323 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



Imagination 



parts of Nature into an organic whole. 

 TYNDALL Fragments of Science, vol. ii, ch. 

 8, p. 104. (A., 1897.) 



1575. Checks of Reason 



and Observation. Imagination is necessary 

 to the man of science, and we could not 

 reason on our present subject without the 

 power of presenting mentally a picture of 

 the earth's crust cracked and fissured by 

 the forces which produced its upheaval. 

 Imagination, however, must be strictly 

 checked by reason and by observation. 

 TYNDALL Hours of Exercise in the Alps, ch. 

 20, p. 230. (A., 1898.) 



1576. Mythology Sug- 

 gests Botanical Names. Linnseus gave the 

 name Andromeda after the Ethiopian maid 

 whose mother's over-great boasts of the 

 daughter's beauty made her the victim of 

 Poseidon's wrath. Linnaeus justified his 

 procedure by a remarkable play of fancy: 

 " This most choice and beautiful virgin 

 gracefully erects her long and shining neck 

 (the peduncle), her face with its rosy lips 

 (the corolla) far excelling the best pigment. 

 She kneels on the ground with her feet 

 bound (the lower part of the stem incum- 

 bent ) , surrounded with water, and fixed to 

 a rock (a projecting clod), exposed to 

 frightful dragons ( frogs and newts ) . She 

 bends her sorrowful face (the flower) to- 

 wards the earth, stretches up her innocent 

 arms (the branches) toward heaven, worthy 

 of a better place and happier fate, until the 

 welcome Perseus ( summer ) , after conquer- 

 ing the monster, draws her out of the water 

 and renders her a fruitful mother, when she 

 raises her head (the fruit) erect." GILL 

 Address before the Amer. Assoc. for the Ad- 

 vancement of Science, Smithsonian Report 

 for 1896, pp. 457-83. 



1577. 



Producing Effects 



in the World of Fact. This conception of 

 physical theory [of light] implies, as you 

 perceive, the exercise of the imagination. 

 Do not be afraid of this word, which seems 

 to render so many respectable people, both 

 in the ranks of science and out of them, 

 uncomfortable. That men in the ranks of 

 science should feel thus is, I think, a proof 

 that they have suffered themselves to be mis- 

 led by the popular definition of a great 

 faculty instead of observing its operation in 

 their own minds. Without imagination we 

 cannot take a step beyond the bourn of the 

 mere animal world, perhaps not even to the 

 edge of this one. But, in speaking thus of 

 imagination, I do not mean a riotous power 

 which deals capriciously with facts, but a 

 well-ordered and disciplined power, whose 

 sole function is to form conceptions which 

 the intellect imperatively demands. Imagi- 

 nation, thus exercised, never really severs 

 itself from the world of fact. This is the 

 storehouse from which the materials for all 

 its pictures are derived ; and the magic of 

 its art consists, not in creating things anew, 

 but in so changing the magnitude, position, 



and other relations of sensible things as to 

 render them fit for the requirements of the 

 intellect in the subsensible world. TYNDALL 

 Lectures on Light, lect. 2, p. 43. (A., 1898.) 



1578. IMAGINATION MAY MAKE 

 IDEAL WORLD ALMOST REAL The higher 

 feelings or emotions are distinguished from 

 the simple sense-feelings in being largely 

 representative. Thus, a feeling of content- 

 ment at any moment, tho^ no doubt condi- 

 tioned by the bodily state and the character 

 of the organic sensations, or coenesthesis, 

 commonly depends for the most part on in- 

 tellectual representations of external cir- 

 cumstances or relations, and may be called 

 an ideal foretaste of actual satisfactions, 

 such as the pleasures of success, of com- 

 panionship, and so on. This being so, it is 

 easy for imagination to call up a semblance 

 of these higher feelings. Since they depend 

 largely on representation, a mere act of 

 representation may suffice to excite a degree 

 of the feeling hardly distinguishable from 

 the actual one. Thus, to imagine myself as 

 contented is really to see myself at the 

 moment as actually contented. Again, the 

 actor, tho . . . he does not feel all that 

 the spectator is apt to attribute to him, 

 tends, when vividly representing to himself 

 a particular shade of feeling, to regard him- 

 self as actually feeling in this way. Thus, 

 it is said of Garrick, that when acting 

 Richard III, he felt himself for the moment 

 to be a villain. SULLY Illusions, ch. 8, p. 

 199. (A., 1897.) 



1579. IMAGINATION, P E T I C , OF 

 GREAT DISCOVERER Scientific Insight 

 Penetrates the Unknown Columbus Infers 

 a Continent Orinoco Thought a River of 

 Paradise. The appearance of this region 

 [near the mouth of the Orinoco] first con- 

 vinced the bold navigator Columbus of the 

 existence of an American continent. " Such 

 an enormous body of fresh water," con- 

 cluded this acute observer of Nature, " could 

 only be collected from a river having a long 

 course; the land, therefore, which supplied 

 it must be a continent and not an island." 

 As, according to Arrian, the companions of 

 Alexander, when they penetrated across the 

 snow-crowned summits of Paropamisus, be- 

 lieved that they recognized in the crocodile- 

 teeming Indus a part of the Nile, so Colum- 

 bus, in his ignorance of the similarity of 

 physiognomy which characterizes all the 

 products of the climate of palms, imagined 

 that the new continent was the eastern 

 coast of the far-projecting Asia. The grate- 

 ful coolness of the evening air, the ethereal 

 purity of the starry firmament, the balmy 

 fragrance of flowers, wafted to him by the 

 land breeze all led him to suppose (as we 

 are told by Herrera, in the " Decades " ) that 

 he was approaching the Garden of Eden, the 

 sacred abode of our first parents. The Ori- 

 noco seemed to him one of the four rivers 

 which, according to the venerable tradition 

 of the ancient world, flowed from Paradise 

 to water and divide the surface of the earth, 



