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PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 AN ACCOUNT OF 
 
 THE PRINCIPAL MENTAL PHENOMENA, 
 
 WITH NUMEROUS EXAMPLES 
 
 An Exposition in Popular Form, Designed for the Use of 
 Students and of Readers in General 
 
 BY 
 
 ALFRED COOK, Ph.D. 
 
 (University of Halle, Prussia) 
 
 Formerly Fellow by Courtesy of Johns Hopkins University 
 
 as well as Decent in Clark University 
 
 ' On earth there is nothing great but man. 
 In man there is nothing great but mind." 
 
 — Favorinus. 
 
 HINDS, NOBLE & ELDREDGE 
 
 31-33-35 West 15th Street New York City 
 
 b 
 

 OCT 13 1904 
 o<if>^ 3 , f</0^ 
 
 CLASS a, xxo. Ho. 
 OOPV 8 
 
 z 
 
 /, 
 
 *. Copyright, 1904, 
 ***By ALFRED COOK 
 
 Entered at Stationers Hall 
 Al/ Rights Reserved 
 
—3 
 
 AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED BY 
 THE AUTHOR TO HIS NIECE 
 
 MABEL ELIZABETH COOK 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Billions of human beings must have Hved and died 
 on this earth, yet in a sense the mind of every one of 
 them was what the mind of any of us is. Knowledge 
 of this sameness of mind is psychology. 
 
 Every human mind has sensations through the nerves, 
 perceives things, dreams, remembers matters or forgets 
 them, imagines impossible existences, conceives general 
 notions, exercises judgment, reasons, systematizes, makes 
 inventions, puts forth volitions, is subject to desires, 
 affections, and emotions, has some purpose for living, 
 and is connected with the past of the universe. 
 
 The question arises, in what way can this great theme 
 best be set forth? the answer to which is that, for all 
 purposes, no such way exists. There can be no final 
 presentation of the subject of psychology, just as there 
 can be no final translation of Homer. One presentation 
 will be useful for one purpose, another for another. No 
 account of the mind has been without its merits. 
 
 The design of the present attempt is to treat of the 
 mind by means of examples, to show the great im- 
 portance of the several aspects of mind from bodies of 
 fact, it being hoped in this way to secure both clearness 
 and point. 
 
 A great advantage of proceeding by examples is that 
 the student is always able to follow up a case with ex- 
 amples which he may himself discover. The way is 
 
p 
 
 VI PREFACE 
 
 opened up for investigation; psychology is made teach- 
 able. It will be found, indeed, that every aspect of the 
 mind has a world of facts of which it is the indwelling 
 principle. 
 
 The endeavor is also here made to present the several 
 topics of psychology systematically, so that the learner 
 may the more readily acquire and retain the substance 
 of what is stated. 
 
 The method of treatment here attempted, it is believed, 
 will be especially useful not only to those just entering 
 on the study of the mind, but also to those who wish to 
 gather up their knowledge of the subject into one view. 
 It should be useful to pupil and teacher, to clergyman 
 and layman. 
 
 Any errors in citing examples which may have been 
 made will easily be corrected, analogous examples being 
 found, since the examples are always cited with the 
 principle in view. 
 New York, July 19, 1904. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 SENSATION 
 
 PAGE 
 
 We are part mind and part body — Sensations of the skin and muscles 
 relative to pain, heat, and resistance — ^Touch — Organ of giddiness — 
 Sensations of taste, of smell, of hearing, and of seeing — Nervous 
 system as a whole, means by which we get specific knowledge — The 
 man without sensory nerves — Purpose of our constitution as part 
 body and part mind » . i 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 PERCEPTION 
 
 Sight — We see only the ghosts of things — With the eyes we do not handle, 
 hear, smell, or taste things, but seeing things we infer how they wiU 
 feel, sound, etc. — We do not directly see thickness, shape, size, or 
 distance — Time relations and motions not objects of direct percep- 
 tion — Persons bom blind and receiving their sight — Berkeley and 
 Schopenhauer on sight — Only difference between ordinary dream- 
 ing and perception is the consistency arising from answering reality 
 — Lotze's ideal realism — Hearing, tasting, smelling, and handling. . 23 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 PHANTASY 
 
 Nature of dreams — ^Dreams are perceptive or cognitive, sleeping or 
 waking, individual or communal — Dreams have meaning; their ordi- 
 nary meaning is on the principle of figurative language — Their ex- 
 traordinary meaning has reference to things, distance, and time — 
 Dreams are taken as realities — Production of dreams by physical 
 and by mental causes — Influence of dreams on our voluntary actions, 
 on our organic functions, and on inorganic matter 46 
 
vni CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 MEMORY 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Memory depends on conditions — Personal conditions are health and 
 aptitude — Circumstances of life as early impressions and changes — 
 Double memory — Persons possessed of spirits good or bad — Auto- 
 matic writing — Intensity of things or vividness — Space as determin- 
 ing memory; position, multiplicity — Time, succession, simultaneity, 
 and perpetuity — The relation of things; connection, classification, 
 cross-reference. . , c .,,.... 72 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 IMAGINATION 
 
 The faculty of representing the impossible contrasted with conception — 
 The six ways in which possibility can be represented are the six 
 ways in which impossibility can be represented — Kant's categories — 
 Impossible degree — Impossible time — Impossible size — Impossible 
 properties — Impossible causation — Impossible composition, . „ » 97 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 CONCEPTION 
 
 Simple apprehension gives us primitive notions — Notions of the inorgan- 
 ic: sky, ground, surroundings — Notions of the organic: Vegetable: 
 trees, shrubs, vines, grasses, grains, herbs, roots, gourds, flowers, 
 weeds, and moss — Animal: beasts, birds, fishes, shells, amphibians, 
 lizards, serpents, insects, worms — Notions of the mental world, es- 
 pecially of utilities (lever, incline, bow, thread, bodkin, knife, vessel, 
 vehicle), and of religion (monotheism, worship, messiahship, millen- 
 nialism, sin, retribution, redemption, immortality) . . . . . .121 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 JUDGMENT 
 
 Our notions are improved by our putting other notions in them, i. e., we 
 affirm predicates of a subject — Applied to the inorganic — Homer's 
 world — Learning to read — Analytic and synthetic judgments — 
 Applied to the organic, vegetable and animal — Differences of judg- 
 ment — Applied to the mental, particularly to practical affairs and to 
 artistic matters „ . 145 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 We know a predicate of a thing by a predicate of one of its predicates — 
 Enthymeme — Syllogism — Mental image in reasoning — Language — 
 Reasoning from equalization — Pythagorean theorem — Arithmetic 
 and geometric progressions — Reasoning from consistency — Circum- 
 stantial evidence — Decipherments — Importance of reasoning on 
 general principles — Reductio ad absurdum — Reasoning from dilem- 
 ma, non-mathematical and mathematical — Reasoning from example, 
 electricity and chemistry. . . , 170 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 SYSTEMATIZATION 
 
 Mathematical systematization — Physical systematization — Biological 
 systematization; botanic, zoological — Psychological systematization; 
 grammatical, logical, ethical, aesthetical, and metaphysical. . . . 195 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 mVENTION 
 
 Mechanical invention — Chemical invention — Biological invention — ^In- 
 stitutional invention — Artistic invention. , „ » . = .. » .215 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 VOLITION 
 
 Materialization of a notion — Man an idea motor — Habit — ^Nervous 
 determination of the will — Diseases, manias, instinctive actions — 
 Dispositional determination of the will in animals and in men — 
 Heredity — Deliberative determination of the will — Free-will — 
 Qualitative determination of the will — Attractiveness, importance, 
 and ease of mastery — Quantitative determination of the will; ex- 
 tensive, protensive, intensive — Relational determination of the will 
 — Exclusion, inclusion, and part the one and part the other. . . . 238 
 
X CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER Xn 
 
 DESIRE 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Feeling of wanting something, now principally feeling of wanting wealth, 
 power, and fame, especially feeling of wanting property — Progress 
 among animals in supplying wants; among savages — Peru as an 
 example of stage attained among primitive civiUzed communities 
 in satisfying desires — The Persian empire — Greece — Rome — Con- 
 stantinople — Papacy — Protestancy — Modem world; machinery, 
 business, schools, government 261 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 AFFECTION 
 
 Depends on mutuality of participation — Family affections are conju- 
 gal, parental, filial, fraternal, nepotal — Friendship: Cicero's state- 
 ment, Emerson's — Malevolence — AbnormaUty of envy, jealousy, 
 and the like — Affection for animals, as for horses, cats, and dogs — 
 Affection for plants — Affection for inanimate things, as for places 
 and relics 287 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 EMOTION 
 
 Unity in variety — Sublime as extensive, dynamical, and moral — ^Pathetic, 
 adjunct c5f sublime — Ludicrous — Beautiful in the sense of the sym- 
 metrical — ^Picturesque — ^Wonderfvil. ..312 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 DESTINY 
 
 Nature of the mind shows its pvupose — Only possible ends are secularity 
 and spirituality, the one standing for wealth, power, and fame, and 
 the other for refinement, morality, religion, and knowledge — Secu- 
 larity depends on spirituality — Knowledge is chief thing, since re- 
 finement, morality, and religion depend on it, and because truth, 
 the object of knowledge, is the foundation of art, morality, and re- 
 ligion — Courses of study — History, Athens — Buddha, Fichte, 
 Kant — ^Temple of Fame — Judgment pronounced on mankind. . . 336 
 
CONTENTS xi 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 ORIGIN 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Disposed of to the extent it is shown that the mind had no origin — Mate- 
 rialistic consideration; unchangeability of matter; its similarity to 
 mind — Infinite divisibihty — Moral consideration; freedom and 
 necessity — Transmigration of souls — Reconciliation of the two 
 opposing views — Creation from eternity — Axioms — Biological con- 
 sideration; propagation by branching, by subdivision, and by eggs — 
 Mammals — Man 360 
 
 INDEX 385 
 
PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 SENSATION 
 
 It is a curious fact that we exist on this earth as 
 part mind and part body, a fact not sufficiently taken 
 into account. More curious still, the body is a machine 
 of the mind by means of which the mind has sensations. 
 What, then, are sensations? Nervous tinglings in the 
 mind whereby it has intimations of things. 
 
 Sensations, according to the old division of them — 
 which, indeed, for our purposes is accurate enough — are 
 of five kinds, originated as they are from the skin and 
 muscles, from the tongue, from the nose, from the ears, 
 and from the eyes. 
 
 To take the first case, the brain, which is somehow 
 the organ of the mind, is connected by the nerves with 
 the skin and muscles, so that what affects the skin and 
 muscles affects the mind also. What is more, the skin 
 and muscles, taken by themselves, give rise to three 
 kinds of sensations, namely, those of pain, those of heat, 
 and those of resistance or pressure. 
 
 It seems strange, no doubt, to say that pain is in the 
 mind, even bodily pain, yet such is the case. For, put 
 
2 SENSATION 
 
 your hand hurriedly into a brier-bush and you have a 
 feehng of which you are deeply conscious, it being, there- 
 fore, in the mind. 
 
 We should have no feeling of pain in the body, how- 
 ever, but for the nerves, as indeed an example shows. 
 It is known, for instance, that a mixture of salt and 
 pounded ice, if applied for a time to the flesh, say of the 
 arm, has the effect to render it almost insensible to pain, 
 it being possible then to sear the flesh with a hot iron 
 without creating any great pain. This mixture has the 
 effect, indeed, to lessen the rapidity with which the blood 
 circulates, whence we learn that we feel pain in the skin 
 or muscles, only provided the circulation of the blood 
 be up to a certain degree, strange as it may seem that the 
 mind should be influenced by the swiftness of the blood. 
 
 We should not feel heat either were the nerves of the 
 skin and muscles inactive. We have an example in the 
 case of a scar. For where there is a scar, no matter how 
 large it may be, there is no feeling of heat or cold, the 
 nerves of heat having been destroyed. A negro having 
 learned this fact, we are told, desired that he might have 
 a horse, scar all over, as he did not wish to provide a 
 stable for his horse in winter. 
 
 Neither should we feel the resistance of objects to 
 the skin and muscles were it not for the nerves. Suppose 
 the nerves of the skin do not do their duty. The patient 
 is not able with his hands alone to distinguish an onion 
 from an apple, not feeling the roughness or smoothness 
 of things by means of the skin as we do. Suppose the 
 nerves of the muscles do not do their duty. The patient 
 does not know in the night-time where his limbs are, 
 can, in fact, convince himself that he has limbs only by 
 
SENSATION 3 
 
 making a search for them, being unable to tell whether 
 the muscles of them relax and contract or not. 
 
 Touch is a general term, sometimes used to designate 
 the three feelings which have been considered, feeling 
 of pain, feeling of heat, and feeling of resistance, it being 
 understood, of course, that feelings the opposite of these 
 are included in the designations. 
 
 The organ of giddiness, as it is called, is perhaps also 
 a case of touch, for the semi-circular canals of the ear 
 are supposed to be such an organ, a sort of spirit-level in 
 the head, so to say, enabling us to keep our balance 
 when we walk, the fluid in the canals, it being supposed, 
 affecting the nerves in certain ways as we change posi- 
 tion. Fishes are thought to know their position in the 
 water by means of this organ. Deaf persons, it is said, 
 — many of them at least — are not subject to dizziness as 
 we are, the spirit-level in their heads having gotten out 
 of order. They have the advantage, doubtless, that they 
 are never sea-sick. 
 
 We have next to take into account that sensations of 
 taste are dependent on the nerves. 
 
 This is proved in the first place by the action of drugs. 
 In Africa and other parts of the world grows a vine, 
 called gymnema, the leaves of which, if chewed, have 
 the effect that for a certain time afterward sugar does 
 not taste sweet. Were the nerves of the tongue con- 
 tinually in the condition gymnema puts them in, the 
 whole business of the confectioner, as well as that of 
 the sugar refiners, would be at an end. Gymnema also, 
 whether in the form of the plant or in the form of the 
 drug, makes quinine taste as chalk, not an unmixed evil, 
 indeed. 
 
4 SENSATION 
 
 Quinine taken in sweetened coffee, moreover, does not 
 taste as bitter as it otherwise would, the coffee having 
 some pecuHar effect on the tongue. 
 
 A form of cocaine, known as hydrochlorate, exercises 
 such a power over the nerves of the tongue that nothing 
 whatsoever for a time tastes bitter. One relates that 
 in his boyhood he tasted aloes in the evening and could 
 still taste it in the morning. If, however, previously to 
 his tasting it, he had put into his mouth hydrochlorate 
 of cocaine, he would not have had this experience. 
 
 Diseases of various kinds show the dependence of taste 
 on nervous conditions. Jaundice, for example, has the 
 effect to produce a bitter taste in the mouth ; diabetes, a 
 sweetish one. Certain people in Georgia are known as 
 clay-eaters, for, owing to an abnormal condition of their 
 bodies, they eat earthy matter with a relish. And per- 
 sons suffering from certain maladies are known to crave 
 for ashes and even for slate-pencils to eat. 
 V" Different parts of the tongue are appropriated to dif- 
 ferent uses, this again showing the necessity of the 
 nerves to taste. It seems that in general the tip of the 
 tongue is more sensitive to what is sweet, the back of 
 the tongue to what is bitter. Darwinians say we can 
 easily tell what our ancestors ate ages ago, those nuts, 
 fruits, roots, and the like, which are sweet or sweetish 
 to the taste. Primeval animals, they say, selected their 
 food by means of the tongue. Whatever was pungent 
 or acidulous they rejected. Other things taken into the 
 mouth were thrown out if bitter, most bitter things being 
 harmful, strychnine, for instance. We, of a truth, with 
 our vast quantities of sugar and sweetmeats, live in what 
 was to primeval man the sweet by-and-by. 
 
SENSATION 
 
 The dependence of taste on the nerves is farther ex- 
 emplified in that the tongues of persons differ. One 
 person, for example, tastes sweet better with one part 
 of the tongue, and another person with another part of 
 the tongue. 
 
 Moreover, the fact that it takes time to taste any- 
 thing proves that the nerves are indispensable to taste. 
 The effect of quinine on the tongue, for example, was 
 found in a certain experiment to require 2,196 ten 
 thousandths of a second to travel from the tongue 
 to the brain, that of sugar only 1,639 ^^^ thousandths 
 of a second^ the sweet effect travelling faster than the 
 bitter. 
 
 The delicacy of taste is still another thing which dem- 
 onstrates that we have to have nerves to taste things. 
 For example, a smaller portion of quinine than of sugar 
 can be tasted with the tongue, the nerves of it being 
 more sensitive for the one than for the other. Should 
 we take three hundred and ninety thousand parts of 
 water with which to mix one part of quinine, a man 
 could yet taste the quinine in each and every portion of 
 the mixture. Sugar, on the contrary, a man cannot taste 
 in such small, though yet in very small, quantities. In 
 order that he may taste it in each and every part of the 
 mixture we cannot take more than one hundred and 
 ninety-nine thousand parts of water to put with one of 
 sugar, that is to say, if there were two hundred thou- 
 sand parts of water a man could not taste the sugar. 
 But women can taste smaller quantities of things than 
 men can taste, the nerves of their tongues being some- 
 how different from those of men. When four hundred 
 and fifty-six thousand parts of water are mixed with 
 
6 SENSATION 
 
 one of quinine, women can still taste bitter in each and 
 every part of the entire mixture. Sweet they can so 
 taste when two hundred and four thousand parts of 
 water are mixed with one of sugar. 
 
 Thirdly, it is by means of the nerves — namely, those 
 of the nose — that we smell things. 
 
 Nothing can be smelled at all unless it is capable of 
 affecting the nose in certain definite ways. Hydrogen, 
 for example, is one of those things which nobody ever 
 smells, the reason which some assign for this being that 
 its particles vibrate so extraordinarily fast that they do 
 not have time to be smelled. A particle of hydrogen, it 
 is said, vibrates forty-four hundred thousand billion 
 times a second, to do which, it would seem, it must in 
 a second move through a distance many times that 
 around the earth, another instance in which truth may 
 be stranger than fiction. 
 
 An example of how the nerves are affected in definite 
 ways to produce particular smells is furnished by arsenic 
 and sulphur, the bad smell of so many things being due, 
 as is supposed, to the presence of one or the other of 
 these ingredients. For instance, green paper when burn- 
 ing has a disagreeable odor on account of the arsenic 
 in it, and sulphuretted hydrogen, one of the worst 
 smelling things in the world, gets its odor from 
 sulphur. 
 
 The fact that the sense of smell can be dulled by 
 applying to the nose certain drugs shows likewise the 
 part the nerves play in smell. We have the case of 
 men, for example, who being obliged to work amid the 
 intolerable odors of a soap factory were able to do so 
 by using as snuff a certain mixture of sugar and mor- 
 
SENSATION 7 
 
 phine, this having the effect to paralyze temporarily the 
 nasal nerves. 
 
 It is said, also, that a man who snuffed this prepara- 
 tion made a good living by showing, for a price, how 
 he could smell of a bottle of which nobody else could 
 sniff; but one day he had, by mistake, used strychnine 
 instead of morphine, thus forming a mixture which in- 
 creases the power of smell. He snuffed this, and, un- 
 corking his bottle, brought it close to his nose, his failure 
 then being most ludicrous. 
 
 Certain diseases of the nose render smelling impos- 
 sible, a thing which could not be were smell not depend- 
 ent on the nerves. A Dutchman, the nerves of whose 
 nose were totally paralyzed, was entrusted to take two 
 small boys from one place to another, not knowing their 
 language, nor they his. Coming into the vicinity of a 
 slaughter-house, which was concealed from view by trees 
 and shrubbery, he was surprised to observe that the boys 
 manifested great uneasiness and unwillingness to pro- 
 ceed — he had, as a matter of fact, to drive them past 
 the place with a stick. Presently, however, arriving at 
 a place where was a flower garden hidden from sight 
 by a wall, he was puzzled to know why the boys were 
 pleased with it and manifested a desire to linger there. 
 
 The dependence of smell on the nerves is also exem- 
 plified in animals which do not have these nerves. Most 
 whales, for example, have no nerves of smell. If one 
 of this kind, therefore, were approaching the island of 
 Ceylon, he could not be apprised of the fact; he could 
 not smell the spice-laden breezes as the sailors smell 
 them. A whale of this kind could have swum up Chi- 
 cago River when it was in its most filthy condition, pre- 
 
8 SENSATION 
 
 vious to the opening of the Drainage Canal, without 
 experiencing the least annoyance, what to us must seem 
 miraculous. 
 
 What has been said has special importance owing to 
 the use of smell. Dogs, as we know, live in a world of 
 smells, so to say, and are serviceable chiefly on that 
 account, as an example will show. Some convicts had 
 escaped one night from the jail of a country town, but, 
 greatly to their misfortune, it so happened that a show- 
 man had been the same night in the town with several 
 bloodhounds. The dogs, taken to the jail by the officers, 
 smelled about, and, finding the trail, overtook the con- 
 victs before dawn. The scented air rising from the 
 tracks of the men had some peculiar effect on the nerves 
 of the dogs' noses, causing in the minds of the dogs 
 certain sensations which were to the dogs signs that the 
 tracks were those of the men who had been in the jail. 
 Without these sensations the dogs could not have tracked 
 the men. We read that Bruce, the Scottish Chieftain, 
 being pursued by bloodhounds, eluded them. For, reach- 
 ing a brook in advance of the dogs, he waded a distance 
 in the water, and then got up into a tree by means of an 
 overhanging limb. The dogs coming to the brook were 
 unable to follow him, the tracks, so to say, having been 
 washed down stream. 
 
 Romanes made an experiment of importance. Eleven 
 men walked behind him, each stepping in his tracks. 
 His dog was afterward put upon the trail and succeeded 
 in finding him, being able to smell out his master's tracks 
 under the eleven others. 
 
 We have the instance of a dog which walked nearly 
 a thousand miles to get back to the place from which it 
 
SENSATION 9 
 
 had been taken, an event so notable that a monument 
 was erected to the dog. 
 
 Turtles, going good distances through the sea, find 
 Ascension Island, there to deposit their eggs, a place 
 which sailors themselves cannot find without calculating 
 its latitude and longitude. 
 
 It has, indeed, been objected to the theory that animals 
 are guided by smell in finding their way that they do 
 not always go the same route, do not, for example, 
 always return home by precisely the same route as was 
 followed when they were taken from home; but this is 
 nothing to the point. For, on similar grounds, it could 
 be proved that we make no use of sight in finding our 
 way home, since we often return to our home some other 
 way than we came from it. 
 
 Working ants, it is said, do not carry on business on 
 the basis of sight at all, not being able to see very much, 
 but carry on business on the basis of smell altogether. 
 
 It is a mistake to suppose that men even are not 
 assisted by smell. A certain blind man, we are told, 
 could by smell alone tell if cats were in the house, not- 
 withstanding the fact that several doors intervened be- 
 tween him and them. A blind man, named Mitchell, 
 knew by smell, it is asserted, what were the characters 
 of men, whether, for example, one was a rogue, a miser, 
 or what not. But why do we speak of this when there 
 is Jaeger? This eminent man, a designer of woolen 
 clothes, claims to have proved that every nation, kin- 
 dred, tribe, family, and individual may be known by the 
 smell, thinks that even the secret of heredity can be 
 gotten at by it, the soul itself discovered. 
 
 It is strange, for a fact, how small a thing can be 
 
10 SENSATION 
 
 recognized by smell. If the third part of an ounce of 
 musk be divided into a thousand parts, and each of these 
 into another thousand, and finally the last parts into a 
 hundred each, we can yet smell these smallest parts, any 
 one of them by itself. A piece of musk will scent a room 
 for years without any perceptible loss of weight, though 
 it would seem that some of that musk must be in every 
 part of the room continually, to say nothing of what is 
 wafted away. 
 
 Smell has importance even as related to cookery, what 
 we call tasting things being for the most part smelling 
 them, For example, if a blind man were to hold his 
 nose he could not from the taste alone tell whether he 
 were eating beef, mutton, or pork. A man blindfolded 
 and his nose held cannot tell by tasting them a slice of 
 onion from a slice of apple as one after the other is laid 
 on his tongue. At the table it is not the flavors of 
 things that delight us, but their smell, for, as we have 
 said, we taste nothing but sour and salt, bitter and sweet. 
 
 Not only the food itself, but the accompaniments of 
 the feast, were made to minister to smell by the ancients. 
 Athenseus relates that, at the banquet he has described, 
 the dishes had been made by baking perfumed clay with 
 aromatic woods as fuel. Other cases of the ornamental 
 uses of odors were found in the Roman theatres, the 
 air of which was perfumed. Incense in houses of wor- 
 ship was another instance. Somebody proposes that we 
 have galleries of smells, just as we have galleries of 
 pictures. The Japanese actually do have a game of 
 smells, this possibly taking the place of billiards with 
 us, the game consisting in the matching of smells, a 
 hundred and twenty being in common use. 
 
SENSATION 1 1 
 
 Fourthly, the hearing of sounds takes place by means 
 of nerves, the nerves pertaining to the ears. For, ex- 
 cept on the supposition that certain other persons' ears 
 differ from ours in their nervous make-up, how shall 
 we account for the fact that they can hear notes an 
 octave higher than any which we can hear ? Birds, it is 
 believed, can hear the crawling of worms in the earth, 
 and are thus enabled to find them. For all we know 
 to the contrary, insects may be able to hear the growth 
 of the grass, the ascent of sap in trees. 
 
 Defects of hearing teach us the same thing. For there 
 was once, as is known, a man by the name of Cowles 
 who could hear most things as well as any of us can 
 hear them, but who could not in the least hear the sibi- 
 lant sound in words which we represent by the letter 
 s, whence, in speaking, he did not utter this sound at all. 
 What was stranger still, he did not hear the songs of 
 birds. Putting his ear close to a cage in which canaries 
 were warbling, he could not catch the slightest sound. 
 He was about twenty-five years of age when he made 
 this discovery, and up to that time, whenever he heard 
 anybody speak of the songs of birds or read about any 
 such thing, he supposed that the language was figura- 
 tive; he had no idea that it described a reality. Birds, 
 he supposed, were mute. He could not hear a fife or 
 a piano, and must have thought that persons playing 
 these instruments were merely taking gymnastic exercise. 
 
 It only remains now to show how sight, like the other 
 senses, depends on the nerves. 
 
 To do this we have, in the first instance, to mention 
 the effects of santonine on the nerves of the eyes. It 
 so happened, it is said, that a boy who was accustomed 
 
1 2 SENSATION 
 
 to see the stars and stripes floating from the school- 
 house near where he lived^ one day saw that the flag 
 was yellow; but when speaking to his mother about the 
 matter, she assured him that the flag was just the same 
 as it had always been. The truth is the boy had been 
 given a dose of santonine for a vermifuge, this drug 
 having the effect, by its action on the nerves of the eyes, 
 to make things look yellow. What better example, then, 
 could we have to show that knowledge gained by the 
 eyes depends on the state of the nerves, not merely in 
 general, but in particular? 
 
 Another example, however, may make the matter 
 plainer — the fact that some persons cannot tell black 
 from scarlet, the nerves of their eyes somehow differing 
 from ours. Wilson, indeed, tells of an undertaker who 
 covered a coffin with scarlet cloth, thinking it black. 
 We have also the ludicrous example of an old bachelor, 
 who lived alone by himself, on whom his friends played 
 a practical joke. In collusion with the tailor they caused 
 to have made for him a scarlet suit instead of the black 
 one which he had ordered. He, not perceiving any dif- 
 ference between the two colors, appeared next Sunday 
 at church in this gay attire, much to the merriment of 
 the people. Moreover, Quakers, it is said, were often 
 imposed on in this way. They had scruples against ex- 
 hibiting themselves in showy gowns on festive occasions, 
 but were given scarlet instead of black ones, without 
 their knowing the difference, they being persons, of 
 course, whom their friends knew to be unable to dis- 
 tinguish red from black. 
 
 Again, an orange, which to us appears yellowish, it is 
 said, appears whitish to one who has taken a certain 
 
SENSATION 13 
 
 preparation of cocaine in a certain dose. Moreover, it 
 has often been asserted that there are persons who can- 
 not tell gold from silver coins, if the coins are of the 
 same size, and it has been inferred consequently that what 
 is yellowish to us they see as if it were whitish. Such 
 a person, it is presumed, would also see an orange as 
 whitish. To some, too, an orange looks blackish, they 
 seeing no colors as we do, but merely lights and shades, 
 things appearing to them as they do to us in engravings. 
 Huddart, more than one hundred and fifty years ago, 
 wrote of a man who was unable to distinguish an orange 
 from an apple except by its shape. If, then, all those 
 who see oranges different should ever get together, what 
 a bedlam there would be! For some of them would 
 maintain that oranges are white, others that they are 
 black, we ourselves that they are yellow. 
 
 Still another class of cases may be mentioned as show- 
 ing the dependence of sight on the nervous constitution. 
 Many persons, owing to the nature of the nerves of their 
 eyes, cannot distinguish between red and green ; the 
 color of the red stripes of an American flag, for instance, 
 they cannot distinguish from the color of the Irish flag. 
 Dalton, when a boy, hearing some bystanders remark 
 on the beauty of the uniforms of British troops, these 
 uniforms, as most of us are aware, being red, innocently 
 enough asked those persons wherein the color of the 
 clothes differed from that of the grass. Like many 
 other people, he could not tell ripened cherries from the 
 leaves on the trees unless he were near them, the nerves 
 of his eyes differing from ours. 
 
 Many persons can see no difference between a red 
 and a green light, the consequence being that they make 
 
14 SENSATION 
 
 sad -mistakes. Two ships, for example came into col- 
 lision off the coast of Virginia owing to the fact that 
 the pilot of one of them could not distinguish a red 
 from a green signal, the result being that ten lives were 
 lost. 
 
 Strange to say, this state of the nerves is sometimes 
 induced by the excessive use of tobacco. The tobacco 
 of a certain pilot, for example, is known to have entailed 
 on humanity a cost of two hundred thousand dollars, 
 since, because of its use, he wrecked a rich cargo in the 
 harbor of Fernandina, not being able to perceive any 
 difference between red and green. 
 
 Having now considered the several senses in detail, 
 we are in a condition to take up the nervous system as 
 a whole. 
 
 The mind of each of us has as its organ a brain, and 
 from the base of this brain extends what is called the 
 medulla oblongata to the spinal cord. The medulla 
 oblongata, which may be described either as the lower 
 part of the brain or as the upper part of the spinal cord, 
 has been held to be a centre of nervous action. The 
 nerves of the skin and muscles are connected with it by 
 the spinal cord, the nerves of the nose and eyes are 
 connected with it by the brain, and the nerves of the 
 tongue and ears go directly into it. The medulla oblon- 
 gata, therefore, it is thought, is a general centre, the 
 capital of the nervous system, as it were. That this is 
 so was argued from the fact that both the brain and the 
 spinal cord of an animal might be removed and the ani- 
 mal still live, while the removal or injury of the medulla 
 oblongata was fatal. For example, a rat whose brain 
 had been taken out, would yet make jumps to escape 
 
SENSATION 15 
 
 whenever noises were made resembling the mewings of 
 a cat. Moreover, a frog whose brain was removed 
 brushed off with its foot acid which had been put on 
 its body. It seemed, indeed, as if there were a mind 
 or minds in its medulla oblongata looking after things. 
 Again, the lancet, a fish very low in the scale of 
 existence, manages to get along very well, though it 
 has no brain at all, possibly using some sort of medulla 
 oblongata. 
 
 The brain proper, however, we are led to believe, per- 
 forms a higher function for the mind than the medulla 
 oblongata, being, as is supposed, the more immediate 
 organ of the mind. 
 
 The human head is a world in itself, having the form 
 of an ellipsoid, about six inches in latitude and eight in 
 longitude, twenty-five inches or more in circumference. 
 Its importance, however, lies not in its size, but in its 
 use, it having all the organs of sense, even skin and 
 muscles. 
 
 If we might conceive of a man whose head actually, 
 and not in his own estimation, was as large as the earth, 
 twenty-five thousand miles in circumference, yet would 
 such a man have not a whit of advantage over us, for 
 we can pass through time with a small quite as well as 
 with a big head, just as we can cross a river in a small 
 boat quite as well as in a large one, to use an illustra- 
 tion from Horace. 
 
 By what means impressions made by things on the 
 ends of the nerves are transmitted to the brain we may 
 not be able to say, though we can easily enough conceive 
 how it is possible. For if the nerves consist of particles 
 Standing one next after another, the influence exerted 
 
1 6 SENSATION 
 
 on the first may be transferred to the next, and so on 
 till the influence reaches the brain and finally the mind. 
 To use a crude example, applicable in some respects, 
 though not in others, we may instance a series of cog- 
 wheels. When the wheel at one end is turned, it turns 
 correspondingly the wheel at the other end, and this 
 notwithstanding the length of the series. Moreover, we 
 have the example of electricity, how it conveys messages. 
 On this analogy, the nerves might be considered as the 
 wires of the animal body. 
 
 At any rate, whenever impressions are made by things 
 on the skin, muscles, tongue, nose, ears, or eyes, we have 
 corresponding to such impressions certain sensations in 
 the mind. 
 
 These sensations are not shadows of objects or any- 
 thing of the sort, but are merely signs, intimations of 
 things. When we feel a stick, for example, with the 
 hand, the sensation in the mind is not an image of the 
 stick, but the mind forms the image of the stick by using 
 the sensations as clues. The forming of the image of 
 the stick by the mind, indeed, is perception, and not 
 sensation at all. 
 
 We come now to the most important consideration of 
 all, that the nerves are necessary to our getting any 
 specific knowledge of things. Indeed, this must hold 
 without exception, unless the mind is possessed of some- 
 thing like a clairvoyant power, independent of the nerves, 
 by means of which it may know things. 
 
 Oysters know very little as it is. What would they 
 know without some means of sensation? 
 
 Plain enough it is that a person who should be born 
 blind, deaf, and without touch, taste, or smell, could 
 
SENSATION 17 
 
 never know anything specifically of things as we know 
 it ; could have, in short, no experience of things as pleas- 
 ant, or painful, warm or cold, resistant or yielding, salt, 
 sour, bitter or sweet, fragrant or fetid, noisy or musical, 
 shadowy or tinted. 
 
 Of such a person it could be said that he would sleep 
 as comfortably on a stack of thistles as on a couch of 
 down, and would be no colder in January than in June. 
 If he ran his head against a stone wall he would not 
 know it. He would eat the sourest apples without 
 complaint and walk undisturbed in the midst of stench. 
 He would not be stunned by the explosion of a powder- 
 mill. Midnight and noontide would be the same to 
 him. 
 
 It is plain, also, that he would have none of that 
 knowledge which we ourselves, or others from whom 
 we have learned it, have deduced from knowledge ac- 
 quired by the senses, not, indeed, unless, as was said, 
 he were possessed of something like a clairvoyant power, 
 and one, too, not dependent on nerves. 
 
 He could know nothing of geography. He could not 
 know that the Caspian Sea is the northern end of the 
 Indian Ocean or that the Antarctic is the southern end 
 of it. He could not know that Lake Genesaret is below 
 the surface of the sea or that Lake Titicacca is above it. 
 He could not know that of all rivers on the earth the 
 Amazon is the largest and longest, or that the Jordan 
 is well-nigh the smallest and shortest. He could not 
 know that Java rests in eternal calm or Greenland in 
 eternal snow. He could not know that the Himalaya 
 Mountains are the highest in the world or that the Ozark 
 are among the lowest. He could not know that in Ken- 
 
1 8 SENSATION 
 
 tucky is a country under ground or that in Africa are 
 countries in the midst of deserts. 
 
 He could know nothing of astronomy. He could not 
 know anything of high or of low tide, anything of new 
 or of full moon. He could not know that the earth is 
 round or be able to believe that it is flat. He could not 
 know that there are seas on Mars or rings around 
 Saturn. 
 
 He could know nothing of botany. He could not 
 know anything of trees or shrubs, anything of grasses 
 or grains, anything of cabbages or cucumbers, anything 
 of weeds or flowers. He could not know what plants 
 belong to the same family. He could not know that 
 there is a plant the leaves of which, if they poison us, 
 the fruit thereof will cure us. 
 
 He could know nothing of zoology. He could not 
 know anything of horses, cattle, dogs, or cats, anything 
 of snakes, lizards, or toads. No feeling of wonder 
 could he have over the duck-mole, no comparison of size 
 institute between elephant and mouse. He could have 
 no more idea of the Darwinian than of the apostolic 
 succession. 
 
 He could know nothing of history. He could not 
 know anything of the kitchen-middeners or of the 
 mound-builders. He could not know whether the Egyp- 
 tians lived before or after the Romans, whether or not 
 there were any Egyptians. He could not know that it 
 now counts more for Marcus Aurelius that he wrote 
 his meditations than it does that he was Emperor of 
 Rome. 
 
 He could know nothing of morals. He could not 
 know that honesty is the best policy. Of good or bad 
 
SENSATION 19 
 
 manners he could have no notion, whether, for example, 
 it is better to eat with a knife than with a fork. 
 
 He could know nothing of jurisprudence. He could 
 not know anything of immemorial usage or of the rules 
 of evidence. He could not know that the Romans were, 
 as Draper says, the first people to discover that next to 
 the privilege of making the laws is the privilege of say- 
 ing what the laws mean. 
 
 He could know nothing of politics. Of constitutions 
 and governments he could not know anything, could be 
 neither a royalist nor a republican, neither a centrist nor 
 a rightist, neither a single nor a double taxer. 
 
 He could know nothing of art. He could not know 
 that the Parthenon is the best of buildings, the Jupiter 
 the best of statues, the Madonna the best of pictures, 
 the Messiah the best of oratorios, the Iliad the best of 
 epics, the Hamlet the best of tragedies, the De Corona 
 the best of speeches. 
 
 He could know nothing of theology. He could neither 
 believe that there is but one God nor that gods be many. 
 He could be neither a Catholic nor a Protestant, neither 
 a supralapsarian nor a sublapsarian. He could have no 
 opinion as to whether the Holy Ghost proceeds from 
 the Father only or from the Son also. 
 
 The world itself could not contain the books which 
 should enumerate and describe the things whereof he 
 could have no knowledge. For of things specifically it 
 is plain he could know nothing at all. Should we con- 
 cede, as indeed we may, that he might have innate ideas, 
 manifest or latent, yet plainly these without experience 
 would be empty. 
 
 All this, it seems, follows, as was said, unless we 
 
20 SENSATION 
 
 might suppose that he could get some facuhy of clair- 
 voyance independent of nerves. 
 
 Taking things as we know them, it would appear that 
 we got ourselves born merely for the purpose of arriv- 
 ing at a specific knowledge of things, seeing that get- 
 ting one's self born is the same thing as getting a 
 nervous system. 
 
 If our bodies were made up of nothing but the nerves 
 of sense, this contention would be at once manifest, for 
 the reason that the nerves of sense have no other use 
 than to give us clues whereby we are able to know what 
 is specifically true of things. Come to think of it, how- 
 ever, our bodies, in principle, do consist of nothing but 
 the nerves of sense, strange as this may seem. " What 
 then?" you will be ready to ask. "Are not the stom- 
 ach, heart, and lungs, with their accessories, a part of 
 the body?" Doubtless they are, but they are nothing 
 but an adjunct of the nerves of sense, a device merely 
 to adapt the nerves of sense to a world of time. Every- 
 thing is in eternal motion. The only way that the ner- 
 vous system can exist, then, is that it be built up as it 
 is torn down. The stomach, heart, and lungs, together 
 with their accessories, are nothing but a device for 
 dragging the nervous system through time. " What 
 then? " you will be ready to ask. " Are not the bones, 
 muscles, and motors, with their accessories, a part of 
 the body?" Doubtless they are, but then they are 
 nothing but an adjunct of the nerves of sense, a device 
 to adapt the nerves of sense to a world of space. Every- 
 thing is in a different place than everything else. The 
 only way, then, that the nervous system can exist is 
 through locomotion. The bones, muscles, and motors, 
 with their accessories, are nothing but a device for drag- 
 
SENSATION 21 
 
 g'mg the nervous system through space. Our bodies 
 consist of nothing but the nerves of sense, with an 
 arrang-ement on the one hand by which we get from 
 moment to moment, and an arrangement on the other 
 by which we get from place to place. Nothing else was 
 possible, since matter acts under the forms of time and 
 space. 
 
 It is, therefore, a great joke, and one showing to the 
 best effect the irony of nature, that whereas the clown 
 consciously or unconsciously despises knowledge, dis- 
 allowing alike both science and classics, his bodily con- 
 stitution should nevertheless demonstrate that but to get 
 knowledge he would never have been born. 
 
 " But is it not," you will probably ask, " the chief 
 end of man to glorify God and enjoy him forever?" 
 Doubtless it is, but how to do this, that is the question. 
 Really to get knowledge is just the way to do it. For 
 by knowledge we come to understand the truth of things, 
 the laws of nature. Should it be asked, What, then, if 
 we do? it is possible to say. We have communion 
 with God only through the truth, the truth of things 
 alone expressing what the will of God is. For example, 
 by the diseases and death which poisons produce we 
 know it to be the will of God that we should not take 
 them into our bodies. What is true of poisons in this 
 respect is true of everything else. We come to what 
 the will of God is respecting anything only through the 
 truth. We do his will in fact only as we know what it 
 is. Nay, perfectly knowing what his will is, shall we 
 not surely do it ? Presumably, seeing that otherwise we 
 should put the unreasonable for the reasonable. Com- 
 ing, then, into unison with the will of God through our 
 knowledge of things, we do glorify him and, not only 
 
22 SENSATION 
 
 SO, we do also enjoy him, and that always, our religious 
 emotions, it is plain, arising out of our view of the 
 truth of things taken as a whole. Rising, then, to the 
 true, the beautiful, and the good through the knowledge 
 which our nerves make possible, we fulfil our mission. 
 
 We must, therefore, conclude that everybody who has 
 been born into the world came to take on flesh and blood 
 solely for the purpose of becoming informed about 
 things; for that purpose, indeed, left his former state, 
 whatever it might have been, whether one of existence 
 or of non-existence, of joy or of sorrow, of glory or of 
 shame. We must conclude this in fact, unless we might 
 believe that he could have possessed himself of some 
 clairvoyant power by which it would have been possible 
 for him to have knowledge without nerves. We must 
 conclude that the sorrow which fills our hearts and is 
 expressed in tears when we gaze on the mortal remains 
 of one untimely cut down is the sorrow which we feel 
 that one should have been deprived at least temporarily 
 of his means of knowledge. 
 
 The dogma of absorption, as held long since by the 
 Hindoos, is that one should so conduct himself as at 
 last to be absorbed into divinity, a dogma which, taken 
 figuratively, we are bound to accept. For the truth 
 issues from the divine will and expresses what the divine 
 will is, so that to come into unison with this will, be 
 absorbed into it, as it were, we have to know what the 
 truth is. All humanity, past, present, and to come, re- 
 duces to mind obtaining knowledge through the nerves, 
 coming thus at the truth, or, as the song has it, 
 
 " We are traveling home to God 
 In the way the fathers trod." 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 PERCEPTION 
 
 Of all the processes of the mind perception Is at once 
 the best and the worst understood. It Is nothing- but 
 seeing, hearing, and the like. Who does not think that 
 he knows all about it — and yet how soon must he be 
 undeceived ? 
 
 The chief interest relative to perception lies in this, 
 that what we actually perceive of things is nothing but 
 images in the mind, created by the mind Itself, but 
 created on suggestion of sensations. 
 
 It must be plain to anybody that we do not directly 
 see with the eyes more than one-fifth of the kinds of 
 properties which things manifest. Indeed, are there not 
 four senses beside sight? We do not directly see with 
 the eyes how things will feel, what sounds they are 
 capable of, or how they will taste or smell — all this we 
 calculate and Image. 
 
 To take the case of how things will feel, we do not 
 directly see with the eyes that anything is material, has 
 rigidity, will resist touch, is Impenetrable, That we do 
 not see this is proved from what Is known once to have 
 happened In a Grecian temple. A human face, smiling 
 and scowling, was made to appear over the place from 
 which the smoke of incense arose^ In the midst of the 
 smoke itself, yet the attendant would surprise the spec- 
 tators by passing his sword right through the face, just 
 
 83 
 
24 PERCEPTION 
 
 as if' the face were nothing but air, as, indeed, it was. 
 The trick was performed by a series of mirrors before 
 the first of which sat a person out of sight. His Hkeness 
 was reflected from this mirror to the second, and so on, 
 till it fell at last upon a concave mirror, which had the 
 effect to throw the likeness out over the incense. It was 
 this likeness which the spectators mistook for a person's 
 face, and why should they not so mistake it? For it 
 looked exactly as a human face. Now in every case 
 each of us does just what these spectators did. We do 
 not see how things feel, but we judge from appearances 
 how they feel. If we saw directly with our eyes, as some 
 people suppose we do, how things feel, such a mistake 
 as that which was made in the Grecian temple would 
 be impossible. We should have to see just how things 
 feel. 
 
 We do not directly see with our eyes that things will 
 burn or pain us. We merely conclude that they will 
 do so from certain signs, and hence the mistakes in this 
 particular also which we make. We see a man stand 
 barefooted upon what seems to us a red-hot griddle, it 
 being heated to all appearances by the gas-jets below 
 it. Actually, however, it is merely painted red. The 
 gas-jets below it are turned down so far as not to heat 
 it very much. Never, indeed, do we see with our eyes 
 that griddles are hot. We merely guess that they are 
 hot. Whether we are correct or not makes no difference 
 so far as the process of perception is concerned. 
 
 We do not in any way whatsoever hear with our eyes, 
 that is to say, we do not with our eyes directly see what 
 sounds a body is capable of making, how a drum will 
 sound, for example. A man comes upon the platform. 
 
PERCEPTION 25 
 
 holding in his hand what we take to be a cage with a 
 canary inside it. We suppose that the bird can sing, 
 birds with the appearance of this one usually being able 
 to do so. We are surprised that, on a sudden, the cage 
 and canary vanish away. What we took for a cage was 
 only a pasteboard frame so arranged that it was easily 
 folded up. What we took to be a canary was only a 
 stuffed one. The frame folding up suddenly, enclosing 
 the stuffed bird, glided unperceived down the perform- 
 er's coat-sleeve. We no more see with our eyes that 
 any other bird will sing than we saw with our eyes that 
 this stuffed canary would sing. We merely reason out 
 and imagine from what we see that birds can sing. 
 
 We do not see with our eyes directly how anything 
 smells. We infer from what we see how it will smell. 
 Seeing a bottle out of which he had once taken a dis- 
 agreeable dose, a man could not be persuaded to smell 
 of it again, though it now contained nothing but rose- 
 water. The signs were to him that it would smell bad, 
 that was all. He did not see how it would smell, but 
 thought how it would smell. 
 
 We do not see with the eyes how things will taste, 
 apples or oranges, for example. We infer this merely. 
 Otherwise we should not be deceived, as we sometimes 
 are, mistaking waxen apples for real ones, orange skins 
 stuffed with cotton for oranges indeed. If a horse had 
 green spectacles on he would doubtless think that shav- 
 ings must have the taste of grass. 
 
 To sum up, then, we do not see with the eyes how a 
 thorn will feel, how a bell will sound, how a rose will 
 smell, how a fig will taste — all this we guess at. We 
 do not, in other words, see how things are related to 
 
26 PERCEPTION 
 
 senses other than sight, but on the strength of past ex- 
 perience we infer how they are related to these senses. 
 
 What in any case we see is merely an image which 
 appears to us to be where the object which it represents 
 is situated. There is nothing material or tangible about 
 this image, as must be evident from the fact that we see 
 just such images in the dreams of our sleep. The tree, 
 for example, which we see in our dream does not look 
 in any way different from the tree which we see with 
 our eyes. The fact is that the tree which we see with 
 our eyes when we are awake is nothing but an image 
 in the mind constructed by the mind itself. 
 
 This is still more evident if we take into account what 
 are usually called our space perceptions of things, namely, 
 thickness, shape, size, and distance. 
 
 Space has three dimensions — length, breadth, and 
 thickness; from the first two we guess at the third, not 
 seeing directly that things are thick, but merely thinking 
 that they are so. Berkeley made a telling statement of 
 this when he declared that we see only the ends of 
 things, the ends toward us, not what is behind them. 
 Had he thought of it, he would probably have said that 
 to see behind the ends of things would be like seeing 
 under the ground; we should as easily do the one thing 
 as the other. As we can at best see but the surfaces of 
 things, what we know of the thickness of things must 
 be reasoned out and imagined. If, as is maintained, we 
 do not directly see with the eyes the distance of things 
 from us, we can, of course, not directly see with the 
 eyes that one part of a thing is farther from us than 
 another part of it, as indeed we should have to do were 
 we directly to see the thickness of things. (We can 
 
PERCEPTION 27 
 
 anticipate a point here, it remaining to be considered 
 whether or not we directly see witli the eyes the distance 
 of things.) 
 
 Another proof that we do not directly see the thick- 
 ness of things is taken from the laws of perspective. It 
 is known to everybody that lines can be so drawn on a 
 flat surface that when we look at them they have to us 
 the appearance of a solid object; what, for example, is 
 only a disc, appearing to us as a ball. When, then, we 
 look at an actual ball — such is the argument — what we 
 really see, if anything, is nothing but a disc, we judging 
 it to be globular from the positions of the lines. Pictures 
 for the stereoscope consist of two parts, one represent- 
 ing the object as seen by the right, and the other the 
 object as seen by the left eye. When we look at the 
 picture these two views are combined in imagination to 
 produce the view of the whole. When we see objects 
 without the stereoscope — such is the argument — we 
 really, then, also combine in imagination the two views, 
 the one of the right and the other of the left eye. When 
 the real colors of objects are shown in pictures, as, for 
 example, in a picture of the pyramids, a view of them 
 in the stereoscope differs hardly at all from a view of 
 the objects. We cannot persuade ourselves that we are 
 not looking on things having extent in the third dimen- 
 sion, though what we actually see is nothing more than 
 lines and shades on a flat surface. 
 
 We do not directly see the shape of things with the 
 eyes; this also we have to reason out and imagine. In 
 the first place, we have to combine in imagination the sev- 
 eral lines of direction which an object presents in order to 
 form any idea of its shape, not seeing the combination 
 
28 PERCEPTION 
 
 directly, but only mediately. Seeing a ring of points 
 marked on a black-board, for example, we are able to 
 make out the ring only by combining in imagination those 
 separate points. In the second place, as we do not see 
 with the eyes the direction of lines as they are, but only 
 as we think them to be, it is plain also from this that we 
 see only such shapes as we ourselves conjure up and set 
 before the imagination, shapes being made out by the 
 directions of lines. This is proved by a notable example, 
 namely, that if from the ground we look at statues which 
 are on the top of a high building we see them as if they 
 stand perpendicular. Going to the top of the building, 
 however, we are surprised to find that these same statues 
 actually lean backward. The statues had, in other words, 
 to be placed slanting in order that they might appear 
 erect. If we go to Paris and view the statue of Bona- 
 parte which stands on the high Vendome column, we 
 shall notice that Bonaparte appears to lean a little back- 
 ward, forward, or sideways, according to the position 
 we are in ; the statue, inasmuch as it must be seen from 
 all sides, had to be placed perpendicular on the pedestal. 
 The Parthenon, the temple at Athens on the Acropolis, 
 was perfectly symmetrical in form, every line in it 
 appearing to the eye to be exactly straight, though in 
 fact there was not a straight line in it. If the lines had 
 been made perfectly straight they would not have ap- 
 peared so, we not seeing directions of lines as they are, 
 but only as we think them to be. 
 
 There is, however, still another way in which we may 
 convince ourselves that we do not directly see the shape 
 of things. Take a card-board with two pin-holes in it, 
 one for each eye. Through these look at a coin which 
 
PERCEPTION 29 
 
 you hold a few feet off. You will be surprised that the 
 coin does not appear to be round, but oval. You, there- 
 fore, do not see the shape of the coin as it is, but only 
 as you imagine it to be. It is, moreover, known that a 
 stick, part of which is immersed in water, although it 
 be straight, yet appears bent, the water refracting the 
 rays of light at an angle differing from that at which 
 the air refracts them. Wherefore, as the conditions 
 under which a thing is seen modify the shape which we 
 give it, it is plain that the shape of a thing is a matter 
 of judgment, rather than a matter of direct sight. We 
 have to conjure up out of the given conditions what the 
 shape shall be. 
 
 We may, if we choose, see certain things directly 
 opposite in shape to what they are. Looking at the out- 
 side of an actor's mask, for example, we can, if we wish, 
 see it as the form of a face, not right side, but wrong 
 side out. On the same principle, an image of a face in 
 relief, say that of Benjamin Franklin, may, if we wish, 
 appear to us the concave mould in which the image of 
 the face might have been cast. 
 
 The size of objects is inferred and imagined by us, 
 not directly seen with the eyes. We have, in truth, to 
 infer and imagine the size of an object either from the 
 distance we think it from us or from comparison of the 
 object with other objects the size of which we think 
 we know. We have, in short, two principal ways of 
 estimating the size of things. An example of the first 
 is this: It is known that statues on the top of a very 
 high building have' to be larger than natural in order to 
 appear of proper size, the reason being that we under- 
 estimate the height of such a building. We think the 
 
30 PERCEPTION 
 
 statues smaller because we think them nearer us than 
 they are. What is the same thing, making a mistake 
 as to the distance of the objects from us, we also make 
 a mistake as to their size. 
 
 Statues which are set up on heights are made very 
 large, by means of which they make the greater impres- 
 sion on us, this having the effect to make us imagine 
 them larger than we should otherwise take them to be. 
 Indeed, the amount of impression which a thing pro- 
 duces on us might have been put down as one of the 
 means by which we make out its size. 
 
 Of estimating the size of an object by comparison of 
 it with objects of which we think we know the size, we 
 have a good example from Abercrombie. Seeing men 
 and women entering the door of St. Paul's Cathedral, 
 he supposed that they were children. For he compared 
 them with the door, thinking it an ordinary one, when 
 in reality it is very large. Entering New York harbor, 
 as one comes from a voyage at sea, he is surprised that 
 the Statue of Liberty looks so small, the reason probably 
 being that it bears no proper proportion to the neighbor- 
 ing hills. The great pyramid, it is said, looks larger than 
 usual if a huge camel be standing at its base. 
 
 That the size of things is merely reasoned out and 
 imagined by us, and not directly seen with the eyes, is 
 also established by the different sizes which people 
 attribute to the moon. The moon looks larger when near 
 the ground than when up in the sky, the reason being 
 that when the moon is near the ground, intervening 
 objects, such as trees and the like, make its distance 
 from us appear greater than when it is over us. We 
 imagine the size of the moon, in short, from the dis- 
 
PERCEPTION 31 
 
 tance we imagine it to be from us. When seen behind 
 the mass of leaves and twigs which a tree holds the 
 moon looks larger than usual, because we compare it 
 with this mass, the size of which we pretty accurately 
 know. Le Conte mentions that when the sun sets at 
 San Francisco it appears to be broader than a certain 
 island behind which it goes down. When the moon is 
 up in the sky, to one person it appears no larger than 
 a saucer, to another as large as a plate, to a third the 
 size of a wash-tub. The explanation is that when the 
 moon is over our heads there are no intervening objects 
 to lengthen out the distance nor any with which we may 
 compare the moon. Everybody has to suit himself, 
 imagining what he will. 
 
 We do not directly see the distance of things from 
 us, but estimate it either by means of the size we sup- 
 pose things to have, or by the atmosphere, or by the 
 intervening objects. Small distances we estimate by the 
 amount of effort we make either to converge or to focus 
 the eyes. 
 
 We have this incident given to illustrate estimating 
 distance by means of the supposed size of objects. A 
 w^oman, seeing on a plain a small boy playing with a 
 little wagon, took them to be a good distance from her 
 because she supposed that the boy was a man and that 
 the wagon was an ordinary one — in other words, being 
 wrong about the size, she was wrong about the distance. 
 A better example is that of a man looking out of his 
 window, and, seeing the spire of a dove-cote not far off, 
 which, however, he placed at a good distance, supposing 
 it to be a church spire, the which, if it had really been, 
 it must have been a long distance off to look so small. 
 
32 PERCEPTION 
 
 Owing to the kind of impression which objects make 
 on US' in a clear atmosphere we take them to be nearer 
 us than they are. This is the reason why strangers 
 arriving in Denver undertake to walk out to Pike's Peak, 
 thinking it close at hand, when it is about seventy-five 
 miles away. The air of Italy is likewise clear. Look- 
 ing from Frascati, says Schopenhauer, Tivoli, though 
 far off, looks to be close by. A foggy atmosphere, on 
 the other hand,, makes things look more distant than they 
 are. Two trains approaching each other on the same 
 track during a fog, the men who jumped from them to 
 save their lives were surprised that the collision took 
 place so soon after they first caught sight of the dan- 
 ger, the trains having been nearer together than they 
 supposed. 
 
 It is well known that intervening objects increase to 
 the mind the length of anything. A field through which 
 cocks of hay extend looks longer than it does without 
 them. A stretch of water in which ships are anchored 
 one after another looks longer than it does when the 
 ships have sailed away. 
 
 How we estimate a short distance by the amount of 
 effort we make to converge the eyes is illustrated by 
 many well-known examples. If we shut one eye and 
 try as quickly as we can to put the stopper in the ink- 
 stand, we shall probably make some ludicrous blunder, 
 because we cannot converge the eyes quickly, and by 
 the amount of effort to do so estimate the distance from 
 the stopper to the ink-stand. For the same reason we 
 find difficulty if, shutting one eye, we attempt quickly 
 to thread a needle or to snuff a candle. The estimation 
 of short distances by the amount of effort we make to 
 
PERCEPTION . 33 
 
 focus the eyes is exemplified by holding a book at arm's 
 length and then bringing it suddenly toward the face. 
 We shall be made sensible of the amount of effort we 
 make for each particular distance as the book approaches. 
 By the amount of effort made each time we judge the 
 distance for that time. 
 
 It is thus made out, therefore, that we do not directly 
 see with our eyes the thickness, shape, size, and distance 
 of things, but calculate and imagine them merely. 
 
 The time relations of things are fabricated in the mind 
 somewhat as are the space relations. We do not, for 
 instance, see with the eyes the passage of time, but cal- 
 culate it. One who is suffering from rheumatism won- 
 ders how other persons are able to lie abed so late in 
 the morning, the time between the first break of dawn 
 and the rising of the household seeming intolerably long 
 to him. To those, however, who are lying comfortably 
 in bed this same time seems very short. 
 
 Several considerations prove that we imagine and 
 infer the motion of things rather than directly see it with 
 the eyes. In the first place, things may appear to move 
 when in reality they are standing still, or may appear 
 to stand still when in reality they are moving. This we 
 observe when we are traveling in railroad coaches. Our 
 own coach seems to be moving when it is the train beside 
 ours that is in motion. The objects along the road seem 
 to be gliding past us, when it is ourselves who are speed- 
 ing away. In the second place, certain things can be 
 made to appear to move either this way or that, just 
 as we choose. Looking at an old-fashioned wind-mill 
 with its sails, if we give attention to the upper part of 
 the sails they appear to turn in one direction, if we give 
 
34 PERCEPTION 
 
 attention to the lower part of the sails they appear to 
 turn in the opposite direction. In the third place, things 
 may seem to us to move even in impossible ways. Water 
 may appear to run uphill if the ground along the stream 
 is descending when we think it to be level. 
 
 We do not, then, see directly with the eyes the quali- 
 ties of things or their space or their time relations. We 
 reason out and imagine what these are. 
 
 Persons born blind and brought to sight by operations 
 for cataract have at first great difficulty in seeing things 
 as we do, because they have had no previous experience 
 in using reason and imagination for such a purpose. 
 The oldest case on record is that of a boy, thirteen years 
 of age, on whose eyes Cheselden operated. The boy was 
 either born blind or had lost his sight so early in life as 
 to have no recollection of having seen anything. He 
 therefore lacked skill in applying his reason and imag- 
 ination to things. First one eye was operated upon, and 
 then, after the lapse of about a year, the other eye. On 
 receiving the sight of the first eye it was found that he 
 could not properly make out the qualities of things. He 
 was surprised that pictures did not feel like the things 
 which they represented to sight. He asked which sense 
 it was that was lying to him, whether it were sight or 
 whether it were touch. No doubt he would have been 
 surprised that the countenance of a good singer might 
 not be beautiful, as, we are told, he thought it strange 
 that those he most loved were not prepossessing in looks. 
 He would also have been surprised that the sweetly 
 smelling orris-root is somewhat scraggy in appearance. 
 He was actually surprised that things which tasted 
 agreeable to him were not always pleasant to look upon. 
 
PERCEPTION 35 
 
 Certainly we have it proved in this that we do not 
 directly see with our eyes the rigidities of things, their 
 sounds, their odors, and their flavors, but have to infer 
 and imagine these qualities — otherwise the boy on com- 
 ing to his sight would have been able to see them as we 
 think we do. 
 
 As regards the thickness of things, their shape, their 
 size, and their distance, it is interesting to know what 
 was the experience of the boy. , 
 
 He did not at first, the surgeon says, see things as 
 having depth in space at all. Had he seen a pitcher or 
 bowl on the table, either of them would have been to 
 him merely a flat surface. He was unable to compre- 
 hend how pictures on flat surfaces could represent objects 
 that to touch show thickness. He could not make out 
 the shape of things. He could not so much as distin- 
 guish the cat from the dog. Looking at the cat, and 
 then having felt it over with the hand, he said he 
 thought he might know it next time. He was unable 
 to see things of proper size. They appeared to him 
 larger than is natural. When the second eye was 
 brought to sight things appeared larger to it than to 
 the eye first opened. To both eyes, used at the same 
 time, things appeared about twice as large as when he 
 used only the first eye made to see. He was, moreover, 
 unable to form correct ideas of size in general. He 
 could not conceive how the house could be larger than 
 a room of it. He was also unable to conceive how his 
 father's picture could be contained in a locket. He was 
 not able properly to estimate the distance of things 
 from him. Indeed, at first, he did not see things at a 
 distance at all. Everything seemed to be touching his 
 
36 PERCEPTION 
 
 eye. When he had learned to distinguish the distance 
 of objects on Epsom Downs he called it a new kind of 
 seeing. 
 
 We seem, then, to have it demonstrated from the case 
 of this boy, unfortunate though he was, but destined to 
 everlasting mention, that the seeing of things consists 
 merely in applying reason and imagination to the sen- 
 sations given us by the nerves of the eyes; that we do 
 not directly see with the eyes the qualities of things, 
 their space relations, and the like. 
 
 The case of Caspar Hausar has a bearing on this sub- 
 ject. For although not born blind, he had been confined 
 in a dungeon from infancy. He was found wandering 
 on the streets of Nuremberg, having in his possession a 
 letter that gave an account of his previous confinement 
 and stated that the time had now arrived when it had 
 been found practicable to set him at liberty. He de- 
 clared that when he first left the dungeon all he could 
 see was a window-shutter in front of his eyes on which 
 various colors were flitting about. Nothing as a single 
 distinct object could he see. The shutter which he saw 
 was of course an image of the one on which he had 
 gazed so long in the prison. With sufficient practice he 
 learned, indeed, to see things as we do ; but why the 
 need of this practice ? Evidently because he had to learn 
 to exercise his reason and imagination on the sensations 
 of sight, the act of seeing being an intellectual and not 
 merely a physical affair. 
 
 Haslam gives an account of a boy who, though his 
 eyes were good enough, could not see things as we do, 
 since from feebleness of mind he did not sufficiently 
 use his reason and imagination to interpret the sensa- 
 
PERCEPTION 37 
 
 tlons which his eyes gave him. He could not estimate 
 the distance of objects with any approach to accuracy, 
 for which reason he was known even to clutch at the 
 moon with his hand. He, no doubt, thought it a cheese 
 or something of the sort a few feet from his head ! 
 There is an account of a feeble-minded woman brought 
 to sight by an operation for cataract which is much to 
 the same purport. She was, as a general thing, not 
 interested in anything, but there was one exception — 
 nuts and apples. These she could easily see and would 
 eagerly grasp after. She could, in other words, see only 
 those things with regard to which she could be induced 
 to exercise her reason and imagination. 
 
 We have, then, to adopt as a theory of sight this — 
 that what we seem to see as if they be objects are really 
 nothing but images in the mind which the mind itself 
 creates. How, indeed, do we think this can be other- 
 wise, when it is made out that we do not directly see 
 with the eyes the qualities of things or their space or 
 time relations? 
 
 Berkeley, who was the first to set forth this theory 
 with anything like an approach to thoroughness, relied 
 mainly for his proof of it on two points, his main argu- 
 ment being that from the nature of the case we can 
 know only what is in the mind, not what is outside it, 
 consequently that whatever we seem to see of a thing 
 is only an idea. Notwithstanding the desperate efforts 
 made to show the insufficiency of this contention, the 
 argument still maintains its force. For what we see of 
 things is manifestly only our knowledge of them. His 
 special plea was that the world of sight is different from 
 the world of touch, nobody ever seeing what he touches 
 
38 PERCEPTION 
 
 nor -touching what he sees. We have learned to merge 
 these two worlds into one on theory merely, he claims. 
 He showed that we do not directly see with the eyes 
 the distance, size, or situation of things, but have to 
 infer the same. He had learned from Alhazen, an Arab, 
 who lived in the Middle Ages, that the moon is seen to 
 be of different sizes at different times, and even at the 
 same time, by different persons, owing to the fact that 
 its size has to be calculated from various circumstances, 
 and is not directly given. He was also familiar with 
 what had become known as Molyneux's query. Whether 
 or not a man born blind would, on first receiving his 
 sight, be able to distinguish a ball from a cube, both 
 ball and cube being nearly the same in size. Berkeley, 
 following up the clues which these examples suggested, 
 worked out the great theory that what we see as if they 
 be things are really only the ghosts of things. 
 
 Schopenhauer maintains the theory on four grounds : 
 First, though the image of an object on the eye is upside 
 down, we yet see the object right side up. Secondly, 
 though the image of an object is on the eye, we yet see 
 the object not on the eye, but at a distance from us. 
 Thirdly, though there is on each of our eyes an image 
 of the object, we yet see not two objects, but only one. 
 Fourthly, though the image of an object on the eye is 
 perfectly flat, we yet see the object as having thickness. 
 These facts plainly prove, Schopenhauer contends, that 
 what we see as an object is merely an image which the 
 mind creates on suggestions of sense. We see objects 
 right side up because the mind has learned how to con- 
 struct the right kind of an image to represent an object. 
 For the same reason we see objects at a distance, do 
 
PERCEPTION 39 
 
 not see them double, and see them as extended in the 
 third dimension. Why it is that seeing but the ghosts 
 of things, we yet see them how and where the things 
 are, Schopenhauer explains on the ground that we feel 
 things with the rays of light. When we look at the sun, 
 for example, it is the same as if we are poking the sun 
 with sticks ninety-two million miles long to find out 
 what sort of thing the sun is! 
 
 Berkeley held that dreams appear the same to us as 
 realities for the reason that realities are really dreams. 
 Nobody pretends, says he, that we see anything in our 
 dreams but images; why, then, should we pretend that 
 we see anything in our experiences but images? As 
 nobody pretends there was any cow present when he 
 saw one in his dream, why pretend that there is any 
 present when he sees one in reality? Why pretend to 
 the seeing of stars millions of miles from his head? 
 Manifestly, says Berkeley, we see nothing in life but 
 dreams. A man who lodged at a tavern, rising early 
 in the morning, saw in the hall as he entered it a man 
 coming to meet him, was in fact about to accost the 
 man, when, greatly to his surprise, he discovered that 
 it was himself. As a matter of fact, he had only been 
 looking into a very good and almost perfect mirror. 
 Somewhat after this manner, says Berkeley, we take for 
 things what are only images in the mind. We do not 
 see things, but only dreams. 
 
 What we ordinarily call a dream, however, differs 
 from our every-day experience in that it may in certain 
 respects be inconsistent. Fosgate relates that, having 
 once dreamed of falling into a chasm, he dreamed again 
 the same night the very same dream, thinking he was 
 
40 PERCEPTION 
 
 now- awake. A boy who had heard it said that it was 
 a bad sign to dream of anything white, dreaming once 
 of a white horse, quickly bethought himself, '' I must 
 be careful not to dream of this to-night." A man, 
 dreaming that he was attending the funeral of a friend, 
 dreamed at the same time that he was conversing with 
 that friend, the same alive and well. We give, more- 
 over, no heed to the length of time in dreams. A sol- 
 dier, for example, was twice called, the intervals between 
 the calls being short, yet in that brief time, as he after- 
 ward related, he dreamed of events which would natu- 
 rally occupy days. Tennent, on the contrary, who lay 
 seven days in a trance, said on his recovery that the 
 whole time seemed but a moment. 
 
 On the contrary, consistency is characteristic of our 
 every-day experience. For example, a wagon of which 
 we have knowledge through the perceptions of the senses 
 wears out only gradually and in a way that every change 
 in it is distinctly marked and accounted for. The wood 
 which wears away or rots is by no means lost, but is 
 merely separated into parts, the oil which evaporates 
 from it is preserved, the particles of iron which are 
 rubbed off last still and always. Indeed, that wagon 
 never is nor ever can be lost to human experience. Like 
 the brook of Tennyson it goes on forever. In some 
 form or other it will extend to the most distant future. 
 It also goes back to the remotest past. The wood was 
 once in trees, the oil in flax, the iron in mines. The 
 trees out of which the wood came were formed of such 
 things as earth, water, and air — constituents which ex- 
 isted in the world when the world was as yet without 
 form and void. The like may be said of whatever else 
 
PERCEPTION 4 1 
 
 is in the wagon. Indeed, if we look the matter up, we 
 shall find that the wagon in some form or other was 
 existing when the morning stars sang together. All the 
 modifications of its materials which have been or will 
 be made were or will be consistent not only with them- 
 selves, but with all human experiences, past, present, 
 and to come. 
 
 This we may say of a wagon of which we have ex- 
 perience through the senses — every stage of its history 
 is definitely fixed with reference to each stage preceding 
 it and to each stage following it, everything that has 
 occurred with reference to it is in itself capable of being 
 traced up ; but this we cannot say of a wagon which 
 exists merely as a dream. 
 
 Nevertheless, so far as the mere appearances of things 
 are concerned, it is evident that they are just the same 
 in dreaming as in reality. 
 
 The ideal realism of Lotze depends on the principle 
 that seeing with the eyes is merely a consistent dream- 
 ing. Matter, he contends, is composed of minds, star- 
 tling as this may seem, every atom of a stick or of a 
 stone, for example, being, as he supposes, a mind hav- 
 ing similarity with our own. The world, as he teaches, 
 exists both within and without us, and hence the name, 
 ideal realism. The world exists within us, seeing it is 
 but the dream occasioned in us by the joint action of 
 the minds making up the universe. The world exists 
 without us, seeing it is the same for everybody. 
 
 There are four kinds of perception in addition to 
 sight, namely, hearing, tasting, smelling, and handling, 
 each of which resembles sight in being an imagery within 
 the mind, so that we may say generally that perception 
 
4i PERCEPTION 
 
 is a process of forming images in the mind on sugges- 
 tions of sense. 
 
 With the ear we directly experience but Httle, noth- 
 ing in fact but the quivering of the waves of air; but 
 though we directly experience so little with the ear, we 
 yet from what we experience infer a great deal. Should 
 we hear a machine in the darkness imitating exactly the 
 human voice, we should no doubt think we were hearing 
 a man talking, the reason being that we have learned 
 from experience that tones and words such as the ma- 
 chine might make are peculiar to humanity. We do not, 
 then, in reality hear that a man talks, we merely con- 
 clude that a man talks, conclude that he talks from the 
 signs we have. Were this not so it would be impossible 
 that we should mistake the sound of a machine for the 
 voice. 
 
 Experts in tasting teas are able to tell the qualities 
 of the teas, as, for example, that a certain tea has been 
 dried on copper. It would be inaccurate, however, to 
 say that they taste the drying of the tea. For they do 
 not taste this, but infer it, there being cerain peculiari- 
 ties in the taste of the tea giving clues to reason. Men, 
 moreover, do not taste that a liquor is ten years old or 
 that there was a nail in the keg. This or that they 
 reason out and imagine on the ground of certain sen- 
 sations. 
 
 Testing things by taste, as it is called, is in truth, for 
 the most part, testing them by smell; but this is irrele- 
 vant to the matter in question. 
 
 Knowing nothing but the smell of an object, we 
 imagine its qualities. For example, a man smelling 
 apples in a dark cellar may in consequence know the 
 
PERCEPTION 43 
 
 characteristics of them. For from their smell, perhaps, 
 he knows what kind of apples they are — pippins, for 
 instance. Knowing that the pippins usually sold in the 
 market are of a certain size, he is able from having 
 smelled them to say how large they are. It would not 
 be correct, however, to say that he smells that certain 
 apples are pippins or that the diameters of the apples are 
 three inches. 
 
 Julia Brace, blind, deaf, and dumb, was able by the 
 sense of smell alone to distribute a whole washing as 
 it came from the laundry, telling infallibly every piece, 
 to whom it belonged. 
 
 Next to sight, however, touch best exemplifies per- 
 ception, how it is a process of forming images in the 
 mind. We can test this for ourselves by touching some- 
 thing at random in the dark. For instance, rising in 
 the night and going into a room, where we touch a table, 
 we know immediately what it is. When the hand no 
 more than comes in contact with it we have an image 
 of it in the mind; we do not have to wait to feel the 
 table all over. The mind is able at once to infer and 
 imagine what the object is we have touched. 
 
 Persons who are born blind exemplify the same thing. 
 For by the use of reason and imagination a blind man 
 can learn to do almost anything that anybody else can 
 do — learn to sew, to spin, and to weave, to make bas- 
 kets, to bottom chairs, and to play the violin. Sander- 
 son, although blind, was yet able to distinguish genuine 
 from counterfeit medals, succeeding even where experts 
 had failed, relying merely on touch. Kleinhaus, another 
 blind man, chiseled out a very good statue of the Em- 
 peror of Austria, as did Genabasius, still another blind 
 
44 PERCEPTION 
 
 man, a statue of one of the popes. Bayle tells of a blind 
 man who distinguished by touch every card in the pack, 
 and played the game so dexterously that he was hard 
 to beat. A blind man passing his hand over the back 
 of a horse knows what the color of the horse is. Mani- 
 festly, however, it would be improper to say that he feels 
 what color the horse is — ^brown, bay, chestnut, or what 
 not. What he feels is certain impressions merely. From 
 these he reasons out and imagines what the color of the 
 horse is. 
 
 What it is possible for the mind to reason out and 
 imagine from mere sensations of touch is still better 
 illustrated by those who are not only blind, but deaf 
 also, and perhaps dumb. Laura Bridgeman, who could 
 not see or hear or speak, learned to sew, to knit, and to 
 write. She was able to read by passing her fingers over 
 raised letters, and was able to converse with people by 
 means of signs. She knew everybody perfectly well, 
 and would put out her hand at the right time to shake 
 another's. 
 
 Those whose limbs have been amputated also furnish 
 examples how reason and imagination are applied to the 
 impressions of sense. Certain persons who have lost 
 their limbs yet feel pain in them, the effect, no doubt, 
 of past experience on the mind, reason and imagination 
 continuing to do their wonted work, notwithstanding the 
 fact that the impressions of things on the nerves have 
 ceased to exist. An apparatus having been applied to 
 the stump of a man's leg twelve years after the leg had 
 been taken off, the man declared that he felt the lost 
 member as if it were asleep. Another man, under some- 
 what similar circumstances, said that he felt pain in the 
 
PERCEPTION 45 
 
 toes of his foot^ although the foot had long since been 
 amputated. By the force of reason and imagination 
 he felt pain in toes which he did not have. A man whose 
 arm had been off for thirteen years or more declared 
 that he still felt the hand as if it were in a bent and 
 cramped position. A man who had lost his arm in bat- 
 tle, said, twenty years subsequently, that he felt rheu- 
 matism in it whenever the weather was damp. Persons 
 whose legs have been removed are in the night so sure 
 that they possess them that they can convince themselves 
 to the contrary only by feeling for them with their hands. 
 
 Something similar happens to persons after having 
 had their teeth filled by a dentist. When they have 
 retired at night they feel the working of the tools on 
 their teeth, although no tools are there. The nerves 
 giving the same sensations that they gave when the 
 tools were applied to the teeth, reason and imagination 
 construct the same perception as they constructed when 
 the tools were actually applied. 
 
 This must teach us that perception by touch, like all 
 other perception, is mostly a process of inference and 
 imagery, perception, in fact, being the process of form- 
 ing images in the mind on intimation of the nerves, so 
 that what we really perceive is, so to say, the ghosts of 
 things, these ghosts, however, truly representing the 
 things, how and where they are. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 PHANTASY 
 
 We are, doubtless, all acquainted with the process of 
 dreaming, the faculty appropriate to which is called 
 phantasy, but we may not be so well acquainted with 
 its importance, to say nothing about understanding the 
 complexity of the process. 
 
 The subject of dreams is embraced under three heads 
 — what they are, what produces them, what they them- 
 selves occasion — these divisions corresponding to the 
 questions, what? whence? whither? 
 
 Dreams, considered as to what they are in themselves, 
 are either perceptive or cognitive, either sleeping or 
 waking, either individual or communal. 
 
 Perceptive dreams are dreams of seeing things, of 
 hearing them, of touching them, or even of tasting or of 
 smelling them ; dreams of sight, however, called visions, 
 being by far the most important. One may, indeed, 
 dream of hearing sounds. For example, a man dreamed 
 that he witnessed a sea-fight and that he could plainly 
 hear the booming of guns. One may dream of touch- 
 ing something. For example, a man who dreamed that 
 he was wearing a velvet coat, dreamed at the same time 
 that he felt it with his hand and found it smooth. Occa- 
 sionally, also, one dreams of tasting or of smelling some- 
 thing. Whenever we dream of perceiving anything, in 
 short, the dream is perceptive — there is a representation 
 
 46 
 
PHANTASY 47 
 
 to the mind just as there is when we directly perceive 
 anything. 
 
 Cognitive dreams, on the other hand, are dreams of 
 memory or thought, such dreams consisting not in what 
 we seem to see, to hear, to touch, and the hke, but 
 merely in what we assume to be true, we dreaming that 
 something has taken place, whether it has or not; that 
 something is so, without regard to the truth of it. For 
 example, it is related by a man that he frequently dreams 
 that he once had a very good dinner in a certain restau- 
 rant. He never had any such dinner there, however — 
 the restaurant does not even exist. His dream is merely 
 a representation of memory or thought. 
 
 This distinction between perceptive and cognitive 
 dreams is of the greatest importance. For by it we are 
 made aware, right at the beginning, that the dreaming 
 process is much more complex than we might have sus- 
 pected it to be. 
 
 We are not to understand, however, that one of these 
 kinds of dreams necessarily takes place apart from the 
 other. As a matter of fact, they are usually blended 
 with each other. 
 
 The second distinction to be made in dreams is the 
 distinction between those which occur in our sleep and 
 those which occur in our waking. The former being 
 well understood, it is necessary only to speak of the 
 latter. 
 
 We have an example o£ a perceptive dream in waking 
 hours given in the experience of Nicolai, a certain Ger- 
 man writer. For he distinctly saw by day, as he says, 
 men and women who followed him about whithersoever 
 he went, conversing with him and with one another, 
 
48 PHANTASY 
 
 although no men and women were present, as he was 
 able to prove by experiments which he made. If it be 
 held that persons in this condition are really asleep, or, 
 perhaps, as it would be preferable to say, are under the 
 power of hypnosis — this, if true, little alters the case — 
 we speak only after the popular fashion. The dreamer 
 really acts just as people do when they are awake — he 
 walks around, performs various actions, engages in con- 
 versation — he is not asleep in the sense in which one is 
 asleep in bed. If he is technically asleep, this, as was 
 said, little alters the case. 
 
 An example of a cognitive dream occurring when one 
 is awake is furnished by the experience of a boy who 
 was oppressed with a fever. He verily believed that 
 just outside the bedroom door was the highway and 
 that there to a gate he had a horse tied. He thought 
 he had been ploughing in the field. The fact, however, 
 was that he had never used a horse in his whole life. 
 He was merely dreaming when he was awake — at least, 
 when he and others supposed that he was awake. 
 
 We have in the fact of persons' dreaming, when seem- 
 ingly awake, one of the explanations made of their see- 
 ing ghosts, as the same are called, what they see being, 
 on this theory, only their dream. It is related, for 
 example, of a certain boy that, having gone to bed in 
 a dimly lighted bedroom, he saw standing against the 
 wall, or moving about, gayly dressed men and women, 
 the appearance being to him of an evening party. No- 
 ticing that his mother, who was putting him to bed, did 
 not see them, he supposed himself to be possessed of 
 some power of mind superior to hers. She, on the con- 
 trary, when he called her attention to the presence of 
 
PHANTASY 49 
 
 men and women in the room, thought him Hght-headed 
 or at best trifling. 
 
 A woman, sitting in the twihght of her parlor one 
 evening, saw for a few moments, and for a few moments 
 only, what in every respect resembled her deceased sister. 
 She particularly noticed the long golden hair which her 
 sister had worn when living. She was dreaming, as we 
 suppose. 
 
 What has often happened is this : a man, having gone 
 to bed, is visited by a deceased relative, who stands at 
 the foot of the bed and converses with him. He, indeed, 
 thinks he is conversing with a deceased relative, the 
 truth being, however, that he is merely dreaming that he 
 is doing so, dreaming that he is doing so when he is 
 awake, or, at least, when he thinks he is awake. 
 
 If it be objected that not all cases of seeing ghosts 
 are to be accounted for on the principle appealed to, this 
 is nothing to the purpose. The point is that some cases 
 of seeing ghosts are thus to be accounted for. 
 
 The third distinction in dreams, and, as it seems, the 
 last which needs to be taken account of, is the distinc- 
 tion between dreams which are individual and those 
 which are communal, it being here necessary, however, 
 to refer only to the latter. 
 
 Two or more persons may dream the same thing, 
 either when asleep or when awake. 
 
 A family aroused, as they supposed, from their slum- 
 bers in the dead of night, found the house lighted up 
 and strange-looking creatures moving about, all of which 
 resembled in appearance the traditional form of the devil. 
 These beings compelled the whole family to get out of 
 bed, and continued for a long time to terrify them, even 
 
50 PHANTASY 
 
 passing their hands over the face of each. Finally, 
 however, they put the whole family to bed again and 
 extinguished the lights. Nobody dared to stir till it was 
 broad daylight, when, getting up one by one and look- 
 ing around, they could discover no clue to what had 
 happened in the night, except that they smelled sulphur. 
 Sulphur had accidentally gotten upon the stove. It was 
 the smell of this which had set the whole family to 
 dreaming the same thing at the same time. As a matter 
 of fact, they had not been out of their beds the whole 
 night. 
 
 An example of more than one person dreaming the 
 same thing when awake may also be given. During the 
 night a lady, perceiving that there was a woman in white 
 rocking the cradle in which her child was sleeping, fran- 
 tically shook her maid to get her up, whereupon her maid 
 merely said, " Don't I see it, too," the woman in white 
 that instant passing out of the window, notwithstanding 
 the fact also that it was closed. The theory is that the 
 lady and her maid dreamed the same thing at the same 
 time, and when awake, or at least when they supposed 
 they were awake. 
 
 On the basis of such occurrences as these it has been 
 sought to account for haunted houses, for the miracles 
 which the Hindoos perform, and even for the appear- 
 ances in seances. 
 
 The principle on which haunted houses are explained, 
 supposing that the appearances there are nothing but the 
 dreams which one or m.ore persons have, is that a per- 
 son having in that house some time or other been sub- 
 jected to great mental strain, a knowledge of which he 
 wished others to possess, his experience was thereby im- 
 
PHANTASY 51 
 
 pressed on the mind of everybody in the universe. Peo- 
 ple in general, to be sure, know nothing about this, but 
 when any one of them comes to stay in the house, or 
 possibly merely to visit it, certain circumstances con- 
 nected with the house call out the original impression 
 which the man dying there made on the subconscious 
 mind, causing one to dream the very same thing, and it 
 may be when he is awake, which the person in that house 
 so long ago experienced. 
 
 It is no objection to this theory to say that it is absurd 
 that people should have stored away in the memory what 
 they know nothing of, since it is easily proved that they 
 do have such things stored away in memory; things 
 which they have not thought of for a generation, indeed, 
 may suddenly rise into their consciousness — persons who 
 had entirely forgotten a language, for example, have 
 been known to speak it in the delirium of death ; persons 
 have even spoken in an unknown tongue that which was 
 unconsciously contained in the memory. 
 
 The miracles of the Hindoos, moreover, could be 
 accounted for if we might suppose that they are noth- 
 ing but the dream which several persons at the same 
 time have, there, in fact, being no miracle at all, only 
 what appears to be such. It is reported, for example, 
 that a certain Hindoo, having gathered a crowd of peo- 
 ple around him, made them an address, after which, tak- 
 ing a rope in his hand, he threw it into the air, the rope, 
 strangely enough, standing straight up and down, the 
 one end in the clouds, the other just above his head. 
 Seizing the rope, he climbed it, pulling it up after him, 
 till he was actually lost to view, having, as the bystand- 
 ers believed, made his ascent to heaven. Those who 
 
52 PHANTASY 
 
 witnessed the performance declared that, at least, it 
 appeared just as if all this took place, however difficult 
 it might be to believe that such was actually the case. 
 
 That what people see the Hindoos perform cannot 
 possibly be real is manifest from this, that performers 
 often proceed even to dismember a man, apparently sever 
 his head from his body and the like, yet shortly after- 
 ward produce the man alive and well. 
 
 As was said also, one explanation of the appearances 
 of spirits, as the same are called, at seances, is that 
 they are nothing but the dreams which the several per- 
 sons gathered together there have in common. For 
 example, a man who attended a seance for the first time 
 saw there, as he verily believed, his deceased brother, 
 the same wearing the long beard which was peculiar to 
 him in life. This, in truth, is what he saw, but how 
 could he say that he was not dreaming, since if he were 
 dreaming everything must have seemed to him just as 
 if it were real, the same in fact as things appear to us 
 in the dreams of our sleep? We do not doubt their 
 reality. Something like this at any rate is the argument 
 used, and of course should be taken for what it is worth. 
 
 Three main theories, it may be said, obtain in refer- 
 ence to spiritualism, the first of which is that the phe- 
 nomena are altogether due to sleight-of-hand, the 
 medium always deceiving the people, the objection to 
 which is that it makes too great drafts upon our cre- 
 dulity, we being obliged to suppose wilful deception on 
 the part of so many apparently candid persons. More- 
 over, it is strongly objected to this theory that there are 
 occurrences at seances not capable of explanation merely 
 on the hypothesis of sleight-of-hand. The second theory, 
 
PHANTASY S3 
 
 that the phenomena are due to departed spirits, has the 
 objection that not sufficient intelHgence is manifest in 
 the doings and sayings of the would-be spirits, an objec- 
 tion, of course, possibly admitting of explanation so as 
 greatly to diminish its force. The third theory is that 
 the phenomena are to be explained out of dreams, either 
 that they are nothing but dreams or that they are dreams 
 which are in some sort materialized and embodied. 
 According to this latter theory the mediums are de- 
 ceived, not deceiving, either taking as objective what is 
 merely subjective or as assigning to the phenomena the 
 wrong cause. 
 
 The fact that ghosts of the living as well as ghosts 
 of the dead have been seen is adduced in support that 
 the spirits at seances may not be real ones, the ghost 
 of a living person being, we should suppose, only our 
 mental representation of it. Pythagoras, we are in- 
 formed, was seen at the same time in two different 
 towns, one of these appearances of him manifestly 
 being nothing but his ghost — not his departed spirit, 
 inasmuch as he had not yet departed this life. At any 
 rate, it would seem to follow that the seeing of a ghost 
 does not necessarily prove that the same is in fact a 
 spirit. 
 
 Dreams in themselves considered, then, are either 
 perceptive or cognitive, either sleeping or waking, and 
 either individual or communal. 
 
 Moreover, to dreams of all kinds two characteristics 
 attach which give them great importance, the first that 
 they have significance and the second that they are taken 
 as realities. 
 
 The ordinary and the extraordinary meaning of dreams 
 
54 PHANTASY 
 
 have to be noticed, the ordinary meaning of dreams not 
 usually receiving the attention due it. 
 
 To understand what is meant by the ordinary mean- 
 ing of dreams we have need to take a hint from figura- 
 tive language. For example, we read without surprise 
 that Joseph was a fruitful bough, although it is plain 
 that Joseph being a tribe of men could not have been 
 the limb of a tree. We understand, moreover, what is 
 meant when we read that the Pharisees were a genera- 
 tion of vipers, although plainly being men they could 
 not be snakes. Now the ordinary meaning of dreams 
 is figurative, the same as this language. This, then, is 
 the usual significance of dreams — they indicate to the 
 mind bodily states or states of what is somehow con- 
 nected with the body. Suffering from a fever, a man 
 perhaps dreams that somebody is pouring hot water on 
 him; suffering from indigestion, he dreams perhaps that 
 a mountain is upon his stomach. 
 
 The extraordinary meaning of dreams is that which 
 is more commonly made account of, though it would, 
 doubtless, be better to consider it merely as an adjunct 
 of the main meaning of dreams. 
 
 The extraordinary meaning of dreams is of three 
 kinds — that pertaining to things, that pertaining to space, 
 and that pertaining to time. 
 
 To take the first case, it is true that some special in- 
 sight into things is occasionally gained by means of 
 dreams. Coleridge, for example, having taken an ano- 
 dyne, dreamed out that poem of his known as Kubla 
 Khan. Franklin declared that he gained much political 
 insight from dreams. His example, indeed, makes us 
 wish that politicians nowadays might give more heed 
 
PHANTASY 55 
 
 to dreams. Tartini, the musician, dreamed that the 
 devil appeared to him, and in exchange for his soul com- 
 posed him a piece of music which is known to this day 
 by the appropriate title of the Devil's Sonata, Tartini 
 having remembered it and written it out. 
 
 To take the second case, the significance of dreams 
 as regards space — it has reference to knowing things at 
 a distance. Thus, on the day of the battle of Pharsalia, 
 a man by the name of Cornelius, at Padua, more than a 
 hundred miles from the scene of action — such is the 
 account — described the battle correctly in every detail as 
 it proceeded, seeing the whole thing in a dream, when 
 at the time he was awake or seemingly so. Swedenborg, 
 relying on a waking dream, correctly described a fire 
 which was raging at Stockholm, although he was at 
 Gothenburg, far away. Major Andre's sister, residing 
 in England, saw in a dream the court-martial which 
 condemned her brother, clearly distinguishing in it 
 Washington and Knox, though she had never seen 
 these men, she afterward learning from pictures that 
 her vision was correct. 
 
 To take the third case, the significance of dreams as 
 regards time, it has reference in the first place to what 
 is past and gone. For example, Zschokke, the Swiss 
 writer, tells us that whenever he saw anybody he saw 
 also at the same time and as it were in a dream and 
 by signs seeming to surround the mouth everything 
 which that person had ever done. Sangster recounts 
 that a deceased woman appeared to him looking the same 
 and dressed exactly as she was represented in a picture 
 which was about the house. The tinker of Swaffham, 
 we are told, dreamed that if he would go to London 
 
56 PHANTASY 
 
 Bridge and stand at a certain place upon it, somebody 
 there would tell him something of great importance to 
 him. Following out this dream, he was actually told 
 by a man at that place upon the bridge that he had 
 dreamed himself that there was a chest of money buried 
 under an old apple-tree well known to the tinker in his 
 native town, but that he had no faith in dreams himself, 
 being a man of common-sense. The tinker, however, 
 going home — such is the story — dug in the spot and 
 found the money. 
 
 The significance of dreams as regards time has, in the 
 second place, reference to the future. We read, for 
 example, that Joseph, having been warned of God in a 
 dream, fled into Egypt, thus saving the young Saviour's 
 life. Schopenhauer's servant dreamed of cleaning up 
 ink from the floor the night before she was called upon 
 to do it. Goethe in a waking dream beheld himself in 
 a certain attire riding horseback along the road to Stras- 
 burg, his dream being literally realized eight years 
 afterward. 
 
 Much more talked about, however, are premonitions 
 of approaching death. Families, as we know, have their 
 own sign to indicate to them the impending decease of 
 a relative, the white woman, for example, being such 
 in the case of the Hohenzollerns. Voss relates how a 
 servant of one of his friends always knew when any- 
 body was going to die by seeming to see, as if in a 
 dream, certain shadowy creatures following him about 
 everywhere, as if with intent to destroy him. A case 
 even is on record in which the death of a person and 
 all the circumstances of the funeral were correctly 
 foretold. 
 
PHANTASY 57 
 
 The second general characteristic attaching to dreams, 
 to give them great importance, is the fact that we usu- 
 ally take them as realities. 
 
 If our dream be a vision, we just as much believe 
 that we see what we suppose we see as if in reality we 
 saw it — not always so, of course, but usually. One 
 dreams, for example, that he is out walking of a sum- 
 mer's day — the sun is shining brightly, the trees are 
 loaded with leaves, the grass is green, horses, sheep, 
 and cattle are feeding on the meadow. Now what he 
 supposes all the time is that he actually sees all these 
 things. The horses, for example, he thinks are real 
 horses. He is not convinced of the contrary, indeed, 
 till he awakes. 
 
 If the dream be one of thinking merely, and no 
 vision at all, what he thinks in his dream he verily sup- 
 poses to be fact, as, for instance, that he is fallen heir 
 to a large fortune. 
 
 Now, from the circumstance that dreams have sig- 
 nificance, it follows that they must be connected with 
 certain causes, and from the fact that they are taken 
 as realities it follows that they may control our actions. 
 We have, therefore, still to consider what produces 
 dreams, and what they themselves occasion, thus com- 
 pleting our survey of them. 
 
 The production of dreams is occasioned either by 
 physical or by mental causes, the latter, moreover, 
 being another's will or our own. 
 
 Among physical means of producing dreams are drugs, 
 disease, fasting, heat, and light — these, although there 
 are many more. 
 
 Preparations of a certain kind of hemp, when taken 
 
5 8 PHANTASY 
 
 info the system, have the effect to make one dream 
 of diversified landscapes; he really thinks that he 
 is looking on meadows, hills, and vales, the same 
 covered with grass, flowers, and weeds, with here and 
 there rocks and streams interspersed. A man, having 
 taken a good dose of valerian, saw on retiring to rest, 
 and while he was still awake, a lake before him in which 
 were fifty or more boys bathing, distinctly distinguish- 
 ing the features of each. Opium has a similar effect, as 
 most everybody knows from the case of De Quincey. 
 Having used this drug, he saw stairs towering into the 
 heavens and others descending into the earth, saw pal- 
 aces the corners of which rested on mountains and the 
 vast doors of which were festooned with clouds. More- 
 over, he seemed to spend infinite ages with crocodiles 
 and other loathsome animals. 
 
 Delirium tremens is a disease which, when one has it, 
 causes him to see snakes and insects just as if they are 
 real, although no snakes nor insects are at hand, A 
 small boy overcome by a fever said that he saw on a 
 rose-bush, just outside the window, a little white dog, 
 the fact being, however, that no such dog was anywhere 
 about the place. A man who suffered from a fever said 
 that to him the walls of his room appeared to be cov- 
 ered with drifting sand, over which were passing all 
 kinds of animals of diminutive size. 
 
 Mahomet, having fasted much, saw things when 
 awake just as we see them when asleep. He saw, for 
 example, something like a shadow enter his room, 
 although his wife, who was with him, could not perceive 
 any such thing. St. Anthony, from habitual fasting, 
 came to see strange visions. Creatures of every descrip- 
 tion seemed to him to enter his room — lions, panthers, 
 
PHANTASY 59 
 
 bears, and wolves. What he took to be the devil 
 approached him, handing him a silver dish which, as he 
 took it in his hand, vanished into smoke. He was 
 dreaming when he was awake, we suppose, nothing 
 more. Luther, in the Wartburg, from a similar cause, 
 saw, as he believed, the devil, and threw at him his 
 ink-bottle, bespattering the wall in the place, which is 
 still shown to tourists. 
 
 How a heated room will make one dream everybody 
 must have observed ; even too much covering on the bed 
 will do the same thing. 
 
 Light reflected from smooth surfaces is a physical 
 means to make us dream. We have the case of crystal- 
 gazers, as they are called, who put themselves to dream- 
 ing by looking into water-bottles or other glassware. 
 Their dream is directed by the reflections of color and 
 form upon the interior surface of the glass. It is re- 
 corded that in a certain Grecian temple there was a 
 well in the bottom of which was a mirror. The priestess 
 looking into this well saw in the glass an image of the 
 absent sick person, a cure for whom was being sought. 
 Gazing on the glass, we may suppose, had the effect to 
 make her dream. It was the image in her vision which 
 she saw. We have all heard the queer story regarding 
 Abraham Lincoln, that standing before his looking-glass 
 after his first nomination, which was made at Chicago, 
 he saw two images of himself, the front one bright, the 
 one behind it pale, and that subsequently in his life he 
 saw the same thing again, perhaps several times ; that he 
 believed the bright image to represent his past career, 
 the pale one to represent his future. He believed he 
 would not live to see the end of his term of ofiice. This, 
 
6o PHANTASY 
 
 experience of his is explained on the ground that gazing 
 on the glass caused him to dream, though he was awake, 
 or at least seemingly awake. He saw two conditions 
 of himself in that baseless fabric of a vision. It is said 
 that in Egypt there is a society which has existed for 
 forty centuries, the successive members of which have 
 produced in themselves dreaming by gazing on porce- 
 lain. They have triangles drawn on a porcelain plate 
 and certain words inscribed upon it, and to make the 
 plate more shiny they oil it. 
 
 We come now to the mental means of putting one to 
 dreaming, the actions of others or of one's self. 
 
 The means by which one person puts another to 
 dreaming are either objective or subjective, the objec- 
 tive means being what he says or does. 
 
 For example, the operator says to the person who is 
 to be hypnotized, " Think of nothing but that you are 
 going to sleep; your eyelids are now closing, your eyes 
 are getting tired, you feel weary all over; you are now 
 sound asleep." The patient comes thus to be in the 
 dream state, and when in that state his dream can be 
 directed by the operator, that is to say, he will dream 
 anything the operator suggests to him to dream. 
 
 A hypnotized patient told that there is a bird on the 
 table where there is none, not only sees a bird on the 
 table, but also the image of the bird in the looking-glass 
 on that table. Told that the picture of a certain person 
 is on a piece of blank paper, he sees the picture on that 
 piece of paper, but only on the side of it on which he 
 was told that the picture was. If the paper is taken 
 away and then brought back, the other side up, he sees 
 no picture on it at all. 
 
PHANTASY 6 1 
 
 Persons hypnotized also have their dream directed by 
 putting them in certain attitudes, as, for example, put- 
 ting them in the attitude of drinking may make them 
 drink, and the like. 
 
 The subjective means by which one puts another to 
 dreaming is the mere use of his own thought and will, 
 without any apparently outward signs. Some of us in 
 our childhood were made to wonder much at what was 
 related of a crazy man, that, though he was kept in a 
 separate room of the house confined or under watch, he 
 would yet repeat what persons in other rooms said in 
 a very low tone, and even what they merely thought 
 and did not utter at all. We have the explanation in 
 this that the thoughts of others were transferred to his 
 mind, thus suggesting ideas which, as it were, directed 
 his dreaming. 
 
 We have also the case of controlling hypnotized pa- 
 tients in that the company all think of the same thing 
 for a time, when it is found that the patient dreams it. 
 For example, in the presence of a hypnotized woman, 
 the company by agreement kept in their minds the 
 thought that the woman would see her hat the color of 
 red, although it was really of some other color. She 
 did actually see it red, we are told, and could not be- 
 lieve it was hers. 
 
 Certain persons have power to put themselves to 
 dreaming, at least on certain subjects. Painters make 
 use of this gift. For example, Dore saw, as it were in 
 a dream, the pictures which he wished to paint. Was, 
 for instance, a man to be represented in the act of leap- 
 ing, Dore in his self-induced dream saw the man in 
 that attitude. We are to understand that what he saw 
 
62 PHANTASY 
 
 was not the scheme of a picture, such as any of us may- 
 have before the mind, but that what he saw in his wak- 
 ing dream looked exactly like the object which we 
 behold with our eyes when we perceive a man in the 
 attitude of leaping. It was related by a certain painter 
 that, wishing to portray an ideal woman, he dreamed 
 one sitting before him in a chair, then, watching his 
 dream closely, he took a brush in his hand and depicted 
 the woman on the canvas. French schools make it a 
 part of the instruction in painting to teach pupils how 
 to dream. The voluntary production of the ghosts of 
 persons is not so rare an occurrence as we might sup- 
 pose it to be, but it may seem strange that a man should 
 have the power to make his own ghost appear before 
 him, as Brosius, a physician of Bendorf, a town of Ger- 
 many, is said to have done. Such a man could paint 
 his own picture without the aid of a sketch and without 
 looking into a mirror. Beethoven, even after he was 
 deaf, it is said, could yet dream how any music would 
 sound, doing so when he was awake. Ole Bull was 
 accustomed to say that the music of his violin existed in 
 his mind before he played it. When Poe was writing 
 his Raven, a poem esteemed the best which has been 
 produced in the New World, he made himself dream, 
 we are told, the scenes represented in it. Sitting under 
 a lamp-post in New York, he told a friend of his that 
 at that very instant he could see a raven and could even 
 hear it croak. Flaubert, the French novelist, relates 
 that he dreamed his characters so vividly that they had 
 to him all the semblance of reality. We are told of a 
 negro preacher who so perfectly portrayed an inferno 
 as to come to believe in its reality himself — for, pausing 
 
PHANTASY 63 
 
 in the midst of his discourse, he wailed long and loud 
 over the state of the lost. Men have played chess by 
 dreaming, the player sitting with his back to the board, 
 perhaps also with his hand over his eyes. The moves 
 on the real chess-board are made by an assistant as the 
 player directs him. The player looks merely on the 
 board which he has in his dream — upon this board, in- 
 deed, it is that he plays the game. We are told of a 
 man who could in this fashion play twenty games of 
 chess, all at the same time, every stage of each of these 
 games standing before his mind, not as a scheme, but 
 as if it were real, just as we behold something similar 
 in the dreams of our sleep. 
 
 We observe somewhat the same thing in the case 
 of psychometrical demonstrations, as they are some- 
 times called. Taking articles in his hands, the medium 
 tells to what sort of persons they belong, what scenes 
 have been associated with them, and the like. Taking 
 a watch and chain, for example, not knowing whence 
 it came, after looking at it a little while and feeling it 
 carefully, he proceeds to tell the appearance and char- 
 acter of the person to whom it belonged and to trace 
 out the history of the same. Much the same thing is 
 often done without the use of the articles. The medium 
 tells, for example, that such a person, whom he points 
 out in the assemblage, has lost such and such relatives 
 by death, that they were such and such like persons, per- 
 haps even gives some minute details which could not 
 have been known to him personally. 
 
 He, indeed, claims to have this knowledge from de- 
 parted spirits — and this is one theory of the case^ — 
 though it seems possible that he gets his knowledge 
 telepathically by seeing into the minds of others. 
 
64 PHANTASY 
 
 So far the cases given of dreams induced by one's 
 self have been those in which the person is aware that 
 he is dreaming, but there are other cases in which he is 
 not aware of it. Certain persons are able to put them- 
 selves into a trance, in which state they dream and give 
 an account of what they dream, but when they come 
 out of the trance they do not remember what they have 
 dreamed any more than we remember much of what 
 we have dreamed in our sleep. For example, a woman, 
 being in a trance, a piece of marble from the ruins of 
 Pompeii was placed upon her head, when, it is said, she 
 described the house of which this piece of marble had, 
 about two thousand years ago, formed a part, the in- 
 mates, who they were, what their customs and manners 
 were, even their dress. 
 
 Persons in this condition take the dreams which they 
 have produced for realities; any object which they seem 
 to see they take to be a veritable one. They may, there- 
 fore, even act in accordance with what they seem to see. 
 
 This indeed brings us to the third and last grand 
 division of our subject — for the direction of our volun- 
 tary actions by our dreams means that we act in accord- 
 ance with them, just as we act in accordance with the 
 perceptions of sense. We have it illustrated in som- 
 nambulism, in hypnosis, and in insanity. 
 
 As regards somnambulism, the case of persons getting 
 up in their sleep and going out on the roof of a house 
 is the best known example. Such persons are guided 
 by their dream, the same as a carpenter going out on 
 the roof of a house is guided by his perception. At 
 least in part the somnambulist is actuated by his dream. 
 We have the case of a young woman who was trying 
 
PHANTASY 65 
 
 to win a prize in painting, and consequently had her 
 mind greatly exercised over it. She discovered that 
 somebody was adding touches to her picture in the 
 night. A watch being set, it was found that it was she 
 herself who did the work. She would get up in her 
 sleep, paint a while, then go back to bed, and know 
 nothing about it in the morning. We have also the case 
 of a young preacher who worked at his sermons this 
 way. It was found that if a pasteboard was placed 
 between his eyes and the page he could read just as well 
 as before, presumably because he was reading out of his 
 own mind, and not off the page at all. What is still 
 stranger, we have the case of a man who would get up 
 in the night and rob his own hen-roost, knowing noth- 
 ing about it in the morning. 
 
 We are to understand that these are all cases of 
 dreams getting into action — the dream is not only taken 
 as a reality, but is actually put into practice. The be- 
 ginning of something of this nature can be traced in us 
 all, especially when we have been hard at work on a 
 task. We in our sleep constantly think of it and seem 
 to ourselves to be still working at it. A boy who, in 
 the hot sun, loaded sheaves of oats all day, on going 
 to sleep at night dreamed all the while of still loading 
 sheaves of oats. Had his dream been even more intense 
 the probability is that he would have gotten up and 
 gone into the field and would actually have handled the 
 sheaves. Indeed, a case is known of a man who did 
 this very thing. 
 
 Hypnosis somewhat resembles somnambulism, the 
 great difference being that it is artificially induced, or 
 at least often so. When hypnotized patients are told 
 
66 PHANTASY 
 
 that mosquitos are biting them, they go through the 
 motions of brushing off mosquitos, plainly showing that 
 they are acting out a dream, no mosquitos really being 
 about them. Told that they are in the midst of a flower- 
 garden, they get down on the floor and go through the 
 motions of picking flowers, calling them pinks, lilies, or 
 what not, just as suggested. Told that it is cold, they 
 shiver; told that it is raining, they get under cover. 
 
 It is possible that witchcraft is merely a case of a 
 person hypnotized and set to doing and believing absurd 
 things. An example, doubtless familiar to all, may be 
 cited. Against the express wish of his wife, a man, we 
 are told, persisted in going with some associates on a 
 hunt. They were surprised that a fine-looking deer 
 which circled around them could not be hit by any of 
 the party. The man, at last, cut from his coat a silver 
 button, which he put into his gun and fired at the deer. 
 The result was that the deer was wounded by it and 
 fled away. Reaching home at night he found his wife 
 in bed wounded exactly as the deer had been wounded, 
 the theory being that the woman, having transformed 
 herself into a deer to be shot out of spite, had then 
 retransformed herself into a woman, exercising the 
 powers of a witch. This, considered as a matter of 
 fact, we are sure could never have happened, but con- 
 sidered as a waking dream which several persons had 
 in common, and in accordance with which they per- 
 formed certain actions, it may well enough have taken 
 place. If we suppose the woman, as well as the men, 
 to have been hypnotized by a witch, the whole transac- 
 tion, although a dream, may yet have had the appear- 
 ance of a reality. For witches may have been able to 
 
PHANTASY 67 
 
 make several persons dream the same thing at the same 
 time, and not only so, but also to make them regulate 
 their actions by it, so that they should think that things 
 happened to them in common which did not. 
 
 Nineteen persons, under the persecution of Cotton 
 Mather, were hanged for witchcraft on Gallows Hill, 
 Salem, Mass., a thing which is often made subject of 
 lament. The traveler standing at the grave of Mather 
 on Copp's Hill, Boston, to-day, muses on what he deems 
 that man's misguided action. For all we know to the con- 
 trary, however, many, if not even all, of those who were 
 hanged may have been veritable witches, persons who, 
 out of malice, hypnotized others to make them trouble. 
 The witchcraft of Salem, for all that anybody can show 
 to the contrary, may have been a matter of fact. When 
 the nature of hypnotism was not understood, it was easy 
 for people to suppose that the power which certain per- 
 sons exercised over others was due to their league with 
 the devil. 
 
 To maintain the reality of witchcraft it would, doubt- 
 less, be necessary to assume that one person may under 
 certain circumstances hypnotize others at a distance, even 
 at a long distance; it would, in other words, be neces- 
 sary to assume what is called telepathy, a thing which 
 has before been alluded to. 
 
 Insanity is a sort of continuous somnambulism, a sort 
 of natural hypnosis, though it is admitted that these 
 expressions do not fully describe it. The insane man, 
 though wide-awake, or at least apparently so, acts under 
 the delusion of a dream, his dream being largely cog- 
 nitive, though also often perceptive; that is to say, he 
 thinks false things mostly perhaps, yet often sees and 
 experiences what is not at hand. 
 
68 PHANTASY 
 
 We are more familiar, doubtless, v/ith the msanity of 
 some individual rather than with that of a community, 
 though both kinds of insanity exist, the individual and 
 the communal. 
 
 A man who was becoming insane, to take the case 
 of an individual, tied his cow behind his carriage and 
 drove rapidly to the neighboring town, giving as his 
 reason for so doing that his cow, although she had now 
 reached an advanced age, had yet never seen that place. 
 He was, we may suppose, but acting out a dream 
 which possessed him. The dream, too, was a dream of 
 thought merely — he thought things to be as they are not. 
 
 Taine gives an account of a man who attempted to 
 get away from robbers, complained, indeed, that they 
 pounded him almost to death, although, as a matter of 
 fact, nobody was near him nor was doing him any harm. 
 He had but been dreaming when he was awake, and so 
 vividly, moreover, as to take his dream for a reality. 
 What was more, he had proceeded to act in accordance 
 with what he dreamed. 
 
 W^e have also the ludicrous example of a man who 
 pounded himself continually, thinking it was somebody 
 else. He could not endure, he said, the insults which 
 that man offered him. 
 
 Crazy persons, as was said, may not only be under 
 a delusion of thought, but also under a delusion of per- 
 ception, see things which are not present, hear sounds — 
 indeed, exist in a world altogether different from that 
 in which we conduct our affairs. Cases enough are on 
 record in which a person is visited by the dead, who tell 
 him what to do — commit murder and the like — all of 
 which he takes in sober earnest, though it be nothing 
 
PHANTASY 69 
 
 but a dream. We are thus able to account for the hor- 
 rible things which certain insane persons perform and 
 to understand why it is necessary to keep them in close 
 confinement. 
 
 What is called communal insanity also exists, or at 
 least has existed, an insanity in which several persons 
 participate. 
 
 For example, during the Middle Ages people had g 
 mania for dancing in concert. They would gather in 
 public places for this purpose; screaming and foaming, 
 they would dance till they fell in utter exhaustion, when 
 they would groan as if they were dying. While they 
 were in these acts they were insensible to all other im- 
 pressions than those connected with what they were 
 doing. They thought of nothing but the dream which 
 they had in common and which in common they acted 
 out. 
 
 There were in the Middle Ages, also, what we call 
 were-wolves. Men and women dreamed — and when 
 awake — that they were wolves — dreamed it in common 
 and in common acted it out. They took to the woods 
 in bands, walked on all-fours, howled and hunted. They 
 killed and devoured not only animals, but also children. 
 It was in some cases found necessary to destroy them, 
 as if, indeed, they had been wolves. 
 
 What is observed in a speaker's influencing an audi- 
 ence is, perhaps, a mild form of the communal acting 
 out of a dream. Punshon, the great preacher, for ex- 
 ample, so roused the people before whom he spoke at a 
 conference that they all rose to their feet, shouted, and 
 waved their handkerchiefs. He is said to have mag- 
 netized them, which probably means no more than that 
 
70 PHANTASY 
 
 he caused them in a measure to dream, and what they 
 dreamed to act in accordance with. They were led to 
 attach an exaggerated importance to something, and in 
 accordance with their false assumptions to act. No one 
 reading by himself what Punshon said would have con- 
 ducted himself in such a manner. 
 
 So far account has been taken only of the influence 
 of dreams on what are usually called our voluntary 
 actions, but it seems that they may also have influence 
 on what are called our involuntary actions, on the organic 
 functions of the body. 
 
 A patient whose limb was amputated felt no pain 
 during the operation from the fact that, previous to it, 
 he had been hypnotized and then told that he would 
 feel no pain. Here a delusion in the mind had the effect 
 to suspend the ordinary results from the action of the 
 nerves. What, indeed, could better illustrate the power 
 of a dream? 
 
 The cure of many diseases, it is claimed, can be 
 effected by means of hypnosis, this meaning that the 
 patient is put to dreaming and that his dreams have an 
 effect on the body for the better. Persons suffering 
 from a mania for intoxicating drinks have been cured 
 by being hypnotized, and when in that state told to 
 abstain from liquor. Those subject to maniacal attacks 
 have been cured by a similar process. For example, a 
 girl in such a condition that it required five nurses to 
 control her was hypnotized after several hours of effort, 
 her eyelids being held open so that she was compelled 
 to gaze at a magnesium light. Once got to dreaming, 
 she was kept in the state nearly all the while for weeks, 
 being taken out of the hypnosis only a half-hour daily. 
 
PHANTASY 71 
 
 She was cured by this process. The operator had power 
 to cast out devils, had them dreamed out, we might say, 
 really used dreams to modify the organic structure of 
 the brain. 
 
 It is said that even laziness has been cured by a like 
 means. A boy who stood at the foot of his class be- 
 cause he could not apply himself to his tasks, having 
 been hypnotized, was commanded to learn his lessons. 
 Brought out of the hypnosis, he made such diligent 
 application of his powers that he very soon reached a 
 high grade. 
 
 Allusion has been made by Rosenkranz to the hope- 
 lessness of trying to educate idiots, but it seems that 
 even they yield to hypnosis. An idiot, it is said, who 
 could not learn to write was able after hypnotic treat- 
 ment to make the entire alphabet, having gotten power 
 over his muscles by the aid of his dreams. 
 
 If dreams can modify the human body, the question 
 arises whether they can also have an effect on matter 
 outside of the body, as, indeed, some have claimed. It 
 is asserted, for example, that persons by the mind have 
 been able to move the needle of a compass. It is claimed 
 that a man in India can by his mind write a letter on 
 a sheet of paper which is in another man's desk in 
 America, such being called a precipitated letter. 
 
 It remains to be asked whether the materializations 
 of spirits, as they are called, are anything but the pa- 
 tient's dream made to embody itself. Are, indeed, levi- 
 tation, table-tipping, and the like explainable on these 
 grounds ? 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 MEMORY 
 
 It being admitted that memory depends on conditions, 
 the question arises what are those conditions ? Not only 
 so, but what are all of those conditions? Primarily the 
 conditions of memory are (i) the person himself, (2) 
 his circumstances, (3) and things in general. The per- 
 son himself includes two conditions of memory, health 
 and aptitude; but what conditions of memory, we may 
 ask, are included in things themselves? The aspects of 
 things in general are quality, quantity, and relation, but 
 we have here to consider quality only quantitatively, 
 what its intensity is, so that the aspects of things in 
 general reduce for us to quantity and to relation. Three 
 kinds of quantity exist, that of intensity, that of space, 
 and that of time. All the conditions of memory, there- 
 fore, are health, aptitude, intensity, space, time, and 
 relation. 
 
 We might reduce the statement to this : the condi- 
 tions of memory in their entirety are, first, the person 
 himself; secondly, his circumstances; thirdly, the inten- 
 sity of things ; fourthly, space and time ; and, fifthly, the 
 relations of things. 
 
 This classification, no doubt, is exhaustive, seeing that, 
 beside the person and his circumstances, all there is 
 anyhow to influence the memory is things, these, more- 
 
 72 
 
MEMORY 73 
 
 over, having intensity of quality, being in space and 
 time, and standing in relation to one another. 
 
 It is plain that the person consists of body and of 
 mind. The main question with regard to the body is 
 health, with regard to the mind is aptitude. The first 
 thing to consider, then, so far as the person is concerned, 
 is the state of his health. This condition of memory 
 seems to depend on the connection which things to be 
 remembered have with the brain. Traces of sensations, 
 it is supposed, are always or usually left in the brain, 
 these traces being the means by which we call up events. 
 One trace is connected with another, consequently, get- 
 ting intimation of one thing, we thereby get intimation 
 of others — this is the theory. 
 
 According to this view much is stored away in the 
 brain, possibly everything of which we have ever had 
 any impression, many examples, indeed, being adduced 
 to show this. A boy whose skull was opened by a sur- 
 geon was wholly unconscious at the time of the opera- 
 tion, but remembered all about it four years afterward 
 when in a delirium of fever. He even told who were, 
 two years before, present at the operation and how each 
 of them was dressed. An even more remarkable case is 
 this : a clergyman being in the habit of reading aloud 
 every day Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, was overheard 
 by a woman who was at work about his house. She 
 understood nothing of what he read, not knowing the 
 languages. Many years afterward, however, when 
 seized of a fever and wholly unconscious, she repeated, 
 greatly to the surprise of those who heard her, the very 
 same passages that the clergyman had so long before 
 read in her hearing. A man who was leisurely resting 
 
74 MEMORY 
 
 his fingers over the muzzle of his gun, when it was dis- 
 charged in consequence of a dog's running against the 
 lock, said that in the brief time elapsing between the 
 dog's striking the gun and the discharge of it all his 
 past conduct stood before him, the Lamb's Book of 
 Life, as it were. 
 
 We have not, perhaps, sufficiently taken into account 
 what a remarkable thing memory is. A man sitting by 
 his fireside of a winter's evening relates how, fifty years 
 ago, his sister drew him upon a little wagon along a 
 certain well-known road. He describes the little wagon 
 in all of its details — the wheels sawed out of a board, 
 holes through them for the axle, the narrow box, the 
 tongue with its cross-piece. Nobody but himself pre- 
 tends to know anything about that little wagon, not 
 even the sister who he says drew him upon it. No part 
 or vestige of that little wagon can now be found. Not- 
 withstanding all this, he still insists on the truth of what 
 he says. 
 
 This is as wonderful as the claim of St. John to have 
 been relating things which must shortly come to pass. 
 For it is nowise stranger that one should know the 
 future than it is that he should know the past, seeing 
 that we are always but in the present time. 
 
 The brain, as was said, is a machine of the mind, 
 possibly somewhat on the principle of a graphophone, 
 having in itself traces of whatsoever has happened in 
 the experience of the person. How it is, then, that the 
 state of the health should have an influence on the mem- 
 ory is comprehensible. 
 
 The second thing to consider, so far as the person is 
 concerned, is what aptitude he was born with. Great 
 
MEMORY 75 
 
 memories are, no doubt, in part to be explained on this 
 principle, as, for example, extraordinary memories of 
 faces, of places, of details, of accounts, of words, of dis- 
 course, and of music. While most of us find it difficult 
 to recall forty or fifty faces, Cyrus, the elder, we are 
 informed, knew every soldier in his army, and Themis- 
 tocles knew twenty thousand citizens of Athens. We 
 have an account of a man by the name of Thompson 
 who could draw from memory a correct map of a whole 
 parish, showing the position of everything in it, streets, 
 alleys, barns, and houses. A man, known as Ravenna, 
 having played a game of chess, could afterward describe 
 all the moves which had been made and in the order in 
 which they had taken place. Hortensius, the great 
 Roman orator, was able after an auction to give from 
 memory a statement of all the sales in their order, just 
 as they appeared on the book of the clerk, with the 
 amount each person bought. It has often been a matter 
 of great wonder how Drew, the financier, could transact 
 his immense business without keeping any books. The 
 thing, however, is easily enough understood if we sup- 
 pose him to have had a memory such as that of Hor- 
 tensius. A certain Corsican, we are told, could repeat 
 thirty-six thousand words backward or forward, putting 
 each in its proper place. Another man, named Lyon, 
 could commit to memory a whole newspaper, advertise- 
 ments and all, in one day. Scaliger learned the entire 
 Odyssey and Iliad by heart in three weeks. According 
 to Eusebius, the manuscripts of the Old Testament being 
 destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar at the time he destroyed 
 Solomon's temple, five hundred and eighty-six years 
 before the birth of Christ, we should have had no Old 
 
76 MEMORY 
 
 Testament but for the memory of Ezra, from which it 
 was restored. The Miserere, which was sung but three 
 times a year in the Sistine Chapel of Rome, and the 
 manuscript of which was kept secret, was Hstened to so 
 intently by Mozart, when he was but fourteen years of 
 age, that after having heard it twice he wrote it out 
 and was able to sing it himself, and with an effect 
 almost to rival that produced by the choir, although the 
 effect of the piece when sung in the service of the chapel 
 is said to exceed that of any other known one. 
 
 Such memories, then, we may suppose, are partly to 
 be accounted for by the aptitudes with which certain 
 persons are born, the want of such aptitudes also account- 
 ing for the very poor memory which certain persons 
 from the first manifest for certain subj ects. It is related, 
 for instance, of George Combe, the well-known writer, 
 that he never could in his whole life learn the multipli- 
 cation table, what many a boy has learned in one night. 
 
 It may be remarked here that attention is set down 
 by many as a condition of memory pertaining to the 
 person, but perhaps not with sufficient accuracy. For 
 attention itself being dependent on other conditions of 
 memory, its separate force, no doubt, has been much 
 exaggerated. Usually, indeed, we give attention to 
 things on account of something else than attention. 
 
 We are now arrived at the second division of our 
 subject, the circumstances of one's life. 
 
 Early impressions, it is noticed, have to do with the 
 scope and direction of our memory, and probably because 
 they pertain to the circumstances of our life. 
 
 Arkwright, being the youngest of thirteen children 
 and in a family the circumstances of which were strait- 
 
MEMORY 77 
 
 ened, from early childhood had strongly impressed upon 
 his mind the dependence of one thing on another finan- 
 cially, so much so that he afterward invented spinning- 
 machines; he accomplished his invention from the con- 
 stant presence in his memory of the necessity of organ- 
 izing details to a paying result. Bonaparte, early im- 
 pressed with warlike scenes, came to have what we may 
 call a military memory. 
 
 Any sudden change of one's circumstances is likely 
 to transform one's memory, as numerous instances 
 show. 
 
 When scarcely six years old, John Wesley was one 
 night aroused from his slumbers to escape from the 
 flames of his father's house. So much impressed was 
 he with the event that ever afterward the thought of 
 the uncertainty of life clung to his memory ; but for that 
 fire he could never have preached the sermons for which 
 he is now famous; that fire, indeed, was the happiest 
 pedagogical device which could have been contrived to 
 make him a great preacher. A certain man, who 
 throughout his former life had been of a serious, if not 
 of a melancholy, turn of mind, was during his last ill- 
 ness wholly given up to jocularity. Whereas his recol- 
 lections were once of the austere, they were now of the 
 comic. What is called a loss of memory is often noth- 
 ing but a change of memory, new rnatters being made 
 prominent and old matters obscured; whoever has 
 changed from one business to another, or from any one 
 condition to another, must have been made sensible of 
 this. 
 
 Even cases of rotation in memory have been noticed, 
 the person being subject to two different states, in the 
 
78 MEMORY 
 
 one of which he has one memory and in the other of 
 which he has another memory, being veritably part of 
 the time Jekyll and part of the time Hyde. 
 
 For example, a drunkard when sober could not re- 
 member at what house he had left a certain parcel, but 
 when he was drunk again he remembered very well 
 where it was — he had one memory as drunk and another 
 as sober. A man while in the somnambulistic state had 
 resolved on suicide, but forgot all about it when he was 
 brought out of that state. The next time, however, he 
 was in the somnambulistic condition, he unfortunately 
 made way with himself. We are told of a woman who 
 changed from one memory to the other every time she 
 fell into a deep and protracted slumber to which she 
 was subject. When she had one memory she wrote one 
 hand, when the other memory another hand; when she 
 had one memory she knew certain persons only, when 
 the other memory certain other persons. She had to 
 be introduced to a person if she had only known him 
 when she had the other memory. Thus she changed 
 from one memory to the other every time she fell into 
 one of her deep and protracted slumbers. 
 
 Mediumship, as it is called, possibly is to be explained 
 on this principle, the theory being that when the person 
 acts as a medium he is merely in a second condition of 
 memory. 
 
 At a religious meeting, where testimonies of experi- 
 ence were given, a young woman suddenly arose and 
 spoke energetically, claiming especial authority for her 
 utterances. She was* for the time being, it is believed, 
 in another state of memory than was usual with hei, 
 nothing more. 
 
MEMORY 79 
 
 Sometimes the medium ev^en poses as one who has 
 long since departed this Hfe, thinks he is really such, the 
 truth perhaps being, however, that he is merely speak- 
 ing from his secondary memory, his primary memory 
 being for the time submerged. What is called being 
 possessed of a spirit, good or bad, is also explained on 
 the same ground. 
 
 Instead of rotation in memories, however, the two 
 memories may exist at one and the same time, it seem- 
 ing to one in this state as if inside his own mind is the 
 mind of another. Sidney Dean had a work of twenty- 
 four chapters produced by what seemed to him to be a 
 mind within his own moving his hand. 
 
 Such writing as this is called automatic, and is some- 
 times even signed by the name of a person deceased, 
 but, as was said, is believed by many to be due to noth- 
 ing but secondary memory. 
 
 Some persons only, and not all, being subject to such 
 a state, the cause of it is plainly to be ascribed to cer- 
 tain circumstances which have influenced the brain. 
 Circumstances of life, accordingly, have to be included 
 among the conditions of memory. 
 
 Beside the person and the circumstances of his life, 
 it is plain that things themselves are alone what remains 
 anyhow to influence memory. Four" conditions of mem- 
 ory are therefore yet to be treated of — intensity, space, 
 time, and relation. 
 
 The intensity of things as it affects memory is usually 
 considered under three heads — that of interest, that of 
 perspicuity, and that of vividness. The first two of these, 
 however, are but cases of the third, what is to our inter- 
 est more vividly impressing the mind than what is not 
 
80 MEMORY 
 
 to olir interest, what is clear more vividly impressing 
 the mind than what is obscure. 
 
 Vividness as a condition of memory is exemplified in 
 what is specific and objective. 
 
 Realistic descriptions, for example, are easily kept in 
 mind because they vividly impress us. How easily we 
 remember all about the Russian expedition of Napoleon, 
 so vivid are the scenes of it. Let us contrast with this, 
 however, the items of the losses of the Federals at Bull 
 Run — four hundred and sixty killed, one thousand one 
 hundred and twenty-four wounded, and one thousand 
 three hundred and twelve missing — total loss, two thou- 
 sand eight hundred and ninety-six. The reason we can 
 remember the scenes of the Napoleonic expedition better 
 than the items of the Federal losses at Bull Run is be- 
 cause the one is intuitive and objective and the other 
 analytic and abstract. For the same reason it is easy 
 to remember that Simeon Stylites, out of devotion to his 
 Saviour, went up on top of a post, where he continued 
 to live for thirty years, supported by almsgivers, never 
 once descending all that time ; but hard it is to remember 
 that in a particular instance the exceptions to gender 
 are arctus, alvus, colus, carbasus, vannus, and humus. 
 It was stated by a certain man that he had forgotten all 
 of the history which he learned at school when a boy, 
 except that in a certain battle a horse's tail was shot off 
 — that fact, said he, I can never forget. 
 
 The reason why stories are easily remembered, and 
 therefore powerfully affect the mind, is because they are 
 detailed and specific — they vividly impress us for that 
 reason. We have all heard the fable to the effect that 
 a kid, standing on the roof of a house, made sport of 
 
MEMORY 
 
 8i 
 
 a wolf passing by. We are impressed with what is 
 meant, the scene coming so vividly before us. Very 
 different, however, it is if one say, by way of maxim, 
 that many are brave, for no other reason than that they 
 are out of harm's way. We have explained why the Hin- 
 doos teach morals almost exclusively from fables. Bun- 
 yan, by his account of the men's falling into the hands 
 of Giant Despair, makes a vivid picture easily remem- 
 bered by us. If, however, he had merely said that hesi- 
 tation to do one's duty brings one into evil plight, how 
 weak would have been the impression! Our Saviour 
 makes a strong representation when he says that the 
 characters of men, as related to the truth, are as so many 
 kinds of ground on which the same kind of seed falls, 
 some of it outside the field, some of it on stony, some 
 of it on thorny, and some of it on good ground. It 
 would have been very different, however, if he had 
 merely said that the truth is the same for everybody, 
 what one gets out of it depending on his character. 
 There would have been nothing to impress us. 
 
 Object lessons, it is plain, involve the same principle. 
 They make things easy to recall, because they vividly 
 affect the mind. We have a grotesque example from 
 the Spartans and another from the Burgundians. The 
 Spartans caused drunken men to be exhibited in public, 
 so that their own children might be strongly impressed 
 with the evils of intoxication. The Burgundians took 
 their children to the limits of the country, where they 
 had them thoroughly flogged, the reason assigned for 
 the strange practice being that the children might never 
 forget where the boundaries of the country were. 
 
 We have just the same thing, and nothing more, in 
 
82 MEMORY 
 
 the use of maps, charts, models, specimens, dissections, 
 experiments; what these effect is to make matters vivid. 
 
 It must follow, also, that whatever can be connected 
 with things vivid will be easily remembered; this is a 
 second main point to be taken into account. We remem- 
 ber the shape of Italy, for example, from the shape of 
 a boot, the shape of Florida from the shape of a pistol, 
 the shape of Cuba from the shape of a banana. 
 
 Herndon proposed a curious plan for remembering 
 numbers on this principle. He would let objects stand 
 for them — say a candle for i, a goose for 2, a tripod 
 for 3, a table for 4, a hand for 5, a pipe for 6, a razor 
 for 7, a pair of spectacles for 8, a gourd for 9, a melon 
 for o. Then any number could be symbolized by some- 
 thing vivid and easy to recollect, for example, a candle, 
 a table, a gourd, and a goose thought of as in a row 
 represent to the mind the date 1492, a goose with a can- 
 dle in front of it the 21st, the day of October on which 
 Columbus discovered America. 
 
 It is the same principle of which Grey made use to 
 remember numbers, having words to stand for them, 
 the theory being that we remember words easier than 
 we remember numbers. For each of the ten numerical 
 characters Grey let both a vowel and a consonant stand, 
 either of which could be used at pleasure, so that a word 
 easily pronounced could always be manufactured to rep- 
 resent any given number — for instance, afne, for 1492. 
 
 Lately a system something like that of Grey has come 
 into extensive use as a means of ordering goods, each 
 article having a made-up word to signify it. 
 
 The plan adopted by Grey was to let a or b stand for 
 I, e or d for 2, i or t for 3, o or f for 4, u or 1 for 5, 
 
MEMORY 83 
 
 au or s for 6, oi or p for 7, ei or k for 8, ou or n for 9, 
 and z or y for o. 
 
 Very easy to remember would be another plan of sym-- 
 bolization — let a, e, i, o, u, long and short, stand for 
 the ten numerical characters, also let stand for them 
 consonants derived from the names of the same, n for 
 I, t for 2, th for 3, r for 4, v for 5, x for 6, s for 7, 
 g for 8, m for 9 (as if it were nn written together), 
 and z for o. 
 
 If by this arrangement we wish to remember the 
 number of the house in which Frances E. Willard lived 
 on Chicago Avenue, Evanston, 111., we should only have 
 to keep in mind the word neti, 1728. 
 
 Feinaigle, a German, used all the consonants for the 
 ten figures, having allotted certain ones to each digit, 
 no regard being paid to vowels, so that it was usually 
 possible to find several real words in the language to 
 represent any number. According to Pliny Miles's 
 scheme, founded on this device, the word tribune stands 
 for 1492. 
 
 The next division of our subject is space, how it 
 affects the memory. 
 
 Things are beside one another in space; they have, 
 therefore, position and multiplicity — we can say where 
 each is with reference to the rest and how many things 
 are there together. What, then, position and what, then, 
 multiplicity have to do with our remembering things, 
 these are the questions to be taken up. 
 
 Respecting position, the principle is that, having in 
 mind an object, we naturally remember things in prox- 
 imity to it. This explains a seemingly otherwise inex- 
 phcable thing, namely, that one who has resided for a 
 
84 MEMORY 
 
 few years in a city comes to remember millions of things 
 in it. He remembers them from their positions. 
 
 It follows that it will assist us in remembering any 
 branch of knowledge if we can represent to ourselves 
 the parts of it as being beside one another in space. 
 Studying history, for example, we may make what is 
 called a map of time, a space being assigned to each 
 age of the world, and the characteristics of that age 
 written in the space. Studying optics, we may draw 
 squares, assigning to one of them velocity, to one of 
 them intensity, to one of them refraction, to one of them 
 reflection, and to one of them color, writing in each square 
 peculiarities of the topic. Studying geology, we may 
 draw concentric rings to represent the different ages of 
 the earth's crust, the first and innermost one the Silu- 
 rian age, the next the Devonian, and so on. 
 
 On this principle we have explained the method which 
 in antiquity was ascribed to Simonides. Simonides, we 
 are told, being called out during the progress of a ban- 
 quet, the roof of the house suddenly fell in, crushing to 
 death all those who had remained at the table. When 
 the stones were cleared away, though the bodies were 
 mangled beyond the possibility of recognition, yet was 
 Simonides able to identify every one of them. For he 
 had remembered what position each of them occupied 
 at the table. To remember anything, then, said he, we 
 are to have in mind certain fixed places, and therein to 
 imagine the things which we wish to recollect. 
 
 This device is highly commended by Cicero and by 
 Quintilian. Cicero tells us how we can associate what 
 we wish to remember with things which we imagine to 
 be in the rooms of an imaginary house. On this plan, 
 
MEMORY 85 
 
 if we were going to make a speech, we might imagine 
 in the hall things which would suggest to us the ideas 
 of our introduction, in the next room things which would 
 suggest to us the ideas of our statement of the case, in 
 the next room things which would suggest to us the ideas 
 of the division of our subject, and so on, the things 
 which would suggest to us the ideas of the conclusion 
 being, perhaps, in the kitchen. Quintilian convinces us, 
 once for all, of the great efficacy of such a method by 
 the observation that, when we return to places in which 
 we formerly were, we remember what once occurred in 
 those places, and even the thoughts which we once had 
 in them. 
 
 If we imagine a house with ten rooms, the four walls 
 and floors of which are divided into two equal parts, it 
 is plain that we should have a hundred different places 
 in such a house wherein to imagine things by which to 
 remember others, and that imagining ten such houses 
 we should have a thousand places. If in each of these 
 thousand places we imagine four or five objects to recall 
 so many words, we shall have deposited in it things 
 enough to recall a good vocabulary. 
 
 The principle of multiplicity as applied to memory is 
 illustrated in this, that we find it comparatively easy to 
 remember a few objects, say articles of furniture in a 
 room, but extremely difficult to remember a great num- 
 ber of them. 
 
 It is proverbial that to learn anything one must con- 
 fine his attention to a very few things. He must guard 
 against a diversity of objects and a diversity of changes. 
 He should, says Watts, not study where he has a good 
 view from the window, nor should he indulge in recrea- 
 
86 MEMORY 
 
 tions immediately after having attended on instruction. 
 Pericles, during all the time of his administration, says 
 Plutarch, never accepted invitations to dine out, nor was 
 he ever seen in any other street than that which led 
 from his house to the assembly. 
 
 Hyde, the great adept in life insurance, it is said, was 
 not recognized by anybody outside of his business in 
 going from his house to the office or in returning from 
 the same. He had nothing to do with society as such. 
 All he thought of was how to get somebody to insure 
 his life and how to invest the premiums. 
 
 We contravene the principle of multiplicity by using 
 one thing for many, effecting in this way a generaliza- 
 tion, so to say. 
 
 Having, for example, learned twenty-six letters, we 
 are able by this means to recall any number of ideas 
 whatsoever. Having learned the ten numerical symbols, 
 we can by this means recall any number, however large. 
 Letters and figures, therefore, beside their other uses, 
 are a device by which we get over the condition that 
 increasing the number of things increases the difficulty 
 of recollecting them. Rules are a similar contrivance, 
 as, for example, that for spelling words which double a 
 final consonant — we do not have to remember how to 
 spell each word individually, but only how to spell the 
 words in general. So, also, we conjugate Latin verbs 
 easily if we merely remember that the stems are for the 
 most part unchanged, the personal endings nearly always 
 the same, the tense signs recurring. Mnemonic letters 
 and rhymes involve the same principle, as, for example, 
 the well-known vibgyor and the lines for remembering 
 the exact number of days in each month. 
 
MEMORY 87 
 
 We also contravene the principle of multiplicity by 
 using a part for the whole. The advantage of catechisms 
 and teaching by question and answer is that a part of a 
 subject can be considered and exhausted at a time with- 
 out special reference to the rest. Of all merely human 
 teachers Plato, it is said, is the most beloved. For he 
 taught his doctrines in dialogues still extant, the learner 
 considering one particular point at a time together with 
 its various bearings. Abstracts or compendiums serve a 
 like purpose in that they condense the matter of larger 
 treatises into narrow limits. If, moreover, when we read 
 a book, we mark such passages as seem important, add- 
 ing here and there a note, we by this very means make 
 a compendium of it, and with little trouble. 
 
 There is no greater pedagogical mistake of the pres- 
 ent day than the failure to take into account the prin- 
 ciple of multiplicity. This we observe particularly in 
 the study of languages, very small results being obtained 
 in comparison with the time and labor spent upon them. 
 The learner, to do anything in a language, has to know 
 the various meanings of several thousands of words. It 
 is not enough to know the meaning of several hundreds 
 of them. As soon, however, as he tries to master these 
 thousands of words he finds himself in the iron grasp 
 of the principle of multiplicity. It is so hard to remem- 
 ber a great number of things together. As somebody 
 has well remarked, the reason why a student cannot read 
 at sight a page of Latin or Greek is a very simple one — 
 he does not know what the words mean. 
 
 It is plain that from the beginning to the end of the 
 study of a language the vocabulary should be an object 
 of attention. The use of translations, interlinear or 
 
88 MEMORY 
 
 Other, and the Hmiting of grammatical work to the ele- 
 ments, will enable the pupil to secure the requisite time. 
 
 As to the mastering of a vocabulary, the plan of short 
 lessons and continuity is probably the best. If we try 
 to accomplish too much, like the boy who put his hand 
 into the jar of filberts and grasped so many that he could 
 not get it out, we accomplish nothing. It is known that 
 if one learn but five words a day he will in two years 
 learn three thousand. The excuse, therefore, for spend- 
 ing such an amount of time, to have at the end of it a 
 knowledge of only a few hundred words, and this knowl- 
 edge imperfect, is not as good as it was once supposed 
 to be. Learning a vocabulary is like going over a moun- 
 tain — step by step we approach the other side, but we 
 cannot jump over the mountain. 
 
 Another thing which the principle of multiplicity re- 
 quires is small classes, and, therefore, the adoption of 
 something equivalent to the so-called Lancastrian sys- 
 tem, whereby students do some of the teaching. No 
 other way does it seem possible to accommodate our- 
 selves to that condition of memory according to which 
 it is harder for us to remember many things than a few. 
 
 We reach that division of our subject in which is to 
 be stated what influence time has on memory. 
 
 Succession, simultaneity, and perpetuity are the three 
 characteristics which have to do with time — we find, 
 accordingly, that memory is concerned with each. In 
 the first place, we are likely to remember one thing from 
 another if in their occurrence one came right after the 
 other, the assassination of Lincoln, for example, from 
 the surrender of Lee. In the second place, we are likely 
 to remember one thing from another if they both oc- 
 
MEMORY 89 
 
 curred at the same time, as the surrender of Vicksburg 
 from the withdrawal of Lee from Gettysburg. In the 
 third place, however, we remember a thing if it is con- 
 stantly in time, that is to say, is repeated to the mind, a 
 case of more importance than the other two, as examples 
 will show. 
 
 Houdon made a practice of rushing by toy and other 
 shops, observing the wares as intently as he could. 
 When past the shop he made an effort to recall as many 
 of the things he had seen as it was possible for him to 
 do. He found by this repetition that he gained power 
 to recollect things, Herndon would let his mind drift 
 for a few moments and then endeavor to recall as many 
 as he could of the thoughts which had passed in his 
 mind. By practice with cards persons learn to remem- 
 ber every one which they may throw down. They begin 
 by laying down one and recalling what it is, then two, 
 then three, and so on. They must be careful not to 
 increase the number too fast, must thoroughly master 
 two cards before proceeding to three, and so on. The 
 same way men learn to add long columns of figures at 
 sight. They practise first with two or three small num- 
 bers, hurriedly writing them, erasing them, and recall- 
 ing their sum. They proceed to more numbers and 
 larger ones, and so on. On this principle, too, some 
 learn to take into the mind a page of writing or printing 
 at a glance, are thus able to speak from manuscript as 
 readily as from memory. They begin with a sentence 
 or two, glancing at the page, then away from it, and 
 trying to repeat what they had fixed their eyes upon. 
 When they get so that they can master a sentence or 
 two, they add a third, and so on, till, as was said, they 
 
90 MEMORY 
 
 can take in a whole page at a glance. Demosthenes, that 
 he might impress on his mind the phraseology of the 
 speeches of Thucydides, copied them not merely once, 
 but eight times over. It is related of a German that 
 having learned by heart the speech of Demosthenes " On 
 the Crown," and having recited it a great many times, 
 he finally came to believe that he was Demosthenes him- 
 self before the Athenian assembly. We are told that 
 a man who found it difficult to remember that the word 
 " surely " occurs twice instead of once in the well-known 
 line of " The Raven," having said this line over twenty 
 or thirty times to himself as fast as he could, ever after- 
 ward remembered it well enough. Elihu Burritt, having 
 open before him a page, as he blew the fire or pounded 
 the iron, was able in this way to learn eighteen different 
 languages at the blacksmith's forge. 
 
 At least three thousand words have to be known be- 
 fore we can do anything in a language. The only way 
 to learn them is to go over them continually. If we are 
 not willing to do this, it might as well be understood 
 that we can never master the language. 
 
 It was one of the advantages of the old-fashioned 
 school, whatever else might have been its defects, that 
 the pupil, when studying arithmetic, proceeded directly 
 to the examples, working them by the thousand. He 
 came to proficiency through sheer force of repetition. 
 
 A teacher, whose success was marked, made it a rule 
 to review every day all that had previously been gone 
 over, possibly having in mind that Cato never made a 
 speech on any subject in the Roman senate without 
 somehow dragging in the thought that Carthage ought 
 to be destroyed. 
 
MEMORY 91 
 
 Examples of the lack of repetition are also good to 
 illustrate this condition of memory. A pupil recites well 
 to-day how it is proved that in every triangle, no matter 
 what, where, or when, the sum of the angles was, is, and 
 will be the equal of two right angles. The teacher re- 
 joices in the mastery of the subject evinced by the pupil. 
 Ten days from that time, however, the pupil could not go 
 through that demonstration if his life depended on his 
 doing it. A man relates that once he knew as well as 
 could be all the words in the first book of the Anabasis, 
 so that he could read it in a day, taking into his mind 
 an account of all the circumstances which led up to that 
 battle at Cunaxa which must forever be famous, but for 
 years he had not done anything in the language. What 
 was he to expect? One day, chancing to take up that 
 same first book, he could not make out so much as that 
 of Darius and Parysatis were born two sons. It is well 
 known that one will even forget his native tongue if he 
 is placed under circumstances in which he does not use 
 it. For example, an Englishman who had resided in 
 France for five years, on his return home could not tell 
 where he had been, except in some such unintelligible 
 expressions as " Got back — France — five years." An 
 old lawyer, who had not practised for some time, on 
 going to try a case, found himself at disadvantage in 
 that a young lawyer quoted against him an appropriate 
 passage in a law-book. " Alas, young man," said the 
 old lawyer, " I have forgotten more law than you ever 
 knew." 
 
 In the last division of our subject it remains to speak 
 of the relation of things, how this affects the memory. 
 
 We remember more easily whatever is similar to any- 
 
92 MEMORY 
 
 thing else which we may have in mind. One hearing 
 an anecdote told, for instance, remarks that it reminds 
 him of a story, which, accordingly, he proceeds to tell. 
 We remember anything more easily, also, which is in 
 contrast to anything else which we may have in mind, 
 as, for instance, the vanity of human life from the jests 
 of the grave-diggers in Hamlet. In general, whenever 
 anything depends on another, we remember the first 
 from the second, and vice versa. 
 
 The association of one thing with another causes it 
 to be recalled, as is illustrated by examples easy to find. 
 
 Washburne relates in his memoirs that, when he was 
 minister to France, he had on a certain occasion to in- 
 troduce many Americans to the Emperor Louis Napo- 
 leon, who having expressed his surprise how Washburne 
 could remember names so easily, Washburne told him 
 that the feat was not so great after all, seeing that he 
 had always made it a practice when he met anybody to 
 observe some peculiarity about him. This peculiarity 
 would, by association, call up the name of the person. 
 
 How hard it is to recollect a list of disconnected 
 words — exceptions to gender, for example — is well 
 known, the reason being that there is nothing by which 
 one word suggests another. For example, Foote, the 
 comedian, it is said, wrote ten lines of nonsense and 
 challenged anybody to commit it to memory in ten min- 
 utes, a thing which no one was able to do. 
 
 A list of words, no matter how long it may be, can 
 nevertheless easily be committed to memory if it is 
 arranged so that each preceding furnishes a clue to the 
 next. Such a list of words, for example, is this : street, 
 pavement, quarry, workman, pickaxe, handle, wood, tree 
 
MEMORY 93 
 
 — each suggests the following by its relation to it. 
 Again, suppose it were required to remember the word 
 chemistry from the word Hottentot, it would be possible 
 to do so by inserting the intermediate series, black, char- 
 coal, carbon, for Hottentot suggests black, black char- 
 coal, charcoal carbon, carbon chemistry, so that, indi- 
 rectly, Hottentot suggests chemistry. Such are the tricks 
 of mnemonics made possible by the fact that one thing 
 suggests another through the relations which it sustains 
 to it. 
 
 Classification helps us to remember things because of 
 the principle of relation. 
 
 It is illustrated by an apothecary shop, where the bot- 
 tles, boxes, drawers, and cases are arranged in some way 
 according to kinds, to the end that each article can the 
 more readily be found. It is still better illustrated by 
 a catalogue of a library, where subjects are arranged 
 under heads, subheads, and particulars. 
 
 In pursuing any branch of knowledge, says Watts, we 
 should begin with a view of the subject as a whole, 
 arranged under its proper divisions. We should begin 
 with what is commonly called a primer. For, if we 
 plunge at once into large works, we shall be like the 
 mariner on the great ocean without a compass. If we 
 confine ourselves to pamphlets treating only of particu- 
 lar aspects of the subject, we shall be like the poor fish- 
 erman who only knows his own bay. 
 
 Regarding the subject of classification, the question 
 arises whether, in the case of geometry, the divisions 
 usually made might not be much improved, especially 
 for beginners. Suppose, for instance, that the first 
 division were triangles — the treatment of angles being 
 
94 MEMORY 
 
 made subordinate to that of triangles. Then suppose 
 that the second division were figures composed of tri- 
 angles, all surfaces being regarded as subject to trian- 
 gulation. Next, suppose that the third division were 
 pyramids, the sides of these being triangles. Lastly, 
 suppose that the fourth division were bodies composed 
 of pyramids, all bodies being considered as so composed. 
 Further, suppose that not all the details were gone into, 
 but only things of prime importance. Would not such 
 a classification have great advantages for beginners? 
 
 Even an artificial classification may be of great use to 
 the memory, as we see in the case of the alphabet, a 
 classification which enables us readily to find anything 
 not only in a dictionary or encyclopaedia, but even in a 
 library. 
 
 Some have performed mnemonic tricks by having fixed 
 in the mind the representation of an animal for each 
 letter of the alphabet, as, for example, ape for a, bat for 
 b, cat for c, etc., then associating the things which they 
 wished to remember with these animals in their order. 
 We have also heard of persons who, having a poem by 
 heart, associated with the phrases thereof, taking them 
 in their order from the first, things that they wished to 
 recall, disconnected words, for example. 
 
 The general principle in these artificial systems is that 
 we have a framework in the mind on which we hang 
 things, so to say. 
 
 The condition of memory founded on the relations of 
 things explains also the use of cross-references, a sub- 
 ject well illustrated in a method of teaching. 
 
 For example, if the study were the geography of 
 Palestine, the learner would consider not merely what 
 
MEMORY 95 
 
 is ordinarily known as the geography of that country. 
 He would, indeed, learn all about the physical features 
 of the land and its political divisions, but, in addition 
 to this, he would learn everything else about the coun- 
 try. He would learn what representatives the vegetable 
 kingdom has in Palestine — the sycamore, the olive, and 
 the fig-tree, the flowers which bloom on the plain of 
 Sharon, commonly called roses, the lilies which skirt the 
 Mount of Beatitudes. He would learn that the Egyp- 
 tians made coffins out of the wood of fig-trees obtained 
 from Palestine. He would learn what representatives 
 the animal kingdom has there — wild boars, porcupines, 
 and curious squirrels. He would compare the wild 
 swine of that country with our own, noticing the great 
 transformation which environment has effected. He 
 would learn what are the mineral resources of the coun- 
 try, though, except salt, they are few. He would learn 
 what are the commercial products of the country — oil, 
 fruits, and grains — how each of these is obtained and 
 how prepared for the market. He would learn what 
 are the customs and manners of the people. He would 
 learn what are the incidents and antiquities connected 
 with the various places — the graves of Abraham, Sarah, 
 Isaac, Rebecca, Jacob, and Leah are at Machpelah; at 
 Bethel, Jacob dreamed of the golden ladder ; at Shechem, 
 Joseph was cast into the pit. He would learn what were 
 the careers of the great men who once inhabited the 
 country. He would learn what literature the country 
 has had — Psalms, prophesies, chronicles. He would con- 
 sider particularly the Book of Job, the greatest literary 
 production of the Hebrew mind, among the first in the 
 order of time of great literary productions in general. 
 
96 MEMORY 
 
 The object of learning all these matters in connection 
 one with another is not merely that the learner shall 
 possess such a rich store of knowledge, but also that 
 from the connections which all these matters have with 
 one another it would be impossible that much of it 
 should ever slip away from the mind, one thing always 
 bringing up another, and the parts the whole. 
 
 The mastery of one subject after this manner has also 
 the effect to improve the mind generally, making it 
 capable of absorbing and retaining knowledge on any 
 subject. 
 
 The chief advantage which a genius has over others 
 lies in the fact that he perceives innumerable relations 
 between one thing and everything else, his mind being, 
 consequently, always interested, engaged, and invigo- 
 rated, making the acquisition of knowledge easy for him. 
 
 The object of teaching a pupil on the principle of 
 cross-references is to make of him in some sort a genius. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 IMAGINATION 
 
 Imagination, using the word in the broadest sense, is 
 characteristic of every faculty of the mind, every process 
 of the mind being, in fact, one of forming images. In 
 the restricted sense of the word, however, imagination 
 may be defined as the power which the mind has to rep- 
 resent impossibihty. 
 
 The greater part of fiction is the work of conception 
 rather than of imagination, if we speak of imagination 
 in the narrower sense. The characters and circum- 
 stances represented in fiction are such as really exist — 
 the Achilles of Homer, for example, is what many a 
 man is, the siege of Troy is that which often takes place. 
 The most of fiction, therefore, is only history — general 
 history, we might say — an account not of particular in- 
 dividuals, but rather of classes of society; such fiction, 
 accordingly, being as much the truth as any matter of 
 history whatsoever. 
 
 The process of mind employed in creating novels and 
 the like is invention, compound conception. 
 
 But coming to imagination in the stricter sense, it is 
 plain that there are as many ways of representing im- 
 possibility as there are ways of representing possibility 
 itself. Herein, then, we have a clue of great importance 
 in compassing the scope of imagination, taking imagina- 
 tion in the narrower sense. 
 
 97 
 
98 IMAGINATION 
 
 Possibility, it is agreed, cannot be otherwise considered 
 than under some one of three heads — quahty, quantity, 
 and relation. What is more, for the purposes in hand, 
 the head, quality, is embraced in that of quantity, any 
 particular quality being determined by its quantitative 
 degree. We say, for example, that the air is so hot (as 
 indicated by the thermometer), thus designating its qual- 
 ity. We have, therefore, the two heads, quantity and 
 relation, to which, for the undertaking on which we are 
 entered, we can reduce all possibility. 
 
 As, then, there are only three kinds of quantity — 
 degree, time, and size — and only three kinds of relation 
 — inclusion, exclusion, and these two taken together — 
 it may be reasoned that imagination can violate reality 
 in but six ways. 
 
 This result, in fact, comes to the same thing as that 
 arrived at by Kant. Every truth, says he, can be ex- 
 pressed in a proposition — every proposition, moreover, 
 not only expressing a relation of things, but also a qual- 
 ity and a quantity, the quality and quantity of proposi- 
 tions being, as we know, a subject often treated of. 
 Thus Kant reached the conclusion that all reality ulti- 
 mately falls under the three heads — quality, quantity, 
 and relation — and, as quality has a quantitative limita- 
 tion, he was enabled to reduce these heads, for certain 
 purposes, to two, namely, quantity and relation. 
 
 Quantity, according to Kant, is intensive, protensive, 
 and extensive, that is to say, quantity of the degree of 
 quality, quantity of the length of duration, and quantity 
 of the amount of space, this, in fact, agreeing with our 
 measures, these all being of intensity, of duration, or of 
 extension. 
 
IMAGINATION 99 
 
 Kant ascertained also that there are but three kinds 
 of relations of things — that of objects and their proper- 
 ties, that of causes and their effects, and that of wholes 
 and their parts. 
 
 The first of these relations we may call inclusion, a 
 property being included in its object; the second we may 
 call exclusion, a cause excluding all but the one sole 
 effect; the third we may call inclusion and exclusion 
 taken together, the parts of a thing being included in 
 the whole, but excluding one another. This last relation 
 we may also speak of as composition, composition exem- 
 plifying the relation of whole and part. 
 
 There is still another way in which we may look at 
 the matter. Things may be regarded as qualities with 
 their quantities — the quantities as degrees, durations, and 
 sizes ; the qualities as properties, causes, and constituents 
 — whence the six ways in which imagination may mis- 
 represent things. 
 
 From a certain point of view, then, we have mythology 
 explained as the representation of impossibility, this im- 
 possibility being either in degree, or in time, or in size, 
 or in property, or in consequence, or in composition. 
 
 First, things are represented as of impossible degree, 
 many examples illustrating it. 
 
 The capabilities of the members and organs of the 
 body, for example, imagination exaggerates. The eyes 
 of Jupiter were so good that, although he was in Greece, 
 he could yet see what was taking place in Italy. Heim- 
 dall, the watchman of the gods, had such good ears that 
 he could even hear the wool growing on the backs of 
 sheep. Mars had such good lungs that his voice re- 
 sounded over the field like the blast of a brazen trumpet. 
 
 Lot 
 
100 IMAGINATION 
 
 The hands of Minerva were so deft no one else could 
 weave as she. The feet of Camilla were so nimble that 
 she could run over the water v/ithout wetting them, over 
 the standing grain without bending it. The dog Lelaps 
 could not be overtaken by any other animal in flight. 
 Hugi could run so fast that he got to the end of the 
 race and back again before his competitor could even 
 get started. Thor had such a good stomach that he 
 could eat for supper eight fishes and could drink eight 
 barrels of mead, this notwithstanding he was not a man 
 of great proportions. 
 
 Homer represents that, at the siege of Troy, Diomed 
 declared in the assembly of the Greeks that they might 
 all go home if they desired — he and his man, Sthenelos, 
 would remain and take Troy alone. Caesar records how 
 the Germans told him of the Suevi, a certain tribe of 
 men, that the gods themselves were not to be compared 
 with them, this although the gods are represented as 
 possessed of unnatural powers. The heads of Guido 
 Reni, perhaps, surpass anything that nature can produce. 
 The landscapes of Claude Lorraine, it is said, have no 
 existence — they excel in beauty any representation of 
 real landscapes. The throne of Satan, as described by 
 Milton, far outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind. 
 In all these cases, then, we have the exemplification of 
 exaggerated degree, the assignment to things of a degree 
 of quality impossible to them. 
 
 Secondly, time is violated whenever imagination rep- 
 resents things as taking place either sooner than is natu- 
 ral or more slowly. 
 
 Of things coming about too quickly we have the ex- 
 ample of Aladdin's palace, that, though more gorgeous 
 
IMAGINATION 10 1 
 
 than any previously existing, is built in one night. The 
 apartments are numerous and magnificent. The hall 
 alone has four-and-twenty windows, enriched with dia- 
 monds, rubies, and emeralds, large and perfect. One of 
 the windows is, by design, left uncompleted. The Sul- 
 tan's artisans attempting to complete it, after working 
 six weeks give up in despair. Aladdin has it finished 
 in an instant. 
 
 The contrast between this and the real building of a 
 structure is wonderful. Solomon's temple, which was 
 built about nine hundred years or more before the birth 
 of Christ, required seven years for completion, notwith- 
 standing the fact that the number of men employed on 
 it was great. 
 
 Of things coming about too slowly we have the ex- 
 ample of the Struldbrugs of Swift, men and women who, 
 though they became older and older each day and ever 
 more and more decrepit, yet did not die, their day of 
 death being unnaturally put off. We have the Hindoo 
 representation of Brahma as a being, one night and one 
 day of whom is between eight and nine billions of our 
 years. 
 
 To represent the weariness of time in the infernal 
 realm Ingersoll imagined that a bird carries away the 
 material of a whole world such as ours is, a grain of it 
 at a time, flying with each grain over millions of miles, 
 indeed, keeps on his journeys till none of the world is 
 left — and yet it is not even breakfast time in the infernal 
 realm. 
 
 Thirdly, of size misrepresented by imagination we 
 have also two cases, first, what is too small, and, sec- 
 ondly, what is too large. 
 
102 IMAGINATION 
 
 Of the first, Swift's Lilliputians are the best known 
 example. Gulliver, a man of ordinary size, resembling 
 in appearance, therefore, one of us, waking up one 
 morning on a far-off shore where he had been cast in 
 the night-time, finds himself tied down and guarded. 
 Cords had been stretched over his body and fastened to 
 stakes driven into the ground, these cords being in size 
 about the same as our ordinary twine. On his body, as 
 he lay there, a soldier, about six inches in height, was 
 pacing up and down, his weapons in his hands. All the 
 men in the country were somewhat similar in height, 
 though an exception was made in case of the emperor, 
 he being taller than any other Lilliputian by as much 
 as the thickness of one of our thumb-nails. The soldiers 
 were armed with bows and arrows, and when Gulliver 
 tried to move, a regiment or two of them discharged a 
 volley, the effect of which Gulliver could feel on his 
 hand, as if needles were pricking it a little. A platform 
 a foot and a half high having been erected, an officer of 
 high standing delivered therefrom an address, not one 
 word of which Gulliver understood, though it concerned 
 him much, being a statement of the regulations to which 
 he would be subject while sojourning in the realm. 
 Gulliver making sign that he wanted something to eat, 
 the little folk put up ladders against his side as he lay 
 there. Up these they carried baskets of hams, quarters 
 of beef, and joints of mutton. Putting up inclines also, 
 they rolled up to his mouth hogsheads of wine. Gulliver 
 took several baskets of meat at a mouthful and drank 
 at one draught a hogshead of their wine — indeed, the 
 little folk did not have wine enough for him. 
 
 We are to remember that everything in the country 
 
IMAGINATION IO3 
 
 corresponded in size with the men. Oxen were hardly 
 more than four inches high, sheep but an inch and a half, 
 geese were the size of our sparrows, larks the size of 
 our flies. Dogs with which the people could hunt game 
 would probably be about the height of their sheep, but 
 otherwise not so large. ' The tallest trees were not more 
 than seven feet in height. A sword was less than three 
 inches long, a bucket the size of one of our thimbles. 
 It took six hundred of their beds to make one for Gulli- 
 ver. Their thread and needles were so small as to be 
 invisible to him. Their fields were forty feet square. 
 A city capable of containing five hundred thousand in- 
 habitants was five hundred feet square, the walls two 
 and one-half feet high and eleven inches thick. The 
 gates in the wall perhaps were thirty inches long, and a 
 little more than half as high. There were some build- 
 ings in the city, however, that were as much as five feet 
 in height. The whole empire was about twelve miles 
 in circuit. 
 
 Gulliver ate from a table which he himself improvised, 
 it being like one of ours for height. Upon this table, 
 that he had to keep in one of the public parks, he, at 
 meal-time, often placed the emperor himself, together 
 with some of his ministers, they sitting in chairs of state 
 on the table to visit with Gulliver while he dined. 
 
 It was calculated by the Lilliputian mathematicians 
 that it would take one thousand seven hundred and 
 twenty-four times as much food to make Gulliver a meal 
 as it took for one of them. Their loaves of bread were 
 the size of our bullets. Not more than three bites were 
 necessary in eating the largest of their sirloin steaks by 
 one of our species. A dish of anything was usually not 
 
104 IMAGINATION 
 
 more than a mouthful for Gulliver. He could take 
 twenty or thirty of their fowl on the end of his knife. 
 A goose or turkey made a small mouthful for him. It 
 took three hundred of their cooks to supply his wants. 
 
 To transport Gulliver to the capital of the country the 
 Lilliputians made a vehicle which for them was great in 
 size. The wheels were six inches or more in diameter, 
 and of these wheels there were twenty-two. The frame 
 of the vehicle, something like a hay tackling, was seven 
 feet long and four feet wide. Five hundred workmen 
 were employed to construct it. Upon this vehicle they 
 loaded Gulliver, using, to do so, eighty poles one foot 
 in length, and fastening to these poles ropes the size of 
 our twine. It took nine hundred of their men three 
 weary hours to accomplish the task. Fifteen hundred 
 of the largest horses that could be found in the empire 
 were required to draw this vehicle, none of which horses 
 was more than four and a half inches in height. 
 
 Gulliver easily drew across a channel a whole fleet of 
 vessels, the entire navy of the Lilliputians, having hooked 
 to the ship with wires which he had fastened to strings. 
 He waded the water, hauling after him the fleet. 
 
 To form to ourselves some idea of the astonishment 
 which must have overcome the Lilliputians on seeing 
 Gulliver among them let us for a moment imagine that 
 we ourselves are in a position similar to theirs. Sup- 
 pose, for example, that a man should be discovered some 
 night in the vicinity of Chicago on the shore of the 
 great lake, a man whose size should be as much greater 
 than ours as Gulliver's was greater than that of the 
 Lilliputians. If we take the average height of human 
 beings as sixty or seventy inches, they are ten or twelve 
 
IMAGINATION I05 
 
 times as tall as the little folk are represented to have 
 been. The giant we have supposed to be discovered 
 would, therefore, be sixty or seventy feet high. If it 
 would take a string three feet long to reach around the 
 body of an ordinary man, a string which would reach 
 around the body of the giant would have to be thirty 
 or more feet long. If the average weight of men is one 
 hundred and forty or one hundred and fifty pounds, the 
 giant would weigh fifteen hundred pounds or more. 
 Suppose, then, such a giant were discovered on the shore 
 of the lake in the night, we can well think what a stir 
 there would be among the people. While he is asleep, 
 ropes are carefully stretched over his body and fastened 
 on either side to stakes driven into the ground. Though 
 these are our ordinary ropes, he has strength enough to 
 break any of them when he awakes. A platform is 
 erected fifteen or twenty feet high, from which the 
 mayor perhaps delivers an address, telling what condi- 
 tions the giant will be subject to, though the giant 
 understands nothing of what the mayor says. Let us 
 imagine, also, the scene of giving the giant his break- 
 fast as he lies there, his side on the ground. To get 
 up on him ladders have to be fifteen or twenty feet long. 
 A hundred men ascend these ladders with baskets of 
 hams, baskets of bread, baskets of apples, and the like, 
 such as are found in our markets. Long timbers having 
 been placed to form an incline, men roll up kegs of beer 
 and wine. A keg of beer to him is no more than a glass 
 to one of our species. A cubic foot of any kind of food, 
 say of ice-cream, would be no more to him than a cubic 
 inch of the same kind of food to us. We may also 
 imagine the scene of taking him on a huge vehicle to 
 
io6 IMAGINATION 
 
 the city. He has to be drawn by one thousand five hun- 
 dred of our best horses. The vehicle would have twenty- 
 two wheels, six or seven feet in diameter, and would be 
 seventy or eighty feet long, forty or fifty feet wide. 
 The giant would be loaded on this vehicle by nine hun- 
 dred men, having poles twelve feet or more in length 
 and ropes attached to them, it taking three hours to com- 
 plete the work. If the giant walked through the streets 
 of Chicago he would have to be careful not to brush 
 away projections with his coat-tail. He must look out, 
 too, not to tread on people who are going in or out 
 the eating-houses. If the giant made himself a table on 
 which to take his meals in one of the parks he could lift 
 up the mayor and some of the aldermen, perhaps, and 
 let them sit in chairs on the table while he conversed 
 with them and at the same time ate his dinner. If a 
 large boat were at anchor in the river he could hook 
 to it and haul it after him, much as a tug now does the 
 same thing. 
 
 The representation of size impossibly large is exem- 
 plified in the Brobdingnags of Swift, these looking as 
 tall as church steeples, being men sixty or seventy feet 
 in height. They stepped thirty feet at a stride. Their 
 stile and stair-steps were six feet high, their beds twenty- 
 four, their tables thirty. A page of their books was 
 eighteen or twenty feet long — one of their dictionaries 
 may have been about forty feet square and fully twelve 
 or fifteen feet thick. Their razors were the length of 
 two of our scythes, a case-knife twice as long. Their 
 platters were seventy-five feet around. Indeed, such 
 whales as abound in our waters were, as Swift repre- 
 sents, often roasted and brought on the table whole, the 
 
IMAGINATION lo; 
 
 occasion doubtless being Thanksgiving. Cats were as 
 large as three of our oxen, dogs as three of our ele- 
 phants, rats as one of our dogs, larks as nine of our 
 turkeys, some flies as large as our pigeons. Apples were 
 as large as our barrels, hazel-nuts as our pumpkins. The 
 straw of wheat in the fields stood forty feet high. A 
 man of our size lying in the stubble would be concealed 
 from view, much as a rat is in our stubble. These giants 
 put Gulliver, a man of our kind, on exhibition, taking 
 him around the country in a box, as we take around 
 mice for the same purpose, A mischievous dwarf among 
 the giants, thirty feet in height, however, nearly drowned 
 Gulliver by dropping him into a pitcher half-full of 
 cream. He also once wedged him into the end of a 
 beef-bone, the marrow having been extracted, causing 
 Gulliver much annoyance. 
 
 Voltaire's Micromegas illustrates the same thing. For 
 this giant was many miles in height — the length of his 
 nose was alone more than a mile. He could walk en- 
 tirely around the earth in thirty-six hours, could easily 
 wade the oceans. The diamonds of his necklace, strung 
 on a string like beads, weighed from fifty to a hundred 
 pounds each. The insects which he dissected, when he 
 was a student at the university, were a hundred feet in 
 diameter. Having taken up one of our largest ships out 
 of the sea in his hand, he was examining it, with a view 
 to scientific information, when by chance the ship, hap- 
 pening to slip from his fingers, fell into the pocket of 
 his friend, another giant, though not so large as he. To 
 find the ship in the pocket of his friend required a great 
 search. 
 
 If it be maintained that it is not impossible that on 
 
I08 IMAGINATION 
 
 some worlds things may be as small as they are repre- 
 sented to have been among the Lilliputians, and on 
 other worlds as large as they are represented to have 
 been among the Brobdingnags, it is to be remembered 
 that we are speaking of things as they are on this earth, 
 where there are neither pygmies nor giants from which 
 descendants may arise. That, however, some conditions 
 of size are impossible, under any conditions, must be 
 manifest, as, for example, we observe in the case men- 
 tioned by Sterne. Providence, it was said, might make 
 an ordinary man's nose of any size whatsoever. Not so, 
 it was replied. For if a man's nose were as large as a 
 church steeple it would not be the man who had the 
 nose, but the nose which had the man. 
 
 Fourthly, things may be represented as existing with 
 properties that it is impossible they should possess. 
 
 Swift's Laputa is an example, an island that is rep- 
 resented as jfloating in the air, and raised and lowered 
 at the will of the inhabitants, they having merely to 
 move a lever to accomplish this result. The lever turned 
 a horizontal shaft which was in the middle of the isl- 
 and, and fastened to which shaft was a magnet, one side 
 attracted, the other side repelled by the earth, whence 
 it is easy to understand how the position of the lever 
 and consequently the position of the magnet determined 
 the ascent or descent of the island. The island is rep- 
 resented as containing just ten thousand acres and almost 
 exactly seventy-eight hundred and thirty-seven yards in 
 diameter, its under layer being of adamant, two hundred 
 feet thick, on the upper side of which were the metals, 
 and lastly the soil itself, all the streams flowing to the 
 centre of the island and into one or the other of four 
 
IMAGINATION IO9 
 
 ponds, these about two hundred feet from the centre 
 of the island. As, however, the island is represented as 
 being raised or lowered at the will of the inhabitants, 
 the thought is that they could avoid dew or rain by 
 going above the clouds. 
 
 This artificial land, conjured up by the imagination of 
 Swift, recalls to our minds a late theory of things, ac- 
 cording to which we are living on the inside of the crust 
 of the earth, the oceans and continents being on the 
 inside of this crust, the sun, moon, and stars in the inte- 
 rior of the earth. 
 
 But not alone to the mineral kingdom do we have the 
 assignment of impossible properties, we have them also 
 assigned to the vegetable kingdom. Certain trees, it is 
 said, would grow till their tops could be seen from the 
 ruins of Troy, then wither and die down, doing this 
 again and again and forevermore, out of sorrow for the 
 downfall of the city. We are persuaded, however, that 
 no such trees ever existed, and that imagination in giv- 
 ing them such attributes has transcended reality. The 
 fruit of trees is imagined as having impossible proper- 
 ties, Iduna's apples, for example. According to the myth 
 of the Norsemen, if anybody ate one of these apples he 
 was at once restored to youth, just as Ponce de Leon 
 hoped to be by bathing in some fountain of Florida. The 
 account which we have of the lotos is likewise imag- 
 inary. According to Homer, the ships of Ulysses were 
 borne for ten days over the waves from Malea, when 
 they struck land, supposed to be some part of Africa. 
 The sailors going on shore were given lotos by the in- 
 habitants to eat, whereupon they lost all desire to return 
 to their country. They had to be dragged to the ship 
 by main force and securely tied there to get them away. 
 
no IMAGINATION 
 
 We have, moreover, animals set forth by imagination 
 as possessed of impossible traits. The Houyhnhnms of 
 Swift, although they were horses, are yet represented 
 as having the reasoning powers of men. To draw their 
 sleds, ploughs, and the like, the Houyhnhnms had ani- 
 mals exactly resembling men, but destitute of our reason. 
 According to the portrayal of Swift, it was common in- 
 deed to see a horse sitting on a sled, driving around the 
 country, drawn by a number of these animals, known 
 as yahoos. Swift represents that these horses built their 
 own houses, or, perhaps we should rather say stables, 
 there being in them mangers. The horses could use 
 tools — for example, held a chisel between the pastern and 
 the hoof. They could cut oats and grass and even make 
 earthenware. They had a republic, in some respects 
 rivalling that of Plato; were active in politics. Their 
 colts were exercised in gymnastics and were otherwise 
 well educated; excellent domestic regulations also ob- 
 tained. 
 
 According to Homer, when Patroclus was slain in bat- 
 tle at Troy, the horses of Achilles, which he had driven, 
 bowing their heads to the earth wept bitterly, their tears 
 falling thick and fast. 
 
 The attributing of such traits to animals, it is plain, 
 is the work of imagination merely, animals being in- 
 capable of them. 
 
 Men also are assigned attributes by imagination which 
 they cannot possibly have. In disregard of truth, we 
 imagine that diminutive, invisible human beings, called 
 elves, inhabit wild and desert places, there playing pranks 
 upon unwary travelers. In disregard of truth, we im- 
 agine that farm-houses are the abodes of small, invisible 
 
IMAGINATION III 
 
 creatures in human shape, called brownies, who thresh 
 the farmer's grain in the night or in the night churn 
 the good housewife's butter. In disregard of truth, we 
 imagine that every spring, brook, hill, dale, meadow, and 
 what not, has its nymph, an invisible woman, who con- 
 trols the place and somehow resembles it. In disregard 
 of truth, we imagine that there are three women, called 
 the Graces, who have to do with whatever is becoming 
 and proper; three women, called the Fates, who control 
 everything pertaining to one's destiny; three women, 
 called the Furies, who punish crimes ; three women, called 
 the Gray Sisters, who are the harbingers of age and 
 want; three women, called the Gorgons, whom, if anyone 
 look upon, he will be turned to stone. In disregard of 
 truth, we imagine that a man called Apollo draws the 
 sun through the heavens every day with a team of horses. 
 In disregard of truth, we imagine that a man called 
 Neptune has control of the waves and tides of the sea. 
 In disregard of truth, we imagine that a man called 
 Jupiter directs the storms, even hurling the lightning in 
 his hands. In all these cases we really attribute to hu- 
 man beings characteristics which are imaginary merely, 
 the results of nature being really produced by mineral, 
 plant, and animal existences in accord with the laws 
 which the Creator has assigned them, and not by anthro- 
 pomorphic divinities. 
 
 Personifications are a similar work of imagination, 
 Virgil's Rumor, for example, he representing it as a 
 woman with a hundred tongues. 
 
 Furthermore, things that are made or built are often 
 portrayed as having impossible attributes. The ships of 
 the Phseacians are an example. They are represented 
 
112 IMAGINATION 
 
 by Homer as being without rudders and without pilots, 
 yet of such a nature that they would always of them- 
 selves go to the right port. Even if the sea were cov- 
 ered with mist, this made no difference. The ships 
 always went by the shortest route just where they were 
 wanted. Mouse Island, near the spacious harbor of 
 Corfu, is still pointed out as the remains of one of these 
 ships, that which bore Ulysses from Corfu to Ithaca. 
 At the mouth of the brook which now bears the name 
 Cresside, on the same island, is a lake, and, on the south 
 side of it, a spot is still shown where, according to tra- 
 dition, Nausica first met Ulysses, she apprising the 
 Phaeacians of his coming, so that they afterward fur- 
 nished him with the ship. 
 
 Fifthly, the relation of cause and effect is violated by 
 imagination. 
 
 Things are assigned as causes that are totally inade- 
 quate to produce the results given them, as we discover 
 from myths. Loki, we are told, is compelled to sit where 
 a serpent drops down from above poison, which his wife, 
 however, catches in a cup, but, when she must for a 
 moment empty this cup, a little poison falls upon him, 
 causing him to squirm and to howl so violently that the 
 whole earth is shaken — this, as mythology has it, being 
 the cause of earthquakes. 
 
 Mythology, moreover, often represents one thing as 
 instantaneously changing into another without any ade- 
 quate cause, which is also at variance with the law of 
 consequences. For example, when the waters of the 
 flood had subsided, Deucalion and his wife having 
 thrown behind them stones, those stones became men and 
 women — the hard parts of them bone, the seams blood- 
 
IMAGINATION II3 
 
 vessels, and the slime flesh, so that, as Greek mythology 
 has it, the world was repeopled. Men are also repre- 
 sented as instantaneously changed into flowers, trees, or 
 stars. Ajax, having slain himself out of grief because 
 the armor of Achilles was awarded to Ulysses, the lark- 
 spur sprang up from his blood. This flower has on it, 
 to be sure, certain marks which a good imagination con- 
 strues into the first two letters of his name, these, more- 
 over, forming the Greek word equivalent to our inter- 
 jection, Woe! The sisters of Phaeton, mourning for , 
 their brother, were transformed into poplar-trees on the 
 bank of a river, their tears becoming amber as they fell 
 into the water, this latter incident seeming to refer to 
 the yellow leaves of the poplar which fall in autumn. 
 On a hill in Phrygia the traveler is still shown a low 
 wall, enclosing two trees, one a basswood and the other 
 an oak. These, he is informed, were, according to tra- 
 dition, Baucis and Philemon, an aged woman and her 
 husband, once residents of the place, but turned into 
 trees simultaneously on account of their expressed wish 
 that neither of them should outlive the other. Most of 
 the constellations of the heavens are imagined as having 
 once been men or animals. The Great Bear, according 
 to mythology, was once Calisto, a woman; the Little 
 Bear, Areas, her son; they having been changed into 
 these stars out of the compassion which Jupiter had for 
 them, an agreement being made between Jupiter and 
 Neptune that they should never dip themselves in the 
 ocean, the consequence of which is that these constella- 
 tions always continue to circle around the pole-star. 
 
 This myth was known to the old Chaldeans, and it is 
 a strange fact that the Iroquois of America used the 
 
114 IMAGINATION 
 
 nSme of bear for the constellation which the Chaldeans 
 designated by the same name. 
 
 Transformations are, indeed, a common thing in 
 mythology. Proteus could change himself into anything, 
 becoming at pleasure beast, fire, or flood. 
 
 Sometimes the violation of the causal connection ex- 
 tends only to the conditions under which the results are 
 feigned, the causes themselves being otherwise adequate. 
 Munchausen, for example, imagines that having at sea 
 a dog which made sign that game was nigh, he did not 
 doubt the instinct of the animal, as well he might not. 
 For soon the sailors, having caught a shark, found in 
 its stomach several live partridges, some of them sitting 
 on eggs. Here, manifestly, the only absurdity consists 
 in the circumstances under which the fowls lived and 
 were scented.. Another example from Munchausen bet- 
 ter illustrates the same point : his ship having been 
 swallowed by a whale, as he avers, he escaped from its 
 stomach by placing a beam upright between its jaws, 
 this keeping the mouth of the whale open while his ship 
 sailed safely out. 
 
 On account of causality things always pass away into 
 others, but imagination may represent them as continu- 
 ing long or always in the same state. Endymion, for 
 example, always continued young, notwithstanding the 
 passage of time. Diana took care of his flocks, so that, 
 although he slept on age after age in his youthful beauty, 
 everything was done just as well as if he w^ere awake. 
 Rip Van Winkle kept in the same condition for twenty 
 years, notwithstanding the great advance which the 
 world in that time made. Greuselbach believed that the 
 Egyptians knew how to have themselves embalmed so 
 
IMAGINATION II 5 
 
 as to be unconscious for thousands of years and without 
 change, when they were awakened to new life by a chem- 
 ical process. It has also been represented that a woman, 
 a few years ago, was living in Africa, who was still as 
 young as she was when the pyramids were building. It 
 is imagined, moreover, that a good Genius takes unfort- 
 unate children to a plain upon the clouds, where they 
 romp and sport forever, their childhood never ending. 
 Swift imagines that a magician, merely by waving a 
 wand, could exhibit Alexander still alive and well, at the 
 head of his army, just as he and they all appeared before 
 the battle of Arbela, more than two thousand two hun- 
 dred years ago. Hannibal with his army crossing the 
 Alps was made to appear, Julius Caesar also, in his last 
 triumph, ascending the Capitol. Caesar, in fact, still had 
 on the very same clothes which he wore that day, his 
 clothing not having waxed old with the ages. Homer 
 and Aristotle appeared on a stage at the head of their 
 commentators, a motley throng, whom Homer and Aris- 
 totle knew not. Swift, as he informs us, was good 
 enough to introduce Homer and Aristotle to some of 
 them. We have all heard, likewise, of the evening party, 
 men and women eating and drinking and making 
 merry, when, on a sudden and without warning, every- 
 one stopped just in what position he or she was, and in 
 the scene was there no change till a thousand years were 
 flown, when the spell was broken and the eating and 
 drinking and merry-making continued until the party 
 dispersed. 
 
 Philosophers, indeed, have pointed out that if we 
 might suppose the entire universe to cease for a trillion 
 years, and then to proceed exactly where it left off, no- 
 
Il6 IMAGINATION 
 
 body would know any difference and everything would 
 be accounted for just as it now is. 
 
 What is more, causality requires that things take place 
 in a fixed order down the stream of time, but imagina- 
 tion may regard things as taking place backward. In 
 the case of moving pictures, for example, if the crank 
 be turned the other way the scene takes place in reverse 
 order. One starts, say, with a harvest-field, the sheaves 
 of grain in shock. As he turns the crank backward the 
 sheaves become scattered over the field, and then un- 
 bound, the grain becomes standing and uncut again, 
 grows green, is younger and younger, till, finally, it is 
 just springing from the ground, and lastly the sower 
 appears scattering the seeds. Flammarion has pointed 
 out that everything that occurs, if it were observed at a 
 great distance by a person moving in the right direc- 
 tion and at the right rate of speed, would all appear to 
 him to take place in reverse order. Persons on their 
 death-beds, for instance, would appear to recover and to 
 become younger, eventually getting to be little children 
 again, even elemental. 
 
 The Phoenix of mythology is in some respects a case 
 of the same thing. A bird, living to be five hundred 
 years old, built itself a nest of sweet-smelling things, in 
 which it died, to grow up again, whence our expression, 
 " The Phoenix rising from her ashes." 
 
 Sixthly, imagination represents an unnatural compo- 
 sition of things, impossible combinations. 
 
 We have an example from Virgil in that he speaks 
 of shrubs the sap of which was human blood, the impos- 
 sibility consisting merely in the assumed combination of 
 shrub and blood, not in the existence of either of these 
 things in itself. 
 
IMAGINATION II 7 
 
 The monsters of mythology, also, are good examples 
 of this use of the imagination. Sheep, swine, cattle, and 
 horses are set forth as made up in impossible ways. As 
 a matter of fact, no sheep ever had a fleece of gold, yet 
 the ram of Phrixus is represented as having had such 
 a one. Diana had a boar whose bristles were those of 
 a porcupine, its tusks long like those of an elephant, and 
 its eyes balls of fire. The king of Colchis had cattle the 
 hoofs of which were brass. Neptune's horses not only 
 had brazen hoofs, but also golden manes. No horses 
 exist with wings, yet imagination so portrays them, so 
 portrays Pegasus, for example. The Griffin, which was 
 a creature of imagination, had the neck and wings like 
 those of an eagle, but the rest of its body resembling a 
 lion's. It built a nest of gold and laid in it an egg of 
 agate. The Chimera was partly lion, partly goat, and 
 partly dragon, had three heads, breathed out fire and 
 smoke, and ravaged the country. The Basilisk, also, 
 was a serpent which burned up the herbage with its 
 breath. The Hydra was a serpent with nine heads — if 
 anybody cut off either of these, two more heads grew 
 out to take its place. 
 
 Certain men were imagined by the poets as mon- 
 strously composed. Briareus, as the poets made him, 
 was a man similar to others, although he had a hun- 
 dred hands. He could have driven a team of horses, 
 lines and whip in hand, ate his dinner, and performed 
 several kinds of work, all at the same time — he might 
 even have done the entire work of a small factory. The 
 Centaurs are represented as being men to the waist, the 
 rest of them horse. Such a man, in fact, did not have 
 to keep a horse, since he was both man and horse at the 
 same time. The Satyrs were men the legs and feet of 
 
Il8 IMAGINATION 
 
 whom were those of goats. The Gorgons were women, 
 each particular hair of whose heads was a good-sized 
 snake, their teeth were those of swine, and their nails 
 were brass. They would have been employed in our 
 time to husk maize or to pick cotton. The Harpies were 
 women with the bodies of birds. The Sphinx was a 
 woman with the body of a lion and the wings of an eagle. 
 Argus, as fabricated by the poets, had a hundred eyes, 
 never sleeping with more than two of them at a time. 
 On the contrary, the Cyclops and the Arimaspians had 
 but one eye each — the Cyclops, who were very large and 
 tall, having the eye in the forehead. The three Gorgons, 
 moreover, had but one eye between them all. 
 
 Of things the like of which human hands have fash- 
 ioned, those most commonly made the subjects of im- 
 aginary composition are palaces, for example, that of 
 Eblis, which was wrought out by the imagination of 
 William Beckford. 
 
 The visitor ascending the side of a mountain by a 
 staircase reaches at length a level terrace extending 
 along the mountain's side. The terrace is paved with 
 polished marble, so that it really resembles in appear- 
 ance an expanse of water. Moreover, on this terrace 
 extends, as far as the eye can reach, a row of towers. 
 Looking upward, the visitor sees that the tops of these 
 towers — and they seem almost to touch the sky — are the 
 abodes of birds and built in an architecture so strange 
 as to be indescribable. Descrying in front of these tow- 
 ers the broken walls of an immense palace, he is filled 
 with terror as he beholds upon them four colossal figures^ 
 images of strange creatures, as they are, part leopard 
 and part Griffin. He is filled with greater terror as he 
 
IMAGINATION 1 1 9 
 
 beholds upon them inscriptions which ever and anon 
 change themselves into others as he watches them in 
 the moonlight. 
 
 Suddenly the mountain shakes, and, the side of it 
 yawning, there is disclosed to the visitor a stairway, 
 broad and ample, descending into the depths of the 
 earth. On the right side of each step is a torch, and 
 on the left side of each step is a torch, and above each 
 torch a cloud of camphor-smoke, so that between these 
 two rows of torches the visitor descends, reaching at 
 last the bottom, only because he goes so fast. He sees 
 before him three huge doors of ebony, the locks of which 
 are enamelled. Applying then his keys to these doors, 
 they fly open, and with a noise as if it were a clap of 
 thunder. 
 
 He enters a hall, the floor of which Is so extensive as 
 to be mistaken for a prairie, the roof of which is so 
 high as to be nearly out of sight. The floor is strewn 
 with gold-dust and with saffron, from which there 
 exhales a fragrance almost overpowering, this being 
 increased also by the smoke of ambergris and aloes wood 
 everywhere burning. The display of things to eat and 
 drink is profuse beyond description. Rows of tables 
 extend for miles between the columns of the hall, heaped 
 with viands, fruits, and dainties. Vases of crystal 
 interspersed sparkle with all kinds of wines. Strange- 
 looking men and women, seemingly of a spiritual race, 
 are everywhere moving to the sound of music which 
 comes from below. Multitudes of other men and women, 
 more nearly resembling ourselves, each deathly pale, 
 however, and each holding the right hand to the heart, 
 are moving hither and thither, disregardful of the sights. 
 
120 IMAGINATION 
 
 In fact, the hearts of these are on fire because of the 
 evil which they have done. 
 
 Going down a passage which ghmmers with hght 
 coming from afar the visitor passes some curtains, which 
 are brocaded with crimson and gold, into a vast room 
 carpeted with the skins of leopards. 
 
 Eblis, the king of the palace, sits on a ball of fire on 
 the top of a mound in the very midst of this room. 
 
 The visitor passes out by an aisle into another room, 
 where even greater wonders meet his gaze. There are 
 in it fifty windows with frames of brass, through any 
 one of which he sees several cataracts. 
 
 On bedsteads of cedar are reposing living skeletons, 
 prehistoric kings of the earth that lived before Abraham, 
 Isaac, and Jacob, inscriptions at their feet recounting 
 whatsoever they have done, and from a mound in the 
 midst of this room a similar skeleton exhorts to right- 
 eousness everybody who enters. 
 
 Huge vases, each with a lid on it, extend in a circle 
 around the mound, being filled, as the visitor finds, with 
 talismans, which, according to the strange usage of the 
 place, he is obliged to present as tickets of admission to 
 the remaining halls and chambers of the palace, these 
 halls and chambers extending without end and without 
 number into the depths of the earth, and containing all 
 things whatsoever curious and rare. 
 
 Those whose hearts are on fire wander through these 
 halls and chambers forevermore seeking rest, but find- 
 ing none, ever dissatisfied with what they have seen, ever 
 hunting for something else. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 CONCEPTION 
 
 We come to a process of the mind the importance of 
 which it would be difficult to exaggerate. This process 
 is often spoken of as simple apprehension, being such a 
 generalizing as a simple inspection of things is able to 
 afford us. It is the process whereby the mind forms 
 images of the unchangeable aspects of things on the 
 things merely being taken cognizance of, what is gen- 
 eral in things being that which is abiding in them, what 
 is general in things being that which is in all the things. 
 
 We form in this way primitive classes. The power 
 of mind to perform this process is known as conception, 
 a name which is also extended to the process itself. 
 
 It is, of course, to be understood that this is simple as 
 opposed to compound conception. We here merely gen- 
 eralize what exists. We do not change anything. We 
 do not create something. Simple apprehension is not 
 invention. 
 
 Things are inorganic, or organic, or mental. The 
 inorganic world consists, for the ordinary observer, of 
 the sky, the ground, and the surroundings, so that his 
 notions of the unchangeable aspects of the inorganic are 
 confined to these. There is a world above him, below 
 him, and around him. 
 
 Of things above us are the canopy, the sun, moon. 
 
122 CONCEPTION 
 
 and stars, and the clouds, together with things connected 
 with the clouds. These in general are all the things 
 over our heads, and what they now are they have, time 
 out of mind, been; what the image of any one of them 
 was in the minds of men thousands of years ago, thanks 
 to our power of conception, it is in our minds to-day — 
 certainly a very remarkable thing. 
 
 To every generation the sky has been a canopy, slightly 
 colored. What little difference there may be between 
 one view of the sky and another we manage to neglect, 
 doing which we call making abstraction; what in every 
 view of the sky is the same we keep in mind, doing 
 which we call generalization. 
 
 What is the same in all our views of the sky we make 
 in the mind an image of, this image being called a notion, 
 sometimes even a general notion. 
 
 To a notion which we have in the mind we give a 
 name which stands for it, every common noun, in fact, 
 being such a name. Certain nouns — indeed, the greater 
 part of them — are called common, not because, as the 
 boy thought, they are an inferior kind of noun, but 
 because they denote what is common to things, what is 
 general in them, what in them is unchangeable. 
 
 The sun looked the same to Joshua some ages ago as 
 it looks to us to-day, he having in mind the same notion 
 of it that we have. 
 
 The moon is mentioned by Thucydides in his history. 
 He informs us that the Athenians having observed it to 
 be eclipsed when they were about to abandon the siege 
 of Syracuse, the four hundred and thirteenth year prior 
 to our era, were on that account unwilling to leave, the 
 consequence being that, when they did abandon the 
 
CONCEPTION 123 
 
 place, they were all either killed or captured. It is mani- 
 fest that the image of the moon was the same in their 
 minds as it is in ours, a silvery disc broken into shadowy 
 forms. 
 
 As regards the stars the case is similar. For example, 
 a child happens for the first time in his life to be taken 
 out-of-doors before daybreak to go on a journey. Ob- 
 serving the shining lights of the heavens, he unhesitat- 
 ingly calls them stars, though plainly he has never before 
 seen those particular stars, having never before been out- 
 doors so early in the morning. He calls them stars be- 
 cause he has an image in his mind how stars look. 
 
 The clouds, says Solomon, return after the rain, the 
 word which he uses to denote clouds having to him the 
 very same meaning that the word we use to denote 
 the same thing has to us, although between him and us 
 have lived and died eighty-five or more generations 
 of men. 
 
 The clouds, we notice, are moved by the winds, and 
 of the winds we also have a notion, carrying it in our 
 heads as we journey down the stream of time. 
 
 Horace, who lived more than nineteen hundred years 
 ago, tells us of the thunder which he heard, of the light- 
 ning which he saw, yet all the thunder that has been heard, 
 all the lightning that has been seen since that day when 
 his mortal remains were borne to their last resting-place 
 on the Esquiline have been of like character — the thun- 
 der as he heard it, the lightning as he saw it. On many 
 parts of the globe does the lightning play, in many parts 
 is the thunder heard, yet who is there that ever fails to 
 know either of them by the notion which he has of it 
 in his mind? 
 
124 CONCEPTION 
 
 The rains which swelled the Euphrates when the 
 Jews hung up their harps upon the willows growing 
 beside it differed not perceptibly from the rains which 
 swelled the Tennessee when the hosts of Grant con- 
 tended with those of Johnston on its bank. People in 
 Babylonia and people in Tennessee, though separated by 
 thousands of years, had yet the very same notion of rain. 
 
 The snows of Valley Forge which chilled the air to 
 Washington were the same as those of Moscow which 
 chilled the air to Bonaparte; the notion that the one had 
 of snow was the same as that which the other had of it. 
 
 The hail which beat upon the heads of the Amorites 
 was like that which is still observed ; in fact, we have in 
 our heads the very same notion of hail that the Amorites 
 had in their heads, though our heads be not beaten with 
 the hail. 
 
 The sleet that prehistoric men saw glittering on trees 
 and shrubs as so many gems was like what we often 
 behold, the notion which they had of it, that which we 
 have. 
 
 David, lamenting the death of Jonathan, says : " Let 
 there be no more dew upon the mountains of Gilboa ; " 
 we know what he means, because we have the notion of 
 dew that he had, notwithstanding the mutations of time 
 which fill in the gap between him and us. 
 
 Siberia shows us the ruins of cities underground 
 and inscriptions that we cannot read, people known as 
 Scythians having long ago lived there; people who must 
 have been acquainted with frost, must have possessed 
 the very same notion of it that we possess." 
 
 Of everything above our heads, then, we have a no- 
 tion in the mind, of everything connected with every- 
 
CONCEPTION 125 
 
 thing above our heads. This notion of the sky, indeed, 
 connects all men and all ages into one, yet manifestly 
 could not do so but for that process of the mind known 
 as conception, simple apprehension. 
 
 We have next to consider what is under our feet — 
 loam, clay, sand, gravel, and rock, connected with which 
 are burrows, pits, caves, mines, quarries, and with these 
 metals and gems. 
 
 The soil of Egypt is mentioned by Herodotus, who 
 declares that, in his opinion, the whole land of Egypt 
 was once a bay, that it was filled up with the mud of 
 the Nile. He ventures the hypothesis, indeed, that if 
 the Nile were turned into the Red Sea, it would in ten 
 thousand years convert that sea into arable land. It is 
 loam which the Nile deposits, giving to Egypt its fer- 
 tility. The Egyptians, then, though they lived long 
 before us, long before Moses even, had in their heads 
 the same notion of loam that we have. 
 
 The case is the same with regard to clay, bricks made 
 of which by the Babylonians exist in great numbers, the 
 Babylonians having thought of it as we do. 
 
 Of sand old accounts exist, one of which may be men- 
 tioned. Archimedes wrote a work — still existing, strange 
 as this may seem — in which he makes computation how 
 many grains of sand it would take to fill in all the space 
 around the earth out as far as the farthest fixed star, 
 the sands together forming a great globe, the number, 
 according to him, being what we should express by 
 sixty-four with twenty-one ciphers attached. It is evi- 
 dent, therefore, that he entertained the same idea of 
 sand that we entertain of it, had the same image of it 
 in his mind. 
 
1 26 CONCEPTION 
 
 ' Vitruvius speaks of gravel in his work on architecture, 
 having had the notion of gravel that we possess. 
 
 Agrigentum stood partly on what was popularly- 
 known as the rock of Athens, the which the traveler 
 beholds to-day. Empedocles, who lived there, must 
 have had the same notion of rock that we keep in 
 mind. 
 
 The gospels speak of the holes of foxes. We know 
 what is meant because we have in mind what the writers 
 had each in his mind. 
 
 We read that Joseph's brethren threw him into a pit 
 in the vicinity of Shechem, where now his tomb is. The 
 pit we understand was an opening in the ground much 
 the same as those which we observe to-day. We have, 
 in short, the very same notion of a pit that Joseph had 
 of one. 
 
 The Phoenicians, we are informed, had tin-mines 
 worked in England where to-day the same mines are 
 still worked ; in fact, the notion of a mine was the same 
 to the Phoenicians that it is to the Englishmen. 
 
 The traveler coming into that part of Sicily where 
 once Syracuse stood sees the quarries, now overgrown 
 with weeds, where the Athenians pined away more than 
 four hundred years before Christ. The notion which 
 they had of a quarry was that which we have. 
 
 Tubal Cain, we read, was a worker of metals. We 
 understand by this that even prehistoric men had the 
 same notion of metals that we have. 
 
 It is stated that of every age there remain gems. If 
 we had them arranged in a row they would stand for 
 all the generations of men. The gem of Thotmes, on 
 which it is said that the eyes of Moses may haVe gazed, 
 
CONCEPTION 127 
 
 is seen by us in the museum, it meaning no more to us 
 than it meant to Thotmes. 
 
 We have, then, a notion of the ground as a whole, 
 this notion made up of subordinate notions, both the 
 whole and its parts being the same for us as for those 
 who lived before us. 
 
 There is a third something involved in the inorganic 
 world, our surroundings, these being of water or of land, 
 the diversities of which are, on the one hand, marshes, 
 springs, brooks, rivers, ponds, lakes, and seas; on the 
 other hand, plains, hills, mountains, vales, islands, pen- 
 insulas, and capes. 
 
 We are told of the Pontine marshes which men, rep- 
 resenting successive generations, have undertaken to 
 drain — Appius, Caesar, the emperors, the popes, and our 
 engineers. To each of these the notion of a marsh has 
 been but that which it is to us — ground partly covered 
 with water. 
 
 The fountain of Arethusa, to which Virgil alludes, is 
 still pointed out near the place where Syracuse once 
 stood. This fountain has persisted through time, but 
 not more so than the notion of a fountain. 
 
 The brook Cyane, which successive generations have 
 looked upon, has to each of them been the same. 
 
 Firdusi bids us not to worry. For, says he, the Tigris 
 will continue to go down to the sea long after the heads 
 of the Mahometan church have passed away. It appears 
 that at least two hundred generations of men have looked 
 upon the Tigris, but it has been to all of them what a 
 river is to us — a stream of water, somewhat large, con- 
 fined between banks and flowing to an outlet. 
 
 Exodus contains mention of ponds. When we read 
 
128 CONCEPTION 
 
 the account we are as certain what is meant as was the 
 writer himself. 
 
 Thrasymenus, the lake near which Hannibal overcame 
 the Romans, is still beheld by the traveler. It is, in 
 fact, by Hannibal's notion of it that the traveler recog- 
 nizes it. 
 
 The Athenians sailed over the sea to Sicily, the sea 
 meaning the same to them that it does to us. 
 
 The plain of Shinar, read of on tablets dug up in 
 Mesopotamia, is similar to any other plain with which 
 we are acquainted — a level portion of country. 
 
 People to-day go to Athens and stand on the hill 
 where the Areopagus met, but the hill is the same to 
 them that it was to the Areopagites. 
 
 Hiram, we are told, sent out men to the mountains of 
 Lebanon to get timber, he having had in mind a notion 
 of what mountains are, not different from what we have. 
 
 Jews nowadays speak of the valley of Hinnon, having 
 the same notion of a valley that their forefathers had 
 of one. 
 
 Writers tell of islands, meaning what we do by the 
 same name — a body of land surrounded by water. 
 
 Anaxagoras spoke of the Peloponnesus, a peninsula, 
 having had a notion of what the same is. He knew no 
 better what a peninsula is than any of us know what it 
 is ; indeed, wherever there is a pond or a stream we may 
 notice something of the kind on a small scale. 
 
 Similarly we speak of what is called a cape, a point 
 of ground extending into the water. 
 
 Our notion of the sky, of the ground, and of our sur- 
 roundings make up our notion of the inorganic, that is 
 to say, our notion of nature as a whole exclusive of the 
 
CONCEPTION 129 
 
 organic and the mental. Everybody, therefore, so to 
 say, has the inorganic world fast in the net of his notions, 
 having a sort of universal wisdom, or metaphysic, of the 
 inorganic, a system of notions to which the inorganic 
 shall always conform. This must be evident. For sci- 
 ence is a knowledge of the invariable way in which 
 things conduct themselves, the particular way in which 
 they exist. 
 
 The Egyptians, in knowing that the inorganic world 
 consists of things the nature of which is always the same 
 — the canopy, the sun, moon, and stars, the clouds, the 
 ground, the diversities of land and the diversities of 
 water — truly possessed a science of inorganic nature. 
 They were able to say beforehand how things must be. 
 They were able to get all this without any efifort, it hav- 
 ing been ordained by the Creator that we should have 
 the process of mind known as conception, simple appre- 
 hension, primeval generalization. 
 
 Precisely similar as we have a notion of the inorganic, 
 we have a notion of the organic. 
 
 We have a notion of the vegetable kingdom, which, 
 indeed, for the ordinary observer, is composed of trees, 
 shrubs, vines, grasses, grains, herbs, roots, gourds, flow- 
 ers, weeds, and moss. 
 
 The olive-trees in the Garden of Gethsemane are be- 
 lieved to have been standing when our Saviour spent 
 there that last sorrowful night. He had the notion which 
 we have of them; not only so, but he had the notion of 
 trees in general that we have. 
 
 We read in Xenophon of the shrubs which the Greeks 
 saw when they were marching toward Babylon, more 
 than two thousand years ago. Not one of those shrubs 
 
130 CONCEPTION 
 
 probably is now in existence, they have passed into eter- 
 nity with the writer, yet the notion of shrubs has sur- 
 vived to our day. 
 
 The spies brought back to the IsraeHtish camp some 
 grapes from the vale of Eschol. We can easily conceive 
 how the vines on which those grapes grew looked to the 
 spies, not different, indeed, than vines look to us now. 
 Numerous are the kinds and variety of vines, and yet 
 none of us ever fails to recognize any of them the mo- 
 ment he sees one, having in his mind the notion of vines 
 in general, the unchangeable aspect of them. 
 
 Homer tells us of the grass on which the horses of 
 his heroes fed, conveying to our minds what his notion 
 of grass was — one, in truth, not different from the one 
 which everybody since his day has possessed. 
 
 Herodotus speaks of the grain which he saw growing 
 in the vicinity of Babylon, twenty-three hundred years 
 ago, assigning to it a yield which must seem fabulous, 
 namely, that if one sowed a bushel of it he might hope 
 to reap two hundred. How long the heads of the grain 
 were he refuses to divulge for fear nobody will believe 
 him. We understand perfectly well what he means by 
 grain — the very same thing that we mean by it; we do 
 not gather at all that he was speaking of trees, shrubs, 
 vines, or even of grass. 
 
 On the great pyramid of Egypt, it is said, is an in- 
 scription in hieroglyphics stating that upward of two 
 million dollars were paid out by Cheops in supplying the 
 builders with radishes, onions, and the like. The Israel- 
 ites, moreover, in the wilderness, we read, longed for 
 the leeks of Egypt. Those peoples, who so long ago 
 departed this life, had no different notion of the vege- 
 
CONCEPTION 131 
 
 tables which grow in our gardens — such as herbs, roots, 
 and gourds, together with their representatives and imi- 
 tations in the wild state — than has any child of the pres- 
 ent day who may chance to live on a farm and, perhaps, 
 may help to gather into the cellar the vegetables for use. 
 
 The same thing is true in regard to flowers. Our 
 Saviour, in the well-known sermon on the Mount, alludes 
 to the lilies, doubtless having pointed to those flowers 
 themselves. To this day, at any rate, lilies are seen 
 growing on the slopes of the Mount, descended, we must 
 suppose, from the very ones at which he pointed his fin- 
 ger more than nineteen hundred years ago. One notion, 
 however, connects the lilies which our Saviour saw with 
 those which travelers now behold there. 
 
 The tares spoken of in the gospels were weeds, the 
 like of which still exist. We know what is meant, be- 
 cause we have the notion which the writer had. 
 
 The man of eighty years knows a burdock the moment 
 he sees one, for it has the same look that the burdocks 
 had which grew in his father's door-yard when he was 
 a boy. He remembers to have built a play-house out of 
 them when they were taller than his head. Throughout 
 the joys and sorrows of a long life that notion of a 
 burdock has kept its place in his head. 
 
 Rocks covered with moss are spoken of in one of the 
 odes of Horace. Those who sang this ode in the days 
 of Augustus must have had the same notion of moss 
 that we ourselves possess. That notion, indeed, has sur- 
 vived the Roman Empire. 
 
 The notion of the vegetable kingdom, therefore, as 
 made up of trees, shrubs, vines, grasses, grains, herbs, 
 roots, gourds, flowers, weeds, and moss, is common to 
 
132 CONCEPTION 
 
 the human mind as such; by means of it, in fact, it is 
 that everybody views the vegetable kingdom as a system 
 of unchangeable aspects, and owing to the mental process 
 of conception this is possible and without effort. 
 
 We have a notion of the animal kingdom as made up 
 of the notion of beasts, the notion of birds, the notion 
 of fishes, the notion of shells, the notion of amphibians, 
 the notion of lizards, the notion of serpents, the notion 
 of insects, and the notion of worms. 
 
 Do we ever wonder what an ancient author means 
 when he speaks of beasts ? Do we not entertain the very 
 same notion of them that he held in his mind? 
 
 We are all familiar, moreover, with the story of the 
 Roman who, when told that the sacred chickens would 
 not eat, said : " Let them drink, then," thereupon throw- 
 ing them overboard to drown. He had the notion of 
 a bird that any of us has. 
 
 Juvenal tells of a huge fish, which, brought into the 
 room where the banquet was held, seemed to look down 
 on the company from the shoulder of the waiter. Juve- 
 nal no doubt expected all posterity to understand what 
 he meant, but how were this possible unless they should 
 have precisely the same notion he had of fishes ? 
 
 Oyster-shells are found even in the refuse heaps of 
 primeval men, showing that even they had a notion of 
 such animals. 
 
 Moreover, turtles and lobsters, as well as mollusks, 
 are known to the ordinary observer as shells. 
 
 Virgil tells of toads having their habitation in hol- 
 lows and of frogs that uttered their complaints, meaning, 
 doubtless, such animals as we still see or hear. It mat- 
 ters not that no animal that was living in his day now 
 
CONCEPTION 133 
 
 survives, the notion that he had of amphibians still 
 clings to us. 
 
 Horace speaks of lizards, intending to designate the 
 kind of small animals to which v^e give that name, 
 though, in a more extended sense, crocodiles, alligators, 
 and even some other animals may be classed under the 
 same head. 
 
 Serpents are spoken of by various old writers, none 
 of whom we fail to understand. 
 
 Virgil gives up a whole book to the consideration of 
 bees, the average life of one being only a few weeks; 
 whence the number of generations of bees that have come 
 and gone since his day! Having had the notion of a 
 bee, it is plain he had the notion of an insect, which in- 
 cludes in itself the notion of bees, of ants, of spiders, 
 and of others. 
 
 Through this notion all the countless hosts of insects 
 which have been on earth since Virgil's time have passed, 
 through it all the countless hosts of insects that are to 
 come must pass. 
 
 The fossils of worms are found in the stones which 
 were used in building the pyramids ; all the worms which 
 existed prior to the building of these piles conformed 
 to the notion expressed in those fossils, all the worms 
 which ever shall exist will conform to that notion. We 
 have the very same notion of worms that primeval men 
 had — perhaps the very same notion that the worms them- 
 selves had. 
 
 The ordinary observer, then, however untutored, has 
 a notion of the animal world, knowing it as a system of 
 unchangeable aspects, beasts, birds, fishes, shells, am- 
 phibians, lizards, serpents, insects, worms. 
 
134 CONCEPTION 
 
 ' We have, in fact, a notion of the whole organic world, 
 just as we have one of the whole inorganic world, these 
 worlds being to each of us a system of unchangeable 
 aspects. 
 
 Some sort of biology, accordingly, existed from very 
 early times, men having a knowledge of the invariable 
 ways in which living organisms appear on the earth. 
 That plants appear under certain constant classes gave 
 them a botany, and that animals appear under constant 
 classes gave them a zoology. 
 
 As we come through simple apprehension to have in 
 mind notions of the unchangeable aspects of the inor- 
 ganic and of the organic, so do we come through simple 
 apprehension to have notions of the unchangeable aspects 
 of the mental. 
 
 It will be sufficient to confine ourselves to two divisions 
 of it, namely, primitive notions of utilities and primitive 
 notions of religion. 
 
 A vast number of utilities, it will be found, depend 
 on a very few simple notions, namely, that of the lever, 
 that of the incline, that of the bow, that of the thread, 
 that of the bodkin, that of the knife, that of the vessel, 
 and that of the vehicle. 
 
 An example of the lever is present to the savage when- 
 ever he makes use of a stick. When, moreover, he throws 
 a stone or uses one for pounding or crushing anything, 
 he has an object-lesson of the lever; in fact, whenever 
 he makes use of a stone in this way he has a hammer, 
 although when he fastens a stone to a stick he has what 
 is more commonly called such. He makes use of the 
 lever in either case, in the first his arm being the lever. 
 He acquires this notion with little or no effort. The 
 
CONCEPTION 135 
 
 principle, however, is a very important one, since the 
 wheel and axle and pulley are cases of it. 
 
 It has been held to be marvelous how the Egyptians 
 could have placed those stones of such enormous weight 
 where we now find them. Some have even gone to the 
 extreme of claiming for the Egyptians miraculous pow- 
 ers, but by a very simple calculation it may be shown 
 that with levers of the requisite length and with men 
 enough to use them the placing of those stones in their 
 present positions was comparatively easy. The wisdom 
 of the Egyptians consisted in conception merely, in sim- 
 ple apprehension. Our difficulty in comprehending the 
 Egyptians has arisen from our failure to realize the im- 
 portance of this process. Could anything, then, better 
 exemplify the importance there is in understanding the 
 processes of the mind than this application of a prin- 
 ciple involving one of these processes to explain what 
 has been deemed inexplicable? When we have once 
 grasped the idea of simple apprehension we have no fur- 
 ther need to ascribe the origin of Egypt to Atlantis. 
 
 Of the incline the savage has an example every time he 
 ascends a hill, he observes how he gets to the height with 
 an ease not the case when the ascent is perpendicular. 
 
 The Egyptians are said to have made use of inclines 
 to raise stones, a very simple means indeed, though, as 
 was said, one very easily discovered. 
 
 The wedge and the screw are but forms of the incline, 
 so that the lever and incline taken together are the prin- 
 ciples of machinery in general. 
 
 Simple apprehension, therefore, from the first fur- 
 nished mankind with mechanical wnsdom. 
 
 The notion of the bow or spring is another easily 
 
136 CONCEPTION 
 
 obtained from simple apprehension. The savage, hurry- 
 ing through the thicket, bending back in his course 
 branches which when let loose returned to their former 
 positions, had it exemplified for him, the bow, in fact, 
 being but a device by which power stored up is sud- 
 denly released into action. The tendons of animals 
 furnish savages with strings ready-made, taking one 
 of which and tying the ends of it, each to the end of a 
 stick, and drawing the string tightly, they had a bow. 
 
 We can understand, then, how it came to pass that 
 peoples widely separated from one another were yet able 
 to invent the bow — they could get the notion from sim- 
 ple apprehension independently of one another. 
 
 The notion of thread is that of fibres twisted together 
 to form a strand, a notion not hard to acquire, yet of 
 great value. Threads twisted together make strings, 
 strings twisted together make ropes, ropes twisted to- 
 gether make cables. Threads woven together make 
 cloth. How much, in truth, depends on a simple notion, 
 namely, that of thread! 
 
 That people in different parts of the world might, in- 
 dependent of one another, have learned to make cloth 
 need in nowise surprise us. 
 
 The notion of a bodkin is not a difficult one to obtain, 
 it being merely that of a rod in which there is an open- 
 ing. Examples of the bodkin might doubtless have been 
 found in nature, some little stick, some small bone, or 
 some slender stone being found with a hole through it; 
 or, what would not have been much different, a savage 
 might have made an aperture through some of these 
 materials out of mere freak — many savages might have 
 repeatedly done it. 
 
CONCEPTION 137 
 
 The use of the bodkin is to draw strings through 
 hides to sew hides together for clothes, holes having 
 previously been made in the hides. 
 
 The notion of a knife is that of some material brought 
 to an edge, the advantage being that it now encounters 
 resistance in but a narrow line, that is to say, it now 
 encounters the fewest possible obstacles to penetration. 
 The knife was observed in the case of shells, of bones, 
 and even of stones, nobody, indeed, being able to be 
 destitute of it. 
 
 We have first the ordinary knife, a piece of stone, 
 bone, or metal ground down to an edge. A dart is a 
 double-edged knife pointed at the end, spear-heads, 
 arrow-heads, and the like, being examples. A saw is 
 really nothing but a row of small darts, the advantage 
 gained being that resistance to it is only at the points, 
 and that a multiplicity of points can be worked at the 
 same time. A rasp contains the same principle, except 
 that there are many rows of points side by side. The 
 awl is a modified form of the dart, the material being 
 narrow and sharpened at the end all around. The needle 
 is a combination of the bodkin and the awl, the eye being 
 carried to the end. 
 
 The sewing-machine needle is set down as a great 
 invention, but really all the inventor had to do was to 
 sharpen a bodkin. 
 
 The axe is a combination of the hammer and the knife, 
 the lever here being made use of to give force to the 
 cutting. 
 
 Stone axes are found all over the earth, in places, 
 indeed, as widely separated from one another as is Vir- 
 ginia from India; they are found under the foundations 
 
138 CONCEPTION 
 
 of Troy; they may well enough be under the pyramids 
 themselves. Did some one person, nobody knows where 
 or when, invent the axe, and are all axes but copies of 
 that one? Not necessarily so, seeing that anybody in 
 any part of the world could come at it independently 
 from the notion of a hammer and an axe combined, a 
 notion he might obtain from simple apprehension. 
 
 The notion of a vessel is that of a hollow cylinder 
 or other body open at one end and closed at the other, 
 a device by which any liquid can be moved from one 
 place to another or can be put or kept in any place at 
 pleasure. 
 
 Cups, pans, pails, kettles, are examples of the simplest 
 form. A cask is but the case of a vessel closed at both 
 ends; the bottle, of a vessel nearly closed at the top. A 
 boat, as indeed language bears witness, is nothing but a 
 vessel, though in this case the object is to exclude rather 
 than to include liquid. A house is a vessel turned upside 
 down. 
 
 The invention of vessels, we may suppose, sprang up 
 spontaneously in different parts of the earth, men hav- 
 ing the notion of them from simple apprehension. Pieces 
 of cocoa-nut shell, the shells of animals, and even geodes 
 would furnish examples ready made. What is more, 
 wishing to heat water in a cocoa-nut shell, and at the 
 same time to keep the shell from burning, the savage 
 may have daubed the shell over with moist clay, that is 
 to say, with mud, the fire baking the clay, giving him 
 the idea of earthenware. We observe, in fact, that the 
 invention of such utilities was much less arduous than 
 we might have supposed it to be. 
 
 Lastly, the notion of a vehicle is that of something 
 
CONCEPTION 139 
 
 on which something- else is or can be borne over the 
 ground, or at least over some fixed material. From this 
 one notion gotten from simple apprehension, it will be 
 found, all the vehicles in the world have been derived. 
 
 The rudest form of the vehicle is exhibited in the 
 stone-boat, a board or combination of boards which is 
 dragged upon the ground. In the case of the sled the 
 friction is diminished by reducing the under surface of 
 the boards to two edges called runners. If we fasten 
 these runners at one point only and make them circular, 
 the same edge to return on itself, we still further reduce 
 the friction, having converted the runners into wheels. 
 We now have the cart. A wagon consists of two carts, 
 a railroad coach of two wagons. A velocipede is a cart, 
 so to say, one of whose wheels is directly behind the 
 other, what is gained by this arrangement being that the 
 second wheel follows the track of the first, thus getting 
 rid of some friction which the common cart meets with. 
 A wheelbarrow may be said to be a velocipede with but 
 one wheel. The boxes used in shops to convey money 
 and parcels from one part of the building to another are 
 vehicles the track of which is above instead of below them. 
 
 If we might conceive that children could be brought 
 up on an island by deaf and dumb persons in utter igno- 
 rance of all our inventions, yet their posterity, we may 
 believe, would in time come to invent vehicles like those 
 which we now possess. 
 
 We learn, therefore, how our utilities depend on a 
 very few notions which all men everywhere get without 
 effort through the process of conception, simple appre- 
 hension, off-hand generalization. 
 
 As regards religion, the second topic proposed to be 
 
140 CONCEPTION 
 
 treated of, we have to explain how, from the simplest 
 observation, men obtain notions on which to found it; 
 we have, in other words, to explain how on principles 
 of conception the heathen attain to piety. 
 
 Fundamental notions of religion are monotheism, wor- 
 ship, messiahship, millennialism, sin, retribution, redemp- 
 tion, and perhaps immortality. 
 
 As to monotheism, nature being known to simple 
 apprehension as a system of unchangeable aspects, inor- 
 ganic, organic, and mental, it was certainly not difficult 
 to arrive at the notion of a supreme being. How many 
 gods soever people might be pleased to imagine there 
 be, it is nevertheless just the same as if there is but one 
 God, the forms of nature — mineral, vegetable, animal, 
 and mental — being permanently what they are. Things 
 exist and act in but one way, wherefore, if many gods 
 obtain, it is just the same as if they do nothing. This 
 is a notion with which simple apprehension supplied the 
 heathen. 
 
 Hundreds and perhaps thousands of years before 
 Christ the Chinese spoke of Heaven as the supreme One ; 
 the Hindoos held that there is but one power in the uni- 
 verse, namely, Brahm. The tombs of Egypt contain the 
 inscription, " One only art thou, creator of things, and 
 alone dost thou make all that is." On the weather- 
 beaten rocks of Mount Behistun is read what Darius 
 caused to be inscribed there twenty-four hundred years 
 ago, the purport of which is that but one God exists. 
 Among the Greeks, Zeus, among the Romans, Jupiter, 
 was supreme. Widely separated from the old world was 
 the new, yet even here the same belief obtained. The 
 Mexicans consecrated the temple of Tezcuco to the cause 
 
CONCEPTION 141 
 
 of causes, designating the cause of causes as enthroned 
 above the nine heavens, the nine heavens possibly stand- 
 ing in their minds for the unchangeable aspects of 
 nature. They built the temple nine stories high, sur- 
 mounting it with a black dome, this dome, it may be, 
 symbolizing the supreme power. The dome was studded, 
 it is said, with stars of gold, typifying, no doubt, the 
 dependence of the heavens on omnipotence. 
 
 The way, then, we account for people, scattered 
 through so many times, places, and conditions, all hold- 
 ing the same belief in a Supreme Being, is that they 
 easily obtained the notion of such an existence, from 
 simple apprehension. They merely observed that nature 
 continues to exhibit certain aspects, is, in short, directed 
 after one form only. 
 
 The notion of worship is one just as easily obtained 
 as is that of one God. The forms of nature, inorganic, 
 organic, and mental, are the ways in which supreme 
 existence is manifested. To go against these forms is 
 to bring all our endeavors to naught, to act in accordance 
 with them is to insure success. The heathen, therefore, 
 having r.esp^ct for the power manifested in these forms 
 of nature, made this power an object of worship. Their 
 thought was probably something of this sort : a man 
 would more readily do the will of the Almighty, as ex- 
 pressed in the aspects of nature, if he should have a con- 
 stant intent to perform that will, wherefore the good 
 results of the spirit of worship. 
 
 The notion of the messiahship also, at least the notion 
 of it in its most elementary form — namely, that enter- 
 tained by the heathen — is one given in simple apprehen- 
 sion. For there is only one kind of a man which each 
 
142 CONCEPTION 
 
 of US should become, a kind of a man which the heathen 
 had some notion of, having made a generahzation from 
 the characteristics observable in men. 
 
 Ages, therefore, before the birth of Christ, Hindoos, 
 Egyptians, and Persians vvrere persuaded of his coming, 
 at any rate were persuaded of the coming of some such 
 person. Virgil, writing before the birth of Christ, sets 
 forth the notion of a Messiah in one of his pastorals. 
 Tacitus declares that the notion was then common 
 throughout the world. The Mexicans seem to have had 
 a Saviour in the person of Quetzalcoatl, a man whom 
 they assumed to be a pattern for them to follow. Per- 
 haps every tribe of savages has entertained some such 
 notion, the process of conception having prepared the 
 way for the missionary. 
 
 Strange as it may seem, the millennium also is a no- 
 tion to be gotten by simple apprehension. The word, 
 to be sure, is merely a name for a thousand years, but 
 with us has come to mean a perfected state of society 
 upon this earth. When the character of everybody is 
 in accordance with the perfected pattern of humanity a 
 state of society properly designated as perfect will be 
 ushered in; this, we may believe, was the thought of 
 antiquity. 
 
 We are able, therefore, to understand how it was that 
 Zoroaster, a long time before our era, was enabled to 
 prophesy the coming of the millennium, fixing it at three 
 thousand years from his date. If he lived when we sup- 
 pose he did the time which he set for the perfection of 
 society would very nearly coincide with the Treaty of 
 Westphalia, 1648, that is to say, with the beginning of 
 the modem regime. 
 
CONCEPTION 143 
 
 Society is not as yet by any means perfect, but has 
 made so much progress toward perfection that what re- 
 mains to be done seems but httle compared with what 
 has already been achieved. For example, if a savage 
 could have been told of the state in which we live to-day 
 it would have been more Utopian to him than is Utopian 
 to us the millennial age. 
 
 Men in the early days of the world, noticing that there 
 were some whose characters approximated perfection, 
 observed also that when enough of them did so, some- 
 thing like a perfect state of human life must obtain on 
 the globe. 
 
 Some notion of sin, moreover, is open to conception. 
 Mankind in their early history observed that the state 
 of one's mind has to do with his welfare, that, indeed, 
 misfortune is attendant on a bad state of mind. They 
 might have called this ignorance, stupidity, sin, it mat- 
 ters not what, to them it was simply a disadvantageous 
 state of mind. With the discovery of this they discov- 
 ered sin. 
 
 The notion of retribution is immediately joined with 
 that of sin. For only as one conforms to a correct view 
 of things is he free from pain. Suffering is, in fact, the 
 natural result of a wrong state of mind. The heathen, 
 even savages, might as well have the notion of retribu- 
 tion as we ourselves may have it, seeing that it requires 
 little thought to obtain it. 
 
 The notion of redemption is, of course, that of a 
 process whereby a disadvantageous state of mind is re- 
 moved. The means at hand for effecting such a thing 
 might at first have been very inadequate, but the notion 
 of what was to b^ done was ever clear enough. From 
 
144 CONCEPTION 
 
 time immemorial mankind have understood that they 
 should be transformed into better individuals. 
 
 Even the notion of immortality is foreshadowed in 
 simple apprehension, notwithstanding that some after- 
 thought is necessary to complete it. That the forms of 
 everything, material and mental, perpetuate themselves, 
 this had only to be applied to the mind, considering it 
 as an individual existence, to obtain the notion of the 
 mind's survival of bodily changes. 
 
 The heathen took it that the individual things which 
 appear in the world are only those which have previously 
 existed, . whence the doctrine of the transmigration of 
 souls. They would seem, however, to have been right 
 in attributing permanence to the ultimate constituents of 
 things, such a dogma being little more than that of ours 
 known as the conservation of energy. 
 
 We have explained, then, perhaps, why a child, when 
 being told by his elders that he would surely die, he 
 understanding by death extinction altogether, disbelieved 
 what they said, though he had never had any instruction 
 on the subject and had never before even heard of death. 
 
 These notions, then, monotheism, worship, messiah- 
 ship, millennialism, sin, retribution, redemption, and per- 
 haps immortality, it is plain are given men in the process 
 of conception, simple generalization. 
 
 How, therefore, similar religious beliefs could have 
 arisen in different parts of the world is apparent. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 JUDGMENT 
 
 The notions which we at first have of things are but 
 meagre and incomplete, it is by judgment that they are 
 improved. What is related of a boy illustrates the case 
 of us all. He lived between two creeks, which to the 
 north were not far apart, and to the south came together. 
 Trees in profusion skirted their banks. The sky seemed 
 to him to fit down over the ring of woods like an inverted 
 basin. The boy supposed that the little plain upon which 
 he lived, encircled by woods, and only a few miles in 
 extent, was all there was of the universe. His notion 
 of the world was not wrong, so far as he had any notion 
 of it at all, but it was wrong only in what it did not 
 contain. 
 
 The boy learned in time that the land extended thou- 
 sands of miles beyond his native woods, even to oceans 
 beyond which were still other lands. His own locality, 
 indeed, looked just the same to him as previously, his 
 former notion of it not being in itself wrong, but being 
 capable of improvement by the introduction into it of 
 the notion of extent. 
 
 This new notion which he had put into the old one 
 was what in technical language is called a predicate, the 
 original notion being called the subject. It comes about, 
 then, that this judgment is expressed in a proposition 
 whereof a predicate is affirmed of a subject. The proc- 
 
 145 
 
146 JUDGMENT 
 
 ess of mind employed is also called judgment, the form 
 of which is that an image in the mind is so modified as 
 to include in itself another image. 
 
 It is plain that a multitude of details are gone into by 
 everybody after this fashion whereby his notion of the 
 world is made more precise, enlarged, we may say, each 
 of these details consisting in an added predicate. One 
 learns that in certain parts of the earth are ranges of 
 mountains, that, indeed, there are lands above the clouds ; 
 he learns that great stretches of land exist, composed of 
 deserts, over which storms of sand drift; he learns that 
 fire in places issues from the ground, particularly from 
 certain mountains, that fire can be produced by rubbing 
 sticks together; he learns that there are mines in the 
 earth which yield the metals and other substances which 
 he uses, including even salt, oil, and coal. Lead he took 
 to be a rigid substance, but now he learns that it can be 
 melted and run into moulds. Gold he at first understood 
 to be nothing but a yellow metal, beautiful to look upon, 
 but now he learns that it can be dissolved in aqua regia, 
 the same as sugar can be dissolved in water. He learns 
 that there are great oceans on the surface of the globe, 
 that, indeed, they surpass in extent the entire area of the 
 lands — more exactly, two and a half to one ; he learns that 
 there are rivers thousands of miles in length; he learns 
 that water comes from the clouds, which are made of 
 vapors, the vapors arising from the waters of the earth; 
 he learns that there are regions of the earth in which 
 there are no rains at all, others in which the rainy sea- 
 son comes regularly. He learns that water can be so 
 treated that there arise in place of it two gases, one just 
 double the amount of the other; he learns that the air 
 
JUDGMENT 147 
 
 on the tops of mountains is rare, that in old wells it 
 destroys life; he learns that air in motion is wind, that 
 in certain parts of the earth great winds, called hurri- 
 canes, sweep everything before them; he learns that 
 there are in certain parts of the earth prevailing winds, 
 in other parts continuous calms. He learns that while 
 it is night in the place where he lives it is day some- 
 where else, that the seasons also transmigrate. He 
 learns that to the north of him in summer and to the 
 south of him in winter there is a vast country in which 
 it is perpetual day, the sun not setting, but seeming to 
 move around the country in a circle. 
 
 In each of these cases, and in many more, everybody 
 makes a judgment about the inorganic world, improves 
 his notion of it by adding a predicate. How much en- 
 larged, then, does the notion become as compared with 
 that which the boy had when he thought that the entire 
 universe was included between those two creeks! 
 
 It is plain that this process of judgment which a boy 
 goes through with respecting the world was once gone 
 through with by the race in general — what is the same 
 thing, that there was once a time when men had not as 
 yet much exercised their judgment. They had to im- 
 prove their primitive notion of the inorganic world by 
 adding a great number of predicates not previously 
 thought of. 
 
 This coming of the race to exercise its judgment must 
 have marked an epoch in human affairs. The race could 
 never again be what it previously was, since its notion 1 
 of things had been so much improved. 
 
 Homer represents that the ocean passes entirely around 
 the land of the world, that in the midst of the land is 
 
148 JUDGMENT 
 
 the Mediterranean, and that into this the river Nile flows 
 from the south, its sources being in mountains, beyond 
 •which Hve certain pygmies, men of small stature. Far 
 away in the western ocean, he held, are the islands of 
 the blessed, as the same were called. He also states that 
 Ulysses, sailing far to the north, found a land where it 
 was continuously day, and another where it was con- 
 tinuously night. 
 
 As a matter of fact the ocean does extend all the 
 way around the old world, the Pacific and the Atlantic 
 branching from the Antarctic to meet again at Bering 
 Straits, the Arctic being regarded as the northern end 
 of the Atlantic. 
 
 America, North and South, at least those portions of 
 them approaching the equator, might be considered as 
 islands in the western ocean with pleasant climes. 
 
 Stanley, in our day, has gone to the sources of the 
 Nile and looked upon the Mountains of the Moon, as 
 they are called, and has actually found the pygmies, 
 descendants, no doubt, of those whom Homer mentions. 
 
 That both continuous day and continuous night exist, 
 alternately, toward the pole has also long been known to 
 us. Homer was under the necessity of representing two 
 countries to the north, the one all the while light and the 
 other all the while dark, evidently because he did not 
 understand how contradictory conditions could pertain 
 to the same place. He did not know the astronomical 
 reason which we do for this state of things. 
 
 It is plain that this knowledge which was possessed 
 by those of Homer's time relative to the earth could not 
 have been gotten by men in the early ages of the world, 
 for the reason that the distances to be traversed in order 
 
JUDGMENT 149 
 
 to get it were so great. It was by the Phoenicians that 
 this knowledge was given to mankind, they being the 
 first great maritime people of the earth, going great dis- 
 tances in their ships to carry out and bring in merchan- 
 dise, the traffic in which made them immensely wealthy. 
 It is believed that they penetrated to the Baltic and to 
 the northern seas. Diodorus gives a tradition even that 
 their ships, being driven by a wind, discovered a great 
 country in the western ocean, which we may suppose to 
 have been America. We have to take into account also 
 that, as they opened up lines of trade in all directions 
 from them, much news about other lands would neces- 
 sarily come to them, even if they did not actually go to 
 those lands. 
 
 When mankind had once got this knowledge It is evi- 
 dent that their notion of the earth was much improved 
 in comparison with what it had previously been ; what is 
 the same thing, respecting the notion of the earth, a 
 crisis had been reached, a definite progress made which 
 never could be lost. 
 
 What is more, contemporary with this advance of 
 judgment about the earth, we find that there was also 
 an advance of judgment about matters in general. It 
 showed an improvement of judgment when the Phoeni- 
 cians discovered that commerce is a way of getting a 
 living in addition to stock-raising and farming, since 
 they had added a predicate to the notion of human em- 
 ployment. It showed an improvement of judgment when 
 the Phoenicians built factories in many parts of the world 
 where were made new and attractive things, as, for ex- 
 ample, the famous dyes which they were enabled to sell 
 at high prices. It showed an improvement of judgment 
 
150 JUDGMENT 
 
 when the Phoenicians simphfied the alphabet, reducing 
 it to about twenty characters which were capable of ex- 
 pressing to sight any word whatsoever, and consequently 
 any idea conceivable. Necessarily this became the basis 
 of future alphabets and wrought a great change in the 
 world. It showed an improvement of judgment when 
 the cities of Nineveh and Babylon were built on a grand 
 scale, rivaled in sized only by our modern cities, out of 
 brick instead of out of stone, and in the decoration of 
 which a great use of color was made. Upon a vast plat- 
 form, elevated many feet above the level of the ground, 
 building was placed on top of building, each smaller 
 than the one below it, till often a seventh or perhaps 
 even an eighth or ninth was added, the walls inside being 
 wainscoted with sculptured slabs of alabaster, and above 
 these, colored tiles placed. The entrances below were 
 guarded by great winged beasts calculated to impress 
 wonder on the beholder. It showed an advance of judg- 
 ment when a great artificial lake was created by excava- 
 tions made in a few days, the notion of engineering 
 being somewhat enlarged. It was an improvement of 
 judgment when the Assyrian, the Babylonian, and lastly 
 the Persian empire was organized, reducing to unity so 
 many different communities, and yet allowing them some 
 measure of local self-government. It was an improve- 
 ment of judgment when in place of the crude literary 
 performances which had before existed, the Iliad and 
 the Odyssey were produced. It was an improvement 
 of judgment when the drama of Job was composed, the 
 Psalms of David, the Reproaches of Isaiah. It was an 
 improvement of judgment when the religion of Israel 
 arose with its abhorrence of idolatrous worship, and its 
 
JUDGMENT 151 
 
 inculcation of the notion of one God, non-anthropomor- 
 phic, ubiquitous, and eternal. 
 
 The times of which Homer gives an account, it is 
 believed, are those of a thousand years before the Chris- 
 tian era, differing, therefore, not much from the time 
 of the Trojan war and of the building of Solomon's 
 temple. Within the time, then, stretching from the 
 exodus of the Jews to the battle of Marathon, from 
 Rameses to Miltiades, we have a grand epoch in human 
 progress, so marked, indeed, that even as children we 
 have all learned of it and by it been impressed; so' 
 marked, indeed, that many persons have fallen into the 
 error of supposing that there was little progress pre- 
 viously and that there has never been any since, for- 
 getting what the Greeks and what the Romans and what 
 Christianity have done for us. 
 
 Studying the processes of the human mind we are 
 able to see that this epoch in the affairs of men was pro- 
 duced by the unfolding of the faculty of judgment, the 
 making more specific in the human mind of the notions 
 of things. This is what, in fact, produced this great post- 
 Egyptian civilization, different aspects of which were 
 Nineveh, Babylon, Phoenicia, Judea, Achaia, and Persia. 
 
 We have also another very important application of 
 the principle of judgment; we are able to explain by it 
 what is observed in learning to read. It is known that 
 between the primer and literature, properly so-called, 
 there are usually read by the pupil three readers, the 
 second being higher in grade than the first, the third 
 than the second. What seems to be true is this : the 
 work of the primer represents merely the inceptive stage, 
 the pupil learns, for example, that a certain sign stands 
 
152 JUDGMENT 
 
 for his notion of a dog-, another for his notion of run- 
 ning, and so on. We have explained, therefore, why 
 pretty rapid progress is made with the primer, the pupil 
 having here only to learn signs for simple notions. In 
 the readers, however, he enters on a process of judg- 
 ment, he has to improve his notions. It is no longer a 
 question of one simple sign for one simple notion, shades 
 of meaning have to be noticed at every turn. He is 
 going through a process respecting language similar to 
 that which a boy goes through respecting the earth. 
 This part of learning to read is therefore tedious and 
 uncertain. 
 
 Judging, it will be observed, consists in making dis- 
 tinctions; for example, when we learn that gold is solu- 
 ble in aqua regia, we have something by which gold, 
 as we know it, is distinguished from gold as we for- 
 merly knew it. What is much the same thing, we have 
 put gold into a particular class of things, those things, 
 namely, which can be dissolved; we have found another 
 limitation, another specification of it. 
 
 We are most familiar, indeed, with the word judg- 
 ment in its application to judicial procedure, yet here 
 even what meaning the word conveys to us is that of dis- 
 tinction. When the judge passes on a matter he puts 
 it into a certain class — the theft, for example, was petit 
 larceny, the murder was of the first degree, and so forth 
 — the judge making distinction of the thing passed on. 
 Our Saviour, in illustrating the nature of the last judg- 
 ment, instances the case of a shepherd separating the 
 sheep from the goats, a distinguishing of them into 
 classes. The German word for judgment literally means 
 to make distinction, not only so, but to make primitive 
 
JUDGMENT 153 
 
 distinction — means, in fact, to attain a natural specifica- 
 tion of a thing. 
 
 Judgments have been divided into analytic and syn- 
 thetic, analytic judgments being those which are implied 
 in the very notion of a thing, as, for example, " Gold 
 is yellow," synthetic judgments being those which are 
 not implied in the very notion of a thing, as, for exam- 
 ple, " Gold is soluble " ; but for certain purposes this 
 division is not very important, it being ofttimes as much 
 a discovery to draw out what is implied in a notion as 
 to find something in it which was not directly implied. 
 
 A process of judgment similar to that which takes 
 place with regard to the inorganic takes place with 
 regard to the organic. 
 
 It is plain that a child has at first but a very inade- 
 quate notion of plants, little more perhaps than that they 
 are pleasant things to look upon which grow up out of 
 the earth; but as he becomes informed about them he 
 improves his original notion. 
 
 Take first the matter of roots. He finds that the roots 
 of plants may in certain cases be mistaken for leaves, 
 the roots in some plants having the appearance of ten- 
 drils and being in the air instead of in the ground, as, 
 for example, the tufts which hang from trees in the 
 Dismal Swamp of Virginia. He finds that the roots of 
 plants, when in the ground, absorb water, which, with 
 whatever it contains, ascends the plant as sap, the press- 
 ure exerted by which being great, as is shown in the 
 experiment of fixing a tube to the end of a grape-vine, 
 a good weight of mercury in the tube being then lifted 
 by the force of the sap alone. 
 
 Take, secondly, the matter of the stems of plants. 
 
154 JUDGMENT 
 
 He finds that the stems of plants often grow under the 
 ground, being thus Hable to be mistaken for roots. 
 Quack grass, for example, is exceedingly hard to destroy 
 for this very reason, the stem branches underground 
 growing to a good length, while from the branches 
 everywhere proceed the secondary ones. It is common, 
 indeed, to call all these branches roots, but they are 
 really the same as the runners in the case of strawberry 
 plants, except that in the case of strawberries the run- 
 ners are above instead of below the ground. The true 
 name of these branches, as we know, is rhizomes. In 
 the case of potatoes, what one might mistake for the 
 fruit is nothing but enlargements of the stem, called 
 tubers. Even when not running the stem is sometimes 
 under the ground, as is the case with the crocus, this 
 form of stem being called a corm. Cactus exhibits all 
 three of these forms above ground, rhizomes, tubers, 
 and corms, the stem of the cactus often consisting wholly 
 of these. 
 
 As, moreover, new branches of the stems of plants 
 grow out of their buds, it is possible from the stems of 
 little trees to obtain a new quantity of trees, at least in 
 certain cases. It is also the custom of nurserymen to 
 cut open the bark of young trees and to insert buds of 
 some favorite variety, so that the branches grown from 
 these buds shall bear the desired fruit. Sometimes, too, 
 the piece of a twig is inserted in the stump of a tree, 
 the twig being sharpened and its bark made to match 
 with the bark of the stump, the object being that the 
 branches growing from the buds of the inserted pieces 
 of twig shall produce the fruit wanted — a process known 
 as grafting. 
 
JUDGMENT 155 
 
 Take, thirdly, the matter of leaves. They may be 
 mistaken for something else. What appears to be the 
 bark of a cactus, for example, is in reality its leaves. 
 Owing to the droughts to which this plant is subject it 
 is an advantage to it to have as little surface as possible 
 exposed to the air. But the reverse of this is true in 
 the case of plants in general. For a large tree, such as 
 an elm, for instance, although the entire surface of its 
 stem may be comparatively small, obtains by means of 
 its leaves a surface of five or ten acres to expose to the 
 air. What other modifications leaves are capable of is 
 also shown in flowers, flowers being but leaves adapted 
 to a particular purpose. Stamens and pistils are special 
 adaptations. 
 
 Moreover, it is not at first known, but is afterward 
 ascertained, that pollenization is one of the means of 
 propagating plants, the pollen being produced in the 
 stamens and falling into the pistils. Strange enough, 
 it is found that in many plants the stamens are on certain 
 individuals and the pistils on others, the pollen having 
 thus to be shifted over from one plant to another. The 
 pollen, indeed, is often blown from one flower to an- 
 other by the wind, but oftener is transferred by means 
 of insects, these being attracted into the flowers, owing 
 perhaps to the fragrance or the color of the flowers. 
 The insects, going from flower to flower, carry with 
 them the pollen and thus fertilize the flowers, as we say. 
 It has been argued, therefore, that those plants that hap- 
 pen to be attractive by reason of fragrance or color stood 
 a better chance of surviving than others, being more 
 likely to be pollenized by insects and so to bear seeds. 
 One hundred thousand plants, it is said, could not exist 
 
156 JUDGMENT 
 
 but for the bees — the rise of such insects, exhibiting 
 marvelous intelHgence, it is thought, we have to thank 
 for our flowers. It is also not at first known, but has to 
 be learned, that the leaves of plants absorb gases from 
 the air, particularly carboniferous gas. 
 
 Furthermore, plants for the most part are constituted 
 out of air and water. People, indeed, say that they can- 
 not live on wind, and that beside water they must have 
 something else, the truth being, however, that they are 
 actually living on little else than these very things, the 
 food of animals coming in the last resort from vege- 
 tables. 
 
 How many other things there are which we have had 
 to learn about the modes of life peculiar to plants ! The 
 strange adaptation which a plant has to circumstances, 
 for instance, is one of these. Take the water-nut which 
 grows at the bottom of streams. It has on it certain 
 little balloons which, filling with air in the spring, raise 
 the plant to the surface of the water, where it blossoms 
 and brings forth its fruit. The bearing season over, the 
 balloons fill with water and the plant descends to the 
 bottom of the stream to escape the rigors of winter. 
 
 The great importance of plants on account of the 
 properties which they contain is another matter which 
 is learned in detail. For example, we have the case of 
 the discovery of the virtues of the bark of a tree, the 
 same having cured of a fever the wife of one Chinchon, 
 a governor of Peru, the tree henceforth being called 
 Cinchona in honor of the woman — a tree from whose 
 bark is made quinine, the greatest febrifuge and anti- 
 periodic known to therapeutics. 
 
 In the case of animal life, also, it is plain that a series 
 
JUDGMENT 157 
 
 of judgments is made by us, one predicate after another 
 being added as we advance in knowledge of the animal 
 kingdom. 
 
 We should not at first have had any intimation of 
 the vast diversity possible to animals. As regards size, 
 should we ever have thought that there are animals so 
 small that even millions of them exist in an ounce of 
 sand, animals so small as to be invisible to the naked 
 eye? The inequality in size between a whale and an 
 ant even is what must seem fabulous, yet the ant is as 
 much of an animal as is a whale. As regards length 
 of life, what a difference in animals! The may-fly at 
 the best does not live more than a week — within that 
 time are embraced all its joys and sorrows. On the 
 contrary, an elephant, as Lotze remarks, which eats out 
 of the hand of a child to-day, may have eaten out of 
 that child's great-grandfather's hand when that great- 
 grandfather was himself a child. A crow and a may-fly 
 may come to consciousness on the very same day, but 
 in the ordinary course of things the crow will live five 
 or ten thousand times as long as the May-fly. As 
 regards type, what contrast in animals! Who would 
 have believed but for the testimony of his sense that 
 animals could exist in the form of mollusks? What a 
 contrast between a dog and a clam! Yet one of these 
 is as much an animal as the other. Nay, there are ani- 
 mals in the sea which for all the world resemble melons 
 or cucumbers, except that they have certain long strings 
 attached to them by means of which they lasso crabs. 
 What is more, there are animals in the sea not to be 
 distinguished even from bushes. Variety within the 
 same type of animal is also marked. That, for instance, 
 
158 JUDGMENT 
 
 whales belong to the order of beasts was not to have 
 been believed, we being inclined to consider them fishes. 
 Certain naturalists, indeed, have held that whales and 
 swine have descended from the same ancestors, it being 
 supposed that whales once lived on the land. Quite, as 
 strange is the fact that there are beasts which fly in the 
 air, the bats, for example. What is more, duck-moles, 
 although beasts, have yet bills like those of birds; we 
 should have thought that such animals were mythologi- 
 cal, truth in this case being as strange as fiction, perhaps 
 even more so. 
 
 Not only the variety of animal life is great but also 
 its uniformity. First, every animal has a cellular struct- 
 ure, is, in other words, made up of cells, man as well 
 as the amcebe. Each of these cells is a ball of protoplasm, 
 the same usually covered with what may be called a skin. 
 It would require three thousand of these cells to equal 
 the head of a pin in size. A cell increases in size a 
 certain amount and then divides in two, this being the 
 way in which animals grow. Cells are combined into 
 tissues, tissues into membranes, membranes into organs, 
 those animals which consist of a single cell — and there 
 are such — having no organs of any kind, the animal being 
 stomach and everything else at the same time — a jack- 
 of-all-trades. Secondly, the materials of which all ani- 
 mals are made are the same — air and water, little else. 
 The cells of the body are continually arising, continually 
 wasting away. It is, therefore, as if a gust of wind 
 and a stream of water are all the while the one blowing 
 and the other flowing through the body, the body for 
 the time being consisting of the wind and water in it. 
 Thirdly, a characteristic of all animals is the possession 
 
JUDGMENT 159 
 
 of mind, capacity to feel, usually to know, and to act. 
 A mosquito, for instance, certainly knows something and 
 does something, has therefore a mind, quite as much as 
 Napoleon had one, however superior Napoleon's mind 
 might have been to the mosquito's. A certain animal 
 there is, consisting of a single cell, living inside worms, 
 the same as worms live inside other animals, yet, strange 
 as it may seem, it is possessed of a mind. Legs it has 
 none, hands it has none, head it has none, no organs of 
 any kind does it have, yet it does have a mind. Prac- 
 tically but for a moment does an animal have the same 
 body, that is to say, the same oxygen, hydrogen, nitro- 
 gen, and carbon, but forever does it have the same mind. 
 
 Now each one of these details about plants or about 
 animals gives us a new notion with regard to the one 
 or the other. For each of them we put a new predicate 
 into our notion of plant or into our notion of animal, 
 as the case may be; that is to say, we form a judgment 
 about the one or the other which we express in a propo- 
 sition whereof a predicate is affirmed of a subject. 
 
 Judgment about plants and animals, it is known, 
 except in some minor particulars, was not arrived at by 
 mankind but gradually, the time taken to get a tolerably 
 good judgment of them having been long, and what was 
 once true of mankind on this subject, it is plain, is still 
 true of individuals on many subjects. 
 
 Those of like judgments naturally form a clique, 
 whence it comes about that society is divided into sets, 
 as it were, any one of which disparages the others, 
 a truth which, it is said, Shakespeare meant to set 
 forth in his comedy known as " A Midsummer Night's 
 Dream." 
 
l60 JUDGMENT 
 
 T'here remains, beside the inorganic and the organic, 
 the mental. Moreover, the mental activities of men are 
 directed, among other things, to practical affairs and to 
 artistic matters. 
 
 First, then, it is known that a person of judgment 
 has much better notions relative to practical affairs than 
 a person lacking this judgment. Those who lend money, 
 when inquiring into a farmer's circumstances, let him 
 have the money more readily provided the improvements 
 on his lands be not too good, considering that, if he 
 has put up with more moderate ones, he has better judg- 
 ment and is, accordingly, more likely to be able to pay 
 what he owes. 
 
 People often mistake in their estimates. It was said 
 of a certain man, for example, that he was a good 
 farmer, the opinion prevailing merely because every- 
 thing was kept picked up on his farm, everything in 
 order, the buildings in repair and well painted. It was 
 not known that a large mortgage was on the farm. The 
 fact is, a farmer may be making a profit, and must there- 
 fore be said to be succeeding in his undertaking, although 
 his premises are badly kept. 
 
 It was said of a certain man that he was a good 
 financier ; all were loud in his praise. He paid his debts 
 promptly, had everything looking well about him. The 
 truth, however, was that his financial ability was small. 
 He had started out with a good property, had not lost 
 it, to be sure, yet during his whole life, if all his accu- 
 mulations were taken into account, he had not made on 
 the average more than fifty or sixty dollars a year, that 
 is to say, not twenty cents a day. 
 
 Persons of poor judgment put great stress on having 
 
JUDGMENT l6l 
 
 a house furnished in a particular way, not taking into 
 account that one can sleep just as well on a bedstead 
 which cost five dollars as on one which cost fifty. Car- 
 pets and wall-paper and what not are by many deemed 
 essential, whereas in some countries they are rarely met 
 with. 
 
 Many persons will not have flour which is not per- 
 fectly white, with them the only thing indispensable is 
 its color. To those who have judgment, however, flour 
 not so white is deemed better, that which has in it more 
 of the good qualities of the wheat. Rye bread is de- 
 spised by a great many on account of its dark color, 
 notwithstanding its nutritious quality. Warm bread, 
 although hurtful to the health, is yet preferred by many, 
 it having been found necessary in Prussia to have a law 
 against people's selling it. Cake in which yellow paint 
 was put once had an extensive sale, notwithstanding 
 the fact that it was so deleterious to health, the reason 
 being that the color of the cake was so brilliant. Of 
 the very same potatoes one man declared that they were 
 the best that he ever saw, another man that they were 
 the worst. The quality of the potatoes for food was 
 excellent, but their skins were rough and they had on 
 them some dirt. The man who considered them the 
 worst that he ever saw evidently bought potatoes merely 
 to look at. Some persons cannot understand how it was 
 possible that the aged Emperor of Germany could have 
 made a meal on rye bread and sausages. Some persons, 
 too, think there cannot be a meal made without a table- 
 cloth and about so many dishes and so many knives, 
 forks, and spoons, whereas Germans often make a meal 
 with hardly any of these things. 
 
1 62 JUDGMENT 
 
 Much the same want of judgment is observed respect- 
 ing clothing. A certain peasant, we are told, could not 
 comprehend how it was that a noted divine could preach, 
 seeing how badly he was dressed. Many persons, it is 
 said, turned away from hearing Barrow, a very eloquent 
 English preacher, on account of the meanness of his 
 attire. They probably went to church not for the pur- 
 pose of hearing a sermon, but for the purpose of view- 
 ing the exhibit of a tailor shop. The Egyptians would 
 not receive Agesilaus as their general, despite his emi- 
 nent capabilities, seeing that he was poorly clad, was 
 lame, not prepossessing in looks. Once the lackey of a 
 king, having observed Bonaparte, bespattered with mud, 
 helping take care of the wounded on a battle-field, held 
 up his hands in horror, crying out, "Is it possible that 
 this man is Emperor of France ! " When the army of 
 Thomas was in danger of starving to death at Chatta- 
 nooga and Grant and Sherman came to relieve it, the 
 officers of Thomas's army had great misgivings, observ- 
 ing how shabbily Grant and Sherman were dressed. 
 
 As to judgment about clothes, many place it alto- 
 gether on the price, the very same article being with 
 them inferior if it costs less. Merchants, therefore, put 
 the same thing on sale in different parts of the city at 
 different prices, just as the venders of liquors are wont 
 to sell five-cent, ten-cent, and fifteen-cent drinks all out 
 of the same keg. 
 
 Judgment about the nature of law is equally remark- 
 able. We should not at first have thought that hearsay 
 evidence is untrustworthy, we should have thought that 
 it is as good as any. We should at first not have thought 
 that the making of an absolutely new law is well nigh 
 
JUDGMENT 163 
 
 impossible, legislation being hampered by principles and 
 precedents. 
 
 Political judgment is often wanting, note the prating 
 about the divine right of kings, all the divine right there 
 is being that of properly constituted authority. We 
 might as well talk about the divine right of constables 
 as about the divine right of kings. 
 
 One of the most commonly discussed of practical 
 matters is what one shall make the outcome of his life, 
 a theme on which a strange lack of judgment is mani- 
 fest. We are told, for example, of a certain boy who 
 looked forward to manhood as the time when he might 
 go to California overland, riding in a covered wagon 
 and sleeping in it nights, to do which seemed to him 
 to be the height of all human achievement. Another 
 boy desired that he might be the father of eight sons, 
 so that they with him might constitute a baseball team. 
 Still another boy, urged to get an education, declared 
 that he did not care for it. " Why," said he, " there is 
 so and so," naming a certain clown in the town, " he 
 never went to school but two days in his life, and you 
 can't hardly find a smarter man." It would be incompre- 
 hensible to many persons that there are twice a year at 
 Berlin courses of lectures on such subjects as hieroglyph- 
 ics, dogmatics, and quaternions, attended by thousands. 
 
 Respecting artistic matters, how much need there is 
 of judgment is generally admitted. 
 
 Many, could they have seen the Parthenon of Athens 
 in all its glory, when as yet it had not been despoiled 
 by the hand of Turk or by the hand of Venetian, would 
 doubtless have been under the necessity of having its 
 good points explained to them. 
 
164 JUDGMENT 
 
 The statues erected in parks are by some found fault 
 with, by others praised, whence it is plain that one or 
 the other of these must be mistaken. 
 
 Wendell Phillips,, speaking of the statues of Boston, 
 characterized them to this effect. That of Horace Mann 
 shows him as if he had just gotten out of bed and had 
 brought with him a good share of the bedclothes; that 
 of George Washington shows him as staring up the 
 street, his legs at a painful distance from his horse, and 
 with none of that ease which he was wont to exhibit at 
 Mount Vernon; that of Edward Everett shows him as 
 if he were just rising up out of a barrel ; that of Charles 
 Sumner shows him as a burly sailor, pointing his finger 
 at the meat-market; and that of Daniel Webster, placed 
 in the State-house near the stairway, has this advantage 
 only, that persons going up the stairs, as they see it, are 
 compelled to laugh, and are therefore cheered up and 
 rested in making the ascent. 
 
 To suppose that Wendell Phillips, though in • many 
 respects a gifted man, was totally wrong in his judg- 
 ment about these statues is indeed permissible, but the 
 main point to be insisted upon is this, that at least he 
 or those who differ with him lack in judgment. 
 
 Here indeed we have a remarkable instance how neces- 
 sary it is to take into account the process of judgment 
 if we are to understand the mind, a thing which has 
 usually been neglected. 
 
 A great painting has lately obtained celebrity from the 
 report that it was bought for a hundred thousand dollars, 
 people going in great numbers to see it, no doubt pay- 
 ing out in admission fees more than the reputed price 
 of it; but it has since come out that the sale was only 
 
JUDGMENT 165 
 
 nominal, the painter really getting no great sum for it. 
 Except for the belief that it cost so much, few would 
 have admired it. 
 
 The operas of Wagner have received very different 
 judgments from different people, showing that some of 
 them are lacking in critical power. For example, the 
 operas are held by certain persons — as indeed they were 
 by Wagner himself — to be the music of the future, the 
 end of all musical attainment, contrasted with whose 
 opinion, however, is that of Tolstoi. 
 
 Tolstoi pronounces Wagner's " Niebling's Ring," for 
 instance, to be a model work of counterfeit art. For 
 what do we have, says he, but an actor beating an im- 
 possible sword with an impossible hammer, at the same 
 time strangely opening his mouth and uttering some- 
 thing incomprehensible? Then we have him sawing 
 up into pieces the broken sword, which he heats and 
 forges (not this, indeed, but the pretence of doing it), 
 while at the same time he accompanies his action 
 with the unintelligible singing of " Heiho ! Heiho ! 
 Heiho!" 
 
 Wagner has gained a great reputation, says Tolstoi, 
 because he has been able to command all the resources 
 of counterfeit art. The audience becomes hypnotized, 
 says he, listening to one of these operas, just as we may 
 suppose it would be hypnotized were it to listen for sev- 
 eral hours to the ravings of a maniac delivered with 
 great oratorical power. 
 
 As to what is urged by critics, namely, that one must 
 hear the operas much to get their full effect, Tolstoi 
 acknowledges that the point is well taken, but that the 
 
1 66 JUDGMENT 
 
 same kind of effect can be more readily realized, and 
 with less expense, by getting drunk. 
 
 Although the poems of Homer were among the first 
 of literary productions to show judgment, yet Zoilus 
 gave an unfavorable opinion of them. He is, declares 
 Victor Hugo, as certain to be remembered as Homer 
 himself, it being impossible to forget so great a dunce. 
 
 Matthew Arnold relates that he was once under the 
 tyranny of Bentham's wisdom, but was delivered from 
 it the moment he read in his writings that Plato talked 
 nonsense. He realized that there were some matters 
 about which even Bentham knew nothing. 
 
 Tacitus informs us that persons were found who main- 
 tained that the style of Cicero was redundant, turgid, 
 diffuse, inelegant, and egotistic. This, be it remem- 
 bered, was said of the greatest of all orators, Demos- 
 thenes in a few points only excepted, the greatest master 
 of composition that the world has ever known. If he 
 was wrong on so many points, what chance exists that 
 anybody else ever can be right? 
 
 Hume asserted that Shakespeare was wholly ignorant 
 of theatrical art and conduct, that we probably over- 
 estimate his genius on account of his defects, it being 
 true that things often appear more gigantic on account 
 of being disproportioned and misshapen. Dryden com- 
 plains of the lameness of the plots of Shakespeare, made 
 up, as he thinks, of ridiculous, incoherent stories, founded 
 often on impossibilities. The only reason, says he, why 
 the Elizabethan age is called the Golden Age of poetry 
 is that people, being then content with acorns, knew not 
 the use of bread. Shaftesbury speaks of Shakespeare's 
 rude, unpolished style, and antiquated form of wit. Cha- 
 
JUDGMENT 167 
 
 teaubriand makes it an objection against Shakespeare 
 that he did not know the gender, accent, nor exact mean- 
 ing of words, on account of which he introduces poetic 
 expressions haphazard into the most trivial situations. 
 Pepys has recorded in his diary that he saw Shake- 
 speare's " A Midsummer Night's Dream " played when 
 Shakespeare was still living, and that it was the most 
 insipid, ridiculous play that ever he saw in his whole 
 life. Rymer considered the tragical flights of Shake- 
 speare to be inferior to the neighings of a horse or the 
 growling of a dog. Sardou asserts that Hamlet is an 
 empty wind-bag hero whom Shakespeare has clothed in 
 a dramatic fog and whom the German critics have stuffed 
 with their cloudy notions, with all their uncertain disser- 
 tations, with all the smoke of their pipes, and with all 
 the obscurity of their beer-cellars. A Puritan expressed 
 great contempt for the plays of Shakespeare on account 
 of the metaphors which they contain. Somebody has 
 ventured the opinion that the works of Shakespeare can- 
 not live, seeing that they deal with foreign subjects, such 
 as Hamlet, Othello, and Macbeth. An English news- 
 paper observes that places can be found in England 
 where the fame of Shakespeare seems to rest on the be- 
 lief that he was some sort of a prize-fighter. It having 
 been asked of a Dutchman what character in " Hamlet " 
 he most admired, he replied, " The Ghost." 
 
 Booth, we are told, was once playing " The Merchant 
 of Venice " in a backwoods town of Virginia, and wished 
 to take the steamer before he could conclude the whole. 
 He therefore, by previous arrangement, had recourse to 
 a trick. The trial scene coming on, Antonio said to Shy- 
 lock, " I'll tell you what I'll do, provided you forego 
 
1 68 JUDGMENT 
 
 the pound of flesh, I'll give you, in addition to what 
 money is coming to you, fifty caddies of tobacco ! " " I'd 
 be foolish," replied Shylock, " not to take it," where- 
 upon the play was brought to a close, all who saw it 
 being highly delighted, especially the captain himself, 
 who, on the way down the river, told Booth that he 
 " never knew before that there was so much in that 
 Shakespeare." 
 
 Mary Wortley Montagu said of Pope that he is all 
 tune and no meaning; Shenstone, that no poet ever 
 brought so much sense into the same number of lines. 
 Voltaire declares that the " Essay on Man " is the most 
 useful and sublime didactic poem ever written; Black, 
 that it is a tedious and stilted effort. Taine says that 
 we need much self-command not to throw down the 
 " Dunciad " as insipid and even disgusting ; Williams, 
 that the " Dunciad " is the greatest feat of the humorous 
 imagination in English poetry. Johnson pronounces the 
 translation of Homer as being the greatest work of its 
 kind; Dennis pronounced it a failure. 
 
 Objection was made by a teacher of Greek to the ren- 
 dering which Pope makes of a certain passage in Homer, 
 and being asked what the passage really meant, he con- 
 veyed as good an idea of it as he could, whereupon the 
 questioner exclaimed, "If that is what Homer meant, 
 then Pope is a greater poet than Homer." 
 
 It has been objected to Macaulay that certain trees 
 which he mentions as oaks were really elms, that it is 
 doubtful whether what William hunted were not really 
 some other animals than stags. One of the most promi- 
 nent defects of his history, says Croker, is its style, a 
 point on which he is followed by others. On the con- 
 
JUDGMENT 169 
 
 trary, the great writers of the world have expressed their 
 admiration of the thoroughness of the researches of 
 Macaulay and his general accuracy, while as regards his 
 style, they consider it a marvel of perspicuity and effec- 
 tiveness. 
 
 Psychology, indeed, furnishes us a means of under- 
 standing much when it acquaints us with the nature of 
 the process of judgment, a process of such a kind that 
 whereas one's opinion on one subject may be good, on 
 another it may be worth nothing at all. 
 
 The notion which one entertains on anything can be 
 only general, somewhat vague, perhaps, without he has 
 put into it those predicates which specify it, or, what is 
 the same thing, bring it down to particulars. The star- 
 tling and absurd statements which one often hears on 
 various topics should, therefore, not in the least sur- 
 prise him. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 REASON 
 
 Reasoning may well enough be defined as knowing 
 by implication — knowing something from knowing some- 
 thing else. To state the matter differently, through rea- 
 soning we know a characteristic of a thing by means 
 of a characteristic of that characteristic of it; to say 
 this still another way, through reasoning we know a 
 predicate of a thing by means of a predicate of that 
 predicate. To take an example, a man — half-asleep per- 
 haps — discovers that his house is on fire, not merely be- 
 cause he smells smoke — that might be from his lamp — 
 but because he smells smoke with a woody scent. This 
 woody scent is here the characteristic of the characteristic 
 of the thing, the predicate of the predicate. Reasoning, 
 in short, consists in assigning an attribute to a thing on 
 the ground of some other attribute of it, the attribute 
 of mortality, for instance, to Socrates on the ground of 
 his attribute of humanity. 
 
 The expression of a reasoning in the simplest manner 
 was called by Aristotle an enthymeme — for example, 
 " Socrates was mortal, because he was a man ; " the 
 more definite expression of it, a syllogism — for example, 
 " All men are mortal ; Socrates was a man, therefore 
 Socrates was mortal." 
 
 The characteristics of things are represented in the 
 mind by notions, so that the process of reasoning is said 
 
REASON 171 
 
 to be the forming of one notion out of two others. The 
 notion of woody smell, for instance, merged into that 
 of smoky smell, gives us the notion of smoking wood, 
 that is to say, the notion of wood on fire. Notions, 
 moreover, are images in the mind for which words stand. 
 
 Reasoning takes place on theory and from practice. 
 As it takes place more especially on theory, it is quanti- 
 tative, qualitative, and relational. As it takes place more 
 especially from experience, it is inductive. Reasonings, 
 therefore, naturally divide themselves into four great 
 classes — first, reasoning from equalization ; secondly, rea- 
 soning from consistency; thirdly, reasoning from di- 
 lemma; fourthly, reasoning from example. 
 
 Reasoning from equalization consists in recognizing 
 that two quantities are equal because each of them sepa- 
 rately is equal to the same third quantity, A equals B, 
 for example, because A as well as B equals C. 
 
 We may take as an illustration what is known as the 
 theorem of Pythagoras, We draw a right-angled tri- 
 angle, and upon each of its sides a square, then draw 
 certain other lines. We now show that the square upon 
 the hypothenuse is just equal to certain spaces which 
 themselves are just equal to the square upon the base 
 added to the square upon the perpendicular, whence 
 things which are equal to the same thing being equal to 
 each other, the square on the hypothenuse of a right- 
 angled triangle is proved to be equal to the sum of the 
 squares on the other two sides. 
 
 The solutions of trigonometry, as is well known, de- 
 pend on this theorem, whence for the results of trigo- 
 nometry Pythagoras may claim credit. As, then, engi- 
 neering depends on trigonometry, engineers themselves 
 
172 REASON 
 
 get their credentials from Pythagoras, he having in effect 
 given them permission to measure inaccessible heights, 
 distances which cannot be traversed. Indeed, Pythag- 
 oras gave mankind permission to lay out roads, build 
 bridges, and dig tunnels. As, moreover, the measure- 
 ment of our lands in the last resort depends on trigo- 
 nometry, the titles of our lands are actually derived 
 from Pythagoras. 
 
 A system of triangles has been laid out by surveyors, 
 which extends from England to Russia, likewise a sys- 
 tem of triangles which extends from Maine to California, 
 which two systems are to be pushed into Asia to meet. 
 Particular surveys, as of farms and lots, depend on these 
 general ones. 
 
 Let us pause to reflect that the reasoning of Pythag- 
 oras, on which trigonometry rests, itself rests on the 
 principle that things which are equal to the same thing 
 are equal to each other. Who would have thought that 
 on a foundation so slight such a mighty superstructure 
 could have been erected? It might have been objected 
 to Pythagoras that it is the merest truism that equal 
 quantities are equal, that no possible good could come 
 from the consideration of a truth so barren; but the 
 spaces which he found to be equal, either of them, to the 
 third space, are very different the one from the other — 
 herein lay his chance of success. That A equals A may 
 seem a very trite proposition; not so, however, if the 
 one A is made up in a manner very different from the 
 other A. It might have been objected, also, to Pythag- 
 oras that he was but wasting his time considering ab- 
 stractly the question of squares on a triangle. The way 
 for him to do, it might have been said, was to go out 
 
REASON 173 
 
 into the fields, measure pieces of land, observe how 
 things are! For how could it be possible that, sitting 
 in his easy-chair, in a room where, perhaps, he could 
 not even see out-doors, he could yet prove what must 
 be true upon the moon ? 
 
 According to tradition, when Pythagoras had proved 
 that the square upon the hypothenuse of a right-angled 
 triangle is equal to the sum of the squares upon the 
 other two sides, he returned thanks to heaven, making 
 an expensive sacrifice. The vast results which have 
 flowed from his discovery well justify the ardor which 
 he exhibited. For through him mankind has been able 
 to measure the earth and to weigh the mountains. 
 
 Pythagoras, moreover, precipitated a crisis in human 
 affairs — humanity could never be what it was before. He 
 had discovered mathematical reasoning, thereby chang- 
 ing the course of history. Euclid afterward worked out 
 that great geometry which is still used in our schools, 
 either by way of translation or by way of adaptation. 
 Following the path opened by Pythagoras, the Greeks 
 discovered reasoning in general, a circumstance which ex- 
 plains all about them. The governments of the Greeks 
 were democratic, governments by discussion, the prin- 
 ciple of which is that an appeal is made to reason. The 
 architecture, sculpture, and painting of the Greeks were 
 characterized by perfect symmetry — inconsistencies, that 
 is to say, contradictions, were excluded, reason being the 
 faculty which detects them. Similarly it was that the 
 literature of the Greeks was rational — it had unity and 
 point — the small points, moreover, were subordinated to 
 the great ones. The Romans applied reason to law, car- 
 rying back jurisprudence to principles of eternal justice. 
 
174 REASON 
 
 the same as Euclid had carried back geometry to the 
 principles of space. The Romans likewise employing 
 the principle of reason in the state, arrived at unity of 
 administration, introducing consistency into the man- 
 agement of their affairs. Their notion of the unity of 
 superintendence led to their choice of what are known 
 as the emperors, though these were not emperors in the 
 modern sense. They were merely the managers of the 
 republic, somewhat like our presidents. Pythagoras 
 having, then, set in motion the course of events which 
 finally culminated in the Roman empire, well exemplifies 
 the saying that truth is stranger than fiction. 
 
 Pythagoras lived in Crotona, Italy, where he had as 
 disciples six hundred others, who, together with their 
 families, all lived in the same house. They all observed 
 certain rules — rose before the sun, recited verses, lis- 
 tened to music, thought how each might best pass the 
 day; took then solitary walks, meditating the while ; next 
 they came together for conversation, took gymnastic 
 exercises, and dined on bread, honey, and water, meat 
 not being eaten; in the afternoon they looked after their 
 affairs, took their baths, and performed religious rites. 
 Before going to bed each took a retrospect of the day, 
 what he had missed, what he had gained. It was en- 
 joined on a new disciple to keep still about the truths 
 communicated to him; moreover, these truths were first 
 given to him in symbols which might mean one thing 
 or another, so that the curiosity of the learner was ex- 
 cited. If he persevered, however, the abstract principles 
 of truth were in time revealed to him. Pythagoras 
 talked to his hearers from behind a curtain, so that no 
 gesticulation, no change of features might impress them, 
 
REASON 175 
 
 nothing but the truth. When he appeared among his 
 followers he wore a white gown and on his head a gilded 
 circlet. His beard, moreover, was white, long, and 
 flowing. 
 
 For the great services which he rendered mankind he 
 received no pay, indeed, did not ask any; like Agassiz 
 after him, he did not have time to make money. Some 
 persons, he said, came into the world to sell goods, others 
 to eat; as for himself, he came into the world to look 
 on. He was an inspector of mankind, with a view to 
 bettering society. 
 
 Another illustration of reasoning from equalization 
 may be given. It is proved that a geometric ratio will 
 amount to more than an arithmetic one, a geometric 
 ratio increasing by an increasing amount, an arithmetic 
 by a fixed amount only. For, as a geometric series goes 
 on, the point is reached where its increment equals or 
 surpasses the increment of the arithmetic one; accord- 
 ingly, this increment, being all the while multiplied, will 
 not only submerge the previous accumulation of the 
 arithmetic series, but its future accumulation as well. 
 
 That an arithmetic series cannot equal a geometric one 
 may seem a very trivial matter, yet it is fraught with 
 momentous consequences. 
 
 Malthus pointed out that whereas animals have the 
 power continually to double their number, the land has 
 not the power continually to double its crop, animals 
 increasing in geometric ratio, food in arithmetic only. 
 The matter is made still worse by the fact that there are 
 many kinds of animals virtually dependent on the same 
 kind of food. It is, therefore, as if the food of the 
 earth w?re divided into a certain number of rations, the 
 
176 REASON 
 
 animals to eat them exceeding that number. As, how- 
 ever, animals cannot live without food, therefore neg- 
 lecting the matter of insufficient nutrition, the truth 
 arrived at is merely this, that animal life presses on the 
 means of subsistence, whence the struggle among ani- 
 mals to get a living. 
 
 Darwin teaches that all the manifold kinds of animals 
 have been formed by this struggle. The discovery of 
 this, with whatever is accessory to it, is to be set down 
 to the credit of the reasoning that a geometric ratio 
 must exceed an arithmetic one. 
 
 By means of this reasoning, also, we are enabled to 
 know things regarding the past, present, and future his- 
 tory of mankind which could hardly otherwise have come 
 to light. 
 
 The population of the earth was once very small, 
 indeed, did not come to be considerable till people learned 
 how to farm or to keep flocks. We know this because 
 great populations, not being able to subsist without a 
 proportionate supply of food, could not have means 
 whereby they might live previous to farming or to keep- 
 ing of flocks. Neither the spontaneous productions of 
 nature nor what game could be taken would have been 
 sufficient to supply their wants. Or, perhaps we might 
 better say, not till men learned to till the soil and to do 
 so systematically did there exist enormous populations 
 on the globe, before that time there not having been food 
 enough to support them. For instance, a portion of 
 America where once only forty thousand natives could 
 subsist by hunting and fishing, afterward supported three 
 millions of colonists, these subsisting on agriculture and 
 manufacturing. 
 
REASON 177 
 
 We may draw a subsidiary inference here. That part 
 of the world in which agriculture first got a sure foot- 
 ing, presumably Mesopotamia, was the place where civ- 
 ilization originated, great populations and life in great 
 cities being necessary to the birth of civilization, neither 
 of which could obtain without agriculture, agriculture 
 being necessary to great populations, great populations 
 to cities. 
 
 We have here something which may account for the 
 fact that so many peoples trace their origin back to 
 regions lying around the Caspian. 
 
 We have explained, too, why the population of Eng- 
 land is now very large in comparison with what it was 
 in the Elizabethan age; the machinery and other inven- 
 tions of recent times greatly increase the food-supply of 
 the world, enabling one to do what once it took many 
 to accomplish. 
 
 When, moreover, the entire earth shall have been 
 brought to the highest state of cultivation, and when 
 all the means of saving and organizing labor shall have 
 been exhausted, the population of the earth will not 
 increase any more. 
 
 Such a state of things, indeed, has already practically 
 been reached in France. There is a farm to about every 
 six persons, usually owned by the proprietor himself. 
 More than half of the entire population of the country 
 is engaged in tilling the soil. This result obtains from 
 the fact that the farms are small, the average contain- 
 ing not much more than twenty acres, half the farms 
 less than six acres, many as little as two and one-half. 
 The farms are used to the very best advantage, and, as 
 the population does not increase, each generation is in 
 
178 REASON 
 
 a little better circumstances than the one which pre- 
 ceded it. 
 
 Thus does the proof that a geometric ratio outruns 
 an arithmetic one furnish us with clues to much of 
 importance. 
 
 Reasoning from consistency degends on the principle 
 that the universe is a closed system of causes, each cause 
 producing its effect. 
 
 We have this reasoning exemplified in what is known 
 as circumstantial evidence, such as is taken cognizance 
 of in our courts of justice, an instance of which may 
 be given. 
 
 Several men broke into a house in the dead of night, 
 presumably to rob the inmates, but being discovered, an 
 affray ensued in which the man of the house was killed. 
 Those who had broken into the house then ran away, 
 leaving behind them a piece of candle. Strangely enough, 
 this was found exactly to match another piece which was 
 in the house of a man supposedly concerned in the crime. 
 The original candle, it seemed, had been cut in two by 
 a knife, showing the wick pressed in the same direction 
 and left in the same position in both pieces. The kind 
 of candles of which these pieces were samples was kept 
 by one dealer only in the village. Of him, it was shown 
 that a member of the man's family in which the second 
 piece of candle was found had purchased a candle a few 
 days before the night in question. No satisfactory ex- 
 planation could be made why they had bought it or to 
 what use they intended to put it. The man whose fam- 
 ily purchased the candle was in bad repute. Remarks 
 previously made by him caused suspicions to rest upon 
 him. It was maintained, moreover, that his voice was 
 
REASON 179 
 
 recognized in the house where the man was murdered 
 about the time the murder took place. 
 
 How could all these circumstances perfectly harmo- 
 nize with the supposition that he was implicated in the 
 crime unless he was actually implicated in it? 
 
 Of course, if it could have been shown that even the 
 most trivial circumstance in the case was at variance 
 with the hypothesis that the man was privy to the mur- 
 der the proof would have failed. A reductio ad ab- 
 surdum would have been instituted. For this kind of 
 reasoning requires consistency in all things. Could it 
 have been shown, for example, that a great many can- 
 dles of the kind in question had been sold in the village 
 by different dealers, and repeatedly to the family sus- 
 pected, the evidence against the man would not, to say 
 the least, have been as good as it was. Could it have 
 been shown that the cutting of a candle in two with an 
 ordinary knife will generally leave the wick and other 
 materials in about the same condition in which they were 
 in this particular case, the evidence would have been 
 somewhat shaken. Could it have been shown that a 
 single thread of wick in one of the pieces of candle had 
 a position not consistent with this piece matching the 
 other, the evidence would certainly have failed. Could 
 it have been shown that the materials in one piece of 
 candle were different from those in the other piece, noth- 
 ing would have been made out. 
 
 When we consider the great number of cases coming 
 before our courts in which the whole matter turns on 
 such reasoning as this, we are made aware of the great 
 importance of it. Famous cases, indeed, might be cited, 
 such as that of Freeman, in which Seward made one of 
 
160 REASON 
 
 the greatest speeches of all time — of the kind of speech, 
 perhaps, the very greatest. 
 
 We have another instance of reasoning from consist- 
 ency, when by means of such reasoning a lost and dead 
 language is deciphered, as, for example, the Egyptian. 
 
 Napoleon's engineers, while engaged in throwing up 
 breastworks in Egypt, discovered by accident what is 
 called the Rossetta Stone, a piece of basalt upon which 
 something was inscribed in Egyptian, together with a 
 translation in Greek. For ages nobody whosoever had 
 been able to read a word of Egyptian. How, then, was 
 this now to be read? How, if not on the principle of 
 consistency? What was inscribed upon the stone must 
 be consistent with itself, every part and circumstance 
 with the whole, every part and circumstance with every 
 other part and circumstance. Indeed, this must be so, 
 or the Egyptians themselves could have made nothing 
 out of it. Everything in the Greek must have something 
 equivalent to it in the Egyptian, or the Greeks them- 
 selves could not have gotten from it the same sense 
 which was contained in the Egyptian, the translation 
 would have been absurd. What is more, it was actually 
 stated in the Greek that it was an equivalent of the 
 Egyptian. 
 
 The name of Ptolemy, which occurs in the Greek, 
 would correspond to some word in the Egyptian, this 
 word, moreover, could be found in the Egyptian from 
 its position. And the word being discovered, of course 
 the characters by which it is spelled would be discovered 
 also. On the same principle, indeed, from other proper 
 names in the inscription still other characters could be 
 made out. 
 
REASON 18 1 
 
 The inscription upon the Rossetta Stone is a decree 
 of the priests in honor of Ptolemy Epiphanes, one hun- 
 dred and ninety-five years prior to the birth of our 
 Saviour. 
 
 The same process which was apphed by scholars to 
 the Rossetta Stone was applied by them to other stones. 
 The decree of Canopus is an instance. Before the days 
 of Christianity the priests of Egypt held a conference 
 in the town of Canopus, at which they passed a resolu- 
 tion eulogistic of Ptolemy Euergetes, having the same 
 inscribed upon a stone both in Egyptian and in Greek. 
 Twenty-one hundred and four years afterward, almost 
 to a month, that is to say, in our own times, Lepsius, 
 the German savant, discovered this very same stone at 
 Tanis in Egypt. 
 
 Pillars of stone were also found upon which Darius, 
 the great organizer of the Persian empire, had put, 
 twenty-four hundred years ago, an inscription, both in 
 Egyptian and in Persian. These inscriptions, as was said, 
 besides their other uses in the decipherment, furnished 
 proper names which could be spelled out in Egyptian. 
 
 The meaning of Egyptian words other than proper 
 names could, on principles of consistency, be come at in 
 several ways. The Coptic language, as found in a trans- 
 lation of the Bible, being descended from the Egyptian, 
 has somewhat the same names for things as the Egyp- 
 tian itself. The Egyptian names for things, moreover, 
 could be gotten from the tombs, where are still pictures 
 of most objects with the names attached. These words 
 must agree with the Coptic, or nearly so. 
 
 What was read upon the Rossetta Stone, what was 
 read upon the stone found at Tanis, what was read upon 
 
1 82 REASON 
 
 the pillars of Darius, and what was read in the tombs 
 would have to be consistent, the one with the other, as 
 well as with the translations in Greek, Persian, or Coptic. 
 
 Following up these clues, scholars have been able to 
 read the lost language of Egypt. They read, for ex- 
 ample, on the walls of Karnak the poem of Pentaur 
 which praises the deeds of Rameses the Great. Un- 
 wrapping a mummy, moreover, they read the funeral 
 ritual of the Egyptians which was used thousands of 
 years before the birth of Christ. They read also in the 
 tombs around the great pyramid the names of men 
 attached to their portraits, men, indeed, who lived as 
 long before Rameses as Rameses before Christ. 
 
 A complete dictionary of the Egyptian language is in 
 process of completion, the meaning of the Egyptian 
 words in their several applications being ascertained, 
 thanks to reasoning from consistency. 
 
 On the same principles it was that the Assyrian lan- 
 guage was made known to us. The libraries of Nineveh 
 and Babylon, together with those of their suburbs, had 
 been buried for ages. Xenophon makes no mention of 
 Nineveh, although he passed by the site of it long before 
 the Christian era — even then it was covered with earth. 
 The libraries were there in the ground, imperishable be- 
 cause they had been written upon clay, the which had 
 then been burned. Xenophon, however, could not have 
 read the libraries, even if he had known about them — 
 their treasures were apparently locked up for good. It 
 was not till our own times that the language was de- 
 ciphered, it requiring the labor of many men for many 
 years. Grammars and dictionaries were found in the 
 libraries, and, strangely enough, certain mistakes in them, 
 
REASON 183 
 
 a result which also well illustrates the wonders of rea- 
 soning. Nebuchadnezzar's bricks were found with his 
 name stamped upon them, although he lived so long ago 
 as when the temple of Solomon was still standing. 
 
 The principle of consistency is much more used than 
 we should have supposed, a great deal of reasoning rest- 
 ing upon it rather than upon the principle of induction. 
 Astronomy is a case. When we take into account that 
 looking at the planets with a good telescope is like look- 
 ing at objects with the naked eye twenty-five hundred 
 miles off, it becomes apparent how little we actually see 
 with our eyes. Astronomy rests rather upon consistency 
 of theory than upon observation, we assuming that to 
 be the truth about the heavenly bodies which perfectly 
 harmonizes with itself. The same thing is somewhat 
 true of physiology. It would be difficult to observe all 
 the processes of the body from beginning to end and in 
 connection with one another. Our physiology is in great 
 part merely a theory which is consistent with itself. 
 Geology exemplifies the same thing. Men pretend to 
 say what was the climate of Greenland millions of years 
 before they were born, a climate somewhat resembling 
 that of Florida, such as it might have been pleasant to 
 pass a winter in, had there been anybody on earth to 
 enjoy it. Agassiz made us believe that he knew how 
 the bowlders got where they now are, although no record 
 regarding them has come down to us from the misty 
 past. Physics may hkewise be appealed to in this con- 
 nection. Men undertake to say that throughout the uni- 
 verse no particle of existence is ever lost, though mani- 
 festly they have not been watching every particle of 
 existence from all eternity to see just what became of 
 
184 REASON 
 
 it. Theology, as we know, proceeds much the same way. 
 Men assure us what were the decrees of God in the 
 dateless past, what in future will be the issues of the 
 judgment. Reason, indeed, rivals clairvoyance, even if 
 all that is claimed for clairvoyance be true. Reason, 
 declared Cardinal Newman, reaches to the ends of the 
 universe and to the throne of God beyond them. 
 
 We have, in the third place, reasoning from dilemma, 
 disjunctive reasoning, as it is called, a subject naturally 
 falling under two heads, non-mathematical and mathe- 
 matical. 
 
 Of the first kind, the best known instance is that 
 of Demosthenes against ^schines — " ^schines either 
 joined in the public rejoicing or he did not. If he 
 joined in it, he was inconsistent with himself; if he did 
 not join in it, he was unpatriotic. On either horn, one 
 of which must be true, he was at fault." 
 
 The second part of the subject, that of mathematical 
 dilemmas, is of especial importance. 
 
 It is an example of this kind of reasoning when we 
 prove that two triangles are equal because the one is 
 neither greater nor less than the other, only three alter- 
 natives being possible, either that the triangles are equal, 
 or that one is greater than the other, or that one is less 
 than the other. 
 
 The method by which Archimedes proved that the 
 ratio of the diameter to the circumference is about 
 3. 141 6 is an example of disjunctive reasoning. For the 
 length of the perimeter of the regular inscribed or cir- 
 cumscribed polygon is determined by the length of one 
 of its sides. A side of the polygon, however, is a side 
 of one of the equal triangles into which the polygon can 
 
REASON 185 
 
 be divided. The side of the polygon, moreover, is deter- 
 mined by the length of half the diameter of the circle. 
 Out of the equal parts, therefore, into which the circum- 
 ference falls, Archimedes deduced the length of the cir- 
 cumference, the dilemma being that either the whole or 
 all its parts are the same. 
 
 Mathematical reasoning from dilemmas has applica- 
 tions to business. Take, for example, the device by 
 which one may pay for a house in installments. If a 
 man pay seven hundred and thirty-six dollars for a house 
 at once or pay one hundred dollars a year for ten years 
 it is the same thing, counting interest at six per cent., 
 whence he may have the privilege of making use of this 
 alternative — dilemma, if we wish to call it so. What is 
 much the same thing, i.f a man pay eight dollars a month 
 for ten years, he pays seven hundred and thirty-six dol- 
 lars for his house and six per cent, interest on what debt 
 remains till the whole is paid, this debt all the while 
 decreasing — he pays about this much, indeed, on this 
 plan. 
 
 The Prussian Government, after the Napoleonic wars, 
 obliged the great landlords to sell out part of their lands 
 in small pieces to peasants, the landlords receiving from 
 them a small sum each year for a term of years, the sums 
 exactly paying for the lands, together with interest. 
 
 What is called an endowment is arranged on the same 
 plan. If one pay two hundred and fifty-six dollars and 
 fifty cents to a trust company every year, this at six 
 per cent, compound interest will amount to ten thousand 
 dollars in twenty years. Anyone, accordingly, by pay- 
 ing in a certain sum each year may at the end of a cer- 
 tain time receive a certain sum. 
 
1 86 REASON 
 
 On the same principle it is shown that a man sixty 
 years old who has, since he was twenty-one, accumu- 
 lated sixty thousand dollars, has in reality saved no 
 more on the average than one dollar and seventy-five 
 cents a day, money at four per cent. We have the in- 
 stance also of a man who enjoyed exceptional advan- 
 tages in business and who, after fifty years of active 
 life, died worth three hundred thousand dollars. It is 
 shown, however, by mathematical calculation that, with 
 all his advantages, he saved on the average no more than 
 one thousand dollars a year, the rate of interest being 
 taken rather high. If at the beginning of the Christian 
 era, one cent had been put out at compound interest, 
 even at a very low rate, the amount of the same would 
 now be enough to buy out everything on earth. 
 
 The principle of paying by installments is also ex- 
 tended to what is known as irredeemable bonds. If 
 money be valued at two per cent., it is all one whether 
 a bank receive two per cent, on money for a hundred 
 years, getting at the end of that time the principal back, 
 or receive a trifle more than two per cent, for a hun- 
 dred years, not getting the principal back at all. 
 
 Another case of reasoning from dilemma is exempli- 
 fied in life insurance. Of any thousand persons of the 
 same age about the same number will die in a given 
 time. We know, therefore, beforehand, as it were, just 
 how long each person will live, since from a business 
 point of view it makes no difference whether one per- 
 son die or another. On the whole, just so many will 
 die in such a time anyhow. Every time of life, there- 
 fore, has its expectancy, as we say. If one is thirty- 
 three years old, he has the probability of living thirty- 
 
REASON 187 
 
 three years, but if fifty-three years old, the probabihty 
 of hving but nineteen years. On this basis it is that 
 every man pays according to his age to receive a certain 
 sum when he dies. For example, if one is twenty-five 
 years old, he pays about twenty dollars a year; if fifty 
 years old, about forty-five dollars; if sixty-nine years 
 old, about one hundred and nineteen dollars — any 
 one of them to receive at death one thousand dollars. A 
 man who is ninety years old would have to pay about 
 four hundred and eighty-five dollars a year to receive 
 a thousand dollars at death. 
 
 Not only is it known how many will die on the aver- 
 age each year, but it is also known how many will die 
 on the average in any specified time, say in twenty years. 
 It is possible, therefore, to insure one for twenty years 
 instead of for life, he receiving at the end of that time 
 the sum for which he was insured, the same as if he 
 had died. 
 
 The principle of life insurance, it is plain, can be 
 applied to a great many other subjects besides, it being 
 known as the doctrine of general averages. The best 
 known examples are fire and marine insurance. One by 
 paying so much annually is entitled to receive a certain 
 amount should his house or goods be burned, should his 
 ship or goods be lost at sea. The theory is that just 
 about so much property will on the average be destroyed 
 by fire anyhow in a given number of years, about so 
 much property in a given number of years be lost by 
 shipwreck. 
 
 The same principle is applied to the collection of 
 debts. It is known, for example, that in a given busi- 
 ness a certain percentage of the debts cannot be collected, 
 
185 REASON 
 
 say fifty per cent., or one-half. If, therefore, as much 
 again be charged, the matter of bad debts may be neg- 
 lected. As high charges, however, have the tendency 
 to keep those who will pay from making use of things, 
 it is manifest that the principle more especially applies 
 to a business wherein the loss by bad debts is small, say 
 five per cent. 
 
 The principle is also made use of in estimating things, 
 the yield of crops, for example. Suppose that we nail 
 four laths together so as to leave in the middle just one 
 square foot. Taking this frame into the field, we may 
 bring it down wherever we please, so that we enclose in 
 it just one square foot of the oats, wheat, or what other 
 grain grows in the field. Threshing this grain out and 
 weighing or measuring it, we know the yield per square 
 foot, multiplying which by the number of square feet in 
 an acre we know the yield per acre. To be more 
 accurate, we may try the same experiment in several 
 places of the field and take the average result of these 
 experiments. 
 
 We have the case of a landlord detecting the theft of 
 his tenant on the principle of general averages. Hav- 
 ing computed the number of hills of maize on his land, 
 and from trials in several places determined the yield 
 per hill, he knew beforehand about how much his share 
 of the maize should be, so that although the tenant 
 claimed that his own crib contained no more than his 
 own share, yet the landlord knew better. An investiga- 
 tion, indeed, demonstrated that under one of the cribs 
 the tenant had a cellar which he had filled with the 
 surplus. 
 
 It is often stated that in certain kinds of business, there 
 
REASON 189 
 
 being a great many such, ninety-eight per cent, of all 
 those who engage in them fail. The theory, however, 
 may be ventured that such business, scientifically, though 
 not morally, is of the nature of gambling. Those who 
 engage in it are like a man tossing up a penny. On the 
 average the penny comes down tails about as often as it 
 does heads. The result will be that nobody engaging in 
 such business will make anything. Not only ninety-eight 
 per cent, of those engaging in it fail, but one hundred 
 per cent. The few who seem to succeed in the business 
 really do so on account of cheap living, cheap help, or 
 something of the sort. 
 
 Here we have the doctrine of chances, namely, that it 
 is possible from the conditions of an event to express 
 in numbers what is the probability of its happening. La 
 Place, for example, undertook to show that, unless we 
 assume the truth of the nebular hypothesis, the improba- 
 bility of the planets being as they are is well nigh, if not 
 actually, infinite. The probability that a hungry dog v/ill 
 eat food when the same is placed before him has to be 
 expressed by such a large number as to be practically 
 infinity. We have, indeed, the joke of a German student, 
 who said he would attend a lecture at the university pro- 
 vided his dog did not eat the sausage which he was about 
 to offer him. 
 
 Reasoning from example, the inductive process, de- 
 pends on the principle which we may designate as the 
 sameness of causes — what is observed of a combination of 
 things will always happen upon such combinations, like 
 causes always producing like effects. 
 
 This kind of reasoning finds illustration in the knowl- 
 edge we have obtained of electricity and of chemistry. 
 
190 REASON 
 
 Volta observed that two metals connected by wires, 
 tin and copper say, if a moist substance be between them, 
 generate a current of electricity. Galvanic batteries are, 
 as a matter of fact, only an example of this, the metals 
 used being ordinarily zinc and copper, the moist sub- 
 stance between them vitriol water. Such a combination 
 of things actually produces electricity — it will therefore 
 always produce it, like causes being under the necessity 
 of giving rise to like effects. This is a reasoning pos- 
 sible to be made from one observation merely, provided 
 that observation be thorough and exhaustive, the force 
 of the reasoning not depending on the number of exam- 
 ples, but on the identity of causes. 
 
 Ampere discovered that a spiral current of electricity 
 has just the same effect as a magnet, what is the same 
 thing, that an electro-magnet is possible, that is to say, 
 a magnet that can be made or unmade at pleasure. 
 
 Faraday observed that breaking currents of magnets 
 starts currents in the opposite direction. Magnets re- 
 volving so as to pass an armature, or an armature so as 
 to pass magnets, therefore, generate a current of elec- 
 tricity, as we observe in the use of the dynamo. 
 
 We have thus three simple reasonings from example 
 which have revolutionized the world about us. The 
 lighting of houses and streets by electricity, the moving 
 of cars and wagons by it, and the sending of messages 
 by it — these all are dependent on one or more of these 
 simple reasonings. 
 
 These men, then — ^Volta, Ampere, and Faraday — may 
 be considered as a triumvirate, exercising government 
 over utilities, it being by their perm^ission that we have 
 our houses lighted, ride on cars, and forward messages. 
 
REASON 191 
 
 The reasoning of Volta is practically the fundamental 
 one, since it led to the others, but this reasoning itself 
 was derived from an observation made by Galvani that 
 the flesh of 'a frog placed between two metals produces 
 a current of electricity. 
 
 Galvani made the experiment of hanging skinned 
 frogs on the railing of his balcony, thinking he might 
 elicit some fact relative to animal electricity. The wind 
 swaying the frogs to one side caused them to touch the 
 upright rods. The frogs, being thus between two metals, 
 twitched as if they were alive. This was the original 
 battery, the frog battery, we may call it, the battery from 
 which all others have descended. 
 
 Galvani was led to make this experiment, as tradition 
 has it, because his assistant, operating an electric ma- 
 chine, had noticed that a skinned frog which he touched 
 with his knife twitched and jerked its muscles. Madame 
 Galvani, in skinning those frogs for dinner, did better 
 than she knew, furnished her husband with the means 
 of making one of the greatest discoveries on record. In 
 its most primitive form, then, the reasoning on which 
 the battery depends was made by Galvani, and it is in 
 recognition of this service that the battery is called 
 galvanic. 
 
 It is among the curiosities of destiny that, though by 
 means of this reasoning of Galvani so many men have 
 been enriched and so many afforded conveniences, he 
 himself was neglected and died in poverty, a proof of 
 the saying, " He saved others, himself he could not 
 save." At this late day, however, a statue to him has 
 been erected in Bologna, where he made his famous 
 reasoning. 
 
192 REASON 
 
 Reasoning from example is equally important in the 
 case of chemistry. Priestley observed that a certain form 
 of mercury, known as red oxide, when it is sufficiently 
 heated, gives off oxygen, a gas which he found supports 
 combustion. As like causes produce like effects, it was 
 established that whenever and wherever this kind of 
 mercury is in this way heated oxygen is sure to be 
 given off. 
 
 It has been said that Priestley discovered oxygen, men 
 speaking as if what he did was after the manner of his 
 finding a coin in his path. This, however, is not what 
 he actually accomplished. What he did was to make a 
 reasoning, namely, that the heating of red oxide of 
 mercury, as he heated it, will evermore cause it to give 
 off oxygen. Any savage, indeed, might have observed 
 all that Priestley saw without being any wiser. The point 
 is that what Priestley brought to pass was not due to 
 experiment merely. The experiment, for all we know, 
 and probably, was made many times before. The rea- 
 soning could not have been made without the experiment, 
 to be sure, yet it was the reasoning from this experiment 
 that was of chief importance. 
 
 By observations similar to those of Priestley, though 
 these were often complex, it has been ascertained how 
 each of the so-called chemical elements, more than sev- 
 enty-five in number, can be obtained. Not only so, but 
 it has been ascertained how by the removal or addition 
 of some elements useful materials can be obtained from 
 certain things. We have thus, through simple reasoning 
 from example, the chemical receipts for the making of 
 commercial products. 
 
 So many useful articles are manufactured by the use 
 
REASON 193 
 
 of these receipts that the knowledge of the chiemist may 
 be said to have revolutionized industry. 
 
 The knowledge of the chemist over a wide range of 
 subjects is ubiquitous and eternal. The chemist, although 
 he has never been to Africa, will yet tell you in all con- 
 fidence that a certain combination of materials will there 
 produce water-gas the same as it does here. The par- 
 ticular combination of materials and conditions which are 
 known to produce it now will produce it a thousand years 
 hence. He sees to the ends of the earth and to the re- 
 motest ages of the future. He is clairvoyant and prophet. 
 
 Were it true that all the reasonings which have estab- 
 lished chemistry were actually made by Priestley and 
 derived from him by others, then, it might be said, he 
 gave mankind permission to have the things which, 
 thanks to chemistry, they enjoy; but the principle is not 
 changed because there were many reasonings, one made 
 by one man and one by another. For from these men, 
 taking them collectively, mankind gets permission to have 
 these things. Priestley may, in fact, stand as the repre- 
 sentative of them, the chairman of the committee, so to 
 say, for providing people with good things. 
 
 Around the grave of Priestley an assemblage of scien- 
 tists has paid him the respect to which he was entitled 
 for the importance of his discovery, besides, a tablet to 
 his memory has been set up in one of the churches of 
 Philadelphia. 
 
 Thus he is somewhat compensated for the fact that 
 when he was a young man he received but one hundred 
 and fifty dollars a year for preaching and that he paid 
 a quack a hundred dollars to cure him of stammering, 
 without avail. He is also somewhat compensated for 
 
194 REASON 
 
 the fact that, owing to his sympathy with the French 
 revolutionists, a mob burned down both his house and 
 his church, besides also destroying his papers and appa- 
 ratus, this occurring in England previous to his em- 
 barkation for America. He is also somewhat compen- 
 sated for the fact that he failed, owing to his view of 
 the Trinity, to be appointed to accompany Captain Cook 
 to the South Seas. 
 
 It is well known that Priestley was a Calvinist and 
 believed, therefore, that whatsoever comes to pass has 
 been determined to do so beforehand. Reflection on 
 this doubtless led him to the view that like causes pro- 
 duce like effects. Whatever a given combination of 
 materials under the same conditions will produce, they 
 will under those conditions any time produce. This, as 
 was said, was the principle on which he proceeded. 
 
 ThiSjJn fact, is the same thing as the principle of the 
 identity of things, namely, that every ultimate force of 
 nature always being the same, existing as it does without 
 reference to time, will always produce its one sole effect. 
 
 Inductive reasoning, it should be observed, is, like all 
 other reasoning, merely syllogistic, the major premise 
 being here the principle that like causes produce like 
 effects. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 SYSTEMATIZATION 
 
 The mind is able not only to discover specific con- 
 ceptions of the aspects of things, but is also able to dis- 
 cover systems of these conceptions, attaining in this way 
 specific classifications. This process of the mind we may 
 call systematization. It is not creation, the systems being 
 of things as they are. 
 
 The principal kinds of systems which the mind thus 
 arrives at, speaking generally, are mathematical, physical, 
 biological, and psychological. 
 
 The decimal notation is an instance of the mathe- 
 matical kind. We number things by a system of the 
 powers of lo. Thus, the first power of lo is lo, the 
 second power of lo is lOO, the third power of lo is i,ooo, 
 and so on. Moreover, i is the zero power of lo, and the 
 reciprocals of the powers of lo are powers indicated by 
 negative exponents. Then, how many times a power is 
 taken we show by a coefficient. To take an illustration, 
 the number three thousand five hundred sixty-one and 
 seventy-five hundredths is written 3,561.75, as if it were 
 3a^ -f 5a^ -f 6a -f a9 -f- ya~^ + 50""^ (a = 10). We omit 
 in practice the literal part, understanding it merely. On 
 this plan, it is plain, we can designate in the briefest way 
 imaginable any number whatsoever. The mind reached 
 a great conception, therefore, when it discovered the 
 decimal system, or rather, as we might say, the power 
 
 195 
 
196 SYSTEMATIZATION 
 
 system, since the principle can be applied no matter what 
 the base. 
 
 The mind also attains to a system of vast importance 
 when it discovers that calculations depend on finding the 
 sum or difference of numbers, and in a simple and easy 
 manner. Numbers in the first place are whole or frac- 
 tional, and they are like or unlike. The process of find- 
 ing the sum of unlike numbers is addition, which we 
 perform merely by adding units and carrying tens, not 
 having to have a frame with balls on it, as the Chinese 
 do. The process of finding the sum of like numbers is 
 multiplication, which we perform by multiplying units 
 and carrying tens, writing each result in the proper col- 
 umn. The process of finding the difference between two 
 numbers or what remainder survives when one num- 
 ber is taken from another is subtraction, which we per- 
 form by subtracting units and carrying tens. The proc- 
 ess of finding how many like numbers can be subtracted 
 from a given number and what the remainder is is 
 division, which we perform by dividing units and carry- 
 ing tens. The process of multiplication, when the multi- 
 plier is the same as the multiplicand, is involution, and 
 the process of division, when the quotient is the same 
 number as the divisor, is evolution. Any case whatso- 
 ever of finding the sum or difference of whole numbers 
 is thus brought under one or the other of these six 
 processes, each very simple in itself, a systematization 
 hardly to be overestimated. To perform all these opera- 
 tions, moreover, we have merely to know the tables up 
 to ten. Fractional addition and subtraction are per- 
 formed by reduction to a common denominator, and then 
 procedure as in the case of whole numbers. Fractional 
 
SYSTEM ATIZATION 197 
 
 multiplication is performed by multiplying the numera- 
 tors for a new numerator, the denominators for a new 
 denominator. This process, which includes in itself all 
 cases of multiplying fractions, also includes in itself all 
 cases of the division of fractions, with this proviso only, 
 that the divisor be inverted. If the fractions are ex- 
 pressed decimally, the operations, it is plain, are the same 
 in all respects as in whole numbers. 
 
 It is related by a man that when he was a boy and 
 began to attend school, though he was now eleven years 
 old, he was greatly impressed by seeing an older pupil 
 write several fractions on the board and after a simple 
 process write their exact sum in whole numbers and 
 parts thereof, and well he might have been impressed. 
 Indeed, the papers of the Egyptians show us that the 
 labor was great whereby the human mind so systematized 
 conceptions as to be able to accomplish such a feat. 
 
 Series, such as the binomial, the arithmetic, the geo- 
 metric, and the logarithmic, also show systematization. 
 
 The binomial series expresses the amount of the sum 
 or difference of any two numbers multiplied or divided 
 by itself or both, any number of times. All this, how-, 
 ever, can be put into the form of a binomial multiplied 
 by itself any number of times, since we can use nega- 
 tive and fractional exponents as well as positive and 
 integral ones. We can also reduce the serial part of the 
 expansion to the amount of i plus or minus any num- 
 ber, raised to any power. The series will then consist 
 of I plus the powers of the number which was added to 
 I, from zero upward or from zero downward, and with 
 certain coefficients which follow a law. The coefficient 
 of the first power of the number is the exponent divided 
 
198 S YSTEM ATIZ ATION 
 
 by I, the coefficient of the second power is the product 
 of the exponent into a number i less than the exponent, 
 this product divided by i times 2, the coefficient of the 
 third power is the exponent multipHed by a number i 
 less than the exponent and by a number 2 less than the 
 exponent, this product divided by i times 2 times 3, and 
 so on. Here, then, we have a great means of making 
 calculation, since in one series, proceeding according to 
 laws, we have grasped all the operations of arithmetic. 
 
 An arithmetic series is one in which the terms increase 
 or decrease by a common difference. Five points are 
 involved, the first term, the last term, the common dif- 
 ference, the number of terms, and the sum of all the 
 terms, any three of which being known, the others can 
 be found on principle, whence the advantage of this 
 series. 
 
 A geometric series is one in which the terms differ 
 in a constant ratio, the series being increasing if the 
 ratio is integral, decreasing if it is fractional, and in- 
 volves the five points, any two of which are determined 
 by the other three. 
 
 An arithmetic series, moreover, bears a certain rela- 
 tion to a geometric one, for if we take the series 10 + 
 100-1-1,000+10,000, and so on, we observe that it 
 corresponds to the series 14-2 + 34-4, and so on, 
 since each term in the second series designates to what 
 power 10 must be raised to produce the corresponding 
 term in the first series. Now every number may be 
 considered as the sum of a geometric series, that is to 
 say, as some power of 10 multiplied by i. There is 
 corresponding to every number, therefore, another called 
 its exponent which shows to what power 10 is to be 
 
SYSTEM ATIZATION 199 
 
 raised to produce it. Having, then, a table of these ex- 
 ponents, called a logarithmic table, we can multiply 
 numbers without multiplying them, divide them without 
 dividing them, and the like, get at arithmetic results 
 through the exponents. What a triumph of the mind 
 in systematization ! 
 
 The logarithm of any number depends on a series of 
 the powers of a number i less than that number, the 
 first power divided by i, the second by 2, and so on, the 
 odd terms being plus and the even terms minus. Thus 
 from this logarithmic series and its derivatives we can 
 find the logarithm of any number whatsoever. 
 
 Another class of mathematical systematization is that 
 which has to do with surfaces and solids. Properties 
 of the different kinds of polygons and of circles and of 
 the different kinds of polyhedrons and of spheres and 
 of cylinders and of cones are subject to a system of con- 
 ceptions. Take, for example, that simple case that the 
 area of any triangle is equal to the product of the base 
 into half the altitude. What an importance must attach 
 to it! Take also the case that the surface of a globe is 
 the same as that of a cylinder with the same diameter. 
 Every solid, moreover, has its contents determined by 
 the area of some surface or surfaces, and these surfaces 
 are in the last resort resolvable into triangles. How 
 great, then, must be the importance of the system of 
 conceptions under which triangles exist! It is found, 
 indeed, that if we know one side of a triangle, we can 
 find the other two sides on principle, provided we also 
 know two of the angles, or knowing one angle and two 
 sides we can find the other side and angles. We come 
 thus to have what are called trigonometrical formulae 
 
200 SYSTEM ATIZATION 
 
 for finding the dimensions of triangles. What is more, 
 geometrical figures may be algebraically expressed, geo- 
 metrical truths arrived at analytically. 
 
 Physical systematization, as we may call it, is exem- 
 plified in what we know of astronomy, geography, and 
 geology. 
 
 The sun, moon, and planets have their motions, which 
 have been calculated with great precision. We can say 
 just at what time the sun will rise a thousand years from 
 to-day, what position the moon and the planets will then 
 be in. 
 
 Another physical systematization, and one of great 
 importance, is that which is geographical. We know the 
 system of the diversities of lands on the globe, and how 
 each continent, island, peninsula, cape, and isthmus is 
 situated with reference to the rest of the world. In the 
 same way we know the system of the diversities of 
 waters. We know the different countries of the earth, 
 their cities, their inhabitants, and their productions. 
 
 We know, moreover, the different strata of the earth 
 and what is characteristic of each, the Silurian, Devo- 
 nian, and the like. 
 
 We descend with our systematization, however, more 
 deeply still into the physical make-up of things. 
 
 First, we have a system of the conceptions according 
 to which the movements of bodies take place. For ex- 
 ample, a traveler in Saxony, together with his friend, 
 coming to a river which he wished to cross, got into a 
 small boat which was fastened to a wire by a swivel, 
 the wire extending across the river and being fastened 
 at either end. The manager of the boat merely struck 
 the swivel a light blow, when the boat of itself moved 
 
SYSTEM ATIZATION 201 
 
 to the other side of the river. The man would not have 
 been more surprised if a miracle had taken place, hav- 
 ing for the moment forgotten to reflect on the principle 
 according to which forces are compounded. For it was 
 really the current of the river which drove the boat over, 
 as the man's friend explained to him, the principle being 
 that of the parallelogram of forces, that on which a ship 
 sails. 
 
 Instances also might be given of the laws of falling 
 bodies, of the laws of pendulums, and of the laws of 
 machines. 
 
 Secondly, we have a system of conceptions according 
 to which water acts, hydrostatic systematization, we may 
 call it, and a system of conceptions according to which 
 air acts. 
 
 Water presses equally in all directions, the principle 
 on which any weight however small can lift any v/eight 
 however large, the principle of the hydraulic press. 
 Water makes bodies immersed in it lighter by the weight 
 of water displaced, the principle on which specific gravi- 
 ties are determined. Think of the importance of this, 
 a means by which a substance can be identified! For 
 the specific gravity of anything, say of gold, is the ratio 
 of a pound of it to the weight of water of the same size. 
 By means of this principle it was that Archimedes could 
 divine that a crown which it was claimed was made of 
 pure gold really contained alloy. 
 
 We have also a system of conceptions relating to air, 
 for example, the air exerts a pressure of several pounds 
 to the square inch, or rather a pressure which varies with 
 the condition of the air, the principle of the barometer. 
 
 The waves of air creating sounds are subject to a 
 
202 SYSTEM ATIZATION 
 
 system of conceptions on which depends music. For 
 example, we are able to say beforehand that the num- 
 ber of vibrations of a tightened string per second varies 
 as the square root of the tension. We are able to say 
 that musical sounds must conform to certain arithmetic 
 ratios, and the like. 
 
 Thirdly, we have systems of conceptions about heat, 
 about light, and about electricity. 
 
 Regarding heat, we have it established that the change 
 of temperature changes proportionately the size of a 
 thing, different substances having different coefhcients of 
 expansion, that is to say, each a number to indicate its 
 enlargement by heat. Each substance, too, has its boil- 
 ing point, that of mercury, for example, being more than 
 three times higher than that of water. Moreover, heat 
 can be transformed into motion, as we say, so much heat 
 producing so much effect. 
 
 Regarding light, we have it established that it is 
 reflected and refracted in definite ways, the angle of 
 reflection being the same as that of incidence, and the 
 angle of refraction being determined by the medium. 
 Examples of mirrors we have explained out of the law 
 of reflection, examples of lenses out of the law of re- 
 fraction. It is found also that the light from a sub- 
 stance in flames gives a spectrum, certain lines by which 
 the substance can be identified, whether it be compounded 
 with other substances or not. 
 
 Regarding electricity, we have it established that posi- 
 tive repels positive, but attracts negative, that negative 
 repels negative, but attracts positive. The generation 
 and effectuality of electricity, moreover, is in accordance 
 with mathematical forms. When a cable which was laid 
 
SYSTEMATIZATION 203 
 
 in the ocean broke, Thomson, it is said, was able, on 
 mathematical grounds, to say where in that long stretch 
 the breakage had taken place. 
 
 Fourthly, we have systems of conceptions respecting 
 the chemical conditions of matter. For each compound 
 substance we have a formula expressing how it is con- 
 stituted, as, for example, HgO for water. When, indeed, 
 we take into consideration the vast number of these 
 formulae which we possess, applying with precision to 
 all ordinary things, we are made aware what a power 
 we have over nature in the comprehension of the sys- 
 tem of chemistry. 
 
 The physical systematization which the mind has been 
 able to arrive at we find to be a wonderful thing. We 
 are possessed of an intricate system of conceptions into 
 which nature fits, the net, so to say, into which the uni- 
 verse is constructed, to borrow an expression from 
 Hegel. It is to be observed, too, that these are not 
 mere vague conceptions, but are specific in their char- 
 acter. It must be evident, therefore, that the mind of 
 man has gained such an advance beyond that of the 
 brute as to make comparison between the one and the 
 other ludicrous. This is not to say that there is no 
 advantage in such a comparison, as indeed there is, but 
 it is to say that the mind of man has so far outstripped 
 that of the brute that the mind of the brute has no 
 chance of ever approaching it. The minds of savages, 
 it is also apparent, having made little progress in sys- 
 tematization, are so inferior to the minds of many others 
 that the comparison between the mind of a savage and 
 that of a Gladstone, for example, is ridiculous. The 
 minds of clowns, it is also clear, can have little impor- 
 
204 SYSTEMATIZATION 
 
 tance in comparison with the minds of scientists. That 
 the minds of all men can in time be raised up into sys- 
 tematization we must indeed hope, but that they are not 
 yet raised up into it we must also acknowledge. 
 
 Biological systematization is either botanic or zoolog- 
 ical, as it pertains either to plants or to animals. 
 
 The different kinds of vegetable existences in the 
 world, which are certainly more than one hundred thou- 
 sand, are grouped into a few classes. We have, in the 
 first place, a class made up of slime-moulds, bacteria, 
 yeast-plants, gutter-plants, and the like, the whole class 
 sometimes called protophytes. We have, in the second 
 place, a class made up of water-nets, desmids, diatoms, 
 and the like, the whole class sometimes called zygospores. 
 We have, in the third place, a class made up of sargas- 
 sums, rock-weeds, blight-plants, and the like, the whole 
 class sometimes called oospores. We have, in the fourth 
 place, a class made up of dulses, truffles, morels, mush- 
 rooms, rusts, black-knots, ergots, and the like, the whole 
 class sometimes called carpospores. We have, in the 
 fifth place, a class made up of liverworts and mosses and 
 the like, the whole class sometimes called bryophytes. 
 We have, in the sixth place, a class made up of horsetails, 
 ferns, pepperworts, and the like, the whole class some- 
 times called pteridophytes. We have, in the seventh 
 place, a class made up of cycads, pines, and welwitschias, 
 the whole class sometimes called gymnosperms. We 
 have, in the eighth place, what are sometimes called 
 angiosperms, a class divided into monocotyledons and 
 dicotyledons. 
 
 If, then, we had at hand, as we might easily have, 
 bacteria, diatoms, seaweeds, mushrooms, mosses, ferns, 
 
SYSTEMATIZATION 205 
 
 cedars, palms, and oaks, we should have the whole 
 vegetable kingdom assembled, so to say, in our presence, 
 such systematization has the mind arrived at relative to 
 plants. 
 
 The monocotyledons are found to consist of about fifty 
 kinds, of which representatives might be taken, such as 
 grasses, lilies, yams, bananas, palms, and so on, all 
 of which if we had them assembled would represent to 
 us this whole division of angiosperms. 
 
 Under the same kind, or order, as it is called, many 
 of the varieties of monocotyledons are small and some 
 insignificant, yet almost any kind, it appears, had the 
 capability to produce trees. The bamboo, for example, 
 is the tree of the grass family. 
 
 The dicotyledons are found to consist of three times 
 or more as many kinds as the other division, representa- 
 tives of which are oaks, nutmegs, beets, sage, and so on. 
 We can say of these also that if we had them all in one 
 company they would represent to us all the divisions of 
 the angiosperms, by far the most important portion of 
 the vegetable kingdom. 
 
 It is furthermore to be taken into account that each 
 of these classes of plants is divided into others, and these 
 often into still others, so that the divisions finally reached 
 are very specific and not mere generalities, as were the 
 primitive divisions made by mankind. The mind has 
 the vegetable kingdom fast in a net, as it were. 
 
 But not only does the mind have a systematization of 
 the whole vegetable kingdom as regards kinds. It also 
 has a systematization of the forms which all plants tend 
 to take. First, we have the stem, which may become 
 runners, rootstocks, tubers, corms, axes, tendrils, and 
 
206 SYSTEMATIZATION 
 
 thorns. Secondly, we have the leaf, which may become 
 bracts, scales, envelopes, stamens, carpels, tendrils, and 
 spines. Thirdly, we have the bark, which may become 
 hairs, bristles, prickles, scales, glands, and ovules. 
 Fourthly, we have the root, which may become what are 
 called aerial roots or the so-called suckers of parasites, 
 in addition to what we usually call roots. Again, all 
 forms of vegetation are resolvable into cells, which them- 
 selves are subject to systematization. 
 
 The countless animals of the world fall into a very 
 few classes. Indeed, if we had an amoeba, a sponge, a 
 polyp, a starfish, a worm, an oyster, a lobster, a fly, and 
 a vertebrate, we should possess the whole kingdom. 
 
 The class to which man belongs, by far the most im- 
 portant, the vertebrate, itself falls into five classes, fishes, 
 amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals, the latter 
 being of all animals those of chief note!. 
 
 We can readily find about us animals to represent 
 half of the mammals or more, opossums, moles, bats, 
 cats, rats, oxen, and any of our own species, but we 
 should have to go to the ocean for whales and sea-cows, 
 to India or Africa for an elephant, to Syria or Arabia 
 for a cony, to Australia for a duckbill, and to South 
 America for a sloth. If, however, we had in a small 
 park, as we might easily have, a duckbill, an opossum, 
 a sloth, rats, moles, bats, a whale, a sea-cow, an elephant, 
 conies, an ox, cats, and a man or an ape, we should have 
 present representatives of the whole class of mammals, 
 thirteen in number. 
 
 Each of the classes of animals, however, falls into 
 others, which are in the case of some classes still far- 
 ther divided, so that the divisions which we have attained 
 
SYSTEMATIZATION 20/ 
 
 of animals map out their kingdom for us with great pre- 
 cision. We have reached specific distinctions. We have 
 thus the whole animal kingdom fast in a net of systems, 
 an advantage which is hardly to be overrated. 
 
 Moreover, of the higher kinds, any individual animal 
 is reducible to certain systems, as the tegumentary, the 
 osseous, the muscular, the digestive, the secretory, the 
 circulatory, the respiratory, the nervous, and the like. 
 Indeed, these systems fall into various forms as they are 
 found in this or in that kind of an animal. An animal 
 body also reduces to tissues, and these to cells. Indeed, 
 every animal body, it is said, has been built up from a 
 single cell. 
 
 Psychological systematizations are also attained, gram- 
 matical, logical, ethical, sesthetical, and metaphysical. 
 
 Every word belongs to one or the other of a few 
 classes. The names of things are found to have certain 
 forms for the plural and are in certain cases. There are 
 certain distinctions to indicate gender. Adjectives have 
 forms of comparison. Verbs have person, number, mood, 
 tense, and voice. We have adverbs of time, place, man- 
 ner. We have conjunctions, relative and personal pro- 
 nouns. We have, in short, a system of grammar. 
 
 We have also a systematization of thought itself, hav- 
 ing discovered that we make conclusions in a certain 
 form which may be reduced to the syllogism, this being 
 made up of judgments, which themselves are constituted 
 out of notions. 
 
 Notions are individual or general. This is the pri- 
 mary distinction. Proper nouns, for example, denote 
 individual existences, but common nouns denote what is 
 common to several individuals. The same distinction, 
 
2o8 SYSTEMATIZATION 
 
 of course, applies to the terms in which notions are 
 expressed. 
 
 A systematization has also been made of the ways in 
 which one notion may stand to another, what notions 
 are consistent with each other, what notions are not, the 
 same thing applying to terms. 
 
 Judgments and the propositions standing for them 
 are categorical, hypothetical, or disjunctive, hypothetical 
 propositions usually containing the word if, and disjunc- 
 tive ones the words either, or. Judgments and the 
 propositions standing for them are affirmative or nega- 
 tive, the latter propositions usually containing the word 
 not. Judgments and the propositions standing for them 
 are universal or particular, universal propositions usu- 
 ally containing the word all, particular propositions the 
 word some. 
 
 Universal judgments and propositions, if affirmative, 
 are designated by the letter A, \{ negative by the letter 
 E, while particular judgments and propositions, if af- 
 firmative, are designated by the letter /, if negative by 
 the letter 0. All the ways, therefore, which the several 
 kinds of judgments can stand to one another are exhib- 
 ited by certain combinations of these letters. 
 
 Syllogisms are categorical, hypothetical, or disjunc- 
 tive, accordingly as the first judgment or proposition in 
 them is the one or the other of these kinds, the categori- 
 cal, however, being the primary form from which the 
 others follow, an example of which is. All men are mor- 
 tal, Socrates was a man — Socrates was mortal, which, 
 it will be observed, means no more than this, that 
 Socrates was mortal because he was human, we attribut- 
 ing to Socrates the characteristic mortality because it 
 
SYSTEM ATIZATION 209 
 
 was a characteristic of that characteristic of him which 
 we denominate humanity. The first judgment or propo- 
 sition in a syllogism is called the major premise and the 
 second the minor, the third being called the conclusion. 
 
 Moreover, as any syllogism can be expressed by some 
 arrangement of three of the letters, A, E, I, O, and each 
 judgment or proposition in them by some arrangement 
 of two of the letters x, y, z, all possible syllogisms are 
 easily canvassed and their peculiarities pointed out, it 
 being found that only a few of these are valid, the which 
 have names, as, for instance, Barbara, for a syllogism 
 consisting of three universal affirmative judgments or 
 propositions. 
 
 We have likewise a systematization of rules for the 
 guidance of our thought. 
 
 As this relates to notions, it is concerned chiefly with 
 definitions, that they be clear and precise, or with divi- 
 sions, that they be exhaustive and no one of them include 
 any of the others. 
 
 Moreover, when a notion or term contains others it 
 is said to be the genus, and the notions or terms con- 
 tained in it are said to be species, and that which dis- 
 tinguishes a species from its genus is called the essential 
 difference. 
 
 As a systematization of rules relates to judgments or 
 propositions, it is concerned chiefly with what is known 
 as conversion, what changes are necessary, so that the 
 subject may take the place of the predicate and the 
 truth be preserved. 
 
 As a systematization of rules relates to syllogisms, it 
 is concerned with methods of testing conclusions, whether 
 they be valid or not. It is settled as a general principle 
 
210 SYSTEM ATIZATION 
 
 that nothing follows from mere negatives or from mere 
 particulars, a universal judgment or proposition being 
 necessary to a just conclusion, and that if one premise 
 be negative or particular, so also must be the conclusion. 
 No more can be contained in the conclusion than was 
 contained in the premises. Moreover, no syllogism can 
 have four judgments or propositions, four notions or 
 terms in it. 
 
 Again, it is a rule of procedure in reasoning that 
 wherein things alone agree or differ is to be found the 
 antecedent of a given consequent. 
 
 Some special methods also are set forth for guidance 
 in particular cases. If we assign a reason for a premise, 
 we have an epichirema, as, for example, this : " The 
 mixture taken was poisonous because it contained strych- 
 nine; it was deliberately drunk by the person; he, there- 
 fore, committed suicide." If we make one conclusion 
 follow upon another in a chain we have a sorites, as, for 
 example, what was stated by Frederick Douglass to the 
 colored people : " Without wealth there is no leisure, 
 without leisure there is no thought, and without thought 
 there is no progress." If we prove a worse case than 
 the one in question we have an a fortiori, for example, 
 " I can't walk^ much more I can't run." If we show 
 that the opposite of a proposition is absurd we have a 
 reductio ad absurdum. If we show that on either sup- 
 position, one or the other of which must be true, a con- 
 clusion follows, we have a dilemma, as, for example, 
 " With one draught it is impossible to take a draught 
 in the double corner of a checker-board, this draught 
 being capable of being moved in either of two spaces." 
 If our reasoning proceed from antecedents to conse- 
 
SYSTEMATIZATION 211 
 
 quents it is said to be a priori, if from consequents to 
 antecedents, d posteriori. Lastly, certain persistent fal- 
 lacies are pointed out, ambiguous middle, begging the 
 question, mistaking the point, argumentum ad hominem, 
 propter hoc, etc. 
 
 We have, moreover, as everybody knows, what are 
 called systems of ethics, the same being divided into 
 theoretical and practical. 
 
 The ground of right is said to be in the will of God, 
 in the nature of things, or in the end for which we exist, 
 these manifestly, however, all coming to the same thing, 
 the nature of things exhibiting the will of God and the 
 end of our existence being a part of the nature of things. 
 
 Duty falls into a system, being first what one owes 
 to God, secondly what he owes to mankind, thirdly what 
 he owes to animals. 
 
 Duties to mankind are concerned with health, prop- 
 erty, propriety, companionship, and knowledge. For 
 these are ends of our being, or at least necessarily in- 
 volved in the ends of our being. We are naturally 
 obligated, therefore, to respect them not only in our- 
 selves, but in others ; for example, we cannot rightfully 
 mar the bodily perfection of another, take away his 
 property, discourteously treat him, keep from him proper 
 social enjoyment, or tell him falsehoods. Lying, for 
 instance, is merely depriving one of knowledge to which 
 he is entitled. 
 
 The mind also forms aesthetic systematizations, as must 
 be evident on a moment's reflection. For all are agreed 
 that a beautiful thing is in certain definite respects dis- 
 tinguished from an ugly one. They will also point out 
 in what these respects consist. Karnes declares that 
 
212 SYSTEMATIZATION 
 
 artists have in all ages been governed by a taste for sim- 
 plicity. Why this should have been so he undertakes to 
 say. The mind can know things only under the form 
 of unity, which makes it difficult for it to give attention 
 to complicated circumstances and crowded ornaments; 
 besides, says he, the mind attached to beauties of a high 
 rank cannot descend to inferior beauties. He states also 
 that regularity is an element of beauty, we being pleased 
 with a due proportion of parts in a thing. Purpose he 
 mentions as still another element of beauty — anything 
 to please us must have some aim, must come to some 
 point. Again, he designates a want of variety as being 
 disagreeable to us. Now all this and countless other such 
 observations are gathered up into the systematization 
 that what is beautiful is that which amid variety main- 
 tains unity. For illustration, what is regular, that is to 
 say, what is symmetrical, is that which has the same 
 thing in different parts, is beautiful. Again, what has 
 purpose has a unity of details. 
 
 The mind also makes a systematization of the systems 
 of truth, such systematization constituting metaphysics, 
 which, however, has had to advance gradually, as the sys- 
 tems of truth were gotten at better and better. 
 
 Aristotle, more than two thousand years ago, reduced 
 all existence to system with the principle of what he 
 designated as entelechy, namely, organization which con- 
 forms to an idea while ever materially varying. The 
 human body, for example, is an entelechy — while no two 
 moments the same, it is yet always the same. The whole 
 universe is an entelechy — its idea is each moment ex- 
 pressed in the flow of events. He was led to his doc- 
 trine by the doctrine of Plato, that the indwelling prin- 
 
SYSTEM ATI2ATI0N 213 
 
 ciple of everything is its idea — everything exists on a 
 pattern. For example, every triangle, in that it is a 
 triangle, conforms to a type. 
 
 Plato obtained his doctrine from that of Socrates, 
 which was to the effect that the universal notion of a 
 thing is that in which its essence consists. That in which 
 the things of a class are the same is what puts them in 
 that class. 
 
 Plotinus, on the basis of Aristotle's systematization of 
 the universe, arrived at the notion of its unity, the sys- 
 tem of the truth of things is the expression of one power, 
 he therefore, to this extent, enhanced the previous sys- 
 tematization. 
 
 Athanasius improved this in that he founded what is 
 known as trinitarianism, taking the word here in a philo- 
 sophical, not in a popular sense, seeing that he pointed 
 out how the system of the truth of things, called by him 
 the Logos, is one with the unity of the world, as well 
 as with the systematization of things in men's minds. 
 The Father is the one primeval power, the Son is the 
 system of the truth of things, the Spirit is the guide of 
 men to the truth, and yet these three are one and the 
 same. 
 
 The question having been forced on the minds of men 
 what the universal essence in any case is, it was deter- 
 mined that it must be certain aspects of individual 
 things, not a generality existing outside them merely. 
 There is a sense, therefore, in which the one power of 
 the universe is immanent in things. 
 
 Descartes, then, reached the doctrine that the whole 
 system of the truth of things is that of matter and that 
 of mind, absolute certitude about them being guaranteed 
 
214 SYSTEMATIZATION 
 
 by the nature of mind itself, which cannot doubt that 
 it, doubting, doubts — it knows something for certain. 
 Whatsoever else it knows with equal certainty, it cer- 
 tainly knows. 
 
 The question, however, necessarily arose, How are 
 mind and matter related to each other? Those who 
 showed a connection of mind and matter on general prin- 
 ciples were Malebranche, Spinoza, and Leibnitz — hence 
 called rationalists. Those who showed the same con- 
 nection from experience were Locke, Berkeley, and 
 Hume — hence called empiricists. Those who showed the 
 connection rationally and empirically at the same time 
 were Kant, Herbart, and Lotze — hence called respec- 
 tively transcendentalist, realistic individualist, and ideal 
 realist. 
 
 Granting, however, the connection of mind and mat- 
 ter on general principles as well as from experience, the 
 question still remained. How are mind and matter re- 
 lated to living organisms? We have, therefore, the 
 systematization effected by Spencer, which is no doubt 
 to be followed by others more specifically setting forth 
 the systematization of all things. 
 
 It is plain also that we could go back of Socrates and 
 enumerate the steps in the systematization of our total 
 knowledge of things which were successively taken, from 
 the mythological notion of things up to Socrates's 
 philosophy. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 INVENTION 
 
 The term invention may be used to designate the com- 
 bination which the mind makes of primitive conceptions, 
 so that together they form a new conception reahzable 
 in the world. We are, indeed, able to design things dif- 
 ferent from those we have before known to exist, but 
 not able to design the parts of which they are ultimately 
 composed. 
 
 This applies to every realm of existence, inorganic, 
 organic, mental; whence in general we may say that in- 
 ventions are mechanical, chemical, biological, institu- 
 tional, and artistic. Such a division, at least, is sufficient 
 for what we have to consider. 
 
 Mechanical invention is exemplified, for one way, in 
 the construction of buildings. The stones of which these 
 are made — if, indeed, they be built of stone — have existed 
 for millions of years. Our conceptions of the stones, 
 therefore, are primitive ones. Nevertheless, we do shape 
 the stones, that is to say, we combine the conception of 
 a stone with certain geometrical conceptions, these, too, 
 going back to primitive ones. We also put the stones in 
 certain positions, adding here again other conceptions. 
 If we use mortar, we add still another conception, and a 
 compound one at that, mortar itself being the result of 
 the combination of several conceptions. The woodwork 
 and metalwork likewise each exhibit the forms of various 
 
 215 
 
2l6 INVENTION 
 
 combined conceptions. The glass, furthermore, is the 
 result of much transformation — a number of conceptions 
 have been united, enabling us to manufacture and shape 
 it. The building, finally, stands forth in the form of a 
 thought, which itself consists of a great many primitive 
 thoughts. The process by which this thought was ob- 
 tained we call invention. 
 
 This process is not imaginary in the sense that it 
 departs from reality. The primitive conceptions of which 
 the compound conception is made up are forms of what 
 has existence in nature, and they are combined on the 
 basis of possibility. The compound conception, whether 
 it is realized or not, at least can be realized. Suppose, 
 for example, that the Coliseum at Rome had never been 
 built, it would nevertheless have been possible to build it. 
 
 Once neither Solomon's Temple nor any prototype of 
 it existed on this earth. Its construction had to be 
 thought out, and on the ground of reality. Doubtless it 
 was partly modelled after former structures, but these 
 structures themselves were once non-existent. Going 
 back to the elements of edifices, we find that the concep- 
 tions of edifices are merely embodiments of primary 
 conceptions that are discovered in nature. The creative 
 process consists in combining these conceptions. Some- 
 times a compound conception which should form part of 
 the total was obtained on theory merely, sometimes an 
 experiment was necessary. In all cases there was a com- 
 bination of conceptions which stood for natural realities. 
 
 The temple of Solomon was destroyed more than 
 twenty-four hundred years ago, but an account of it has 
 descended to us so that we should be able in part to 
 restore it. Indeed, its perfect restoration is in itself 
 
INVENTION 217 
 
 conceivable. For if we had the minute specifications of 
 the temple which we may suppose the architect himself 
 to have possessed, one of our own builders could repro- 
 duce the temple with such exactness that those who be- 
 held the original temple, should they suddenly rise from 
 the dead, would not be able to detect any difference 
 whatsoever between this temple and that which Solomon 
 dedicated. Should Solomon himself appear on the scene 
 he would not know the temple we had made from the 
 one which he caused to be built. 
 
 Roads for wagons depend on compound conception, 
 and are, therefore, due to invention. 
 
 Sherman's army, moving northward from Savannah 
 through the Carolinas, had to pass over moist ground. 
 To keep the wagons from sinking into the mud, rails 
 were taken from fences and laid down crosswise, one 
 after the other. Over these the wagons were readily 
 hauled, the rails being pressed into the earth, forming 
 a hard bed. These rails of fences were here combined 
 with the ground to make what we call a road, one primi- 
 tive conception with one compound one. For rails them- 
 selves are an invention. Long before the Civil War, 
 farmers along the road which Sherman was destined to 
 take had chopped down trees, cut them into certain 
 lengths, and then split the logs with beetle and wedges, 
 little thinking, perhaps, that they were working for 
 Sherman. The trees were in the form of a primitive 
 conception. Cutting and splitting were other primitive 
 conceptions that were added to them to make the con- 
 ception of rails. 
 
 The Appian Way, a Roman thoroughfare, was begun 
 more than three hundred years before the birth of Christ. 
 
21 8 INVENTION 
 
 It finally extended from Rome to Brundusium. It was 
 paved with blocks of stone cut in polygonal shapes, and 
 on either side was a stone balustrade. The whole road 
 was about eighteen feet wide. 
 
 The Romans filled up depressions and levelled eleva- 
 tions, bridged streams, and tunnelled mountains. To 
 build their roads they had to combine many primitive 
 conceptions into compound ones. Their bridges are still 
 in existence, and seem likely to be the means by which 
 even those who shall live in the days of the millennium 
 shall pass to and fro over many a stream. One of their 
 tunnels is to-day observed in the vicinity of Naples, hav- 
 ing arches at the end, the stones of which were laid by 
 hands long since ceased from their activity. The Ro- 
 mans at times used gravel to harden their roadbeds, the 
 same as we do ourselves at this day, combining here two 
 primitive conceptions into a new one. 
 
 We ourselves, however, have extended invention much 
 farther than the Romans. We have combined the con- 
 ception of a Roman road with the conception of iron. 
 To save expense, we hit on the device of having the road 
 only for the wheels of the vehicles,. neglecting the middle 
 and sides. On the roadbed we placed ties, and on these 
 the rails. Here we have a handsome generalization. 
 
 It is possible to generalize still farther. A road may 
 consist of merely a band in sections, these sections form- 
 ing an endless band not many times greater in diameter 
 than the wheel, a section to drop down in front of the 
 wheel at the same time that one behind it shall rise up. 
 This principle has probably never been applied on a large 
 scale, though it is manifestly capable of being so applied, 
 the advantage, moreover, being that the railroad would 
 
INVENTION 219 
 
 be so cheap and could be made to extend in any direc- 
 tion and to any length at pleasure. The vehicle could 
 go anywhere. 
 
 Machinery is the most common illustration of mechan- 
 ical invention, the saw-mill, for example. Blocks of 
 wood or pieces of iron, forming part of a framework, 
 were so placed as to hold an upright saw in position, 
 and yet at the same time to allow the saw to move up 
 or down a certain distance. Then the crank of a shaft 
 was fastened to one of the handles of the saw, so that 
 when the shaft revolved the saw would rise and fall, 
 the shaft being turned by a water-wheel either directly 
 or by means of a belt or by an arm. The log lay on a 
 frame which was moved so as gradually to press the log 
 against the saw. Thus boards and timbers were cut out. 
 Here several compound conceptions were united to pro- 
 duce the desired result — that of the saw, that of the 
 water-wheel, that of the carriage, that of the frame. 
 Analyzing these, we should of course get back to the 
 primitive conceptions. 
 
 Simple as this invention seems to us it was undoubt- 
 edly not an early one, men having had to do a great 
 deal of thinking to produce it. It is recorded that in 
 the year 1338 there was living at Augsburg, Germany, 
 a man by the name of Sawmiller, whence it is inferred 
 that saw-mills must have been in existence before that 
 time, or whence should the man have derived his name? 
 It seems, however, that logs were once sawed by two 
 men, one of whom stood on the log and the other below 
 the log in a pit. A place in which sawing of this kind 
 was done might have been called a saw-mill. There is 
 on record, however, a description of a saw-mill which 
 
220 INVENTION 
 
 was observed by the writer of the account about the 
 middle of the sixteenth century, and there are indica- 
 tions that saw-mills were in existence a hundred years 
 earlier. 
 
 Sewing-machines, moreover, are a mechanical inven- 
 tion. The needle is forced through the cloth by an arm 
 which vibrates, and a shuttle passes a thread through the 
 loop on the under side. The tension exerted on the 
 thread draws it up tightly, so that a neat seam is stitched. 
 If, then, we take one of our sewing-machines and ana- 
 lyze it into its primitive conceptions we shall find that 
 the machine is the result of a compounding of primitive 
 conceptions that are forms of things existing in nature 
 and subject to everybody's observation. 
 
 Chemical invention was usually later than mechanical 
 invention, being more difficult to arrive at. The pro- 
 duction of steel is an example of it. 
 
 Primitive men, doubtless, did not melt iron ore, they 
 merely heated certain kinds of iron which they found 
 and pounded the iron into shape. Heating it with wood, 
 which was in contact with it, they happened to make 
 use of carbon, which is necessary to the reduction of 
 iron ore. What is called cast-iron was subsequently 
 made, the iron ore being melted in some kind of a blast- 
 furnace, certain chemical changes being thereby effected 
 in the ores. Wrought-iron came to be made out of cast- 
 iron by getting rid of most of the carbon which is found 
 in cast-iron, getting rid also, at the same time, of the 
 phosphorus and silicon. Practice has shown, however, 
 that an intermediate grade, having not so much carbon 
 as cast-iron nor so little as wrought-iron, is best suited 
 to commercial purposes, taking things as they are. 
 
INVENTION 221 
 
 One of the main conditions on which the production 
 of commercial steel depends is due to the invention of 
 Bessemer — from whom, therefore, this steel takes its 
 name — the blowing of air into melted cast-iron. The 
 oxygen of the air combines chemically with the iron, or 
 oxidizes it. This has the result to take the carbon out 
 of the iron, much the same as oxygen combining with 
 wood has the effect to take the wood out of a stove. 
 The carbon being out of the cast-iron, then, by adding 
 other cast-iron, carbon can be reintroduced to the desired 
 quantity to make out of the mass what is now called 
 Bessemer steel. It should be noted, however that a 
 very important improvement was made in that the vessel 
 which holds the molten mass, technically called a con- 
 verter, is lined with limestone, this having the effect to 
 take the phosphorus out of the iron, if the iron chances 
 to contain this substance, the phosphorus uniting with 
 the lime. 
 
 Steel has thus become a very important thing. Not 
 only are railroads made of it, but the frames of houses, 
 to say nothing about the other countless uses of it. 
 
 Materials for building, it would seem, are now nearly 
 perfect. Any form of frame whatever can be made out 
 of steel, and the frame can be filled with brick, or even 
 with cement. Thus any form of house is easily con- 
 structed out of fluid, or, at least, out of mushy materials. 
 We have descended to the very elements of building, 
 as it were, and can mould them to our will. Out of these 
 materials, moreover, structures can be built which are 
 practically eternal. Could it be settled what we want, 
 then we could build once for all. Houses would last 
 not merely hundreds, nor even thousands, but millions 
 
222 INVENTION 
 
 of years. What result this would have on the cheapen- 
 ing of living is easily computed. 
 
 Explosives are an instance of chemical invention, gun- 
 powder among them. Gunpowder is made by mixing 
 sulphur and charcoal together in not quite equal quan- 
 tities, and combining this mixture with about three times 
 as much saltpetre. When fire is brought in contact with 
 gunpowder a chemical change takes place, creating gases, 
 the expansive force of which makes the explosion. For 
 the gases must occupy about two hundred and eighty 
 times as much space as the original powder occupied, 
 and, what is more, they must occupy it in a hurry. 
 
 Gunpowder seems to have been known to the Chinese 
 possibly thousands of years before our era. How, then, 
 could they have discovered it? The answer has been 
 that there are in China great plains on which saltpetre 
 exists, and fires being kindled there would produce car- 
 bon, which becoming combined with the saltpetre would 
 cause an explosion. The use of sulphur, it is believed, 
 was an after-thought. 
 
 The great effect which gunpowder has had on warfare, 
 indeed, entitles it to rank as one of the most important 
 inventions ever effected. Barbarians are no longer able 
 to overrun civilized peoples. What is more, valor counts 
 for little. Thought alone is what can be of any avail 
 in war. Furthermore, wars are rendered very expen- 
 sive, and therefore are not likely to be undertaken if they 
 can be avoided. All these results are due to the inven- 
 tion of gunpowder, a chemical invention which consisted 
 in combining the conception of carbon and the concep- 
 tion of sulphur with the conception of saltpetre. 
 
 Dynamite is an explosive which depends on nitro- 
 
INVENTION 223 
 
 glycerine, the which is made of glycerine and acids, 
 nitric and sulphuric, a late invention due to Sobrero. It 
 is this mixed with some other thing, brick-dust, for ex- 
 ample, which is called dynamite. It was found too dan- 
 gerous to use the nitro-glycerine without so mixing it. 
 
 Dynamite is exploded by a shock, and, therefore, is 
 very important as a means of blasting, having three or 
 four times the force of gunpowder. The Hoosac Tun- 
 nel, which is about five miles in length, was blasted out 
 with it, seventy tons being used for that purpose. It 
 was transported in tin cans in a frozen state, and the 
 cans were coated with paraffine. The bottoms of the 
 boxes in which the cans were packed were covered with 
 sponges, and rubber was wound around the outside of 
 the boxes. 
 
 The amount of labor which can be saved by the use 
 of an explosive like nitro-glycerine is what would once 
 have been deemed incredible. All this saving is due to 
 the chemical invention of Sobrero. Indeed, if he were 
 paid for all the work which his invention has saved he 
 would have money enough to buy out some States. 
 
 Biological invention is shown when conceptions are so 
 combined as to affect plants or animals, and rises, there- 
 fore, above both mechanical and chemical invention. 
 
 The grass family of plants contains between four and 
 five hundred species, and among them is wheat, the seeds 
 of which constitute the most important food of mankind. 
 
 An experiment was made of taking a certain wild 
 grass, planting its seeds, cultivating the shoots, and, 
 when they themselves produced seed, selecting the best 
 of it to sow next year. This process having been con- 
 tinued for twelve years, the seeds were so much improved 
 
224 INVENTION 
 
 as veritably to be wheat itself. It is argued, therefore, 
 and with plausibility, that wheat was in the early ages 
 of the world gotten in such a way. To produce it, the 
 wild seeds were combined with good soil, and perhaps 
 with moisture. The best of the seeds, moreover, were 
 each time sown. Here, indeed, we have a combination 
 of primitive biological conceptions into a new whole. 
 
 There are three plants derived from America which 
 have gained great prominence in the commercial world, 
 maize, potatoes, and tobacco, all of which probably came 
 to perfection through biological invention. 
 
 Kernels of maize have been found in the tombs of the 
 Incas of Peru, greatly differing from any now grown. 
 Indeed, it is probable that all the kinds of maize which 
 we possess are descended from some wild variety, in 
 every way inferior to the maize which we possess. 
 Whether the primitive maize was red, and whether the 
 kernels were each separately enclosed in husks, are points 
 to be raised. Red ears of corn are found in all varieties, 
 even in the white, and kernels have been discovered in- 
 dividually encased with husk. The question is, are red 
 ears and sheathed kernels reversions? 
 
 The potato belongs to the nightshade family, a family 
 containing more than twelve hundred species, the most 
 of which are poisonous. How mankind came to eat the 
 potato, then, may seem a mystery, a mystery, however, 
 easily resolved if we take into account how hard people 
 were pressed for food. Savages observed what animals 
 ate, and were often in this way enabled to make a selec- 
 tion; moreover, hurtful things were often learned from 
 trial, thus in course of time savages came to distinguish 
 what might be eaten and what might not. Men com- 
 
INVENTION 225 
 
 bined potato-seed with good soil, with watering, with 
 weeding. They also planted each year the best seed. 
 They produced in this way, we may suppose, the potatoes 
 from which our varieties have sprung. Speaking psy- 
 chologically, men combined primitive biological concep- 
 tions into a new whole, the doing of which we have to 
 thank for our potatoes. 
 
 Tobacco, likewise, belongs to the nightshade family. 
 Columbus, soon after his discovery of Cuba, was in- 
 formed by an exploring party that they had seen men 
 smoking it, the first instance, so far as we know, which 
 came under the observation of Europeans. All the smok- 
 ing of tobacco among white peoples has resulted from 
 the practice of smoking it observed among the so-called 
 American Indians, a momentous consequence. The 
 aborigines chewed and snuffed as well as smoked it. 
 Indeed, we may suppose that chewing preceded smok- 
 ing. Trying herbs for food, savages tried tobacco among 
 the rest. It was found that the chewing of it produced 
 certain agreeable results. The plant was accordingly 
 cultivated and improved. 
 
 Strenuous efforts were made to suppress the use of 
 tobacco among Europeans, even the death penalty being 
 invoked to this end, but without avail. For the use of 
 tobacco continued to increase. 
 
 Some time ago it was computed that more than seven 
 hundred thousand acres of land were, in the United 
 States alone, given up to the culture of tobacco, that 
 more than half a billion of pounds were produced annu- 
 ally, and that the crop was sold for more than forty 
 millions of dollars. Now all this great result has come 
 about from the fact that savages, when hungry, once 
 
226 INVENTION 
 
 upon a time chewed certain weeds, and were consequently 
 led to cultivate them. 
 
 As with grains and vegetables, so with fruits, the 
 trees producing them have descended from wild ones, 
 these having been improved upon by selection. More- 
 over, it is known that any variety, say that of pippins, 
 can be grown on any kind of an apple-tree by grafting 
 it. Take, for example, the sourest kind of apple imag- 
 inable, small and shrivelled, into the kind of tree which 
 produces it, when a shrub, insert small and short pieces 
 of twigs of pippins. The limbs growing out from these 
 pieces inserted will themselves bear pippins. This is a 
 splendid example of biological invention. The primitive 
 sour-apple conception is combined with the pippin-apple 
 conception to produce a new conception, that of pippin 
 apples grown on a sour-apple tree. Of course, the in- 
 vention has to be realistic, not imaginary merely, else 
 the boy who grafted an apple into a locust would have 
 been successful. 
 
 Cats, dogs, horses, cows, sheep, and pigs no doubt 
 show marks of biological invention. 
 
 Our cats descended, it is supposed, from some species 
 of wild cat. Under domestication many varieties have 
 been produced, some that will howl, others which will 
 not, some that are white, and some that are black; even 
 red cats, it is said, are known to exist. 
 
 The kinds of dogs are almost innumerable, but it is 
 plain that each kind cannot be descended from an orig- 
 inal stock, no such stock existing, or ever having existed. 
 The kinds of dogs have been developed through bio- 
 logical invention. 
 
 It is said that nearly every trotting horse of merit in 
 
INVENTION 227 
 
 America is descended from a horse imported from Eng- 
 land in 1788, called Messenger, and that he himself 
 came of a horse called Mambrino. Rysdyk's Hamble- 
 tonian, from which so many trotting horses in America 
 have sprung, was a descendant of Messenger and was 
 valued at one hundred thousand dollars. The Goldsmith 
 Maid descended from him left the turf at the age of 
 twenty-one with earnings of two hundred thousand dol- 
 lars. We have here a fine illustration how a stock is 
 improved by selection and the transmission of charac- 
 teristics. It is believed that the horse in general was 
 evolved from a wild horse, which has long since per- 
 ished from the sight of men, and was evolved by breeding 
 from the best horses. No primitive wild horses possibly 
 now exist, the so-called wild ones being descendants of 
 escaped or abandoned tame ones. 
 
 Cattle are found in Africa with horns thirteen feet 
 long, while, as we know, certain cattle among us have 
 no horns at all. It is evident, also, that from horned 
 cattle, horned cattle descend, from hornless cattle, horn- 
 less cattle. Indeed, the tendency to have large or small 
 horns may be developed on the principle of selection. 
 Breeds of butter or of cheese cows, moreover, exist 
 which command very high prices, breeds which have been 
 developed in a very short time. That all our cattle were 
 gotten from certain wild ones no longer extant is easily 
 conceivable. 
 
 Sheep of many varieties exist, one, for instance, which 
 has such large, fat tails that it is found necessary for 
 each sheep to have a cart on which to carry its tail 
 around. That, however, such sheep have been developed 
 through selection and heredity is apparent, since if these 
 
228 INVENTION 
 
 sheep are taken to other countries and put under other 
 conditions their descendants come to have smaller tails. 
 
 All the kinds of pigs in the world can, according to 
 the claim of certain naturalists, be traced back to two 
 varieties, the wild boars and the Chinese kind. Those 
 descended from the two species combined show, even in 
 the first generation, it is said, modifications of the skull 
 due to inheritance from the Chinese stock. In the ruins 
 of Pompeii was found the skull of a pig which in appear- 
 ance greatly resembled that of the breed still kept in the 
 vicinity. Essex pigs, it is said, owe their excellent 
 qualities to inheritance from the same variety, that is to 
 say, from Neapolitan pigs. 
 
 Our fowls arose in the same way. It is plain that 
 they have not existed on this earth in their present form 
 from all antiquity. The Chinese have records of their 
 introduction into their country. Fowls are not men- 
 tioned by the older Jewish or Egyptian writers, and are 
 not spoken of by Homer. They seem, however, to have 
 existed in India something like eight hundred or a thou- 
 sand years before our era. We may suppose that they 
 had been developed from wild fowl. 
 
 Institutional invention has always been considered as 
 being of a high order. Illustrating it we may instance 
 courts, armies, and schools, none of which things exist 
 by nature, but have been created by man on the principle 
 of compounding conceptions. 
 
 Among savage peoples some means of insuring jus- 
 tice indeed exist, and often these means may be adequate, 
 but it is to be remembered that savages have to deal with 
 sparse populations only, and with interests little diversi- 
 fied. Civilized people, on the contrary, were compelled 
 
INVENTION 229 
 
 to have some permanent and systematic way of satisfy- 
 ing the demand for justice, whence the invention of 
 courts. There had to be a tribunal which should pass 
 on cases, a fixed manner of getting cases before this 
 tribunal, and a method of trial. The tribunal was made 
 to consist of judges, latterly of a judge and jurors. The 
 judges were men set apart to do nothing else but to 
 pass on matters presented to them, men who thus came 
 to have precedents on which to decide. To guard 
 against possible mistakes or prejudices on the part of 
 the judges, one not satisfied with a decision in a lower 
 court might appeal to a higher. Certain forms were pre- 
 scribed for getting a case before a court, now technically 
 known as pleadings, the outcome of which was that the 
 point was reached wherein one party affirmed just what 
 the other party denied, whence the necessity of the trial 
 of the case. The point in controversy might be either 
 what the law was or what the fact was, and the one or 
 the other of these might be hard to determine. First, 
 it would be a part of the system of justice that declara- 
 tions should be made by the nation or its rulers as to 
 what the laws were, certain written statements of them. 
 Secondly, however, as these laws could only exist in a 
 general form, each particular case would have to be 
 passed on as to whether it came under the rule or not. 
 The judge or judges would have to decide the point, 
 but not till he or they had heard the arguments on both 
 sides. The question of fact would be still harder to 
 settle. Evidence would have to be furnished, and this 
 in general would be either documentary or oral, whence 
 the multitudinous rules which would come to exist re- 
 garding the admissibility of testimony. It having been 
 
230 INVENTION 
 
 determined what in the particular case was evidence and 
 what was not, the judge giving decisions on the points 
 as they arose, the next thing to dispose of would be 
 what was the weight of the evidence. Both parties 
 would have somewhat to support the contention which 
 it set up, the question was, whose evidence preponder- 
 ated? often a most perplexing one, a matter which with 
 us, as we know, is left to the jury. When a case was 
 finally decided it would in general relate to one or the 
 other of two things, either to the person or to his prop- 
 erty. Some punishment was or was not to be inflicted 
 upon the person, some property was or was not to pass 
 from one person to another. There had accordingly to 
 be some way of carrying the findings of the court out. 
 Certain forms were to be gone through with, after which 
 it was the duty of certain officers to punish the person 
 or to take away his property. The institution of courts, 
 indeed, consisted in compounding a conception out of 
 other conceptions, those conceptions in the last resort 
 going back to primitive ones, inalienable rights. 
 
 The creation of armies gave great power to nations, 
 for the reason that an organized and permanent force 
 is greatly superior to a disorganized and temporary one. 
 Men were set apart for soldiers, trained for the work. 
 They were divided into small bands, over which was an 
 officer whose orders the soldiers must unhesitatingly 
 obey. A number of these bands were under the direc- 
 tion of a higher officer, whom the commanders of the 
 bands were to obey. Thus a larger band was formed. 
 Bands of this size were combined into larger ones on 
 the same plan, and these into still larger ones, and so 
 on, till finally the whole constituted an army which was 
 
INVENTION 231 
 
 under the command of a single person. Whatever he 
 said had to be done. The soldiers were each armed with 
 some kind of weapon or weapons, some cutting instru- 
 ment or some missile. In close contact they used spears 
 and swords, being at a distance they threw stones or 
 shot arrows. Latterly, of course, firearms came into use, 
 but the principle was the same. Anybody who thought 
 to interfere with the existing order, as it is usual to call 
 it, could easily be put out of the way by one or more 
 of the soldiers acting under the orders of superiors. If 
 he assembled a band of persons like minded as himself, 
 enough of these soldiers could likewise overcome them, 
 being always ready to act at a moment's notice. It would 
 necessarily come about, therefore, that only armies, and 
 those of considerable size, could combat the regime of 
 any particular people, the result being that men obtained 
 fixed ways of doing things and worked them out to per- 
 fection. Except in time of war, order prevailed. 
 
 The institution of armies, then, it will appear, was a 
 case of compounding conceptions, as was said. For 
 everything pertaining to an army exists independent of 
 it. An army is created by effecting a systematic com- 
 bination of various things and carrying on the use of it 
 systematically. 
 
 The institution of the army, doubtless, had its greatest 
 effect on the world in the hands of the Romans. Their 
 armies were so organized as to be practically invincible, 
 and the management of them was so systematized that 
 the republic on the banks of the Tiber extended its do- 
 minions so far as still to have been the greatest republic 
 which the world has ever seen. Rome completed its 
 principal conquests more than one hundred and thirty 
 
232 INVENTION 
 
 years' before the Christian era, and it was not till two 
 hundred and eighty-four years after that era that Dio- 
 cletian began that change of constitution which led to 
 the institution of the empire whose seat was Constan- 
 tinople. Rome, therefore, as an imperial and world- 
 dominating republic may be said to have lasted about 
 four hundred years, the ordinary division into republic 
 and empire being a misleading one. The Roman idea 
 was that the emperors were magistrates of the country, 
 sort of prime ministers, not that they were sovereigns. 
 The effect which Rome produced on mankind in this 
 four hundred years with its military administration was 
 one which could never be undone. The social mind was 
 given a certain discipline which was destined to influ- 
 ence its whole subsequent career. 
 
 Another institutional invention is the school, an or- 
 ganized means of forcing ideas into the heads of men 
 to become there dominant. Persons known as teachers 
 are set apart to take charge of the pupils. The pupil 
 passes after a time from a lower to a higher grade. All 
 the grade teachers are under the direction of a superin- 
 tendent and have some system on which to proceed. The 
 pupil is taught at first certain rudiments, both of litera- 
 ture and of science, that is to say, letters and numbers. 
 He must learn how to read and write and how to calcu- 
 late. The principle employed is to give little at a time 
 and to reiterate it, the result being that the pupil comes 
 to be able to read at sight some very simple sentences 
 wherever he may see them, or even anything similar to 
 them, and to make some very simple calculations, as, for 
 instance, that if Alfred has two marbles and John has 
 three, both together they have five. The pupil recites 
 
INVENTION 233 
 
 daily, or perhaps more than once each day, on the same 
 or similar matter. Some methodical plan also underlies 
 the work; for instance, a certain vocabulary is made the 
 end in the teaching of reading, and certain elementary 
 combinations of numbers in the teaching of calculation. 
 When the pupil has this vocabulary and these combina- 
 tions at command, he has finished the grade. Thus the 
 pupil passes from grade to grade, till finally he has mas- 
 tered the vocabulary used in common life and can per- 
 form the operations of addition, subtraction, multiplica- 
 tion, and division. He now reaches the point at which 
 he enters on the study of the grammar of the language 
 and on the study of arithmetic, takes also geography 
 and the like, comes in this way to be prepared to enter 
 on the study of pieces of literature and of some of the 
 sciences, as algebra, geometry, physics, biology, psychol- 
 ogy. From the lower schools he passes to higher ones, 
 where literature and science are studied with much 
 thoroughness, and finally, perhaps, specializes on some 
 branch. It is these higher schools which are of chief 
 importance, so far as the welfare and progress of man- 
 kind are concerned, the lower schools, however, being 
 necessary to enable one to rise to them. The higher ones 
 proceed on the same principles as other schools — they 
 have system, they make matters impressiye, they take a 
 little at a time, they review. 
 
 Not till our times, indeed, was this institution brought 
 to anything like perfection, its invention having required 
 much thought, though, as is evident, the conception of 
 it is merely compounded out of simple conceptions. 
 
 It is evident that the effect of schools on mankind 
 must in time produce the greatest of changes. Ideas 
 
234 INVENTION 
 
 desirable to be had and to be put into practice will have 
 been drummed into the heads of men so effectively that 
 men can never be gotten away from them. Mankind, so 
 to say, will be hypnotized to good ends, the character 
 of the inhabitants of the globe will have been changed. 
 
 Lastly, artistic invention is illustrated in architecture, 
 together with its accessories : sculpture and painting, in 
 musical composition, and in literary productions. 
 
 The Egyptian temples, for example, though erected so 
 long ago, display great inventive faculty, for instance, 
 that of Luxor by the Nile. The approach to that end 
 of it which we may call the front, not along the river, 
 was a way on either side of which were sphinxes. At 
 the termination of the rows of sphinxes, and as one 
 came to the temple, were two obelisks, one on either 
 side, much the same as those which can now be seen in 
 our cemeteries, they having been copied from the Egyp- 
 tian ones. Near the entrance were large statues of 
 Rameses the Great. Masts on either side also supported 
 colored streamers. The front of the temple had on it 
 sculptures in relief representing scenes from the battles 
 of Rameses the Great, beneath which was inscribed Pen- 
 taur's epic of the battle of Kadesh. Entering through 
 the front of the temple the visitor went into a court, 
 around which were two rows of columns, on top of them 
 a roofing, but over the court itself none. In other words, 
 around the court was a colonnade. Going out of this court 
 at the opposite end the visitor came into a great hall, 
 the roof of which was supported by giant columns, the 
 sun streaming through openings near the top, a sort of 
 stone-lattice work. He now passed out into a second 
 court surrounded by a colonnade, but not as large as 
 
INVENTION 235 
 
 the first one. From this he got into a vestibule which 
 was filled with columns, and from this into either of the 
 two small chapels, one on each side. From the vestibule 
 he proceeded to more rooms, in the midst of which was 
 the sanctuary. It is to be kept in mind, too, that the 
 walls were well decorated. Furthermore, when one en- 
 tered the covered portion of the temple, called the 
 hypostyle, he passed into twilight, and when he entered 
 the sanctuary he found it half dark. Thus was produced 
 an artistic effect. 
 
 This whole temple, however, was but an adjunct of 
 the temple of Karnak, the grandest structure, it is said, 
 ever erected by the hand of man. The hypostyle of 
 Karnak contains great pillars, some of them nearly sev- 
 enty feet high and twelve feet in diameter, so arranged 
 that in whatever direction one looks they seem to be 
 without end, somewhat as the trees in a forest. 
 
 We have, then, in this artistic creation, taken as a 
 whole, a great piece of invention, though, to be sure, no 
 one man designed the whole, since it was building 
 through successive generations, yet of course it shows 
 in itself a great compound conception fabricated by the 
 inventive faculty out of primitive conceptions. The 
 effects which it produced as a whole were due to artistic 
 contrivance. 
 
 Music is another thing which gives scope for the 
 exercise of invention. 
 
 Musical compositions were made by the Egyptians 
 thousands of years ago, and the other peoples of an- 
 tiquity produced them, but the great musical composi- 
 tions have been the work of modern times. 
 
 Music expresses human sentiments indefinitely, so that 
 
236 INVENTION 
 
 the music may mean something to one person which it 
 does not to another, something to one age which it does 
 not to the next. 
 
 Handel's " Messiah," a musical epic, has been consid- 
 ered the best oratorio ever wrought out in the brain of 
 man, the manuscript of which in the hand of the com- 
 poser is still to be seen in Buckingham Palace. It should 
 be observed that this is a composition requiring an even- 
 ing for its performance and employing a great number 
 and various kinds of musicians. At one performance 
 there were twenty-seven hundred voices in the chorus. 
 No other musical work, it is said, has enjoyed so great 
 and so protracted popularity. Its Hallelujah choruses 
 are the delight and wonder of mankind. Handel him- 
 self took part in its performance but eight days before 
 his death, and it may be considered as his valedictory. 
 One hundred years after his birth, to a day, the house 
 in which he was born in Halle, Prussia, had placed on 
 it in evergreen the names of his celebrated oratorios, the 
 word, Messiah, appearing among the rest. Out of the 
 primitive conceptions into which musical sounds can be 
 resolved he constructed this compound conception. 
 
 Literary invention furnishes still another example of 
 artistic creation, the " Hamlet " of Shakespeare, for 
 instance. 
 
 In real life people come together, converse with one 
 another, and perform while in company certain actions, 
 the whole affair being known as a scene. The persons, 
 it is plain, talk and act in accordance with their char- 
 acters, each as to what the same is. One scene, it is 
 plain, too, leads on to another and somewhat influences 
 it. All this, indeed, we observe in every-day life. 
 
INVENTION ' 237 
 
 The dramatic poet takes this conception, but changes 
 it in points. He selects his men and women, those who 
 have, this or that one, a character which he assigns 
 him or her. He selects, also, the situations in which 
 they are placed. He works out a plot through their 
 conversations and actions. 
 
 It may be that no person just the same as he brings 
 on the stage ever really existed or will exist, yet the 
 several traits in them are well known by us in men and 
 women whom we have seen or at least have heard about. 
 The dramatic poet is not therefore depicting impossibili- 
 ties nor even improbabilities. He is only describing what 
 actually exists or may exist. His characterization and 
 the action which it begets are not imaginary in the sense 
 that a square circle is. 
 
 Everybody in whose case there is a tragedy of thought 
 has a resemblance to Hamlet, but Hamlet is a generic 
 character that contains much besides what we might find 
 in this particular person. 
 
 Children's play is in some sort a dramatization. For 
 they go on hours with a fiction, inventing it as they 
 proceed. One is a banker, another a farmer, a third a 
 merchant, and so on. They call bits of paper money, 
 sticks horses, and sand sugar. The representation which 
 they carry on in their minds is of what is possible, it 
 may be of what somewhere exists, but it is not repre- 
 sentative of what is at hand. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 VOLITION 
 
 What is peculiar of the will is that a notion, called 
 by us a plan, existing in the mind as an idea, takes on, 
 through the body, material shape, the plan of the tailor, 
 for example, becoming a coat, the plan of the builder a 
 house, the plan of the sculptor a statue, the plan of the 
 painter a picture, the plan of the singer a song, and the 
 plan of the speaker a speech. What, in short, we do 
 with any organ of the body, what with any member 
 thereof, the hand, for example, is an act of will. 
 
 We sometimes, it is true, use the word will to mean 
 the wish merely to execute something, but what is now 
 to be said shall be of will in the proper sense of the 
 term, the power which the mind has to embody its no- 
 tions in material shape. 
 
 The body is a machine of the mind, formed in such 
 a manner that, as soon as the mind decides that a plan 
 is to be carried into effect, forthwith the body performs 
 the necessary movements to that end. Be the plan to 
 walk, the feet begin to step; be the plan to toil, the 
 hands begin to act; be the plan to speak, the lips begin 
 to move. All the mind has to do is to have the plan 
 uppermost, the body does the rest. 
 
 Motors of various kinds exist — those of water, those 
 of wind, those of steam, and those of electricity. Ani- 
 
 238 
 
VOLITION 239 
 
 mals of every description, man included, are idea motors, 
 operated by the notions which they have in their heads. 
 
 What is of chief importance as regards the will is 
 that every creature has some peculiar bent of mind by 
 which he does things. Nearly everything that a creature 
 performs is the outcome of habits, whence the saying that 
 character fixes destiny means no more than that habits 
 fix it. To set forth, therefore, what are the conditions of 
 habit must be to set forth the conditions of will. We 
 are required, in fact, to describe the whole system of 
 conditions on which action depends. 
 
 The conditions of will, it is manifest, are either sub- 
 jective or objective, the subjective conditions being dis- 
 position and thought, the objective conditions being the 
 bodily constitution and the nature of things in general. 
 The constitution of our bodies, so far as the will is con- 
 cerned, reduces to the nervous system, the nature of 
 things in general to quality, quantity, and relation. We 
 may put the matter another way : a creature consists of 
 body and mind, and things around him have quality, 
 quantity, and relation. Six different determinations of 
 the will, then, obtain — the nervous, the dispositional, 
 the deliberative, the qualitative, the quantitative, and the 
 relational. Possibly for the word determination we 
 should say condition. What is meant is that, if we take 
 up each of the six points relative to the will, we take 
 up all that is of importance regarding it. 
 
 The nervous determination of the will is illustrated 
 in the case of diseases, in the case of manias, and in the 
 case of instinctive actions. 
 
 To take up cases of disease, or at least what seem 
 to be such; there are certain persons who, owing to the 
 
240 VOLITION 
 
 state of their nerves, if left to themselves, are unable 
 to get out of bed or even to rise from a chair. If any- 
 body speaks to them, the purpose which they have to 
 get out of bed or to rise from a chair becomes suffi- 
 ciently strong to affect their muscles — then they can 
 easily do the one or the other. Some persons who are 
 accounted lazy may, after all, owe their peculiarity to 
 nothing but a state of the nerves. We often find men, 
 for example, who will do very little work unless some- 
 body keeps putting ideas into their heads, their own 
 ideas being too faint, it should seem, to affect their 
 muscles very much. As long as we exert our influence 
 over them they work. well enough, but the moment this 
 is withdrawn they are as indolent as ever. 
 
 On the other hand, the muscles of certain persons, 
 owing to disease, respond too readily to suggestion. 
 Such persons are afflicted with what is sometimes called 
 insanity of the muscles. They make up faces, twist 
 their bodies into awkward shapes, jerk their shoulders 
 up, and suddenly extend their limbs. St. Vitus' dance 
 is an instance of this. In the case of locomotor ataxia 
 it seems to the person afflicted as if between his feet 
 and the ground is something soft. When he tries to 
 step, his foot is suddenly thrown out and his head de- 
 scends rapidly. If he looks up or shuts his eyes, he 
 will totter and perhaps fall down. It is for this reason 
 that there are persons that cannot walk in the dark. 
 
 The excessive use of alcohol produces a diseased state 
 of the nerves that influences action. An inebriate is 
 set to acting by the smell of whiskey. The smell of it 
 gives him the idea of drinking. This idea in his head 
 pulls the string that sets in motion his body. It comes 
 
VOLITION 241 
 
 about, then, that the smell of whiskey takes him where 
 whiskey is to be had. Burns, the Scottish poet, declared 
 that to get rum he would not hesitate to pass in front 
 of blazing cannon. The fact that certain drunkards can 
 be cured by prescriptions proves that their difficulty is 
 in the nerves. The physical condition removed, they 
 recover. 
 
 A certain kind of mania is that for cleanliness. There 
 are persons who, at the sight of water, must fall to wash- 
 ing their hands. Not all great Neptune's ocean, to 
 their minds, can wash their hands clean from their stains. 
 Such persons are, as it were, propelled by water. The 
 idea of water sets them in motion. 
 
 Another mania is that for danger. We find, for 
 example, persons who say they are tempted to leap out 
 of windows at great height. The idea of danger so 
 works on their nerves that it is hardly possible for them 
 to control their muscles by other ideas. From this fact 
 it was found necessary to cover the top of a certain 
 tower in London with a cage, so many persons having 
 leaped from it to destruction. 
 
 Bearing on this subject, we have related a certain 
 extraordinary experience of a man. He was in the city 
 of Halle, where is a church with two high towers, these 
 towers connected near the top by a stone bridge. Hav- 
 ing reached the bridge by a winding stair inside one of 
 the towers, the man went across the bridge, terror- 
 stricken, although he knew there was not the slightest 
 danger, a stone wall being on either side of him, several 
 feet high. He did not dare to walk back over the bridge, 
 but crawled on his hands and knees to get over it, and 
 descended as soon as he could. To this day, he says, 
 
242 VOLITION 
 
 whenever he thinks of that Httle bridge, high up in the 
 air, he is still seized with fear, shrugs his shoulders, and 
 writhes his limbs. 
 
 Some persons say they can hardly resist the tempta- 
 tion to put themselves in front of moving trains. 
 
 Instinctive actions are such as one performs immedi- 
 ately on suggestion, as, for example, shutting the eyes 
 to keep the dust out. As somebody has said, our ner- 
 vous system is so organized that certain impressions 
 that are made by things on us have the effect to pull 
 the triggers that set in motion the parts that perform 
 the work. If we step and are nigh unto falling, we 
 come quickly to our own rescue, and in a way surpris- 
 ingly effective, although we deliberate not at all about 
 it. We act merely on the impulse of the occasion. 
 And this is also a nervous determination. 
 
 The dispositional determination of the will may be 
 observed both in animals and in men. The case of ani- 
 mals may be considered, because what applies to them 
 applies by analogy to men. 
 
 Chickens, a few days after they are hatched out, will 
 scratch the ground in search of insects, although they 
 cannot have learned to do so from previous experience. 
 Spalding had chickens hatched in the dark that, on 
 being taken into the light, in two minutes followed 
 bugs with their eyes, the same as do old fowls. Ducks 
 one day old will catch flies on the wing. A young 
 turkey when first he heard the chirp of a hawk ran to 
 the other side of the yard in great fear. A young chim- 
 panzee, at the first sight of a snake, took the greatest 
 alarm. Horses that have never seen a lion become rest- 
 less the moment they scent one. Dogs, it is said, attack 
 
VOLITION 243 
 
 those who eat dogs' flesh, even those who have any- 
 thing to do with it. Nicholls relates that he knew a 
 dog that unaccountably attacked a man coming into a 
 hotel. Upon investigation it was found that the man 
 was a butcher. Huggins declares he had a dog which 
 started back in fear at the first butcher-shop he ever saw. 
 A tame beaver will, in the night, carry wood to bank 
 up against the door of the farmer's house, doing this 
 because his ancestors, in the wild state, piled up wood 
 to build a dam. Little animals exist in the mountains 
 of Norway called Lemings, averaging in size between 
 a rat and a mouse. These at times descend in great 
 numbers into the plains, traveling by night and living 
 on roots. They are attacked by cattle and other ani- 
 mals, but, being so numerous, their progress is not 
 stayed till they reach the Atlantic. Then, with un- 
 broken front, they plunge into its waves and swim until 
 they are all drowned. It has been sought to explain 
 this strange performance on the ground that such ani- 
 mals were once able to emigrate to America — Norway 
 being connected with America, it was thought, by land 
 since submerged. The posterity of the Lemings, the 
 theory has been, tries to get to America, notwithstand- 
 ing the changed conditions. 
 
 The power of disposition to control actions is, how- 
 ever, just as well illustrated by the course of men. A 
 certain sea-captain, when he had left off following the 
 sea, could not content himself without having a place 
 in his back-yard raised in imitation of the deck of a 
 ship, on which he might promenade. Lee, the general 
 who was dismissed by Washington for misconduct at 
 the battle of Monmouth, June 28, 1778, had after his 
 
244 VOLITION 
 
 retirement but one room in his house, which was divided 
 by chalk-Hnes into spaces, one of which he called his 
 parlor, one his library, one his dining-room, one his 
 kitchen, and several his bedrooms. He took his posi- 
 tion upon a raised platform from which he could over- 
 look the whole. Accustomed to military life, he wanted 
 his household on the plan of a battle-field. The houses 
 of primitive men probably contained but one room, till 
 some reformer arose to put in a partition. What oppo- 
 sition he met with, by what tortures the partitionists 
 suffered, history does not tell us. We have, too, all 
 of us heard the story of the man who went to mill with 
 a bag upon his shoulder, the wheat in one end, a stone 
 in the other. The man's son proposed that he do away 
 with the stone, merely putting part of the wheat in one 
 end and part of it in the other end of the bag, this 
 arrangement enabling him just as well to balance the 
 bag upon his shoulder. But the old man said it was 
 the strangest notion of which he ever heard; if the boy 
 referred to it again he should flog him. 
 
 We have here the whole subject of heredity. We get 
 dispositions from our ancestors. 
 
 Children are born with certain characteristics and 
 proclivities, being by nature able to adapt themselves to 
 the different men and women with whom they come in 
 contact, avoiding harm from some and getting advan- 
 tage from others. For example, a boy was known to 
 take a decided dislike to a man from the first, although 
 he had had no previous knowledge that the man was 
 bad, as in fact he turned out to be. Poets, it is said, 
 are born, and not made! Statesmen, sculptors, and 
 painters probably brought most of their talent with them 
 
VOLITION 245 
 
 into the world — Napoleon, Phidias, Raphael, who sup- 
 poses that they learned each his own art in the brief 
 span of this earthly life? Who by taking thought can 
 become an inventor like Edison? Mozart, when but 
 four years old, could play the piano, and with great 
 power of expression. Even when an infant he gained 
 a knowledge of music from listening to the exercises 
 of his sister. 
 
 Another condition of action is thought, seeing that 
 by thinking over the consequences of things we come 
 to exercise prudence with regard to them. 
 
 Men weigh the reasons for and against the several 
 courses of action, and on what they deem the best rea- 
 son proceed to act. The story which Plutarch tells of 
 Julius Caesar furnishes an example. Entertaining a 
 company at Ravenna one night, forty-nine years before 
 the Christian era, Caesar, with a weight upon his mind, 
 begged of a sudden to be excused, saying they should 
 make merry until his return. To this day, however, he 
 has failed to put in an appearance. Entering a carriage 
 and going in the opposite direction, then quickly chang- 
 ing his course, he drove to the Rubicon, a stream which 
 formed the boundary of the province over which he 
 exercised command. Standing on the bank of the river, 
 reasons for and against crossing it passed through his 
 mind. For it occurred to him, says Plutarch, to con- 
 sider what posterity would think of it. Should he cross 
 the river a civil war was sure to ensue, wherein many 
 of his countrymen would be slain; he might be unsuc- 
 cessful, his reputation might be lost, his motives might 
 be misjudged, the influence of his party might cease. 
 On the other hand, should he not cross the river, it was 
 
246 VOLITION 
 
 certain he would lose his command; his renown, which 
 now fills the world, would not come to exist; the cause 
 of liberty that he believed himself to represent might 
 be undone. Having thus balanced the reasons for and 
 against crossing the river, it seemed to him, on the 
 whole, best to cross it. 
 
 It would be a great mistake to suppose that we do 
 not ourselves deliberate about everything much after the 
 same fashion. We have to decide what kind of diet 
 we shall have — vegetarian, meat, or mixed, how com- 
 pounded and how cooked; we have to decide what 
 shapes and what colors we shall be clothed in; we have 
 to decide what kinds of carpets, what patterns of wall- 
 paper we shall have; we have to decide what kind of 
 a physician we shall employ — allopathic, homoeopathic, 
 hydropathic, electropathic, osteopathic, or psycopathic; 
 we have to decide what schools we shall attend, what 
 studies pursue; we have to decide what vocations we 
 shall follow, what companions we shall choose. 
 
 At every cross-road of life there is a sphinx pro- 
 posing to us a riddle, the which we must either guess' 
 or be devoured by her. We proceed in the same way 
 that Caesar did. Having first compared the respective 
 merits of the courses of action that are open to us, we 
 select one on the ground of its preference, this kind of 
 choice being called deliberative, elective, or free. 
 
 Men of opposite habits, however, differ on the same 
 thing, even after deliberation. One chooses to eat vege- 
 tables, another to eat meat, one to drink wine, another 
 to drink water. On more important questions choices 
 are equally varying, there being hundreds of religious 
 sects, to say nothing about the divisions in politics. 
 
VOLITION 247 
 
 How, then, it is asked, can men be free moral agents if, 
 notwithstanding their dehberations, each, nevertheless, 
 follows the bent of his mind? 
 
 On the one hand, it is maintained that whenever we 
 choose one way we have at the same time power to 
 choose not that way, but some other. Unless this were 
 so, it is said, we should not be responsible for our 
 actions, nobody being to blame for what he cannot help. 
 On the other hand, it is objected that unless one were 
 governed by his habits we should not depend on him to 
 do things as we do. If people were not governed by 
 their habits it would make no difference, it is said, in 
 what bank we deposit our money, seeing that any 
 banker may at any time do anything, nobody knows 
 what. If people are not governed by their habits, it 
 would not surprise us should the Darwinians any day 
 undertake to persuade us that the heavens and earth 
 were created on the 23d of October, 4004 years before 
 the birth of Christ. 
 
 We have accordingly two parties, one of them main- 
 taining that whatever we do is the result of arbitrary 
 choice, the other that whatever we do is the result of 
 habit, these being in ceaseless conflict. On the waves 
 of the battle their standards ever rise and fall. Some 
 say that our side is getting ahead, some say that your 
 side is getting ahead, but others say that neither of us 
 is getting ahead. 
 
 Kant proposed a reconciliation of free-will and neces- 
 sity which has become famous. Every action of a man, 
 so far as we can observe, says he, goes back for its 
 cause to some other, so that finally it would follow that 
 the conditions under which a man was born were due to 
 
248 VOLITION 
 
 his previous acts. This fact, however, if indeed it be 
 a fact, avails us nothing in fixing the man's responsi- 
 bihty, seeing that we have ever to go back in time to 
 hunt it up. The case, nevertheless, will be altered if 
 we suppose that the man is of such a nature as never 
 to have begun to be at all. His choice would then have 
 been made from all eternity, with nothing previous to 
 it, it being possible to conceive time itself as having 
 originated with his choice. He would be free, since all 
 his actions in time would be the outcome of his original 
 choice which was without date, all dates having mani- 
 festly to be in time, but of any particular action of his 
 we could say it was determined by a previous one. 
 Without having power, therefore, in each particular in- 
 stance to do otherwise than he does, he would yet be 
 responsible for what he does. Any action of his would 
 be predestinated, determined beforehand, but he would 
 be the one who predestinated it. 
 
 But to say that a man can be bound and free at the 
 same time — all his actions predestinated, yet he respon- 
 sible for them — this, it is objected, is the same as to 
 say that a door can be open and shut at the same time. 
 It turns out, however, that a door can be open and shut 
 at the same time — there being a great many such doors, 
 consisting, as they do, of revolving fans. Freedom and 
 necessity, indeed, may be but two sides of the same 
 thing, just as unchangeability and changeability are; to 
 take an example, we hold that the atoms, that is to say, 
 those which are ultimate, are unchangeable, though we 
 admit that they change their places. 
 
 The quality of things is another condition of the will, 
 whether they be attractive, whether they be important, 
 whether their mastery be easy. 
 
VOLITION 249 
 
 To begin with, then, attractiveness aids us in the for- 
 mation and retention of habits. The great hold that 
 drinking, smoking, vulgarity, gaming, and loafing have 
 on people is partially to be explained on this ground. 
 Drinking is attractive in more ways than one. First, 
 there is the good flavor of the liquor; secondly, there is 
 the exhilaration attendant on its use; thirdly, there is 
 the pleasure of following the fashion. Suppose the 
 matter were otherwise, suppose the liquor had the taste 
 of quinine, suppose that the drinking of it made one 
 sick, suppose it were unfashionable to drink it? Would, 
 then, so many be addicted to its use? Learning to 
 smoke is at first disagreeable, and this is to a certain 
 extent a bar to it; but smoking is fashionable, and very 
 soon becomes agreeable. Vulgarity is fashionable among 
 a certain class of people, but unfashionable among an- 
 other class — it depends, therefore, very much on the 
 company one keeps. To vulgarity a certain pleasure 
 attaches from the gratification it affords vanity. The 
 vulgar man seems to himself to set at naught the usages 
 of a better class of society than that to which he be- 
 longs; sometimes he even seems to himself to be, as it 
 were, about to suspend the laws of nature themselves — 
 ^tna, perhaps, will cease to thunder if he goes by! 
 Moreover, vulgarity does not, like the use of tobacco, 
 make one sick. The use of the rod in early life, render- 
 ing it less attractive, does often prevent the formation 
 of the habit. Gaming is attractive, because it is free 
 from the details of a petty business, the gamester being 
 like a superintendent, general, or prime minister, man- 
 aging things only in their generalities. Every kind of 
 business, he says, is a game. What is the use of buying 
 
250 VOLITION 
 
 a stock of goods, taking chances that they will not suffer 
 damage, that they can be sold at a profit, that the money 
 for them can be collected? One might better go to the 
 chances themselves at once, without any intermediaries. 
 Let him gamble directly for the results. Disappoint- 
 ment tends to make a man put away gaming. This 
 shows that the habit tends to lessen its grip upon him 
 as its attractiveness wanes. Loafing, likewise, has a 
 great hold on people because of its attractiveness. A 
 man has been known to go every day for twenty years 
 to the corner grocery, there to sit, on the average, six 
 hours a day, gossiping. 
 
 Curious things also have attractiveness for us, and, 
 therefore, an influence on our actions. Emerson remarks 
 that Caesar, at the time he was dictator and was looking 
 after affairs in Egypt, had his curiosity so aroused about 
 the sources of the Nile that he was willing to leave 
 everything, if only he might discover them. The quest 
 after the North Pole is another case illustrating the same 
 thing. We may cite still another example. It was once 
 asked of a man what three things he would most desire 
 to know, whereupon he replied, the state of the dead, 
 what is on the planets, what is in the minds of others. 
 No doubt, if any of us were persuaded that he could 
 discover somewhat about any one of these things, there 
 would be no limit to the amount of effort he would put 
 forth to do so. 
 
 Another quality of things which has to do with action 
 is their importance; when at first a boy keeps himself 
 at his tasks, he would a thousand times rather be at 
 play, but the importance of his task makes him perse- 
 vere in it. It has often been remarked, also, what one 
 
VOLITION 251 
 
 will do through fear. A man, says Kant, who thinks 
 he cannot perform a certain action, could easily enough 
 do it were his life staked on its performance. We may, 
 however, find an example of less violent form. A 
 teacher finds great difficulty in keeping his pupils to 
 their studies, not being able at times to maintain order 
 in the room. At last, however, the examination comes. 
 There may be a hundred pupils, each writing at his desk 
 answers to questions. It is still as death. The fear of 
 failure is the magic that works such wonders with the 
 pupils. The marking system used at the recitation of a 
 class has much the same effect — may, therefore, be jus- 
 tified on grounds of expediency, however inadequate as 
 a test of real attainments it may be. Men working for 
 property or for power have their actions influenced by 
 the importance they attach to them. A man denies him- 
 self not only luxuries, but even necessaries, to lay up 
 money. Again, what unremitting toil and long hours a 
 man like Bonaparte will bear to gain power! 
 
 The ease with which a thing is mastered is another 
 quality which has to do with our actions. We have here 
 explained what might otherwise seem incomprehensible, 
 the great hold that drink and such like habits quickly 
 obtain over people. Suppose that, in order to learn to 
 drink, a man had to be drilled several hours a day for 
 a term of years, that is to say, suppose it were not very 
 easy to learn to drink, would so many acquire the habit? 
 One to become expert in vulgarity does not have to take 
 a long course of instruction, as he does to learn Latin. 
 Gambling, at least that form of it that depends merely 
 on chance, requires little or no preparation. Any habit, 
 even though formed with difficulty, when it has once 
 
252 VOLITION 
 
 come to perfection, makes practice in it easy, whence it 
 may be hard to get rid of it. This appHes, of course, to 
 good as well as to bad habits — accounts, therefore, for 
 the pains employers take to select men of approved habits. 
 
 The quantity of things, as well as their quality, pre- 
 scribes laws to action. 
 
 We have, first, extensive quantity, the number of 
 things. This has to do particularly with space, since 
 the number of things are beside one another in space. 
 Here, so far as actions are concerned, the principle is 
 limitation — make the matters of action as few as pos- 
 sible. The principle comes to what is called the division 
 of labor. As many as eighteen different kinds of work 
 were, as Adam Smith says, in his day involved in mak- 
 ing pins. If any one man had to do all these kinds of 
 work himself alone, he could not make more than ten 
 or twenty, if, indeed, he could make one pin a day. 
 With each man doing but one kind of work, however, 
 these same eighteen men could in one day make a hun- 
 dred thousand pins! Thus, by this quantitative condi- 
 tion of the will, there is a difference in results not merely 
 of a hundredfold, not merely of a thousandfold, but of 
 one-tenth a millionfold. Each man, by concentrating 
 his efforts, acquires the habit of doing his work quickly. 
 He thereby becomes so expert that he can do a great 
 deal. If he had to go from one thing to another, he 
 could not do anything well. His action, in short, is 
 regulated by the quantity of things, here extensive. 
 
 According to the economist Say, there are or were 
 seventy different kinds of work in making ordinary 
 playing-cards, the which, if any one man had to do them 
 all, he could not in a day make more than one or two 
 
VOLITION 253 
 
 cards. Thirty men, however, each doing but one or 
 two, or at most but three kinds of work, could in a day 
 make fifteen thousand. 
 
 Reports made by a committee to Parliament showed 
 as many kinds of work to be necessary in making 
 watches as there are counties in the State of Illinois — 
 one hundred and two. If one man had to do them all, 
 it was said, he could not in a whole lifetime finish a 
 single watch. As watches are now made, there are 
 more kinds of work on them than there are days in the 
 year, so that it is more than ever evident that no one 
 man, alone and unaided, can in any reasonable time 
 make a watch. 
 
 One of the Rothschilds, it is said, being asked if he 
 wanted his son to follow nothing but banking, remarked 
 that it was just what he wanted. For, said he, if a man 
 be merchant, brewer, banker, and everything else, it is 
 only a question of time when he will be sold out by the 
 sheriff. It is well worth our while, also, earnestly tp 
 consider that remarkable statement of Andrew Carnegie 
 that he has never yet known a man who understood two 
 kinds of business. 
 
 We have, however, in the second place, protensive 
 quantity, that is to say, quantity of time. By putting 
 a great deal of time on a thing we may become expert 
 in it. Certain persons, learning to play musical instru- 
 ments, practise five or six hours a day, their dexterity 
 being due to the quantity of time they repeat the acts. 
 
 A skilful seamstress handles a needle in a way which 
 must seem miraculous to a clumsy beginner, yet she her- 
 self was perhaps clumsy at first; she has become expert 
 simply from using the needle so many times. 
 
254 VOLITION 
 
 We have seen a man take four balls, which he all the 
 while keeps in the air, gently raising each up as it falls. 
 It may be that he uses knives instead of balls, twirling 
 each as he throws it up. It may be that he even uses 
 torches, keeping four of them upright, tossing up each 
 as it falls. He comes to be able to do such a thing as 
 this by the number of times he has practised it. 
 
 The egg-dancing girl, as she is called, illustrates the 
 same thing. Around her head is a band, at short dis- 
 tances on which are fastened little nooses, these in fact 
 extending the whole length of the band. Without ceas- 
 ing to dance, she must take, one by one, the eggs from 
 the basket which she holds in her hand and tighten 
 around it one of these nooses. When she has the eggs 
 all out of the basket, she must take them, one by one, 
 from the nooses and replace them in the basket, continu- 
 ing all this while to dance. What care she must take 
 not to break any of the eggs, besides that care necessary 
 to surmount the other difficulties in the case, it is hardly 
 possible for us to conceive. The proficiency of the girl 
 is gotten by practice. 
 
 A man of the name of Patch was once accustomed to 
 walk a rope stretched across the Niagara River. He 
 became so expert at it that he was able to stop on his 
 way over, balance a stove on the rope, and there cook 
 his dinner, maintaining all the time the utmost com- 
 posure. Certainly none of us would expect to succeed 
 in doing the same thing the first time he tried it. 
 
 But we have, thirdly, intensive quantity, number of 
 degrees. Actions are performed easier if we take the 
 difficulty little by little, gradually overcoming it. It is 
 conceivable that all manufacturing might be done by 
 
VOLITION 255 
 
 unskilled labor provided that the work were so laid out 
 that each workman had but the merest trifle to accom- 
 plish. Perhaps those who talk so much about general 
 equality hope to reach it on this principle, the wages of 
 everybody to be the same because one does as much as 
 another. A boy learning to swim is first instructed in 
 some very simple positions and motions, then in those 
 a degree more complex, and so on. A teacher remarked 
 that he considered calculus no more difficult than frac- 
 tions, provided the learner was prepared to enter on the 
 study of it, having reached it by passing all the inter- 
 mediate grades. 
 
 The grades which are established in a school exem- 
 plify the principle, graduation meaning that one has 
 passed all the degrees below a certain point of attain- 
 ment. Classification in a school, however, is, we know, 
 anything but thorough, pupils being treated in the same 
 way who differ greatly. Whatever disadvantages, there- 
 fore, might have been apparent in the old-fashioned way 
 of having a private tutor for children, at least one great 
 advantage was certainly attained, the lesson could be 
 better adapted to the needs of the individual. 
 
 We have, in the last place, that condition of the will 
 which depends on the relation of things. 
 
 In order to compass this subject, it is plain we must 
 have a notion what the primary classes of relations are. 
 Manifestly they are relations of exclusion and relations 
 of inclusion, a third class being composed of these two 
 taken together. 
 
 Take the first class of relations, that denominated as 
 exclusion, in which one thing interferes with another; 
 we have it illustrated when one way of doing a thing 
 
256 VOLITION 
 
 precludes another way of doing it. A man, for example, 
 has, as he supposes, skill in playing a piano, but on 
 going to a conservatory he finds that he has to unlearn 
 it, his previous training interfering with the training he 
 is about to take. 
 
 What is known as diverting the mind seems to de- 
 pend on the principle of exclusion. Balky horses, it is 
 asserted, on being taken to the city and there used, balk 
 no longer, the constant noise diverting the mind of the 
 horse, so that the notion of balking no longer occurs 
 to him. 
 
 Diverting of the mind is often a good thing to make 
 use of — exclude the conditions of doing the thing in 
 question by introducing the condition of doing some- 
 thing at variance with it. The propensity to make use 
 of pernicious or worthless literature, for example, can 
 be cured by opening up the opportunity for good liter- 
 ature. What is called breaking the will is often noth- 
 ing but strengthening it. For example, a child who is 
 whipped for doing something may thereby only have it 
 more strongly impressed on his mind, so that he is more 
 likely to do it again. We are told, for example, that a 
 boy, having been punished for something — probably not 
 for a misdeed, but only for something held to be such — 
 presently made application to be punished again. He 
 wanted to repeat what he had done, but preferred to 
 have the punishment first. A better treatment of such 
 cases manifestly is to divert the mind. Give the child 
 something else to do and think about incompatible with 
 what it is desired he should not engage in. 
 
 Another class of relations in which things stand to 
 one another is that for which we may use the word in- 
 
VOLITION 257 
 
 elusion. Certain kinds of habits and actions involve 
 others. For example, the habit of obedience somewhat 
 insures the performance of certain actions. This is why 
 Girard was accustomed to impose ridiculous tasks on 
 his men, requiring them, for example, to move a heap 
 of stones from one place to another one day, and the 
 next day to move it back again. He wanted to test 
 their capacity for implicit obedience. And Bonaparte, 
 we are told, promoted the sentry who refused to let him 
 pass the lines, knowing that his habit of obedience fitted 
 him for an office. 
 
 The habit of attention is also a thing on which much 
 depends. We are told, for example, of a frivolous girl, 
 who could never get any good from study till her atten- 
 tion was secured by telling her of the rings of Saturn, 
 how they give perpetual light to the planet, so that, ex- 
 cept on cloudy nights, street-lamps there are not neces- 
 sary. This allusion, however inferior might have been 
 its scientific value, so excited her curiosity, it is said, 
 that she became a good student. 
 
 It is on this principle of one thing's including another, 
 so far as actions are concerned, that system has impor- 
 tance for the will. One action leads directly to another, 
 one action is implied in another, all the actions in a 
 very few. 
 
 We are told of a method of preaching, for instance, 
 which will illustrate it. The preacher, having fixed on 
 an idea about which he wishes to talk, proceeds to find 
 three heads under which it may be considered, each of 
 which he subdivides into three others, the last in each 
 set being of the nature of an illustration. Every ser- 
 mon he writes is always on this plan and is always 
 
258 VOLITION 
 
 twenty minutes long, on twenty pages of paper, and one 
 hundred words to the page. It is said it was wonder- 
 ful how well some who could not preach at all, if they 
 went about it at random, could get along on this plan, 
 bad as in some respects it might have been. 
 
 We are able on the same principle to understand 
 wherein the good of manual training consists, namely, 
 in the fact that one's activity is systematically directed 
 in a realistic process. This we may exemplify by the 
 way splits are gotten out for baskets. The worker takes 
 a log of white oak, say, a few inches in diameter, a few 
 feet in length. He splits it into halves, then into quar- 
 ters, and so on, till he has pieces sufficiently small. 
 From these he removes the heart and bark, then brings 
 them into shape, narrow at the ends and enlarging to 
 the middle. These he halves, quarters, and so on, till 
 he has splits of the requisite thickness, which he pro- 
 ceeds to smooth. In short, he always knows just what 
 to do, the whole prescribing the parts, and the parts of 
 the parts on down to the smallest. 
 
 Pupils who have followed such a process as this are 
 likely to develop habits of systematic action. 
 
 What is true' of making baskets is true of adopting 
 ways. We are caught in the process of acting. We 
 live in a world of organized activity. We come natu- 
 rally into a system of accepted behaviors and beliefs. 
 We are easily drawn into this system of organized 
 activity, acquiring in a short time by imitation what 
 otherwise it would take us a lifetime to learn. We have 
 only to get into the swim, so to say, to be borne on, such 
 a control does the relation of things by inclusion have 
 over the will. 
 
VOLITION 259 
 
 The object of taking a special training in something 
 is largely that one may put himself under a system of 
 conditions which will carry him along. 
 
 The wonders which such men as Alexander, Csesar, 
 and Napoleon accomplished were not so much due to 
 their ability as to the system of conditions into which 
 they were able to get, a system of conditions into which, 
 perhaps, the times placed them. They were in such a 
 system of organized activity that things did themselves, 
 as it were. 
 
 Change of conditions may, therefore, above every- 
 thing else, be beneficial to one. A man by changing his 
 room, his furniture, his mode of life, may get into a 
 better way of doing things. One addicted to some bad 
 habit, as that of drunkenness, for example, may be re- 
 formed by changing his associations. 
 
 The third and last class of relations in which things 
 may stand to one another is that in which a thing, in- 
 deed, is involved in others, but partially so only, the 
 relation, therefore, being partly one of exclusion, partly 
 one of inclusion. The Esquimos, for example, coming 
 out of the North to London, would find themselves 
 under two systems, each of which would at the same 
 time exclude and include the other. Naturally they 
 would be reluctant to change their clothing, yet would 
 almost be under the necessity of so doing; naturally 
 they would dislike the dishes set before them, yet would 
 have to eat something; naturally they would detest the 
 beds and bedrooms, yet would get sleepy. 
 
 First, then, everybody to a certain extent acts accord- 
 ing to what he has formerly been. For example, to all 
 the expostulations which were made to an old man to 
 
26o VOLITION 
 
 induce him to take out life insurance, the only answer 
 that could be gotten out of him was that he never fell 
 in with it. Secondly, however, new conditions have the 
 effect to make one change his ways. A man who will 
 not buy a machine, for example, yet on hearing its 
 merits so highly extolled by the agent, finally concludes 
 to take it. 
 
 As a matter of fact, the old and the new are always 
 contending for mastery of us; we are partly precluded 
 from certain actions, partly impelled toward them. 
 What is meant by saying that we should embrace the 
 first opportunity of putting a good resolution into prac- 
 tice is that we should quickly get into the new current 
 of things, lest the old one carry us away. What is meant 
 by saying that we should allow no exception in our con- 
 duct when once we have entered on a new course of 
 action is that we should not allow the old current to 
 catch us again, get us into its system. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 DESIRE 
 
 Desire is the feeling of wanting something, primarily 
 of wanting to live. The fundamental forms of desire 
 are, therefore, for food and for offspring. Through the 
 unfolding of life and the development of society, how- 
 ever, it has come about that the desires are for wealth, 
 power, and fame, if on the one hand we neglect the 
 satisfaction of appetite and on the other the desire for 
 knowledge. But, as was said, the primary forms of de- 
 sire are for nourishment and for propagation. 
 
 Definite stages of progress in the satisfaction of desire, 
 particularly of that of possessing utilities and conven- 
 iences may be noted. 
 
 The amoeba is an animal, consisting of a single cell, 
 so small usually as to be seen only by the aid of a micro- 
 scope. It is a nucleus surrounded by a less dense en- 
 velope. To eat, it folds portions of its body around a 
 speck of nourishment; to walk, it bulges out and con- 
 tracts portions of its body. It multiplies in that its 
 nucleus splitting in two, over the parts thus formed 
 grow envelopes. According to certain evolutionists, all 
 animals have descended from such an organism. 
 
 Sponges and corals, which are a multiplicity of ani- 
 mals joined together and growing fast to the ground, 
 get their nourishment from the currents of water which 
 they draw to themselves — a socialistic community with 
 a minimum of labor. Oysters, clams, and the like also 
 
 261 
 
2 62 DESIRE 
 
 supply their wants in the simplest manner, these wants, 
 indeed, being few. Echinoderms, such as sea-cucum- 
 bers, move by hydraulic contrivances, water being forced 
 from tubes into feet or fans. Fishes, though vertebrates, 
 yet are water animals, swimming from place to place in 
 quest of food, and depositing eggs in vast quantities 
 from which other fishes grow. These vast quantities of 
 eggs insure the preservation of the species in that, though 
 most of them may come to nothing, yet enough of them 
 will be productive. What are called mud-fish are part 
 fish and part frog. They live during the winter months 
 in rivers and bogs, breathing through gills, the same as 
 fishes breathe, but in the summer they go for a vacation 
 into dry mud, where, under coverings of leaves, they 
 breathe air with lungs the same as amphibians. Their 
 desires have risen above those of common fish; they 
 make use of two sets of conditions, are, in short, aris- 
 tocratic. They have the form of eels, which latter have 
 somewhat the form of worms. Worms are assigned a 
 great place in the animal world — according to some, not 
 only cattle and horses, but even men are descended from 
 them. 
 
 Worms of various sorts have desires which extend 
 beyond the mere questions of subsistence and propaga- 
 tion to that of shelter. They have constructed tubes of 
 sand in which they dwell, or they make tubes by gluing 
 together shells. Many worms also have caves in the 
 earth, eating the soil, being nourished by the vegetable 
 matter which it contains. When the weather is dry they 
 descend deeper into the earth, as they do also in winter 
 to get away from the frost. 
 
 Animals which have legs are able to satisfy desires 
 
DESIRE 263 
 
 better than those which at best can only swim or drag 
 themselves along, frogs, toads, and lizards, for example. 
 The ancient lizards, which were enormous in size, had 
 naturally to have a vast supply of food, so that it was 
 difficult, we may suppose, for them to satisfy their 
 desires. Elephants present a similar case; for example, 
 an elephant may weigh five or six tons, that is to say, 
 more than ten thousand pounds, whence we can form 
 some idea of the amount it takes to keep him. It is 
 conceivable, indeed, that animals as much larger than 
 any animals known to have ever existed on the earth 
 might have been developed in the course of time but for 
 the impossibility such animals would have found to 
 satisfy desire. 
 
 The satisfaction of desire in birds is somewhat com- 
 plex. They have one home in the north and one home 
 in the south, flying thousands of miles over land and sea 
 to pass from the one to the other. Some of them, it is 
 said, fly hundreds of miles an hour, and are sometimes 
 at a height of two or three miles. Birds which in sum- 
 mer live in the far north, being habituated to a cold 
 climate, in the winter come to countries from which 
 other birds have flown to the south, these countries now 
 being warm enough for them. Birds, it will be evident, 
 live a life with which that of the lower animals will not 
 compare. 
 
 Many beasts provide themselves some sort of houses, 
 usually holes in the ground, but not infrequently holes 
 in trees, trying to satisfy the desire for shelter. Beavers 
 make use of systematic means for satisfying their de- 
 sires, having advanced in this direction farther than any 
 other beasts. Beavers gnaw down trees, which they, 
 
264 DESIRE 
 
 then gnawing, trim up, making use of which they con- 
 struct dams across streams, causing the water above the 
 dam to become of the required depth. Sometimes the 
 dam consists almost entirely of the wood piled up, the 
 water running through it, but not in sufficient quanti- 
 ties to lower the supply above. Sometimes, however, 
 the dam is a solid wall, the beavers having mixed much 
 mud and many stones with the wood. Often, too, a 
 dam not so high is built above or below the main one 
 to lessen the pressure of the water on the main dam. 
 The beavers construct houses in the water above the 
 dam by piling up sticks, stones, and mud, till the struct- 
 ure rises a little above the water, where they make a 
 floor by gnawing the sticks bare, and upon this erect 
 the house. They have only one room, but have from 
 it two entrances into the water. Where the banks of 
 the stream are steep, they dig away the earth so as to 
 form inclines, down which they drag sticks and poles. 
 What is more remarkable, they dig canals several feet 
 deep and several feet wide back from the water so that 
 they can raft down sticks and logs for use; they are 
 Known even to have systems of locks. They live on 
 bark, twigs, and even on wood, all of which they store 
 away in the water below. Only one family inhabits a 
 house, though the family may consist of a dozen beav- 
 ers, since the young beavers do not go out into the 
 world to shift for themselves till about the third year, 
 when they become of age. Beavers, as it seems, indulge 
 also in yachting, an old one swimming around the pond 
 with the young ones on his back, so complex has become 
 the satisfaction of their desires. 
 
 The only animals approaching the beaver in compli- 
 
DESIRE 265 
 
 cated polity are the bees. The cells of the comb are 
 six-sided, a side thus being equal in length to the radius 
 of the circle of which the sides are chords, speaking 
 geometrically, the result being that the system of cells 
 is constructed with the least possible amount of wax. 
 The bees use these cells for storing away their food, 
 honey being the chief of it, and for holding the eggs 
 from which new bees are hatched. Bees have division 
 of labor and system in their work, and have established 
 a sort of republic. 
 
 An opinion regarding the animals which has been 
 entertained may be briefly alluded to. Insects of all 
 kinds, bees among them, were too small to have obtained 
 the dominion of the world, no matter how intelligent 
 they might have been, but the same could not have been 
 said of the beavers. With man out of the way, it is 
 maintained, there would have been nobody to contest 
 their supremacy. Even as it was, their empire extended 
 from Canada to Mexico. We may — such is the conten- 
 tion — consider that the end which animal life has before 
 it is to exist intellectually, that if men had perished from 
 the earth, providence would have supplied the defect as 
 best it could, installing in their place that species of 
 animal which exhibited the greatest fitness to fill it. This 
 fancy, however, need not detain us, since we come to 
 fact. 
 
 Men, even in a low stage of thought, rise above ani- 
 mals in the satisfaction of desire, as appears in their 
 use of stone, fire, leather, and wood, the principal arti- 
 cles, indeed, the use of which first distinguishes savages 
 from brutes. 
 
 Men wrought spear-heads of stone, which fasten- 
 
266 DESIRE 
 
 ing, to sticks with cords of animals, they possessed 
 weapons to be used against beasts. Out of stone they 
 also worked knives, which enabled them to skin and 
 dress the animals they killed, scrapers also, with which 
 they would clean the hides. Many an animal also was 
 killed with hammers or mauls, these being dressed stones 
 fastened with cords to handles. Axes were stones not 
 only dressed, but also brought to an edge, and attached 
 to sticks. Savages used such axes not only against ani- 
 mals, but also against one another, employing them as 
 weapons of warfare. The tomb of Aldus M'Gladus in 
 Kirkcudbrightshire, opened some years ago, was found 
 to contain the skeleton of a man, the upper bone of whose 
 arm contained a stone sliver, doubtless from a prehis- 
 toric axe. Strange as it may seem, even surgical opera- 
 tions were performed with stone instruments, sometimes 
 a portion of the human skull even being removed with 
 them, the person recovering and doing well, as is proved 
 by the remaining skulls which show the bone healed. 
 The object of thus trepanning the skull, it is supposed, 
 was to cure epilepsy, the theory being that if a hole were 
 made in the head the devils might get out, they doubt- 
 less being glad to escape. Savages made their weapons 
 and tools out of flint, chipping ofif flake after flake, using 
 a hard material for a chisel, the tooth of a shark, for 
 •instance. Stones were also rounded and flattened by 
 them, which, being turned on each other, constituted the 
 first grist-mill. 
 
 Men differ, moreover, from animals in that they make 
 use of fire for various purposes, for heat and light, for 
 cooking food, for baking clay, and for smelting metals. 
 Savages have fire-drills, as the same are called, made of 
 stone, which they cause to twirl rapidly, first one way 
 
DESIRE 267 
 
 and then the other, using to accompHsh this a cord or 
 thong, both ends of which are attached to a stick. The 
 drill revolving rapidly against some hard material pro- 
 duces such friction as to cause the emission of sparks 
 of fire, which, catching in something dry, as leaves, 
 create a blaze. Fire, indeed, may first have been ob- 
 tained from burning forests or from volcanoes. While, 
 then, the animal world was wrapped in darkness, men, 
 though savages, might spend their evenings in the light 
 of their camp-fires, beholding one another's faces and at 
 the same time enjoying conversation. Animals were 
 compelled to eat their food raw, but men, even though 
 their stage of thought was low, might broil their meat 
 and roast their vegetables. Certain stones exist which 
 have somewhat the shape of cups, besides there are 
 gourds and cocoa-nuts, natural vessels. The stone cups 
 were raised higher with a rim of clay, the shells were 
 coated with the same material, placed upon the fire, the 
 clay baked, the result being that men discovered pottery. 
 Having vessels which could resist fire, primitive peoples 
 put water in them and placed them over the fire, being 
 able in this way to boil vegetables or meat. They might 
 now have more than one kind of dinner — might have 
 roast or boiled ham, just as they chose. Again, metals 
 being heated in fire, were softened, and were then beaten 
 into knives, spear-heads, and the like. The time, indeed, 
 came when men melted the metals, and, filling moulds 
 with the liquid, cast them weapons and tools. 
 
 Man further distinguished himself from other mam- 
 mals by the use of skins. Scraping the flesh clean from 
 hides with little stone adzes, he oiled them, rendering 
 them pliable ; this was the primitive tanning. He threw a 
 hide about his shoulders, extemporizing a jacket, or about 
 
268 DESIRE 
 
 his loins, extemporizing a skirt. He learned to fasten 
 them on him by tying them together with cords or with 
 withes. After a time he learned to cut them into pieces 
 and then to sew them together, so as to make shapely 
 garments. The skirt in time became divided, forming 
 trousers. Where the climate was cold, caps were made 
 for the head and moccasins for the feet. Thus it was 
 that man became so different in appearance from the 
 beasts. But he used skins not only for clothes, but also 
 for houses. For, setting up sticks, he hung hides upon 
 them, making himself a shelter. Laying skins upon the 
 ground, he had a bed. He could, if he wished, put skins 
 over him for a blanket. Stranger still, he made kettles 
 out of skins. He would dig a hole in the ground and 
 line it with a whole hide, so that the edges of the hide 
 extended a little over the hole and upon the ground. 
 The projections of the hide he caused to be held down 
 with stones. Then he would fill the skin with water, 
 and put into it turnips or other roots. Heating stones 
 in a fire and dropping them into the water, he brought 
 it about that the turnips or other roots were boiled. 
 
 Making use of wood, man likewise went far beyond 
 the brute. The first thing of wood which he turned to 
 account was no doubt the club, a weapon still wielded 
 by certain officials among us. When he fastened a stone 
 to his club he had a hammer, when he fastened a cut- 
 ting tool to his club he had an axe, when he fastened a 
 pointed blade to his club he had a spear. The boom- 
 erang is a club which, when it has been thrown, will of 
 itself return to the hand of the thrower. What a sur- 
 prise would such a thing be to a tribe of monkeys, if, 
 indeed — which, however, is improbable — they had suffi- 
 
DESIRE 269 
 
 cient intelligence to observe the fact at all! The bow 
 consists of a stick to both ends of which is tied a tightly 
 drawn cord. By means of it a small spear, that is to 
 say, an arrow, can be thrown with great force, with so 
 much force, in fact, as to kill not only birds, but beasts 
 as well. Another thing fabricated out of wood was 
 the mat, splits for this purpose being plaited together. 
 Moreover, by weaving splits or willows, men made bas- 
 kets, obtaining receptacles in which to carry things. 
 Houses were made out of wood, a frame of poles being 
 covered with bark. Wood was also made into boats and 
 into vehicles. Logs might first have been fastened to- 
 gether to form rafts. Hollowing out and shaping a 
 log, however, made of it a canoe. Canoes were also 
 made by fastening bark upon a frame of sticks, as we 
 now make boats by fastening boards upon a frame of 
 beams. The sled, either with merely a flat surface or 
 with two runners, was a device of wood for transport- 
 ing things overland. 
 
 When, then, mankind had learned what to do with 
 stone, fire, leather, and wood, they must have sup- 
 posed, comparing themselves with the animals, that 
 they had reached the millennial age. Many of their 
 descendants, indeed, have not to this day advanced much 
 beyond the point then attained. To have accomplished 
 so much implied the expenditure of a vast amount of 
 thought and a consequent intellectual exaltation before 
 undreamed of. 
 
 When, however, civilization became firmly established 
 in the world, it made provisions for the satisfaction of 
 desire, much more complicated than those which had 
 been known to savage men. Peru, indeed, affords a 
 good example of what was accomplished in this regard. 
 
270 DESIRE 
 
 The people were organized, like an army, into squads 
 of ten families, over which was an ensign. Ten of these 
 squads made a company, over which was a captain; ten 
 companies a regiment, over which was a colonel ; and 
 ten regiments a division, over which was a brigadier, 
 using our terminology. Over each province of the em- 
 pire, and there were four of these, was an inspector- 
 general. At the head of the whole organization was 
 the Inca, the hereditary commander-in-chief of the peo- 
 ple. Each man was allotted a piece of land for the 
 support of himself and his family, but had also to help 
 till the lands not allotted to anyone, the returns from 
 these being appropriated to general state uses, as, for 
 example, the support of the military, of the priesthood, 
 of the artisans, and of the infirm. There was no private 
 ownership of land and materials in the sense in which 
 we now speak of it. Stone buildings, somewhat resem- 
 bling our modern ones, existed in every village as gran- 
 aries. Roads connected the villages with one another, 
 and about every five miles were public lodging-houses. 
 Everybody really worked for the state and was sup- 
 ported by it, no such thing existing as private enter- 
 prise. There was no money, no buying and no selling. 
 The state also provided everybody with house room. 
 The houses seem to have been what we now call flats, 
 had apartments opening on the corridor, and in the same 
 house lived many families. Beggary there could not be, 
 since everybody was sure of a good living, was in fact 
 born to it — the saying that the world owes one a living 
 having been in their case literally true. Marriage was 
 compulsory, and a man was allowed but one wife, just 
 as he was allowed but one piece of land and but one 
 
DESIRE 271 
 
 stock of materials. It seems that the state made the 
 marriages, selecting for each man his wife. 
 
 Some details regarding the actual state of things in 
 the Peruvian empire will better enable us to get a con- 
 ception of them. There was an extensive system of 
 irrigation, water being conveyed through the country in 
 aqueducts and into reservoirs, from which it was con- 
 ducted over the fields. For the country was without 
 rain, so that, but for this watering, the fields would not 
 have produced much. The Peruvians raised the corn 
 common to America, more properly called maize, the 
 white variety of which, it is said, they grew better and 
 larger than any which has been anywhere else or subse- 
 quently produced. It is, moreover, affirmed that the 
 potatoes which they raised have never been equaled for 
 quality. They had no tea or coffee, but instead had 
 good cocoa. The peppers of which chili-sauce is made 
 were also one of their products. Their cotton was 
 much superior to that raised in the Southern States of 
 our country — indeed, was without rival, if we except 
 Egyptian and sea-island cotton. The game was pre- 
 served in the forests and systematically hunted by the 
 state for the people. The rest of the meat was supplied 
 from herds of llamas and alpacas. The Peruvians had 
 no horses, cattle, sheep, dogs, cats, or any other of our 
 domestic animals. They made cotton cloth, which they 
 stamped with dies, a sort of calico, we might call it. 
 Their woolen cloth was made out of the fleece of the 
 llama. What we still call alpaca was made by them 
 from the shearings of the animal which bears that name. 
 They made a very heavy cloth from the fibres of aloes, 
 interweaving the cords of animals with them. They 
 
272 DESIRE 
 
 produced also a sort of a cloth of gold. Not needing 
 gold or silver for money, they used it not only for decora- 
 tions, but also for utensils. Their pottery was of a very 
 high grade, as we know from the great quantities which 
 have survived the wreck of their empire. It bore the 
 shapes of men and of animals. One kind was made of 
 an amalgam of gold and mercury, the mercury vapor- 
 izing in the baking. They possessed no iron, but made 
 their tools out of copper mixed with silver or tin. They 
 put up huge stone buildings, which were beautiful in 
 appearance, fitting the stones neatly together and not 
 employing mortar. Generally lintels were used for the 
 doorways and windows, but arches, made by continually 
 extending the layers of masonry, also obtained. As 
 they had no glass or other transparent substance, so far 
 as we know, their windows were only openings very 
 much resembling those in which we put our window- 
 frames. It is possible, of course, that their windows 
 were curtained. Many of their buildings, according to 
 the restorations which have been drawn of them, would 
 rival the handsome structures to be found in our great 
 cities, nor is this conclusion a matter of guesswork 
 merely, seeing that extensive remains of their buildings 
 are found. As there were no horses or oxen, the roads 
 were, of course, for those who went afoot, but were 
 eighteen, twenty-five, and even forty feet wide, paved 
 with smooth stones. Obstructions were cut away, 
 ravines filled up, and streams bridged. Over the rivers 
 were suspension bridges made of cables wrought out of 
 willows. The Peruvians had no writing, and conse- 
 quently no reading, all their knowledge being held in 
 memory and orally transmitted, It is certain, however. 
 
DESIRE 273 
 
 that they had dramas, composed without the aid of 
 writing, one of which, indeed, has come down to us. 
 They were able to keep accounts by means of certain 
 knots tied in strings, which were hung as fringe upon 
 cords. These were cahed quipos. Facts, it is beheved, 
 were recorded somewhat in the same way, the quipos 
 being mnemonic strings. The Peruvians had a sort of 
 rehgion, or at least what is called such. Their great 
 temple was erected to the glory of the sun, but had 
 apartments respectively for the moon, for the evening 
 star, for the rainbow, and for the thunder and light- 
 ning. The main idea seems to have been praise for the 
 fixed order of nature. We must take into account, 
 moreover, that Peru was not a small community like 
 Sparta, but a vast empire, a million square miles in ex- 
 tent, large as the States of our Union between the Atlan- 
 tic and the Mississippi, fifteen hundred miles long and 
 four hundred miles broad, and containing ten millions 
 of people. This empire, with its grand system of pro- 
 viding for human wants, arose by successive growths 
 out of the state of things existing among savages of the 
 stone age. 
 
 Suppose, then, that the ancestors of apes and men — 
 if, indeed, as Darwin teaches, they are the same — lean- 
 ing over the battlements of heaven, had beheld the 
 Peruvian state, must they not have wondered at the 
 progress men had made as compared with what apes had 
 accomplished in the satisfaction of desire; must they 
 not, on general principles, have conceded that all things 
 were possible to men, even evolution to spiritual per- 
 fection ? 
 
 The ancient empires of the old world, which were 
 
2 74 DESIRE 
 
 evolved out of civilized society, offered even greater 
 means of satisfying desire. 
 
 According to Diodorus, living was so cheap in Egypt 
 that the whole cost of a person from birth to majority 
 was not more than three dollars, on the average about 
 fourteen cents a year. It can readily be seen that, from 
 the warmth of the climate, clothing was hardly worth 
 taking into account and that the same might be said of 
 house-rent. Moreover, the soil produced so abundantly 
 and with so little labor that food was not of much mo- 
 ment. We may suppose, for example, that in Egypt a 
 few hours' work would produce enough to keep one a 
 whole year or more. The Egyptians, accordingly, could 
 put in most of their time building great monuments 
 which should perpetuate their memory to eternity. 
 
 The people of Babylon lived in a magnificence which 
 to the earlier civilized peoples would have been deemed 
 Utopian. Babylon was five or ten times the size of the 
 present London, but it is to be taken into account that 
 the buildings had extensive yards and gardens. The 
 whole city was surrounded by a wall three hundred feet 
 high and eighty feet thick, on top of which was a grand 
 boulevard for chariots. Riding in vehicles drawn by 
 horses on this elevated road persons could view the stu- 
 pendous structures of the city, as, for example, the 
 hanging gardens or the temple. The hanging gardens 
 consisted of long and broad platforms, one above the 
 other, supported on pillars and covered with earth — 
 flowers, shrubs, and trees growing on the same. Each 
 succeeding platform was smaller than the one below it, 
 so that the whole presented somewhat the shape of a 
 truncated wedge. We can well imagine what must have 
 
DESIRE 275 
 
 been the appearance, from the walls, of these platforms 
 bearing their verdure and blossoms. But a still more 
 imposing structure rose from a platform in the midst 
 of the city, which was itself seventy-five feet high — the 
 great temple. It consisted of seven edifices, each of one 
 story, each succeeding one smaller and resting on the 
 flat roof of the one below it, each a different color than 
 the others, the uppermost one gold. We are to remem- 
 ber that the dress and utensils of the Babylonians were 
 equally luxurious with their buildings, whence we under- 
 stand what were their means of satisfying desire. 
 
 Nineveh was the seat of artistic excellence. The pub- 
 lic buildings, which were huge and rose one on top of 
 another, had wainscoting of alabaster, upon which were 
 highly wrought sculptures. The chairs, tables, and 
 stools of the Ninevites were about such as we possess 
 to-day, ours often being copied from theirs. The Nin- 
 evites made use even of face-powder and perfumery, 
 so great was their luxury. It should seem also that we 
 have derived embroidery from them. With the needle 
 they worked on cloth the forms of rosettes, of flowers, 
 and of animals, the latter sometimes being representa- 
 tive of real, sometimes of fictitious ones. Just what were 
 the patterns of these embroideries is known to us, since, 
 on the wainscoting, sculptures of the dress of men show 
 how the cloth was wrought on; the sculptured thresh- 
 olds of the palaces also give us an idea of the same. 
 The corribs of the Ninevites, together with their brace- 
 lets, ear-rings, and necklaces, have come down to us, 
 showing us their skill in designing. 
 
 Tyre and Sidon exhibit a people devoted to manu- 
 facture and commerce, a people who thrived through 
 
276 DESIRE 
 
 specialization. They made a profit on everything which 
 they made, a profit, indeed, on what they had not made. 
 They were the first people to discover that work is un- 
 necessary. They produced nothing, but secured a profit 
 on what others produced. They fitted out ships, which 
 they moved over the sea by means of rows of men who 
 sat on benches, whence called rowers. They went a 
 thousand miles or more, establishing stations and ware- 
 houses where they might exchange the goods which 
 they brought for others which they might carry away, 
 always managing to get the best of the bargain. The 
 goods which they took away, if they did not wish to 
 use them themselves, they sold at advantage. They had 
 a knowledge of all the inventions and receipts of the 
 past, to which they added a few of their own. They 
 even entered the undertaking business, making coffins 
 of stone, of wood, of earthenware, and even of lead 
 to sell. 
 
 Judea presented a people who from being shepherds 
 had become farmers, engaging latterly, to be sure, in 
 manufacture and commerce. The Jews thought to ren- 
 der easier the satisfaction of desire by limiting the title 
 to land. Every fifty years horns were to be blown all 
 over the country, signifying that the grand year of 
 jubilee had come, then anybody who during the last fifty 
 years had sold land was to get it back again for nothing. 
 Anyone buying land, therefore, really would only pay 
 cash rent for it as many years as were to expire till the 
 jubilee came. The doctrine of this usage was that no- 
 body should ultimately alienate himself from the land. 
 Another provision somewhat along the same line was 
 that every seventh year those who owned land were not 
 
to work it, but to give up its use to the poor. Those Jews 
 who had sold themselves into bondage were also to be 
 free after the expiration of a certain time, and debts 
 were to be subject to the statute of limitation. Such, 
 indeed, were the proposed Jewish regulations, though 
 doubt exists as to whether they were ever generally car- 
 ried out. At any rate, however, they serve to show the 
 natural progress of mankind toward the satisfaction of 
 desire. 
 
 Persia, a small country on the gulf of kindred name, 
 annexing territory after territory, welded together into 
 a single empire Egypt, Babylon, Nineveh, Phoenicia, 
 Judea, and all the other countries between the Helles- 
 pont and the Indus. This empire exhibited in a way all 
 the characteristics which those countries had manifested, 
 and in addition a splendid organization. The Persian 
 empire was three thousand miles long and from five 
 hundred to fifteen hundred broad, and contained two 
 million square miles, eighty million inhabitants, sixty 
 nations. The Persians made roads through this empire 
 over which couriers rode on fleet horses carrying the 
 mails. Uniform coinage was adopted, an army and a 
 navy created. 
 
 This great empire was evolved out of nations which 
 themselves were evolved out of some state of things 
 comparable with what once existed in the Peruvian em- 
 pire — not exactly such a state of things as Peru had, 
 perhaps, but something equivalent to it. 
 
 From the Persian empire to modern times, more than 
 two thousand years, there have existed in succession 
 Greece, Rome, Constantinople, Papacy, and Protestancy, 
 so many stages of progress in the satisfaction of desire. 
 
27S DESIRE 
 
 Greece produced Athens, Sparta, and Macedonia. 
 Athens had a great navy and a large merchant marine, 
 and carried on an extensive commerce, besides devoting 
 itself to manufacture. It extended its empire over four 
 hundred cities, everywhere building up democracy. The 
 Athenians had their work all done for them by slaves, 
 and devoted themselves to politics and letters. It may 
 be doubted whether any other people ever had such an 
 easy and delightful time. Sparta was a socialistic re- 
 public, so far as citizenship was concerned, the labor, 
 however, being performed by slaves with no voice in 
 affairs. The people were required to eat at public tables, 
 where the fare was plain and the whole life of the citizen 
 was removed as far as possible from luxury. He, 
 indeed, did not have to work, but must prepare himself 
 for the life of a soldier and serve in the army, in which 
 capacity he was very successful. Macedonia, owing to 
 the conquest of Athens by Sparta and the downfall of 
 Thebes, a fourth great power of the Greeks, became the 
 head of all Greece, and under Alexander the Great over- 
 threw the Persian empire, annexing its territory, this 
 being the greatest single conquest ever effected. The 
 Greeks now pushed into the Persian territory, absorb- 
 ing its treasures and filling positions of power there, 
 which advantages, indeed, they continued to enjoy for 
 centuries. This conquest of Alexander, then, changed 
 the fate of the world, caused enlightened method to be 
 introduced into the affairs of men, whereby the satis- 
 faction of desire was greatly promoted. 
 
 Rome made the legion its unit of military power, an 
 organization which came to consist of six thousand men, 
 subdivided and officered somewhat on the plan of a mod- 
 
DESIRE- 279 
 
 ern army, and having, besides infantry, some cavalry 
 and perhaps engines of war. Great armies were merely 
 made up of such legions. Whenever a legion stopped 
 for the night, the men entrenched themselves and ap- 
 pointed guards. They never dispersed about a town, 
 but were constantly together and always subject to the 
 strictest discipline. They were always ready, day and 
 night, in season and out of season, to effect all they 
 were capable of. Whatever lands the Roman army 
 occupied it held, so that taxes were collected from them 
 to fill the coffers. Commerce was also carried on with 
 the conquered lands, the inhabitants being allowed to 
 retain their liberty and to keep their possessions. Since, 
 then, Rome with its machine of power kept adding on 
 land after land, it came to hold sway from the Thames 
 to the Euphrates. There was unity of administration, 
 the senate directing and the consul or general executing, 
 a dictator with absolute power being appointed, if neces- 
 sary. A commander came, however, to be chosen, who 
 exercised the executive authority somewhat as a modern 
 president exercises it, and to whom has been applied, 
 perhaps inappropriately, the designation of emperor. 
 Of such commanders — emperors, as they have come to 
 be called — there were at least forty, counting from and 
 including Augustus up to, but excluding, Diocletian. 
 Lastly, all questions of rights were decided in courts, 
 according to general principles of justice, which the 
 Romans have the merit of having worked out. The 
 dominion of the Romans was about three thousand miles 
 long and fifteen hundred broad, counting at the places 
 of greatest extension. One hundred and twenty mill- 
 ions of people, it is believed, were found within its 
 
250 DESIRE 
 
 borders, on which people it enforced its regime for four 
 hundred years or more. A hke number of people, it 
 seems probable, were never before so well provided for. 
 
 Constantinople was founded by Constantine the Great, 
 from whom it got its name, and was made by him the 
 seat of an empire which, though it was called Roman, 
 was not such in the sense formerly attaching to that 
 name. Republican institutions became nominal merely, 
 Constantine being legislator, executor, and supreme 
 court. He appointed one set of men to the civil, an- 
 other to the military service, remaining himself at the 
 head of both. As emblematical of the exalted station 
 to which he had attained he wore upon his shoulders a 
 silk robe gorgeously colored and embroidered with flow- 
 ers, upon his head a wig of various colored hair, set off 
 with pearls and gems. It would be a great mistake, 
 however, to suppose that he ruled merely by caprice. 
 The Roman law was that which determined rights be- 
 tween man and man, systematized finally into the Code, 
 Institutes, and Pandects of Justinian, the source of our 
 modern law. Christianity, with its principle of broth- 
 erly love, was made the religion of the empire, where- 
 upon persecutions and paganism vanished. 
 
 Papacy created two great empires, which existed 
 simultaneously — the Mahometan, which for the most 
 part was south of the Mediterranean, and the Catholic, 
 which was for the most part north of it. The Ma- 
 hometan empire was more than thirty-five hundred miles 
 long, stretching from France to India. The Caliph was 
 the supreme authority, both in religion and in politics. 
 What he said had to be done, what he said had to be 
 believed; there was, however, more than one chief, each 
 
DESIRE 281 
 
 supreme within his jurisdiction, particularly the Caliph 
 of Bagdad and the Emir of Cordova. All believers 
 were nominally alike, equal before God, the same to con- 
 science, since each was credited with a like intention. 
 Very good laws were enacted, industry of all kinds 
 flourished, and there was throughout the empire great 
 prosperity, greater perhaps than had ever before existed 
 on so large a scale. The Catholic empire extended over 
 various kingdoms and republics, some of which were 
 changeful. The Pope, with supreme authority in relig- 
 ion, assumed authority over governments, the theory 
 being that politics should be controlled by religion. 
 Outside of towns the feudal organization prevailed, the 
 people getting their lands from the lords on condition of 
 furnishing supplies and rendering service, the lords get- 
 ting the lands from those higher up, and so on. Guilds 
 existed which restricted kinds of labor to their orders, 
 this enhancing the price. On the whole, it is believed 
 that the lot of the average man under papal rule was 
 not hard. 
 
 Protestancy, which appeared four hundred years ago, 
 extended its empire over the peoples of Europe which 
 were of German extraction. If the individual thinks the 
 right thing, it is of no consequence that the world thinks 
 directly the opposite; he shall prevail against the world. 
 For example, it was nothing against the theory of 
 Columbus that bodies of men decided it to be chimerical. 
 This principle of setting store by the individual gave 
 an impulse to progress never before known, allowed 
 originality to manifest itself, individual enterprise to 
 flourish. 
 
 Thus between the Persian empire and modern times 
 
282 DESIRE 
 
 intetvened Greece, Rome, Constantinople, Papacy, and 
 Protestancy. Greece gave mankind the free use of rea- 
 son, Rome showed them how to apply this to practical 
 affairs, Constantinople established the reign of abstract 
 truth, namely, by legality in the temporal realm, by 
 Christianity in the spiritual. Papacy enforced the one- 
 ness of humanity, Protestancy its diversity. 
 
 Out of savagery was evolved civilization; out of civ- 
 ilization, Persia; out of Persia, Protestancy; out of 
 Protestancy, Modernity. 
 
 Modernity makes use of things on the principles of 
 their constitution, goes back to the ultimate nature of 
 matter and of mind from which to formulate rules for 
 the satisfaction of desire. 
 
 This is exhibited in the universality of machinery as 
 applied to transportation, to production, and to manu- 
 facture. From place to place extend railroads, over 
 which are drawn vehicles loaded with passengers and 
 freight moved on by the pressure of steam. The nature 
 of heat, of mechanics, and of the like inherent in matter, 
 is here made use of to supply the place of human labor, 
 it being, indeed, a general principle that whether we are 
 asleep or awake, alive or dead, matter is always and 
 forevermore working in exactly the same way and to 
 the same end. Likewise cars propelled by the dynamo 
 carry passengers from one place to another with great 
 rapidity. Iron roads, with mechanically moved vehicles, 
 are doubtless destined to connect all points of importance 
 on the land surface of the earth with one another, the re- 
 sult being that the earth will practically dwindle to a small 
 territory. Wires extend around the globe, and in every 
 direction, transmitting intelligence so rapidly that even 
 
DESIRE 283 
 
 to-day, for purposes of communication, the whole world 
 is hardly larger than was once a single town. Produc- 
 tion is also effected by machinery rather than by labor. 
 Crops are planted, cultivated, and harvested by ma- 
 chinery, the grains are threshed and hulled by machin- 
 ery. There are machines by which the ground is pre- 
 pared for tillage, such as ploughs, harrows, rollers, and 
 pulverizers. Machines exist for sowing grain, for drop- 
 ping seeds, and for planting tubers, for removing weeds 
 from between rows of vegetables, for spraying plants, 
 and even for getting insects off them. The harvester, 
 as it is called, used for cutting, binding, and windrow- 
 ing grain, it is said, enables one man to perform the 
 work which formerly required twenty, and not only so, 
 but to perform all this work without working at all, he 
 having merely to sit upon a seat driving a team. Manu- 
 facturing of all kinds is done by machinery, whether in 
 the matter of preparing the raw material or in the mat- 
 ter of working it up into the finished product. The 
 result is that our food, clothes, and dwellings are very 
 largely made not by human hands directed by an impulse 
 inherent in the mind, but by impersonal mechanisms 
 inherent in matter. This is a state of things which did 
 not belong to any former time of the world, but is char- 
 acteristic of the empire of the present only. Printing 
 and writing may also be mentioned as things effected 
 by mechanism and greatly distinguishing our time from 
 all others. 
 
 Chemistry further exemplifies the use to which we put 
 the nature of matter. Thousands of utilities are cheaply 
 manufactured by applying one sort of matter to another, 
 so that the forces in the one affect those of the other. 
 
284 DESIRE 
 
 producing the desired product. It is said that there are 
 factories in Germany which have perfect laboratories 
 and employ a hundred chemists or more constantly to 
 investigate the nature of matter with a view to obtain- 
 ing useful combinations of it. Explosives of such power 
 are now made through chemical agencies as enable the 
 intellectual peoples of the earth to control it against any 
 possible irruption of barbarians. One regiment of men 
 armed in modern fashion, could they overcome the fact 
 of time and transfer themselves to the state of Csesar, 
 would be able to overthrow the whole Roman empire 
 and to dictate any policy they might see fit. 
 
 Going back to the principles of principles, if we may 
 so say, is also characteristic of modern life, as, for ex- 
 ample, we may observe in the case of finance. We have 
 the banking system extended all over the world with 
 uniformity of method, a means whereby a person has 
 his credit available at a moment's notice in any locality 
 and usually without the use of property, whether money 
 or goods, the affair being simply one of bookkeeping. 
 The banks have deposited in them credits many times 
 the whole circulating medium of the world. The stock 
 company is another device along the same line, a device 
 whereby the possessions of several persons, or such part 
 of them as they choose, are converted into a total credit, 
 out of which may be paid the expenses of the business, 
 the incomes from which accrue to the persons whose 
 credit is used. Great businesses are thus reduced to 
 bureaucratic management, certain men sitting in an 
 office somewhere performing the labor of the world 
 without laboring. What is more, the stockholders do 
 not even have to sit in an office; the whole thing is done 
 
DESIRE 285 
 
 for them, and they merely take the returns. These 
 results depend in the last resort on what is known as 
 invested capital, the return on which is profit, interest, 
 and insurance. Credit at interest, even at two per cent., 
 will double itself in about a generation. A man with 
 a thousand dollars will thus, without doing anything, 
 come to have in that time two thousand. Risks to goods 
 and life are covered by insurance on the principle of 
 general averages, wherefore, if one takes the risks with- 
 out having them covered, he also reaps a gain if no dis- 
 aster occur. Life insurance is a great modem inven- 
 tion whereby by the payment of a stipulated sum each 
 year, each quarter, or each month, a person receives a 
 certain sum at death or at the expiration of a certain 
 time. How these financial institutions give a power to 
 modern society which was denied to the past must be 
 apparent. 
 
 Education by means of the school, the newspaper, and 
 the library also distinguishes modern from former times. 
 Schools are now characterized by teaching based on a 
 thorough investigation of mind as it has appeared on 
 this earth, by the long time given up to it, and by the 
 extent of what is taught. The value of public-school 
 property in the United States alone is more than a half 
 billion of dollars. More than ten millions of dollars are 
 each month paid to teachers. The teachers employed, 
 if gotten together, would make a body wellnigh as large 
 as Napoleon's grand army. The number of pupils in 
 the United States would form a body three times as 
 great as Xerxes' host. 
 
 It is proved, just as we should have expected, that the 
 industrial productivity of a community increases with 
 
286 DESIRE 
 
 the rise of its schools, Massachusetts, for example, where 
 schools are best, being nearly twice as productive as the 
 rest of the country. Among other things, accordingly, 
 education may rank as one of the means which has been 
 discovered to aid the satisfaction of desire. 
 
 Government through some fixed system of representa- 
 tion also characterizes modern times, all countries of 
 much importance, with the exception of Russia, of Tur- 
 key, and of China, making use of it. The representative 
 himself stands for a place, a term, and a party. Such 
 a system, unlike any system of other days, enables a 
 government to extend over any amount of territory. It 
 enables a state to last any length of time. It enables 
 the will of the people in the long run to be realized. 
 
 Such, then, is the empire of the present which has 
 been evolved out of Protestancy. How much improve- 
 ment in the means of satisfying desire has been made 
 from the state of the amoeba to ours is manifest, how 
 much even from the state of savages to ours. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 AFFECTION 
 
 The general law by which affections are regulated 
 seems to be that of the mutuality of participation. We 
 became enamored of what is connected with our activi- 
 ties. This may be observed by examining the three 
 principal classes of affections, those for kindred, those 
 for friends, and those for things, it being understood 
 that by affection is meant the feeling of regard which 
 we have either for persons or for things. 
 
 Affections for kindred are conjugal, parental, filial, 
 fraternal, and nepotal, it being assumed here that hus- 
 band and wife are kindred — for it may be that a better 
 designation for these would have been family affections. 
 
 One of the mutualities which bind together husband 
 and wife is comradeship, husband and wife being close 
 companions in the journey of life. Even the hardships 
 which they are called on to endure it is a pleasure to 
 remember, just as to the followers- of ^neas it was a 
 pleasure to remember how they had been tossed about 
 on land and sea. The pleasures which husband and wife 
 have had together will seem doubly pleasant on that 
 account. Another thing by which husband and wife 
 have their feelings for each other heightened is the 
 mutuality of possessions. They are in a certain sense 
 in a business partnership. The value which there may 
 
 287 
 
288 AFFECTION 
 
 be in this world's goods is shared mutually by them, 
 they form with their children a sort of socialistic com- 
 munity. The greatest mutuality subsisting between hus- 
 band and wife, however, we may believe, is that of 
 parentage. 
 
 Notwithstanding all these mutualities, it is true that 
 conjugal affection does not always exist. We must sup- 
 pose that in such cases the mutuality of participation 
 which would make for affection is offset by something 
 else. Husband and wife may not be companionable, 
 their possessions may not be mutually shared, their 
 parentage may be unhappy. 
 
 After thirty-three years of married life, Cicero was 
 divorced from Terentia. The reasons which he assigns 
 for this, in a letter which is still extant, are that she 
 was intriguing, perfidious, and extravagant. We have 
 here only another way of his saying that the concerns 
 of himself and his wife were not one, there was not a 
 mutuality of interests. 
 
 Had Terentia left her memoirs, we should have had 
 some light thrown on the subject of matrimony, as, 
 according to tradition, she not only married Sallust, 
 the historian, but two other husbands besides. If the 
 account is true, she has the honor of having been the 
 wife of the greatest literary man who ever lived and also 
 the wife of another literary man whose eminence was 
 great. She is said to have attained the age of one hun- 
 dred and three years, to have seen the men of Cicero's 
 day pass from view and a succeeding generation come 
 to power. 
 
 Her last husband boasted, it is said, that he had two 
 things which belonged respectively to the two greatest 
 
AFFECTION 289 
 
 men of the previous age, Cicero's wife and Caesar's 
 chair. 
 
 Parental affection is grounded on the law of mutual- 
 ity of participation. The fact that a child is associated 
 with his parents for so long a time is certainly one of 
 the reasons why an affection exists for him on the part 
 of the parents. Another reason is the multitude of de- 
 tails and complexity of details in which the child is 
 associated with the parent. Greater, perhaps, may be 
 some important matter of mutual participation, some 
 passage of a crisis — for instance, a recovery on the part 
 of the child from a severe illness through the watchful 
 care of the parents. 
 
 We can, therefore, well understand why paternal 
 affection should be strong enough to prevail even when 
 the child has committed misdeeds or is ungrateful. To 
 this day a tomb is pointed out which, according to tra- 
 dition, is that of the ill-fated and misguided Absalom. 
 David mourned bitterly for him and, as is supposed, 
 built him this monument which should make known his 
 affection to all futurity. 
 
 Cicero's Tullia affords the best example of a father's 
 regard on record. For in her case there was nothing 
 which might prevent affection, everything which might 
 further it. She was the delightful companion of her 
 father, one of the most accomplished of Roman ladies, 
 but died at thirty-two. At the house of Atticus, Cicero 
 read everything which he could find on the subject of 
 assuaging grief, and wrote afterward his essay on 
 Consolation, which unfortunately is lost. Philosophers 
 came to comfort him and men high in public life wrote 
 him letters of condolence, among them even Julius 
 
290 AFFECTION 
 
 Csfesar himself, so that Tulha went down in such mourn- 
 ful solicitude as has been vouchsafed to no other human 
 being. Cicero retired to Astura, where in the thickest 
 of the woods he hid himself, staying there from early 
 morn till dewy eve, reading as best he could, but fre- 
 quently blinded with tears. 
 
 Rhodiginus declares that hundreds of years afterward, 
 in the days of the popes, the body of Tullia was found, 
 partially embalmed, it would appear, and the hair dressed 
 up in a golden network, but that on exposure the body 
 crumbled to dust. 
 
 Cicero, indeed, contemplated building a monument to 
 her which should perpetuate his affection for her to the 
 remotest ages, but for reasons which we do not alto- 
 gether understand was prevented from so doing, yet, 
 though he built it not, he builded better than he knew. 
 For his mention of the monument has ridden safely over 
 the billows of time to us and is more effective than the 
 monument itself could possibly have been, while, more- 
 over, it is eternal and unchangeable. 
 
 Filial affection, it is easy to understand, is not likely 
 to be as strong as parental affection, because the child 
 cannot be as conscious as his parents of participation 
 with them in the things which have chiefly concerned 
 him. Parents there are, and many of them too, who 
 show a much deeper regard for their children when little 
 than when grown, another reason why the children lose 
 affection for their parents. Parents, moreover, have the 
 tendency to exercise over their children a mental tyranny 
 which is not conducive to affection on the part of the 
 child. 
 
 Yet there are remarkable instances of filial affection, 
 
AFFECTION 29 1 
 
 the most remarkable on record probably being that of 
 Alexander Pope, the poet. He tenderly cared for his 
 mother till she passed away at the age of ninety-three. 
 He had a sketch drawn of her after death, so that her 
 looks have descended to us. Six men of humble station 
 bore her remains to their resting-place in Twickenham 
 church, followed by as many women of like degree, all 
 dressed in gray. Pope directed that his own interment 
 should be similar, for he would not have it more osten- 
 tatious than that of his beloved mother. He placed an 
 obelisk in his garden, on which he had inscribed in 
 Latin, " Ah ! Edith, best of women, most loving of 
 mothers, fare thee well ! " This obelisk is preserved to 
 this day at Gopsail, Leicestershire, where it was taken 
 from Twickenham — seems likely, indeed, to render the 
 record of the son's affection for his mother everlasting. 
 
 Fraternal affection also springs from mutual partici- 
 pation, the children of the same family have regard for 
 one another owing to the fact that they have so many 
 common associations. Certain limits, however, to this 
 affection are noticeable. The unfairness with which 
 parents deal with their children, giving one an undue 
 advantage to the detriment of another, is a great bar 
 to it. The great differences of disposition which chil- 
 dren of the same family manifest is a great bar to it. 
 The great changes that fortune makes, raising one and 
 lowering another, is a great bar to it. 
 
 We have, nevertheless, from fiction the example of 
 Antigone, who willingly lost her own life to prevent 
 the desecration of the body of her deceased brother. 
 
 The popularity of the play of Sophocles, in which this 
 is set forth, must in part be ascribed to the hold which 
 
292 AFFECTION 
 
 fraternal afifection had on the Athenians. Even in late 
 years, and here in America, the play has been acted in 
 the original Greek, and with costumes and accompani- 
 ments reproducing as nearly as possible those of the 
 Athenian stage, and even on an American audience the 
 effect was profound. 
 
 Charles Lamb, we know, tenderly cared for his sister, 
 who at times lost her reason. He is admired for his 
 writing, but perhaps not less for this affection. 
 
 Artemisia, Queen of Caria, however, has shown the 
 most remarkable regard for a brother which the annals 
 of time furnish. She invited the most celebrated ora- 
 tors to compose in competition a funeral oration on him, 
 the choice falling on that of Theopompus, now regret- 
 tably lost. She built such an elaborate and imposing 
 mansion of a tomb for him that it has given its name 
 to all similar structures among us — mausoleum, from his 
 name, Mausoleus. Though long ago wrecked, first by 
 an earthquake and latterly by a crusade, its memory is 
 yet preserved in its name, a proof that words are the 
 only things which last forever. Fragments of the monu- 
 ment are in the museum at London, where they yet 
 recall the affection of Artemisia for her brother. It was 
 known as one of the seven wonders of the world, and 
 the description of it by Pliny is extant. Lately, too, the 
 site of it has been unearthed, whence restorations have 
 appeared. Thus the renown of Artemisia goes on. 
 
 Nepotal affection is a designation which may be used 
 to denote affection between relatives outside the imme- 
 diate family. The relation of nephews or nieces to 
 uncles or aunts differs very essentially from that of chil- 
 dren to their parents or from that of children to one 
 
AFFECTION 293 
 
 another, whence certain sources of affection which exist 
 within the immediate family circle will be wanting out- 
 side of it. It would be a great mistake, however, not 
 to perceive that there is also a certain gain in this. For 
 most of the things which will lead to the estrangement 
 of children from their parents or of children from one 
 another are absent in the case of more distant relatives. 
 The affection subsisting between such relatives is more 
 of the nature of friendship, with this important differ- 
 ence, that the consanguinity is a means of approach. 
 We have explained, then, the undying affection which 
 has often sprung up between aunts and nephews, be-_ 
 tween uncles and nieces. 
 
 Pliny the younger was the nephew of that Pliny who 
 wrote the " Natural History " still enjoyed by us, and 
 was kindly cared for by him. The younger Pliny be- 
 came himself a great writer, and has left us an account 
 of the death of his uncle at Vesuvius. We can well 
 imagine what affection the young man must have enter- 
 tained for the uncle. 
 
 The word nepotal, it will be observed, properly de- 
 notes the affections subsisting between those not of the 
 same immediate family, since the relationship between 
 them arises from the fact that they are grandsons or 
 granddaughters. One is a nephew, for instance, because 
 he is a grandson, a cousin because he is a grandson, 
 and so on. 
 
 Affection for others than those of one's own family 
 is usually known as friendship. 
 
 Theophrastus, the pupil of Aristotle, who lived to 
 such an advanced age and wrote so many things which 
 have perished, or at least are supposed to have perished, 
 
294 AFFECTION 
 
 wrote, among other things — which, too, is now lost — an 
 essay on friendship. Cicero was famihar with this, and 
 it was doubtless on the basis of it that he wrote out his 
 own well-known tract which everybody reads. Friend- 
 ship depends on persons having something in common, 
 indeed, on their having much in common. He who 
 looks into the face of a friend, says Cicero, beholds 
 there, as it were, a copy of himself, for which reason it 
 is that friendship is the most delightful of all things. 
 Ennius, the old Roman poet, as quoted by Cicero, says 
 in certain of his verses, which have outlasted Rome 
 itself : " How can life be worth living if devoid of the 
 calm trust reposed by friend in friend?" Cicero tells 
 how, in a play of Pacuvius, when it was acted, Pylades 
 and his friend Orestes were presented as each desiring 
 to die for the other, the spectators roundly applauding, 
 showing what appreciation they had of friendship. Are 
 we charmed with office, fame, architecture, dress, and 
 genteel appearance, says Cicero, and not with a mind 
 endowed with virtue? Who would want wealth, says 
 he, without friends? Friends, he declares, are the most 
 beautiful and best furniture of life. Archytas, it is 
 said, remarked that if one had ascended into the heavens 
 and had become possessed of all their secrets, he would 
 yet not enjoy his knowledge very much unless he could 
 communicate it to others. Cicero's contention that simi- 
 larity of traits is the great bond between friends is but 
 another statement of the law of mutuality of participa- 
 tion. The friends of our earlier life, he reminds us, are 
 not likely to continue such, because our interests and 
 theirs as we come to maturity are likely to diverge. 
 This is, in fact, but saying that community of interests. 
 
AFFECTION 295 
 
 tastes, or something of the sort, is the basis of friend- 
 ship. He quotes the saying of Aristotle, which indeed 
 must have been old when Aristotle was born, that many 
 pecks of salt must be eaten together to bring friendship 
 to perfection. Friends would have to dine together 
 months, it is presumed, to use up so much as one cellar 
 of salt, a whole year perhaps to use up a gill of it — but 
 in a peck are sixty- four gills ! The statement, therefore, 
 is an hyperbole, a way of saying that long and intimate 
 association is favorable to friendship. This community 
 of association merely, does in fact count for something, 
 yet its effect must be very limited without similar dis- 
 positions obtain in the persons associating. Cicero well 
 remarks that friendship is rare among those in public 
 office and concerned in the affairs of state. For who 
 is there, says he, who prefers his friend's promotion to 
 his own? Those who are prosperous, says he, despise 
 the friends of their former condition, as they also de- 
 spise those who, from having been prosperous, have 
 fallen into adversity. Many things, then, there are 
 which may break up friendships — rivalry, neglect, what 
 not — the reason, doubtless, why so few friendships exist. 
 One of the most common obstacles to friendship is, 
 according to Cicero, the demand of one person of an- 
 other to do something questionable, nearly everybody 
 having some regard for truth and right. He mentions, 
 however, the case of Blossius, who was an exception to 
 the rule. Tiberius Gracchus was endeavoring to exer- 
 cise in behalf of the people dictatorial power, in the 
 doing of which he was violently opposed by the senate. 
 Blossius, his friend, however, stuck to him. Asked if 
 he would have set fire to the capitol if Tiberius Gracchus 
 
296 AFFECTION 
 
 had told him to do so, he rephed that he would. Regard 
 for truth and right, however, has in general such a deep 
 lodgment in the human breast that it has passed into a 
 proverb that there can be no friendship among the bad. 
 This, however, is not an exception to the principle that 
 friendship rests on community of mind, seeing that on 
 matters of baseness people can seldom agree. Partici- 
 pation in good character, Cicero has it, is such a firm 
 basis for friendship that divergence of mind in certain 
 other particulars is not important. A failure to do 
 kindly offices or even reproving a friend may not, he 
 thinks, be fatal to friendship if the one or the other 
 spring from a virtuous regard. Persons, firm, steadfast, 
 and self-consistent, he says, are those whom we should 
 choose for friends, this, however, involving the difficulty 
 that there is a lack of such persons. Cicero makes 
 Scipio, the same who defeated Hannibal at Zama, say 
 that we should at least give as much attention to the 
 choice of friends as we give to the choice of horses. 
 
 About nineteen hundred years after Cicero finished his 
 essay on friendship, Emerson wrote one on the same 
 subject. It is interesting, therefore, to observe that, 
 though Emerson thought out things for himself and was 
 not guided solely by authority, he yet makes friendship, 
 as does Cicero, turn on mutuality. He who hears and 
 understands me, says Emerson, becomes mine. A man 
 may have all the thought and eloquence conceivable yet 
 be unable to converse with his cousin or his uncle, un- 
 less, indeed, these be kindred souls. We have explained 
 why the intellectual and active powers increase with 
 affection as they do, since we know that a man can 
 write to a friend what he otherwise could not think of, 
 
AFFECTION 297 
 
 can speak to a friend what he otherwise could not say. 
 When we can indulge our affection, says Emerson, the 
 preceding eternity vanishes, all things begin de novo, 
 we suddenly awaken, as it were, to life. If a soul might 
 be assured that somewhere in the universe it should 
 regain its friend, says he, it would be content and cheer- 
 ful alone for a thousand years to come. A friend, de- 
 clares Emerson, is one with whom I can be sincere, that 
 is to say, one with whom I can be myself, one with 
 whom I do not have to appear other than I am. Every- 
 body, when alone, says he, is sincere; he becomes insin- 
 cere only when a second person enters. The need of 
 mutuality, he thinks, explains why conversation is best 
 between two persons only. Three cannot take part in 
 it. We have suggested the dinner-parties, where there 
 is an effort made to please everybody, to reduce all as 
 much as possible to one mind, to suppress every appear- 
 ance of individuality. That man, said a host, I cannot 
 have at my parties, he does not agree to the opinions 
 of some present, he argues a point. The host, in fact, 
 seems to be a man whose business it is to see that no- 
 body enjoys himself, whose business it is to curb the 
 spontaneity of thought, or at least to stop its expression. 
 The only fault of the host, however, is that he endeavors 
 to insure a mutuality where none is possible; he is right 
 enough in his purpose. We expect much of a stranger, 
 says Emerson, but as soon as he begins to intrude his 
 partialities, his definitions, his defects into the conver- 
 sation, it is all over, the want of mutuality is apparent. 
 Moreover, it is necessary that the mutuality be real, and 
 not feigned. A friend, says Emerson, must be himself 
 — he is mine only to the extent that he is not mine. This 
 
298 AFFECTION 
 
 explains why self-possession is a necessary attribute of 
 one in whom we put confidence. If we perceive that he 
 is not at ease, we infer that his mind and ours are not 
 in harmony. Where there are friends, says Emerson, 
 each must stand for the whole world. The only way to 
 be a friend, he teaches, is to be one, discover in another 
 the mutual requisite. We cannot get nearer to a man 
 by getting into his house, but only by getting into his 
 heart. It is of no avail to know his mother, his brothers, 
 or his sisters. After all, Emerson thinks, friendship is 
 at best but a matter of approximation, something like 
 the value of tt or e, or the square root of 2. All asso- 
 ciation, he says, has to be a compromise. Our ideals 
 of friendship, he thinks, are dreams and fables, some- 
 thing that we might hope to have realized. We may, 
 indeed, conceive that in the depths of the milky way 
 are worlds on which all that might be desired or con- 
 ceived of in a friend actually exists. 
 
 Of an opposite nature to friendship is malevolence, 
 examples of which are anger, hatred, revenge, contempt, 
 envy, and jealousy. The case of Achilles well illustrates 
 anger. Incensed at Agamemnon on account of the 
 injustice which Agamemnon had inflicted on him, he 
 refused longer to take part in the operations connected 
 with the siege of Troy, the consequence being that the 
 Greeks were overwhelmed with defeat. Agamemnon 
 prayed his forgiveness and begged him again to lead the 
 Greeks, offering him great rewards, whereupon Achilles 
 merely replied that, even if the gifts were fabulous be- 
 yond measure, yet should his resentment remain, he 
 would let the Greeks perish to the last man rather than 
 lift a finger to help them. Examples like this may yet 
 
AFFECTION 299 
 
 be found, and almost anywhere. An illustration of 
 hatred is that recorded by Xenophon. Cyrus the younger 
 exceedingly despised his brother Artaxerxes, who was 
 King of Persia. Having raised an insurrection against 
 him and penetrated with his army wellnigh to Babylon, 
 the capital, he was engaging the king's forces with 
 every prospect of success at Cunaxa, when, spying his 
 brother among the Persians, he could not restrain him- 
 self, but, crying out, " I see the man," rushed upon him 
 with his few attendants, thereby losing his own life and 
 destroying all chance of success. It may be doubted 
 whether this, also, is any uncommon example of the 
 display of hatred. Revenge shows itself in many in- 
 stances, yea, in instances innumerable. Not having been 
 appointed to an office, which he coveted, by the president, 
 the applicant inflicted, when opportunity offered, a mor- 
 tal wound on the president, exceeding the injury which 
 the president had done him — if, indeed, injury it could 
 be called — infinitely. Something of the sort, but on a 
 smaller scale, may be observed in country precincts when 
 an election is in progress. It is nothing to the one 
 who scratches the ballot that the candidate is good and 
 capable, so sweet to him is his revenge. Contempt, as 
 is known, arises out of the undue importance which one 
 attaches to himself. This, indeed, may go so far that 
 he attaches an importance to the opinions of others on 
 the ground of their falsity; he may desire persons to 
 consider him meritorious, even when he knows himself 
 not to be so. Of jealousy Othello furnishes the stand- 
 ing example. The man has come to the pass that he 
 believes another person to be his absolute possession. 
 She should not dare even to put in a claim to her own 
 
300 AFFECTION 
 
 soul. His position is, indeed, so ridiculous that he is 
 made the victim of plots and deep-laid schemes on the 
 part of lago, he even goes to the extent of committing 
 murder — indeed, takes the life of his wife on the ground 
 that he adores her. The nature of jealousy, then, is that 
 the mind is pained to have its possession, or at least its 
 supposed possession, contribute even in the most trivial 
 manner to the advantage or pleasure of another. Envy 
 is the pain which one feels in the happiness or good 
 fortune of another, usually in the happiness or good 
 fortune of one of his own class. Beggars, it is said, 
 have no envy of those in affluence, but only of their 
 fellow beggars who may be a little better off than them- 
 selves, of a fellow beggar, for example, who may chance 
 to have a better pair of shoes than any of the rest pos- 
 sesses. Envy leads to detraction, the envious person 
 representing that the object of his envy does not know 
 as much as he thinks he knows, or perhaps as much as 
 some others think he knows, that he has not as many 
 possessions as he appears to have, that he does not man- 
 age his affairs as well as he might, although all this in 
 no way concerns the man who is envious of him. The 
 envious man looks after the affairs of others for noth- 
 ing, even to his own detriment perhaps. Often an 
 envious man will miss no chance to browbeat one by 
 unpleasant allusion or question, as, " That was a pretty 
 bad bargain you made in buying that house," or " What 
 do you suppose I heard a person remark about your 
 speech last night ? " 
 
 The question has often been raised, what can be the 
 natural purpose of such affections as envy, jealousy, 
 and the like, or if they have no natural purpose, whence 
 then their origin? 
 
AFFECTION 3OI 
 
 An hypothesis may be ventured whether they are not 
 to be accounted for somewhat as are the monsters of 
 bygone ages. Once on the earth, as we know, were 
 gigantic hzards, some fifteen feet in height, some sixty 
 feet long, some, indeed, with jaws not less than twenty 
 feet in length, some with eyes fully two feet in diameter. 
 They are to be explained on the ground that the condi- 
 tions of the earth were once favorable to their evolution, 
 conditions which no longer obtain. May it not be that 
 envy, jealousy, and revenge, and, in a large measure, 
 contempt, anger, and hatred, are monsters of human 
 feeling which certain conditions have developed, but 
 which, with those conditions ceasing, are destined to 
 extinction ? 
 
 As we look on a picture representing a giant lizard 
 of the past, with its huge tail, huge neck, and still huger 
 body, large eye and small brain, we shall perhaps be 
 unable to keep from laughing. If we accept the doc- 
 trine of Schelling that all animal life is an attempt to 
 reach rationality full and complete, our laughter will be 
 uproarious. These animals were the attempt to get at 
 something in the wrong way. 
 
 It is not necessary to suppose that future ages will 
 attach the same importance to the characterization of 
 Othello that the Elizabethans did, the conditions pro- 
 ducing jealousy ceasing, jealousy itself will cease. 
 
 We have the cases of parents who will not allow some 
 of their children to have the delicacies which they per- 
 mit their other children to share, a circumstance which 
 occasions much bad feeling. States of society in which 
 discrimination, and on trivial grounds, is made in 
 favor of one to the detriment of another would, we may 
 
302 AFFECTION 
 
 suppose, have the tendency to produce just such feelings 
 as anger, hatred, revenge, contempt, envy, and jealousy, 
 the which conditions passing away, these feelings will 
 likewise cease. 
 
 When the waste lands of the earth have been taken 
 up and the resources of the earth have been developed, 
 when migration has ceased, when people are compelled to 
 make the place in which they live a desirable one in- 
 stead of fleeing to another, then we may expect that 
 these juster conditions will prevail. 
 
 Affections not for persons are those for animals, and 
 plants, and inanimate things. 
 
 Alexander the Great, we are told, persuaded his 
 father, Philip, of whom everybody has heard, to buy a 
 certain refractory horse for him, having himself broken 
 in the animal, which was the condition set. The horse, 
 in fact, would never allow anybody but Alexander to 
 ride him, if we may believe the historians. The cost 
 of this horse was something like twenty thousand dol- 
 lars, but it appears that he was worth as much as that 
 — indeed, a great deal more. For it is remarkable that 
 this horse, called Bucephalus, was the companion of 
 Alexander nearly all the rest of his life and made the 
 conquest of Asia with him, taking part in all the bat- 
 tles, including that of Arbela, This faithful horse 
 finally died in India on the bank of the river known as 
 Jhylum, where his body was buried. Alexander founded 
 a town there, calling it Bucephalia, as a monument to 
 his horse, and a town supposed to be on the same spot 
 is still pointed out. 
 
 What, then, must have been the feeling of Alexander 
 for the horse when he witnessed the interment of its 
 
AFFECTION 303 
 
 body we can well conceive. As he stood at the grave 
 of the horse, memories of his youth must have crowded 
 upon him — how he had recited when a boy in the pres- 
 ence of Demosthenes himself, how he had been instructed 
 by Aristotle, how his mother had been separated from 
 his father, how he had himself, in behalf of his mother, 
 quarreled with his father, how at the wedding feast of 
 his sister his father had been assassinated, how he had 
 himself since overcome the world, undergoing untold 
 hardships and dangers. 
 
 The bodies of cats and the bodies of birds are found 
 embalmed in Egypt, which, it seems, were there in their 
 coffins when the Israelites were making their exodus, 
 animals which the Egyptians remembered with the ten- 
 derest affection. 
 
 It is rehearsed by a man that his parents had, during 
 his stay at home, one dog after another, seven in all, 
 and that he has a distinct recollection of each that he 
 shall always cherish. Though fond of all these dogs, 
 he yet professed a preference for the sixth one. Jack, 
 which, he says, he hopes to meet in the paradise to come. 
 Of the first cat which he remembers his parents to have 
 had, the name of which was Dill, he is still able to give 
 a description — remembers, indeed, how he once thought- 
 lessly put her in the oven. 
 
 There are few persons probably who cannot relate 
 something similar, and the fact that they can do so 
 shows the interest which they take in household animals. 
 
 We have all heard of the man who had his whole 
 life transformed by the affection which he formed for 
 a flower which grew in a pot in his prison. 
 
 The Dutch had, and still have, a great fondness for 
 
304 AFFECTION 
 
 tulips, which grow in their gardens, just as many a one 
 among us has a fondness for some particular flower 
 which he cultivates. 
 
 What is called the tulip mania had its origin in this 
 regard for flowers. Tulips in Holland became an object 
 of speculation, much as pork, wheat, and corn, or even 
 stocks have become objects of speculation with us. 
 Extraordinary prices were paid for tulips. For exam- 
 ple, for one root of a tulip a man gave twelve acres of 
 land, not, indeed, that this was the price which he set 
 on his affection for it, but that he hoped to sell it at a 
 still higher price. The very fact, however, that tulips 
 could be made objects of speculation proves that they 
 must have been in demand. Even in the nineteenth 
 century, it is said, a tulip bulb brought upward of fifteen 
 hundred dollars. 
 
 Our affection for places is very marked, particularly 
 affection for home or country. 
 
 What a certain man once remarked is doubtless that 
 to which everybody will assent, namely, that there is 
 no other spot on the whole earth which has the same 
 significance to a man as that where he spent his child- 
 hood and youth. The geography of it means more to 
 him than the geography of all lands besides. 
 
 The house in which George Washington's parents 
 lived, and in which he was born, stood on the south 
 bank of the Potomac, Virginia, such a primitive house 
 as we have often seen, having huge chimneys on the 
 outside and the roof twice as long on one side as on 
 the other. 
 
 Custis, son of Martha Washington, 181 5, had loaded 
 on a boat at Alexandria, Virginia, a piece of marble 
 
AFFECTION 305 
 
 wrapped in an American flag, which he transported to 
 the place where the old house had stood, the house itself 
 having been destroyed eighty years previously. Out of 
 bricks which had belonged to one of the chimneys he 
 laid a foundation, upon which he placed the marble to 
 mark the site of Washington's old home. 
 
 Years afterward, the historian Lossing came to the 
 spot, finding the stone of Custis broken and around it, 
 and even over it, growing vines, briers, and weeds. He 
 could perceive here and there a stunted cedar sapling and 
 shrubs of figs, descendants no doubt of trees which stood 
 there when Washington was a boy. 
 
 Sherman, who had made his famous march to the sea, 
 came to the place, 1878, and beheld one of the old chim- 
 neys of the house still standing. 
 
 What happened in the case of Washington is that 
 which has happened in the case of us all. Any one of 
 us may go to another state, province, or country, and 
 there perhaps find the remains of an old cellar in the 
 midst of brush over which once stood the house of his 
 great-grandfather. Some old pear-trees, even, may yet 
 be standing near the spot. 
 
 We have all realized the truth of the poet's portrayal 
 of a sentiment in which we all participate more or less : 
 
 " Long years have past and I behold 
 My father's elms and mansions old, 
 The brook's bright wave, — 
 But ah ! the scenes which fancy drew 
 Deceived my heart, the friends I knew, 
 Are sleeping now beneath the yew, 
 Low in the grave." 
 
 Not very far from the site of the old house in which 
 Washington was born is a vault, surrounded with shrub- 
 
306 AFFECTION 
 
 b^ry, wherein repose the bodies of his father and kin- 
 dred. How different is the scene which one now wit- 
 nesses on visiting the place from the scene it presented 
 to the childhood of the man whom we have all come 
 to honor! 
 
 We have an affection for distinguished places in our 
 own country, and even for such places in any country, 
 as, for example, for Jamestown, for Plymouth, for 
 Winchester, for Rome, for Troy, for Tyre, for Baby- 
 lon, and for Memphis. 
 
 Jamestown may be considered as the first capital of 
 America, where even to-day the remnant of the old 
 church tower is descried in the midst of trees and 
 shrubs, and round which are the graves of the early 
 settlers. 
 
 When we think of this great republic, whose domin- 
 ions extend beyond the setting sun and into the region 
 of to-morrow, shall we not feel affection for the spot? 
 
 Winchester, of Hampshire, may be regarded as the 
 first capital of Anglo-Saxondom, Winchester having 
 been seized by Cerdic fourteen hundred years ago. 
 
 The state which the Saxons founded in Hampshire, 
 together with the states derived from it and the states 
 subject to Anglo-Saxon rule, now cover a quarter of 
 the land surface of the globe. 
 
 It is not, therefore, without affection that we shall 
 regard Winchester, from which all this result has come. 
 
 Places connected with religion are objects of affec- 
 tion, as Jerusalem. Jerusalem, the literal meaning of 
 which is Peaceville, we understand was a city before the 
 Jews conquered Palestine. For, strange as it may seem, 
 letters or copies of such from a ruler of Jerusalem to a 
 
AFFECTION 307 
 
 king of Egypt, antedating Joshua, have in our day been 
 discovered. When these letters were written, all the 
 matters which have since given distinction to Jerusalem 
 were existent potentially only. None of our Bible had 
 as then been written. Jerusalem we are informed was 
 taken by David and on what was the thrashing-floor of 
 Araunah Solomon built the temple, the corner stones of 
 which are still pointed out. The Jews have such an 
 affection for the place that they meet there every day to 
 wail, mourning the downfall of their empire. All Chris- 
 tians and all Mahometans as well join in their affection 
 for Jerusalem, particularly all Christians, their regard for 
 it not being exceeded by that of the Jews themselves, 
 \vhence it is that they fervently chant — 
 
 " Glorious things of thee are spoken, 
 Zion, city of our God, 
 He whose word cannot be broken, 
 Formed thee for his own abode." 
 
 Places connected with the progress of knowledge are 
 endeared to us. Columbus seeking the aid of Spain to 
 make his voyage of discovery stopped at the convent of 
 La Rabida to beg bread for his son, he who had in his 
 head an idea which was worth more than all Europe. 
 The good priest of that place gave him help in his project 
 which enabled him to carry it out. So much affection, 
 therefore, does the world feel for the place that four 
 hundred years afterwards an exact copy of the convent 
 is erected on the shore of Lake Michigan in commem- 
 oration of the fact. 
 
 About fifteen miles west of Genoa, Italy, is the village 
 of Cogoleto, containing about twenty-four hundred in- 
 
308 AFFECTION 
 
 habitants, the place where Columbus is reputed to have 
 been born. The house which is regarded as his birth- 
 place is now a shop, but bears an inscription. 
 
 Genoa, where Columbus lived, has, however, a monu- 
 ment to him in a public place, the monument being a 
 statue resting on an anchor and upon a pedestal set off 
 with the prows of ships, at the feet of the statue a figure 
 of America kneeling, besides allegorical figures, one of 
 which is Geography. 
 
 There is no American probably who would not like to 
 make a journey, if not to Genoa, at least to the little 
 town of Cogoleto, so much affection does he entertain 
 for the places connected with this greatest of geographical 
 discoverers. 
 
 We have in like manner an affection for relics whether 
 ancestral, or historical, or biological, or mineralogical. 
 
 There are few people who have not some keepsakes, 
 as the same are called, which they highly value, these 
 having once belonged to their parents or to other mem- 
 bers of the family. 
 
 A man, for example, has an old spinning-wheel which 
 he remembers to have seen his mother use. She had 
 rolls of wool laid in a pile, taking up one of which, she 
 would fasten it to a piece of yarn which was wound 
 around the spindle, then stepping backward and holding 
 the roll in one hand, she would give the large wheel a 
 turn with the other. The spindle was thus whirled rap- 
 idly around and the roll twisted into yarn. The 
 machinery of our times has done away with the use of 
 the spinning-wheel, yet the man greatly prizes it, because 
 his mother used it and because perhaps it stands for a 
 state of things which has passed away. 
 
AFFECTION 3O9 
 
 For similar reasons, one keeps old chairs, tables, and 
 bedsteads, dishes, knives and forks, watches and clocks, 
 nay, what not? The older a family relic is, usually the 
 more it is treasured, a snuff-box, for example, which 
 belonged to one's great-grandmother. 
 
 Of historical relics the number is truly great, as one 
 well knows who has visited museums. 
 
 Guericke, who discovered how to make the air-pump 
 at Magdeburg, in order to show its workings had two 
 hollow half spheres which fitted together, the air being 
 exhausted from which they could not easily be pulled 
 apart. Indeed, he caused fifteen horses to be hitched to 
 one of these half spheres and fifteen to the other and 
 then let them all pull back to back, as hard as they could 
 and yet they could not separate the half spheres from 
 each other, though nothing in the world held them 
 together but the pressure of the air. So much were these 
 half spheres esteemed as relics that to this day they 
 have been reverently preserved in the library of Berlin. 
 At Magdeburg even pieces of Guericke's house are kept 
 as relics. 
 
 On Christmas eve, 1801, Trevithick making use of a 
 sort of locomotive gave some persons a ride, the first 
 load of passengers, it is said, ever moved by steam, a 
 circumstance in which we cannot help but take great 
 interest, knowing the use which has since been made of 
 steam to transport persons and goods not only from New 
 York to San Francisco, but also from Paris to Vladivo- 
 stok. Previous to this time, Trevithick had made mod- 
 els of locomotives which were moved by steam on a table, 
 one of which models is still to be seen at South Kensing- 
 ton, an object of the deepest regard. There is also 
 
3lO AFFECTION 
 
 there a mandrel, weighing half a ton, which Trevithick 
 often lifted when he was a youth of eighteen, possessing 
 great power of muscle as well as of brain. 
 
 Our affection for biological relics is also strong. For 
 example, there once lived a certain animal, sort of baboon 
 or perhaps of manlike ape, nobody knows exactly when, 
 though a long time ago, his life doubtless precarious 
 and his death unmourned, he in fact having no idea of 
 his own importance. Lately, however, naturalists found 
 in a heap of volcanic ashes in Java, part of his skull, two 
 of his teeth, and a thigh bone, when suddenly he became 
 an object of affectionate regard and acquired great 
 fame, since he is supposed to have filled in some measure 
 the office of missing link. 
 
 The bones or fossils of the primitive horse, an animal 
 with four toes in front and three behind, and about as 
 large as a cat, probably also striped like one of our 
 prairie squirrels, have likewise been the objects of 
 affection, since from such an animal as this it is supposed 
 all our horses have descended, even those which at pres- 
 ent trot a mile in two minutes. 
 
 Suetonius, the historian, mentions that Julius Caesar 
 possessed a horse which had toes, not dreaming of the 
 importance which attached to his statement, since it was 
 not till Darwin's time that it was understood that horses 
 have descended from toed animals. 
 
 We also form attachments for the minerals and metals 
 that are contained in our cabinets. Fragments of 
 meteoric stones are met with and are rightly made 
 objects of regard. Quartz rocks containing gold are 
 also very common in cabinets, enormous pieces of which 
 have sometimes been discovered, one it is said that 
 
AFFECTION 3 1 1 
 
 weighed two hundred and thirty pounds, and many such 
 a large piece is contained in some museum to be highly 
 treasured. Diamonds, so large as to be worth thousands 
 of dollars have been taken from the mines. Of cut 
 diamonds indeed there is a great collection at Dresden. 
 As, moreover, each kind of rock exhibits a certain kind 
 of crystal known among other things by its angle, a col- 
 lection of rocks has also on this account an importance 
 and, therefore, a claim on our affection. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 EMOTION 
 
 The emotions, according to some, are all aesthetic, but 
 whether they are so or not, at least aesthetic emotions are 
 those that particularly require to be treated of. 
 
 It has been common, moreover, to speak of aesthetic 
 emotions as feelings produced either by things sublime 
 or by things beautiful, but in truth they are also pro- 
 duced by things pathetic, by things ludicrous, by things 
 picturesque, and by things wonderful, there being at 
 least six classes of them. What we have reason to 
 believe, however, is this — the sublime, the pathetic, the 
 ludicrous, the beautiful, the picturesque, and the wonder- 
 ful are but different forms of unity in variety, this prin- 
 ciple, according to Schopenhauer, being the concept re- 
 garded as fixed, the many grasped unchangeably in the 
 one, whereby, indeed, more unity is, perhaps, ascribed 
 to things than they actually possess. 
 
 The sublime may be one of extent merely, in which 
 case it is properly spoken of as the extensive sublime, 
 though the term mathematical is that which is usually 
 employed to designate it. 
 
 Things which awaken in us sublime feelings affect 
 us, not by the variety which they contain, but by their 
 unity — the unbroken sameness in them swallowing up the 
 variety. All the waters of the ocean, for example, are 
 
 312 
 
EMOTION 313 
 
 nearly alike, it is not their variety, but their sameness 
 that delights us, the unity of all the waters, so to say. 
 
 The ocean which appears boundless to the eye, the 
 prairies of America, the deserts of Africa produce in us 
 feelings of the sublime, as do mountains, the Alps, for 
 instance — indeed, any such objects. 
 
 When the question is one of power, however, rather 
 than one of extent, the sublime is said to be dynamical. 
 Whatever is able, as it were, to unite in itself all power, 
 that is to say, to subject to itself, as a unity, all opposing 
 forces, is dynamically sublime, as, for example, are 
 volcanoes, earthquakes, avalanches, floods, and winds. 
 
 An eruption of the volcano, Kilauea, Hawaii, 1840, 
 was sublime. Burning lava, red as blood, burst forth 
 from that volcano, forming a river of fire that flowed 
 forty miles to the sea, half a mile wide, two hundred 
 feet deep, irresistible in its fury, heating the water for 
 twenty miles along the coast and turning night into day. 
 Mauna Loa, on the same island, was a fountain of fire, 
 1852, such as artifice has not produced, there issuing 
 from it a red-hot column of burning lava to the height 
 of seven hundred feet, a thousand feet in diameter. 
 
 Two streams of burning lava burst out of Skapter 
 Jocul, Iceland, 1783, which continued to flow for two 
 years to the sea, sweeping away in their courses twenty 
 villages and nine thousand inhabitants. 
 
 Earthquakes, manifesting, as they do, such gigantic 
 power, are well calculated to rouse within us emotions of 
 the sublime. The earthquake of Lisbon, 1755, furnishes 
 a good example. Within the space of six minutes, 
 incredible as it may seem, great fragments were torn off 
 mountains and precipitated to the valleys below, the 
 
314 ■ EMOTION 
 
 waters of the ocean were lifted fifty feet, a great part 
 of the city was made a mass of shapeless ruins, and 
 thirty thousand people were hurried into eternity. The 
 earthquake of Calabria, 1783, is an example — the ground, 
 suddenly yawning into great seams, swallowed a hun- 
 dred thousand " persons. The earthquake of Caracas, 
 1 812, is an example, the city being tumbled into ruins 
 in the twinkling of an eye. The earthquake of New 
 Madrid, 181 1, may also be cited — the ground suddenly 
 lifted the Mississippi River, so that its waters flowed 
 backward and over-ran its banks, indeed forming lakes, 
 some that were twenty miles in extent. 
 
 When we hear of such things as these, feelings of the 
 sublime well up within us, feelings of the dynamic sub- 
 lime, as it is called, the sublime of power. 
 
 An Alpine avalanche is sublime, a huge body of ice 
 on the summit of a mountain breaking loose, falling 
 down the mountain side, taking with it rocks and trees, 
 plunging at last headlong into the valley below, crush- 
 ing towns, as a pebble might crush an egg-shell. 
 
 The power exerted by water is also sublime, the great 
 geyser of Iceland, for example, throws a stream of boil- 
 ing water, ten feet in diameter, a hundred feet high and 
 that continuously. The waters of Niagara plunge in 
 great mass over a rocky wall one hundred and fifty feet 
 or more. The strong ocean tide moving with irresisti- 
 ble might up the mouths of great rivers, as for example, 
 up the mouth of the Ho-hong-ho, meets the hardly less 
 strong current of the rivers, causing great columns of 
 water to rise high in the air and to rush up stream. 
 Near Johnstown, Pennsylvania, 1889, ^ ^^^e in the 
 mountains, having broken over an artificial embank- 
 
EMOTION 315 
 
 ment, filled the valley below with a mighty flood, bearing 
 down all before it — trees, houses, humanity itself. 
 
 These things are sublime because a unity of power, 
 great enough to subdue all other varieties is here mani- 
 fest. 
 
 Tornadoes, moreover, are sublime, sweeping every- 
 thing before them and raising houses and ships into 
 the air. 
 
 Furthermore, the sure working of nature's laws by 
 which death is a certainty to every creature is sublime, 
 this power of death uniting in itself, as it were, all 
 others. Sublime, therefore, was the thought of Xerxes, 
 when standing on the shore of the Hellespont, he sur- 
 veyed the mightiest army ever assembled, five millions 
 of men, as some say, sixty different nations each in its 
 own garb of war, power enough as he thought to subdue 
 the world : 
 
 " Ere a hundred years were finished 
 
 Where would all those myriads be ? 
 Hellespont would still be rolling 
 
 His bright waters to the sea, 
 But of all those countless numbers 
 
 Not one living could be found, 
 A dead host with their dead monarch, 
 
 Silent in the silent ground." 
 
 Besides the extensive sublime and the dynamical sub- 
 lime, we have also the moral sublime, that which exem- 
 plifies the triumph of right over might through desperate 
 human actions. Xerxes with his mighty host, for ex- 
 ample, comes to the pass of Thermopylae, there to find 
 Leonidas with only three hundred men to dispute his 
 passage. " Give up your arms," is the demand of the 
 
3l6 EMOTION 
 
 Persians, " Come and take them," the reply of the 
 Greeks. " Our arrows are so many," say the Persians, 
 **' that, when we discharge them, they darken the sun." 
 " So much the better," retort the Greeks, " for, then, we 
 shall fight in the shade." What could more awaken 
 within us the feeling of the sublime, particularly when 
 we remember that Greece was the one hope of the world 
 for all time to come ? Similarly productive of sublime 
 emotions is the meeting of two great armies in deadly 
 conflict when some great principle is to be decided, the 
 Greeks and Persians at Marathon, the Romans and 
 Carthaginians at Zama. 
 
 Another instance of the moral sublime may be men- 
 tioned. Napoleon, when his grand army, on its retreat 
 from Moscow, had diminished to eleven thousand men, 
 without ammunition at that — cold, hungry, and in rags — 
 yet to rescue Marshal Ney, turned them back into the 
 snows of Russia, despite the countless hosts which the 
 Czar could muster against him, an example of what is 
 morally sublime. 
 
 When Alexander the Great, with the world at his beck, 
 asked Diogenes who had nothing of his own but his tub, 
 if he could do anything for him, Diogenes replied that 
 it would be an accommodation if Alexander would stand 
 to one side a little, so as not to keep from him the direct 
 rays of the sun. This also was morally sublime. 
 
 The pathetic, imperfectly treated of by investigators, 
 may perhaps receive an explanation, as being an adjunct 
 of the sublime. 
 
 All are agreed that pathetic feelings are occasioned 
 by what is sad, yet manifestly it is not the sadness as 
 such that is pleasurable. What is pleasurable must be 
 some aspect of the sad event. 
 
EMOTION 3 I 7 
 
 Sad things, in so far as they are subHme, may be 
 pleasant, notwithstanding that in another respect they 
 are unpleasant. Here, perhaps, we have a clue to 
 explaining the pathetic. 
 
 Death, for example, an event occupying but a moment 
 of time, gathers up into itself the consequences of futu- 
 rity, unifies the variety of the years, so to say — whence 
 this event is sublime, painful though, in other respects, 
 it be. 
 
 Indeed, that there may be pleasure in spite of pain is 
 illustrated in the havoc which the eruption of a volcano 
 produces. The pleasure is not on account of the havoc 
 but in spite of it, no doubt on account of the sublime 
 aspect which the volcano manifests. 
 
 What sadness there is in the case of the pathetic, 
 moreover, is softened by the consolations of religion. 
 For we believe that the death of the person, though from 
 one point of view a misfortune, yet in the economy of 
 providence is compensated for. 
 
 Furthermore, whatever sadness there may be, since it 
 mingles with the pleasure of the sublime, heightens it by 
 contrast. 
 
 Actual occurrences that have the power to raise 
 pathetic emotions are probably oftener connected with 
 the family than with anything else, the death of children 
 being one of the sources of the pathetic most noted. 
 
 When we read, for example, in Sterne's sketch of his 
 own life how his father's family having removed from 
 Bristol to Hampshire, lost there his little brother, "Poor 
 Jothram," as he calls him, " a pretty boy four years old," 
 there wells up within us the feeling in question. 
 
 The state of the poor boy, so far as this earthly life 
 
3l8 EMOTION 
 
 is concerned, no time, however long, will be able to 
 change — that one event of his death, brief though it 
 was, unifies all the events of the future, so far as they 
 might have been joined to him, whence his death, what- 
 ever else it was, was sublime. 
 
 Still another instance is this. A little boy having left 
 his mother's humble cottage, one afternoon, went up the 
 side of the neighboring cliff to play, an earthquake in 
 the meantime chancing to take place, so that by the open- 
 ing of a seam in the ground the cliff was made inacces- 
 sible from the cottage. The boy, doubtless destroyed, 
 was never heard of more — but for years his little coat, 
 which he had hung on the limb of a tree, could still be 
 seen flapping in the breeze upon the cliff. 
 
 What we are told of Lucy Gray is pathetic. Caught 
 in a blinding snowstorm, late one afternoon, no adequate 
 search could be made for her until morning, when her 
 little footsteps were followed to the bridge, beyond which 
 no trace of her ever could be found. 
 
 Descriptive points, as they help to bring her vividly 
 before us, increase the pathos. She was sent by her 
 father to go to the neighboring town to accompany her 
 mother home who worked there during the day in a 
 factory, she went blithe as a roe, she had a lantern in 
 her hand, and she kicked the snow before her as she 
 walked. 
 
 Another point is to be taken into account, namely that 
 it is not known what did actually bec6me of her, the 
 chance existing that she may not have perished after all, 
 except, of course, in the minds of others, the sadness 
 which we might naturally feel being thereby somewhat 
 softened. 
 
EMOTION 319 
 
 What we are told of the babes in the woods is pa- 
 thetic. They were left to wander in the pathless solitude, 
 till broken-hearted, they died of hunger. 
 
 Details woven in make the scene impressive. The 
 children, a boy and a girl, were greatly beloved by their 
 parents, who, dying left them well provided for and to 
 the care of an uncle who caused them to suffer death 
 in order that he might obtain the property. They were 
 attractive. Not even the ruffian to whom they were 
 committed to be killed would put them to death. 
 
 Next after the family, the career of a person is a 
 source of the pathetic. 
 
 The " one more unfortunate," as she is called, illus- 
 trates the point — in fact by no means a rare case — clos- 
 ing the course of her life prematurely. 
 
 Particulars are introduced to set the matter in a strong 
 light. Her body is found in the river near a large city — 
 her auburn tresses, though somewhat loosened, are still 
 beautiful — her garments drip with water — she must 
 have had parents, perhaps even friends — she found 
 nothing, however, worth living for — in fact, plunged 
 into the water, shivering in the bleak wind of March. 
 
 We have also an example of the pathetic in the death 
 of Saul and Jonathan, an example heightened by the 
 circumstances that they were pleasant in their lives and 
 in their death were not divided. 
 
 It may be noted as a matter of interest that all words 
 such as changeless, ceaseless, and the like raise emotions 
 of the sublime, since they denote an infinite deprivation 
 of quality. We may quote, for example, Ingersoll's 
 " dreamless sleep of the tongueless dust." 
 
 The pathetic is aroused by certain architectural ar- 
 
320 EMOTION 
 
 rangements of tombs whereby sadness for the departure 
 of friends is expressed. More particularly, however, is 
 this done by certain sculptures, as, for example, that of 
 the weeping willow, that of the sheaf of wheat, that of 
 the broken column. 
 
 The Laocoon, a piece of sculpture dug up at Rome, 
 in the year 1506, represents a pathetic scene, the priest 
 and his young sons perishing together in the grasp of 
 the bodies of serpents wound around them. 
 
 Paintings of the Crucifixion exhibit pathos — the 
 mother of Jesus witnessing the untimely and unnatural 
 death of her son. 
 
 Requiems are pieces of music that have the effect to 
 cause within us pathetic emotions, as for example, that 
 composed by Schumann and known as the Requiem for 
 Mignon. 
 
 One of the characters of Goethe's " Wilhelm Meister " 
 is a very interesting girl by the name of Mignon, who 
 dies an untimely death and for whose funeral a piece is 
 represented as having been rendered. It was this which 
 furnished the point for Schumann. 
 
 Poetry exhibits many instances of the pathetic, a few 
 of which may be given. From Shakespeare take the 
 instance of Imogen — 
 
 Fear no more the heat o' the sun 
 Nor the furious winter's rages, 
 Thou thy earthly task hast done, 
 Home art gone and ta'en thy wages. 
 
 From Pope take the instance of the unfortunate lady — 
 
 By foreign hands thy dying eyes were closed, 
 By foreign hands thy decent limbs composed, 
 
EMOTION 321 
 
 By foreign hands thy humble grave adorned, 
 By strangers honored and by strangers mourned. 
 
 From Gray take the instance of the rude forefathers — 
 
 No more for them the blazing hearth shall burn 
 Nor busy housewife ply her evening care, 
 No children run to lisp their sire's return 
 Nor climb his knee the envied kiss to share. 
 
 From Pierpont take the instance of Napoleon — 
 
 Here sleeps he now, alone, not one 
 Of all the kings whose crowns he gave 
 Bends o'er his dust, nor wife, nor son 
 Has ever seen or sought his grave. 
 
 From an unknown poet take the instance of a man un- 
 known — 
 
 Lay him down, his work is done, 
 
 Vain for him is friend or foeman, 
 
 Rise of moon or set of sun. 
 
 Hand of man or kiss of woman. 
 
 From Holland take the instance of humanity — 
 
 Oh, the rigid rock is frigid, though its bed be summer mould, 
 And the diamond glitters ever in the grasp of changeless gold ; 
 And the laws that bring the seasons swing their cycles as they must. 
 Though the ample road they trample blind the eyes with human dust, 
 Moons will wax in ardent glory though man wane to hopeless gloom. 
 Stars will sparkle in their splendor though he darkle to his doom. 
 
 We have, in the case of the sublime, variety absorbed 
 in unity, but directly the opposite of this in the case of 
 the ludicrous, unity absorbed in variety. For it is 
 agreed, on all hands, that things which call up the 
 ludicrous are incongruous, characterized by inconsist- 
 ency. Such unity as the ludicrous exhibits is a pretence 
 merely, no substantial unity at all subsisting. On ac- 
 
322 EMOTION 
 
 .count of this make-believe consistency, or, what is the 
 same thing, on account of this assumed unity, we laugh. 
 
 Ludicrous, therefore, is this example in Arithmetic — 
 if it took a hundred thousand men twenty years to build 
 the great pyramid of Gizeh, how long would have taken 
 one man to build it alone ? Ludicrous is this question 
 asked by a teacher to secure the attention of his class — 
 "1 live at 529 Broadway, and drive a white horse, what 
 is my name ? " Ludicrous, if true, is what is related 
 of a German tutor, that he tried to prove to his pupils 
 that the earth is round by citing the fact that shoe heels 
 run over, wear off on one side. Ludicrous is the expla- 
 nation which a negro made of telegraphy. There is, said 
 he, a huge dog, his hind feet in New York, his fore feet 
 in London — every time they step on his tail in New 
 York, he barks in London. Ludicrous is what is told 
 of an Irishman. His horse having caught one of his 
 feet in the stirrup — " If you are going to get on," said 
 the Irishman, " I will get off." Ludicrous is what is 
 told of an Englishman. Coming to the cross-roads with 
 a friend, he read on the sign, " 2| miles to Bristol, those 
 who cannot read inquire of the blacksmith." " I see," 
 said he, after pondering much, "the joke is that the 
 blacksmith might not be in." 
 
 Ludicrous is a scene described by Jean Paul Richter. 
 A returning funeral procession passing near a river, a 
 droll fellow ran to the water and plunged in, evidently 
 with intent to commit suicide. The procession stopped and 
 those in the carriages getting out, hastened to the river 
 to see what might be done by way of rescuing him — 
 and with some hope of success — as it seemed, since, 
 standing in the water, he began to address them, saying 
 
EMOTION 323 
 
 that he was yet open to conviction, could they show 
 good reasons why he should not make an end of himself. 
 He related how everything upon which he had entered 
 in life had turned out amiss. He had tried keeping a 
 home for old snipes in Vienna, but it had not paid him 
 anything, owing to the fact that there were no snipes 
 there. Going to London, he had made a business of 
 writing speeches for those who were to be hanged, but 
 had come near having to use one of them himself. 
 Besides, his domestic relations were unsatisfactory. He 
 continued, in fact, to discourse to the assembled multitude 
 till finally it dawned upon them that he was but playing 
 a practical joke upon them, having caused them to stop 
 the procession to gather at the river for that very 
 purpose. 
 
 Ludicrous is what is told of an actor who gave a din- 
 ner to certain others of his profession. All the guests 
 except one had arrived. " It would be a good joke," 
 said he, " If you would all get under the table and make 
 him believe, when he comes in, that he is the first one 
 to arrive." This was readily assented to by all. The 
 remaining guest arriving, however, the host entered 
 into a lengthy conversation with him, nowise referring 
 to those under the table. These, at last getting weary, 
 emerged one by one much to their chagrin. 
 
 Ludicrous is what is reported of a backwoods preacher. 
 Given to exaggeration, he had the assistance of a deacon 
 who sat near him to whistle when he exceeded the 
 bounds of truth, so that he might introduce timely 
 modifications. Once the theme being the taking of the 
 foxes by Samson, the preacher was explaining how he 
 was able to catch so many foxes. " The foxes' tails in 
 
324 EMOTION 
 
 ~ those days," he went on to say, " were twenty feet long." 
 The deacon hereupon whistHng, the preacher reduced the 
 length of the tails to fifteen and even to ten feet, but 
 without avail — the deacon continued to whistle. Becom- 
 ing angry, the preacher then straightened himself up and 
 cried out — " I won't take another inch off those foxes' 
 tails if you whistle to all eternity ! " 
 
 Ludicrous is what is related of a negro who heard a 
 sermon on the passage in Genesis which describes the 
 creation of man. *' What has been done once," said he, 
 " can be done again. I am resolved to try it." Going 
 to the brook, therefore, he shaped, as best he could, a 
 man of mud. " To-morrow," said he, " I will come 
 back and breathe into you the breath of life." It hap- 
 pened, however, on his return the next day that the man 
 could nowhere be found, meddlesome boys having 
 thrown it into the water. Shortly afterwards, however, 
 seeing in town a misshapen tramp who asked him why 
 he kept following him around, he demanded of the tramp 
 why he had run away before he got him finished. 
 
 Ludicrous is this which is represented as a passage 
 from an oration — " At Peoria, Illinois, is a bridge 500 
 feet high, extending across the Illinois River. The 
 other day a drover was driving through this bridge a 
 flock of ten thousand sheep. The old bell-wether had 
 nearly reached the middle of the bridge, when spying 
 at his right an open window through which broad day- 
 light streamed, he at once, recognizing his destiny, made 
 a rush for glory and the grave. And not till he had 
 passed far out into the open sunlight did he appreciate 
 his critical situation, when stretching out his four feet 
 to the cardinal points of the compass, with a plaintive 
 
EMOTION 325 
 
 bleat, he descended to his fate. The next sheep and 
 the next followed, each imitating the remark and gesture 
 of the leader. For hours it rained sheep. The erewhile 
 placid stream soon became incarnadine with the life-blood 
 of moribund mutton. And not until the brief tail of the 
 last sheep, as it passed through the window, waved adieu 
 to this wicked world, did the movement cease." 
 
 While the sublime is a case in which variety is gath- 
 ered up in unity and the ludicrous is a case in which 
 unity is gathered up in variety, the beautiful is a case in 
 which unity and variety stand in even balance, it is the 
 symmetrical — the use of the word beautiful here being, 
 of course, in the restricted sense. 
 
 The Parthenon of Athens, a temple on the acropolis, is 
 reputed to have been the most beautiful building the world 
 has ever seen. The parts of it were adjusted to one another 
 according to ratios, there being, as the Greeks discov- 
 ered, a rule for the harmony of sights, quite as much as 
 a rule for the harmony of sounds, an optical as well as a 
 musical scale. The whole building was made of pure 
 white marble, contrasting pleasantly with the blue sky 
 and with the green earth. Certain small portions of 
 it and the statues and reliefs of the gables were painted 
 in colors, while the reins of the sculptured horses were 
 of metal, the eyes of gems. Within and without the 
 temple were rows of white marble pillars, fluted and 
 capped, equal in height, in the distance of their spaces 
 equal. Inside the temple was an ivory statue of 
 Minerva with a dress of gold. 
 
 The Taj Mehal of Agra, esteemed the most beautiful 
 of mausoleums, is a building composed of white marble 
 which, by its purity, exhibits symmetry, a like condition 
 
326 EMOTION 
 
 being in every part of it. This white marble in appro- 
 priate places is inlaid with agates, jaspers, bloodstones, 
 and the like, forming wreaths, scrolls, and frets, which 
 by the just proportions and symmetrical arrangements 
 of parts are fine in their effects — unsurpassed even, it 
 is said. The minarets at the corners of the building are 
 considered the most beautiful in existence, manifesting 
 such perfect harmony. The dome in the centre, likewise 
 captivates the beholder by the way its variety is made 
 consistent with itself. The light of the sun is admitted 
 through trellis work of white marble, so as to be subdued 
 in its effects, extravagance or disproportion thus being 
 avoided. 
 
 The human body with its many parts, so adapted as 
 to serve and preserve the whole is an object of beauty, 
 especially when there is perfect symmetry, but more per- 
 fect in form than the human body is a statue of it by the 
 Greeks, in which the parts are all of the proper size and 
 posture. All contradictions and inconsistencies have 
 been excluded from it, there is the strict application of 
 reason to art. 
 
 The statue made by Phidias representing Jupiter was 
 the finest one which has ever appeared. The expression 
 of the face, though majestic, was yet mild and peace- 
 ful — its symmetry permitted no extravagance. The 
 statue was made of white ivory, but the draping and the 
 wreath on the head were of gold, the contrast in the 
 color of these materials being such as in the taste of the 
 Greeks to heighten the effect. For it was delicate and 
 not disproportionate. Jupiter was represented as sitting 
 on a throne, holding in his right hand the well-known 
 statue. Winged Victory, in his left a sceptre surmounted 
 
EMOTION 327 
 
 by an eagle. The garment of gold, which covered the 
 entire body, except the head and neck, was worked with 
 figures and lilies. We may not wonder that everybody 
 who had seen this statue was accounted fortunate. 
 
 Perhaps the most beautiful picture of the Greeks was 
 that which is known as Venus Rising from the Sea, one 
 for which Augustus, we are told, paid a hundred thou- 
 sand dollars; but the most beautiful picture of all time, 
 it is presumed, is the Sistine Madonna, painted by 
 Raphael, a picture which is still to be seen at Dresden. 
 Curtains are represented as having just been drawn 
 back. The mother of Jesus is seen stepping triumph- 
 antly forward in flowing robes, holding the infant 
 Saviour in her arms. On the one side kneels St. Sixtus, 
 on the other St. Catherine. Beneath them are two 
 cherubs in perfect repose ; above, the faces of the heavenly 
 host. Everything is in due proportion. Everything 
 harmonizes with everything else. 
 
 Music, by the harmony of its sounds, is beautiful, every 
 note in an opera, for example, having an exact ratio to 
 every other. Whatever the music, if Jo is made by 128 
 vibrations, re can only be made by 144, mi by 160, and 
 so on, a harmony of parts being necessary to the very 
 existence of music. 
 
 The QEdipus Tyrannus of Sophocles by the unbroken 
 unity of its action and the concentration of the interest 
 is the most beautiful drama in existence — that is to say, 
 while other dramas, as notably those of Shakespeare, 
 surpass the OEdipus in content, none, we may believe, 
 has ever surpassed it in form. 
 
 An army of soldiers is beautiful, the men all dressed 
 in the same manner, formed into companies, regiments. 
 
328 EMOTION 
 
 brigades, divisions, and corps, moving in perfect order 
 and with perfect precision, the perfect expression of the 
 harmonious blending of unity and variety. 
 
 A plowman's furrows are to a certain extent beautiful, 
 for the reason that he has worn away the glebe by turn- 
 ing over a set portion of the ground every time he went 
 through the field. For the same reason, rows of grow- 
 ing vegetables, swathes of grain, and the like are beau- 
 tiful. 
 
 Principles of science or of art are beautiful, since they 
 show the one in the many, each principle being the gist 
 of innumerable examples, an even balance being thus 
 exhibited between law and fact. The rule for quad- 
 ratics, for example, is good for all possible cases of equa- 
 tions of the second degree with one unknown quantity. 
 The law of causality holds for everything which takes 
 place throughout the universe. The golden rule pre- 
 scribes a method for all the manifold dealings between 
 men. 
 
 The character of a man is said to be beautiful, if it 
 begets acSons all of which are directed by some simple 
 principle, without any exaggeration or disproportion. 
 
 The picturesque is a case in which great and promi- 
 nent variety has yet a sufficing, though slight unity. 
 
 It finds the best of illustrations in a landscape, inas- 
 much as here multitudinous details blend in the general 
 effect. For example, gnarled and scraggy oak trees, 
 amidst rocks and the underbrush of the woods, are 
 picturesque. It has often been remarked that a moss- 
 covered cottage on a rough and stony bank, overlooking 
 a river whose course is irregular and whose motion is 
 slow is picturesque. Again, the scene of the old oaken 
 
EMOTION 329 
 
 bucket is picturesque — a small cottage, an old dairy, a 
 well, the aforesaid bucket, a wide-spreading chestnut, a 
 deep-tangled wild-wood, a meadow, a stream pouring 
 over rocks, a quaint bridge over this stream, and an old 
 mih. 
 
 The landscape of the Jamestown ruins is picturesque — 
 the broken tower of the old church, the quaint tomb- 
 stones of the founders of Virginia, shrubbery, birds, and 
 the murmur of the water. 
 
 The landscape described by Keats in his Endymion is 
 picturesque. Hidden in the depth of the woods was a 
 lawn in the exact shape of a parallelogram, the green 
 grass of which was interspersed with daisies. This 
 lawn was walled in on all sides, so to say, by the trees 
 and undergrowing stems. All that could be seen of the 
 sky, therefore, was a parallelogram of blue. The air of 
 the lawn was sweet-scented from the moistened eglan- 
 tine of the woods. An altar of white marble with a 
 tress of newly budded flowers upon it was at one end of 
 the lawn. To this came a great procession, observing 
 some religious rite, m.en, women, and children with fair 
 faces and dressed in white, then the priest wearing on 
 his head a chaplet of beechen leaves. In his right hand 
 he carried a vase filled with sparking wine, in his left 
 hand he had a basket full of flowers — cresses, lilies, and 
 thyme. Lastly came a car drawn by prancing steeds. 
 The priest after exhorting the people to thanksgiving, 
 puts the flowers upon the altar, pours the wine upon the 
 ground. The choir chants and the youth dance to harps 
 and pipes. 
 
 The Yosemite presents a picturesque landscape. 
 Standing on some commanding eminence, the visitor 
 
330 EMOTION 
 
 "beholds a valley situated between high granite walls 
 over which pour small streams of water, spread out into 
 cascades by the breeze. The rocky steeples of the gran- 
 ite walls pierce the blue vault of heaven above, below is 
 the carpet of the valley, flowers in profusion. The old- 
 est trees on earth are there in the form of giant ever- 
 greens. The river is so clear as to reveal shoals of trout. 
 The cemetery, known as Mount Auburn, near Bos- 
 ton, presents a landscape which is highly picturesque. 
 A large tract of land composed of ridges and hills is 
 covered with trees and shrubbery. Interspersed are 
 glens in which are ponds and fountains. Paths wind 
 and circle in all directions, many roads are also seen. A 
 large chapel supports a growth of ivy. On an eminence 
 is a high tower. Everywhere are tombs, stone or bronze, 
 and many of them with statues. Here rests Longfellow 
 whose name recalls the Psalm of Life, upon a ridge, 
 there lies Lowell of the Biglow Papers. Yonder rises 
 the shaft of Anson Burlingame, once special envoy of 
 China. On a side-hill is the red granite of Rufus 
 Choate. Within a little vale is the abode of Edward 
 Everett, he who discoursed of the dead at Gettysburg, 
 now dead himself. Not far off, John Pierpont, who 
 once made verses about Napoleon's tomb, now fills a 
 tomb himself. Agassiz, who discovered that boulders 
 were brought to us on blocks of ice, here sleeps under one 
 of those very boulders. On a certain tombstone are 
 carved some fern leaves, fittingly memorial of the so- 
 called Fanny Fern. On another is wrought the image 
 of a harp to typify the poetical powers of Frances 
 Osgood. Here the ill-fated Margaret Fuller is recalled 
 only by the stone of her ill-fated child. Charlotte Cush- 
 
EMOTION 331 
 
 man's expression is an obelisk merely. The breezes 
 rustle in the branches of the trees, the birds fly about, 
 while fleecy clouds float in the blue sky above. The 
 whole — hills, ridges, glens, vales, fountains, ponds, 
 shrubbery, trees, tombstones, statues, breezes, birds, and 
 clouds — makes up a picturesque scene, seldom, if ever," 
 excelled. 
 
 Other things than landscapes, however, call out feel- 
 ings of the picturesque, for example, cathedrals, markets, 
 the character of a man and his style. 
 
 The mediaeval cathedrals are picturesque, built as they 
 are, with steeples, gables, and vaulted ceilings, the 
 interior effect being heightened by stained glass, by 
 pictures, by statues, and by tombs. The priest is in his 
 robes, speaking Latin, the choir chanting, candles burn- 
 ing, incense rising, the whole congregation kneeling at 
 mass, princes by the side of beggars, fustian in contact 
 with satin. 
 
 The ordinary German market is picturesque. There 
 are present men, women, boys, and girls in great num- 
 bers with multitudes of things to sell — pails, bowls, tubs, 
 barrels, butter, cheese, eggs, potatoes, onions, lettuce, 
 peas, cabbage, radishes, pickles, fish, sausages, hams, 
 beef, mutton, pork, apples, oranges, peaches, cherries, 
 huckleberries, melons. The place is filled with dogs, 
 dog-wagons, horses, donkeys. All sorts of people are 
 buying, all sorts of people are selling. 
 
 Th» features of certain men are picturesque — rugged, 
 misshapen, overgrown with beard, overhung with hair — 
 yet pleasing. 
 
 The character of many a man is picturesque, as for 
 example, that of Abraham Lincoln, who was a man awk- 
 ward in his actions, peculiar in his dress, given to jocu- 
 
332 EMOTION 
 
 larity, easily forgiving and forgetting injuries, yet 
 withal capable, stern, profound. 
 
 The style of certain writers is picturesque, as for ex- 
 ample, that of Carlyle. Wishing to express the truth 
 that in the gain or loss of one man all the rest have 
 equal share, he said that at the top of a hill lived a 
 wealthy family in a palace, at the foot of the hill a poor 
 family in a hovel. The family at the foot of the hill, 
 dying and having nothing else to leave the family at the 
 top of the hill, left them the typhoid fever of which 
 accordingly the family at the top of the hill all died. 
 
 Contrasted, with the ordinary, the wonderful has 
 indeed marked variety, varies much from the ordinary, 
 yet as the wonderful is matter of fact, or if not, is rep- 
 resented as such, it stands in unison with things the 
 most commonplace. 
 
 The wonderful, then, like the sublime, the pathetic, 
 the ludicrous, the beautiful, and the picturesque is but 
 another case of the principle, known as unity in variety. 
 
 The form of our thought is that of unity in variety, 
 every thought being in fact expressible in a sentence, as 
 the junction of subject and predicate. 
 
 Whatever, then, takes the form of unity in variety 
 pleases us — ^we see ourselves in it, so to say, see in it the 
 form under which things exist. 
 
 Of unity in variety, however, there may be several 
 kinds, what is known as the sublime, what is known as 
 the pathetic, what is known as the ludicrous, what is 
 known as the beautiful, what is known as the picturesque, 
 lastly, what is known as the wonderful. 
 
 There are things to excite our wonder in the mineral, 
 vegetable, and animal world. For example, the falling 
 of stones from the sky, particularly, when accompanied 
 
EMOTION 333 
 
 with a blaze and an explosion, has been deemed wonder- 
 ful. It is likewise a matter of wonder that at Hilde- 
 sheim is a rose-bush 800 years old. It is further won- 
 derful that in Colombia should be found a bird which 
 has by nature an image of the sun and moon on its 
 wings, just as there is among us the death's-head moth, 
 which has upon its back the skull and cross-bones. 
 
 The scope of the wonderful, however, belongs more 
 particularly to human action and the vicissitudes of 
 human life. 
 
 Who has not felt pleasure when he has heard of the 
 statue of Memnon, a work of art, wrought by human 
 hands, which stood in the sands of Egpyt and sang a 
 song every morning as the sun arose? 
 
 It adds, perhaps, to our pleasure to know that, after 
 all the ravages of time, that statue is still standing in 
 the same place, although it now sings no more. 
 
 The name of Rameses the Great calls forth feelings 
 of the wonderful. It was he who had built the grotto 
 temple of Abusimbel which can still be seen. It was he 
 who was many a time and oft at the temple of Karnak 
 which is still visited, it was he who had made of himself 
 four massive statues, three of which still look proudly over 
 the Egyptian sands, it was he who had engraved on the 
 rocks of Egypt those words which we still read there, 
 " I will make mankind talk eternally and forever of me." 
 All this is wonderful enough, in itself, but is more won- 
 derful when we remember that all this was before Moses 
 led the Jews by the waters of the Red Sea, before one 
 word of our Bible had as yet been written, before Jeru- 
 salem, Athens, Carthage, and Rome were founded, 
 before Homer and Virgil, Demosthenes and Cicero, 
 Alexander and Caesar were born. With Rameses, how- 
 
334 EMOTION 
 
 ever, the wonderful does not cease, his strange prediction 
 to make mankind talk forever of him seeming likely to 
 be fulfilled. For, after lying for thirty-three hundred 
 years in a vault, his body, in our day, again sees the light. 
 Every little hamlet of the world may now behold a like- 
 ness of his dying gaze. 
 
 We have the case of an unsolved mystery as an ex- 
 ample of the wonderful, A mason by trade, such is the 
 story, was one evening accosted on the streets of Paris 
 and asked to do a little work the reward for which should 
 be ample. He was taken blindfolded he knew not where, 
 till he found himself in a room, the ceiling, walls, and 
 floor of which were covered with black cloth, only an 
 opening on one side appearing. Here he was obliged 
 to wall up with a trowel a young woman who was thrust 
 alive into the opening. Everybody around him was 
 masked. When the work was done he was taken back 
 to the city and set at liberty. He, as quickly as he 
 could, notified the authorities, but though diligent search 
 was made, Bonaparte especially urging it, no clue to the 
 mystery ever could be found. 
 
 The case of the Man in the Iron Mask, as the same 
 is called, is another example, it being impossible, to this 
 day, to say who he was, although seventeen hundred 
 volumes of archives have been gone through for that 
 purpose. 
 
 The affair imagined by Jean Paul Richter is still 
 another good example. Albano, together with his 
 tutors, meets his father for the first time and by appoint- 
 ment on the beautiful island of Lake Maggiore. His 
 father informs him that his mother, whom the boy never 
 remembers to have seen, she having died in his infancy, 
 left certain queer directions which he when he arrives 
 
EMOTION 335 
 
 at manhood, is to follow. Three different persons will 
 meet him on the same day in different places, each giv- 
 ing him a sealed envelope, the contents in each case 
 being a card with the name and number of a street in a 
 certain city. To that house, Albano is to repair, where, 
 searching through it, he shall find betimes a room in 
 which are pictures hanging against the wall. Pressing 
 the knobs by which these pictures are hung, one after 
 another, a certain one, when so pressed, will set off an 
 alarm clock. Taking down this picture he shall open the 
 secret doors behind it. He will discover there the image 
 of a woman, in her right hand a crayon, on her left hand 
 three rings. When he presses the. ring on the middle 
 finger of the image of the woman, the image, operated 
 by clock-work, will rise, step forward, and with the 
 crayon mark on the wall a spot where is another secret 
 compartment. Opening this, he shall find a sort of spy- 
 glass. Looking at a certain medallion, which his father 
 has given him, through the eye-piece of this glass he 
 shall see the likeness of his sister whom he has never 
 known. Looking at another medallion, which his father 
 has likewise given him, with the object-piece of this 
 glass, he shall see the likeness of his deceased mother. Out 
 of these medallions, without the glasses, however, he can 
 make nothing. Having, then, done all this, he shall next 
 press the ring finger of the image of the woman, when 
 the image will write with the crayon the name of the 
 church where is deposited his mother's coffin. Within 
 the coffin he will find a stone slab and inside of that a 
 document wherein everything will be explained to him, 
 but till the things mentioned have been gone through 
 with, he is to know nothing of them. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 DESTINY 
 
 The processes of the mind being what they are, the 
 question arises, What is the natural destiny of the mind ? 
 Machines show in their make-up for what they were 
 intended. We do not mistake a printing press for a 
 corn-sheller, or a road-scraper for a lathe. The mind 
 by its peculiarity also shows for what it exists. We do 
 not mistake its natural purpose for an unnatural one. 
 The end of the mind is its own perfection, intellectuality. 
 
 We have, then, to justify the choice of Solomon, we 
 have to show that wisdom is our being's end and aim. 
 
 The proof of the proposition that the supreme end 
 of human existence is knowledge turns on three consider- 
 ations, first, that there are no ends possible to us but 
 secularity and spirituality; secondly, that secularity is 
 subordinate to spirituality ; and thirdly, that among spirit- 
 ual things knowledge is chiefest. 
 
 To take up the first point, it must strike us as a 
 very strange circumstance that man is fitted to attain 
 so few things, nothing, in fact, but secularity and spirit- 
 uality. Secularity is a name which stands mainly for 
 wealth, power, and fame, spirituality a name which stands 
 mainly for art, morality, piety, and knowledge. What 
 anybody can attain to, it might be shown, is one, or 
 more, or all of these things, nothing else. The question 
 
 336 
 
DESTINY 337 
 
 of the natural destiny of the mind is therefore circum- 
 scribed within narrow Hmits. 
 
 Coming to the second consideration, namely, that secu- 
 larity is dependent on spirituality, this, it may be said, 
 is the same thing as that wealth, power, and fame are 
 dependent on refinement, morality, religion, and knowl- 
 edge. We are to seek first the kingdom of heaven 
 to the end that other desirable things be added unto us. 
 
 For attaining wealth, power, and fame, not only is 
 honesty, but also courtesy and even piety, the best policy ; 
 knowledge, moreover, is needed. 
 
 It is generally admitted, indeed, that knowledge is 
 of great importance toward securing wealth, power, and 
 fame, if, for no other reason, because intelligent organi- 
 zation counts for so much. 
 
 Organization is particularly important for accomplish- 
 ing anything secular, because of the uncertainty which 
 the nature of time introduces into human affairs. 
 
 The future is not present, nor the present future. 
 When the opportunity is at hand, we are not prepared 
 for it, when we are ready for it, the opportunity has 
 gone by. Everything, moreover, is arrived at only 
 through a tedious process. The seed which has been 
 stored up over winter has to be put in the ground in 
 the spring, the growing plants have to be tended, the 
 vegetables have to be gathered, cleaned, and cooked — 
 how many times, indeed, must they be moved! On 
 the same principle, one's capacity for doing anything 
 does not spring ready made into being, as Minerva is 
 said to have done from the head of Jupiter. Think 
 also of the evanescence of things ! Our eating and drink- 
 ing will last us but for a few hours, when we must eat 
 
338 DESTINY 
 
 and drink again; our sleep refreshes us but for a day, 
 when we must again sleep. Our toilet cannot be made 
 once for all, but has constantly to be repeated. Our 
 garments wax old unlike those which the Israelites had 
 in the desert, our houses have to be repaired, that is to 
 say, built over. Furthermore, we can give our attention 
 to but a few things at a time, our doing these things well 
 meaning our doing others badly. 
 
 Against the uncertainty brought into affairs because 
 of the nature of time, organization, as was said, is the 
 great specific, organization which can be gotten, however, 
 only through knowledge, whence, for this reason, secu- 
 larity can succeed but through spirituality, that is to 
 say, through wisdom. 
 
 The necessary dependence of secularity on spirituality 
 is also apparent from common observation, the boorish, 
 wicked, impious, and ignorant being usually neither pros- 
 perous, nor powerful, nor renowned. 
 
 We may notice in passing that the necessity which 
 our nature imposes on us to subject secularity to spiritu- 
 ality explains things otherwise not easy to understand, 
 the disregard of secular things for spiritual ends. The 
 Hindoos, with a view to getting spiritual good even 
 inflict on themselves great tortures. A man, for instance, 
 will have a hook stuck in the skin of his back and tied 
 to a sweep by which means he is then swung rapidly in 
 the air, the theory being that this improves his mind. 
 A man with the same end in view, will also hold his 
 hand above his head for days, weeks, and even for 
 months, till from inaction and its unnatural position, the 
 hand almost withers away. A man will even fall in front 
 of the car of Juggernaut to be crushed to death, abandon- 
 
DESTINY 339 
 
 ing for spirituality all things secular whatsoever. Man- 
 kind have been loud in their praises of Regulus for 
 keeping his word and returning to Carthage, though his 
 doing so was the giving up of secularity altogether. We 
 also commend Jane Eyre and Jean Valjean for acting 
 on the same principle. 
 
 It being settled, then, that there are not other ends 
 than secularity and spirituality and that secularity is sub- 
 ject to spirituality, it only remains to settle what in 
 spirituality is of most importance. 
 
 Knowledge being indispensable to religion, art, and 
 morality, knowledge is for that reason, it should seem, 
 entitled to the primacy. 
 
 It is only through knowledge that correct ideas on 
 religion can be formed. Besides, it is a fact that men 
 of the greatest piety — Wesley, for instance — have been 
 men of the greatest knowledge. 
 
 Knowledge, it is also conceded, is necessary to correct 
 taste, the man without high attainments in knowledge 
 not being able to chisel captivating shapes from the 
 marble, or to paint enrapturing scenes on the canvas. 
 
 As to what concerns morality, although the general 
 principles of it require no great knowledge, yet the appli- 
 cation of them requires, we might say, all knowledge. 
 
 How great in fact is the liability to error has often 
 been set forth and its chief cases pointed out, after which 
 manner we may proceed to indicate them. Through 
 indolence, we often fail to make a proper investigation 
 of a matter thereby inducing improper action. Had 
 Bonaparte's officers made the right study of the defiles 
 of Kaluga, the disasters of Moscow, it is said, would 
 have been unknown, Some trivial association, more- 
 
340 DESTINY 
 
 over, may so impose on us as to render us incapable of 
 doing what otherwise we should not find it difficult to 
 perform, whence the need of knowledge. For instance, 
 Herodotus relates that the Scythians being at war with 
 their slaves were unable to overcome them till they at- 
 tacked them with whips, the reason being, the slaves 
 had been used to cowering before whips and now, even 
 though armed, they were, because of the association, 
 incapable of offering resistance. What happened in the 
 case of these slaves, happens in the case of us all, indeed 
 we are all the slaves of associations. It is only knowl- 
 edge that can deliver us from their thraldom. Our in- 
 terest, or at least what we take to be such, may warp our 
 minds from the living truth, unless indeed knowledge 
 save us from this. Preachers, for example, have been 
 known to lay ten times as much stress on what is unes- 
 sential in religion as on what is essential in it, simply 
 because their lives were so bound up in some sect. A 
 pugnacious disposition may prevent us from forming a 
 proper estimation of the merits of a case, if our knowl- 
 edge is inadequate. The Campbellites and their oppo- 
 nents used to debate with much alacrity the question of 
 the divinity of Christ, without, however, ever coming 
 to any satisfactory conclusion on the subject, each party 
 to the controversy being so desirous of carrying their 
 point. Each party were a little surer of their position 
 after each debate than before, the arguments on the other 
 side having had just the contrary effect of what they 
 were intended to have. Two men would debate very 
 spiritedly for a long time, then going home, each would 
 tell his family how he vanquished the other. Caesar, in 
 the account of the wars which he waged in France two 
 
DESTINY 341 
 
 thousand years ago tells us that men easily believe what 
 they wish to have true. Without great knowledge, we 
 are also likely to err from our proneness to follow the 
 fashion. Opinions, because they are fads, obtain great 
 hold on us, we shall as soon shake off the old man of the 
 sea. There was once a world, it is said, in which every- 
 body was hump-backed, in short to be such was there the 
 fashion. A man chancing to appear in that world with- 
 out a hump on his back was thought to be too unsightly 
 to live. Worse than things, themselves, to make us err, 
 are words. How many are their meanings! How 
 difficult it is for us to arrive at the right one! Every- 
 thing we hear or read may, in fact, be regarded as a 
 series of hints, we getting according to our ability to 
 guess. The Dutchman thought that transubstantiation 
 meant bowing at the high altar, the Irishman that it 
 meant doing one's whole duty ! Those who say that 
 they take the Scriptures just as they read, at best mean 
 no more than this — that they take them just as they think 
 they read. 
 
 The sources of error then being so many and so great, 
 knowledge becomes necessary, if we are to act properly, 
 good acting being possible only through good thinking. 
 
 It has truly been said that a man's fate in each instance 
 depends on his finding the right class in which to put a 
 thing. He must decide whether this or that is the right 
 thing to be done with reference to this or that object in 
 view. Everybody has at each moment to conduct a sort 
 of last judgment, to part the sheep from the goats, so to 
 say. If he does not know a sheep from a goat, it is plain 
 what mistakes he must make. 
 
 We always decide a case on the ground of some rea- 
 son, we should decide it better if we had better reasons. 
 
342 DESTINY 
 
 It is noticed that efforts to reform persons consist in 
 getting certain ideas into their heads. There would, 
 indeed, be no use in talking to one, without we assumed 
 that knowledge is a condition of right action. 
 
 We are led up to the conclusion, therefore, that knowl- 
 edge is chief among spiritual attainments, the one on 
 which in fact the others depend. 
 
 We may also argue in this way — art, morality, and 
 religion are founded on the truth of things, deriving as 
 they do their nature from it, wherefore the coming 
 through knowledge at the truth is the coming at them. 
 All else than the truth, says Hegel, is error, trouble, 
 opinion, strife, caprice, and evanescence. 
 
 The truth of things, then, being the basis of art, 
 morality, and religion, we bring art, morality, and relig- 
 ion to perfection only by having a knowledge of the 
 truth. This is the sense in which a knowledge of the 
 truth of things is the end of our existence. 
 
 It turns out, then, that the fulfilling of the end for 
 which we were born into the world is possible only 
 through those branches of learning which make up our 
 courses of study, these being concerned with the system 
 of truth as such. 
 
 The truth of things, the knowledge of which is to 
 make us free, consists primarily in mathematics, physics, 
 psychology, and biology. For things in general are 
 time, space, matter, mind, and life. Arithmetic is the 
 truth of time, geometry the truth of space, physics the 
 truth of matter, psychology the truth of mind, and 
 biology the truth of life. 
 
 A knowledge of these subjects, therefore, it is which 
 is necessary if we are to attain the end of our being. 
 
DESTINY 343 
 
 Arithmetic is the science of the succession of the 
 moments of time, one, two, three — in short, the science 
 of numbers. Geometry is the science of extension, treat- 
 ing, accordingly, of Hues, surfaces, and soHds. Physics, 
 in an extended sense, is the science of matter, including 
 chemistry, astronomy, and other branches. Psychology, 
 in the general sense of the term, is inclusive of logic, 
 aesthetics, and ethics, even history. Biology compre- 
 hends physiology, botany, zoology, and the like. A gen- 
 eral view of the consistency of all the sciences taken 
 together is metaphysics. 
 
 Inasmuch as a knowledge of the truth of things 
 consists primarily in knowing mathematics, physics, 
 psychology, and biology, if, then, these sciences existed 
 in perfection, a mastery of them would constitute a per- 
 fect knowledge of the truth of things. 
 
 It has, indeed, been claimed that they do exist in per- 
 fection. For in the Himalaya Mountains, it is said, is 
 a brotherhood which knows everything. Were we in 
 their condition, we might say that we had attained the 
 end of our being, we should know as we are known. 
 We should have the means of a perfect conduct. The 
 story of the Himalaya brotherhood, however, we may 
 take as a myth, teaching us the perfectability of mankind. 
 
 We must take into account, nevertheless, that many 
 persons claim that the human mind can never arrive at 
 a satisfactory knowledge of things, owing either to the 
 limitation of our faculties or to the nature of things. 
 
 To the first objection, it seems a sufficient reply to 
 make that, if there are things which, because of our 
 natural constitution, we are prevented from knowing, it 
 is the same to us as if these things do not exist — that of 
 
344 DESTINY 
 
 which there can be no experience being practically non- 
 existent, notwithstanding its existence in fact. To know 
 all else would be virtually to know all things. 
 
 The second objection, that we can never arrive at a 
 complete knowledge of things, owing to their complexity, 
 is better, though, perhaps, not well founded. It is the 
 objection of those who bear a banner with the strange 
 device, " Ignoramus, ignorabimus," certain positivists, 
 such as Comte, for example. 
 
 According to Comte, our great knowledge of astron- 
 omy is due solely to the simplicity of our solar system, 
 the planets being few in number, widely separated, and 
 unequal in mass. Had this all been different, says he, 
 had the planets been numerous, crowded together, and 
 in mass nearly the same, we must have remained 
 ignorant of astronomy. 
 
 He cites the case of medicine, a science in which com- 
 paratively little progress has been made. The reason, he 
 says, is not far to seek. The subject matter of medicine 
 is so complicated that we are unable to disentangle facts 
 of it from combinations in which they are found. 
 
 Comte admits that every problem is merely one of 
 number, every phenomenon being susceptible of expres- 
 sion in an equation, logically so, indeed, but not prac- 
 tically so. 
 
 In the case of medicine, even could we isolate a certain 
 phenomenon from the complexity in which it exists, we 
 should not, he thinks, be able to trace out the multitude 
 of relations which it sustains to other things. The great 
 amount of detail would overwhelm us. We should not 
 be able to grasp in the mind so many things whereby to 
 come at the law of the whole. 
 
DESTINY 345 
 
 He supposes that, if it were possible for us to do so, 
 the practice of medicine would be something like en- 
 gineering or surveying. What to do in case of a cer- 
 tain disease, say one of the liver, would be discovered 
 by making an algebraic calculation, possibly by finding 
 the hyperbolic logarithm of a certain infinitesimal. 
 
 He allows that the discovery of the calculus has en- 
 abled us to solve problems the solution of which was 
 formerly despaired of. How, then, it might be asked, 
 does it appear that the discovery of still other processes 
 may not render easy the solution of problems now 
 deemed insolvable? • 
 
 Moreover, for all we know to the contrary, nature may 
 at bottom be very simple, depending merely on a few 
 atomistic conditions, the which being known, we should 
 arrive at all truth. 
 
 We may say, also, that with our present knowledge, 
 it would be no more wonderful, if we should arrive at 
 a knowledge of all things, than it once would have been 
 wonderful that we should arrive at the knowledge which 
 we already possess. What idea, for example, can the ox 
 or the horse have of finding the distance around the 
 earth or that of the earth to the sun, what of discovering 
 how the boulders came to be where they now are or of 
 discovering what the climate of Greenland was ages ago ? 
 What idea could savages even have had of the possibility 
 of determining such questions? 
 
 Of mathematics, of psychology, of physics, we already 
 know much. What we are chiefly ignorant of is biology. 
 How are mind and matter related to living organisms? 
 This is the question. It involves the question of the 
 habitation of the planets, has relation therefore to every 
 
34^ DESTINY 
 
 part of space. It involves the question of the succession 
 of forms of hfe, has therefore relation to every part of 
 time. 
 
 What is already known of the truth of things is much. 
 What is matter of chief regret is that so few persons 
 possess it. It is even now as if there is a brotherhood, 
 small in numbers, to which is confided the secrets of 
 existence, the other members of the human family being 
 deprived of them. What is known of mathematics it 
 would take a long time to compass, what is known of 
 physics a long time, what is known of pyschology a long 
 time. 
 
 Everybody has the opportunity to join the brotherhood 
 of those who know, is in fact obligated by his nature to 
 join it. He must join it in fact or miss his mission. 
 
 Even to acquire the elements of mathematics, of 
 physics, of psychology, and of biology is to take an hon- 
 orable degree in the brotherhood of science, all further 
 attainments depending on these elements. 
 
 It cannot be said that one has not time to learn these 
 elements, must forsooth labor for a living — it having 
 already been demonstrated that even a living depends on 
 their being known. It is not necessary to ask what 
 shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world and 
 lose his own mind? Eor without his mind he cannot 
 even gain the whole world. 
 
 Why our courses of study are partly literary is ex- 
 plained from the fact that the attainment of truth is 
 possible only through language, it being just as neces- 
 sary that we should be able to tell what we know as it 
 is to know it — indeed how should we even know it with- 
 out somebody had told it? 
 
DESTINY 347 
 
 All courses of study, therefore, consist of two and only 
 two parts, the scientific and the literary, the mastery of 
 which is necessary to our arriving at the end of our 
 existence, science being concerned with the truth of 
 things, literature with making it known. 
 
 The grand divisions of literary expression are essays, 
 history, oratory, poetry. To be more specific, the ex- 
 pression of certain phases of truth is accomplished in the 
 essay which if it be long and systematic is called a treat- 
 ise. But instead of expressing truth in abstract form, 
 we may use narrative, tell what happened — this is his- 
 tory. When, instead of narrative by another, the one 
 interested expresses the truth directly himself, we have 
 oratory, one, as we say, makes a speech. Lastly, poetry 
 arises because truth may be expressed generally as well 
 as individually — we may tell what is true of classes of 
 society and what is true of these not in one time or place 
 merely but in all times and places. The Achilles of 
 Homer for example, is not Achilles as Cyrus is Cyrus, 
 but is, in a way a general character, what in fact many 
 a man is. 
 
 Literature as it exists on this earth, flows from a few 
 great elevations, just as the rivers of the earth descend 
 from a few sheds. 
 
 The four greatest names in literature are Homer, 
 Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe. But with Homer may be 
 placed Job and with Shakespeare Cervantes. From 
 Homer descend Herodotus, Thucydides, Pindar, Sopho- 
 cles, Demosthenes, and Plato, men of such powerful lit- 
 erary expression as still to be in some ways unsurpassed. 
 The Romans, however, improved upon these in some im- 
 portant particulars of judgment, whence we have Virgil, 
 
348 DESTINY 
 
 -Csesar, Sallust, Livy, Tacitus, Horace, Plautus, Ter- 
 ence, and Cicero. But Roman literature nevertheless 
 is descended from Homer the same as the Greek. All 
 things considered, it reaches its highest point in Cicero, 
 he being in many ways the best example of literary ex- 
 pression in the annals of time, the greatest master of 
 composition that the world has ever known. Of his 
 writings, though he died before the birth of our Saviour, 
 there remain nearly eight hundred letters, the greatest 
 source of information respecting his time we possess. 
 More than fifty of his speeches have withstood the shock 
 of time and it may truly be said of them that none as good 
 as they, since he spoke them, have been heard on earth. 
 Moreover, fourteen of his dialogues on philosophy are 
 still preserved which all the generations of men are 
 fated to read. From Job are descended David, Isaiah, 
 Ezekiel, and Jeremiah, the expressions of whom are 
 destined to work their way into the mind of every inhab- 
 itant of the earth. From Dante, not as many descend 
 as from Homer, yet Petrarch, Boccaccio, Milton, and 
 Pollok. We are to understand that Dante was really 
 portraying all human life as it was, is, and will be, was 
 doing this under the guise of depicting a world of 
 retribution. From Shakespeare descend Bunyan, Bruy- 
 ere, Fielding, Macaulay, and the like, their name being 
 legion. From Cervantes descend Lope de Vega, Rabe- 
 lais, Swift, Sterne, and Voltaire. From Goethe descend 
 Chateaubriand, Victor Hugo, Carlyle, Browning, Tol- 
 stoi, and Ibsen, indeed many more. 
 
 This is literature, the mastery of which enables us to 
 attain the subsidiary end of our existence, though, of 
 course, some importance must attach to expression 
 
DESTINY 349 
 
 through arts other than Hterature, through music 
 especially. 
 
 So much then for the theoretical proof that the attain- 
 ment of truth is the end for which we were created. 
 
 Here is the place to notice the claim of Schopenhauer 
 that we have no end at all, our whole existence as 
 rational creatures being a bad blunder. We must take 
 into account that Schopenhauer distinguishes between 
 a proximate and an ultimate end, admitting the existence 
 of the former, but denying that of the latter. Schopen- 
 hauer teaches that spirituality, primarily knowledge, is 
 the proximate end of our existence, that which it is 
 our natural destiny to attain unto. Since, then, what is 
 the purpose of our being here and now is of chief im- 
 portance to us, we may take the claim of Schopenhauer 
 about the ultimate purpose of our being as practically 
 not coming to so much after all. 
 
 Manifestly, it is possible also to prove from experience 
 that knowledge is what we exist for. We may instance 
 the history of communities and that of individuals. 
 
 To enter on the first case — those communities which 
 have done most for knowledge and the expression of it 
 are those which are the most renowned, Athens, for ex- 
 ample, whence it seems to follow that knowledge is the 
 end for which we entered on life. 
 
 It was at Athens that Plato, the first of the human 
 race to do so, brought the explanation of all things 
 within definite bounds, indeed, his discovery that every- 
 thing is dominated by eternal principles can hardly be 
 overestimated. He has opened a fountain in the wilder- 
 ness of this world, at which the weary still slake their 
 thirst. Well, therefore, has he earned the sobriquet of 
 
350 DESTINY 
 
 the divine. It was at Athens that Aristotle discovered 
 logic, the greatest of all the discoveries vouchsafed man 
 to make, that of Columbus, in comparison with it, paling 
 into insignificance. He expounded the universe on prin- 
 ciples of logic, being in fact blamed by Alexander for 
 letting out the secrets of existence. Furnished by Alex- 
 ander with thousands of men and with nearly a million 
 of dollars, he was able to have collected a multitude of 
 specimens, making use of which he founded Zoology, 
 writing an account still extant of five hundred animals. 
 Theophrastus, a pupil of his, completed the first great 
 treatise on Botany. Moreover, psychology was founded 
 by Aristotle, his writing on that subject being the first 
 to appear. At Athens was produced the first history 
 which is entitled to rank as a work of art, Herodotus in 
 it presenting a multitude of facts and legends with unity 
 of design, employing to do so a pure and simple style. 
 At Athens Thucydides wrote the first history which was 
 ever conceived and worked out from a philosophical 
 point of view, the best history which up to our tirnes has 
 yet appeared. At Athens Demosthenes made the speech 
 on the crown, a speech better than any which has sub- 
 sequently been delivered. At Athens Sophocles pro- 
 duced those plays which for concentration of effect and 
 unity of design surpass anything else ever attempted. 
 At Athens ^schylus and Euripides exhibited their 
 plays, they, with Sophocles, being the founders of trag- 
 edy. At Athens Aristophanes brought out his comic 
 plays, which Jebb says combine excellencies found no- 
 where else — extravagant fancy, delicate humor, and ex- 
 quisite song. At Athens Ictinus constructed the Par- 
 thenon, the most beautiful building ever erected on the 
 
DESTINY 351 
 
 face of the earth. At Athens Phidias wrought those 
 sculptures which are esteemed the best of time. At 
 Athens was developed popular government, government 
 by discussion, as it is called, that is to say, government 
 by appeal to reason. The Greeks, in truth, discovered 
 reason, a circumstance which explains all their works, 
 why they originated republics, why they excluded incon- 
 sistencies from art,, why they founded sciences. 
 
 Athens, then, having done more for the advancement of 
 knowledge than any other community, its fame is the 
 greatest of all, this demonstrating, it should seem, that 
 knowledge is our being's end and aim. 
 
 The meaning of historical progress is that things get 
 better and better adapted for mankind to perfect them- 
 selves spiritually, as time advances. Battles, therefore, 
 which have had the result to bring about conditions 
 favorable to knowledge, are deemed important and are 
 spoken of as decisive; Marathon, for instance. 
 
 Creasy has well described how, four hundred and 
 ninety years before the birth of Christ, the Athenians 
 held a council of war on the slope of the mountain which 
 overlooks the plain of Marathon, the question being 
 whether or not they should fight the Persians who were 
 in camp below them. The Athenians had only about 
 eleven thousand men, their country was but a few miles 
 in extent, and they were inexperienced in war, while the 
 Persians were more than a hundred thousand strong, with 
 a country reaching from the Hellespont to the Indus, 
 from the Jaxartes to the Nile, and had never yet been 
 beaten in battle. Still another thing put the Athenians 
 at a disadvantage. The Spartans, though in sympathy 
 with the Athenians, yet refused to assist them, owing to 
 
352 DESTINY 
 
 superstition. They thought it would be unlucky to 
 engage in battle before the full of the moon, an unfort- 
 unate circumstance, as Creasy remarks, since the Atheni- 
 ans had no way of hurrying up the full of the moon and 
 no way of making the Persians wait for it. 
 
 The matters at stake were truly momentous. Those 
 men for whom Athens is now so much renowned, Plato, 
 Aristotle, Herodotus, Thucydides, ^schylus, Sophocles, 
 Euripides, Aristophanes, Pericles, Demosthenes, Ictinus, 
 Phidias, had not yet been born, and unless the Athenians 
 should at once attack and put to rout the Persians, there 
 was no chance whatever that they ever would be born, 
 for the Athenians would certainly be taken captive to 
 Persia. 
 
 If the Persians effected a conquest of the territory, 
 Athens as we now know it would never come to exist — 
 Rome, Christianity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, 
 and the modern world would never have any semblance. 
 
 Some authorities indeed think that Gutenberg settled 
 it that newspapers should be published, but really Mil- 
 tiades settled it on the plain of Marathon. 
 
 There was a tie vote in the council of war, but Calli- 
 machus, the archon, persuaded by the speech of Miltiades, 
 gave the deciding vote to engage the Persians, the most 
 momentous ballot ever cast, since it was the occasion of 
 the Athenians completely overthrowing the Persians. 
 
 It is plain that our obligations to Miltiades have been 
 but imperfectly discharged, indeed, never can be dis- 
 charged. They are our debt for arithmetic, geometry, 
 trigonometry, calculus, quaternions, chemistry, astron- 
 omy, geology, mineralogy, anatomy, physiology, zoology, 
 botany, psychology, logic, ethics, aesthetics, treatises, 
 histories, oratory, poetry, railroads, steamboats, tele- 
 
DESTINY 353 
 
 graphs, libraries, newspapers, schools, liberty, Chris- 
 tianity. 
 
 The tomb of Miltiades, if it can be found, should be 
 kept covered with freshly cut flowers, his monument 
 should be reared to the skies. 
 
 The Athenians guided, as we may suppose, by some 
 divine instinct, realized the immensity of what they were 
 doing, so impressed were they as to believe that men 
 even rose from the dead and took their places in their 
 ranks to fight. For hundreds of years afterwards, peo- 
 ple believed that they could still see at night the contend- 
 ing armies on the plain, could hear the shouts of war- 
 riors, the neighs of the horses. Even to this day shep- 
 herds living in the vicinity have a similar experience. 
 
 Pausanias records that he saw six hundred years after 
 the battle the monuments which the Athenians erected 
 to the memory of the slain. The mound which covers 
 their bodies survives to this day. The battle was de- 
 picted on the temple of Victory, where even now it is 
 said, some of the figures can be dimly made out. 
 
 This battle has become so fixed in the minds of men 
 because it was the occasion of so much progress on the 
 part of the race. 
 
 History, indeed, consists of a series of stages each 
 more favorable to knowledge than the preceding, the 
 Egyptian, the Judean, the Athenian, the Roman, the 
 Patristic, the Mediaeval, the Revival, and the Modern. 
 
 To glance now at the history of individuals, the 
 estimation in which great men are held we may explain 
 on the ground that knowledge is the end of our exist- 
 ence, great men being, indeed, but examples of what 
 everybody should be. 
 
 That the notion of the Messiahship was in the minds 
 
354 DESTINY 
 
 of men, thousands of years before Christianity, Gentiles 
 as well as Jews, shows that they had discovered the end 
 of life to be spirituality. There is in us, indeed, what 
 may be called a disadvantageous state of mind, a 
 spiritual imperfection fraught with baleful results which 
 it behooves us to be rid of ; the extent to which one per- 
 fects himself spiritually, therefore, makes his greatness. 
 We have accordingly the idea of redemption, the idea 
 of deliverance from our imperfection, an idea which any- 
 one anywhere may have. Whatever else our Saviour 
 stands for, he at least stands for all we ought to attain 
 to, being in all things our pattern. 
 
 When everybody reaches perfection of mind, the per- 
 fection of society obtains. When everybody possesses 
 the truth, the bounds of progress are arrived at. This 
 is our sure ground for believing in a millennium. 
 Whatever else it may be it is a time in which the general- 
 ity of mankind reaches perfection, theoretically, therefore, 
 a time in which everybody reaches perfection. 
 
 Zoroaster, though he is believed to have lived as long 
 ago as Moses, yet foretold the coming of such a time, 
 being able to do so because he perceived the necessity 
 that the race get the truth. 
 
 Our Saviour represents to us absolute perfection, but 
 there are a great many men who approximately represent 
 perfection, conspicuous among them Homer, Job, Dante, 
 Shakespeare, Cervantes, Goethe, Plato, Aristotle, Kant, 
 Hegel, Cicero, Plutarch, Macaulay, Victor Hugo. 
 
 Homer is worthy, not because he wrote the Iliad, but 
 because he knew what to write. He and the rest are 
 examples to us because they did what we ought to do, 
 approximately at least, attained the truth. 
 
DESTINY 355 
 
 The fame of Buddha shows that spirituahty is the end 
 for which we came into the flesh, he being among the 
 greatest apostles of knowledge that the world has ever 
 known. About five hundred years before the birth of 
 Christ, he was living in the village of Kapilavastu, north- 
 ward of Benares, where he had a view of the Himalayas 
 rising to imprint themselves on the blue. He was a 
 prince, living in a palace surrounded by every luxury, 
 had, in short, all the gifts of secularity — riches, honor, 
 and power — but he awoke one night, his mind aroused, 
 it is said, as if his house were on fire. The thought had 
 taken irresistible hold of him that he must do something 
 to deliver humanity from its misery. He had in fact 
 the day before seen the most loathsome examples of it, 
 beggary, disease, and death. Mounting therefore his 
 horse, he rode away from his palace and its luxury, 
 freely abandoning all secularity to the end that he might 
 secure salvation for men, rode away into the desert and 
 its desolation. As he thus rode away from his palace, 
 might seem to have been heard the deafening applause 
 of after ages, the acclaims of the millions who should yet 
 be blest on account of what he was then doing. Faint- 
 ing from continual fasting, it was forcibly impressed 
 upon him that he could never deliver mankind from 
 their sorrows merely by starving himself. Going a dis- 
 tance farther, he seated himself under a tree, where at 
 last it dawned upon him that what made all the trouble 
 with men was their ignorance. There are trees in the 
 world now growing which have been derived, it is said, 
 from that under which he had his momentous revela- 
 tion, trees held sacred by mankind, because of the ulti- 
 mate truth which he attained to under the branches of 
 
35^ DESTINY 
 
 the original one. Asked where he was going he replied : 
 '■ To Benares, there to give light to those enshrouded in 
 darkness, and to open the gates of immortality to men. 
 For now," said he, " I only live to be the prophet of 
 perfect truth." Establishing, as Wesley did after him, 
 an itinerary, he began to preach salvation through knowl- 
 edge. 
 
 Whatsoever imperfections there may have been in his 
 teaching, and it is acknowledged that there were such, 
 at least he was Christian to this extent, that he gave 
 primacy to the kingdom of heaven and relegated to a 
 subsidiary position secularity. He was right also in that 
 he set perfect knowledge as the condition of perfect 
 spirituality. For how, indeed, shall a man properly per- 
 form that of which he knows nothing, how properly per- 
 form that of which he does not know enough ? 
 
 The case of Fichte is even more remarkable, since by 
 showing his countrymen that knowledge is the end of 
 life, he thereby induced them totally to change for the 
 better their affairs. Prussia was wholly given up to 
 secularity, no spiritual fitness was required for office, the 
 schools also were inconceivably bad. The outcome was 
 that nobody cared anything for his country. Napoleon, 
 therefore, in overthrowing German power at Jena was 
 hailed as a sort of deliverer, as indeed he really was. It 
 was then that Fichte recalled men's minds to first prin- 
 ciples, told them in effect that a man's life consisteth not 
 in the abundance of things which he possesseth, that the 
 end of humanity is to attain wisdom. Things then 
 became changed, the principle that every position of 
 honor and emolument shall depend on education was 
 made supreme. The present Germany, as the exponent 
 
DESTINY 357 
 
 of science is the result, the mighty power for progress. 
 Fitting therefore, is the inscription which the traveler 
 now reads over the grave of Fichte, " Those who turn 
 many to the truth shall shine on as the stars forever and 
 ever." 
 
 At Konigsberg, Kant rests in a chapel by himself, to 
 the side of which is the great cathedral in which rest the 
 dukes and princes. Fain would the dukes and princes 
 have him come over to them that he might add a drop of 
 fame to theirs, fain would they have him sent to their 
 posterity that it come not into the place in which they are. 
 Kant, indeed, was the son of a humble strap-cutter, yet, 
 because of his intellectuality, his fame is greater than 
 that of kings. 
 
 At Ratisbon there is what is called a temple of fame, 
 built after the fashion of the Parthenon, the depository 
 of the statues of the great men of Germany. It was the 
 happy thought of Pope that there exists on this plan a 
 much larger temple in which are contained the statues of 
 the great men of all time. He represents that there are 
 six statues, however, given a far more conspicuous place 
 in the temple than the rest, that of Homer, that of Virgil, 
 that of Pindar, that of Horace, that of Aristotle, and 
 that of Cicero. These statues are placed around the 
 throne of fame itself directly beneath the dome of the 
 temple. They are raised above that of fame. The re- 
 flections of the light from the gems in the statue of fame 
 form a rainbow over the heads of the six statues, min- 
 gled rays of emeralds, rubies, sapphires, and ambers. 
 Here we have an allegorical representation of the fact 
 that the natural destiny of man is intellectual perfection, 
 men of the greatest knowledge having the greatest fame. 
 
358 DESTINY 
 
 If the end of the human mind is in fact not knowledge, 
 why then should we not have clowns represented as hav- 
 ing attained the glorified state, statues, for instance, of 
 such as dug the grave of Ophelia placed beneath the 
 dome of the temple of fame? Why should we not have 
 a choir chanting their praises, " Such be the examples of 
 men for aye ? " 
 
 We might, of course, imagine a burlesque temple of 
 fame, those whose statues are in it being examples of 
 what nobody should become. Seneca seems to have had 
 the main idea of such a thing in mind when he said of 
 Tiberius that nature brought him forth to show what 
 folly and stupidity can accomplish. 
 
 We may even look upon a rampant blackguard as a 
 sort of burlesque Saviour of the world, he representing 
 about everything which nobody should be. 
 
 Many a man is preaching the gospel very effectively, 
 although the thought of his doing so is most remote from 
 him. Ever does he remind us not to be what he is, such 
 is the irony of fate. 
 
 As everybody has in himself the standard of perfection 
 by which he is under obligation to know what the truth 
 of things is, it follows that by means of this standard, 
 we are entitled to ascend the judgment throne of the 
 world and to pronounce the verdict. Anybody in fact 
 may follow the example of Dante. 
 
 The judgment will be of the quick and of the dead, 
 those still inhabiting the earth and those deceased. We 
 need mention only such as against whom the judgment is. 
 
 Respecting the living, our judgment will have to be 
 condemnatory of those who now living in Greece have 
 yet never heard of Demosthenes, condemnatory of 
 
DESTINY 359 
 
 those who are now hving in Konigsberg, yet do 
 not exactly know what Kant taught. We shall have 
 to condemn those who would rather put children out 
 to hire than send them to school, thinking it profit- 
 able at the loss of the soul to gain a mere pittance. We 
 shall have to condemn those who act as if they were born 
 into the world for no other purpose than to repair old 
 wagons or to mend crockery, unmindful what Burritt 
 accomplished at the blacksmith's forge. We shall have 
 to condemn those who care not whether Shakespeare 
 meant to represent Hamlet as crazy or rather as crafty, 
 whether gravitation vary inversely as the square or 
 rather as the cube of the distance. We shall have to 
 condemn those who are swayed by Mumbo Jumbo 
 merely, frivolous, incapable of considering anything 
 seriously, always borne about on the winds of opinion. 
 We shall have to condemn those who think they have 
 made some high attainment, because forsooth they pos- 
 sess a hundred suits of raiment, whereas Hawthorne had 
 but two or three and Bonaparte at times not more than 
 one. 
 
 Coming to the dead, we shall have to condemn all those 
 of past ages who were savages or barbarians, they never 
 having beheld the glorious dawn of self-consciousness. 
 We shall have to condemn all the hosts of the dead who 
 were the worshipers of mediocrity or the devotees of 
 immediate good. Of those who burned the Alexandrian 
 library, let the name be hooted and hissed adown the 
 corridors of time, to those who tried to stop the mouth 
 of Galileo, be it known they never have forgiveness. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 ORIGIN 
 
 The question of the origin of the human mind is dis- 
 posed of to the extent we can show it had no origin. 
 This question manifestly has in it the question of im- 
 mortahty. For if the mind had no origin it exists 
 independent of time. It will not end. 
 
 The argument for the eternity of the mind may be 
 embraced under three heads — physical, moral and bio- 
 logical, accordingly as we have a view to matter, to mind, 
 or to life. 
 
 The argument from matter itself consists of two parts, 
 first that matter is without origin, secondly that it has 
 resemblance to mind. 
 
 The natural eternity of matter is implied in what we 
 observe of it. The things of which material nature is 
 composed, as for example, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, 
 and carbon continue to be the same. 
 
 Hydrogen may be put into a vessel and left there in 
 the gaseous state, yet after years it will unite with oxy- 
 gen to form water, a proof that all through those years 
 it has been the same thing. Hydrogen reaches back 
 into the past, being found in the ancient suns of the 
 milky way, hydrogen reaches forward into the future, 
 being about to be in the oceans that shall be formed. 
 Hydrogen may have wandered the heavens for untold 
 ages in a meteor, yet for all that time it has been 
 hydrogen. 
 
 360 
 
ORIGIN 361 
 
 Again, we live in a great sea of nitrogen, the air which 
 we breathe being this together with a mixture of oxygen 
 and gaseous carbon. The nitrogen which forms part 
 of our flesh to-day was a few days ago in the flesh of an 
 ox, a few days before in the grass that the ox ate. 
 When hair is burnt, there is always the same smell from 
 it because the nitrogen in it is but one and the same thing 
 always. The only wrinkles on the brow of nitrogen are 
 those which appear in the spectrum and those are always 
 the same, a proof that time did not write them there. 
 
 Still again, the very same oxygen will combine with 
 every known simple substance, fluorine excepted, being, 
 as it is, nothing but oxygen. Oxygen has taken part in 
 every fire kindled, both before and since the conflagra- 
 tion of Troy, and has been able to do so on account of 
 what it is. The very same oxygen of the earth has sup- 
 ported all the animals which have lived upon the earth. 
 The breath which a man draws into his lungs is that 
 which a bear once inhaled. 
 
 Moreover, when we snufif a lamp-wick, we gaze on a 
 piece of carbon which is just the same as it was when 
 the builders of Solomon's temple were hewing out the 
 timbers in the woods, the very same to be when the 
 millennium dawns. The same carbon is at one time a 
 part of wood, at another a part of bone, at still another 
 a part of hair, yet is the same. 
 
 Wherefore hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon 
 being always the same, the things of which they are com- 
 posed must always be the same. Any one of these, 
 hydrogen for example, we may, to be sure, conceive to 
 be changing but only in the sense that like things replace 
 like. 
 
 « 
 
362 ORIGIN 
 
 - Our bodies are for the most part composed of hydro- 
 gen, nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon, though they contain 
 small quantities of many other things. Whatsoever they 
 contain, however, is of the nature of hydrogen, of nitro- 
 gen, of oxygen, and of carbon, so far as the question of 
 change is concerned, the atoms of everything being ever 
 the same. 
 
 Not only is this thought to be so from observation but 
 follows from the law of causality, it being impossible that 
 like combinations of things should produce like effects 
 unless those things were constant in their natures. It 
 was foretold, for example, more than a hundred years 
 beforehand that a great eclipse of the sun would occur 
 on a certain day, at a certain moment, but how could 
 this have been done unless all the particles of matter be 
 unchangeable in their actions? 
 
 Experiments, moreover, have been made, demonstrat- 
 ing what is called the conservation of energy, the un- 
 changeability of matter. 
 
 And the unchangeability of matter, be it kept in mind, 
 means that matter had no origin in time, time having no 
 relevancy to its atoms. 
 
 The argument from the eternity of matter to that of 
 mind is analogical, we conclude that mind is eternal from 
 its similarity to matter. 
 
 The grounds of the similarity of mind to matter may, 
 for the purposes in hand, be comprised under three 
 separate heads, first that both mind and matter partici- 
 pate in existence, secondly that they are connected with 
 each other in the human body, and thirdly that matter 
 being infinitely divisible is therefore immaterial. 
 
 Some importance even must attach to the first ground, 
 
ORIGIN 363 
 
 namely, the likeness of mind and matter, in the bare fact 
 that each exists, the ground upon which Spinoza took 
 his stand. 
 
 The second ground of similarity between mind and 
 matter, namely their connection with each other in the 
 human body, manifestly falls under two heads, first the 
 action of matter on mind and secondly the action of 
 mind on matter, the first being exemplified in sensation, 
 the second in volition. 
 
 The mind has in sensation intimations of matter 
 through sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste, 
 
 A person standing at Niagara Falls has the conscious- 
 ness that the waters are rolling over that wall of rocks, 
 the water so affecting his mind as to show that the 
 water is not at variance with it. As one listens to the 
 moaning of the wind, he is made to realize that wind is 
 not so much at enmity with mind as not to be on speak- 
 ing terms with it. If one draws the hand over a piece 
 of velvet, he is made aware of its smoothness, velvet not 
 being entirely out of sorts with mind. If one comes into 
 a room where there is perfume, no sooner does he enter 
 than the perfume bids him welcome, showing there is an 
 affiliation between it and mind. Vanilla, placed in the 
 mouth, occasions in us a sense of pleasure, evincing that 
 it is not altogether opposite in nature to mind. 
 
 How all this can be, unless there is some similarity 
 between mind and matter, it were impossible to con- 
 ceive. 
 
 We have in fact, still much to learn from Thales who 
 twenty-five hundred years ago maintained that all things 
 are made out of water — not that all things are made out 
 of water, though a great many of them are — but that all 
 
364 • ORIGIN 
 
 things are so connected, the one with the others, as to 
 show they must all somehow participate in a common 
 nature. 
 
 Volition shows mind actually affecting matter, mind, 
 as strange as it may seem, impressing on matter its ideas. 
 
 Do we conclude at this moment to walk, immediately 
 do our feet move, a state of the body being in this way 
 made by a state of the mind, showing that the mind has 
 with the things of the body something in common. The 
 army of Sherman marched from Atlanta to the sea by 
 continuing to put one foot before the other. All that 
 mass of matter of which his army was composed was 
 transported from the interior of Georgia to the seacoast, 
 merely by the ideas which were in the heads of the men. 
 The men were mental motors, if the expression be 
 allowed. 
 
 Do we conclude at this moment to handle something, 
 immediately do our hands move, a state of the body 
 being in this way made by a state of the mind, showing 
 that the mind has with the things of the body somewhat 
 in common. Long ago the minds of certain men caused 
 their hands to build temples. The mind of Phidias, set- 
 ting his hands in motion, removed chip after chip from a 
 great block of marble, till the sculptured forms which 
 once adorned the Parthenon stood forth. The hands of 
 Raphael were by his mind made to put paints on a can- 
 vas in such a way as that those paints enrapture the 
 mind of every beholder, his mind actually having an 
 effect on the paints. Mozart's mind affecting his fingers, 
 and through them the piano, he made music which filled 
 the minds of his hearers with visions of a brighter world. 
 The scribes of Judea, making the pen subject to the 
 
ORIGIN 365 
 
 mind, through the hand wrote the parchments which 
 have preserved for us the Psalms, the Proverbs, and the 
 Prophecies. How it is that mind can so act on matter 
 as to mould it to its uses, except on the supposition that 
 mind has somewhat in common with matter, it were 
 impossible to say. 
 
 The remaining ground of similarity between mind and 
 matter is that derived from the infinite divisibility of 
 things. 
 
 The material universe consists of small particles of 
 matter, moving, as we suppose, in a sea of ether. What 
 may be the size of these particles even has in some cases 
 been made out, the density of a gas depending on it. 
 Many billions of them, it is found, are crowded within 
 the space of a single cubic inch. But these particles 
 themselves, what of them? Are they made up of others 
 and those still of others and so on without end? 
 
 As the space which any piece of matter occupies must 
 be infinitely divisible, it follows that the piece of matter 
 itself in that space exists infinitely divisible — nay more, 
 that the piece of matter exists in the space infinitely 
 divided, consists in fact of an infinite number of parts. 
 
 Each of those parts is infinitely small, that is to say, 
 is a point of force merely and does not occupy any space, 
 is in short what is called an atom. 
 
 It is not difficult at all to conceive that matter is com- 
 posed of forces having no extensity. For on this sup- 
 position, one of these forces is at every point of space, 
 the combined effect of them having to us the appearance 
 of things spread out, such as the bodies of which we are 
 sensible, though, in truth, the things, which we see, be 
 composed of things which do not appear. 
 
366 ORIGIN 
 
 We know that things which can be seen only under 
 the glass, yet when combined with others of the same 
 kind can easily be observed with the naked eye, not the 
 single things of course, but their united effects, whence 
 it is plain that things which we see may be made up of 
 things invisible. 
 
 For all that appears to the contrary, therefore, matter 
 is similar to mind in being immaterial. The point in 
 which it was supposed that there was complete difference 
 between mind and matter, mind having no extension in 
 space, matter having such extension, vanishes altogether. 
 
 It turns out that it is only the combinations of matter 
 which occupy space, not matter itself, just as it is only 
 the combinations of matter that occupy time, not matter 
 itself. 
 
 This conclusion, as was said, depends on the infinite 
 divisibility of space, a thing which requires a more 
 extended consideration. 
 
 If we suppose, for example, a man to travel from one 
 place to another, it is plain he must first go half the dis- 
 tance, then half the remaining distance, and so on, 
 having continually to bisect a line, so to say. As long 
 then as the halvings which he makes of distances are 
 finite, he will not reach the point for which he set out, 
 there always being left over an undivided remainder. 
 If, however, the number of halvings which he makes, of 
 distances, be infinite, he will reach the point for which 
 he started. For in that case, the last bisection will result 
 in two points merely, these having position but no 
 extension. 
 
 This result agrees with the proof which algebra fur- 
 nishes. Zero multiplied by infinity equals anything. 
 
ORIGIN 367 
 
 The zero is here, the point without extension, the infinity, 
 the number of divisions of the Hne, the product of the 
 two, the whole Hne which was to be divided. 
 
 We observe also from certain algebraic series that an 
 infinite number of small quantities actually constitutes a 
 definite quantity, for example, the geometric series, I, 
 ^, ^, and so on, continued to infinity, it is established, 
 an algebraic grounds, exactly equals the number i (or 
 unity). 
 
 If it be asked how space can be divided into an infinity 
 of parts in a finite time, the answer of Aristotle is that 
 any time, like any space, consists of an infinite number 
 of parts. We, therefore, divide the time, at the same 
 time that we divide the distance. 
 
 Moreover, if space were not infinitely divisible, the 
 contention of Zeno would be correct, that motion is 
 impossible. 
 
 Zeno, who lived at Elea, an Italian town, four hun- 
 dred years before the birth of Christ, proposed among 
 other puzzles wherewith to bother the brains of men 
 that one which is called Achilles and the tortoise. 
 Achilles travels fast, the tortoise slow, yet if the tortoise 
 has the start, Achilles can never overtake him, this being 
 the paradox. The proof which Zeno gave was this. 
 Achilles to reach the point where the tortoise starts from 
 must first go half the distance thereto, then half the 
 remainder, and so on. A remainder always being left 
 over, it is plain he will never come up to the point. 
 On the same principle it follows, if space be not ulti- 
 mately divisible into points, no progress of a body can 
 be made from one position to another; what is the same 
 thing-, niQtion is impossible. 
 
3^8 ORIGIN 
 
 "Space, however, being actually divisible into points, 
 the last remainder in the infinite division of a line, as 
 was said, is nothing at all, whence the possibility of 
 motion. 
 
 Furthermore, as motion actually does take place, space 
 is proved to be infinitely divisible by reductio ad 
 absurdum. 
 
 If it be objected that, on these principles, space must 
 in the last resort consist of what is not space, being 
 ultimately composed of points having position merely but 
 no extension, what we fail to consider is that space does 
 not exist apart from things, but is only the condition 
 of their combination. 
 
 Thus far the attempt has been made to argue the 
 eternity of mind from that of matter, but we come now 
 to the second point, the attempt to argue the eternity of 
 mind from the nature of mind itself. 
 
 What is of importance here is the proposed reconcilia- 
 tion between the dogma of predestination and that of 
 free will. 
 
 We find that our actions are governed by habit, inas- 
 much as we always make a decision on the strength of 
 some motive, that motive too depending on our former 
 manner of life. Kant declares that, if we knew all about 
 a man, we could foretell his actions with as much cer- 
 tainty as we can foretell the occurrence of an eclipse. 
 Knowing men no better than we do, we yet predict rea- 
 sonably well how each will act. For example, a debt 
 may not be collectible of a man at law, yet we do not 
 hesitate to lend the man money; the fact that we do not, 
 it is said, shows our faith in predestination, we reason- 
 ing that the man's habits are such as to fix beforehand 
 his actions. 
 
ORIGIN 369 
 
 It has been observed by everybody that one fault goes 
 back to another. We find, for instance, that a thieving 
 propensity arises from covetousness, covetousness from 
 envy, envy from vanity, vanity from stupidity, stupidity 
 from laziness, laziness from slovenliness, and slovenli- 
 ness from inaccuracy. 
 
 But in tracing back the genealogy of a man's vices, 
 and we may say the same of his virtues, we come at last 
 to the disposition with which the man was born. 
 
 Are we, then, responsible for the circumstances under 
 which we are born ? If we are not responsible for them, 
 why should we be rewarded or punished for having been 
 born as we were ? 
 
 Let not this point be taken lightly. For there is no 
 doubt that to be subject to some of the horrors which 
 Dante depicts would be a less ill than it is to be bom 
 under such circumstances as many a man is born under, 
 while, on the other hand, to attain the paradise of 
 Mahomet would be a less felicity than it is to be born 
 under such circumstances as many another man is born 
 under. 
 
 We are confronted, then, says Kant, by the seeming 
 contradiction that whereas our actions are predestined, 
 we yet are responsible for them. 
 
 To explain this seeming contradiction, our ancestors 
 hit upon the dogma known as the transmigration of souls. 
 
 It was held that everybody who is in a particular con- 
 dition of life, as, indeed, everybody is, is not living in 
 this world for the first time, but has lived in it untold 
 times before. When anybody is born, it was said that 
 he is merely resurrected from the dead, this world and 
 the next being right here in our midst, or to be more 
 
Zl'^ ORIGIN 
 
 precise, we ourselves are in what was once to us the 
 next world. We who are now living are, according to 
 this theory, in process of judgment for what we did 
 when we lived the life before this. Is a man a beggar, 
 going from place to place, having but little to eat, and 
 nowhere to lay his head, it was held that he must have 
 done somewhat bad in a former life, just as he must 
 have done somewhat good, if he is blest with every com- 
 fort and convenience. Everybody, it was said, is mak- 
 ing his way to future bliss just to the extent that he is 
 overcoming the ill effects of what he did in former lives. 
 Some time, if he perseveres, he will be born into a state 
 of society and of personal disposition which we are wont 
 to designate as heaven. His progress to such a state is 
 slow on account of the law of consequences whereby 
 every condition is bound up in other conditions, whence 
 from the predicament in which he is, he can extricate 
 himself only through time. What will finally deliver 
 him from every woe is perfect knowledge, the compre- 
 hension of truth as it is in itself, the which, till he attain, 
 he is doomed to the treadmill of his trials. Why we 
 are still in an imperfect state of existence, though having 
 been born and reborn from time immemorial, was ex- 
 plained on the principle that everything repeats itself. 
 For, when after ages of toil, one has at last reached 
 perfection, he does not forever remain in it, but in time 
 lapses out of it. Everybody, it was said, is going an 
 everlasting round which repeats itself, if not in all its 
 details, at least substantially. Some make this round 
 quickly, others slowly, some quickly once but slowly 
 again. Some there are who have lingered in the world 
 of bliss so long as may seem eternity, others having 
 
ORIGIN 371 
 
 been an equal time at some other stage. The principles 
 held were that the universe is one of diversity on the 
 one hand and one of permanence on the other, worlds all 
 the time arising, all the time disappearing, the general 
 character of them, however, persisting. Every particle 
 of existence, it was said, whether water, stone, or what 
 not is a soul capable of making the general round, want- 
 ing only the opportunity. The greatest mind in fact 
 might once have been an atom helping to make the field 
 fertile, the greatest mind might again be such an atom. 
 It was indeed thought that in the ages of time, the length 
 of which it is impossible to compute, every particle of 
 being does actually make the whole circuit of possibility, 
 there having to be an exchange of services among things, 
 a human soul, for example, when its turn comes, becom- 
 ing an atom of lamp-black to allow an atom of lamp- 
 black to become a human soul. All things, it was 
 believed, are one in their nature, diversity arising out of 
 the combinations. At any rate, howsoever these things 
 be, each of us, it was said, has gone through the states 
 of existence times without number and is to-day at some 
 definite point in the great circle of existence having a 
 bodily constitution befitting his character. For the kind 
 of character a person has, it was believed, determines 
 the condition in which he is born, he virtually choosing 
 all the circumstances of his birth, his parentage, and 
 the like. 
 
 This is the famous doctrine of metempsychosis, a 
 doctrine which has without doubt been the means of en- 
 lightening thousands, bringing forcibly before the mind, 
 as it does, the dependence of one's condition on his 
 actions, but it will be noticed that, taking the theory lit- 
 
372 ORIGIN 
 
 eraHy, we never get any nearer to the source of the diffi- 
 culty, no matter how far we go back in time, the one 
 answer made to the question why anything is as it is 
 being always this, "what the person did before." 
 
 The theory of transmigration, therefore, is inadequate 
 to solve the mystery of evil, since by it we are put to 
 unraveling a series the end of which does not appear. 
 
 The solution of the difficulty proposed by Kant, how- 
 ever, is not open to this objection. Each of us, accord- 
 ing to the theory which he propounded, made a free-will 
 choice from all eternity of everything which befalls him 
 in life, time, itself, originating only in connection with 
 his choice. 
 
 As there was nothing before this choice, we cannot 
 say that the choice was predestined, there was not time 
 in which the choice of anybody from eternity was made. 
 
 All our actions, then, says Kant, are predestinated, as 
 each of them is the result of what stands before it in 
 time, but we are the ones who predestinated them, hav- 
 ing chosen those actions as a whole from all eternity. 
 
 As, then, the supposition that the mind of man was 
 created from eternity clears up the seeming contradic- 
 tion between predestination and free will, the supposi- 
 tion that the mind of man was created from eternity 
 gains somewhat plausibility. 
 
 But did not the deity, it will be asked, create matter 
 and mind by the word of his power? 
 
 Doubtless he did, but not. in time, seeing that he made 
 time as much as he made anything else. We cannot, 
 for example, say that time was made before matter was, 
 since no time being in existence but as it was made, no 
 date can be assigned to the creation of time, all dates 
 
ORIGIN 373 
 
 manifestly having to be in time. Neither can we say 
 that matter was made subsequently to the making of 
 time, since there being no date from which to reckon 
 the creation of time, it is absurd to speak of anything as 
 being made after time was. As time was made along 
 with matter and mind, matter and mind did not orig- 
 inate in time, but only with time. The notions of before 
 and after are merely notions of time and are without 
 application to the creation, since the creator, inhabiting 
 eternity, made things not inside but outside time. The 
 expression " made out of nothing " has not a temporal 
 but only a logical significance, meaning merely that 
 things are eternally existent alone through the Supreme. 
 
 We are not to think that God makes worlds as the 
 artisan makes stools. God creates the materials of 
 which things are formed, the artisan merely shapes them. 
 The arising and disappearing of worlds in particular 
 places is but a question of composition and decomposi- 
 tion, not to be confounded with that of the original 
 creation. " In the beginning God created the heavens 
 and the earth," that is to say those heavens and that 
 earth which we now behold. These indeed, began to 
 exist, but not the things of which they are made. The 
 things of which they are made go back to other worlds 
 and these to others and so on, as far back as we are 
 pleased to go, and even farther. 
 
 Time, space, and substance are in deity, not deity in 
 them. Deity, as the confessions of our faiths declare is 
 without variableness or shadow of turning, without body, 
 passions, or parts. On this point are agreed Brahmin- 
 ists, Buddhists, Jews, Christians, and Mahometans, 
 three-fourths or more of all the inhabitants of the earth. 
 
374 ORIGIN 
 
 Certain small sects, however, hold to anthropomor- 
 phism, imagining the creator to be possessed of body and 
 to be in time, a notion of all ever held the crudest, con- 
 ceived, as it is, as if the creator is subject to his own 
 creation. 
 
 Anthropomorphists, speaking of the creator as if he 
 were a finite creature say, for instance, that they could 
 not respect him, should he do so and so, forgetting that 
 what he does is after the nature of mathematics. What 
 they say is, in fact, the same as if they should maintain 
 they cannot respect him because he has made it farther 
 round a circle than through the diameter, this sometimes 
 being an inconvenience. 
 
 The Deity is the Supreme power on which everything 
 depends. It is only figuratively that we can speak of 
 this being as we would of a finite one. 
 
 The proof that mind and matter are eternal plainly 
 enough depends on the assumption that something can- 
 not come out of nothing, in other words, it depends on 
 the granting of an axiom. The axiom that something 
 cannot come out of nothing is the same as what is known 
 as the law of identity, namely that a thing is always 
 itself, never anything else. 
 
 Without the truth of this law of identity the other 
 laws of thought would not hold, to wit, the law of con- 
 tradiction, the law of excluded middle, and the law of 
 sufficient reason, the latter being also known as the law 
 of causality. 
 
 Suppose that something could come out of nothing, a 
 thing could, on that hypothesis, be and not be at the 
 same point of time; it would be impossible also to say 
 that a thing must either be or not be, since it might be 
 
ORIGIN 375 
 
 both existent and non-existent at the same moment. 
 The law of causaHty would not hold, since subsequent 
 conditions of things would not necessarily depend on 
 their previous conditions. 
 
 Suppose that something might become nothing, all the 
 laws of thought would likewise fail. 
 
 We may argue, therefore, that as all conclusions what- 
 soever depend on the truth of the laws of thought and 
 as these laws, without exception, depend on the prin- 
 ciple that something cannot come out of nothing, either 
 no conclusions of any kind are certain or else matter and 
 mind were created from eternity. 
 
 Causality is regarded as the great principle of nature, 
 that like combinations produce like results. Why they 
 should do so, however, is because the things combined 
 have unchangeability, are always the same. Like com- 
 binations of hydrogen and oxygen would not always give 
 the same effects, unless hydrogen were always just 
 exactly hydrogen, oxygen always just exactly oxygen. 
 If the law of identity holds, namely, that every atom 
 is always itself, never anything else, then, it is plain to 
 see that the law of causality must hold also. 
 
 We might, indeed, as well say that the axioms of 
 mathematics do not hold as to say that something can 
 come out of nothing. If the whole were not greater 
 than any of its parts, then by merely entering the hall 
 of a house, we might enter all the rooms. But what 
 more certainty is there that the whole is greater than 
 any of its parts than there is that something cannot come 
 out of nothing? 
 
 Nothing is so plain, of course, that somebody may not 
 have called it in question, the truth of axioms being no 
 
37^ ORIGIN 
 
 Sextus Empericus, who lived two hundred and forty 
 years subsequent to our Saviour's birth or thereabouts, 
 wrote in Greek a still surviving book, one part of which 
 labors to show that no reliance can be placed on mathe- 
 matics. Ever since his day, however, people have con- 
 tinued to do business by means of arithmetic and to 
 trust the titles of their lands to geometry, just as though 
 he had never written a word. Sextus himself, who was 
 a physician, it is not to be doubted made out his bills on 
 principles of arithmetic, charging for example, if he had 
 made six visits more than if he had made but three. It 
 is hardly possible that he could have been persuaded to 
 take four dollars for six visits at a dollar a visit, on 
 the ground that the multiplication table is false ! 
 
 Sextus argued that axioms are unprovable, because 
 all attempts to prove them must assume that they are 
 true, an objection, however, which in the opinion of many 
 will amount to a demonstration of their truth. Kant, 
 indeed, has shown that the human mind is of such a 
 nature as that it has existence only, provided the axioms 
 be true, the axioms being implied in its very nature, 
 whence, it would seem, we have here a proof of the 
 axioms by reductio ad absurdum. 
 
 What on this theory would be meant by the self-evi- 
 dence of the axioms would be no more than that the 
 proof of the axioms is easy. 
 
 We are all familiar with the question, " Who was the 
 father of the Zebedee children ? " Who, indeed, he was, 
 is, doubtless, self-evident, yet to have it clear in the 
 mind makes a little demand on thought. It was once 
 asked of a man, " How many years of Sundays there 
 are in seventy years," and forthwith he began to enter 
 
ORIGIN 377 
 
 on a laborious calculation to find how many there might 
 be, not having stopped to reflect that one-seventh of the 
 time is on general principles Sundays. Of a similar 
 nature is the question, " How many odd numbers there 
 are in a billion ? " It would take a long time to count 
 them, perhaps nobody ever has or ever will count them, 
 yet is it evident, on thinking, that in a billion there is 
 just half a billion odd numbers. Of the same nature is 
 the truth that something cannot come out of nothing, 
 it is evident on a little thinking, consequently said to be 
 self-evident. 
 
 The question of the origin of the human mind having 
 now been considered from the point of view of matter 
 and from the point of view of mind, it remains to con- 
 sider it from the point of view of both matter and mind 
 taken together; in other words it remains to consider 
 the origin of the human mind from the point of view 
 of living organisms. 
 
 Dante, as we are aware, represents that he saw men, 
 heard them speak, even, the bodies of whom were not 
 like ours but were veritable trees of the forest. Let us 
 then suppose that a race of men answering to this de- 
 scription actually exists on the earth, what are the con- 
 clusions to which we must come respecting it? 
 
 It is recalled by a man that in his boyhood, there was 
 along the road which led out from his father's house, a 
 row of locust trees. Supposing then that these trees had 
 been the bodies of men, what then? Locust trees send 
 out under the ground runners from which new trees 
 sprout up and grow, as, indeed, everybody must have 
 observed. If, then, we suppose that the trees along the 
 road were human beings, each of them having an active, 
 
378 ORIGIN 
 
 sensitive, conscious mind, we must suppose that the new 
 trees sprouting up from the runners of the old ones were 
 new men and women come upon earth. 
 
 Manifestly the tender shoots would be boys and girls, 
 but with a lapse of time would wax into manhood and 
 womanhood. When, then, a new man of a tree sprouted 
 up from the runner of an old one, and we might ask 
 the same question respecting a new woman of a tree, 
 where should we say that this man or this woman came 
 from? 
 
 It would, of course, be admitted that the hydrogen, 
 nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon of which the visible tree 
 springing up from the ground was made, came from the 
 air, water, and mineral of the earth, the atoms of which 
 from age to age change not, but whence should we say 
 that the mind itself of the tree came? 
 
 We have supposed, it will be remembered, that the 
 tree newly sprouting up from the runner of the old one 
 was veritably a human being, having like ourselves ideas, 
 volitions, and feelings, the same as Dante imagined his 
 trees to have. 
 
 When, then, a new tree sprouted up from the runner 
 of an old one, would it be proper to say that its mind 
 came out of nothing, never having before that time had 
 any existence at all? 
 
 It is one of those things which are said to be self- 
 evident that something cannot come out of nothing, to 
 say that something can come out of nothing being 
 equivalent to saying that what is not, exists. 
 
 Does anybody pretend that this is a subject beyond his 
 comprehension, let him be warned to what he is commit- 
 ting himself. He in effect says that he does not under- 
 
ORIGIN 379 
 
 stand how the non-existence of a thing precludes its 
 existence. 
 
 We are speaking, it is proper to observe, of ultimate 
 realities, those that cannot be analyzed into any others, 
 not of things compounded out of these. 
 
 When, then, a person who holds the nature of first 
 truths to be beyond his comprehension, orders his din- 
 ner at a restaurant, the waiter shall place nothing before 
 him, but merely make an appeal to his agnosticism, " For 
 all he knows the non-existence of the atoms which might 
 compose his dinner is the same as their existence ! " 
 
 It has been set down to the credit of Hegel that he 
 was willing to accept, without any mental reservations, 
 whatsoever follows inevitably from general principles, 
 launching his skiff on the sea of thought regardless as 
 to what shores it might be wafted, an attitude of mind 
 which we may well emulate. 
 
 If, then, trees were men having minds like our own, 
 we should have to suppose that, when a tree sprouted 
 up, the mind of it at the same time emerged from the 
 solitudes of eternity, being in fact obliged to grant this 
 or to concede that nothing may become something. 
 
 Should anyone wonder why this example from trees 
 has been urged, he should be reminded that in the sea 
 animals in the form of trees actually do exist, so that 
 Dante's idea is far from being a mere fiction. 
 
 Such animals grow fast to the earth like trees and 
 bushes, being, indeed, often mistaken for forms of vege- 
 tation, some of them even blossoming, yet are they actu- 
 ally possessed of minds, as we, ourselves, strange as this 
 may seem. 
 
 These animals are, for instance, certain corals of which 
 
380 ORIGIN 
 
 there are many varieties in the sea. From any one of 
 these animals, others of like nature sprout up and grow. 
 
 We have, therefore, actual examples in the world 
 which are but little removed from the example of the 
 locust trees. 
 
 When, then, a new animal of this kind sprouts up, as 
 indeed, multitudes of them do, the question meets us, 
 "Where does its mind come from?" 
 
 Is not the old body from which the new body sprouts 
 up merely the means by which a certain mind gets organs 
 for the accomplishment of its purposes? Has not, in 
 fact, the mind of the new body been existing from eter- 
 nity, ready at any time to enter the flesh? 
 
 If the hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon which 
 the machinery of life organizes into the new body be of 
 such a nature as that the atoms of the same have pre- 
 served each its identity from eternity, what precludes the 
 possibility that the mind of the new body may likewise 
 have been able to preserve its identity from eternity? 
 
 The coming into existence of animals through sub- 
 division shows the same principle as appears in branch- 
 ing. 
 
 . The so-called starfishes, animals found in the sea 
 growing much like plants, devour the bait which fisher- 
 men put upon their hooks. Often, drawing up star- 
 fishes which have got fast to the hooks, the fishermen 
 in a rage tear them to pieces and throw the pieces back 
 into the water, thinking thus that they have destroyed 
 the starfishes. The truth is, however, that each of the 
 pieces thrown back becomes an animal like the one which 
 was torn to pieces, so that the fishermen do but multiply 
 the evil which they seek to lessen. 
 
ORIGIN 381 
 
 Here it is plain the mind of each of the new animals 
 existed previously to the animals themselves, minds being 
 scattered, so to say, all through the body of the original 
 starfish. 
 
 Many an animal, it is true, makes its entrance on 
 earthly life grov^ing from some sort of an egg. The 
 machinery of an egg, however, it is proved, differs not 
 in principle from the machinery of a branch, so that in 
 the case of an animal growing from an egg we have 
 involved just the same thing which is involved in the case 
 of an animal growing from a branch. It is, in fact, just 
 the same as if an animal that grows from an egg sprouts 
 up from some portion of another animal. 
 
 The question, therefore, which it was possible to ask 
 about every animal springing up from a branch of 
 another, it is possible to ask about every animal growing 
 out. of an egg, " Where does its mind come from? " 
 
 It is admitted that the materials of its body come from 
 the water, air, and earth, those materials being in the 
 last analysis atoms, those atoms having no beginning of 
 days or end of years, what is better said, existing 
 altogether independent of time. 
 
 Are we then reduced to such desperate straits as to 
 be under the necessity of conceding that the mind of the 
 animal in order to enter into alliance with the atoms of 
 matter had to be changed out of nothing into something ? 
 
 If it were possible that the mind of the animal from 
 being nothing might on a sudden and to meet an emer- 
 gency become something, it must possess a happier knack 
 than any known to sleight-of-hand. 
 
 When the body of a bird is formed in an egg of the 
 nest, where, we may ask, does its mind come from? 
 
382 ORIGIN 
 
 From nothing at all? Or like its body, from something 
 at hand? 
 
 If there were but two birds in the world, yet in the 
 space of a few years there would be birds enough so 
 that everybody could have one. 
 
 Would the minds of these birds that should direct 
 their songs and in their songs take delight, have all orig- 
 inated out of the abyss of nothingness ? Either we must 
 admit this or else grant that mind like matter is non- 
 temporal in its nature. 
 
 What a countless number of feathered creatures there 
 are in the world not alone on the land, but also on the 
 water, where the wing of the sea-gull never wearies! 
 All those which now exist, however, are descendants of 
 those which lived before them. The lives of most of 
 them are short. Think then of the many generations of 
 birds, what a vast number of minds have appeared on 
 the earth in this shape! Whence did they come? Out 
 of nothing or out of selfhood? 
 
 The fish deposits a million of eggs in each of which 
 there is a mind, this mind having either existed from 
 eternity or having come out of nothing this very summer ! 
 
 The young of the Paramecium numbers a quarter of a 
 million, all hatched out in the brief space of a single 
 month! Is it possible that the mind of each of these 
 came out of nothing for the occasion? If we might 
 think so, we must suppose that nothing has a prolixity 
 beyond what it is possible to conceive! 
 
 How innumerable are the creatures, visible and invis- 
 ible, of appreciable size and infinitesimal which swim 
 the seas or inhabit the dust of the earth, to say nothing 
 about those on the land and in the water! Mind is a 
 
ORIGIN 383 
 
 very important thing in the make-up of the world and 
 may, therefore, well enough be of the nature of the other 
 things in the world, existing as Spinoza would have 
 said under the form of eternity. 
 
 Beasts, such as horses, cattle, and sheep, indeed all 
 beasts whatsoever, are no exception to the rule of 
 propagation by means of eggs. We have, therefore, in 
 regard to each one of them, as to any animal whatso- 
 ever, originating from an egg, the pertinent question, 
 *' Where its mind comes from? " 
 
 The hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, carbon, and the like 
 of which the bodies of beasts are composed, it is granted 
 do not come out of nothing. Why, then, should we 
 suppose that the mind of a beast, the same too exhibiting 
 so much intelligence and power, should once have been 
 a mere nonentity ? 
 
 We might better believe all the fables of the Koran, 
 to make use of Bacon's expression. 
 
 Should objection be raised that comparison has so 
 often been instituted between the mere animal and the 
 human mind, this objection can in some degree be miti- 
 gated by the supposition that there are several kinds of 
 minds just as there are several kinds of matter. 
 
 Mind of a very low order it might be assumed is to 
 be found in every part of an animal's body, every ani- 
 mal on this hypothesis being a compound one, every cell 
 in its body a veritable animal. 
 
 We should have come to the point of view of Anax- 
 agoras that all things consist of non-extensive potencies, 
 mind among them that organizes things. 
 
 At any rate the human mind is not more abased by 
 having connection with animal mind than by having con- 
 nection with matter itself. 
 
3^4 ORIGIN 
 
 The animal nature of man being like that of beasts, 
 no difference whatsoever being observable, the same 
 principles of life must apply to men as apply to beasts. 
 Could then a human being have got himself born, his 
 mind we mean, unless he had been on hand to be born ? 
 
 It is not claimed of course that the particular mind of 
 an individual man has previous to his birth gone through 
 a succession of states in time, but only that his mind, as 
 such, is independent of time, originating from eternity. 
 
 THE END 
 
INDEX 
 
 Affection, kinds, 287; in family, 
 287 ; friendship, 294 ; malevo- 
 lence, 298 ; for animals, 302 ; for 
 plants, 303 ; for places, 304 ; for 
 relics, 308. 
 
 Brain, 14, 15. 
 
 Berkeley on perception, 39. 
 
 Conception, field of, 121 ; inorganic 
 world, 121 ; vegetable kingdom, 
 129 ; animal kingdom, 132 ; util- 
 ities, 134 ; religion, 140. 
 
 Desire, satisfaction in animals, 261 ; 
 in savages, 265 ; in civilized so- 
 ciety, 269 ; in intellectual nations, 
 274; in Persian Empire, 277 ; in 
 Greece, 278 ; in Rome, 278 ; in 
 Constantinople, 280 ; in the Mid- 
 dle Ages, 280 ; as influenced by 
 the Reformation, 281 ; in the 
 Modem Time, 282. 
 
 Dreaming, kinds, 46 ; ghosts, 47, 48, 
 49 ; Hindoo miracles, 51 ; haunted 
 houses, 50 ; spiritualism, 52 ; sig- 
 nificance of dreams, 54 ; taken as 
 realities, 57 ; physical means of 
 dreaming, 57 ; hypnotism, 60, 65 ; 
 self-induced dreams, 61 ; trance, 
 64 ; somnambulism, 64 ; witch- 
 craft, 66 ; insanity, 68 ; dancing 
 mania, 69 ; were-wolves, 69 ; ef- 
 
 fect of dreams on organic func- 
 tions, 70 ; cures by dreams, 70, 
 71 ; effect of dreams on inorganic 
 matter, 71. 
 
 Emotion, aesthetic, 312 ; raised by 
 the sublime, 312 ; by the pathetic, 
 316; by the ludicrous, 321; by 
 the beautiful, 325 ; by the pic- 
 turesque, 328 ; by the wonderful, 
 332. 
 
 Fosgate's dream, 39. 
 
 Giddiness, organ of, 3. 
 
 Hearing, Cowles' case, 11. 
 
 Imagination, contrasted with con- 
 ception, 97 ; six ways, 98 ; de- 
 gree, 99 ; time, 100 ; size, loi ; 
 properties, 108 ; causality, 112 ; 
 composition, 116. 
 
 Invention, mechanical, 213 ; chem- 
 ical, 220 ; botanical, 223 ; zoolog- 
 ical, 226 ; institutional, 228 ; ar- 
 tistic, 234. 
 
 Judgment, boy's, 145 ; about the 
 earth improved, 146 ; Homer's 
 world, 147 ; literary judgment im- 
 proved, 150 ; learning to read, 
 151 ; analytic and synthetic, 153 
 
 385 
 
386 
 
 INDEX 
 
 about plants, 153 ; about animals, 
 157 ; conflict of opinion, 159 ; 
 about practical affairs, 160; about 
 art, 163 ; Wagner's operas, 165 ; 
 literary criticism, 166. 
 
 Kant's categories, 98. 
 
 Lotze's ideal realism, 41, 
 
 Memory, all its conditions, 72 ; 
 bodily condition affecting, 73 ; 
 aptitude, 74 ; attention, 76 ; early 
 impressions, 76 ; change of cir- 
 cumstances, 77 ; rotation in, 77 ; 
 mediumship, 78 ; obsession, 79 ; 
 automatic writing, 79 ; interest, 
 79 ; perspicuity, 79 ; vividness, 
 79 ; position, 83 ; multiplicity, 
 85 ; succession, 88 ; simultaneity, 
 88 ; repetition, 89 ; relation of 
 things, 91 ; association, 92 ; clas- 
 sification, 93 ; cross-references, 94. 
 
 Notation, decimal, 195. 
 
 Origin, of the mind from eternity, 
 360 ; argument from matter, 360 ; 
 from mind, 368 ; from life, 377. 
 
 Perception, qualities inferred, 23 ; 
 space relations, 26 ; size of moon, 
 30 ; atmosphere, 32 ; short dis- 
 tances, 32 ; time relations, 33 ; 
 motion, 33 ; Cheselden's case, 34 ; 
 Caspar Hausar's perception, 36 ; 
 Haslam's case, 36 ; theory of per- 
 ception, 37 ; Berkeley on, 37 ; 
 Schopenhauer on, 38 ; dreams, 
 40 ; hearing, 42 ; taste and smell, 
 42-43 ; of the blind, 43 ; touch, 
 44 ; amputated limbs, 44, 45. 
 
 Purpose, of the mind for existing, 
 336 ; no ends but secularity and 
 spirituality, 336 ; secularity de- 
 pends on spirituality, 337 ; knowl- 
 
 edge highest spiritual attainment, 
 339 ; from history, 349. 
 
 Query of Molyneux, 38. 
 
 Reason, kinds of reasoning, 171 • 
 equalization, 171 ; Pythagoras, 
 171 ; circumstantial evidence, 178 ; 
 decipherments, 180 ; disjunctive 
 reasoning, 184 ; induction, 190 ; 
 electricity, 190 ; chemistry, 192. 
 
 Sensation, kinds, i ; of skin and 
 muscles, i ; of taste, 3 ; of smell, 
 6 ; of hearing, 11 ; of sight, 12 ; 
 color-blindness, 12 ; means of 
 specific knowledge, 16 ; chief end 
 of man, 21 ; design of nervous 
 system, 22. 
 
 Systematization, kinds, 195 ; mathe- 
 matical, 195 ; physical, 200 ; bo- 
 tanical, 204 ; zoological, 206 ; 
 grammatical, 207 ; logical, 207 ; 
 ethical, 211 ; sesthetical, 211 ; 
 metaphysical, 212. 
 
 Temperature, sensations of, 2. 
 
 Utilities, common, origin of, 134. 
 
 Volition, nature of, 238 ; habit, 239 ; 
 nervous determination, 239 ; dis- 
 positional, 242, 243 ; heredity, 
 244 ; deliberative, 245 ; qualita- 
 tive, 248 ; quantitative, 252 ; rela- 
 tional, 255. 
 
 Will, question of freedom or neces- 
 sity, 246, 247, 248, 372. 
 
 Xerxes, his host at the Hellespont, 
 
 314- 
 Year, payment by the, on house, 
 
 etc., purchased, 185. 
 
 Zoilus, his judgment on Homer and 
 Victor Hugo's judgment on him, 
 166. 
 
OCT 13 1904