles of 

 physics, and when the science of morals, thus formulated, shall have 

 become an applied science, then real progress in morals will be assured, 

 and will be as much more rapid than it has hitherto been, as the ad- 

 vance in physical science in these modern times has surpassed the slow 

 growth of the pre-scientific era. 



The doctrine that morality is to a certain degree subordinate to the 

 physical status, though contrary to commonly received views, is evi- 

 dently true. The opium-inebriate is abnormally egoistic, unsympa- 

 thetic, untruthful, in short, immoral ; the alcohol-inebriate is morally 

 as well as physically weak and often cruel ; as it has been forcibly ex- 

 pressed, " Alcohol reduces its subject first to a child, then to a brute." 



