661 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



Stupidity 



3267. 



Subordinated to 



Higher Aims The Evolution of Motherhood 

 The Struggle for Another's Life Begun. 

 Watch any higher animal at that most crit- 

 ical of all hours for itself, and for its spe- 

 cies the hour when it gives birth to another 

 creature like itself. Pass over the purely 

 physiological processes of birth; observe the 

 behavior of the animal-mother in presence 

 of the new and helpless life which palpi- 

 tates before her. There it lies, trembling in 

 the balance between life and death. Hunger 

 tortures it; cold threatens it; danger be- 

 sets it ; its blind existence hangs by a thread. 

 There is the opportunity of evolution. There 

 is an opening appointed in the physical 

 order for the introduction of a moral or- 

 der. If there is more in Nature than the 

 selfish struggle for life the secret can now 

 be told. Hitherto, the world belonged to 

 the food-seeker, the self-seeker, the strug- 

 gler for life, the father. Now is the hour 

 of the mother. And, animal tho she be, 

 she rises to her task. And that hour, as she 

 ministers to her young, becomes to her, 

 and to the world, the hour of its holiest 

 birth. DRUMMOND Ascent of Man, p. 17. 

 (J. P., 1900.) 



3268. STUDENT OF FACTS CAW 

 ALONE DETERMINE THEORY But none 

 have a right to question either the sanity 

 or the sanctity of such investigations, still 

 less to dismiss them idly on a priori grounds, 

 till they have approached the practical prob- 

 lem for themselves, and heard at least the 

 first few relevant words from Nature. For 

 one has only to move for a little among 

 the facts to see what a world of interest 

 lies here, and to be forced to hold the judg- 

 ment in suspense till the sciences at work 

 upon the problem have further shaped their 

 verdict. DRUMMOND Ascent of Man, ch. 4, 

 p. 121. ( J. P., 1900.) 



3269. STUDENTS OF PURE SCI- 

 ENCE MAKE DISCOVERIES- Others Make 

 Industrial Application. Cuvier, the great 

 comparative anatomist, writes thus . . . : 

 " These grand, practical innovations are the 

 mere applications of truths of a higher or- 

 der, not sought with a practical intent, but 

 pursued for their own sake, and solely 

 through an ardor for knowledge. Those 

 who applied them could not have discovered 

 them; those who discovered them had no 

 inclination to pursue them to a practical 

 end. Engaged in the high regions whither 

 their thought had carried them, they hard- 

 ly perceived these practical issues, tho born 

 of their own deeds. These rising workshops, 

 these peopled colonies, those ships which 

 furrow the seas this abundance, this lux- 

 ury, this tumult all this comes from dis- 

 coverers in science, and it all remains 

 strange to them. At the point where sci- 

 ence merges into practise they abandon it; 

 it concerns them no more." TYNDALL Lec- 

 tures on Light, p. 223. (A., 1898.) 



3270. STUDY, FAVORITE, MENTAL 

 BENEFIT OF Biology Gives the Mind 

 Breadth and Tone. Mr. Hamerton has well 

 said, " To have one favorite study, and live 

 in it with happy familiarity, and cultivate 

 every portion of it diligently and lovingly, 

 as a small yeoman proprietor cultivates his 

 own land, this, as to study, at least, is the 

 most enviable intellectual life." And if a 

 study should be sought for which shall 

 most pleasantly aid in the cultivation of the 

 inner life just described it will assuredly 

 be found more readily within the domain of 

 biology than in any other department of 

 human knowledge. To act as such a mental 

 stimulant; to effectually prevent the occur- 

 rence of that miserable disease of female 

 mental existence ennui; to give the mind 

 breadth and tone from the beginning of its 

 cultivation such are the benefits I claim 

 for the school study of biology, carried 

 in its natural development into the after- 

 life of the pupil of either sex. ANDREW 

 WILSON Biology in Education, p. 25. (Hum., 

 1888.) 



3271. STUDY OF NATURE LIMIT- 

 ED BY TRADITIONAL BELIEFS Exist- 

 ence of Sun-spots Denied The Sun Stud- 

 ied by Night in Aristotle. It was Father 

 Scheiner, a Jesuit of Ingolstadt, who first 

 effectually called attention to the sun-spots, 

 and this, so to say, in spite of himself and 

 in spite of his superior. The day-star was 

 regarded and honored as the purest symbol 

 of celestial incorruptibility, and the official 

 savants of that age would never have dared 

 to consent to the admission of these spots. 

 It would have been then a crime of high 

 treason, and dogma itself would have ap- 

 peared to be compromised. After his re- 

 peated observations, which would not permit 

 him to doubt their existence, our Jesuit 

 went to consult the provincial father of 

 his order, a zealous peripatetic philosopher, 

 who refused to believe it. " I have read the 

 whole of my Aristotle several times," he 

 replied to Scheiner, " and I can assure you 

 that I have found nothing similar there. 

 Go, my son," added he, dismissing him; 

 " quiet yourself, and be certain that there 

 are defects in your glasses or in your eyes 

 which you take for spots on the sun." They 

 even say that he passed the night in ascer- 

 taining the state of the day-star! At this 

 epoch academical routine still domineered 

 over the study of Nature. Very fortunately 

 for science, unfettered minds would observe : 

 what Scheiner did in Germany, Galileo did 

 in Italy, and the solar spots were verified as 

 facts by all those who wished to see them. 

 FLAMMARION Popular Astronomy, bk. iii, ch. 

 3, p. 253. (A.) 



3272. STUPIDITY OF INSTINCT 



Cats Endlessly Baffled by Same Trick All 

 Experience Vain. A curious instance . . . 

 was brought to my notice . . . by one 

 of my neighbors, a native. His children 

 had made the discovery that some excite- 



