45 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



Architecture 

 Arrest 



one of these bolts shot out of the blue. But 

 with the revival of learning, people came to 

 know better ! That stones should fall down 

 from the sky was clearly, they thought, an 

 absurdity; indeed, according to the learned 

 opinion of that time, one would hardly ask 

 a better instance of the difference between 

 the realities which science recognized and 

 the absurdities wliich it condemned than 

 the fancy that such a thing could be. 

 LANGLEY New Astronomy, ch. 6, p. 175. 

 (H. M. & Co., 1896.) 



227. ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN 



Plan Not Less Divine for Lapse of Time 

 Unity Perfect Interpositions Not Needed. 

 Accepting provisionally, then, the doc- 

 trine of evolution in this widest sense, as 

 implying the common origin of the whole 

 organized creation past and present 

 from a single stock, we shall find that no 

 further modification will be required in the 

 form in which I have put the argument, 

 from design, than such as gives it yet fur- 

 ther range and greater comprehensiveness. 

 For we must then regard our one ancestral 

 germ-particle as endowed with a " poten- 

 tiality " of progressive development that 

 has been equal to the peopling of our globe 

 with all that vast variety of living crea- 

 tures, by some or other of which it has been 

 inhabited through all save the remotest 

 periods of its ever-changing history to the 

 present time. That this progressive de- 

 velopment has taken place according to an 

 orderly succession, the study of which will 

 ultimately enable us to frame " laws " that 

 shall express the conditions of the " per- 

 turbations" as well as of the "uniformities" 

 of genetic descent, is the belief of every 

 philosophic biologist. But when biological 

 science shall have reached this elevated 

 point, . it will have revealed to us only the 

 order of the evolutionary process, leaving 

 us still to seek for its cause. But how 

 much grander a conception of that order do 

 we obtain when we are thus led to regard 

 it as embodied in one original design con- 

 tinuously working itself out through the 

 ages, in constant harmony with the changes 

 contemporaneously taking place in the con- 

 dition of the terrestrial surface, than when 

 we suppose it to have needed successive in- 

 terpositions for readaptation to those 

 changes as they successively occurred! 

 CARPENTER Nature and Man, lect. 15, p. 

 434. (A., 1889.) 



228. ARITHMETIC OF PRIMITIVE 



MAN -Standards of Computation Limited. 

 The standards of compound arithmetic were 

 very low among the Andamanese. About 

 forty pounds was a man's load, and any- 

 thing above that would simply be more 

 than a man's load. Size was rated by well- 

 known natural objects, seeds, fruits, nuts, 

 etc. Capacity was counted by handfuls, 

 basketfuls, bucketfuls, canoefuls. There is 

 no prescribed form or dimensions for any 

 object. No tallies were kept nor counters, 



and this is very low down, because all 

 American tribes knew the use of tallies. 

 Distance was spoken of as a bowshot, or as 

 from there to there, indicating the limits. 

 Fifteen miles, about, was a day's journey, 

 and over that was said to " exceed a day's 

 journey." MASON Origins of Invention, ch. 

 2, p. 69. (S., 1899.) 



229. ARMOR DERIVED FROM ANI- 

 MALS The Cuirass Originally of Leather- 

 Later Imitation of the Scales- of Fish or 

 Reptile. How the warrior's armor comes 

 from the natural armor of animals is 

 plainly to be seen. The beast's own hide 

 may be used, as where one sees in museums 

 the armor of bearskins from Borneo, or 

 breastplates of crocodile's skin from Egypt. 

 The name of the cuirass shows that it was 

 at first of leather, like the buff jerkin. 

 The Bugis of Sumatra would make a 

 breastplate by sewing upon bark the cast- 

 off scales of the ant-eater, overlapping as 

 the animal wore them; and so the natural 

 armor of animals was imitated by the 

 Sarmatians, with their slices of horses' 

 hoofs sewed together in overlapping scales 

 like a fir-cone. Such devices, when metal 

 came in, would lead to the scale armor of 

 the Greeks, imitated from fish-scales and 

 serpent-scales, while their chain-mail is a 

 sort of netted garment made in metal. The 

 armor of the middle ages continued the an- 

 cient kinds, now protecting the whole body 

 with a suit from head to foot (cap-a-pie) 

 of iron scales, or mail (that is, meshes), or 

 of jointed plates of iron copied from the 

 crab and lobster, such as the later suits of 

 armor which decorate our manorial halls. 

 TYLOB Anthropology, ch. 9, p. 222. (A., 

 1899.) 



23O. ARREST OF THE BODY 



Walking Erect and Making Tools Thence- 

 forth Developed Mind. From the time 

 when the ancestral man first walked erect, 

 with hands freed from any active part in 

 locomotion, and when his brain-power be- 

 came sufficient to cause him to use his 

 hands in making weapons and tools, houses 

 and clothing, to use fire for cooking, and 

 to plant seeds or roots to supply himself 

 with stores of food, the power of natural 

 selection would cease to act in producing 

 modifications of his body, but would con- 

 tinuously advance his mind through the 

 development of its organ, the brain. Hence 

 man may have become truly man the 

 species, Homo sapiens even in the Miocene 

 period; and while all other mammals were 

 becoming modified from age to age under 

 the influence of ever-changing physical and 

 biological conditions, he would be advancing 

 mainly in intelligence, but perhaps also in 

 stature, and by that advance alone would 

 be able to maintain himself as the master 

 of all other animals and as the most wide- 

 spread occupier of the earth. WALLACE 

 Darwinism, ch. 15, p. 308. (Hum.) 



