619 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



Selfishness 

 Sense 



may operate in regard either to sensory im- 

 pressions generally or to those of some par- 

 ticular class. Of the former we have a 

 characteristic example in what is known as 

 the hysterical condition; in which the 

 patient's attention is so fixed upon her own 

 bodily state that the most trivial impres- 

 sions are magnified into severe pains; while 

 there is often such an extraordinary acute- 

 ness to sounds that she overhears a conver- 

 sation carried on in an undertone in an 

 adjoining room, or (as in a case known to 

 the writer) in a room on the second floor 

 beneath. There is here, doubtless, a peculiar 

 physical susceptibility to nervous impres- 

 sions, which is to a certain degree re- 

 mediable by medical treatment; but much 

 depends upon the diversion of the patient's 

 attention from her own fancied ailments, 

 and we here see the importance of the self- 

 determining power of the will, which, if 

 duly exercised, can substitute a healthful 

 direction of the mental activity for the 

 morbid imaginings to which the patient has 

 previously yielded herself. CARPENTER Na- 

 ture and Man, bk. i, ch. 4, p. 153. (A., 

 1900.) 



3063. SENSATIONS NOT TO BE 

 MEASURED NUMERICALLY The whole 

 notion of measuring sensations numerically 

 remains in short a mere mathematical specu- 

 lation about possibilities, which has never 

 been applied to practise. JAMES Psychol- 

 ogy, vol. i, ch. 13, p. 539. (H. H. & Co., 

 1899.) 



3064. SENSATIONS OF NORMAL 

 CONSCIOUSNESS TO BE TRUSTED 



Some External Fact Corresponds. The phys- 

 icist, by reducing all external changes to 

 " modes of motion," appears to leave no room 

 in his world-mechanism for the secondary 

 qualities of bodies, such as light and heat, 

 as popularly conceived. Yet, while allowing 

 this, I think we may still regard the at- 

 tribution of qualities like color to objects 

 as in the main correct and answering to 

 a real fact. When a person says an object 

 is red, he is understood by everybody as 

 affirming something which is true or false, 

 something, therefore, which either involves 

 an external fact or is illusory. It would in- 

 volve an external fact whenever the particu- 

 lar sensation which he receives is the result 

 of a physical action (ether vibrations of a 

 certain order), which would produce a like 

 sensation in anybody else in the same situ- 

 ation and endowed with the normal retinal 

 sensibility. On the other hand, an illusory 

 attribution of color would imply that there 

 is no corresponding physical agency at work 

 in the case, but that the sensation is con- 

 nected with exceptional individual condi- 

 tions, as, for example, altered retinal 

 sensibility. SULLY Illusions, ch. 3, p. 36. 

 (A., 1897.) 



3065. SENSE OF BEAUTY, SCIENCE 

 DOES NOT DIMINISH Knowledge Not In- 

 compatible with Poetry. Does the knowl- 



edge of the fact that oxygen has been dis- 

 covered in the sun tend to diminish by one 

 iota the feeling of joy, the inexpressible 

 sense of delight and wonder, with which we 

 see the red rays rising aslant over the 

 Rigi, and finally bursting into glorious 

 effulgence as peak after peak is tinged with 

 the morning glow ? Or when we walk abroad 

 in the full glow of the midday, does the idea 

 of the immensity of heaven's great orb, the 

 knowledge of its distance from us, or the 

 information which details the extent of time 

 occupied in the transit of its light-rays 

 earthward interfere in any sense with our 

 delight in the poetry which has selected 

 astronomy as its theme? Does such knowl- 

 edge repress what Dr. Shairp would call 

 " the momentary elevation of heart," for 

 which its subject " has no words " ? The 

 eye rests on the grateful green of Nature 

 which everywhere meets our gaze, and drinks 

 in the sense of beauty and of this earth's 

 sweet fairness. Shall I the less be filled 

 with joy because I know that the green is 

 the botanist's " chlorophyl," and that but 

 for the verdant hues of plants our world 

 would become a great stagnant pond of foul 

 air? ANDREW WILSON Science and Poetry, 

 p. 8. (Hum., 1888.) 



3066. SENSE OF DURATION Per- 

 ception of Empty Time Vast and Dreary 

 Slow Lapse of a Minute. Close your eyes 

 and simply wait to hear somebody tell you 

 that a minute has elapsed. The full length 

 of your leisure with it seems incredible. 

 You engulf yourself into its bowels as into 

 those of that interminable first week of an 

 ocean voyage, and find yourself wondering 

 that history can have overcome many such 

 periods in its course, all because you at- 

 tend so closely to the mere feeling of the 

 time per se, and because your attention to 

 that is susceptible of such fine-grained, 

 successive subdivision. The odiousness of 

 the whole experience comes from its insi- 

 pidity; for stimulation is the indispensable 

 requisite for pleasure in an experience, and 

 the feeling of bare time is the least stimu- 

 lating experience we can have. JAMES Psy- 

 chology, vol. i, ch. 15, p. 626. (H. H. & Co., 

 1899.) 



3067. SENSE OF IGNORANCE A 

 LAW OF MAN'S BEING Origin of Curi- 

 osity and Wonder Incentive to Progress. 

 It is impossible to mistake, then, the place 

 which is occupied among the unities of Na- 

 ture by that sense of ignorance which is 

 universal among men. It belongs to the 

 number of those primary mental conditions 

 which impel all living things to do that 

 which it is their special work to do, and 

 in the doing of which the highest law of 

 their being is fulfilled. In the case of the 

 lower animals this law, as to the part they 

 have to play, and the ends they have to 

 serve in the economy of the world, is simple, 

 definite, and always perfectly attained. No 

 advance is with them possible, no capacity 



