Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 58.djvu/558

550 of his resistless will he can make the cells of the nervous system retrokaryokinetate to the period when they opened and shut a bivalve or sojourned upon the planet Mars. This, then, is the difference between a telepath and a charlatan: the charlatan is a broker who deals in futures; the telepath is a commission merchant who deals in eggs.

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P. S.—A I go over this to put in missing commas and words, it seems to me that it is made up crazy quilt patchwork fashion, so I suppose it is hardly a virtue to say that, though I first mixed it all up and then wrote it out of my own head, I got the woman facts from old Mrs. Blackleg, who keeps the boarding-house where I lodge, and the sociological facts from a poor fellow who is madly in love with me and has proposed ever so many times, though I have never given him the slightest encouragement, no, never; but he will, and he will, and he will. Not that I am no scientist and don't know original facts. That is not true, for when I was studying up for examination I noticed how the jellyfish Medusa could easily heal its wounded nervous system, and the starfish, too, and so needed no protection, as every part could go off on its own hook; and then how Nature, in making a more centralized nervous system, made a limestone coat for the poor thing, and so on, until I, trying to work out the puzzle of mental fatigue, found that the dear old lady made a clean jump to a double nervous system for backbone animals, one set for vascular work and the other for fighting purposes, and brains made ribs of the entrenchment of the clam and the cuirass of the turtle. And without bothering you any more, I only want to say that when man and woman were somatically one, and when, for purposes best known to a wise and unscrupulous Providence, they somatically became two, that woman remained mankind and nearer to nature, and man must be regarded as a mere freak, which accounts for his ridiculousness and his 'laws,' which are the dread enemies of the worship of Karyokinesis. But I forget all this when riding home in the cool evening air, and the electric car goes bobbing up and down as it tears down the hill, and I hug up close to that broad-shouldered social wretch who is fighting Mrs. Blackleg and her telepaths for my happiness.

To the Editor: It certainly has been sufficiently obvioxis, by the communication of Mr. Smith in your February issue, that the means of thought-communication between 'material scientists' and 'Christian Scientists' are by no means easy or adequate. Not being able to rise above 'human logic' I am placed along with many other worthies, in whose company I take pride, amongst the 'materialists,' and am accordingly and very properly reminded that my opinion on matters pertaining to religion and to Christianity are of little consequence. Let it be also noted en passant that I am not regarded as having attacking 'Christian Science,' but only credited with the belief that I thought I had. Consistently with their own doctrines this really should amount to the same thing. So it will be well to disclaim any intention of attacking, in the personal sense which your correspondent gives to the discussion, the upholders of this or any other faith. It is always important to keep in mind the admonition of Huxley that in controversy one should not wander from the really essential question of what is right and what is wrong to the entirely unimportant matter of who is right and who is wrong.

But my main purpose in sending this note is to protest against the assumption of my critic that the representatives of Christianity are arrayed with him and against me in the advocacy of certain doctrines which I insist are not characteristically religious ones, and which, if they are distorted into a religious guise, can not by that shift escape the candid comment of commonsense science. It is an injustice to the