149 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



sion was of something unnatural ; but there 

 was only a moment to note it, for the sun 

 went out as suddenly as a blown-out gas- 

 jet, and I became as suddenly aware that all 

 around, where it had been, there had been 

 growing into vision a kind of ghostly radi- 

 ance, composed of separate pearly beams, 

 looking distinct each from each, as tho the 

 black circles where the sun once was bristled 

 with pale streamers, stretching far away 

 from it in a sort of crown [the corona]. 

 LANGLEY New Astronomy, ch. 2, p. 39. (H. 

 M. &Co., 1896.) 



730. DARWINISM NOT ATHEISTIC 



^Agnosticism and Monism Problem of 

 First Organisms. Darwinism was not nec- 

 essarily atheistic or agnostic. Its author 

 was content to assume a few living beings 

 or independent forms to begin with, and 

 did not propose to obtain them by any 

 spontaneous action of dead matter, nor to 

 account for the primary origin of life, still 

 less of all material things. In this he was 

 sufficiently humble and honest; but the 

 logical weakness of his position was at once 

 apparent. If creation was needed to give a 

 few initial types, it might have produced 

 others also. The followers of Darwin, there- 

 fore, more especially in Germany, at once 

 pushed the doctrine back into agnosticism 

 and monism, giving to it a greater logical 

 consistency, but bringing it into violent con- 

 flict with theism and with common sense. 

 DAWSON Facts and Fancies of Modern Sci- 

 ence, lect. 1, p. 52. (A. B. P. S.) 



731. DATA, INADEQUATE, LEAD TO 

 ERRONEOUS CONCLUSION Emission 

 Theory of Light Justified by the Facts in 

 Neivton's Possession. The case of Newton 

 still more forcibly illustrates the position, 

 that in forming physical theories we draw 

 for our materials upon the world of fact. 

 Before he began to deal with light, he was 

 intimately acquainted with the laws of elas- 

 tic collision, which all of you have seen more 

 or less perfectly illustrated on a billiard- 

 table. As regards the collision of sensible 

 masses, Newton knew the angle of incidence 

 to be equal to the angle of reflection, and he 

 also knew that experiment . . . had es- 

 tablished the same law with regard to light. 

 He thus found in his previous knowledge the 

 material for theoretic images. He had only 

 to change the magnitude of conceptions 

 already in his mind to arrive at the emis- 

 sion theory of light. He supposed light to 

 consist of elastic particles of inconceivable 

 minuteness shot out with inconceivable rap- 

 idity by luminous bodies, and that such par- 

 ticles impinging upon smooth surfaces were 

 reflected in accordance with the ordinary 

 law of elastic collision. The fact of optical 

 reflection certainly occurred as if light con- 

 sisted of such particles, and this was New- 

 ton's sole justification for introducing them. 

 --TYNDALL Lectures on Light, lect. 2, p. 45. 

 (A., 1898.) 



732. DAWN OF MOTHERLY VIR- 

 TUES Patience Sympathy Carefulness- 

 Tenderness. Begin at the beginning again 

 and recall the fact of woman's passive 

 strain. A tendency to passivity means, 

 among other things, a capacity to sit still. 

 Be it but for a minute or an hour does not 

 matter; the point is that the faintest pos- 

 sible' capacity is there. For this is the 

 embryo of patience, and if much and long 

 nursed a fully fledged patience will come 

 out of it. Supply next to this new virtue 

 some definite object on which to practise, let 

 us say a child. When this child is in 

 trouble the mother will observe the signs of 

 pain. Its cry will awaken associations, and 

 in some dull sense the mother will feel with 

 it. But " feeling with another " is the lit- 

 eral translation of the name of a second vir- 

 tue sympathy. From feeling with it, the 

 parent will sooner or later be led to do some- 

 thing to help it ; then it will do more things 

 to help it; finally it will be always helping 

 it. Now, to care for things is to become 

 careful; to tend things is to become tender. 

 Here are four virtues patience, sympathy, 

 carefulness, tenderness already dawning 

 upon mankind. DRUMMOND Ascent of Man, 

 p. 288. (J. P., 1900.) 



733. DAY'S JOURNEY A Primitive 

 Measure of Distance. The day's journey is 

 often mentioned as a fixed distance. This 

 is only true within wide limits, and it 

 scarcely ever exceeds ten miles for march- 

 ing. " The Indians, finding that their wives 

 were so near as to be within one of their 

 ordinary days' work, which seldom exceeded 

 ten or twelve miles, determined not to rest 

 till they had joined them." MASON Aborigi- 

 nal American Mechanics, Memoirs of the 

 International Congress of Anthropology, p. 

 79. (Sch. P. C.) 



734. DEATH, A SCIENTIST'S DEFI- 

 NITION OF Frozen Caterpillar Revived. 

 I would define death as an arrest of life, 

 from which no lengthened revival, either of 

 the whole or any of its parts, can take 

 place; or, to put it concisely, as a definite 

 arrest of life. . . . For the conception 

 itself it is quite immaterial whether we are 

 able to decide if death has really taken place 

 in any particular case; however uncertain 

 we might be, the state which we call death 

 would be not less sharply and definitely 

 limited. We might consider the caterpillar 

 of Euprepia flavia to be dead when frozen in 

 ice, but if it recovered after thawing and 

 became an imago, we should say that it had 

 only been apparently dead, that life stood 

 still for a time, but had not ceased forever. 

 It is only the irretrievable loss of life in an 

 organism which we call death, and we ought 

 to hold fast to this conception, so that it 

 will not slip from us, and become worthless, 

 because we no longer know what we mean 

 by it. ... The real proof of death is 

 that the organized substance which pre- 



