354 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



had really no intention of bringing about their own death. Some have 

 been led, like the two gentlemen mentioned by Morgagni, to try the 

 experiment out of curiosity. Others may have done it out of pique. 

 It is not impossible, nor perhaps improbable, that high-spirited boys or 

 girls, after a degrading punishment, should rush off, as we read of their 

 doing, and hang themselves. The child puts a cord around his neck, 

 and steps off from a chair, expecting to be followed, found choking, and 

 released, by the anxious parents. If he is not followed and his absence 

 not noticed, nothing can be easier for him than to step up on the chair 

 again, loosen the rope, and no one will ever know of his folly. In the 

 first case he would obtain his childish revenge for the wrong he had 

 received, and in the second case he would lose nothing, for he is his 

 only accomplice. But the laws of Nature are too stern. He experi- 

 ences the fate of poor Scott, above related. Utterly ignorant of his 

 danger, and intending only a prank of childish folly, he steps from his 

 chair into eternity. Such a possibility should make us charitable, and 

 in cases of suicide by hanging lead us to remember that, although the 

 case may be evidently one of suicide, and the hanging plainly inten- 

 tional, nevertheless the death maj have been undesired and unlooked 

 for. 



THE EADICAL FALLACY OF MATERIALISM. 



Br K. G. ECCLES, Esq. 



"~VT~OT many years ago the manifestations of energy were looked 

 -i-^l upon as mere conditions of matter. When a moving body came 

 to rest, it was thought that the motion was obliterated from the uni- 

 verse, and, when a body at rest was put in motion, it was supposed to 

 be a creation. The motion was looked upon as a mere state that had 

 arisen and ceased. To-day, in the light of the new doctrine of the cor- 

 relation and conservation of forces, the old notions are inconceivable, 

 because of the rise of a new element of thought, namely, that force is 

 caused by energy. Motion to us is the effect of a real though imma- 

 terial existence, called force or energy, acting upon matter. This en- 

 ergy persists in spite of every effort to destroy it. It is seen to leap 

 from matter to matter as motion, when passing through a row of elastic 

 collision-balls, as each successively gives up its energy to the next. 

 Energy being seen to travel from matter to matter, persisting in one 

 piece after eliminating the other, we are compelled to look upon it as 

 having a real existence of its own. It may change its form many 

 times, but through all the mutations there remains the identical ener- 

 gy. After repeatedly following it through such changes, we conclude 

 that the universe contains a fixed quantity, never had more, and never 



