THE PATH OF EVOLbTION 



preaching, the great Goddess raised the great zones 

 which Anii made for their glory." By all men the 

 objective existence of the rainbow was believed in. 

 Descartes, at the suggestion of M. A. de Dominis,* 

 further studied and established the true theory of the 

 apparent position and shape of the bow. Newton's 

 discovery of the prismatic colors completed the 

 knowledge of the fact that it had a subjective existence 

 only and relegated its phenomena to the study of " The 

 Physics of the Ether." 



It is hard to realize in our consciousness, although 

 we well know that it is the fact, that the beautiful 

 colors of the world around us exist only on our retina, 

 or in the nervous tissue of our brain. . The vibrations 

 of the Ether carry the compound or white rays of 

 light ; they are broken up by objects around us, as 

 they are in the raindrop, some absorbed and some re- 

 flected. The colored object seen has itself only the 

 structural mechanism that separate the beam of white 

 light into the colored rays, its components. The 

 colors are in the Ether movements only; without 

 them all objects in the world would be colorless and 

 dark. 



* Marc Antoine de Dominis, a Jesuit priest, 1566-1624, was arrested 

 for heresy and imprisoned in the Castle of St. Angelo, where he died 

 a few months afterward. His trial was continued after his death by 

 the Inquisition. He was convicted, his body disinterred and burned 

 on the Campo dei Fiori, where Giordano Bruno had been burned 

 alive twenty-five years before. 



304 



