489 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



Necessity 

 Nerves 



have in it nothing surprising. But in man 

 the negation of all fixed modes is the essen- 

 tial characteristic. He owes his whole pre- 

 eminence a.-? a reasoner, his whole human 

 quality of intellect, we may say, to the facil- 

 ity with which a given mode of thought in 

 him may suddenly be broken up into ele- 

 ments which recombine anew. Only at the 

 price of inheriting no settled instinctive 

 tendencies is he able to settle every novel 

 case by the fresh discovery by his reason of 

 novel principles. JAMES Psychology, vol. ii, 

 ch. 22, p. 368. (H. H. & Co., 1899.) 



2403. NEGLECT, DETERIORATION 



THE PENALTY OF Effort Needed for Ex- 

 cellence (Heb. ii, 3). If we neglect a gar- 

 den plant, then a natural principle of deteri- 

 oration comes in and changes it into a worse 

 plant. And if we neglect a bird, by the 

 same imperious law it will be gradually 

 changed into an uglier bird. Or if we neg- 

 lect almost any of the domestic animals, 

 they will rapidly revert to wild and worth- 

 less forms again. 



Now the same thing exactly would hap- 

 pen in the case of you or me. Why should 

 man be an exception to any of the laws of 

 Nature? Nature knows him simply as an 

 animal subkingdom Vertebrata, class 

 Mammalia, order Bimana. And the law of 

 reversion to type runs through all creation 

 If a man neglect himself for a few years 

 he will change into a worse man and a 

 lower man. If it is his body that he neg- 

 lects, he will deteriorate into a wild and 

 bestial savage, like the dehumanized men 

 who are discovered sometimes upon desert 

 islands. If it is his mind it will degenerate 

 into imbecility and madness solitary con- 

 finement has the power to unmake men's 

 minds and leave them idiots. If he neglect 

 his conscience, it will run off into lawless- 

 ness and vice. Or, lastly, if it is his soul, 

 it must inevitably atrophy, drop off in ruin 

 and decay. DRUMMOND Natural Law in the 

 Spiritual World, essay 2, p. 88. (H. Al.) 



2404. NEGLECT OF SANITATION 

 INVITES ZYMOTIC DISEASE Oppression 

 Opens the Way for Pestilence Human 

 Brotherhood May Involve the Most Discreet 

 with the Most Degraded. We learn from 

 this marvelous discovery [of the destruction 

 of disease-germs by the leucocytes or white 

 blood-corpuscles] that so long as we live 

 simply and naturally, and obey the well- 

 known laws of sanitation, so as to secure 

 a healthy condition of the body, the more 

 dreaded zymotic diseases will be powerless 

 against us. But if we neglect these laws 

 of health, or allow of conditions which com- 

 pel large bodies of our fellow men to neg- 

 lect them, these disease-germs will be pres- 

 ent in such quantities in the air and the 

 water around us that even those who per- 

 sonally live comparatively wholesome lives 

 will not always escape them. WALLACE The 

 Wonderful Century, ch. 14, p. 146. (D. M. 

 & Co., 1899.) 



2405. NEIGHBOR, ANCIENT IDEA 



OF Moral Obligation Limited to Tribe. It 

 must be clearly understood also that the 

 Old- World rules of moral conduct were not 

 the same towards all men. A man knew 

 his duty to his neighbor, but all men were 

 not his neighbors. This is very clearly seen 

 in the history of men's ideas of manslaugh- 

 ter and theft. . . . The old state of 

 things is well illustrated- in the Latin word 

 hostis, which, meaning originally "stranger," 

 passed quite naturally into the sense of 

 " enemy." Not only is slaying an enemy in 

 open war looked on as righteous, but ancient 

 law goes on the doctrine that slaying one's 

 own tribesman and slaying a foreigner are 

 crimes of quite different order, while killing 

 a slave is but a destruction of property. 

 Nor even now does the colonist practically 

 admit that killing a brown or black man 

 is an act of quite the same nature as killing 

 a white countryman. Yet the idea of the 

 sacredness of human life is ever spreading 

 more widely in the world, as a principle 

 applying to mankind at large. 



The history of the notion of theft and 

 plunder follows partly the same lines. In 

 the lower civilization the law, " Thou shalt 

 not steal," is not unknown, but it applies 

 to tribesmen and friends, not to strangers 

 and enemies. TYLOB Anthropology, ch. 16, 

 p. 411. (A., 1899.) 



2406. NERVE-FORCE CAPABLE OF 



EXHAUSTION Sensations More Vivid after 

 Remission Maximum of Power Follows Re- 

 pose. The nerve-pores and corpuscles, on 

 being stimulated, undergo a process of 

 change, whereby their power is gradually 

 exhausted, in consequence of which they 

 need remission and repose. Hence, the 

 first moments of a stimulus are always 

 the freshest, and give birth to the most 

 vivid degrees of consciousness. This is the 

 condition more especially requisite for main- 

 taining a state of pleasurable sensibility. 

 The nervous system should be duly refreshed 

 or invigorated by nourishment and repose, 

 and never pushed in any part to the extreme 

 limits of exhaustion. The same condition 

 applies to our power of active energy in 

 every department, whether intellectual, vol- 

 untary, or emotional. Power is at the maxi- 

 mum, under a fresh start of renovated 

 nerves, and fails as we approach the point 

 of exhaustion. There are certain exception- 

 al manifestations, as in the common ex- 

 perience of " growing warm " to one's work ; 

 the maximum of energy usually shows itself 

 some time after commencing, an effect due 

 entirely to the increased supply of blood fol- 

 lowing on a certain amount of exercise. 

 BAIN Mind and Body, ch. 4, p. 12. (Hum., 

 1880.) 



2407. NERVES COMMUNICATE 

 THROUGH CENTERS Illustration of Mail ' 

 Sent through Distributing Office. The plan 

 of communicating from one part of the body 

 to another as from the skin of the hand 



