Distinction 

 Division 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



180 



879. DISTINCTION BETWEEN SUC- 

 CESSION AND CAUSATION Day and Night 

 vs. Rotation of the Earth. He [Comte] has 

 an objection to the word cause; he will only 

 consent to speak of laws of succession: and 

 depriving himself of the use of a word which 

 has a positive meaning, he misses the mean- 

 ing it expresses. He sees no difference be- 

 tween such generalizations as Kepler's laws 

 and such as the theory of gravitation. He 

 fails to perceive the real distinction between 

 the laws of succession and coexistence which 

 thinkers of a different school call laws of 

 phenomena, and those of what they call the 

 action of causes: the former exemplified by 

 the succession of day and night, the latter 

 by the earth's rotation which causes it. The 

 succession of day and night is as much an 

 invariable sequence as the alternate ex- 

 posure of opposite sides of the earth to the 

 sun. Yet day and night are not the causes 

 of one another; why? Because their se- 

 quence, tho invariable in our experience, is 

 not unconditionally so : those facts only suc- 

 ceed each other, provided that the presence 

 and absence of the sun succeed each other ; 

 and if this alternation were to cease, we 

 might have either day or night unfollowed 

 by one another. There are thus two kinds 

 of uniformities of succession, the one uncon- 

 ditional, the other conditional on the first: 

 laws of causation, and other successions de- 

 pendent on those laws. MILL Positive Phi- 

 losophy of Auguste Comte, p. 54. (H. H. & 

 Co., 1887.) 



880. DISTINCTIONS LITTLE NOTED 

 BY AVERAGE MIND Horse-stealing vs. 

 Sheep-stealing. Professor de Morgan, 

 thinking, it is true, rather of conceptual 

 than of perceptive discrimination, wrote, 

 wittily enough: 



" The great bulk of the illogical part of 

 the educated community whether majority 

 or minority I know not; perhaps six of one 

 and half a dozen of the other have not 

 power to make a distinction, and of course 

 cannot be made to take a distinction, and of 

 course never attempt to shake a distinction. 

 With them all such things are evasions, 

 subterfuges, come-offs, loopholes, etc. They 

 would hang a man* for horse-stealing under 

 a statute against sheep-stealing, and would 

 laugh at you if you quibbled about the dis- 

 tinction between a horse and a sheep." 

 JAMES Psychology, vol. i, ch. 12, p. 509. 

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



881. DISTRACTION OF ATTENTION 

 FROM GRIEF Help to Forgetfulness Voli- 

 tion the Latest Resource. We will take 

 the case of a man who has sustained a great 

 shock by the loss of a dearly loved wife, 

 child, or friend, a disappointed affection, or 

 commercial ruin. His physical condition is 

 lowered, the power of his will is weakened, 

 the painful impression seems branded into 

 his innermost nature, he cannot help feeling 

 it most acutely, he seems powerless to with- 

 draw himself from it. He may be exhorted 



to " rouse himself " ; every conceivable mo- 

 tive may be suggested to him for doing so; 

 but all in vain. What is needed is the com- 

 plete distraction of his attention from 

 brooding over his misfortune ; and the force 

 which the weakened will cannot of itself 

 exert must be supplied by the attractive in- 

 fluence of new scenes and persons, and the 

 complete severance from painful associa- 

 tions. He yields himself passively to his 

 advisers ; at first " all seems barren, from 

 Dan to Beersheba"; he looks up into the 

 dome of St. Peter's, or down into the crater 

 of Vesuvius, and finds " nothing in it." But 

 gradually his bodily health improves; he 

 begins to show some interest in what he sees 

 and hears; and a judicious companion, like 

 a good nurse, watches for every sign, and 

 encourages every movement in the right di- 

 rection, noticing what proves most attract- 

 ive, and secretly planning to bring its at- 

 tractions into play. At first the patient 

 seems ashamed of being cheerful, and falls 

 back into his moodiness, as if he felt it a 

 duty to hug the memory of his lost happi- 

 ness; but these relapses, after a time, be- 

 come less and less frequent. He begins to 

 find that it is really much pleasanter to for- 

 get himself, and to make himself agreeable 

 to others, than it is to brood morosely over 

 his troubles. With the reinvigoration of his 

 bodily health, his volitional power gradually 

 returns; and he comes to feel that he can 

 resist the tendency to revert to them by 

 determinately giving his attention to the 

 objects around him. The resisting power 

 required becomes less and less the more fre- 

 quently it is exerted ; and at length the men- 

 tal health is completely restored the brood- 

 ing tendency, however, being apt to recur, 

 either when the will is weakened by physical 

 fatigue, or when old associations are revived 

 with peculiar force and vividness. CARPEN- 

 TER Mental Physiology, bk. i, ch. 7, p. 334. 

 (A., 1900.) 



882. DISTRIBUTION, GRADUAL, OF 

 MAMMALIA OVER THE EARTH It is 



evident that the distribution of animals over 

 the earth's surface to-day, or their distribu- 

 tion through past time, as evidenced by 

 their fossil remains, both point to a gradual 

 and natural origin and distribution of every 

 kind of beast composing the mammalian 

 class. We say of every kind of beast, be- 

 cause as regards man no reasonable opinion 

 could be gathered from the facts set down 

 in this series of essays. MIVART Types of 

 Animal Life, ch. 12, p. 374. (L. B. & Co., 

 1893.) 



883. DISTRIBUTION OF PLANTS 

 STRIKINGLY IRREGULAR The strug- 

 gle for existence in plants is, therefore, 

 threefold in character and infinite in com- 

 plexity, and the result is seen in their curi- 

 ously irregular distribution over the face of 

 the earth. Not only has each country its 

 distinct plants, but every valley, every hill- 

 side, almost every hedgerow, has a different 



