Concerning Animals and Other MattersAitken, Edward Hamilton
History
Concerning Animals and Other Matters
Aitken, Edward Hamilton
Animal behavior; India -- Social life and customs; Natural history
He was an indefatigable worker in the museum of the Bombay Natural
History Society, which he helped to found, and many of his papers and
notes are preserved for us in the pages of its excellent _Journal_, of
which he was an original joint-editor. He was for long secretary of the
Insect Section, and then president. Before his retirement he was elected
one of the Vice-Presidents of the Society.
Mr. Aitken was a deeply religious man, and was for some twenty years an
elder in the congregation of the United Free Church of Scotland in
Bombay. He was for some years Superintendent of the Sunday School in
connection with this congregation, and a member of the Committee of the
Bombay Scottish Orphanage and the Scottish High Schools. His former
minister says of him, "He was deeply interested in theology, and
remained wonderfully orthodox in spite of" (or, as the present writer
would prefer to say, _because of_) "his scientific knowledge. He always
thought that the evidence for the doctrine of evolution had been pressed
for more than it was worth, and he had many criticisms to make upon the
Higher Critics of the Bible. Many a discussion we had, in which, against
me, he took the conservative side."
He lets one see very clearly into the workings of his mind in this
direction in what is perhaps the finest, although the least well known
of his books, _The Five Windows of the Soul_ (John Murray), in which he
discourses in his own inimitable way of the five senses, and how they
bring man and beast into contact with their surroundings. It is a book
on perceiving, and shows how according as this faculty is exercised it
makes each man such as he is. The following extract from the book shows
Mr. Aitken's style, and may perhaps induce some to go to the book itself
for more from the same source. He is speaking of the moral sense. "And
it is almost a truism to say that, if a man has any taste, it will show
itself in his dress and in his dwelling. No doubt, through indolence and
slovenly habits, a man may allow his surroundings to fall far below what
he is capable of approving; but every one who does so pays the penalty
in the gradual deterioration of his perceptions.
"How many times more true is all this in the case of the moral sense?
When the heart is still young and tender, how spontaneously and sweetly
and urgently does every vision of goodness and nobleness in the conduct
of another awaken the impulse to go and do likewise! And if that impulse
is not obeyed, how certainly does the first approving perception of the
beauty of goodness become duller, until at last we may even come to hate
it where we find it, for its discordance with the 'motions of sins in
our members'!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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