SCIENCE IN AMERICA. 321 



Perhaps there is no exaggeration in the assertion for there seems 

 abundant proof of its truth that the light by which we see some of 

 those distant orbs has crossed through such a prodigious space that 

 millions of years have transpired during the journey. Then the phe- 

 nomena it brings to us are those that were engendered in the begin- 

 ning of the vast time so passed. Whatever there is that is in harmony 

 with facts now happening here, is to us an unimpeachable evidence 

 that the laws which were governing in those old ages have undergone 

 no depreciation, but are active as ever until now. Then shall I exag- 

 gerate if I say that those laws are eternal in duration ? 



Infinite in influence, eternal in duration, what a magnificent spec- 

 tacle ! In the resistless energy of the motions of the universe is there 

 not omnipotence ? The Omnipotent, the Infinite, the Eternal, to what 

 do these attributes belong ? 



Shall a man who stands forth to vindicate the majesty of such 

 laws be blamable in your sight ? Rather shall you not with him be 

 overwhelmed with a conception so stupendous ? And yet let us not 

 forget that these eternal laws of Nature are only the passing thoughts 

 of God. 



But, grand as this is, there is something still grander. There is 

 another temple into which we have to pass, not that of the visible but 

 that of the invisible. We must persist in the invasion we have made, 

 in the revolution we have brought about in physiology. We have to 

 determine the laws which preside in the nervous system of man, and 

 discover the nature of the principle that animates it. Is there not 

 something profoundly impressive in this, that the human mind can 

 look from without upon itself, as one looks at his phantom image in a 

 mirror, and discern its own lineaments and admire its own move- 

 ments ? My own thoughts have of late years been forcibly drawn to 

 this, from a recognition that the interpretation by the mind of im- 

 pressions from without takes place under mathematical laws, as, for 

 instance, that when external ethereal vibrations create in the mind a 

 certain idea, that same idea will arise when the vibrations are doubled, 

 or tripled, or quadrupled in frequency; but other ideas will be engen- 

 dered by vibrations of an intermediate rate. Yet what these ideas 

 will be may be predicted. It is true that this is only an optical case, 

 but it extends the view that has been offered to us by a study of the 

 structure of the ear. In the labyrinthine compartment of that organ 

 the ultimate fibres of the auditory nerve are laid on the winding 

 plane of the spiral lamina, in ever-decreasing lengths, each capable of 

 trembling to the sound which is in unison with it a mechanical action 

 truly, answering to the sympathetic vibration with which the strings 

 of a piano will respond to the corresponding notes of a flute and 

 these are translated by the mind into all the utterances of articulate 

 speech, all the harmonies of music speech that engenders new ideas 

 within us, strains which, though they may die away in the air, live 

 vol. x. 21 



