achine 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



408 



in assuming that the bird lost the power of 

 flight through disuse of its wings. CHAP- 

 MAN Bird-Life, ch. 2, p. 20. (A., 1900.) 



1993. 



Maqnet Must Work 



or Perish Man Made for Usefulness. If 

 made of the best of steel for the purpose, 

 and hardened and tempered in just the right 

 way, [the magnet] will hold its charge if it 

 is given something to do. If a piece of iron 

 is placed across its poles it also becomes a 

 magnet, and its molecules turn and work in 

 harmony with those of the mother-magnet. 

 These magnetic lines of force reach around 

 in a circuit. Even before the iron, or " keep- 

 er," as it is called, is put across its poles 

 there are lines of force reaching around 

 through the air or ether from one pole to 

 another. ... As long as we give our 

 magnet something to do, up to the measure 

 of its capacity, it will keep up its power. 

 We may make other magnets with it 

 thousands, yea, millions of them and it 

 not only does not lose its power, but may 

 be even stronger for having done this work. 

 If, however, we hang it up without its 

 " keeper," and give it nothing to do, it grad- 

 ually returns to its natural condition in 

 the home circle of molecular rings. Little 

 by little the coercive force is overcome by 

 the constant tendency of the molecule to 

 go back to its natural position among its 

 fellows. 



The magnet furnishes many beautiful les- 

 sons, as indeed do all the natural phenome- 

 na. Every man has within him a latent 

 power that needs only to be aroused and 

 directed in the right way to make his in- 

 fluence felt upon his fellows. Like the mag- 

 net, the man who uses his power to help his 

 fellows up to the measure of his limitations 

 not only has been a benefactor to his race, 

 but is himself a stronger and better man 

 for having done so. But, again, like the 

 magnet, if he allows these God-given pow- 

 ers to lie still and rust for want of legiti- 

 mate use he gradually loses the power he 

 had and becomes simply a moving thing 

 without influence or use in a world in which 

 he vegetates. EIJSHA GRAY Nature's Mir- 

 acles, vol. iii, ch. 4, p. 30. (F. H. & H., 

 1900.) 



1994. Parasites among 



Plants. Among a number of plants the 

 power of self-assimilation has been entirely 

 lost. They develop no green leaves, but 

 have the peculiarity of penetrating the roots 

 and the main stalk of other plants with 

 their rootlets, of intergrowing with them 

 completely, and of employing for themselves 

 the combinations of carbon prepared by 

 other plants for their own use. ENGLER 

 Ueber das Pflanzenleben unter der Erde. 

 (Translated for Scientific Side-Lights.) 



1995. LOVE CONVERTS PAIN TO 

 JOY Any Strong Emotion Makes Man Insen- 

 sible to Pain. It is as truly our nature not 

 to feel pain from the ordinarily painful 



things at some times as it is to feel them 

 painful at others. In this respect, the power 

 of love to take away pain is not peculiar. 

 Love, when it is strong, can banish pain; 

 but in this it is only like all strong emo- 

 tions: it is peculiar in its power of ma- 

 king what is ordinarily painful a source of 

 joy, and this a joy of the highest and most 

 exquisite kind. We all know this. We not 

 only are willing, we rejoice, to bear an or- 

 dinarily painful thing for the benefit or 

 pleasure of one whom we intensely love. 

 Within certain limits, indeed, but still most 

 truly, the bearing pain for such an end is 

 a privilege to be sought, not a sorrow to be 

 shunned. Universal experience proves this: 

 it is one of the broad, familiar features of 

 human life. HINTON The Mystery of Pain, 

 p. 20. (Hum., 1893.) 



1996. LOVE NOT A PRODUCT OF 



SEX OR MARRIAGE Loveless Wedlock 

 among Savages The Child Awakened Love 

 United Parents. With all [other] bar- 

 riers removed it might now be supposed that 

 the process was at last complete. But one of 

 the surprises of evolution here awaits us. 

 All the arrangements are finished to fan the 

 flame of love, yet out of none of them was 

 love itself begotten. The idea that the ex- 

 istence of sex accounts for the existence of 

 love is untrue. Marriage among early races 

 . . . has nothing to do with love. Among 

 savage peoples the phenomenon everywhere 

 confronts us of wedded life without a grain 

 of love. Love, then, is no necessary ingredi- 

 ent of the sex relation; it is not an out- 

 growth of passion. Love is love, and has 

 always been love, and has never been any- 

 thing lower. Whence, then, came it? If 

 neither the husband nor the wife bestowed 

 this gift upon the world, who did? It was 

 a little child. Till this appeared, man's af- 

 fection was non-existent; woman's was fro- 

 zen. The man did not love the woman; 

 the woman did not love the man. But one 

 day from its mother's very heart, from a 

 shrine which her husband never visited nor 

 knew was there, which she herself dared 

 scarce acknowledge, a child drew forth the 

 first fresh bud of a love which was not pas- 

 sion, a love which was not selfish, a love 

 which was an incense from its Maker, and 

 whose fragrance from that hour went forth 

 to sanctify the world. Later, long later, 

 through the same tiny and unconscious in- 

 termediary, the father's soul was touched. 

 And one day, in the love of a little child, 

 father and mother met. DRUMMOND Ascent 

 of Man, ch. 9, p. 305. (J. P., 1900.) 



1997. LOVE, THE MOTHER'S, UN- 

 RIVALED The passionate devotion of a 

 mother ill herself, perhaps to a sick or 

 dying child is perhaps the most simply 

 beautiful moral spectacle that human life 

 affords. Contemning every danger, triumph- 

 ing over every difficulty, outlasting all fa- 

 tigue, woman's love is here invincibly su- 



