Savannah courier. (Savannah, Tenn.) 1885-1979, 1891-05-21

the beginning occupies no time; hence
1t must strike and not strike at the same
time. The moments touch, there is no
space between them. The sun rises,
but where can thought get in between
the moment it is below the horizon and
the moment it is above? The two mo-
ments are one.
The old sophists used to prove that a
body cannot move. 1t cannot move
where it is, and it cannot move where
it is not; but experience proves that it
can move, as it were, on the line be-
tween the two In thought matter is
infinitely divisible, time is infinite
ly divisible; therefore bodies can
not touch, therefore things cannot
begin, etc. But experience corrects
this reasoning and shows us bodies do |
move, and do touch, and do begin.
We can conceive of degrees and diff
ferences, but limits, for the most part,
battle us. We cannot conceive of any
thing SO hot but that it might be hot
ter, nor so cold but it might be colder!
Nothing so high or big but that ii
might be higher or bigger; nothing sd
low or small but it might be lower or
smaller Yet we can conceive of abso-
lutte darkness and absolute silence. In
Mammoth cave think / experience
both. Why we can conceive of abso-
Lutte darkness and not of absolute cold,
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 reason 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 fact7
1t requires no little mental effort to
see that the earth is sphere in the face
of the fact that the eye all the time pro-
claims it to be plain, and that when 1t
rcvolves 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 tho other world overhead?
How otherwise? This contradiction
stasgcrs the unreasouing mind, but we
sec it must be SO. 1t is q 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 then the
shock of each planet falling upon
the other and the impossiblc-to-con
ceive state of affairs, with up and down
abolished; my neighbor's mill-pond
overlaid by the mill-pond of miller of
Mars, and neither spilling out, and each
proprietor thinking his premises under
meath the other. We must not be mis-
led by the image of two ships or two
vehicles coming alongside OF each
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 G to
ordinary people, and that the majority
of even the educated accept it on trust.
Imagination, after all, cannot go be-
yond experience. BY no mental effort
can wo get away from this earth and
realtze our condition.
We cannot in imagination see the size
of the earth; we can only picture to
ourselves so much of it's surface as we
have seen from some mountain top, or
else we see it as map, see it in minia-
ture. The mind cannot take in size
any more than it can distance, except
as an abstraction; that is, it cannot get
vivid emotional sense of these things
The mental vision is limited by the
the physical vision. | cannot, for in
stance, sec with my minds eye at one
glauce the stretch of land that lies be-
tween Albany and New York, except
by reducing the scale. The imagina-
tion runs along from point to point, and
flies like bird, and the landscape un-
folds before it.
Even this little planet upon which we
live is on such huge scale that the
tremendous speed at which it moves
seems like eternal rest. TO the un.
reasoning mind it is pure fiction, be-
cause the senses find no evidence of it..
On q still day row out into the middle
of the river, when the tide is setting
strongly up or down, and, resting upon
your oars, fix your eye upon the water
near you. Apparently all motion has
stopped, the water is in perfect repose;
drop 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 by
shore that was not moving, upon which
we could fix our eye. But there is not
We are upon river that has no banks,
and in boat that is carried by ire
mendous tide. John Burroughs, in N
| W IndaDnpdant