282 



SCIENCE. 



There is a profound difference between creatures in which 

 one only of these voices speaks, and man, whose ears 

 are, as it were, open to them both. The things which 

 we do in obedience to the lower and simpler voice are 

 indeed many, various, and full of a true and wonderful 

 significance. But the things which we do and the 

 affections which we cherish, in obedience to the higher 

 voice have a rank, a meaning, and a scope which is all 

 their own. There is no indication in the lower animals 

 of this double Personality. They hear no voice but one : 

 and the whole law of their Being is perfectly fulfilled in fol- 

 lowing it. This it is which gives its restfulness to Nature, 

 whose abodes are indeed what Wordsworth calls them — 



'* Abodes where Self-disturbance hath no part." 



On the other hand, the double Personality, the presence of 

 '' Two Voices," is never wholly wanting even in the most 

 degraded of human beings — their thoughts everywhere '"ac- 

 cusing or else excusing one another." 



Knowing, therefore, in ourselves both these kinds of op- 

 eration, we can measure the distance between them, and we 

 can thoroughly understand how animals ma}' be able to do 

 all that they actually perform, without ever passing through 

 the processes of augmentation b}' which we reach the con- 

 clusions of conscious reason and of moral obligation. More- 

 over, seeing and feeling the difference, we can see and feel 

 the relations which obtain between the two classes of men- 

 tal work. The plain truth is, that the higher and more 

 complicated work is done, and can only be done in this 

 life, with the material supplied by the lower and simpler 

 tools. Nay, more, the very highest and most aspiring men- 

 tal processes rest upon the lower, as a building rests upon 

 its foundation stones. They are like the rude but massive 

 substructions from which some great temple springs. Not 

 only is the impulse, the disposition, and the ability to rea- 

 son as purely intuitive and congenital in Man as the disposi- 

 tion to eat, but the fundamental axioms on which all reason- 

 ing rests are, and can only be, intuitively perceived. This, 

 indeed, is the essential character of all the axioms or self- 

 evident propositions which are the basis of reasoning, that 

 the truth of them is perceived by an act of apprehension, 

 which, if it depends on any process, depends on a process 

 unconscious, involuntary, and purely automatic. But this 

 is the definition, the only definition, of instinct, or intuition. 

 All conscious reasoning thus starts from the data which this 

 great faculty supplies ; and all our trust and confidence in 

 the results of reasoning must depend on our trust and confi- 

 dence in the adjusted harmony which has been established 

 between instinct and the truths of nature. Not only is the 

 idea of mechanism consistent with this confidence, but it is 

 inseparable from it. No firmer gronnd for that confidence 

 can be given us in thought than this conception — that as the 

 eye of sense is a mechanism specially adjusted to receive 

 the light of heaven, so is the mental eye a mechanism 

 specially adjusted to perceive those realities which are 

 in the nature of necessary and eternal truth. More- 

 over, the same conception helps us to understand 

 the real nature of those limitations upon our faculties 

 which curtail their range, and which yet, in a sense, we may 

 be said partially to overpass in the very act of becoming 

 conscious of them. We see it to be a great law prevailing 

 in the instincts of the lower animals, and in our own, that 

 they arc true not only as guiding the animal lightly to the 

 satisfaction of whatever appetite is immediately concerned, 

 but true also as ministering to ends of which the animal 

 knows nothing, although they are ends of the highest im- 

 portance, both in its own ecoi i\ and in the far-off econ- 

 omies of creation. In direct proportion as our own minds 

 and intellects partake of the same nature, and are founded 

 on the same principle "t adjustment, we may feel assured 

 that the same law prevails in theii nobler work and func- 

 tions. And the glorious law is no less than this — that the 

 work Oi in ue nol only for the short way it goes, 



but foi thai infinite distance into which it leads in a true di- 

 rection. 



1 know no argument better fitted than this to dispel the 



sickly dreams, the morbid misgivings, oi the Agnostic. 

 Not do I knowoi any other conception as securely founded 



.,n -< Mil' e, properl] io i ailed, which bettei serves to rendei 



intelliL' ' I' and to bung within the familiar analo; fi 

 Nature '• ose highel and rare] mi nial gifts which we know 



as genius, and even that highest and rarest of all which we 

 understand as inspiration. That the human mind is always 

 in some degree, and that certain individual minds have 

 been in a special degree, reflecting surfaces, as it were, for 

 the verities of the unseen and eternal world, is a concep- 

 tion having all the characters of coherence which assure 

 us of its harmony with the general constitution and the 

 common course of things. 



And so this doctrine of animal automatism — the notion 

 that the mind of man is indeed a structure and a mechan- 

 ism — a notion which is held over our heads as a terror and 

 a doubt — becomes, when closely scrutinized, the most com- 

 forting and re-assuring of all conceptions. No stronger 

 assurance can be given us that our faculties, when rightly 

 used, are powers on which we can indeed rely. It reveals 

 what may be called the strong physical foundations on 

 which the truthfulness of Reason rests. And more than 

 this — it clothes with the like character of trustworthiness 

 every instinctive and intuitive affection of the human soul. 

 It roots the reasonableness of faith in our conviction of the 

 Unities of Nature. It tells us that as we know the instincts 

 of the lower animals to be the index and the result of laws 

 which are out of sight to them, so also have our own 

 higher instincts the same relation to truths which are of 

 corresponding dignity and of corresponding scope. 



Nor can this conception of the mind of Man being 

 connected with an adjusted mechanism cast, as has been 

 suggested, any doubt on the freedom of the Will, — 

 such as by the direct evidence of consciousness we 

 know that freedom to be. This suggestion is simply a 

 repetition of the same inveterate confusion of thought 

 which has been exposed before. The question of what 

 our powers are is in no way affected by the admis- 

 sion or discovery that they are all connected with an 

 apparatus. Consciousness does not tell us that we stand 

 unrelated to the system of things of which we form a 

 part. We dream — or rather we simply rave — if we think 

 we are free to choose among things which are not presented 

 to our choice, — or if we think that choice itself can be free 

 from motives, — or if we think that we can find any motive 

 outstde the number of those to which by the structure of 

 our minds and of its organ we have been made accessible. 

 The only freedom of which we are really conscious is free- 

 dom from compulsion in choosing among things which are 

 presented to our choice,- — -consciousness also attesting the 

 fact that among those things some are coincident, and some 

 are not coincident, with acknowledged obligation. This, 

 anil all other direct perceptions, are not weakened but con- 

 firmed by the doctrine that our minds are connected with 

 an adjusted mechanism. Because the first result of this 

 conception is to establish the evidence of conscious- 

 ness when given under healthy conditions, and when prop- 

 erly ascertained, as necessarily the best and the nearest 

 representation of the truth. This it does in recognizing 

 ourselves, and all the faculties we possess, to be nothing 

 but the result and index of an adjustment contrived by 

 and reflecting the Mind which is supreme in Nature. We 

 are derived and not original. We have been created, or — 

 if any one likes the phrase better — we have been "evolv- 

 ed : " not, however, out of nothing, nor out of confusion, 

 nor out of lies, — but out of " Nature," which is but a word 

 for the sum of all existence — the source of all order, and 

 the very ground of all truth — the fountain in which all full- 

 ness dwells. 



ASTRONOMICAL NOTES. 



ON THE DETERMINATION OF THE VALUE OF ONE 

 REVOLUTION OF A MICROMETER SCREW, ETC. 



To determine the value of a revolution of a micrometer 

 screw, it is desirable to use several different methods. 

 The most common and least accurate is by the observa- 

 tion oi the transits ot stars over two wires of the microme- 

 ter, set at a known distance (in revolutions) apart. Me- 

 chanical measures, depending upon the measurement of 

 the length of the screw, of the dimensions of the object- 

 ive, and ot the principal focal length of the telescope come 

 next. The measures in arc of ten est ria I objects of known 

 linear dimensions come next. Bessel's triangulation of 



