The Montgomery advertiser., 1902-01-25
AT IT AGAIN.

We really believe that the scientists are going to get beyond us, in spite or All we can do, and we do try hard to keen up with them. When they talk of microbes we read up on them till we almost fancy we can feel the pestiferous little things wriggling and crawling all over us We see some unusual state nent made about electricity and we get the books and encyclopedias and fill up on the subject till we feel as if we had swallowed a dynamo. And so 1t goes through all the wide range of human knowledge. The little that we don already know we try to learn, but we can't keep up.
 i. Just now two emlnent-we presume they are eminent-Western professors are at it. hammer and tongs about the location of the human soul. One Of them Knows as much about it as the other does put each thinks he knows all there Is to De known. One of them has fully convinced himself, to judge by his reasonings' that the soul is located In the backbone, and he proves it. after fashion, by citing the experiments which have been made with frogs If you take out frog brains, says he. the animals backbone and his feet and legs, still remain active for a considerable time. Consequently the soul is not in the brain, as-Shat has been thrown away, so it must be in the spine. There's logic for you, and IT II isn't sound what will you do about itF
 Then the other fellow vaults into the ring and with equal positivity asserts that the head is the place, and rings In the turtle to prove 1t. When turtle head is cut off that necessarily sewers the spine and if the soul was in the spine the head would die at once. But it doesn't. It retains life and all US snapping qualities for hours after 1t has been cut off, therefore the soul Is in the head. That is clear as mud. The head will open and close it's eyes, snap its jaws together and otherwise display signs of life, and if the soul is the lire and the head retains life, then the soul is in the head or the brain We should like to see you get around that. Logic is logic; that's what l say" wrote the poet Holmes, and that's what we say.
 But there are hitches in both their arguments Shakespeare talks about the man woh hath no music in his soul' and we'd like to see the man with music in his back. He may have aches ana mains and kinks in it, all right enough, but no music to speak of. Then Byron
 fhat xHaa in itself in their spines. And Robert Browning signs of "a soul that can'st soar" which hits the backbone theory another jolt. Addison says:
 The Soul secure in her existence. smiles At the drawn dagger and defies its point, and If 1t were either in the head or the spine a dagger might reach it. Besides if the soul was in the head 1t would come out at the mouth of some men, for every thing else does. On the whole we doubt If these two men, college professors, though they be. know any more about 1t than some of the rest of us. They may experiment with frogs and lizards and snappins turtles without being any nearer the truth than when they started.
 And while we are about it we may as well bring up two circumstances or arguments that will knock hole in the theories of both the professors. We once saw a common fresh water turtle be- headed and dressed by some laborers at the noon hour, and as an experiment the heart with its surroundings was laid on a board in the shade and left there. We know of our own knowledge that that heart kept beating until night, for we watched it and know there was no mis- take. So that critters soul was in his heart. Again. if you cut off the head of the common mantis, or devils horse, |" the insect will cling to a leaf or stem for hours, and if you touch the legs they will strike out with as much vigor and spitefuIness as when it's head was on it. This we know from personal experiments, so the soul of the nantes are in all parts of them-and that's all.
 
 CROSSING THE INDIANS.