EDITOR'S TABLE. 



411 



in domestic matters; others are effica- 

 cious in the sick-room. The Egyptian 

 exorcist sought to place his patient 

 under the protection of different divini- 

 ties, and thus to scare away the malig- 

 nant ghosts that were preying on him. 

 To-day he would find that, in lieu of the 

 divinities whose names he was accus- 

 tomed to invoke, there were hosts of 

 others, or at least of semi-divinities, 

 with names strange to him, who were 

 credited with exercising tutelary powers 

 exactly similar to those of Isis and Osiris, 

 of Amen and Horus, and the rest. And 

 he would find that the idea of verifica- 

 tion as in any way applicable to such 

 pretended powers was just as odious 

 to-day, alike to the victims of delusion 

 and to the priestly class, as it could 

 have been in his own day and genera- 

 tion. 



Yet verification will triumph. Slow- 

 ly but surely the world will come into the 

 conviction that beliefs which shun veri- 

 fication, and practices which can not be 

 brought to the test of utility, have no 

 claim to respect. The edifice of super- 

 stition seems still all too solid ; but the 

 structure of ordered knowledge which 

 science is building is growing in extent 

 day by day, and little by little is expro- 

 priating the ground on which the tem- 

 ple of intellectual darkness has been 

 reared. The gains of science are defin- 

 itive gains, the losses of superstition are 

 definitive losses. The human mind will 

 never resign to occult and. arbitrary 

 agencies any sphere of phenomena 

 which has once been reduced to law. 

 Still, there is much to be done in helping 

 individual minds to cast off their fetters, 

 and to put on instead the wholesome 

 restraints of reason and moral self-con- 

 trol. 



" The sensual and the dark rehel in vain, 

 Slaves by their own compulsion." 



The bonds of superstition will only be 

 irretrievably broken when the truths of 

 science are welcomed and honored, not 

 alone for the mastery they give over the 



outward world, but for the clearer light 

 they throw upon questions of moral ob- 

 ligation. 



THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN POLI- 

 TICS. 



The Popular Science Monthly is not 

 a political journal, at least as the word 

 " political " is commonly understood. 

 In the wider and truer sense of the word 

 it is political just in the same degree as 

 it is industrial, commercial, educational, 

 and a dozen other things as well ; that 

 is to say, it is interested in the political, 

 as in the industrial, educational, etc., de- 

 velopment of the country, and believes 

 that in the extension and application of 

 scientific modes of thought the key to 

 the best possible political and other de- 

 velopment will be found. If any recent 

 change in the aspect of our national poli- 

 tics has caused us satisfaction it is in no 

 sense from a party point of view — for 

 parties we utterly ignore — but because, 

 as it seems to us, the change is one 

 which tends to place our national life 

 upon a more natural and rational basis 

 than that which it has occupied for 

 many years past, and to favor the growth 

 of a healthy individualism throughout 

 the whole social organism. "We have 

 not hesitated in the past to speak of the 

 false and hurtful relations which a gen- 

 eral policy of what is commonly called 

 "protection," but what, as Mr. Spencer 

 points out, should properly be called 

 " aggression," establishes between the 

 national Government and various more 

 or less powerful private interests; and 

 it is not unnatural, therefore, if we now 

 rejoice at the prospect of at least a very 

 sensible abatement of the evils of that 

 system. But we rejoice still more to 

 think of the ulterior and indirect results 

 of the approaching change in our na- 

 tional policy. True intellectual man- 

 hood has not been attained until men 

 have learned to trust Nature, to test all 

 opinions and schemes by the touchstone 

 of natural law, and, as a necessary re- 

 sult, to despise swaddling clothes and 



