The Columbia herald. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 18??-1935, 1891-02-20

be started by the midnight howl of an
unhappy hound! He sets the bell a.
ring, and the ringing of this bell
a continued howl from
this dog and wakes others to join in
his piteous appeal to the midnight
air; these ring other bells, which
must find their responsive chords in
other voices and other instruments,
until all things, animate aud inani-
mate join in never-ending ring,
howl, bleat, squeak, squeal, and song;
and all this through the subtle infiu-
ence of some mysterious, ghost-like
"immat rial substance" or "sympa-
thyJ" What a world we live in!
But tho wonders do not cease here.
In another part of his article, Mr.. Il.
declares this "immaterial substance"
to be the elmer man." or the "high-
~ conscious form which causes men
tally" etc,-in other words, the soul.
Then we have discovered that man is
not the exclusive pOssessor of a soul;
that our education has been all
wrong; and that the soul is a COM
mon property of bells, dogs, tuning
forks, ducking candles, and all other
things that have ''chords of the same
tensIonu" Can we not now account
for the bells in heaven? Are they
not ths redeemed spirits of wOrnOut
and broken clappers that once did
such faithful service here, aud, their
their days of usefulness over, went to
join immortals2 We may go even
farther yet. Fhls sinner man" may
be cut of and buried piece-mea
Each brave boy that lefta leg, arm,
or other member of his body at Shi-
loh or Gettysburg, also buried there
\ part of his soul. Poor fellow, he is
not only MANNED in body, but in
spirit also. Is this what is meant by
entering life malmed2 To what
country did that severed piece of soul
go when worms and decay had made
useless its further watch over the
buried limb? and will that part of
the elmer man" which was left here
necessarily follow the part that has
gone before, regardl IS of subsequent
actions here? This water is getting
too deep for us, so we must get out Of
1t and try the tuning forks.
We still maintain that sound is
transmitted by vibrations of the me-
dunn through which it passes, wheth-
er that medium be gaseous, liquid, or
solid; and that it is transmitted in no
other way. To his questions we an
swer that an a fork placed near a
sounding Z fork does Vibrate; that
the Intervening tissue paper, or even
an intervening door, does vibrate ;
and that the candle does "duck.
Mr.. T. is in error here because he
does not recognize a vibration unless
it produces an audible sound or is
visible to the unaided eye, Numer-
Gus experiments, made by physicists,
have proven to both the ear
and the eye, the presence OF vibra-
tons which they unaided could not
detect. Mr.. Il. seems to understand
,und only as a sensation, or the eff
feet which a sounding body produces
on the ear. THIS is indeed one def
milton Of sound. In this snnse, a
standard modern work on Natural
Philosophy defines sound as "a vibra-
;ion that can be appreciated by the
earl" but the same work, as do all
others Of it's kind, shows that some
ears need the aid Of ear-trumpets and
like inventions to catch and appre-
ciate the sound vibrations which re-
veal themselves to other ears without
such aid. We cannot therefore con-
clude that because deaf or partially
deaf person hears no sound there are
no sound vibrations, AS well allow
the sightless eyes of blind man to
prove that there is no light. But the
word sound has another definition
namely, the external cause of the
sensation" and this external cause is
Ui6rdtiOn. a distant bell is sound
ing. How can it affect the ear? 1t
must be because of its motion, for
when it is at rest the ear is ignorant
Of its existence, or rather the mind
gets no iptimatiOn of it from the ear.
But motion can be communicated
from one body to another at distance
only through some conducting medi-
UNI. Does sound require such a me-
dunn for its communication? I'm
questiOnably, yes. We run our tele-
phone and telegraph wires from city
to city, the telegraph even across the
ocean, that the sound of the voice OF
the ticking of the instrument at one
end may be heard at the other.
Without the connecting wire neither
the sound of the voice nor the motion
of the telegraph transmitter in CO.
lumbia is known in Nash vile. With
the wire both are readily understood
The wire, then, carries them over
How? By simply stretching from
pole to pole, and allowing these
sounds and motions to run along over
it as railroad engine runs over it,
track, with, perchance, the aid,
guidance, and additional impetus
which the ever-present "Immaterial
substance" can give? Such a theory
is absurd. The chemical decOmpO-
sition going on in the cups of the
Geographic battery here produces
motion, which is transmitted along
the wire to Nashville. The operator
here, withlhis fingers, determines the
character of its motion and cOnSe-
guent sound there. The receiver in
Nashville reads by ear the motion OF
the Columbia operators fingers.
Steele's Philosophy has the follow
ing experiment to prove that sound
is vibration. Under the receiver OF
an air-pump, bell is suspended. by
silk cords, that no vibration may be
conducted through the pump. When
the air is pumped out from around
the bell, "the sound will become sc
faint that it cannot be heard, even
though the ear is placed close to the
receiver" Notice that DIR. Steele
declares there is a sound CvibratiOn)
and yet it cannot be heard. Why is
this? Because the air being taken