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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



social connections, at once disgorged 

 more money. To one person she was 

 a great literary character ; to another, 

 of royal descent; to another she had 

 immense expectations ; to another, she 

 was a stern religionist." 



This woman must have heen as 

 smart as she was unscrupulous. Her 

 capacity of imposture was as marked 

 as the deficiency of moral sense; she 

 was as shrewd and long-headed as she 

 was knavish. The art of her conduct, 

 the consummate calculation, and the 

 skillful adaptation of means to ends in 

 dealing with others, implicate the whole 

 intellectual sphere of action which was 

 at the same time exempt from the con- 

 trol of conscience. Yet the force of mor- 

 al considerations was implied through- 

 out as she had to deal with people who 

 were influenced by them, and to give 

 good reasons for her various claims and 

 representations. It was a sufficiently 

 obvious case of cool criminal depravity, 

 and most people would have little diffi- 

 culty in deciding what was to be done 

 about it. But current theories of con- 

 duct stop with mental effects. Mind 

 being regarded as having a sphere of 

 its own, and the mental world being 

 held as an independent world, where all 

 that goes on is purely psychical, there 

 is no interest or requirement to look 

 beyond the open manifestations of mind 

 to their causes in another sphere. If 

 we should say that this woman had 

 something more than a mind, some- 

 thing more than an immaterial respon- 

 sible soul, that we must look deeper 

 than the mental manifestations dis- 

 played in conduct, that she had a brain 

 made up of cells, fibres, tissues, and 

 circulating blood, subject to the laws 

 of nutrition, waste, and repair, debil- 

 ity, degeneration, and disease, and that 

 all these things must be taken into 

 account as controlling conditions of 

 mental effects, we should be met imme- 

 diately by the cry of materialism ! And 

 if we should furthermore say that these 

 three or four pounds of nervous matter 



must come into consideration before so- 

 ciety can proceed to decide upon such 

 a case, a cry of denunciation would be 

 raised against a destructive materialism 

 that threatens to subvert the order of 

 society. 



Nevertheless, the question of mmd 

 in this case was an organic problem of 

 the brain, as the further facts will show. 

 This woman had lived a quiet but hon- 

 est and uneventful life up to the time 

 that she suddenly struck out into her 

 sensational career. A year of lying, 

 cheating, and scheming practices ended 

 in the development of marked insanity 

 and brain-disease, when she was taken 

 to the Eoyal Edinburgh Asylum for the 

 Insane, where she soon died. The vic- 

 tims of her cunning and mendacity 

 were simply the dupes of a lunatic, and 

 the question of her character and ac- 

 countability resolves itself into a prob- 

 lem of brain-derangement, of morbid 

 material conditions, and is therefore a 

 question of practical materialism which 

 the physician cannot escape. 



EVOLUTION AXJ) THE COPERKICAN 

 THEORY. 



It is significant that nearly all 

 the divines who have spoken, in reply 

 to Prof. Huxley, commit themselves to 

 some form of the doctrine of Evolu- 

 tion. .While, however, they admit that 

 there is some truth in it, there is a 

 common protest against the idea that 

 it contains much truth not by any 

 means so much as is claimed by Prof. 

 Huxley. He said that the evidence for 

 it is demonstrative, and that it is as 

 well based in its proofs as the Coper- 

 nican theory of astronomy. This is 

 thought to be quite absurd. It is said 

 that Huxley may know a great deal 

 about animals and fossils, but that ob- 

 viously he knows very little about logic. 

 His facts being admitted, a great deal 

 of effort has been expended to show 

 that he does not understand how to 

 reason from them. 



