673 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



Superstition 

 Surprise 



3329. SUPERSTITiON PREVENTING 

 SCIENTIFIC STUDY Science Thought to 

 Tempt to Witchcraft. In . . . ages so 

 inimical to intellectual culture, when Chris- 

 tianity was diffused among the Germanic 

 and Celtic nations, who had previously 

 been devoted to the worship of Nature, 

 and had honored under rough symbols 

 its preserving and destroying powers, in- 

 timate intercourse with Nature, and a study 

 of its phenomena, were gradually considered 

 suspicious incentives to witchcraft. This 

 communion with Nature was regarded in 

 the same light as Tertullian, Clement of 

 Alexandria, and almost all the older fathers 

 of the church had considered the pursuit of 

 the plastic arts. In the twelfth and thir- 

 teenth centuries the Councils of Tours 

 (1163) and of Paris (1209) interdicted to 

 monks the sinful reading of works on 

 physics. Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon 

 were the first who boldly rent asunder these 

 fetters of the intellect, and thus, as it were, 

 absolved Nature, and restored her to her 

 ancient rights. HUMBOLDT Cosmos, vol. ii, 

 pt. i, p. 43. (H., 1897.) 



3330. SUPPORT FOR TREE-CLIMB- 

 ER Perfect Grasp of Branches The Monkey' 8 

 Prehensile Tail. In the .spider monkeys, 

 the woolly monkeys, and the howling mon- 

 keys, the undersurface of the terminal por- 

 tion of the tail is naked, so that it can be 

 very closely applied to any surface with 

 which it is in contact. The tail itself is a 

 very powerful organ, and is capable of curl- 

 ing its own end so firmly round an object 

 that the animal's whole body can thus be 

 safely suspended. A tail of this kind is 

 called a " prehensile tail." Not every Amer- 

 ican monkey has it, but no monkey which 

 is not American possesses anything of the 

 kind. Its possession must greatly add to 

 the security and ease of locomotion of 

 any forest-dwelling beast. MIVART Types 

 of Animal Life, ch. 1, p. 5. (L. B. & Co., 

 1893.) 



3331. SUPREMACY COVETED IN 

 A MAN'S CHOSEN FIELD-S/iame of Sur- 

 passing All but One. I, who for the time 

 have staked my all on being a psychologist, 

 am mortified if others know much more 

 psychology than I. But I am contented to 

 wallow in the grossest ignorance of Greek. 

 My deficiencies there give me no sense of 

 personal humiliation at all. Had I " pre- 

 tensions " to be a linguist it would have been 

 just the reverse. So we have the paradox of 

 a man shamed to death because he is only 

 the second pugilist or the second oarsman 

 in the world. That he is able to beat the 

 whole population of the globe minus one 

 is nothing; he has " pitted " himself to beat 

 that one, and as long as he doesn't do that 

 nothing else counts. He is to his own re- 

 gard as if he were not, indeed he is not. 

 JAMES Psychology, vol. i, ch. 10, p. 310. 

 <H. H. & Co., 1899.) 



3332. SUPREMACY OF MIND New- 

 ton Scientific Fame Surpassing That of 

 Warriors and Kings. There are, perhaps, 

 no two sets of human beings who compre- 

 hend less the movements, and enter less into 

 the cares and concerns, of each other, than 

 the wide and busy public on the one hand, 

 and on the other those men of close and 

 studious retirement whom the world never 

 hears of, save when, fronTtheir thoughtful 

 solitude, there issues forth some splendid 

 'discovery to set the world on a gaze of ad- 

 miration. Then will the brilliancy of a 

 superior genius draw every eye towards it, 

 and the homage paid to intellectual superi- 

 ority will place its idol on a loftier emi- 

 nence than all wealth or than all titles can 

 bestow, and the name of the successful phi- 

 losopher will circulate, in his own age, over 

 the whole extent of civilized society, and 

 be borne down to posterity in the characters 

 of ever-enduring remembrance; and thus it 

 is that when we look back on the days of 

 Newton we annex a kind of mysterious 

 greatness to him, who, by the pure force of 

 his understanding, rose to such a gigantic 

 elevation above the level of ordinary men, 

 and the kings and warriors of other days 

 sink into insignificance around him, . . . 

 and, while all the vulgar grandeur of other 

 days is now moldering in forgetfulness, the 

 achievements of our great astronomer are 

 still fresh in the veneration of his country- 

 men, and they carry him forward on the 

 stream of time, with a reputation ever 

 gathering, and the triumphs of a distinc- 

 tion that will never die. CHALMERS As- 

 tronomical Discourses, p. 44. (R. Ct., 1848.) 



3333. SURPRISE OF AERONAUT 



Falling Stone Follows Balloon Communica- 

 tion of Motion. When we drop a stone from 

 the top of the mast of a ship in motion 

 it falls exactly at the foot of the mast, just 

 as if the ship were at rest. The motion of 

 the vessel is communicated to the mast, to 

 the stone, and to everything on the floating 

 abode; there is nothing but the resist- 

 ance of the liquid plain cleft by the ship 

 which permits the passengers to perceive 

 the motion. It is the same on the rail- 

 way and in a balloon. But as the earth 

 does not encounter any strange obstacle, 

 there is absolutely nothing in Nature which 

 can by its resistance, by its motion, or by 

 its shock, enable us to perceive the motion. 

 This motion is common to all terrestrial 

 bodies; if they are raised in the air, they 

 have received beforehand the motion of our 

 globe, its direction and its velocity; and 

 even when they are at the highest point of 

 the atmosphere they continue to move as 

 the earth does. 



We verify the same law in a balloon. I 

 remember myself one day passing over the 

 town of Orleans. I had taken care to write 

 a despatch addressed to the leading journal 

 of that town, and I had expected when we 

 arrived above a promenade to let it fall, 



