Agnosticism 

 Air 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



24 



death? DRUMMOND Natural Law in the 

 Spiritual World, p. 143. (H. Al.) 



115. 



Hopelessness of. The 



agnostic evolution thus leaves us as orphans 

 in the midst of a cold and insensate nature. 

 We are no longer dwellers in our Father's 

 house, beautiful and fitted for us, but are 

 thrown into the midst of a hideous conflict 

 of dead forces, in which we must finally 

 perish and be annihilated. In a struggle so 

 hopeless it is a mere mockery to tell us that 

 in millions of years something better may 

 come out of it; for we know that this will 

 be of no avail to us, and we feel that it is 

 impossible. Thus the agnostic philosophy, 

 if it be once accepted as true, seriously 

 raises the question whether life is worth 

 living. DAWSON Facts and Fancies in Mod- 

 ern Science, lect. 1, p. 99. (A. B. P. S.) 



116. Its Hypotheses Need 



a God. An excellent judge, a gifted adept in 

 physical science and exact reasoning, the late 

 Clerk-Maxwell, is reported to have said, not 

 long before he left the world, that he had 

 scrutinized all the agnostic hypotheses he 

 knew of, and found that they one and all 

 needed a God to make them workable. ASA 

 GRAY Natural Science and Religion, lect. 2, 

 p. 91. (S., 1891.) 



117. AGREEMENT OF INDEPEND- 

 ENT THINKERS Wallace and Darwin Reach 

 the Same Conclusion. Such being the gen- 

 eral ferment in the minds of naturalists, it 

 is no wonder that they mustered strong in 

 the rooms of the Linnaean Society, on the 

 1st of July of the year 1858, to hear two 

 papers by authors living on opposite sides 

 of the globe, working out their results inde- 

 pendently, and yet professing to have dis- 

 covered one and the same solution of all the 

 problems connected with species. The one 

 of these authors was an able naturalist, 

 Mr. Wallace, who had been employed for 

 some years in studying the productions of 

 the islands of the Indian Archipelago, and 

 who had forwarded a memoir embodying his 

 views to Mr. Darwin, for communication to 

 the Linnsean Society. On perusing the es- 

 say Mr. Darwin was not a little surprised 

 to find that it embodied some of the leading 

 ideas of a great work which he had been 

 preparing for twenty years, and parts of 

 which containing a development of the 

 very same views, had been perused by his 

 private friends fifteen or sixteen years be- 

 fore. Perplexed in what manner to do full 

 justice both to his friend and to himself, 

 Mr. Darwin placed the matter in the hands 

 of Dr. Hooker and Sir Charles Lyell, by 

 whose advice he communicated a brief ab- 

 stract of his own views to the Linnaean So- 

 ciety, at the same time that Mr. Wallace's 

 paper was read. Of that abstract the work 

 on the " Origin of Species " is an enlarge- 

 ment. HUXLEY Lay Sermons, serm. 12, p. 

 291. (G. P. P., 1899.) 



118. AGREEMENT OF PLANT AND 



ANIMAL Each an Aggregate of .Units. The 

 substance of our recent knowledge is that a 

 plant is an aggregate of organic units, most- 

 ly of very small size; that these are to the 

 herb or tree what the bricks and stones are 

 to the edifice. Only they " are living stones, 

 fitly framed together " in organic growth, 

 and their walls answer to the cement. Ani- 

 mals do not differ materially, except that 

 the mortar is mostly of the same nature as 

 the bricks, and there is a greater or at 

 length complete fusion or confluence of the 

 cells. The component material, the proto- 

 plasm, is essentially the same. ASA GRAY 

 Natural Science and Religion, lect. 1, p. 30. 

 (S., 1891.) 



119. AGREEMENT OF SUN AND 

 MOON IN APPARENT SIZE Dependence of 

 Astronomy on Seeming Accident. If the 

 moon had a disk much smaller than the 

 sun's there would never be a total eclipse of 

 the sun, and all those wonderful objects 

 which make their appearance when the sun 

 is totally eclipsed the colored prominences 

 and the sierra, the glowing inner corona, 

 and the radiated fainter glory which lies 

 outside the corona would have been alto- 

 gether unknown to us. But we should 

 scarcely have learned more if the moon had 

 had a disk much larger than the sun's. For 

 in that case, when a total eclipse began all 

 the region round the sun, except that close 

 to the part of the sun's face concealed last, 

 would be hidden by the moon's much larger 

 disk. . . . We now see during totality 

 the complete ring of prominences for two or 

 three minutes, and the whole of the corona 

 is shown. Even as thus shown it has been 

 sufficiently difficult to ascertain the nature 

 of these objects. But with a moon much 

 larger than ours we could have learned 

 scarcely anything respecting them, and with 

 a moon much smaller we should have known 

 absolutely nothing of the solar appendages. 

 PROCTOR Expanse of Heaven, p. 38. (L. 

 G. & Co., 1897.) 



1 2O. AGRICULTURE AIDED BY CHEM- 

 ISTRY The Fertilization of Soils. Chem- 

 ical analysis taught the farmer that, 

 to a certain depth, his field contains only a 

 very limited amount of what is required to 

 grow plants, and in what form a fertilizing 

 substance is able to afford nourishment. It 

 showed him also that stable manure, excel- 

 lent as it is, is not adequate for sustaining 

 the farm's products; that to farm with 

 nothing but stable manure produced upon 

 the farm could not increase the amount of 

 nourishing substances in the soil, but would 

 only set these in motion and displace them; 

 that he could not contribute to the surface 

 of an exhausted grain field what he had just 

 withdrawn from the field beneath by means 

 of the plants for fodder; that he was not 

 giving to any field more than he was taking 

 from it, or otherwise, only at the expense of 

 some other field; that the revenue from a 



