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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



morning. My servant insisted upon encir- 

 cling my bed with a riata of horse-hair to 

 protect me from their intrusions. Snakes are 

 said to have a repugnance to being pricked 

 by the extremities of the hair. The paisano, 

 or chaparral cock, surrounds his antagonist, 

 while asleep, with a chain of cactus-thorns. 

 "When the preparations are all made, the bird 

 flutters over the head of the snake to arouse 

 it to action ; the latter, in its vain efforts to 

 escape, is irritated to such a degree by run- 

 ning against the barrier encompassing it, that 



it ends its existence by burying its fangs in its 

 own body." 



To what end or purpose is all this won- 

 derful strategy on the part of the bird ? Is 

 it simply to imprison the snake ? Is it for 

 the fun of seeing the reptile fooled ? Is it 

 merely that the snake should " inflict only 

 mechanical injury upon its own body" which 

 would not be at all likely to prove fatal ; or 

 is the whole story false ? 



A. J. Williams. 

 Cleveland, Ohio, February 21, 1889. 



EDITOR'S TABLE 



INTELLECTUAL INTEGRITY. 



MILL'S "Essay on Liberty" and 

 Darwin's "Origin of Species" 

 mark the opening of what we may re- 

 gard as the latest chapter in the history 

 of modern thought. Mill vindicated for 

 all men the right, not only of using 

 their individual judgment, but of ex- 

 pressing their individual opinions, upon 

 all subjects whatsoever, and proclaimed 

 it to he at once the duty and the inter- 

 est of society at large to see that no im- 

 pediments were cast in the way of such 

 exercise of intellectual liberty. Darwin 

 furnished almost at the same moment a 

 theory which ran so strongly counter to 

 received opinions that to espouse it de- 

 manded no small amount of intellectual 

 courage, and to discuss it fairly on its 

 merits, without any appeal to theologi- 

 cal prejudices, a somewhat rare degree 

 of liberality. Darwin seemed to say to 

 a society that had just received Mr. 

 Mill's essay with acclaims of praise : 

 " Well, here is a touchstone of your sin- 

 cerity ; here is a doctrine which I have 

 carefully thought out, and which, if true, 

 involves a complete reconstruction of 

 many of your most cherished ideas: can 

 you do it justice ? Can you do justice to 

 those who may accept it ? " Outside of 

 the theological colleges the world re- 

 sponded fairly well to the appeal, and 

 " The Origin of Species," though keenly 

 criticised, received the treatment due to 

 a serious intellectual effort. How far the 

 theological colleges, or the theologically 



governed colleges, lagged behind may be 

 judged from the comparatively recent 

 period at which a professor of eminence 

 was removed from his chair in a South- 

 ern college because he had embraced 

 and taught Darwinism in a very mild 

 and inoffensive form. 



The question, however, at which we 

 wish to glance very briefly, is not as to 

 the merits of Darwinism, but as to 

 whether a better basis for the claims of 

 modern thought might not be found on 

 the lines of Mill's famous essay than 

 upon that profession of "agnosticism " 

 to which so many nowadays betake 

 themselves. A passage that falls under 

 our eye, from a French moralist of the 

 seventeenth century, may help to illus- 

 trate our meaning. " There is," says 

 Nicole, the friend of Pascal, " a duty of 

 conviction, which arises when we are 

 face to face with evidence; a duty, also, 

 of doubt, because it is absurd not to be 

 in doubt regarding doubtful things; and 

 a duty of opinion, because we are obliged 

 to affirm that one thing is more proba- 

 ble than another, if proof to that effect 

 is offered." Now, what a modern think- 

 er may justly claim is, liberty to do what 

 Nicole calls his " duty " in these three 

 particulars : to believe in things certain, 

 to doubt of things doubtful, and to have 

 an opinion where the evidence, though 

 not demonstrative, is sufficient to estab- 

 lish a probability. But from which of 

 these three phases of duty should he 

 choose a name for himself? Would it 



