Persistence 

 Phenomena 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



522 



but for a moment of heedlessness, we might 

 never have entered upon, simply because 

 we hate to " change our mind!" JAMES Psy- 

 chology, vol. ii, ch. 26, p. 530. (H. H. & Co., 

 1899.) 



20 7O. PERSISTENCE OF A STRONG 

 CURRENT IN ITS COURSE Rivera Saw 

 Mountains Asunder. It is remarkable . . . 

 how persistent are great rivers in maintain- 

 ing their direction. When it has been once 

 fairly established a large river may outlive 

 many revolutions of the surface. River- 

 valleys are not seldom older than the moun- 

 tain ridges which they sometimes traverse; 

 or, to put it in another way, new mountains 

 may come into existence without deflecting 

 the rivers across whose valleys they may 

 seem at one time to have extended, for the 

 rivers have simply sawed their way through 

 the ridges as these were being gradually 

 developed. GEIKIE Earth Sculpture, ch. 3, 

 p. 45. (G. P. P., 1898.) 



2571. PERSONALITY AFFECTS SCI- 

 ENTIFIC OBSERVATION Every time that, 

 in a given country, there is a change of ob- 

 server we remark a sudden variation in 

 the annual number of auroras. It is neces- 

 sary, therefore, as far as possible, to collect 

 the observations over a whole region, and 

 not content ourselves with a single station, 

 for it often happens that in two neighbor- 

 ing places an aurora will be noted in the 

 one which is unperceived at the other by a 

 less attentive observer. ANGOT Aurora Bo- 

 realis, ch. 5, p. 91. (A., 1897.) 



2572. PERSONALITY AN INEVITABLE 

 CONCEPTION Natural Agencies and Powers 

 Personified. It is the simplest and most 

 natural of all conceptions that the agency 

 of which we are most conscious in ourselves 

 is like the agency which works in the world 

 around us. Even supposing this conception 

 to be groundless, and that, as some now 

 maintain, a more scientific investigation of 

 natural agencies abolishes the conception of 

 design or purpose, or of personal will being 

 at all concerned therein even supposing 

 this, it is not the less true that the transfer 

 of conceptions founded on our own conscious- 

 ness of agency and of power within us to 

 the agencies and powers around us, is a nat- 

 ural, if it be not indeed a necessary, con- 

 ception. That it is a natural conception is 

 proved by the fact that it has been, and 

 still is, so widely prevalent, as well as by 

 the fact that what is called the purely scien- 

 tific conception of natural agencies is a mod- 

 ern conception, and one which is confessedly 

 of difficult attainment. So difficult, indeed, 

 is it to expel from the mind the conception 

 of personality in or behind the agencies of 

 Nature, that it may fairly be questioned 

 whether it has ever been effectually done. 

 Verbal devices for keeping the idea out of 

 sight are indeed very common; but even 

 these are not very successful. . . . Those 

 naturalists and philosophers who are most 

 opposed to all theological explanations or 



conceptions of natural forces do, neverthe- 

 less, habitually, in spite of themselves, have 

 recourse to language which derives its whole 

 form, as well as its whole intelligibility, 

 from those elements of meaning which refer 

 to the familiar operations of our own mind 

 and will. The very phrase " natural selec- 

 tion " is one which likens the operations 

 of Nature to the operations of a mind exer- 

 cising the power of choice. The whole mean- 

 ing of the phrase is to indicate how Nature 

 attains certain ends which are like " selec- 

 tion." ARGTLL Unity of Nature, ch. 11, p. 

 275. (Burt.) 



2573. PERSONALITY A PRIMITIVE 

 CONCEPTION Aryan Impersonations of Ele- 

 mentary Powers. From this evidence, as 

 we find it in the facts reported respecting 

 the earliest forms of Aryan speech, it seems 

 certain that the most ancient conceptions 

 of the energies of Nature were conceptions 

 of personality. In that dim and far-off 

 time, when our prehistoric ancestors were 

 speaking in a language long anterior to the 

 formation of the oldest Sanskrit, we are 

 told that they called the sun the illuminator, 

 or the warmer, or the nourisher; the moon, 

 the measurer; the dawn, the awakener; the 

 thunder, the roarer; the rain, the rainer; 

 the fire, the quick-runner. We are told 

 further that in these personifications the 

 earliest Aryans did not imagine them as 

 possessing the material or corporeal forms 

 of humanity, but only that the activities 

 they exhibited were most easily conceived 

 as comparable with our own. Surely this 

 is a fact which is worth volumes of specu- 

 lation. What was most easy and most nat- 

 ural then must have been most easy and 

 most natural from the beginning. With 

 such a propensity in the earliest men of 

 whom we have any authentic record to see 

 personal agency in everything, and with the 

 general impression of unity and subordina- 

 tion under one system which is suggested 

 by all the phenomena of Nature, it does 

 not seem very difficult to suppose that the 

 fundamental conception of all religion may 

 have been in the strictest sense primeval. 

 AKGYLL Unity of Nature, ch. 12, p. 304. 

 (Burt.) 



2574. PERSONALITY, DESTRUCTION 

 OF Animal Made a True Automaton In- 

 stinctless Condition of Brainless Pigeons. 

 Schrader gives a striking account of the 

 instinctless condition of his brainless pig- 

 eons, active as they were in the way of 

 locomotion and voice. " The hemisphereless 

 animal moves in a world of bodies which 

 . . . are all of equal value for him. . . . 

 He is, to use Goltz's apt expression, im- 

 personal. . . . Every object is for him 

 only a space-occupying mass; he turns out 

 of his path for an ordinary pigeon no other- 

 wise than for a stone. He may try to climb 

 over both. All authors agree that they never 

 found any difference, whether it was an 

 inanimate body, a cat, a dog, or a bird of 



