Savannah courier. (Savannah, Tenn.) 1885-1979, 1891-05-21
A HARD NUT.
The Difference Between Appre-
hend and Comprehend.
Our Reason Tells Us One Thing and the
Senses Flatly Contradict It-Some
Facts Which Arc Not Al
ways Facts.

Ihe Qlftcrence between apprenenulnP
thing and comprehending it is a famil-
lar distinction. We apprehend a thing
when we seize on to it and feel its real
ity; we comprehend it when we have
encompassed it, defined it, and made it
our own. can comprehend the fact
that if the law of gravitation be true,
body at the center of the earth will
have no weight, and | can apprehend
the fact that at that point there would
be no up and no down, but cannot
comprehend it, Our senses, our expert
ence say that in digging through the
earth, if this were possible. we would
be going d0wR all the wayi but our
senses and our experience are upset the
moment we emerge from the surface on
the other side, for we see we should be
standing on our heads. We cannot com
prehend this puzzle; we cannot adjust
our minds to this fact, We are turned
around, and we cannot tell how it hap
pened. The man who reaches the north
pole will have abolished all direction
but one, north is gone and east and
west are gone, only sorth remains. He
chn move in no direction but toward
the equator. We say the sun rises in
the east and sets in the west, and we
think we are enunciating a universal
law. But if the discoverer of the north
pole were to see the sun, he would see
it rise and set in the south, and the man
at the south pole would see it rise and
set in the north. Thus is SO much of
our knowledge merely relative.
Just so with regard to up and down
off in absolute space, in fact with re-
gard to all direction we apprehend the
fact that we should lose direction, but
we cannot comprehend it. Is mans
mind, in some way, under this law or
necessity of the earthly sphere, so that
he can see and admit certain contra
dictions, without ever being able to
reconcile them? Are all his views,
notions and distinctions as relative as
up and down or as east and west? Is it
so even in mathematics? Is there no
absolute truth? The contradictions of
the sphere seem to come into all our
thinking To say there is no absolute
truth would involve Just this rontra-
diction. | am affirming such truth
in the very denial. To the senses, to
the experience, the earth is an unlimit-
ed plane, with the sky above it; there
is and can be no other side. We see
the people at the south pole walking
inverted, like flies upon the ceiling;
yet abstractly as an indication of
, science VIC know the world to be a
sphere, but never as concrete expert
ence. In our view of every question we
are so apt to link our own Judgment
as final, that we are upon plane, and
that there can he no other side, or If
there is the people there are willfully
walking inverted,
Both sides may be equally true how
hard to learn this fact. We cannot
learn it; we may admit it as an abstract
proposition, but we can never realize il
as a concrete reality. We are under the
bondage of the law of the sphere. We
can by no means agree from what point
in the moral or intellectual sphere lon
gitude shall be reckoned. Every man
reckons from his own doorstep. Great
thinkers impose their point of view
upon us for awhile, but we arc always
coming back to our own doorstep. This
impossible contradiction of the sphere
runs through all our thinking. We
must admit, abstractly at least, that
peoples relation to the earth and sky
may be just as normal and proper as
our own, who hold to just the opposite
of what we do. Probably none of ouI
notions would hold good away from
the earth in absolute space, or in tie spir
itual sphere We may expect to enter
Heaven divested of all our earthly
knowledge and preferences. A line alb
solutely horizontal would soon leave
the earth, and absolute right woult
soon carry us away from this self-con
Trajectory sphere.
The same in regard to space W.
can apprehend that space is limit
less, that there are no bounds t
the material universe; but the ef
fort to comprehend it sets thu
head in the whirl. 1t is like trying t
conceive of stick with only one end
After we have fixed our limit, what i
there beyond? With time it is the same
We can conceive of neither beginning
nor ending of time. Indeed, is not tht
beginning of anything unthinlxable
1t is experience and not reason tina
tells us that there are beginnings
When ] was boy read sermon o
pamphlet by Rev. John Pierpont tina
combated the notion that matter wa
created out of nothing. He said if mat
ter began absolutely then no time coul,
elapse between its being and non being
1t would have to be something an,
nothing at the same time, which is a
absurdity. But do we not find ,ouI