ISO THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



race has taken up a rate of increase equal to, if not greater than, 

 that of the country at large, a greater rate than that of the colored 

 people within its borders, and there is no apparent reason why they 

 should not maintain it. It is not, then, a migration of the negroes 

 southward which has caused their relative gain in these States, but it 

 is the losses of the white race losses which, however, are rapidly 

 being repaired. 



As the negroes are not increasing as rapidly as the whites, either 

 in the country at large or in the cotton States, and therefore are des- 

 tined to become constantly of less numerical importance, the pressing 

 necessity for doing something to ward off the evils predicted by the 

 authors above quoted does not appear to exist. 



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THE NEKVOUS SYSTEM AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 



Br W. K. BENEDICT, 



PEOFESSOB OF PSYCHOLOGY AND LOGIC IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI. 



in. 



WE are beginning to hear lamentations over the realism of our 

 time. Not only are the gods dead, God is dead. Art finds no 

 place for Imagination, save in setting her to devise ways and means 

 for a more complete photographic process. Among the crimes laid to 

 the account of Science, this is not the least ; indeed, perhaps this may 

 sum them all, that she has taken away our Lord and will show us 

 nothing in return but the geologic formation of a sepulchre. While 

 this charge is unjust, radically unjust, it must be allowed that the 

 manner of commendation employed by many advocates of science is 

 responsible, in large measure, for our bread-and-butter attitude. The 

 fault lies in the original constitution of certain men not that they are 

 scientists, but that they are small scientists ; men for whom a formula, 

 or a compound, or a root, or a fact whatsoever, is the end. To know 

 the most names of the most classifications is to be saved, to apply 

 chemistry in the manufacture of salable beer is to make " calling and 

 election " sure. The devotion of these little men to science is not only 

 at the expense of all that is highest, but is, as was intimated, largely 

 responsible for the realism over which so many weep. Men of sci- 

 ence, that is to say men of science, are not accountable for deadness 

 of soul. The wonder with which those early Greeks looked out upon 

 the face of all things may not for one instant be compared with the 

 wonder that fills the soul to-day before this stupendous universe : 

 " Die Geisterwelt ist nicht verschlossen : 

 Dein Sinn ist zu, dein Herz ist todt." 

 Because we have learned that color is not in sunset or rose, is there 

 therefore no color ? Is the marvel anywise diminished by knowing 



