SCIENTIFIC TEMPERANCE. 351 



trate or to dwell upon as lie sees fit. No additional strength 

 comes from dilution or repetition. Still less do the gigantic rea- 

 sons why men should lead sober lives gain from association with 

 arguments based on doubtful observations or spurious interpre- 

 tations. In the sixty-seven pages of the other book I find about 

 sixty different ideas, many of these not relevant to the subject in 

 hand, the space being filled by repetition, quotation, and padding. 

 Apparently this was not the author's original plan. It was forced 

 upon him by the demands of the trade. A single collective para- 

 graph, for example, would have covered the known effects of alco- 

 hol on most of the tissues; for alcohol does not affect the bones 

 in one way, the muscles in another, and the stomach in a third. 

 It confuses the nerves and poisons the blood, and these influences 

 show themselves variously. The effects that concern us most are 

 not the changes of tissue, but the changes of life. 



Such a treatise as the New York law contemplates can not be 

 written by a scientific man. The inclusion of " scientific temper- 

 ance" in the course of study means the disappearance of scientific 

 physiology. " It is insisted," says the writer from whom I have 

 already quoted, " that in it shall be taught certain effects of alco- 

 hol on certain tissues and organs, when it is not known that such 

 effects occur, and when some of them are known not to thus occur. 

 Extravagant statements are demanded when only the most mod- 

 erate ones can be made. If alcohol and its effects are mentioned 

 at all, the true scientific spirit would demand that the whole truth 

 and that only be told. This can not be done to meet the approval 

 of the committee of censorship. These people demand this most 

 monstrous thing, that there shall be a law compelling a scientific 

 author in treating his subject to devote a certain prescribed 

 amount of his space in such and such a way. They demand a 

 large introduction of matter into the treatment of a subject that 

 is wholly irrelevant to it. Indeed, they have the effrontery to 

 demand of a scientific author in treating a certain scientific sub- 

 ject in the school courses that he shall introduce only so much of 

 the subject as shall bear on a certain reform that they are advo- 

 cating. Can even earnestness of purpose or the importance of 

 the reform be a shadow of an excuse for such a course ? " 



The primary purpose of science teaching is to give not virtue 

 but strength. The strong mind forms its own precepts of right 

 action. The weak mind fails, whatever its memorized precepts. 

 The methods favored by the advocates of scientific temperance 

 must always fail of their purpose. No impulse to virtue is less 

 effective than memorized statements of the evils of vice. Infor- 

 mation learned by heart is never vital, least of all that which is 

 given on doubtful authority, by methods not sanctioned by peda- 

 gogic experience. If such educational methods really led to tem- 



