The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-04-01

IL,
 the event has come and gone but tha r dust may conceivably be poisoned. Tn
 gases which are thrown out by sucl
 explosions are not healthful and it i
 lpossible--R A. Proctor, the astronomer . in his book on Other Worlds" (pagt 14, evidently believes it certain-tha with the dust much animal matter is
 also thrown into the air He says Even in the very bowels of the earth ) and in the very neighborhood of active , volcanoes, we find the volcano fish ex-
 isting in such countless thousands that
 when they are from time to time vomit- ed forth by the erupting mountain theil bodies are strewn over enormous re- gions and as they putrefy beneath the
 sun's rays spread pestilence and dis
 ease among the inhabitants of the
 neighboring districts" Clearly if that is true, part of the dust which flies SC
 far must be, or at least may be, com
 posed of animal particles which, putre-
 fylng, spread disease. At all events,
 there is much reason to believe that ef-
 fects very inimical either to life or
 health do follow volcanic explosions,
 and that southern Europe may, there
 fore, be visited shortly by some form of
 epidemic or some pest like the kind of
 influenza which seemed, at all events,
 to begin it's ravages after Krakatoa was
 shattered. This Is not pleasant to think
 of, and if the southerners anticipate it,
 which is probable enough, their rush to
 the churches does not strike us as quite
 so imbecilely superstltious as it strikes
 the makers of bulletins. Populations
 are composed of individuals, and prayer
 can never to the individual mind seem more attractive than when it is resort
 ed to against terror in presence of
 which energy and courage are alike un-
 availing.
 We have always wondered little
 why the dread of cataclysms enters so
 little into human calculations. There is no reason which can be stated why an I epidemic, once raging, should not carry
 off whole population, as seems to have l happened in Cambodia or why fire,
 once started, should not consume a cap- 1 ital city, as one nearly did in Chicago;
 or why a storm wave thrown up by
 some sub-oceanic volcano should not
 sweep over a whole country. drowning
 alike man and beast and salting the
 mould till 1t would bear no crop, as happened to populous island in the Ganges; or why volcanic eruption should not occur say, in southern Flu rope on an inconceivably greater scale than that which destroyed Lisbon and
 the faith of Goethe. Those things have
 seldom happened; but they have hap
 pened, and they might any of them happen again and on a greater scale.
 The popular answer that God is too good though 1t indicates useful and, as we believe, a morally beneficial kind of faith, is not logically defensible, for sudden death under terrible circum- stances happens every day and the goodness of God cannot be arraigned or doubted merely because many deaths, all of them inevitable within a short period, are permitted to occur at once. 1 The multiplication of the common fate | does not increase the cruelty of that i fate; rather to most minds 1t diminishes | it. Nor Is the reason general sub- | missiveness to irresistible law, for men | shrink from death, which will come. shrink as they may, and the terror of an approaching comet seen in the heav- ems will shake the nerves of whole pop | ula tions. s9
 We suspect that as man is forbidden | to see even five minutes ahead of the actual present. so his imagination has for the most part been mercfully dulled as to dangers not perceptible to his senses. At least we find it difficult to account otherwise for the entire disre- gard which, until the pestilance arrives, ordinary populations show for sanitary laws Southern MalsaDs are exceed erIx ;,,i ! the presence of epidemics; but the Nea- politans, who when cholera breaks out their doctors would rebel if their city were cleaned and drained till cholera could gain no hold. Even the English, who trust their municipalities and know their doctors will not poison { them, are often immovable as to sani- tary precautions, saying in their minds, ike an old caretaker whom the writer { ,oce reproved for mismauaglng gas, "If { we are to burn, we shall burn for sure" The mind will not take in more than 1t s will hold, and if the observatory people { that another world was { approaching this one, and fifty years ( renee must collide with it. we doubt if f he price of consols would go down a | f point f There is a preservative, as we'll as a t stupidity in most of us, and a f we knew that the fred cloud" nov I ng toward northern Europe brought c with 1t a new, possibly dangerous, ep- ( demic, there would be more symptoms I f annoyance than of panic. It Nevertheless. those who reason should V lot forget that our security against cat y clysms can hardly be considered more y han empirical, that we know, for ex- Ii mple, very little of what a storm wave uch as recently nearly destroyed Gal V eston could be or do, and that in par I icular our security against epidemcs t a kind new to this generation has e O scientific basis We are cleaner fl han we were, but that is a poor de- a anse against germs which travel k trough the air and enter by the mouth. u II we can say about them Is that pan O. is never a help, and that the Eng sh insensibiity to panic about such e 1ings, though it does not preserve us " 'on such dangers, is a grand protec- le on to our general appiness-Specta- fl IT, fir