River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1878-11-14
The Centaurs.

one.-Nature.
The Centaurs.
Among all the fables of Greece, few are
more interesting 10 examine than the IA
BILE of the Centaurs. The notion OF such
a race of two formed creatures was firmly
rooted in the ancient mind, and not soon
relinquished. Although the belief in
their existence was laughed at by many
free thinkers among the ancients them
selves, from the philosopher Plato, to the
physician Galen. it continued TO hold its
own through several centuries of the
Christian era. ST. Jerome, making dis
tinction between monsters which are
simply fabulous and monsters which rea.-
| ly exist contends that both Centaurs and
Sirens are real; and elsewhere he quotes
the testimony of st. Antony, who deposes
that he once spoke to live Centaur, as
he iourneyed through the desert on his
way to visit the hermit Paul. To men
who neither knew nor cared about laws
of structure and anatomy, there would be
nothing distasteful or absured in the idea
of such a mixture and duplication OF or
ganisms. Even to ourselves, if we can
forget our science, the ahsdrdity is not
without its charm. To be part, meta
phorically. of his steed, is the ambition
of the rider; and to unite the two natures
in one indivisible being, able to leap,
gallop, and exult in swiftness like
horse, and having at the same
time the erect countenance and skill
/ fll hands of man. would be to
realize something like those physical
| illusions which visit us in dreams, when
the body seems TO have thrown oil its
natural restraints. and we feel ourselves
careering through space IN the exercise
of miraculous and Incompatible powers.
| The class of conceptions to which the
Centaurs belong fare comparatively rare
in Greek mythology. A Centaur, made
up of the two most perfect of the animals
| in combination, may be an excellent
monster, but is a monster still; and the
Greek imagination, we know. was too
clear and sane to be prodigal OF monstrosi-
W. While Egypt and Asia worshipod
composite divinities, half man, half hawk
dog, cat, ape, eagle, or bull, the Greek
took his ideal of the highest from him
self, and sacrificed to gods after his own
| image. In its obscure origins, Indeed, it
is doubtful whether his religion differed
so much in this respect from the religions
of his neighbors and in its decline II
| tended again to assimilate itself to theirs
| till in the later creeds of Alexandria, An
| tioch, and Rome, we are used to finding
all manner of grOtesque and barbarous
deities COMPOUNDED and identified with
the Olympians But in the good days,
while Greece was really Greece, her gods
her greater gods at least, were of no
double nature, but simply shapes OF man
or woman made perfect. Monsters, when
they occu', occur always in inferior
place. and with a special character and
| significance. Men or woman is mixed
with brute IN those NEUROLOGICAL crea
lures which embody, not the highest, not
the foreseeing and controlling forces ct
the universe, but only its ca
PRECIOUS, violent, or treacherous forces.
those which, though stronger and more
! irrepressible than man, are lower and
| binder than he is. Thus the boisterous-
ness of the earth's exuberance is incar
mated in the goat-toot company of Satyrs;
| the clamorousness and headlong strength
of rivers in river gods having the
| faces of men but the bodies of bulls;
isms, so that we may see the ascending
scale of animated nature mirrored and
summarized in the evolution of every
embryo. Further, the marvel to human
intel .igence in the development of a
| feathered fowl out of the albumen of an
egg is not intrinsically greater than would
! be the evolution of all the flora and fauna
of the universe out of a common proto-
pIasmic germ. We know that tue one
takes place incessaatly, and its mystery
| is forgotten in its constancv and common
ness. The other is unknown to expe-
rience; but the mind can see no obstacle
10 il in the nature of things. 1t contains
no greater mystery than the former, and
| its future demonstration would not ex-
cite surprise. Even within the range of
experience we may witness develop
ment in progress. Alike in the animal
and vegetable kingdoms, among the for
aminlfera and diatoms, change and trans
| formations, within limited field. may
be observed. The development of high
er organisms is only an inductlve infer
ence, drawn by analogy, from the phe-
nomena that fall under our observation,
and can be expeIimentally investigated.
| Even the line between the animal and
the vegetable cannot now be drawn with
the rigor by which the naturalist OF the
| last generation used to separate ,he
| Kingdoms of nature, and there is reason
to believe that the investigation Of mod
ern biology will result in more
emphatic demonstration of the actual
emergency of fresh types of organizati n
out of rudimentarY ones. 1t is TO be noted,
| however, that the discovery of pai9on-
| toIogical for intermediate between man
and the ape would not settle the question
that man was physically the descendant
OF such an intermediate, nor would 1t
greatly aid the controversy, except as af-
| Tording a new link in the chain of organ
lied existence Dem ns.Tation OF the
theory will not be accomplished even by
| discovery of all the missing links, but
| by a sci nti6c use of the links which we
possess. and warrantable differences from
| Them. But does the vital ever proceed
| from the non-vital2 Is the boundary be-
tween the animate and the inanimata as
| precQrious as that which has SEPARATED the
animal from the vegetable; This ulteri
! or question, or graver import, would arise
when the derivation of all the varieties of
vital existence from one another was
demonstrated conclusion of science. The
evolution of nature may be fact; a daily
and hourly apocalypse. But we have no
evidence Of the non vital passing into the
vital. Spontaneous generation is, as yet,
an imaginative guess, unverlfied by scien-
| tific tests. And matter is not itself alive.
Vitality, whether seen in a single cell of
protopasm or in the human brain, is
thing sui qenertes, distinct from matter,
and incapable of being generated out OF
matter-Pr0f. W. knight en- Niaeteenth
| Century.
| Esha