The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1877-01-04
The Extension OF Sense.

POSSiuAiscS u AuulaAly III lcSpoCt " ulc
development of mans moral and intel
lcctual faculties; and seeing, with the
hero of Locksley Hall, that the thoughts of
men are widened with the process of the
suns, we looked forward to time when
faculties such as Shakespeare, Newton,
Mozart, Michael Angelo, and other men
of great genius enjoyed shall be the CON-
mon Inheritance of the race; time when
the average man shall as far surpass the
highest men of to-day in moral and in
tellectual force as the latter do the lowest
savages or the most brutal of our prehis-
toric ancestors.
In his suggestive address before the
American Chemical Society, DR.. Draper
touched another aspect of the question,
the extension of mans faculties of sense.
Referring to the two well-knOwn classes
of nervous fbers-those which gather the
impressions of external things and convey
them to the nerve ccnters, and those
which transmit the dictates of the will
from within Outwards-he observed that.
in the improvement of the capabilities of
one of the former by telescopes, micro
scropes and other sight-aiding con-
trivances, we have an earnest of what
may hereafter be done as respects the four
other special organs of sense; while as
concerns the second class, the increase of
mans power is not less remarkable. The
resolves of the will may already be
transmitted beyond us with even q greater
velocity than in the living system itself,
and that across vast terrestrial distances
and beneath the sea. Photographic wires
are, strictly speaking, combinations of
the centrifugal nerves, and we are not
without reason for believing that it is the
same influence which is active in both
cases."
The learned lecturer might have added
that the extension of sight by no means
exhausts the Improvements of special
sense already arrived at. In range and
delicacy of action, the aural apparatus of
the skilled musician surpasses that of the
savage even more than his visual organs
do; while the extension of sight by means
of lenses is all but paralleled in hearing
by means of modern acoustic apparatus.
Already we may hear by telegraph the
information of speaker, or the notes of an
instrument, many miles away; the en-
tanglements of sound are analysed by the
inventions of HelmhOltz as completely as
those of light are by means of the prism !;
while by kGnig's apparatus the eye is
constrained to do the work of the ear,
|
speak, heard by the eye, and the range of
human knowledge and capacity for inves.
tigating nature are thereby vastly extended.
In o scientific point of view, DR..
Draper goes on to say, such improve
ments in the capabilities of the organs for
receiving external impressions, such ex-
tensions of the distances to which the re.
suits of intellectual acts and the dictates
of the will may he conveyed, constitute q
true development, an evolution none the
less real though it may be Of an artificial
kind. "lf we reflect carefully on these
things" he adds, clearing in mind what
is now known of the course of develop
ment in the animal series, we shall not
fail to remark what singular interest
gathers round these artificial develop
ments-artificial they can scarcely be
called, since they themselves have arisen
interiorly. They are the results Of intel
lectual acts. Man has been developing
himself. He, SO far as the earth Is con-
cerned, is becoming Omnipresent. The
electrical nerves of society are spread to
plexus all over Europe and America
their cOmmissural strands run under the
Atlantic and Pacific"
| When shall this line Of development
have an ends In his reach of sense. per.
ception, his mastery of time and space,
his ability to foresee and control the course
of Nature, making the powers of earth
and air to serve him and to do his bid.
ding, the man of to-day surpasses the
gods of yesterday. Who shall say what
the man of tomorrow may not be-!
tits high time to cease canting about the
degeneracy of man in these latter days.
Those who spend their lives among the
dreams of the ancients, knowing nothing
of the powers and achievements of mod
ern man, may be pardoned for proclaim
ing their own inferiority; but they have
no call to speak for the real men of the
real world about them, the men who are
doing the worlds work, at the same time
steadily lifting humanity to higher and
yet higher planes of capacity and power.
In spite of those who persist in facing
backwards, denying that scientific prog
ress is any measure of human evolution,
the progressive development of human
force and faculty is reality. Where the
ancient athlete could strike blow of q
hundred pounds, the modern mechanic
can deal one of a. many tuns; The steam
hammer, the rifled cannon, the rOck. rend.
ing dynamite being a. truly human as the
muscle on his shoulder. In creating them
man has added to his personal power as
truly as ii he had Increased by 20 much
the forces Of his right arm. The tele.
scope, the microscope and the spectre.