INVOL VNTARY MO VEMENTS. 



743 



1851 the great experiment of Foucault witli the pendulum, showed 

 to the human eye the earth in motion around its own axis. To 

 make the matter complete, this experiment was publicly made in 

 one of the churches at Rome by the eminent astronomer, Father 

 Secchi, of the Jesuits, in 1852 — just two hundred and twenty 

 years after the Jesuits had secured Galileo's condemnation.* 



INVOLUNTARY MOVEMENTS. 



By JOSEPH JASTROW, Ph.D., 



PROFESSOR OF EXPERIMENTAL AND COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGT IN THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. 



QUITE a number of delusions find a common point of origin 

 in the wide-spread belief that our thoughts and actions are 

 to be completely explained by reference to what our consciousness 

 tells us and what our will directs. The equally important realm 

 of the unconscious and the involuntary is too apt to be over- 

 looked. It is true that we are ready to admit that, in some un- 

 usual and semi-morbid conditions, persons will show these unto- 

 ward phenomena ; but we are slow to believe that they have any 

 bearing upon the soundly reasoned and skillfully directed actions 

 of our own intelligence. Accordingly, when from time to time 

 there comes to the front some phenomenon diverging from the 

 ordinary experience of mankind and apparently revealing obscure 

 laws, we fly to some unproved and extreme explanation, and fail 

 to recognize in our daily unconscious and involuntary activity 

 the true source of the apparent mystery. While it is very reason- 

 able to trust the verdict of our consciousness, yet it is equally 



* For good statements of the final action of the Church in the matter, see Gebler ; also 

 Zoeckler, Geschichte dcr Beziehungen, etc., ii, 352. See also Bertrand, Fondateurs de I'As- 

 tronomie moderne, p. 61 ; Flammarion, Vie de Copemic, chap. ix. As to the time when 

 the decree of condemnation was repealed, there have been various pious attempts to make 

 it earlier than the reality. Artaud, p. 307, cited in an apologetic article in the Dublin Re- 

 view, September, 186.5, says that Galileo's famous dialogue was published in 1744, at Padua, 

 entire, and with the usual approbations. The same article also declares that in 1818 the 

 ecclesiastical decrees were repealed by Pius VII in full Consistory. Whewell accepts this ; 

 but Cantu, an authority favorable to the Church, acknowledges that Copernicus's work 

 remained on the Index as late as 1835 (Cantu, Histoire universelle, vol. xv, p. 483) ; and 

 with this Th. Martin, not less favorable to the Church, but exceedingly careful as to the 

 facts, agrees ; and the most eminent authority of all. Prof. Reusch, of Bonn, in his Index 

 der verbotenen Biicher, Bonn, 1885, vol. ii, p. 396, confirms the above statement in the 

 text exactly as I made it in 1871. For a clear statement of Bradley's exquisite demonstra- 

 tion of the Copernican theory by reasonings upon the rapidity of light, etc., and Foucault's 

 exhibition of the rotation of the earth by the pendulum experiment, see Ilocfer, Histoire 

 de 1' Astronomic, pp. 492 et srq. For more recent proofs of the Copernican theory, by 

 the discoveries of Bunsen, Bischoff, Benzcnburg, and others, see Jevons, Principles of 

 Science. 



