j6o 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



purposes, and of a quality such as would not 

 dissolve lead, or form a deposit when boiled. 

 3. It should be clear and bright, agreeable 

 to the eye, and refreshing to the taste. 4. It 

 should be well aerated, of a nearly uniform 

 normal temperature, and not like river or 

 surface water, unduly warm in summer and 

 unduly cold in winter. All that is needed, 

 in the opinion of Mr. Homersham, and most 

 of the other authors of papers, to insure 

 abundance of such pure water, is that pub- 

 lic opinion be educated to insist upon it. 

 Works adequate to provide a regular supply 

 of wholesome water, whether for towns or 

 for small groups of dwellings in the country, 

 might be constructed at moderate expense. 



How Teleologieal Ideas are acquired. 



In the course of his able address on " Edu- 

 cation a Succession of Experiences," Prof. 

 Grote, Vice-President of the Natural His- 

 tory Section of the American Association, 

 remarks as follows upon the futility of teleo- 

 logical arguments : " From the imperfection 

 and limitation of our senses comes not only 

 a succession of experiences which are in- 

 complete, but a general concept with regard 

 to external matters, which must be of neces- 

 sity misleading. We are here but a short 

 time, and see little of the outcome of pass- 

 ing events, and can know nothing of the 

 outcome of the world itself. Thus it has 

 come to pass that what we have not fully 

 observed we have assigned to an unknown 

 cause. We have fitted Nature into our own 

 measure, directly led thereto by the imper- 

 fection of our knowledge, and we have ar- 

 rived at the concept that design exists in 

 the world about us as it is displayed in our 

 own handiwork and the work of animals, 

 which, with ourselves, exhibit design in their 

 operations. But in reality what we see in 

 the details of the structure of animals and 

 plants is not design, but adaptation. Sup- 

 pose we leave a coat in a closet, and while 

 it is there it is visited by a female clothes- 

 moth, which deposits thereon numerous 

 eggs. The little worms hatched from the 

 eggs would at once commence to make free 

 with the nap, and eat holes in the coat with 

 a good appetite. If they ever thought about 

 the matter, would they not conclude that 

 the coat was hung there for their special 

 benefit ? They would do so merely because 



the coat was there. The fact that they 

 adapted it to their own use would be con- 

 strued by them into a belief that it was de- 

 signed for their benefit. They would inevi- 

 tably regard the owner of the coat, could 

 they arrive at this conception, as their bene- 

 factor and the preserver of the whole race 

 of maggots. They would kuow nothing of 

 the thousands of clothes-worm eggs that 

 perish because they never get anything to 

 eat. The fact that life is sacrificed by the 

 wholesale in Nature tells against the argu- 

 ment of design. And Nature is as careless 

 of the species as of the individual. In the 

 crust of the earth are contained the remains 

 of millions of types of form of which Nature 

 has not been careful, but has crushed them 

 out, because they could not adapt them- 

 selves to the changing conditions which sur- 

 rounded them." 



Is the Evolution Theory atheistic? 



Prof. Simon Newcomb's address, on his re- 

 tiring from the annual presidency of the 

 American Association, is a singularly lucid 

 exposition of the state of the case as be- 

 tween the ideological and the mechanical ex- 

 planations of the operations of Nature. The 

 drift of his argument is best seen in the 

 summary with which the address concludes, 

 and which is in substance as follows : First, 

 when men study the operations of the world 

 arcund them, they find some of these plain- 

 ly determined by law, while others appear 

 to be purely arbitrary. This latter class of 

 operations men attribute to the direct action 

 of supernatural beings, gods ; and they fur- 

 ther ascribe to these gods aims, designs, to 

 be attained through these interventions in 

 the course of Nature. Further, men believe 

 themselves able to discern these designs, 

 and thus to explain these arbitrary opera- 

 tions. But, as knowledge advances, one after 

 another of these operations is found to be 

 really determined by law. Final causes hav- 

 ing thus, one by one, disappeared from every 

 thicket which has been fully explored, the 

 question arises whether they now have or 

 ever had any existence at all. On the one 

 hand it may be claimed that it is unphilo- 

 sophical to believe in them when they have 

 been sought in vain in every corner into 

 which light can penetrate. On the other 

 hand, we have the difficulty of accounting 



