INDUS. 



INFAMY. 



after having duly confessed his sins and received absolution, has still 

 to undergo, either in this world or in purgatory, according to the 

 belief of Roman Catholic*. [CONFESSION.] In the early ages of the 

 church repentant sinners after confession had to undergo public 

 punishment, often very severe, in proportion to their offences ; such 

 punishments, however, were occasionally mitigated by the " indulgence " 

 of the bishops, who, in particular cases, abridged the austerities 

 enjoined by the canons, or commuted them for works of charity and 

 pious exercises. Such was the origin of indulgences. (Maldonat, ' De 

 Indulgentiis ; Bibliotheque Sacree,' par les Peres Richard et Giraud, 

 article Indulgence ; ' Lingard, ' History of England,' vol iv.) 



Several of tile early fathers of the church, such an St. Cyprian (' De 

 Lapsis ') and Tertullianua (' De Pudicitia '), complained of the abuse 

 of this practice in their time, and especially that simple priests pre- 

 sumed to grant indulgences, which was the exclusive privilege of 

 bishops, and that bishops themselves granted them with too much 

 facility. The canonical or ceremonial penalties becoming in course of 

 time disused, together with the practice of public confession, the 

 indulgences which continued to be granted afterwards were understood 

 to remit that part of the penance to be undergone in purgatory which 

 was equivalent to the canonical penalty which would have been 

 awarded by the early church. (Maldonat) " The faith of Catholics," 

 says Maimbourg (' Histoira du Luthcraniame,' vol. i.), " has always 

 been that the Son of God has conferred on his church the power of 

 relieving the penitent sinner not only from the bonds of his sin by the 

 merit* of Christ's passion applied to him in the sacrament of confession, 

 but also from the punishment which he would suffer, either in this 

 world or the next, as a satisfaction to the divine justice for offences 

 committed after baptism. Hence St. Paul, at the request of the 

 Corinthians, remitted to the incestuous man whom he had excom- 

 municated, the remnant of the penalty incurred for the crime ; hence 

 the bishops of the earliest ages gave peace to apostates, and reconciled 

 them to the church by abridging the time of the criminal penance 

 through the intercession of martyrs, and in virtue of their sufferings, 

 joined to those of the Saviour of the world, who rendered them 

 precious in the sight of God." The ' Bibliotheque Sacree,' above quoted, 

 contains a most elaborate article on the subject of indulgences, divided 

 into eight sections, namely 1. On the name and nature of indulgences. 

 2. On the various sorts of indulgences. 3. On their virtues and 

 effects. 4. On their truth and foundation. 5. On the causes of 

 indulgences. 6. On the subjects or persons to whom indulgences are 

 applied. 7. On the conditions and dispositions required in order to 

 obtain the benefit of the indulgences. 8. On the abuse of indulgences. 

 We may observe on this last point that indulgences are granted in 

 some cases to those who give money for the building of churches and 

 other pious purposes ; but that the sale of or traffic in indulgences has 

 been severely reprobated by many councils, and that the bulls of 

 indulgences granted by the Pope contain the clause that " if any thing 

 be given as the price of this indulgence, the indulgence itself becomes 

 null." The sale of indulgences, however, has on many occasions been 

 connived at by the higher authorities in the Romish church, and, as is 

 well known, it was the indignation excited by an act of this kind 

 which first aroused the anti-papal spirit in Luther, and led eventually 

 to the Reformation. 



INDUS (the Indian), a constellation of Bayer, situated between 

 Sagittarius and the South Pole. 



No. In Catalogue 

 Ho. In Catalogue of Brltlah 



Character. of Lacalllc. Association. Magnitude. 



a 1676 7096 8 



6 1691 7228 4 



7 1731 7428 6 

 3 1764 7633 6 



INEQUALITY. (Astronomy.) For convenience, the average mo- 

 tion of a planet or satellite, supposed to be made in a circle which has 

 the average distance of the body from the nun or primary for its radius, 

 is the first object of calculation when the place of the body at some 

 future time is to be predicted. All the alterations which are ren- 

 dered necessary by the unequal motion of the planet are called 

 inequalities. [GRAVITATION; LUNAR THEORY; I'LANETARV TIIKOHY, 

 ftc.l 



INKRTIA. This word means something equivalent to the modern 

 English sense of iiiactirily, or rather of incapability, and expresses that 

 property of matter by which it does not change iU own state of rest or 

 motion, but requires for that purpose the action of some external 

 cause, to the magnitude of which the change is in proportion. l'i. \i.> >- 

 to some remarks upon the use of this word, we shall give at length the 

 third definition of Newton's ' Principia,' from which thu common 

 usage of it is derived. " The rii iiaita, or innate force of matter, is a 

 power of resisting by which every body, as much as in it lies, endeavours 

 to iwrsevrre in its present state, whether it be of rest 

 uniformly forward in a straight line. This force is ever proportional 

 to the body whose force it is ; and differs nothing from the inactivity 

 of the mass, but in our manner of conceiving it. A body, from the 

 inactivity of matter, is not without difficulty put out of its state of 

 rest or motion. Upon which account thin rii intita may, by a most 

 significant name, be called fit inertia, or force of inactivity. But a 



body exerts this force only when another force, impressed upon it, 

 endeavours to change its condition," ftc. 



>uld wish that the use of this word were entirely exploded, 

 and for the following reason. When a term is proposed to stand for 

 a property, mode of being, or condition of existence, about which 

 we know nothing except that certain phenomena always occur under 

 certain circumstances, such a proposition may be listened to, on con- 

 dition that there is one distinct phenomenon or class of phenomena, 

 which wants a distinctive name, and also on condition that the word 

 is to be used in a purely characteristic, and not in a doctrin.il or 

 explanatory sense. Thus the word impenetrability [lm't*i\-rv\Bn.nv], 

 though likely to cause misconception, as pointed out in the article 

 cited, is nevertheless a good word to those who know how to use it, 

 and a necessary word to those who desire to describe and reason on 

 our knowledge of matter. It conveys to the mind, by one act of 

 separation or abstraction, tile notion of a cause for a phenomenon 

 which might be conceived to exist independent of the other properties 

 of matter. We can imagine impenetrable space, not endowed with 

 mobility, colour, or any other accident of matter. But with the 

 word inertia as used by Newton, we do not describe any quality of 

 matter, but supply a term of causation for matter itself, so far as 

 those properties are concerned which are studied in mechanics. What 

 is the matter of a work on pure statics or dynamics f That which 

 obeys certain three laws of motion, or presents phenomena which are 

 of a certain threefold description. What word, according to Newton, 

 should be used as a term of causation to remind us that the first 

 law of motion arises from something inherent in the constitution of 

 matter ? The inertia, or vis inertia;. What for the second law ? The 

 inertia. What for the third law ? Still the inertia. Consequently, 

 this inertia is literally nothing but an expression of the incapability of 

 matter to obey any other laws except those which it really does obey ; 

 and the policy of admitting such a term is not merely a question of 

 mechanics. Need we accompany every fundamental term of every 

 science by another, which merely expresses that there must be some 

 reason why the thing signified has the collection of properties which 

 it is found to possess, and not any other ! We think the answer must 

 be in the negative, in which case the word matter itself may be sub- 

 stituted for inert substance, the two phrases being perfectly inter- 

 changeable in every work on mechanics. [MOTION, LAWS OF.] 



If the word inertia be admitted at all as one of distinction, it must 

 be to separate the object of geometry from that of mechanics. In the 

 former we consider space only, that is, bounded portions of space : in 

 the latter we suppose this bounded space to have inertia. But the 

 distinction is quite sufficiently made without the introduction of a 

 synonymic. In geometry we consider space without reference to the 

 question, whether the space be vacuum or matter ; in mechanics we 

 consider matter. 



Thus much for the use of inertia in a scientific sense: in many 

 popular writings we find it applied as a sort of explanation of the 

 properties of matter, which are so and so because matter has inertia. 

 Since this vicious application of words is not by any means confined to 

 the case before us, it is needless to enlarge upon it. 



There is one use of the word inertia which is convenient and harm- 

 less, namely, as part of the phrase MOMENT OF INERTIA. If we 

 imagine a material system which admits of revolution about a fixed 

 axis, it is obvious that the more closely the matter of which it is 

 formed is collected about the axis the less resistance will be offered to 

 the production of rotatory motion. The law of this resistance will be 

 explained in the article alluded to. 



INFAMY (from the Roman Infamia) in English law is not easily 

 defined. Certain offences were formerly considered of so heinous a 

 nature that conviction and judgment for them rendered a man 

 infamous and incompetent to be a witness. But the endurance of the 

 puuishmeut, or reversal of the judgment, restored a man's com] 

 as a witness. The 9 Oeo. IV. c. 32, 8, enacts, that when a man con- 

 victed of a felony shall have undergone the legal punishment for it, 

 the effect shall be the same as a pardon under the Great Seal ; and 

 ( 4) no misdemeanour, except perjury or subornation of perjury, shall 

 render a man an incompetent witness after he has undergone his 

 punishment. The 6 ft 7 Viet. c. 85 (introduced into the House of 

 Lords by Lord Denman, and carried into law after great discussion) 

 was the Act by which many of the old abuses in our rules of evidence 

 were remedied, and the views of the advocates of reform were carried out. 

 This Act, which is entitled 'An Act for Improving the Law of Evidence,' 

 after remarking on the obstructions in the way of eliciting truth in 

 courts of justice owing to incapacities created by the existing law, and 

 the desirability that those who have to decide on the facts in issue 

 xliould cxcrcino their judgment on the credit of the witnesses, enacts 

 that no person offered as a witness in to bo excluded on account of 

 incapacity from crime or interest from giving evidence, either in 

 person or by deposition, on the trial of any issued joined, Ac., but that 

 every such person may be admitted to give evidence on oath or affirma- 

 tion, notwithstanding nucli ]>crson may have bccu convicted of any 

 crime or offence. [EVIDENCE.] 



Curtain offences enumerated in the 7 ft 8 Geo. IV. c. 29, 9, are in- 

 famous crimes, with reference to the provisions of that Act. Though 

 infamy does not disqualify a man from being a witness, it may be urged 

 as an argument against his credibility, for, as an American judge has said 



