Correspondence 

 Creation 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



136 



mental plan and purpose which alone makes 

 such correspondence intelligible to us, and 

 in which alone it may be said to exist. 

 ARGYLL Reign of Laic, ch. 1, p. 19. (Burt.) 

 672. CORRESPONDENCE OF ANI- 

 MAL ORGANS Likeness Found Only in an 

 Order of Thought. An order so vast as this, 

 including within itself such variety of de- 

 tail, and maintained through such periods 

 of time, implies combination and adjust- 

 ment founded upon, and carrying into effect, 

 one vast conception. It is only as an order 

 of thought that the doctrine of animal ho- 

 mologies is intelligible at all. It is a mental 

 order, and can only be mentally perceived. 

 For what do we mean when we say that this 

 bone in one kind of animal corresponds to 

 such another bone in another kind of ani- 

 mal ? Corresponds in what sense ? Not in 

 the method of using it for very often limbs 

 which are homologically the same are put to 

 the most diverse and opposite uses. To 

 what standard, then, are we referring when 

 we say that such and such two limbs are 

 homologically the same? It is to the stand- 

 ard of an ideal order a plan a type a 

 pattern mentally conceived. This sounds 

 very recondite and metaphysical; and yet 

 the habit of referring physical facts to some 

 ideal standard and order of thought is a 

 universal instinct in the human mind. It is 

 one of the earliest of our efforts in endeavor- 

 ing to understand the phenomena around us. 

 ARGYLL Reign of Law, ch. 4, p. 117. 

 (Burt.) 



673. COSMOGONY OF DANTE 

 WRECKED BY COPERNICAN ASTRON- 

 OMY Men Thought Christianity Threatened. 

 With the advent of the Copernican astron- 

 omy the funnel-shaped inferno, the steep 

 mountain of purgatory crowned with its 

 terrestrial paradise, and those concentric 

 spheres of heaven wherein beatified saints 

 held weird and subtle converse, all went 

 their way to the limbo prepared for the 

 childlike fancies of untaught minds, whither 

 Hades and Valhalla had gone before them. 

 In our day it is hard to realize the startling 

 effect of the discovery that man does not 

 dwell at the center of things, but is the deni- 

 zen of an obscure and tiny speck of cosmical 

 matter quite invisible amid the innumerable 

 throng of flaming suns that make up our 

 galaxy. To the contemporaries of Coperni- 

 cus the new theory seemed to strike at the 

 very foundations of Christian theology. 

 FISKE Destiny of Man, ch. 1, p. 15. (H. M. 

 & Co., 1900.) 



674. COSMOGONY, ORIENTAL Hin- 

 du Account of Creation Ordinances of 

 Menu. The earliest doctrines of the Indian 

 and Egyptian schools of philosophy agreed 

 in ascribing the first creation of the world 

 to an omnipotent and infinite being. They 

 concurred also in representing this being, 

 who had existed from all eternity, as having 

 repeatedly destroyed and reproduced the 

 world and all its inhabitants. In the sacred 



volume of the Hindus, called the " Ordi- 

 nances of Menu," comprising the Indian sys- 

 tem of duties religious and civil, we find a 

 preliminary chapter treating of the crea- 

 tion, in which the cosmogony is known to 

 have been derived from earlier writings and 

 traditions, and principally from certain 

 hymns of high antiquity, called the Vedas. 

 These hymns were first put together, accord- 

 ing to Mr. Colebrooke, in a connected series, 

 about thirteen centuries before the Christian 

 era, but they appear from internal evidence 

 to have been written at various antecedent 

 periods. In them, as we learn from the re- 

 searches of Professor Wilson, the eminent 

 Sanskrit scholar, two distinct philosophical 

 systems are discoverable. According to one 

 of them, all things were originally brought 

 into existence by the sole will of a single 

 first cause, which existed from eternity; 

 according to the other, there have always 

 existed two principles, the one material, but 

 without form, the other spiritual and 

 capable of compelling " inert matter to de- 

 velop its sensible properties." This de- 

 velopment of matter into " individual and 

 visible existences " is called creation, and is 

 assigned to a subordinate agent, or the 

 creative faculty of the Supreme Being em- 

 bodied in the person of Brahma. LYELL 

 Principles of Geology, bk. i, ch. 2, p. 4. (A., 

 1854.) 



675. COST OF PLEASURE AND 



PAIN Expenditure of Blood and Nerve-tissue 

 Waste of Life-force by Stimulants. 

 Every throb of pleasure costs something to 

 the physical system; and two throbs cost 

 twice as much as one. If we cannot fix a 

 precise equivalent, it is not because the re- 

 lation is not definite, but from the difficul- 

 ties of reducing degrees of pleasure to a 

 recognized standard. Of this, however, 

 there can be no reasonable doubt namely, 

 that a large amount of pleasure supposes a 

 corresponding large expenditure of blood 

 and nerve-tissue, to the stinting, perhaps, of 

 the active energies and the intellectual proc- 

 esses. It is a matter of practical moment 

 to ascertain what pleasures cost least, for 

 there are thrifty and unthrifty modes of 

 spending our brain and heart's blood. Ex- 

 perience probably justifies us in saying that 

 the narcotic stimulants are, in general, a 

 more extravagant expenditure than the 

 stimulation of food, society, and fine art. 

 One of the safest of delights, if not very 

 acute, is the delight of abounding physical 

 vigor; for, from the very supposition, the 

 supply to the brain is not such as to inter- 

 fere with the general interests of the sys- 

 tem. But the theory of pleasure is incom- 

 plete without the theory of pain. 



As a rule, pain is a more costly experience 

 than pleasure, altho sometimes economical 

 as a check to the spendthrift pleasures. 

 Pain is physically accompanied by an excess 

 of blood in the brain, from at least two 

 causes extreme intensity of nervous action 



