THE BELFAST ADDRESS 161 



numerous. He affirmed that only in man we had the beat- 

 ing of the heart, that the left side of the body was colder 

 than the right, that men have more teeth than women, and 

 that there is an empty space at the back of every man's 

 head. 



There is one essential quality in physical conceptions 

 which was entirely wanting in those of Aristotle and his 

 followers a capability of being placed as coherent pictures 

 before the mind. The Germans express the act of pictur- 

 ing by the word vorstellen, and the picture they call a Vor- 

 stellung. We have no word in English which comes nearer 

 to our requirements than Imagination; and, taken with its 

 proper limitations, the word answers very well. But it is 

 tainted by its associations, and therefore objectionable to 

 some minds. Compare, with reference to this capacity 

 of mental presentation, the case of the Aristotelian, who 

 refers the ascent of water in a pump to Nature's abhor- 

 rence of a vacuum, with that of Pascal when he proposed 

 to solve the question of atmospheric pressure by the ascent 

 of the Puy de Dome. In the one case the terms of the 

 explanation refuse to fall into place as a physical image; 

 in the other the image is distinct, the descent and rise 

 of the barometer being clearly figured beforehand as the 

 balancing of two varying and opposing pressures. 



3 



During the drought of the Middle Ages in Christen- 

 dom, the Arabian intellect, as forcibly shown by Draper, 

 was active. With the intrusion of the Moors into Spain, 

 order, learning, and refinement took the place of their 

 opposites. When smitten with disease, the Christian peas- 

 ant resorted to a shrine, the Moorish one to an instructed 



