Christf 



ristianity 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



484. CHECKS UPON INCREASE OF 

 WEEDS Seedlings, also, are destroyed in 

 vast numbers by various enemies; for in- 

 stance, on a piece of ground three feet long 

 and two wide, dug and cleared, and where 

 there could be no choking from other plants, 

 I marked all the seedlings of our native 

 weeds as they came up, and out of 357 no 

 less than 295 were destroyed, chiefly by 

 slugs and insects. DARWIN Origin of 

 Species, ch. 1, p. 63. (Burt.) 



485. CHEMISTRY DEVELOPED BY 

 ARABS Debt of Science to Moslem Investi- 

 gators. The most powerful influence exer- 

 cised by the Arabs on general natural phys- 

 ics was that directed to the advances of 

 chemistry, a science for which this race 

 created a new era. It must be admitted 

 that alchemistic and new Platonic fancies 

 were as much blended with chemistry as 

 astrology with astronomy. The require- 

 ments of pharmacy, and the equally urgent 

 demands of the technical arts, led to dis- 

 coveries which were promoted, sometimes 

 designedly, and sometimes by a happy acci- 

 dent depending upon alchemistic investi- 

 gation into the study of metallurgy. The 

 labors of Geber and the much more recent 

 ones of Razes have been attended by the 

 most important results. This period is char- 

 acterized by the preparation of sulfuric and 

 nitric acids, aqua regia, preparations of 

 mercury, and of the oxids of other metals, 

 and by the knowledge of the alcoholic proc- 

 ess of fermentation. The first scientific 

 foundation, and the subsequent advances of 

 chemistry, are so much the more important, 

 as they imparted a knowledge of the hetero- 

 geneous character of matter, and the nature 

 of forces not made manifest by motion, but 

 which now led to the recognition of the im- 

 portance of composition, no less than to that 

 of the perfectibility of form assumed in ac- 

 cordance with the doctrines of Pythagoras 

 and Plato. Differences of form and of com- 

 position are, however, the elements of all 

 our knowledge of matter the abstractions 

 which we believe capable, by means of meas- 

 urement and analysis, of enabling us to com- 

 prehend the whole universe. HUMBOLDT 

 Cosmos, vol. ii, pt. ii, p. 217. (H., 1897.) 



486. CHEMISTRY, MODERN, ELE- 

 VATES WORK AND WORKER Intelligence 

 in the Kitchen. Modern chemistry can 

 throw into the kitchen a great deal of light 

 that shall not merely help the cook in doing 

 his or her work more efficiently, but shall 

 also elevate both the work and the worker, 

 and render the kitchen far more interesting, 

 to all intelligent people who have an appe- 

 tite for knowledge, as well as for food ; more 

 so than it can be while the cook is groping 

 in rule-of-thumb darkness is merely a tech- 

 nical operator unenlightened by technolog- 

 ical intelligence. WILLIAMS Chemistry of 

 Cookery, ch. 1, p. 5. (A., 1900.) 



487. CHILD A TUTOR FOR THE AF- 

 FECTIONS The Lengthening of School-days 



Giving Affection Time to Grow. No 

 greater day ever dawned for evolution than 

 this on which the first human child was 

 born. For there entered then into the world 

 the one thing wanting to complete the as- 

 cent of man a tutor for the affections. It 

 may be that a mother teaches a child, but in 

 a far deeper sense it is the child who teaches 

 the mother. ... To create motherhood 

 and all that enshrines itself in that holy 

 word required a human child. The creation 

 of the mammalia established two schools in 

 the world the two oldest and surest and 

 best equipped schools of ethics that have 

 ever been in it the one for the child, who 

 must now at least know its mother; the 

 other for the mother, who must as certainly 

 attend to her child. The only thing that re- 

 mains now is to secure that they shall both 

 be kept in that school as long as it is pos- 

 sible to detain them. The next effort of 

 evolution, therefore the fifth process, as 

 one might call it is to lengthen out these 

 school-days, and give affection time to grow. 

 DBIJMMOND Ascent of Man, p. 281. (J. 

 P., 1900.) 



488. CHILD BELIEVES IN SPONTA- 

 NEOUS GENERATION Childhood of the 

 Race. The most copious source of this life 

 without an ancestry was putrefying flesh; 

 and, lacking the checks imposed by fuller 

 investigation, the conclusion that flesh pos- 

 sesses and exerts this generative power is a 

 natural one. I well remember, when a child 

 of ten or twelve, seeing a joint of imperfectly 

 salted beef cut into, and coils of maggots 

 laid bare within the mass. Without a mo- 

 ment's hesitation I jumped to the conclusion 

 that these maggots had been spontaneously 

 generated in the meat. I had no knowledge 

 which could qualify or oppose this conclu- 

 sion, and for the time it was irresistible. 

 The childhood of the individual typifies that 

 of the race, and the belief here enunciated 

 was that of the world for nearly two thou- 

 sand years. TYNDALL Fragments of Science, 

 vol. ii, ch. 13, p. 291. (A., 1900.) 



489. CHILD-TRAINING, NEED OF A 

 SCIENCE OF The principles of the men- 

 tal culture of children especially can be out- 

 lined without trouble. We have a sufficiency 

 of pedagogic models, almost in greater num- 

 ber than we have in dietetics or hygiene. 

 And a young mother could look upon her 

 babe with much more assurance if she were 

 not obliged to acknowledge that this child of 

 hers was to be an experiment one on which, 

 with more or less independence, and accord- 

 ing to her own starts of fancy, she would 

 make her experiments in training. For 

 let us not blind ourselves to the fact our 

 family training still remains upon the same 

 low plane as political economy in the preced- 

 ing century; it is purely natural economy. 

 It should be the mission of our times to de- 

 velop the science of bringing up children, 

 and to put it into application, and to do 

 away with this continual experimenting, 



