SCIENCE. 



215 



That one of only two alternatives is proved to be absurd 

 is conclusive demonstration that the other must be true. 

 In this way Reason corrects her own operations, for the 

 faculty which recognizes one proposition as evidently ab- 

 surd, is the same faculty which recognizes another pro- 

 position as evidently true. It is, indeed, because of its 

 contradicting something evidently true, or something 

 which has been already proved to be true, that the ab- 

 surd result is seen to be absurd. It is in this way that, 

 in the exact sciences, erroneous data are being perpetu- 

 ally detected, and the sources of error are being perpetu- 

 ally eliminated. But reason seems to have no similar 

 power of detecting errors in the data which are supplied 

 to it from other departments of thought. In the develop- 

 ments, for example, of social habits, and of the moral 

 sentiments on which these principally depend, no results, 

 however extravagant or revolting, are at all certain of 

 being rejected because of their absurdity. No practice 

 however cruel, no custom however destructive, is sure on 

 account of its cruelty or of of us deslructiveness to be at 

 once detected and rejected as self-evidently wrong. 

 Reason works upon the data supplied to it by supersti- 

 tion, or by selfish passions and desires, apparently with- 

 out any power of questioning the validity of those data, 

 or, at all events, without any power of immediately re- 

 cognizing even their most extreme results as evidently 

 false. In Religion, at least, it would almost seem as if 

 there were no axiomatic truths which are universally, 

 constantly, and instinctively present to the mind — none 

 at least, which are incapable of being obscured — and 

 which, therefore, inevitably compel it to revolt against 

 every course or every belief inconsistent with them. It 

 is through this agency of erroneous belief that the very 

 highest of our faculties, the sense of obligation, may and 

 does become itself the most powerful of all agents in the 

 development of evil. It consecrates what is worst in our 

 own nature, or whatever of bad has come to be shown 

 in the multitudinous elements which that nature contains. 

 The consequence -is, that the gift of Reason is the very 

 gift by means of which error in belief, and vice in char- 

 acter, are carried from one stage of development to 

 another, until at last they may, and they often do, result 

 in conditions of life and conduct removed by an immeas- 

 urable distance from those which are in accoi dance with 

 the order and with the analogies of Nature. 



These are the conditions of life, very much lower, as 

 we have seen, than those which prevail among the brutes, 

 which it is now the fashion to assume to be the nearest 

 type of the conditions from which the human race began 

 its course. They are, in reality and on the contrary, 

 conditions which could not possibly have been 

 reached except after a very long journey. They are the 

 goal at which men have arrived after running for many 

 generations in a wrong direction. They are the result 

 of Evolution — they are the product of Development. But 

 it is the evolution of germs whose growth is noxious. It 

 is the development of passions and desires, some of 

 which are peculiar to himself, but all of which are in him 

 freed from the guiding limitations which in every other 

 department of Nature prevail among the motive forces of 

 the world, and by means of which alone they work to 

 order. 



It is in the absence of these limitations that what is 

 called the Free Will of Man consists. It is not a free- 

 dom which is absolute and unconditional. It is not a 

 freedom which is without limitations of its own. It is 

 not a freedom which confers on Man the power of act- 

 ing except on some one or other of the motives which it 

 is in his nature to entertain. But that nature is so infi- 

 nitely complex, so many-sided, is open to so many influ- 

 ences, and is capable of so many movements, that prac- 

 tically their combinations are almost infinite. His free- 

 dom is a freedom to choose among these motives, and 

 to choose what he knows to be the worse instead of the 

 better part. This is the freedom without which there 



could be no action attaining to the rank of virtue, and 

 this also is the freedom in the wrong exercise of which 

 all vice consists. There is no theoretical necessity that 

 along with this freedom there should be 3 propensity to 

 use it wrongly. It is perfectly conceivable that such free- 

 dom should exist, and that all the desires and disposi- 

 tions of men should be to use it rightly. Not only is 

 this conceivable, but it is a wonder that it should be 

 otherwise. That a Being with powers of mind and 

 capacities of enjoyment rising high above those which 

 belong to any other creatures, should, alone of all these 

 creatures, have an innate tendency to use his powers, not 

 only to his own detriment, but even to his own self-tor- 

 ture and destruction, is such an exception to all rule, 

 such a departure from all order, and such a violation of 

 all the reasonableness of Nature, that we cannot think 

 too much of the mystery it involves. It is possible that 

 some light may be thrown upon this mystery by follow- 

 ing the facts connected with it into one of the principal 

 fields of their display — namely, the History of Religion. 

 But this must form the subject of another chapter. 



ASTRONOMY. 

 DISCOVERY OF A NEW COMET. 

 Mr, Lewis Swift, of Rochester, N. Y., has announced 

 to the Smithsonian Institution the discovery by himself, 

 on Sunday morning, May 1st, 1881, of a bright comet in 

 Right Ascension o h o m , Declination 37° North. The 

 comet rises a little before the sun and is moving slowly 

 south. 



Professor A. Hall makes the following enquiry in 

 " The Analyst :" " Observations on the motions of the 

 sun-spots have also established the fact that the sun is 

 not strictly a fixed body, around which the earth revolves, 

 but that it has a motion of its own thro' space."— Physio- 

 graphy, by T. H. Huxley, F. R. S., 2nd Ed., p. 365. 

 How can the above fact be determined by observations 

 of the sun-spots ? 



NOTES. 



A bill has been introduced into Parliament for the pur- 

 pose of authorising the erection of a system of pneumatic 

 clocks in the streets of London. 



Australian Telegraphy. — At the close of 1879 some 

 31,556 miles of telegraph wire were at work on the Austra- 

 lian Continent, and 40,634 miles with Tasmania and New 

 Zealand added. 



It is said that the Telephone Company in Belgium has 

 inaugurated a system by which subscribers leaving word the 

 previous evening maybe awakened at any hour in the morn- 

 ing by means of a powerful alarm. 



Colonel Paris, the head of the Paris fire brigade, has 

 concluded his report on the destruction of the Printemps 

 Establishment by proposing that large warehouses be com- 

 pelled to light by electricity. — Nature. 



A Feat in Nickel-plating. — The plating company of 

 the Berlopton Lane Works, Stockton-on-Tees, have suc- 

 cessfully plated with nickel three large cylinder covers for 

 marine engines, on account of Messrs. Maudslay, Son, and 

 Field, the eminent engineers. The largest cover weighs 

 nearly 1^ tons, and is 6 ft. 6 in. in diameter. It was plated 

 in the large nickel bath, and polished all over successfully 

 by one of Fenwick's patent portable polishing machines. 

 The same company have also just nickel-plated the whole 

 of the bright parts of Sir James Ramsden's yacht engines, 

 built by the well-known firm, the Barrow Shipbuilding 

 Company (Limited), also, some locomotive domes and 

 safeiy-valve covers. 



