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Falling in Love With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science By: Grant Allen (1848-1899) |
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WITH OTHER ESSAYS ON MORE EXACT BRANCHES OF SCIENCE
BY GRANT ALLEN
LONDON
SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE
1889 [ All rights reserved ]
PREFACE
Some people complain that science is dry. That is, of course, a matter
of taste. For my own part, I like my science and my champagne as dry as
I can get them. But the public thinks otherwise. So I have ventured to
sweeten accompanying samples as far as possible to suit the demand, and
trust they will meet with the approbation of consumers. Of the specimens here selected for exhibition, my title piece originally
appeared in the Fortnightly Review : 'Honey Dew' and 'The First Potter'
were contributions to Longman's Magazine : and all the rest found
friendly shelter between the familiar yellow covers of the good old
Cornhill . My thanks are due to the proprietors and editors of those
various periodicals for kind permission to reproduce them here. G.A. THE NOOK, DORKING: September , 1889.
CONTENTS
PAGE FALLING IN LOVE 1
RIGHT AND LEFT 18
EVOLUTION 31
STRICTLY INCOG. 50
SEVEN YEAR SLEEPERS 72
A FOSSIL CONTINENT 88
A VERY OLD MASTER 106
BRITISH AND FOREIGN 123
THUNDERBOLTS 137
HONEY DEW 159
THE MILK IN THE COCO NUT 176
FOOD AND FEEDING 193
DE BANANA 216
GO TO THE ANT 233
BIG ANIMALS 251
FOSSIL FOOD 271
OGBURY BARROWS 287
FISH OUT OF WATER 302
THE FIRST POTTER 316
THE RECIPE FOR GENIUS 328
DESERT SANDS 341
FALLING IN LOVE
An ancient and famous human institution is in pressing danger. Sir
George Campbell has set his face against the time honoured practice of
Falling in Love. Parents innumerable, it is true, have set their faces
against it already from immemorial antiquity; but then they only
attacked the particular instance, without venturing to impugn the
institution itself on general principles. An old Indian administrator,
however, goes to work in all things on a different pattern. He would
always like to regulate human life generally as a department of the
India Office; and so Sir George Campbell would fain have husbands and
wives selected for one another (perhaps on Dr. Johnson's principle, by
the Lord Chancellor) with a view to the future development of the race,
in the process which he not very felicitously or elegantly describes as
'man breeding.' 'Probably,' he says, as reported in Nature , 'we have
enough physiological knowledge to effect a vast improvement in the
pairing of individuals of the same or allied races if we could only
apply that knowledge to make fitting marriages, instead of giving way to
foolish ideas about love and the tastes of young people, whom we can
hardly trust to choose their own bonnets, much less to choose in a
graver matter in which they are most likely to be influenced by
frivolous prejudices.' He wants us, in other words, to discard the
deep seated inner physiological promptings of inherited instinct, and to
substitute for them some calm and dispassionate but artificial
selection of a fitting partner as the father or mother of future
generations. Now this is of course a serious subject, and it ought to be treated
seriously and reverently. But, it seems to me, Sir George Campbell's
conclusion is exactly the opposite one from the conclusion now being
forced upon men of science by a study of the biological and
psychological elements in this very complex problem of heredity. So far
from considering love as a 'foolish idea,' opposed to the best interests
of the race, I believe most competent physiologists and psychologists,
especially those of the modern evolutionary school, would regard it
rather as an essentially beneficent and conservative instinct developed
and maintained in us by natural causes, for the very purpose of insuring
just those precise advantages and improvements which Sir George Campbell
thinks he could himself effect by a conscious and deliberate process of
selection... Continue reading book >>
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