419 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



original man and make him walk about 

 again as we do. The little vials that contain 

 the different elements which we all bear 

 about in small proportions are more numer- 

 ous, and they suggest not merely the com- 

 plexity of our constitutions, but the iden- 

 tity of our elements with those we have 

 found by the spectroscope, not alone in the 

 sun, but even in the distant stars and 

 nebula?; for this wonderful instrument of 

 the new astronomy can find the traces of 

 poison in a stomach or analyze a star, and 

 its conclusions lead us to think that the 

 ancients were nearly right when they called 

 man a microcosm, or little universe. We 

 have literally within our own bodies samples 

 of the most important elements of which the 

 great universe without is composed, and you 

 and I are not only like each other, and 

 brothers in humanity, but children of the 

 sun and stars in a literal sense, having 

 bodies actually made in large part of the 

 same things that make Sirius and Alde- 

 baran. They and we are near relatives. 

 LANGLEY The New Astronomy, ch. 8, p. 221. 

 (H. M. & Co., 1896.) 



2052. MAN MODIFYING NATURE 

 Domestic Animals Remolded to His Will. 

 It appears as if any special quality or 

 modification in an animal can be obtained 

 if we only breed it in sufficient quantity, 

 watch carefully for the required variations, 

 and carry on selection with patience and 

 skill for a sufficiently long period. Thus, in 

 sheep we have enormously increased the 

 wool, and have obtained the power of rapid- 

 ly forming flesh and fat; in cows we have 

 increased the production of milk ; in horses 

 we have obtained strength, endurance, or 

 speed, and have greatly modified size, form, 

 and color; in poultry we have secured 

 various colors of plumage, increase of size, 

 and almost perpetual egg-laying. WALLACE 

 Darwinism, ch. 4, p. 63. (Hum.) 



2053. MAN, MORAL NATURE OF 



Human Conduct the Subject-matter of the 

 Moral Sense. What is the subject-matter 

 of the moral sense? or, in other words, what 

 is the kind of thing of which alone it takes 

 any cognizance, and in which alone it recog- 

 nizes the qualities of right and wrong? 



To this fundamental question one answer, 

 and one answer only, can be given. The 

 things, and the only things, of which the 

 moral sense takes cognizance are the actions 

 of man. It can take no cognizance of the 

 actions of machines, nor of the actions of the 

 inanimate forces of Nature, nor of the ac- 

 tions of beasts, except in so far as a few of 

 these may be supposed to possess in a low 

 and elementary degree some of the charac- 

 teristic powers of man. Human conduct is 

 the only subject-matter in respect of which 

 the perceptions of the moral sense arise. 

 They are perceptions of the mind which have 

 no relation to anything whatever except to 

 the activities of another mind constituted 

 like itself. ARGYLL Unity of Nature, ch. 9, 

 p. 196. (Burt.) 



2054. MAN MORE FEARFUL THAN 

 NATURE Spartacus in Vesuvius. What 

 was the real condition of Campania during 

 those years of dire convulsion [of Vesu- 

 vius] ? " A climate where heaven's breath 

 smells sweet and wooingly a vigorous and 

 luxuriant Nature unparalleled in its produc- 

 tions a coast which was once the fairy-land 

 of poets and the favorite retreat of great 

 men. Even the tyrants of the creation loved 

 this alluring region, spared it, adorned it, 

 lived in it, died in it." [Forsyth's " Italy," 

 vol. ii.] The inhabitants, indeed, have enjoyed 

 no immunity from the calamities which are 

 the lot of mankind; but the principal evils 

 which they have suffered must be attributed 

 to moral, not to physical, causes to disas- 

 trous events over which man might have 

 exercised a control, rather than to the in- 

 evitable catastrophes which result from sub- 

 terranean agency. When Spartacus en- 

 camped his army of ten thousand gladiators 

 in the old extinct crater of Vesuvius, the 

 volcano was more justly a subject of terror 

 to Campania than it has ever been since the 

 rekindling of its fires. LYELL Geology, ch. 

 24, p. 395. (A., 1854.) 



2055. MAN MUST ACQUIRE IN- 

 STINCTS Habit the Process of Acquisition 

 Economy of Automatism. Man is born with 

 a tendency to do more things than he has 

 ready-made arrangements for in his nerve- 

 centers. Most of the performances of other 

 animals are automatic. But in him the 

 number of them is so enormous that most of 

 them must be the fruit of painful study. 

 If practise did not make perfect, nor habit 

 economize the expense of nervous and mus- 

 cular energy, he would therefore be in a 

 sorry plight. As Dr. Maudsley says : 



" If an act became no easier after being 

 done several times, if the careful direction 

 of consciousness were necessary to its ac- 

 complishment on each occasion, it is evident 

 that the whole activity of a lifetime might 

 be confined to one or two deeds that no 

 progress could take place in development. 

 A man might be occupied all day in dressing 

 and undressing himself; the attitude of his 

 body would absorb all his attention and 

 energy; the washing of his hands or the 

 fastening of a button would be as difficult 

 to him on each occasion as to the child on 

 its first trial; and he would, furthermore, 

 be completely exhausted by his exertions. 

 Think of the pains necessary to teach a child 

 to stand, of the many efforts which it must 

 make, and of the ease with which it at last 

 stands, unconscious of any effort. For while 

 secondarily automatic acts are accomplished 

 with comparatively little weariness in this 

 regard approaching the organic movements, 

 or the original reflex movements the con- 

 scious effort of the will soon produces ex- 

 haustion." JAMES Psychology, vol. i, ch. 4, 

 p. 113. (H. H. &Co., 1899.) 



2056. MAN NOT A MERE AUTOM- 

 ATON His Automatic Actions Subordinate 

 and Subsidiary Each Generation Starts 



