The Worcester spy. [volume] (Worcester, Mass.) 1898-1904, 1899-07-14
THE HUMAN SOUL.
Or. Hall Opens His Series on Relations
Between Psychology and Evolution.

Or. Hall Opens His Series on Relations
Between Psychology and Evolution.
The first lecture of the course was
given by DIR. Hall yesterday morning.
His subject was, Some relations be-
tween Psychology and evolution" the
first of his series of lectures on the evo-
luton of the human SOUL He said, in
substance:
My subject this morning is a general
introduction to the course 1 purpose
giving this year. 1t is not usually
known that evolution is not new. AL
| most every savage race has some
| knowledge of evolution. Almost all
the early Greek philosophers are evolu-
tionists in It's broader sense.
/ The history of Greek thought begins
with Thales whose PHILOSOPHERS are
| enough to show US his thought to be
tthat everything was evolved from
water There is much in our life to
/ give basis to this idea. Water enters
into everything. The first idea was of
the earth floating on water, like round
| top table.
| All food is made of moisture. When
we consider the three forms Of water,
the reason for the idea becomes strong
er. Thales said that air was thin
water, rock very thick water When
water dries up, life ceases. Thales did
not attempt to explain in detail how
things came into being, but wrote in a
poetical style, using very philosophical
heXameter
The next person to write on an idea
OF evolution was Alexandra. He I'M
dertook to explain the origin of the
universe from air. 1t was not the ether
of which modern philosophers speak.
His conception was that the highest
thing on earth must be fire, then air,
then wind, then clouds, then water.
then earth. His evolution was de-
scending evolution. First there was
pure empirical fire, which changed into
the other forms as time went on
Some rather curious ideas survive
from Alexandra's philosophy The sun
was nourished by hot air sucked up
from the earth. Because the air is
full of motion it was thought to be the
cause of motion. The arteries mean
air carriers, because they were thought
to contain only air The Anglo-Saxon
word for soul, means air.
The Hypocratic idea was that the
air gave inspiration. Pure air was
found on mountain tops and hence the
prophets went UP the mountains and
were literally inspired
The soul of man, Alexandra held,
was a. higher form of air Man stands
on two legs and hence breathes higher
air than the four-legged animals. de
must have overlooked the giraffe The
earth was "a breather. Volcanoes
breathed. The air is the soul of the
pantheistic philosophy. God is air, they
said.
Another form of evolution began with
what was called pure being" 1t be-
gun with total abnegation of every
thing. All in life was being" 1t was
not empty space, but was as hard to
see as empty space Men fell in love
with pure being. Men prayed to have
their ashes scattered from high noun
tains that tney might become part eg
pure being.
To be sure, this abstract vein of be-
ing is very near nothing, and it is not
strange that the. old philosophers said
that it did rot exist, that nothing ex-
listed.
Hericlitus is another of the teachers
whom we must look at. 1t is thought
that he represents the highest culmina-
tion of Greek thought. What are his
ideas? He has left us hundreds of
fragments, which have been edited and
re-edited. His idea is that change is
the law of everything. He believed in
q way up and way down, and he
believed in fire. The Pickering of the
flame is constant change.
we nave TO MAINTAIN a rather L1gn
degree of heat for life. The earth Is
full Of corpses, says Hericlitus, as the
air is full of souls. His idea was that
the earth was divided into periods OF
$4,000 years. during which 1t became 20
cold as to freeze all life, and then so
hot as to burn up everything.
He held that the sun did not set but
was secretei into the earth at night
and was exereted out in a ball in the
day, making the earth colder, just as
tine soul is gathered into the body dur
ing development, and thrown out again
at death.
We have in the recent work Of Paul
son. a vein which is not inconsistent
with the pantheistic ideas. We can con-
slider that the universe is Gods body,
the stars are the cells and ganglia in
his brain; light and electricity are his
thoughts. God is our father in a sense
we haven't conceived of. We are parts
Of God.
The view represented by Democritus
and others is Of atomism; a thing de-
rided as far as possible.
The history of the earth begins
with the fall Of atoms, which struck
and rebounded, and this has been the
cause OF everything which happened
since. BY others bones were thought