Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 44.djvu/94

86 closely study causes and effects, discern principles of action, and thereupon formulate truths. Forthwith these truths must be utilized to bolster up preconceived notions which have no foundation in fact. Thus valuable time is wasted, and the progress of scientific research is retarded as well. No scientist should start out in search of nothing. He must have an object in view, and that object must in a measure be defined. Science has no business to halt by the wayside and inquire whether or not the truths found in the book of Nature will horrify those who are nursing some creed or dogma. Truth is truth, and an apology for its existence received from any quarter is quite superfluous. If the truths of science have terrors for a man's religion there must be something wrong and untrue in connection with his religion. If his religion be based upon knowledge, love, justice, and mercy, he will encounter no terrors in the realm of science; if his religion means a desire to know the why and wherefore of existences about him and the determination to add his mite of power in helping to ameliorate human conditions, the truths of science will serve as his handmaiden.

The assumed cleverness and wisdom attributed, in the professor's article, to certain thinkers may apply in some instances, but no one realizes more fully than the student of Nature himself the fact that he knows but little and can never know a great deal. But he finds in this reflection no reason why he should quit his labors or even turn aside to ingeniously weave an apologetic yarn, lest his conclusions unmixed with sophistry might possibly horrify some prejudiced minds.



HY is it that the business men of to-day find so much fault with the chirography of the boys who are seeking, or have obtained employment? They assert with great positiveness that the average boy of thirteen or fourteen years does not write legibly; that his labored copy-book hand, with its pale and sight destroying hair-lines, is not at all adapted for business purposes. Their cry is for a style of penmanship that is practical, that a boy or girl can write rapidly, and that will not injure their eyes when forced to read it for any length of time.

It is the purpose of this article to show that there is such a style of penmanship, that it is easier to teach, that it is easier to read, that it is more rapid, and that, from a hygienic point of view, it is incomparably superior to the present slanting writing.