156 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[March 16, 1883. 



later than was originally intended. Messrs. Davey Pax- 

 wan &, Co. have undertaken to provide GOO indicated 

 horsepower for the purpose. One of the engines will 

 develop 350 liorse-power. That the Commissioners should 

 have entrusted the wliolo of the work to one firm is some- 

 what unusual, and the decision implies a high and well- 

 deserved compliment to the manufacturers. 



TiiR Loisettian School of Memory has been prominently 

 brought to my notice by one of my assistants, who is now 

 going through the course of study as taught by Professor 

 Ijoisette, and he confidently states that this system is 

 thoroughly genuine, and fully bears out in every way the 

 many testimonials he has seen regarding it. I should think 

 Professor Loisette's art of " Never Forgetting " of great 

 importance to students of all classes. 



Parasites in the Human Body. — Recent investigations 

 have added greatly to our knowledge of the more highly 

 organised parasites of the helminthoid type. For example, 

 it has been ascertained beyond doubt that the blood- 

 vessels of a human being capable of performing his daily 

 avocations may contain from 20,000 to 30,000 minute 

 embryo nematoid worms. A physician at Calcutta demon- 

 strated this with regard to persons in that climate. Num- 

 bers of individuals so affected suffer from chyluria or 

 elephantiasis in one or other of its forms ; but this is by 

 no means universally the case. Researches have also re- 

 vealed the curious fact that these teeming multitudes of 

 nematoids lurk in some unknown recesses of the vascular 

 system during the daytime, and that only as night 

 approaches do they wander at large through the vessels 

 generally. Experts assure us that a single drop of blood 

 taken from a prick of the finger at midnight in a person 

 so affected may contain as many as 200 embryo nematoids, 

 while many drops similarly obtained at midday will not 

 reveal a single worm. — Times. 



The result of the Freethinker trial is singularly illogical. 

 A small meshed net has been used to catch prey for which 

 a net of another sort is needed, but does not exist. As 

 Justice North explained the law of Blasphemous Libel — 

 and even more clearly as Justice Stephen interprets it — • 

 it is manifest that in these days the law is an anachronism. 

 It covered the offence of the accused, but it covers also 

 many acts which are not offences at all, save as this law 

 makes them such. That, as Justice North said, things 

 written by many of the most esteemed thinkers of the age 

 are utterly unlike the coarse and vulgar effusions brought 

 before him, is not only true, but obvious ; yet they are like 

 in being within the actual range of the preposterous law 

 he had to administer. Moreover, the punishment which 

 the law empowered him to inflict is certainly inappropriate 

 for that part of the offenders' actions in which these were 

 not akin to the writings in question. That part was their 

 vulgarity and offensiveness of tone ; but our laws do not 

 give any one a term of imprisonment with hard labour for 

 even the grossest vulgarity short of absolute indecency. 



No one doubts that the penalties under the Blasphemy 

 Law were originally made heavy as against the publishing 

 of views inconsistent with the State religion ; nor does any 

 one doubt that the attempt to intliot such penalties on 

 those whose published opinions are obviously inconsistent 

 with that religion, would at once le.ad — as the Tiiin's 

 pointed out — to the repeal of a law which is practically 

 obsolete and dead. The persons brought under the opera- 

 tion of the law in this case had offended grossly against 

 propriety. They had exhibited — as the Times puts it — 



hopeless and irredeemable vulgarity. But the law under 

 which sentence was pronounced against them is not a law 

 against vulgarity. 



The coarse vulgarity of the attack made in the Free- 

 lliinker upon opinions held in reverence by thousands of 

 worthy persons, though not much worse than the scurrility 

 of ilr. Talmage's attack on some of the greatest men of 

 science of the day — was deserving of severe censure, even 

 of punishment. Such writings exhibit the very vice 

 which, I suppose, the Freethinker was chiefly intended to 

 oppose — intolerance ; and in a most objectionable, because 

 mean and cowardly, form. Setting aside the vulgarity of 

 all such attacks, whether made by Christians on Jews or by 

 Jews on Christians, by Protestants on Catholics or by 

 Catholics on Protestants, or by those in fine who hold any 

 special doctrine on those who believe ditTerently, there is 

 the wish to annoy and irritate — failing the power to inflict 

 as of yore material injuries on those of different views. This 

 should be regarded in every well-ordered State as a 

 punishable offence. It might be called even " blasphemous 

 libel," if the words were interpreted to signify all scoflSng 

 at ideas held in reverence by others. 



The present law of Blasphemous Libel — so called — 

 belongs to times when intolerance was mistaken for religious 

 fervour. But it should be remembered that in all ages there 

 are men of the Stiggins and Chadband breed, who are only 

 too glad to find in such a law the means of making easy 

 pretence to religious zeal. It matters little to them that 

 men of sense — always rather in the minority — recognise in 

 their pretended fervour the clearest evidence of knavery. 

 Hundreds of feeble-minded folk imagine otherwise, and 

 consider the guzzling selfishness of a Chadband, the bibulous 

 bleatings of a Stiggins, and the noisy brutality of a Honey- 

 thunder, to be the inventions of the enemy. So long as this 

 is so, so long as some money and an easy reputation for 

 zeal are to be made by denouncing others, while mere per- 

 sistence in well-doing is slow to tell, there is always some 

 degree of danger in leaving obsolete laws about religion 

 unrepealed. 



" The Rev. Dr. S. ^Yainwright, President, and Mr. 

 Alexander Scott, Hon. Secretary of the Society for the 

 Suppression of Blasphemous Literature, write : — ' We 

 propose to get up cases, as our funds will allow, against 

 Professor Huxley, Dr. Tyndall, Herbert Spencer, Swin- 

 burne, the author of ' Supernatural Religion,' the pub- 

 lishers of Mill's works, the publishers of Strauss's works, 

 Leslie Stephen, John Morley, the editor of the Jewish 

 World, Dr. Martineau, and others, who by their writings 

 have sown widespread unbelief, and in some cases rank 

 atheism, in cultivated families.' " — Manchester Examiner 

 and Times. 



At a meeting held in Chambers-street Hall, Edinburgh, 

 on March 11, the following resolutions were adopted: — 

 " This open meeting of Edinburgh citizens, without ex- 

 pressing any opinion as to the contents of the Freethinker, 

 condemns the prosecution of that journal as a dangerous 

 revival of laws framed in a spirit of persecution, and now 

 out of harmony with enlightened opinion, and resolves to 

 take all lawful means to obtain a repeal of the statutes 

 relating to blasphemy ; that considering the severity of the 

 sentences on Messrs. Foote, Ramsey, and Kemp, the cir- 

 cumstances attending their trial, and the invidious character 

 of prosecutions for blasphemy, this meeting approves of a 

 memorial being presented to the Home Secretary praying 

 for a remission of the sentence." 



