Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1896-02-08

MY the friend, of women
and the home, and that 1 know 1t if will
only gi1e Truth crushed to earth by the
error of inductive reasoning, chance to
get On her feet and guide my traitorous
pen.
That this suspicion is at least reasonable
enough TO admit of intelligent consideration
l have determined from the fact that I
have put it before such distinguished schol-
ais as DR.. T. De Witt Talmage. DR.. Stat
ford, DR.. Pace. professor of psychology at
the Catholic University, and DR.. Irving c.
Rose, the neuI ologist, who have each and
all listened to me with respect, and an
swered me seriously from the several points
of view which they eminently command.
My suspicion is grounded in the general
attitude of my sex toward science, and has
taken definite form in consequence of a
statement Prof Atwater makes in his re-
pert on food and diet"
There is no doubt that Intellectual &C
tiVity is somehow dependent upon the con-
sumption of material which the brain has
obtained from the food, but just what sub
stances are consumed to produce brain and
nerve force, and how much of each is re-
qured for a given quantity of intellectual
labor, are questions which the chemists
balance and calorimeter do not answer
The body is more than machine. We
nave not simply organs to build and keep
KY
nervous organization; we have sensibili-
ties and the higher intellectual and spir-
itual faculties, and the right exercise of
these depends, upon the right nutrition of
the body"
Different Points of view.
The mind of women is constitutionally in
capable of looking at anything from the
point of view of men, whose habit of
thought naturally approaches scientific
methods. Goethe has put it thus:
Men consider particulars as ends in
themselves; women, on the other hand,
think mora of how things hang together
in life and that rightly, too, because their
destiny-the destiny of Their families-is
bound up in this interdependence, and it is
exactly this which it is their mission to
promote"
1t IS also this which makes it impossible
for one to consider domestic science only
from an economic point of view. Before l,
or any woman, can have any enduring in
terest in it, must understand how it helps
US to live better, not in the sense of living
cheaper with increased capacity for labor
and enjoyment, out in a sense which in
ciudes those higher spiritual faculties
which Prof. Atwater has declared depend
| for their right exercise on right nutrition"
That l persiStently suspect domestic sci
ence of doing little if anything toward this.
L am able to explain by that wholly indis-
putable if not altogether logical argument
of women-becauSe.
There has been a time when I would
have been prompt to assert that / am able
TO determine the tue worth of domestic
science ard everything else in life by
means of intuitional faculty peculiar to
my sex which attains the truth by a single
sweep, correlating and sublimating all
facts of science in a religious idea of
things. by the light of which / am war
ranted. both in intolerance of the worm s
pace of inductive reasoning and in the be-
lief that searching the works of the AL
mighty through a microscope humanity is
prone to miss the Lord in microbes reve-
| lation of the law. 1 have, however, of late
| so far fallen victim to the reign of nat
ural science, and have so far accepted it's
ways as essential to the uplifting Of the
| human race, that no longer have unlinit-
| ed confidence in my intuitonal method
Max Ferdan, in particular. has caused me
| to question whether the boosted intuition
| OF my sex is not a mere pretty excuse for
| following slovenly and Intellectually hab-
| Its of thought, and as for any faith in
things unseen by the microscope and I'M
! measured by the chemists balance, that is
| a probable case Of more or less developed
| hysteria.
| Nordau's Opinion.
| True" says Nordau Science tells us
nothing about the life after death, of harp
1 concerts in paradise. and of TRANSFORMED
| ton of stupid youth and hysterical geese
into Whitehead angels with rainbow-col-
| ored wings. 1t contents itself in a much
| more plain and prosaic manner, with allev-
| 1atlng the existence Of mankind on earth.
| The mystic who is preserved after surgical
| interference through asepsy from suppura
| ton, modification and death; who protects
| himself by a filter from typhus; who by
4 the careless turning of a button floods his
| room with electric light: who through a
| telephone can converse with some one be-
! loved in far distant countries, has to thank
| this alleged bankrupt science for it all, and
not the theology to which he maintains
| that he wants to return.
| THE ounces who abuse science reproach
| 1t also for having destroyed ideals and
stolen from life all its worth. This accusa-
| ton is just as absurd as the talk about
| the bankruptcy of science A higher ideal
| thar the increase of knowledge there can.
| not be. What sanity legend is as beauri-
| full as the life of an inquirer who spends
| his existence bending ever a microscope
| almost without bodily wants, known and
| honored by few, working only for his con-
| science sake without any other ambition
than that perhaps one little new fact may
| be firmly established which a more for
| tunate successor will make use of in q
| brilliant synthesis, and insert in stone
| on some monument of natural science?
| Genuine, healthy poetry has always recog-
| n!zed this and finds its most ideal char
| acters, not In a devotee who murmurs
prayers with driveling lips and stares with
| distorted eyes at some visual hallucina-
| ton, but in a Prometheus and a Faust
| who wrestles for science, that Is, for exact
| knowledge of nature
| A Devotion to Work.
Mr.. Nordau might have failed to disturb
| my convictions concerning the true charac-
| ter and real value of scientific attachments,
| had 1 not previously come in direct contact
| with something of all he claims for science.
| Not long ago. DR.. Kinyoun, the special
| agent of the government, detailed by Sur
| geon General Wyman to investigate the
| anti-toxine diphtheria cure, took me through
| his laboratory. He explained to me the
| magnificent minutiae of the process of
| making anti-toxine. He showed me jar af-
| ter jar, containing enough diphtheria to de-
| vastate the earth in germs at various
( stages of cultivation, and jar after jar,
/ containing quantities of an ugly looking
/ liquid, the poison toxine-developed from
/ his culture of germs. Then he showed me
| two monkeys, cage full of guinea pigs, a
| cage full of rabbits, and outside the labora-
| tory, in a stable, were five horses, the lives
| of all of which poor bsasties were being
| utilized to test the action of the diphtheria
4 poison. great draughts of blood being drawn
from the horses to obtain the serum that is
| afterward used to protect human life from
| the ravages of diphtheria- The monkeys
| shrieked at the sight of the doctor; the rab-
| bits and guinea pigs huddled in the farthest
| corner of the cage, shivering in apprehen-
sion of his touch; horses had died; the doc
| tors assistants had suffered diphtheria.
| and the doctor himself had suffered every