The Cape Girardeau Democrat. (Cape Girardeau, Mo.) 1876-1909, 1891-05-09

Mammoth cave / think l experience
both. Why we can conceive of abso-
lutte darkness and not Of absolute cold,
l do not know. One reason why you
cannot convince an ignorant man that
the earth is round and turns round is
that his senses are stronger than his
reason; whereas in the trained mind
the eason always rules the senses.
When the senses declare so and so is
the fact, the reason asks: Is it the fact?
Can it be the fact?
1t requires no little mental effort to
see that the earth is a sphere in the face
of the fact that the eye all the time pro-
claims it to be a plain, und that when it
revolyes the top side will not be turned
under and the world capsized. There
is no under to the earth, because under
means toward the earth. If two worlds
should come in contact, then-a con-
ceivable thing-would the people upon
! each see the other world overhead?
How otherwise? This contradiction
staggers the unreasOning mind, but we
see it must be so. 1t is a terrible state of
affairs Our notions are not merely
reversed, they are reduced to chaos,
like an arch in ruins. The earth and
Mars, for instance ~(supposing them to
be of the same size). approaching each
other and then colliding, the inhab-
itants of each seeing the other growing
in the sky above, and hen the
shock of each planet falling upon
the other. and the impossible-to-con-
ccivc state of affairs. with up and down
abolished: my neighbours mill-pond
overland by the %mill-pond of a miller of
Mars, and neither splitting out. and each
proprietor thinking his premises under
meath the other. We must not be mis-
led by the image of two ships or we
vehicles coming alongside of zach
other; there is no confusion or contra
diction to the senses here. To the case
| suppose our experience affords no par
allel; we can only see it by an effort of
the Imagination. and we cannot at all
adjust our senses to what our reason
tells us must be the fact. No wonder
this question of the rotundity and the
revolution of the earth is SO puZzling to
ordinary people, and that tine majority
of even the educated accept il on trust.
lIldSl ldliDI. dlltI all. illip S' w
yond experience. by no mental effort
can We get away from this earth and
realize our condition.
We cannot in Imagination see the size
of the earth: we can only picture to
ourselves So much of its surface as we
nave seen from some mountain top. or
else we see it as a map, see it in minia-
turc. The mind cannot take in size
any more than it can distance, except
as an abstraction; that is, it cannot get
a vivid emotional sense of these things.
The mental vision is limited by the
the physical vision. | cannot. for in
stance, see with my minds eye at one
glance the stretch of land that lies he
tween Albany and New York, except
by reducing the scale. The magma
ton runs along from point to point, and
flies like i bird. and the landscape I'M
folds before it.
Even this little planet upon which we
live is on such a huge scale that the
tremendous speed at which it moves
seems like eternal rest. To the I'M
reasoning mind it is "a pure fiction. he.
cause the senses find no evidence of it.
On a still day Tow ont INTO the ma die
of the river. when the tide is setting
strongly up or down, and. resting upon
YOU oars. fix your eye upon the water
neal You. Apparently all motion has
stopped. the water is in perfect repose;
drop Il leaf upon it or one of your oars,
and there is no motion. But lift your
eye to the shore. and you see that you
are moving rapidly, that the whole
body of the water is sliding along and
carrying you with it. Just So we should
become aware of the motion of this
earth of ours if there was any near 10y
shore that was not moving. upon which
we could fix our eye. But there is not.
We are upon Il river tn at has no banks,
and in a boat that is carried by Il ire
mendous tidc.-John burroughs. in y
Y. Independent.