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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



EDITOR'S TABLE. 



THE DOMAIN OF SCIENCE. 



A FEW months ago one of our con- 

 tributors had occasion to notice 

 the attacks made upon the scientific 

 tendencies of the age by writers who 

 might have been supposed to be them- 

 selves highly qualified representatives 

 of the general scientific movement. In 

 these columns, too, we have ourselves 

 found it necessary, from time to time, 

 to maintain the position that, if all is 

 not well in the world to-day, it is not 

 because we are troubled with too much 

 science, but because we have as yet too 

 little. Science has reduced to tolerable 

 order certain departments of thought 

 and knowledge; but there are whole 

 sections of life that as yet it has barely 

 touched. So long as this is the case, 

 the social body must suffer. Until the 

 true laws of life are discovered, and set 

 in sueh a light as to command obedi- 

 ence, there must be more or less of con- 

 fusion, distress, and waste of effort. It is 

 evident, therefore, that the duty which 

 lies at the door of every one capable of 

 grasping the situation is to do all in his 

 power to help science to have its perfect 

 work — its work of social reorganization 

 and regeneration. 



Many persons, we are persuaded, 

 fail to understand that science has any 

 application outside of the investigation of 

 physical laws. They think of it as some- 

 thing that has to do with astronomy and 

 geology, with physiology and chemistry, 

 with steam-engines and telegraphs and 

 telephones. They do not think of it as 

 a method of research valid in every de- 

 partment of life, and coextensive with 

 the whole reach of human knowledge. 

 The time has come, however, when the 

 claims of science to be the supreme mis- 

 tress of thought and action can not be 

 too boldly or earnestly advocated. The 

 spirit of science is a spirit of order; 



wherever, therefore, there is disorder, 

 science is lacking, or, at least, exercises 

 but imperfect control. "We see the per- 

 fect control of science in the exactness 

 with which .astronomical observations 

 and predictions are made ; we see it in 

 the wonderfully accurate determinations 

 of the chemist ; we see it in the formulae 

 of the electrician. When we come to 

 the so-called science of medicine we see 

 real science struggling for the mastery 

 and too often overborne by ancient 

 prejudice and lazy empiricism. When 

 we come to education, we see an enor- 

 mous parade of technique, but, on the 

 whole, poor results in the way of disci- 

 plined intellects and harmonious char- 

 acters. When we ask how science is 

 applied to the government of individual 

 lives, we find that it is scarcely so ap- 

 plied at all. Some notions of physi- 

 cal hygiene are more or less diffused 

 throughout the community, at least 

 among the more intelligent classes; but 

 how rarely do we discover any clear 

 recognition of the fact that there is such 

 a thing as moral hygiene, the object of 

 which is happiness just as that of physi- 

 cal hygiene is health ! To "minister to 

 a mind diseased " is now, as long ago, an 

 almost desperate task, but to prevent 

 the formation of morbid habits of body 

 or mind is, or should be, quite within 

 the scope of the science of to-day. Dr. 

 Maudsley, in bis very interesting work 

 on " Body and Will," gives copious illus- 

 trations of the gradual progress of moral 

 and intellectual decline through success- 

 ive generations. Inordinate vanity or 

 selfishness in one generation may mean 

 a decided development of mental or 

 moral insanity in the next. It is conse- 

 quently of the utmost importance to 

 watch and resist the very beginnings of 

 evil, seeing that it is impossible to say 

 what these may lead to if allowed to 



