Ascent 

 Assumptions 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



48 



man. Our reverence for the nobility of 

 manhood will not be lessened by the knowl- 

 edge that man is, in substance and in struc- 

 ture, one with the brutes; for he alone 

 possesses the marvelous endowment of in- 

 telligible and rational speech whereby, in 

 the secular period of his existence, he has 

 slowly accumulated and organized the ex- 

 perience which is almost wholly lost with 

 the cessation of every individual life in 

 other animals; so that now he stands 

 raised upon it as on a mountain-top, far 

 above the level of his humble fellows, and 

 transfigured from his grosser nature by re- 

 flecting, here and there, a ray from the in- 

 finite source of truth. HUXLEY Man's 

 Place in Nature, p. 234. -(Hum.) 



241. ASPIRATION OF SCIENCE LIM- 

 ITLESS The idea of limitation to 

 thought or achievement no longer enters the 

 imagination. The depth of the sea, the 

 distances of the stars, the concealment of 

 the earth's treasures, the minuteness of 

 the springs of life and sense, the multi- 

 plicity and complicity of phenomena are 

 only so many incitements to greater achieve- 

 ments. The daring souls of this decade are 



' determined at any risk to answer the in- 

 quiry of Pontius Pilate, What is truth? 

 With sympathetic enthusiasm we wave 

 them on, bidding them Godspeed. MASON 

 The Birth of Invention. An Address. 

 [Washington, D. C., 1891.] 



242. ASSIMILATION OF COLOR TO 



ENVIRONMENT Transparency of Pelagic 

 Animals. An . . . illustration of gen- 

 eral assimilation of color to the surround- 

 ings of animals is furnished by the inhabit- 

 ants of the deep oceans. Professor Mose- 

 ley, of the Challenger Expedition, in his 

 British Association lecture on this subject, 

 says : " Most characteristic of pelagic 

 animals is the almost crystalline trans- 

 parency of their bodies. So perfect is this 

 transparency that very many of them are 

 rendered almost entirely invisible when 

 floating in the water, while some, even when 

 caught and held up in a glass globe, are 

 hardly to be seen. The skin, nerves, mus- 

 cles, and other organs are absolutely hya- 

 line and transparent, but the liver and di- 

 gestive tract often remain opaque and of a 

 yellow or brown color, and exactly resemble 

 when seen in the water small pieces of float- 

 ing seaweed." Such marine organisms, how- 

 ever, as are of larger size, and either occa- 

 sionally or habitually float on the surface, 

 are beautifully tinged with blue above, thus 

 harmonizing with the color of the sea as 

 seen by hovering birds ; while they are white 

 below, and are thus invisible against the 

 wave-foam and clouds as seen by enemies be- 

 neath the surface. Such are the tints of the 

 beautiful nudibranchiate mollusk, Glaucus 

 atlanticus, and many others. WALLACE 

 Darwinism, ch. 8, p. 132. (Hum., 1889.) 



243. ASSOCIATION A SOURCE OF 

 POWER Gregarious Animals, However De- 

 fenseless, Survive Each Has the Foresight 

 and Perception of the Herd. One of these 

 advantages [of gregariousness] , obviously, 

 is the mere physical strength of numbers. 

 But there is another and a much more im- 

 portant one the mental strength of a com- 

 bination. Here is a herd of deer, scattered, 

 as they love to be, in a string, a quarter of a 

 mile long. Every animal in the herd not 

 only shares the physical strength of all the 

 rest, but their powers of observation. Its 

 foresight in presence of possible danger is 

 the foresight of the herd. It has as many 

 eyes as the herd, as many ears, as many 

 organs of smell; its nervous system extends 

 throughout the whole space covered by the 

 line; its environment, in short, is not only 

 what it hears, sees, smells, touches, tastes, 

 but what every single member hears, sees, 

 smells, touches, tastes. This means an 

 enormous advantage in the struggle for life. 

 What deer have to arm themselves most 

 against is surprise. When it comes to an 

 actual fight, comrades are of little use. At 

 that crisis the others run away and leave 

 the victims to their fate. But in helping 

 one another to avert that crisis, the value 

 of this mutual aid is so great that gre- 

 garious animals, for the most part timid 

 and defenseless as individuals, have sur- 

 vived to occupy in untold multitudes the 

 highest places 'in nature. DRUMMOND As- 

 cent of Man, p. 155. (J. P., 1900.) 



244. ASSOCIATION IN THOUGHT 



Interdependence of the Various Parts of the 

 Brain. Every namable thing, act, or rela- 

 tion has numerous properties, qualities, or 

 aspects. In our minds the properties of 

 each thing, together with its name, form 

 an associated group. If different parts of 

 the brain are severally concerned with the 

 several properties, and a farther part with 

 the hearing, and still another with the ut- 

 tering, of the name, there must inevitably 

 be brought about (through the law of asso- 

 ciation) such a dynamic connection 

 amongst all these brain-parts that the ac- 

 tivity of any one of them will be likely to 

 awaken the activity of all the rest. When 

 we are talking as we think, the ultimate 

 process is that of utterance. If the brain- 

 part for that be injured, speech is impos- 

 sible or disorderly, even tho all the other 

 brain-parts be intact. JAMES Psychology, 

 vol. i, ch. 2, p. 57. (H. H. & Co., 1899.) 



245. ASSOCIATION OF THE IMPRES- 

 SIONS OF DIFFERENT SENSES Touch 

 Awakens Memories of Sight and Sound. 

 Association occurs as amply between im- 

 pressions of different senses as between 

 homogeneous sensations. Seen things and 

 heard things cohere with each other, and 

 with odors and tastes, in representation, in 

 the same order in which they cohered as im- 

 pressions of the outer world. Feelings of 

 contact reproduce similarly the sights, 



