573 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



gain 

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2826. READINESS OF NERVE-CUR- 

 RENTS TO FOLLOW ACCUSTOMED 

 PATHS Paths Deepened as Traversed The 

 Power of Habit. Of course, a simple habit, 

 like every other nervous event the habit 

 of snuffing, for example, or of putting one's 

 hands into one's pockets, or of biting one's 

 nails is, mechanically, nothing but a reflex 

 discharge, and its anatomical substratum 

 must be a path in the system. The most 

 complex habits . . . are, from the same 

 point of view, nothing but concatenated dis- 

 charges in the nerve-centers, due to the pres- 

 ence there of systems of reflex paths, so or- 

 ganized as to wake each other up successive- 

 ly, the impression produced by one muscular 

 contraction serving as a stimulus to provoke 

 the next, until a final impression inhibits 

 the process and closes the chain. . . . For 

 the entire nervous system is nothing but a 

 system of paths between a sensory terminus 

 a quo and a muscular, glandular, or other 

 terminus ad quern. A path once traversed 

 by a nerve-current might be expected to fol- 

 low the law of most of the paths we know, 

 and to be scooped out and made more per- 

 meable than before; and this ought to be 

 repeated with each new passage of the cur- 

 rent. ... So nothing is easier than to 

 imagine how, when a current once has tra- 

 versed a path, it should traverse it more 

 readily still a second time. JAMES Psychol- 

 ogy, vol. i, ch. 4, p. 107. (H. H. & Co., 1899.) 



2827. READING OF CHARACTER 

 A RARE ATTAINMENT Its Perfection In- 

 volves Knowledge Not Less Than Omnisci- 

 ent (John ii, 24)- Even overlooking human 

 reticence, and, what is worse, human hyp- 

 ocrisy, the conditions of an accurate read- 

 ing of others' minds are rarely realized. 

 If, as has been remarked by a good author- 

 ity, one rarely meets, even among intelligent 

 people, with a fairly accurate observer of 

 external things, what shall be said as to the 

 commonly claimed power of " intuitive in- 

 sight " into other people's thoughts and 

 feelings, as tho it were a process above 

 suspicion? It is plain, indeed, on a little 

 reflection, that, taking into account what 

 is required in the way of large and va- 

 ried experience (personal and social), a 

 habit of careful introspection, as well as 

 a habit of subtle discriminative attention 

 to the external signs of mental life, and 

 lastly a freedom from prepossession and bias, 

 only a very few can ever hope even to ap- 

 proximate to good readers of character. 

 SULLY Illusions, ch. 9, p. 229. (A., 1897.) 



2828. REALITY OF THE HUMAN 

 SOUL No Ghostly Universe Thoughts and 

 Feelings the Surest of All Facts. What we 

 call the soul, the mind, the conscious self, 

 is something strange and wonderful. In 

 our ordinary efforts to conceive it, invisible 

 and impalpable as it is, we are apt to try 

 so strenuously to divorce it from the notion 

 of substance that it seems ethereal, unreal, 

 ghostlike. Yet of all realities the soul is 



the most solid, sound, and undeniable. 

 Thoughts and feelings are the fundamental 

 facts from which there is no escaping. Our 

 whole universe, from the sands on the sea- 

 shore to the flaming suns that throng the 

 Milky Way, is built up of sights and sounds, 

 of tastes and odors, of pleasures and pains, 

 of sensations of motion and resistance either 

 felt directly or inferred. This is no ghostly 

 universe, but all intensely real as it ex- 

 ists in that intensest of realities, the hu- 

 man soul! FISKE Through Nature to God, 

 pt. ii, ch. 5, p. 27. (H. M. & Co., 1900.) 



2829. REASON , THE INTENTIONAL 

 ADAPTATION OF MEANS TO ENDS 

 Reason or intelligence is the faculty which 

 is concerned in the intentional adaptation 

 of means to ends. It therefore implies the 

 conscious knowledge of the relation between 

 means employed and ends attained, and may 

 be exercised "in adaptation to circumstances 

 novel alike to the experience of the indi- 

 vidual and to that of the species. ROMANES 

 Animal Intelligence, int., p. 17. (A., 1899.) 



2830. REASON WORKING FOR EVIL 



Cruel Practises Logical Results from False 

 Premises. It is astonishing how reasonable 

 that is to say, how logical are even the 

 most revolting practises connected, for ex- 

 ample, with religious worship or religious 

 customs, provided we accept as true some 

 fundamental conception of which they are 

 the natural result. If it be true that the 

 God we worship is a being who delights 

 in suffering, and takes pleasure, as it were, 

 in the very smell of blood, then it is not 

 irrational to appease him with hecatombs 

 of human victims. This is an extreme case. 

 There are, however, such cases, as we know, 

 actually existing in the world. But, short 

 of this, the same principle is illustrated 

 in innumerable cases, where cruel and appar- 

 ently irrational customs are in reality noth- 

 ing but the logical consequences of some 

 fundamental belief respecting the nature, 

 the character, and the commands of God. 

 In like manner, in the region of morals and 

 of conduct not directly connected with re- 

 ligious beliefs, reason may be nothing but 

 the servant of desire, and in this service 

 may have no other work to do than that of 

 devising means to the most wicked ends. 

 If the doctrine given to reason be the doc- 

 trine that pleasure and self-indulgence, at 

 whatever sacrifice to others, are the great 

 aims and ends of life, then reason will be 

 busy in seeking out " many inventions " for 

 the attainment of them, each invention being 

 more advanced than another in its defiance 

 of all obligation and in its abandonment of 

 all sense of duty. Thus the development of 

 selfishness under the guidance of faculties 

 which place at its command the great pow- 

 ers of foresight and contrivance, is a kind 

 of development quite as natural and quite 

 as common as that which constitutes the 

 growth of knowledge and of virtue. It is, 

 indeed, a development which, under the con- 



