Freedom 

 Future 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



272 



that is to say, there is nothing existing in 

 the world, or possible even in thought, which 

 is absolutely alone entirely free from in- 

 separable relationship to some other thing 

 or things. Freedom, therefore, is only intel- 

 ligible as meaning the being free from some 

 particular kind of restraint. ARGYLL Reign 

 of Law, ch. 6, p. 179. (Burt.) 



1326. FREEDOM OF CHANGE Hon- 

 esty and Truth Better than Consistency. 

 He [Cope] has been much blamed on ac- 

 count of the constant changes of his views 

 and because he was inconsistent. Unques- 

 tionably he did change his views very often. 

 Doubtless some of those changes were ne- 

 cessitated by too great haste in formulation 

 and too great rashness in publication. The 

 freedom to change which he exercised 

 . . . was an offset to his rashness. He 

 exercised a proper scientific spirit in refu- 

 sing to be always consistent at the expense of 

 truth. GILL Address in Memory of Edward 

 Drinker Cope in Proceedings of Amer. Assoc. 

 for Advancement of Science, vol. xlvi, 1897. 



1327. FREEDOM OF SAVAGES AN 

 ILLUSION Slavery to Barbarous Customs 

 Irrational Demands on Devotee. The truth 

 is that nowhere is the evidence of develop- 

 ment in a wrong direction so strong as in 

 the many customs of savage and barbarous 

 nations which are more or less directly con- 

 nected with religion. The idea has long 

 been abandoned that the savage lives in a 

 condition of freedom as compared with the 

 complicated obligations imposed by civiliza- 

 tion. Savages, on the contrary, are under 

 the tyranny of innumerable customs which 

 render their whole life a slavery from the 

 cradle to the grave. And what is most re- 

 markable is the irrational character of most 

 of these customs, and the difficulty of even 

 imagining how they can have become estab- 

 lished. They bear all the marks of an 

 origin far distant in time of a connection 

 with doctrines which have been forgotten, 

 and of conceptions which have run, as it 

 were, to seed. They bear, in short, all the 

 marks of long attrition, like the remnants 

 of a bed of rock which has been broken up 

 at a distant epoch of geological time, and 

 has left no other record of itself than a few 

 worn and incoherent fragments in some far- 

 off conglomerate. Just as these fragments 

 are now held together by common materials 

 which are universally distributed, such as 

 sand or lime, so the worn and broken frag- 

 ments of old religions are held together, in 

 the shape of barbarous customs, by those 

 common instincts and aspirations of the hu- 

 man mind which follow it in all its stages, 

 whether of growth or of decay. ARGYLL 

 Unity of Nature, ch. 12, p. 285. (Burt.) 



1328. FREEMAN, MORAL, VS. MORAL 

 SLAVE (John viii, 32-36) Avoiding Evil 

 through Love of Good. Spinoza long ago 

 wrote in his " Ethics " that anything that a 

 man can avoid under the notion that it is 

 bad he may also avoid under the notion that 



something else is good. He who habitually 

 acts sub specie mali, under the negative no- 

 tion, the notion of the bad, is called a slave 

 by Spinoza. To him who acts habitually 

 under the notion of good he gives the name 

 of freeman. JAMES Talks to Teachers, ch. 

 15, p. 194. (H. H. & Co., 1900.) 



1329. FREEZING BY RADIATION 

 Formation of Artificial Ice in Bengal. 

 Wells was the first to explain the formation, 

 artificially, of ice in Bengal, where the sub- 

 stance is never formed naturally. Shallow 

 pits are dug, which are partially filled with 

 straw, and on the straw flat pans containing 

 water are exposed to the clear firmament. 

 The water is a powerful radiant, and sends 

 off its heat copiously into space. The heat 

 thus lost cannot be supplied from the earth 

 this source being cut off by the non-con- 

 ducting straw. Before sunrise a cake of ice 

 is formed in each vessel. This is the ex- 

 planation of Wells, and it is, no doubt, the 

 true one. I think, however, it needs supple- 

 menting. It appears, from the description, 

 that the condition most suitable for the for- 

 mation of ice is not only a clear air, but a 

 dry air. The nights, says Sir Robert Bar- 

 ker, most favorable for the production of 

 ice, are those which are clearest and most 

 serene, and in which very little dew appears 

 after 'midnight. The italicized phrase is 

 very significant. To produce the ice in 

 abundance, the atmosphere must not only 

 be clear, but it must be comparatively free 

 from aqueous vapor. When the straw on 

 which the pans were laid became wet, it was 

 always changed for dry straw ; and the rea- 

 son Wells assigned for this was, that the 

 straw, by being wetted, was rendered more 

 compact and efficient as a conductor. This 

 may have been the case, but it is also cer- 

 tain that the vapor rising from the wet 

 straw, and overspreading the pans like a 

 screen, would check the chill and retard the 

 congelation. TYNDALL Heat a Mode of Mo- 

 tion, lect. 17, p. 500. (A., 1900.) 



1330. FREEZING BY RAREFACTION 

 Joseph Henry read a communication 

 [March 2, 1825] on the production of cold 

 by the rarefaction of air, accompanied with 

 experiments. 



One of these experiments most strikingly 

 illustrated the great reduction of tempera- 

 ture which takes place on the sudden rare- 

 faction of condensed air. Half a pint of 

 water was poured into a strong copper ves- 

 sel, of a globular form, and having a capac- 

 ity of five gallons; a tube of one-fourth of 

 an inch in caliber, with a number of holes 

 near the lower end and a stop-cock attached 

 to the other extremity, was firmly screwed 

 into the neck of the vessel; the lower end 

 of the tube dipped into the water, but a 

 number of the holes were above the surface 

 of the liquid, so that a jet of air mingled 

 with water might be thrown from the foun- 

 tain. The apparatus was then charged with 

 condensed air, by means of a powerful con- 

 densing-pump, until the pressure was esti- 



