NEW CONCEPTIONS IN SCIENCE 



troscope. The real astronomy had but begun. 

 Even as Johannes Miiller, the greatest physiologist 

 of his epoch, was setting it down that the phenom- 

 ena of nervous action could never be measured, the 

 rate at which a sensation travels from hand or eye 

 to the brain was being calculated. 



A wayfarer or a fool may read the folly of at- 

 tempting to forecast what the morrow may not 

 bring. Who, then, shall say that we may not be 

 on the brink of new unveilings, before which all 

 that we know now will seem but an introduction? 



There are others who go further. They look 

 upon the wonders of later-day science and they 

 ask : Who shall dogmatically assert that one brain 

 may not act upon another for example, as far as 

 from Nevada to New York, in the incident exploit- 

 ed by Mark Twain ? Who has proof that we may 

 not have converse with the disembodied dead? 

 What intelligent physician shall say that his drugs 

 or wafers are more efficacious than Mrs. Eddy's 

 gentle art? 



Yet he who has taken due account of the actual 

 state of knowledge will rather pause. Within even 

 a few years many of our ideas about this world have 

 been notably clarified. In particular, we have 

 come to know not merely a great deal of the chem- 

 istry and physics of lifeless things, but of living 

 things ay, of the mind as well. Our notions about 



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