689 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



Theory 



conscious of the desired object; or, perhaps, 

 as a lower desire, referring exclusively to the 

 needs of sense. (That is why many psychol- 

 ogists hold that impulses only exist among 

 animals.) And finally these processes are 

 still further supplemented by the postula- 

 tion of will as an entirely new and inde- 

 pendent faculty, whose function it is to 

 choose between the various objects of desire, 

 or in certain circumstances to act in ac- 

 cordance with purely intellectual motives 

 and in opposition to impulses and desires. 

 According to this theory, that is, will con- 

 sists in the capacity for free choice. Choice 

 in this sense presupposes the possibility of 

 decision between various objects of desire, 

 and even of decision against the desired 

 object on the ground of purely rational con- 

 siderations. WUNDT Psychology, lect. 15, 

 p. 224. (Son. & Co., 1896.) 



34O8. THEORY OF MORALITY 

 DOES NOT SAVE Lower Impulses Given 

 the Right of Way The Limp Character. 

 Men do not differ so much in their mere 

 feelings and conceptions. Their notions of 

 possibility and their ideals are not as far 

 apart as might be argued from their differ- 

 ing fates. No class of them have better 

 sentiments or feel more constantly the dif- 

 ference between the higher and the lower 

 path in life than the hopeless failures, the 

 sentimentalists, the drunkards, the schemers, 

 the " dead-beats," whose life is one long con- 

 tradiction between knowledge and action, 

 and who, with full command of theory, never 

 get to holding their limp characters erect. 

 No one eats of the fruit of the tree of 

 knowledge as they do; as far as moral in- 

 sight goes, in comparison with them, the 

 orderly and prosperous philistines whom 

 they scandalize are sucking babes. And yet 

 their moral knowledge, always there grum- 

 bling and rumbling in the background 

 discerning, commenting, protesting, longing, 

 half resolving never wholly resolves, never 

 gets its voice out of the minor into the 

 major key, or its speech out of the subjunc- 

 tive into the imperative mood, never breaks 

 the spell, never takes the helm into its 

 hands. In such characters as Rousseau 

 and Restif it would seem as if the lower 

 motives had all the impulsive efficacy in 

 their hands. Like trains with the right of 

 way, they retain exclusive possession of the 

 track. The more ideal motives exist along- 

 side of them in profusion, but they never 

 get switched on, and the man's conduct is 

 no more influenced by them than an express 

 train is influenced by a wayfarer standing 

 by the roadside and calling to be taken 

 aboard. They are an inert accompaniment 

 to the end of time; and the consciousness 

 of inward hollowness, that accrues from ha- 

 bitually seeing the better only to do the 

 worse, is one of the saddest feelings one 

 can bear with him through this vale of tears. 

 JAMES Psychology, vol. ii, ch. 26, p. 547. 

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



3409. THEORY, PRECONCEIVED, 

 RETARDS SCIENCE-^* Fossils Assigned, 

 to the Deluge Medieval Geology. The 

 theologians who now [1670] entered the field 

 in Italy, Germany, France, and England, 

 were innumerable; and henceforward they 

 who refused to subscribe to the position, that 

 all marine organic remains were proofs of 

 the Mosaic deluge, were exposed to the im- 

 putation of disbelieving the whole of the sa- 

 cred writings. Scarcely any step had been 

 made in approximating to sound theories 

 since the time of Fracastoro, more than a 

 hundred years having been lost in writing 

 down the dogma that organized fossils were 

 mere sports of Nature. An additional peri- 

 od of a century and a half was now destined 

 to be consumed in exploding the hypothesis 

 that organized fossils had all been buried 

 in the solid strata by Noah's flood. Never 

 did a theoretical fallacy, in any branch of 

 science, interfere more seriously with accu- 

 rate observation and the systematic classi- 

 fication of facts. In recent times we may 

 attribute our rapid progress chiefly to the 

 careful determination of the order of suc- 

 cession in mineral masses, by means of their 

 different organic contents and their regular 

 superposition. But th old diluvialists were 

 induced by their system to confound all the 

 groups of strata together instead of dis- 

 criminating to refer all appearances to one 

 cause and to one brief period, not to a va- 

 riety of causes acting throughout a long 

 succession of epochs. They saw the phe- 

 nomena only as they desired to see them, 

 sometimes misrepresenting facts, and at 

 other times deducing false conclusions from 

 correct data. Under the influence of such 

 prejudices three centuries were of as little 

 avail as a few years in our own times, when 

 we are no longer required to propel the ves- 

 sel against the force of an adverse current. 

 LYELL Principles of Geology, bk. i, ch. 3, 

 p. 25. (A., 1854.) 



30 1O. THEORY PROVED BY EX- 

 PERIMENT Science Demands the Test of 

 Fact Structure of Orchid Compels Bee to 

 Gather Pollen. I . . . caught and placed 

 within the labellum [of Cypripedium pubes- 

 cens~\ a very small bee which seemed of about 

 the right size. . . . The bee vainly en- 

 deavored to crawl out again the same way 

 by which it had entered, but always fell 

 backwards, owing to the margins being in- 

 flected. The labellum thus acts like one of 

 those conical traps, with the edges turned 

 inwards, which are sold to catch beetles 

 and cockroaches in the London kitchens. It 

 could not creep out through the slit between 

 the folded edges of the basal part of the 

 labellum, as the elongated, triangular, rudi- 

 mentary stamen here closes the passage. 

 Ultimately it forced its way out through 

 one of the small orifices close to one of the 

 anthers, and was found when caught to be 

 smeared with the glutinous pollen. I then 

 put the same bee back into the labellum; 



