99 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



unity 



this training of children according to mere 

 tradition. VIBCHOW Ueber die Erziehung 

 des Weibes fur seinen Beruf, p. 27. (Trans- 

 lated for Scientific Side-Lights.) 



490. CHOICE AMONG METHODS OF 

 REACHING A SINGLE END A Superior 

 Intelligence Can Predetermine Results, 

 while Leaving Inferior Intelligence Free. 

 Not infrequently the one thing willed, as the 

 only end before the mind, may be accom- 

 plished in either one of several ways. Thus 

 a skilled fencer who has willed to attack his 

 opponent at what he knows to be his only 

 weak point, and under the influence of this 

 volition is watching his opportunity, may 

 with incredible speed, and yet with con- 

 scious intelligent choice, select the particu- 

 lar form of giving his thrust some new 

 trick he has recently learned. LADD Psy- 

 chology, ch. 26, p. 630. (S., 1899.) 



491. CHOICE THE GREAT WORK OF 

 CONSCIOUSNESS Consciousness is at 

 all times primarily a selecting agency. 

 Whether we take it in the lowest sphere of 

 sense or in the highest of intellection, we 

 find it always doing one thing, choosing one 

 out of several of the materials so presented 

 to its notice, emphasizing and accentuating 

 that and suppressing as far as possible all 

 the rest. The item emphasized is always in 

 close connection with some interest felt by 

 consciousness to be paramount at the time. 

 JAMES Psychology, vol. i, ch. 5, p. 139. 

 (H. H. & Co., 1899.) 



492. CHOICE THE RESULT OF A SE- 

 RIES OF COMPARISONS Decision the Result 

 of What One Brings to the Test. How is it 

 when an alternative is presented to you for 

 choice, and you are uncertain what you 

 ought to do? You first hesitate, and then 

 you deliberate. And in what does your de- 

 liberation consist? It consists in trying to 

 apperceive the case successively by a number 

 of different ideas, which seem to fit it more 

 or less, until at last you hit on one which 

 seems to fit it exactly. If that be an idea 

 which is a customary forerunner of action 

 in you, which enters into one of your 

 maxims of positive behavior, your hesita- 

 tion ceases, and you act immediately. If, 

 on the other hand, it be an idea which car- 

 ries inaction as its habitual result, if it ally 

 itself with prohibition, then you unhesitat- 

 ingly refrain. The problem is, you see, to 

 find the right idea or conception for the 

 case. JAMES Talks to Teachers, ch. 15, p. 

 184. (H. H. &Co., 1900.) 



493. CHRISTIANITY DEMANDS NO 

 EXCEPTION TO LAW Christ's Work a 

 Means to an End. Assuredly, whatever may 

 be the difficulties of Christianity, this is not 

 one of them that it calls on us to believe in 

 any exception to the universal prevalence 

 and power of law. Its leading facts and 

 doctrines are directly connected with this 

 belief, and directly suggestive of it. The 

 divine mission of Christ on earth does not 

 this imply not only the use of means to an 



end, but some inscrutable necessity that cer- 

 tain means, and these only, should be em- 

 p!oyed in resisting and overcoming evil? 

 What else is the import of so many passages 

 of Scripture implying that certain condi- 

 tions were required to bring the Savior of 

 man into a given relation with the race he 

 was sent to save ? " It behoved him . . . 

 to make the captain of our salvation perfect 

 through suffering." " It behoved him in all 

 things to be made like unto his brethren, 

 that he might be," etc. with? the reason 

 added : " for in that he himself hath suffered 

 being tempted, he is able to succour them 

 that are tempted." W T hatever more there 

 may be in such passages, they all imply the 

 universal reign of law in the moral and 

 spiritual, as well as in the material world: 

 that those laws had to be behooved to be 

 obeyed ; and that the results to be obtained 

 are brought about by the adaptation of 

 means to an end, or, as it were, by way of 

 natural consequences from the instrumental- 

 ity employed. This, however, is an idea 

 which systematic theology generally regards 

 with intense suspicion, tho, in fact, all 

 theologies involve it, and build upon it. 

 ARGYLL Reign of Law, ch. 1, p. 31. (Burt.) 



494. CHRISTIANITY LED TO STUDY 

 OF NATURE Religion Ministers to Science. 

 At the period when the feelings died away 

 which had animated classical antiquity, and 

 directed the minds of men to a visible mani- 

 festation of human activity rather than to a 

 passive contemplation of the external world, 

 a new spirit arose; Christianity gradually 

 diffused itself, and, wherever it was adopted 

 as the religion of the state, it not only exer- 

 cised a beneficial influence on the condition 

 of the lower classes by inculcating the social 

 freedom of mankind, but also expanded the 

 views of men in their communion with Na- 

 ture. The eye no longer rested on the forms 

 of Olympic gods. The Fathers of the Church, 

 in their rhetorically correct and often poetic- 

 ally imaginative language, now taught that 

 the Creator showed himself great in inani- 

 mate no less than in animate nature, and in 

 the wild strife of the elements no less than 

 in the still activity of organic development. 

 . . . The ancient world is not abruptly 

 separated from the modern, but modifica- 

 tions in the religious sentiments and the 

 tenderest social feelings of men, and changes 

 in the special habits of those who exercise an 

 influence on the ideas of the mass, must give 

 a sudden predominance to that which might 

 previously have escaped attention. It was the 

 tendency of the Christian mind to prove from 

 the order of the universe and the beauty of 

 Nature the greatness and goodness of the 

 Creator. This tendency to glorify the Deity 

 in his works gave rise to a taste for natural 

 description. The earliest and most remark- 

 able instances of this kind are to be met 

 with in the writings of Minucius Felix, a 

 rhetorician and lawyer at Rome, who lived 

 in the beginning of the third century. . . . 



