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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



his presence. Or, again, it is said that a wife who 

 had given a man cause for jealousy, and had been 

 beaten by him in consequence, would thus obtain 

 her object of separation and freedom to live with 

 her paramour. Or, again, that a wife who drank 

 and "sold up " her husband's goods might have 

 practically done him much more grievous injury 

 than he has done her by the thrashing he gives 

 her, and yet, under such an act as is proposed, 

 the husband would be compelled to give a share 

 of his wages to her, and to see his children in her 

 custody possibly starving and ill-treated. To all 

 these hypothetical cases I have only to reply that, 

 should they ever be realized, they would certainly 

 form a failure of justice, and that I should sin- 

 cerely regret that any man, even a wife-beater, 

 should suffer wrongfully, or a jot more than he 

 deserves. But I confess I am more concerned to 

 protect the certainly beaten wives than their hy- 

 pothetically ill-used beaters ; and that most of the 

 suggestions above named appear to me exceed- 

 ingly far-fetched, and unlikely ever to be verified. 

 The real and valid objection to the bill — 

 which I cannot blink — is the same which neces- 

 sarily adheres to every severance of married 

 couples which does not sanction their marrying 

 again — in short, to every divorce a mensa et thoro, 

 which is not a divorce a vinculo. The latter kind 

 of divorce — though we have the opinion of Mr. 

 Lonsdale and Mr. Digby Seymour that it ought 

 to be given to the wife in such cases of brutal 

 assault — seems too dangerous a resource, seeing 

 that it might often act as an incentive to commit 



the assault in the case of a husband, and an in- 

 centive to provoke one in the case of the wife. 

 The (ywasj-judicial separation, on the other hand, 

 which is all the bill proposes, of course leaves the 

 separated man and woman liable each to fall into 

 vicious courses since marriage is closed to them, 

 and thus to contribute to the disorder of the com- 

 munity. The evil. I think, must be fairly weighed 

 against the benefits anticipated from the measure ; 

 but the reflection that the wife-beater is almost 

 always already a man of loose and disorderly life 

 will tend to diminish our estimate of that evil's 

 extent. The decent, respectable wife, such as I 

 hope I have shown a large class of beaten wives 

 to be, would of course live like a well-conducted 

 widow. 



I entreat my readers not to turn away and 

 forget this wretched subject. I entreat the gen- 

 tlemen of England — the bravest, humanest, and 

 most generous in the world — not to leave these 

 helpless women to be trampled to death under 

 their very eyes. I entreat English ladies, who, 

 like myself, have never received from the men 

 with whom we associate anything but kindness 

 and consideration, and who are prone to think that 

 the lot of others is as smooth and happy as our 

 Own, to take to heart the wrongs and agonies of 

 our miserable sisters, and to lift up on their be- 

 half a cry which must make Parliament either 

 hasten to deal with the matter, or renounce for 

 very shame the vain pretense that it takes care of 

 the interests of women. — Contemporary Review. 



MAN AND SCIENCE : A EEPLY. 



By Dr. CHARLES ELAM. 



WHEN the history of modern thought comes 

 to be written in the future, nothing will 

 appear more remarkable to the student of these 

 times than the great divergence, or rather the 

 irreconcilable antagonism, between the utterances 

 of philosophy and the revelations of exact sci- 

 ence. That philosophy should transcend sci- 

 ence, that it should be something more than a 

 summary of results, is too evident even to require 

 admission ; that it should be in absolute contra- 

 diction to these results, that it should set aside 

 or distort the most familiar facts, the best estab- 



lished data of science, will scarcely be claimed 

 by its most ardent votaries. Is this the case ? 



What is philosophy ? " It is the systematiza- 

 tion of the conceptions furnished by science. As 

 science is the systematization of the various gen- 

 eralities reached through particulars, so philoso- 

 phy is the systematization of the generalities of 

 generalities. In other words, science furnishes 

 the knowledge, and philosophy the doctrine." 

 What is truth ? " It is the correspondence be- 

 tween the order of ideas and the order of phe- 

 nomena, so that the one becomes a reflection of 



