Maternity 

 Matter 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



430 



ally, in terms of their reproductive special- 

 ization. DRUMMOND Ascent of Man, ch. 8. 

 p. 268. (J. P., 1900.) 



21O6. MATERNITY VS. MOTHER- 

 HOOD The Butterfly Cares for Its Egg Does 

 Rot and Could Not Care for Its Young 

 Could Not Even Recognize It as Its Own. 

 There is a solicitude for the egg of the most 

 extreme kind for its being placed exactly 

 in the right spot, at the right time, pro- 

 tected from the weather, shielded from ene- 

 mies, and provided with a first supply of 

 food. The butterfly places the eggs of its 

 young on the very leaves which the coming 

 caterpillar likes the most, and on the under 

 side of the leaf where they will be least 

 exposed a case which illustrates in a pal- 

 pable way the essential difference between 

 motherhood and maternity. Maternity here, 

 in the restricted sense of merely adequate 

 physical care, is carried to its utmost per- 

 fection. Everything that can be done for 

 the egg is done. Motherhood, on the other 

 hand, is non-existent, is even an anatomical 

 impossibility. If a butterfly could live till 

 its egg was hatched which does not happen 

 it would see no butterfly come out of the 

 egg, no airy likeness of itself, but an earth- 

 bound caterpillar. If it recognized this crea- 

 ture as its child, it could never play the 

 mother to it. The anatomical form is so 

 different that were it starving it could not 

 feed it, were it threatened it could not save 

 it, nor is it possible to see any direction in 

 which it could be of the slightest use to it. 

 It is obvious that Nature never intended 

 to make a mother here; that all that she 

 desired as yet was to perfect the first ma- 

 ternal instinct. And the tragedy of the 

 situation is that on that day when her train- 

 ing to be a true mother should begin she 

 passes out of the world. DRUMMOND Ascent 

 of Man, ch. 8, p. 270. (J. P., 1900.) 



2 1 7 . MATHEMATICS, BEAUTY OF 



In Music, Sunset, Snow-crystals Har- 

 mony of Nature. The notes of the gamut 

 are, besides, nothing else but ratios of num- 

 ber between the sonorous vibrations. Com- 

 bined in a certain order, these numbers give 

 perfect accord. Here the major mode rouses 

 and enraptures us; there the minor mode 

 affects us and plunges us into melancholy 

 reverie. And yet there is here but a matter 

 of figures! We can not only hear these 

 sounds, but may even see them. Let ^us 

 make two tuning-forks vibrate by the in- 

 genious method of Lissajous, one vertical, 

 the other horizontal, fitted with little mir- 

 rors reflecting a luminous point on a screen. 

 If the two tuning-forks are in unison and 

 give exactly the same note, the combination 

 of the two vibrations rendered visible on the 

 screen by the little mirrors, which inscribe 

 them in lines of light, produces a perfect 

 circle that is to say, the simplest geo- 

 metrical figure; as the amplitude of the vi- 

 brations diminishes, the circle flattens, be- 

 comes an ellipse, then a straight line. . . . 



Yes, in everything and everywhere numbers 

 rule the world. 



Why, however, seek in scientific analysis 

 testimony to the harmony which Nature has 

 shed over all her works? Altho it may be 

 necessary for us to rise to the ideal of music, 

 to contemplate the beautiful colors of the 

 sky or the splendor of the setting sun, we 

 may on a dull winter day, in the gray and 

 monotonous hours when the snow falls in 

 innumerable flakes, examine with the micro- 

 scope some of these flakes, and the geomet- 

 rical beauty of these light crystals will fill 

 us with admiration. As Pythagoras said: 

 " God works everywhere by geometry," 



del 6 0eos vew/uterpri FLAMMARION PopU- 



lar Astronomy, bk. iii, ch. 1, pp. 223-26. 

 (A.) 



2108. MATHEMATICS, DEVELOP- 

 MENT OF Arithmetic Narrowly Limited be- 

 fore Decimal System. The Greeks, the 

 Romans, the Egyptians, the Jews, and the 

 Chinese had all such cumbrous systems that 

 anything like a science of arithmetic, be- 

 yond very simple operations, was impossible; 

 and the Roman system, by which the year 

 1888 would be written MDCCCLXXXVIII, 

 was that in common use in Europe down 

 to the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries, 

 and even much later in some places. 

 Algebra, which was invented by the Hindus, 

 from whom also came the decimal notation, 

 was not introduced into Europe till the thir- 

 teenth century, altho the Greeks had some 

 acquaintance with it; and it reached West- 

 ern Europe from Italy only in the sixteenth 

 century. It was, no doubt, owing to the ab- 

 sence of a sound system of numeration that 

 the mathematical talent of the Greeks was 

 directed chiefly to geometry, in which 

 science Euclid, Archimedes, and others made 

 such brilliant discoveries. It is, however, 

 during the last three centuries only that the 

 civilized world appears to have become con- 

 scious of the possession of a marvelous 

 faculty, . . . the full grandeur of which 

 can be appreciated only by those who have 

 devoted some time (even if unsuccessfully) 

 to the study. WALLACE Darwinism, ch. 15, 

 p. 313. (Hum.) 



2109. MATHEMATICS MINISTERS 

 TO ALL SCIENCE While the algebra of 

 the Arabs, by means of that which they had 

 acquired from the Greeks and Indians, com- 

 bined with the portions due to their own 

 invention, acted so beneficially on the bril- 

 liant epoch of the Italian mathematicians 

 of the Middle Ages, notwithstanding a great 

 deficiency in symbolical designations, we 

 likewise owe to the same people the merit 

 of having furthered the use of the Indian 

 numerical system from Bagdad to Cordova 

 by their writings and their extended com- 

 mercial relations. Both these effects the 

 simultaneous diffusion of the knowledge of 

 the science of numbers and of numerical 

 symbols with value by position have vari- 

 ously, but powerfully, favored the advance 

 of the mathematical portion of natural sci- 



