402 A SHORT HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



in which things seem other than they are. Without virtue a man 

 may repeat words like a parrot, and imitate other men's wisdom like 

 an ape, and all to no purpose. The intellectual effect of a stainless 

 life is well illustrated in the young man who is the bearer of this treatise. 

 The degrees of spiritual experience are seven. (1) Spiritual illumina- 

 tion ; (2) virtue ; (3) the gift of the Holy Spirit described by Isaiah ; 

 (4) the Beatitudes ; (5) spiritual sensibility ; (6) Fruits, such as the 

 peace of God which passes understanding ; (7) states of Rapture. 



CHAPTER II 



It is solely by the aid of this science that we shall be able to disabuse 

 men of the fraudulent tricks by which magicians have imposed on 

 them. As compared with other sciences, this science has three char- 

 acteristics (" prerogatives"). Of these the first is, that it constitutes 

 a test to which all the conclusions of other sciences are to be subjected. 

 In other sciences the principles are discovered by experiment, but the 

 conclusion by reasoning. An instance of this is afforded by the rain- 

 bow, and by other phenomena of a similar kind, as haloes, etc. The 

 natural philosopher forms a judgment on these things : the experi- 

 menter proceeds to test the judgment. He seeks for visible objects 

 in which the colours of the rainbow appear in the same order. He 

 finds this the case with Irish hexagonal crystals when held in the sun's 

 rays. This property, he discovers, is not peculiar to these crystals, 

 but is common to all transparent substances of similar shape, simi- 

 larly placed. He finds these colours again on the surface of crystals 

 when slightly roughened. He finds them in the drops that fall from 

 the rower's oar, when the sun's rays strike them, or from a water- 

 wheel, or in the morning-dew on the grass. They may be seen again 

 in sunshine when the eye is half opened, and in many other cases. 



CHAPTER III 



The shape in which the colours are disposed will vary. Sometimes 

 it is rectangular, sometimes circular. 



CHAPTER IV 



Armed with these terrestrial facts, the experimenter proceeds to 

 examine the celestial phenomenon. He finds, on examining the 

 sun's altitude and that of the summit of the bow, that the two vary 

 inversely. The bow is always opposite the sun. A line may be drawn 



