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THE POPULAR SCIEXCE MONTHLY 



is even tins the sinful occupation that 

 religious people often assume, for the 

 laws of Nature are the laws of God, and 

 no man can be more reverently occupied 

 than in investigating their operations. 

 The laws of God, we venture to think, 

 do not shrink from any thoroughness 

 of verification, and those who conceive 

 tlicmselves insulted by the application 

 of the balance or the spectroscope, ge- 

 ometry or arithmetic, to any of the phys- 

 ical operations of the world, must en- 

 tertain a very narrow and morbid view 

 of the divine government. It would 

 seem that the old religious prejudice 

 against the study of Nature, as a pro- 

 fane occupation of the human mind, in 

 contrast with the sacredness of theo- 

 logical studies, still survives, and that 

 the old conflict is yet very far from 

 having died out. If it be said that the 

 doctrine of answer to prayer, by imme- 

 diate and miraculous suspension of the 

 course of natural changes, has passed 

 away, and has been replaced by the doc- 

 trine that the answer comes through 

 the operation of natural laws, we re- 

 ply, that tlie proof of this position is 

 wanting. We hazard little in the as- 

 sertion that, if the question were sub- 

 mitted to the suffrage of Christendom, 

 those who hold to this interpretation 

 of prayer would not only be in a paltry 

 minority, but would be voted as infi- 

 dels and apostates from the faith. The 

 fact cannot be escaped that multitudes 

 of devout people still strenuously hold 

 to immediate divine intervention in the 

 course of natural things, in response to 

 human supplication. A periodical be- 

 fore US, representing the faith of half 

 the Christian world, says: "Suppose, 

 then, that a whole city full of peo- 

 ple should testify to the resurrection 

 of a dead man from the grave; would 

 we be justified in rejecting the tes- 

 timony on the sole ground of the 

 physical impossibility of the occurrence ? 

 . . . History abounds in instances of 

 the Sort, in recitals of sudden cures 

 witnessed by thousands, of conflagra- 



tions suddenly checked, of plagues dis- 

 appearing in a moment." That such 

 beliefs were universal in past times is 

 notorious; that they have been dissi- 

 pated from many minds is purely owing 

 to what is called the encroachment of 

 science. But the mass of people are 

 still very far from having so clear, and 

 settled, and strong a conviction of the 

 physical order of Nature, that they 

 will not lend a willing ear to the most 

 preposterous stories of its violation. 

 What is the lesson of the gross ghost- 

 ology of modern spiritualism, before 

 which even educated people will throw 

 up gravity, and all the laws of physics, 

 at the first puzzle of a juggling exhib- 

 itor, unless it be that the scientific doc- 

 trine of the government of the world 

 by inviolable law is yet far from be- 

 ing firmly rooted in the general mind. 

 Those who entertain such loose views 

 of the constitution of Nature will al- 

 most necessarily take to the super- 

 stitious side of religion, and resent all 

 attempts to submit their beliefs, even 

 where they involve physical effects, to 

 the test of science. 



LITERARY NOTICES. 



Thk Life and Growth of Language : ^n 

 Outline of Linguistic Science. By Wil- 

 liam DwiGHT Whitney. Pp. 326. New 

 York : Appletons (International Scien- 

 tific Series, Volume XVI.). Price, 1.50. 



Ever since the fifteenth century the 

 study of languages, particularly of Latin, 

 Greek, and Hebrew, has formed the basis 

 of a "liberal education;" and yet it was 

 not till our own day that such a thing as a 

 science of language was thought possible. 

 Generation after generation trod the beaten 

 path of grammar, loading the memory with 

 formulas of accidence and syntax, learning 

 by heart whole books of the " Iliad " and the 

 " ^neid ; " a few, and only a few, getting an 

 insight into the habits of thought of the 

 great poets, philosophers, orators, and his- 

 torians of antiquity. For the few the studj 

 of the classics was an inestimable benefit, 

 it undoubtedly did serve to broaden and lib- 



