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SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



424 



necessary muscular exercise, so these early 

 men speculated vaguely and confusedly re- 

 garding natural phenomena, not having had 

 the discipline needed to give clearness to 

 their insight and firmness to their grasp of 

 principles. They assured themselves of the 

 rectilinear propagation of light, and that the 

 angle of incidence was equal to the angle of 

 reflection. For more than a thousand yeara 

 I might say, indeed, for more than fifteen 

 hundred years subsequently the scientific 

 intellect appears as if smitten with paral- 

 ysis, the fact being that during this time 

 the mental force, which might have run 

 in the direction of science, was diverted into 

 other directions. 



The course of investigation, as regards 

 light, was resumed in 1100 by an Arabian 

 philosopher named Alhazan. Then it was 

 taken up in succession by Roger Bacon, 

 Vitellio, and Kepler. These men, tho failing 

 to detect the principle which ruled the 

 facts, kept the fire of investigation con- 

 stantly burning. Then came the funda- 

 mental discovery of Snell, that corner-stone 

 of optics, and immediately afterwards we 

 have the application by Descartes of Snell's 

 discovery to the explanation of the rainbow. 

 Following this we have the overthrow, by 

 Homer, of the notion of Descartes that light 

 was transmitted instantaneously through 

 space. Then came Newton's crowning ex- 

 periments on the analysis and synthesis of 

 white light, by which it was proved to be 

 compounded of various kinds of light of 

 different degrees of refrangibility. TYN- 

 DALL Lectures on Light, p. 209. (A., 1898.) 



2076. MAN'S LIKENESS TO LOWER 

 ORGANISMS SPRINGS FROM SOME 

 DEEP NECESSITY Whether man has 

 been separately created out of the inor- 

 ganic elements of which his body is com- 

 posed, or whether it was born of matter 

 previously organized in lower forms, this 

 community of structure must equally in- 

 dicate a corresponding community of re- 

 lations with external things, and some an- 

 tecedent necessity deeply seated in the very 

 nature of those things, why his bodily frame 

 should be like to theirs. ARGYLL, Unity 

 of Nature, ch. 2, p. 32. (Burt.) 



2077. MAN'S ORIGINAL HOME A 



Garden of Eden Rejection and Degeneracy. 

 In the nature of things the original set- 

 tlements of man must of necessity have been 

 the most highly favored in the conditions he 

 requires. If, on the commonly received 

 theory of development, those conditions pro- 

 duced him, they must have reached, at the 

 time when and in the place where he arose, 

 the very highest degree of perfect adapta- 

 tion. He must have been happy in the 

 circumstances in which he found himself 

 placed, and presumably he must have been 

 contented to remain there. Equally on the 

 theory of man being a special creation, we 

 must suppose that when weakest and most 

 ignorant he must have been placed in what 



was to him a garden that is to say, in 

 some region where the fruits of the earth 

 were abundant and easily accessible. 

 Whether this region were wide or narrow, 

 he would not naturally leave it except from 

 necessity. On every possible supposition, 

 therefore, as to the origin of man, those who 

 in the dispersion of the race were first sub- 

 jected to hard and unfavorable conditions 

 would naturally be those who had least 

 strength to meet them, and upon whom they 

 would have accordingly the most depressing 

 effect. This is a process of natural rejection 

 which is the inseparable correlative of the 

 process of natural selection. It tends to de- 

 velopment in a wrong direction by the com- 

 bined action of two different circumstanced 

 which are inherent in the nature of the case. 

 First, it must be always the weaker men 

 who are driven out from comfortable 

 homes; and, secondly, it must be always 

 to comparatively unfavorable regions that 

 they are compelled to fly. Under the opera- 

 tion of causes so combined as these it would 

 be strange, indeed, if the physical and men- 

 tal condition of the tribes which have been 

 exposed to them should remain unchanged. 

 ARGYLL Unity of Nature, ch. 10, p. 250. 

 (Burt.) 



2078. MAN'S SOCIAL SELF Torture 

 of Ostracism. A man's social self is the 

 recognition which he gets from his mates. 

 We are not only gregarious animals, liking 

 to be in sight of our fellows, but we have 

 an innate propensity to get ourselves no- 

 ticed, and noticed favorably, by our kind. 

 No more fiendish punishment could be de- 

 vised, were such a thing physically possible, 

 than that one should be turned loose in so- 

 ciety and remain absolutely unnoticed by 

 all the members thereof. If no one turned 

 round when we entered, answered when we 

 spoke, or minded what we did, but if every 

 person we met " cut us dead," and acted as 

 if we were non-existing things, a kind of 

 rage and impotent despair would ere long 

 well up in us, from which the cruelest bodily 

 tortures would be a relief; for these would 

 make us feel that, however bad might be our 

 plight, we had not sunk to such a depth as 

 to be unworthy of attention at all. JAMES 

 Psychology, vol. i, ch. 10, p. 293. (H. H. 

 & Co., 1899.) 



20 7 9. MAN'S WORLD-WIDE UNITY 



Makes the Entire Earth His Province. 

 There is only one species of the genus man; 

 and all people of every time and every clime 

 with which we are acquainted might have 

 originated from one common stock. His 

 residence and his diet are both unrestricted ; 

 he inhabits the whole habitable earth and 

 feeds upon the varied materials derived 

 from organized creation. Relatively to his 

 moderate bulk, and in comparison with other 

 mammifera, he attains a very advanced age. 

 BLUMENBACH Manual of Natural History, 

 p. 35. (Translated for Scientific Side- 

 Lights.) 



