700 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



honest, unjust, disgusting, and of ill re- 

 port. The contrast is indeed flagrant, 

 and possibly the apostle, if he could be 

 revived and given a week's reading of 

 some very widely circulated daily pa- 

 pers, might be disposed to wonder that 

 a community which openly and sys- 

 tematically violated an ethical precept 

 so authoritative in its very simplicity as 

 that which he had laid down, should 

 still be very jealous for the name and 

 character of Christian. Then, if he were 

 regaled with a course of pink- tinted 

 police literature, and had spread out be- 

 fore him the numerous illustrated pur- 

 veyors of vileness that may be seen on 

 most news-stands, he would be too pro- 

 foundly discouraged, we fear, even to 

 think of inditing a stinging epistle to 

 the Church in these lands. 



We do not need, however, to resur- 

 rect an apostle in order to arrive at a 

 moral judgment on this matter. By 

 every rule, both of psychology and of 

 common sense, a certain kind of jour- 

 nalism is morbific in its tendency. It 

 brings and is known to bring a plague 

 in its train, perverting the thoughts of 

 youth, and relaxing moral sanctions that 

 are none too strong even in old age. 

 The question then is, How long will it 

 be before the better portion of the com- 

 munity rises in revolt against so great 

 and unnecessary an evil? The ever- 

 ready resort of some, when a reform is 

 to be accomplished, is to legislation : that 

 idea we wholly repudiate ; legislation 

 can not touch this particular evil. What 

 is required is that intelligent and well- 

 disposed people should discriminate be- 

 tween papers that treat acts of crime or 

 moral disorder with brevity and reserve 

 and those that seek to make capital out 

 of them, bestowing as far as possible their 

 support on the former and withholding 

 it from the latter. This is a very simple 

 remedy, but it would be wonderfully 

 efficacious if tried on a large scale. But 

 no one need wait for others in this mat- 

 ter. It is a thing which concerns the 

 home, and no one should wait to see 



whether others are going to protect 

 their homes before taking steps to pro- 

 tect his. 



One other word before we leave this 

 subject. When we get down to the root 

 of the matter we find that all this mor- 

 bid interest in what is evil and trivial 

 arises from a lack of individuality. 

 "You have no soul that makes you 

 weigh so light," says an old dramatist. 

 It is those who have no deep personal 

 interests of their own, no cultivated 

 tastes, no definite opinions, nothing spe- 

 cial to fix and characterize them as in- 

 dividuals, who are insatiable for gos- 

 sip, and whose love for gossip naturally 

 passes into a love for scandal and what- 

 ever else is morally miserable. Multi- 

 ply individuals in the true sense, and 

 scandal mongering will just proportion- 

 ately decline, while the scum-gather- 

 ing which now forms so large a part of 

 what is called "journalistic enterprise" 

 will become a neglected and dishonored 

 art. How large a part the teaching of 

 science might play in the development 

 of individuality we can not now attempt 

 to indicate : we can merely say that 

 here we see a field of infinite promise 

 which has yielded but little as yet, sim- 

 ply because workers of the right stamp 

 have been few. 



THE MOON OF ROMANCE. 



THE novelists will not leave "the 

 young moon " or " the crescent moon " 

 alone, and three times out of four they 

 contrive to get it into the wrong place. 

 How to explain the conviction which 

 haunts the minds of so many of them, 

 that the crescent moon may be seen al- 

 most any fine evening rising gracefully 

 in the east, is altogether beyond us. 

 The point seems to be one for psy- 

 chologists. Here is a thing that never 

 was seen since the world began ; and 

 yet a number of otherwise sane gentle- 

 men are firmly persuaded that it is a 

 regularly recurring natural phenomenon. 

 Surely the philosophy of this hallucina- 

 tion deserves investigation. The last 



