617 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



Selection 

 Selfishness 



forms of plant and beast in endless and 

 meaningless succession. FISKE Through Na- 

 ture to God, pt. ii, ch. 5, p. 81. (H. M. & 

 Co., 1900.) 



3O52. Wrought by Ele- 

 mental Forces Frost Destroys Weak Plants 

 The Thistle Spreads. That which wind 

 and sea are to a sandy beach, the sum of 

 influences, which we term the " conditions 

 of existence," is to living organisms. The 

 weak are sifted out from the strong. A 

 frosty night " selects " the hardy plants 

 in a plantation from among the tender ones 

 as effectually as if it were the wind, and 

 they the sand and pebbles of our illustra- 

 tion; or, on the other hand, as if the in- 

 telligence of a gardener had been operative 

 in cutting the weaker organisms down. The 

 thistle, which has spread over the pampas, 

 to the destruction of native plants, has been 

 more effectually " selected " by the uncon- 

 scious operation of natural conditions than 

 if a thousand agriculturists had spent their 

 time in sowing it. HUXLEY Lay Sermons, 

 serm. 13, p. 317. (G. P. P., 1899.) 



3053. SELECTION REQUIRES A 

 HIGHER THAN HUMAN WISDOM Con- 

 stantly Reaches Beyond Man's Intent. 

 Hairless dogs have imperfect teeth; long- 

 haired and coarse-haired animals are apt to 

 have, as is asserted, long or many horns; 

 pigeons with feathered feet have skin be- 

 tween their outer toes; pigeons with short 

 beaks have small feet, and those with long 

 beaks large feet. Hence, if man goes on 

 selecting, and thus augmenting, any peculi- 

 arity, he will almost certainly modify un- 

 intentionally other parts of the structure, 

 owing to the mysterious laws of correlation. 

 DARWIN Origin of Species, ch. 1, p. 11. 

 (Burt.) 



3054. SELF, EACH ONE'S SUPREME 

 INTEREST IN The most natively inter- 

 esting object to a man is his own personal 

 self and its fortunes. We accordingly see 

 that the moment a thing becomes connected 

 with the fortunes of the self it forthwith 

 becomes an interesting thing. Lend the child 

 his books, pencils, and other apparatus; 

 then give them to him, make them his own, 

 and notice the new light with which they 

 instantly shine in his eyes. He takes a 

 new kind of care of them altogether. In 

 mature life all the drudgery of a man's 

 business or profession, intolerable in itself, 

 is shot through with engrossing significance 

 because he knows it to be associated with his 

 personal fortunes. What more deadly unin- 

 teresting object can there be than a rail- 

 road time-table? Yet where will you find a 

 more interesting object if you are going 

 on a journey, and by its means can find 

 your train? At such times the time-table 

 will absorb a man's entire attention, its in- 

 terest being borrowed solely from its rela- 

 tion to his personal life. JAMES Talks to 

 Teachers, ch. 10, p. 95. (H. H. & Co., 1900.) 



3O55. SELF IN RELATION TO EN- 

 VIRONMENT Each Person Several Selves. 

 Properly speaking, a man has as many 

 social selves as there are individuals who 

 recognize him and carry an image of him 

 in their mind. To wound any one of these 

 his images is to wound him. But as the in- 

 dividuals who carry the images fall natural- 

 ly into classes, we may practically say that 

 he has as many different social selves as 

 there are distinct groups of persons about 

 whose opinion he cares. He generally shows 

 a different side of himself to each of these 

 different groups. Many a youth who is 

 demure enough before his parents and teach- 

 ers swears and swaggers like a pirate among 

 his " tough " young friends. We do not show 

 ourselves to our children as to our club 

 companions, to our customers as to the la- 

 borers we employ, to our own masters and 

 employers as to our intimate friends. From 

 this there results what practically is a divi- 

 sion of the man into several selves, and this 

 may be a discordant splitting, as where one 

 is afraid to let one set of his acquaintances 

 know him as he is elsewhere; or it may be 

 a perfectly harmonious division of labor, 

 as where one tender to his children is stern 

 to the soldiers or prisoners under his com- 

 mand. JAMES Psychology, vol. i, ch. 10, p. 

 294. (H. H. & Co., 1899.) 



3056. SELFISHNESS IN ANIMAL 

 LIFE Parasitism a Crime in Nature. Among 

 animals these lazzaroni are more largely 

 represented still. Almost every animal is a 

 living poorhouse, and harbors one or more 

 species of Epizoa or Entozoa, supplying them 

 gratis, not only with a permanent home, 

 but with all the necessaries and luxuries 

 of life. 



Why does the naturalist think feardly of 

 the parasites? Why does he speak of them 

 as degraded, and despise them as the most 

 ignoble creatures in Nature? . . . 



The naturalist's reply to this is brief. 

 Parasitism, he will say, is one of the gravest 

 crimes in Nature. It is a breach of the law 

 of evolution. Thou shalt evolve, thou shalt 

 develop all thy faculties to the full, thou 

 shalt attain to the highest conceivable per- 

 fection of thy race and so perfect thy race 

 this is the first and greatest ommand- 

 ment of Nature. But the parasite has no 

 thought for its race, or for perfection in any 

 shape or form. It wants two things food 

 and shelter. How it gets them is of no mo- 

 ment. Each member lives exclusively on its 

 own account an isolated, indolent, selfish, 

 and backsliding life. DRUMMOWD Jt&tural 

 Law in the Spiritual World, essay 9, p. 288. 

 (H. Al. ) 



3057. SELFISHNESS IN DISGUISE 

 OF SPIRITUALITY Mohammedan Paradise 

 True Spiritual Self-seeking. Under the 

 head of spiritual self-seeking ought to be in- 

 cluded every impulse towards psychic prog- 

 ress, whether intellectual, moral, or spiritual 

 in the narrow sense of the term. It must be 



