523 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



Persistence 

 Phenomena 



prey which came in their pigeon's way. The 

 creature knows neither friends nor enemies; 

 in the thickest company it lives like a her- 

 mit. JAMES Psychology, vol. i, ch. 2, p. 77. 

 (H. H. & Co., 1899.) 



2575. PERSONALITY EMBODIED 



The Secret of Idolatry. The universality 

 of this tendency to connect some material 

 objects with religious worship, and the im- 

 mense variety of modes in which this tend- 

 ency has been manifested, are facts which 

 receive a full and adequate explanation in 

 our natural disposition to conceive of all 

 personal agencies as living in some form 

 and in some place, or as having some other 

 special connection with particular things 

 in Nature. Nor is it difficult to understand 

 how the embodiments, or the symbols, or the 

 abodes, which may be imagined and devised 

 by men, will vary according as their mental 

 condition has been developed in a good or 

 in a wrong direction. And as these imagin- 

 ings and devices are never as we see them 

 now among savages, the work of any one 

 generation of men, but are the accumulated 

 inheritance of many generations, all existing 

 systems of worship among them must be 

 regarded as presumably very wide depar- 

 tures from the conceptions which were pri- 

 meval. ARGYLL Unity of Nature, ch. 11, p. 

 283. (Burt.) 



2576. PERSONALITY INDIVIDUAL 

 AND INCOMMUNICABLE Limit to the Pos- 

 sibility of Human Sympathy A Lesson of 

 Charity. There is a something in the in- 

 timacy of a man's own experience which 

 he cannot make to pass entire into the 

 heart and mind even of his most familiar 

 companion, and thus it is that he is so often 

 defeated in his attempts to obtain a full 

 and a cordial possession of his sympathy. 

 He is mortified, and he wonders at the ob- 

 tuseness of the people around him, and 

 that, with every human being he addresses, 

 justness of his complainings, nor to feel the 

 point upon which turn the truth and the 

 reason of his remonstrances, nor to give 

 their interested attention to the case of 

 his peculiarities and of his wrongs, nor to 

 kindle, in generous resentment, along with 

 him, when he starts the topic of his indig- 

 nation. He does not reflect, all the while, 

 that, with every human being he addresses, 

 there is an inner man, which forms a theater 

 of passions, and of interests as busy, as 

 crowded, and as fitted as his own to en- 

 gross the anxious and the exercised feelings 

 of a heart, which can alone understand its 

 own bitterness, and lay a correct estimate 

 on the burden of its own visitations. Every 

 man we meet carries about with him, in the 

 unperceived solitude of his bosom, a little 

 world of his own, and we are just as blind, 

 and as insensible, and as dull, both of per- 

 ception and of sympathy, about his engross- 

 ing objects as he is about ours; and, did 

 we suffer this observation to have all its 

 weight upon us, it might serve to make us 



more candid, and more considerate of others. 

 It might serve to abate the monopolizing 

 selfishness of our nature. CHALMERS Astro- 

 nomical Discourses, p. 42. (R. Ct., 1848.) 



2577. PHANTOMS KNOWN AS ILLU- 

 SIONS Specters Haunting a Scholar. We 

 knew a gentleman of strong mind, and a 

 most accomplished scholar, who was for 

 many years subject to such fantasms, some 

 sufficiently grotesque, and he would occa- 

 sionally laugh heartily at their antics. 

 Sometimes it appeared as if they inter- 

 rupted a conversation in which he was en- 

 gaged; and then, if with his family or in- 

 timate friends, he would turn to empty 

 space, and say, " I don't care a farthing 

 for ye; ye amuse me greatly sometimes, but 

 you are a bore just now." His spectra, when 

 so addressed, would to his eye resume their 

 antics, at which he would laugh, turn to 

 his friend, and continue his conversation. 

 In other respects he was perfectly healthy, 

 his mind was of more than ordinary strength, 

 and he would speak of his fantoms, and 

 reason upon their appearance, being per- 

 fectly conscious that the whole was illusive. 

 CARPENTER Mental Physiology, bk. i, ch. 

 4, p. 167. (A., 1900.) 



2578. PHANTOMS OF IMAGINATION 



The Illusions of Desire. Long before the 

 discovery of the New World it was believed 

 that new lands in the far West might be 

 seen from the shores of the Canaries and the 

 Azores. These illusive images were owing, 

 not to any extraordinary refraction of the 

 rays of light, but produced by an eager long- 

 ing for the distant and the unattained. The 

 philosophy of the Greeks, the physical views 

 of the Middle Ages, and even those of a 

 more recent period have been eminently 

 imbued with the charm springing from simi- 

 lar illusive fantoms of the imagination. 

 At the limits of circumscribed knowledge, 

 as from some lofty island shore, the eye de- 

 lights to penetrate to distant regions. The 

 belief in the uncommon and the wonder- 

 ful lends a definite outline to every mani- 

 festation of ideal creation; and the realm 

 of fancy a fairy-land of cosmological, geog- 

 nostical,and magnetic visions becomes thus 

 involuntarily blended with the domain of 

 reality. HUMBOLDT Cosmos, vol. i, p. 81. 

 (H., 1897.) 



2579. PHENOMENA MANIFESTA- 

 TIONS OF ONE OMNIPRESENT POWER 



Conservation of Energy. All those who 

 have most carefully studied the subject have 

 arrived at the same results. There is, there- 

 fore, every reason to believe that the prin- 

 ciple we have been illustrating is univer- 

 sally true. Let us then embody it in a defi- 

 nite statement. All natural phenomena are 

 the manifestation of the same omnipresent 

 energy, which is transferred from one por- 

 tion of matter to another without loss. 



But if the principle as thus stated be 

 accepted we cannot rest here, for it in- 



