Edifice 

 Effect 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



198 



which their molecules are endowed. In vir- 

 tue of these forces, atom lays itself to atom 

 in a perfectly definite way, the final visible 

 form of the crystal depending upon this play 

 of its molecules. TYNDALL Lectures on 

 Light, lect. 3, p. 101. (A., 1898.) 



967. EDUCATION AND MAN Reac- 

 tion on Impressions. Man is an organism 

 for reacting on impressions: his mind is 

 there to help determine his reactions, and 

 the purpose of his education is to make them 

 numerous and perfect. Our education 

 means, in short, little more than a mass of 

 possibilities of reaction, acquired at home, 

 at school, or in the training of affairs. 

 JAMES Talks to Teachers, ch. 6, p. 38. (H. 

 H. &Co., 1900.) 



968. EDUCATION A TEST Capacity 

 to Receive Differs with Race. In measuring 

 the minds of the lower races, a good test is, 

 how far their children are able to take a 

 civilized education. The account generally 

 given by European teachers who have had 

 the children of lower races in their schools 

 is that, tho these often learn as well as the 

 white children up to about twelve years old, 

 they then fall off, and are left behind by the 

 children of the ruling race. This fits with 

 what anatomy teaches of the less develop- 

 ment of brain in the Australian and African 

 than in the European. It agrees also with 

 what the history of civilization teaches, that 

 up to a certain point savages and barba- 

 rians are like what our ancestors were and 

 our peasants still are, but from this common 

 level the superior intellect of the progressive 

 races has raised their nations to heights of 

 culture. The white man, tho now dominant 

 over the world, must remember that intel- 

 lectual progress has been by no means the 

 monopoly of his race. At the dawn of his- 

 tory the leaders of culture were the brown 

 Egyptians, and the Babylonians, whose Ac- 

 cadian is not connected with the language 

 of white nations, while the yellow Chinese, 

 whose Tatar affinity is evident in their hair 

 and features, have been for four thousand 

 years or more a civilized and literary nation. 

 The dark-whites, Assyrians, Phoenicians, 

 Persians, Greeks, Eomans, did not start but 

 carried on the forward movement of culture, 

 while since then the fair-whites, as part of 

 the population of France, Germany, and 

 England, have taken their share not meanly, 

 tho latest, in the world's progress. TYLOR 

 Anthropology, ch. 3, p. 74. (A., 1899.) 



969. EDUCATION BASED ON ATTEN- 

 TION Animals and Children Idiots and 

 Deaf-mutes. " The first and most impor- 

 tant, but also the most difficult, task at the 

 outset of an education is to overcome gradu- 

 ally the inattentive dispersion of mind 

 which shows itself wherever the organic life 

 preponderates over the intellectual. The 

 training of animals . . . must be in the 

 first instance based on the awakening of at- 

 tention ( cf. Adrian Leonard, ' Essai sur 



TEducation des Animaux,' Lille, 1842) ; 

 that is to say, we must seek to make them 

 gradually perceive separately things which, 

 if left to themselves, would not be attended 

 to, because they would fuse with a great sum 

 of other sensorial stimuli to a confused total 

 impression, of which each separate item only 

 darkens and interferes with the rest. Simi- 

 larly at first with the human child. The 

 enormous difficulty of deaf-mute- and espe- 

 cially of idiot-instruction is principally due 

 to the slow and painful manner in which 

 we succeed in bringing out from the general 

 confusion of perception single items with 

 sufficient sharpness." ( Waitz, " Lehrbuch 

 der Psychologic," p. 632.) JAMES Psychol- 

 ogy, vol. i, ch. 11, p. 405. (H. H. & Co., 

 1899.) 



970. EDUCATION DEVELOPS MEN- 

 TAL ENDOWMENT Genius Not the Result 

 of Training. Fruits and vegetables must 

 have good nurture to reach perfection, but 

 the gardener knowns his labor will be vain 

 unless he starts with seed which is adapted 

 by nature for improvement by judicious nur- 

 ture; and while it is hard for us to con- 

 sider the question whether the arts and ac- 

 complishments of normal men are due to 

 anything else than training and education, 

 we feel no such difficulty when the faculties 

 of abnormal or exceptional individuals are 

 in question ; for the restriction of the pow- 

 ers of idiots is clearly correlated with defi- 

 cient structure, and training and education 

 are so obviously incompetent to account for 

 the achievements of men of genius that we 

 are apt to believe that their natural or in- 

 nate powers are different in kind from any- 

 thing in our own more commonplace selves. 

 BROOKS Foundations of Zoology, lect. 10, 

 p. 261. (C. U. P., 1899.) 



971. EDUCATION OF MAN FOR 

 SPIRITUAL LIFE A Creative Purpose in 

 Nature Material Ends Not Supreme Com- 

 plexity of Light and Light-sensations. 

 This question of absorption [of light], 

 considered with reference to its molec- 

 ular mechanism, is one of the most subtle 

 and difficult in physics. We are not yet 

 in a condition to grapple with it, but we 

 shall be by and by. We have, in the first 

 place, in solar light an agent of exceeding 

 complexity, composed of innumerable con- 

 stituents, refrangible in different degrees. 

 We find, secondly, the atoms and molecules 

 of bodies gifted with the power of sifting 

 solar light in the most various ways, and 

 producing by this sifting the colors observed 

 in Nature and art. To do this they must 

 possess a molecular structure commensurate 

 in complexity with that of light itself. 

 Thirdly, we have the human eye and brain, 

 so organized as to be able to take in and dis- 

 tinguish the multitude of impressions thus 

 generated. The light, therefore, at starting 

 is complex; to sift and select it as they do, 

 natural bodies must be complex; while to 

 take in the impressions thus generated, the 



