The Wallace miner. [volume] (Wallace, Idaho) 1907-current, 1918-04-18
1--WE May Put Back the Clock or Set It
Ahead or Stop 1t Altogether, but Time
Goes on and Present Has No Duration"

In the course of the discussion Of
the bill to provide standard time in
the United States. Congressman E. l..
Hamilton, of Michigan, delivered the
following scholarly address which
contains much information regarding
the measurement of time in all ages:
Mr. Speaker IL this earth should
disappear from among the 100000
stars In the Photographic star cata-
logue Of space and If upon other plan
cts and stars intelligence in some
fern Is searching the infinite depths
which we call the sky, it would simply
be noted in some language undream-
ed Of by us that another light had
gone out; and with it would disap-
pear the brief history and all mat
erial traces of mankind.
We are small planet revolving
around a central sun. The time we
take to make the circuit Of the sun we
call year, and the time we take to
make one revolution we call day and
the day we divide into minutes and
the minutes into seconds. BY these
years, days, minutes and seconds we
measure human transactions and hui
man life, and the days Of our years
are three score and ten; and II by
reason OF strength they be four-score
years yet Is their strength labor and
sorrow; for 1t is soon cut off and we
fly away"
We have five senses, all Of them in
ferior to those of the lower animals,
and they grow dull with the passing
years. Beyond our normal sight and
and microscopic worlds and sound
worlds and in the little radius of ouI
senses on this moving sphere we lay
premises from which we try to reason
into the unknown.
Long after the dawn of history
primitive man believed that the eartf
was flat; that the sun, moon and star,
were hung In the heavens for the pur'
poses of illumination; that the earth
quake and the thunder were the litera
voice Of an angry God, and that com
cts were balls Of fire flung from hea
ven at an offending world and brough
war and pestilence in their train.
The rotundity of the earth dawnet
upon the early Greek astronomers
Pythagoras (569-740 B. c. "deducet
his system in which the earth revolves
on an orbit from fantastic first prin.
ciples," one of which was that 1.-THE
circular motion Is the most perfect
motion"
Plato (born 429 b. c. proposed tc
astronomers the problem of repre-,
senting the courses of the planets by
circular motions"
Aristotle (3s4-322 b. c. summed
up the slate of astronomical knowl
edge in his time and held the eartl
to be fixed in the center Of the world.
Eratosthenes (276-196 b. C.) meas
ured an arc of meridian from Alex
andria to Syene (Assuan). and founc
the difference of latitude by the length
of shadow at noon, summer solstice.
Ptolemy (190 A. d. "theorized or
the earth is fixed in the center of the
universe
Earth Stationary, Said Greeks.
The Greek astronomers who be-
lieved the earth to be at rest reasoned
that II 1t were revolving things would
fly Off from it, But with the decay OF
ancient civilization the world forgot
the learning Of the Greeks. AS time
went on a system of the universe com
pretending heaven and earth and hell
created out Of myth mystery, legend
and story, took shape in human
thought and became real. 1t culmin-
ated in the sixth century in a COM
plete edifice of the universe construct
cd by the Egyptian monk Cosmos, In
which heaven was above, the earth the
ground floor and hell below. When
Dante wrote his Divine Comedy"
early In the fourteenth century, he
wrote 1t in the light of the astron-
omic and theologic knowledge Of the
time.
In the view of medieval Europe the
earth was flat bounded on the north
by ice and arctic blasts, too cold for
life to live in: on the south by desert
wastes and boiling seas too hot for life
to live in; on the east by far Cathay
and swamps of vast extent, and on
the west by a Sea of Darkness and
the few people who finally began to
talk about possible other side Of
the world where trees grew downward
and rain fell upward were considered
by knight, monk and vassal as mere
babblers and dreamers of dreams. The
science of those days was mixed with
miracle and prodigy 1T brewed
strange ingredients into elixirs of life,
searched for the philosophers stone
and gathered herbs in suspicious
phases of the moon for the cure of
diseases" The map of Claudius
Ptolemy made in the middle Of the
second century and the miracles of
Marco Polo in Asia represented all
that scholars knew and much of what