PHYSICAL SCIENCE AND CHRISTIAN REVELATION
BY REV. JAMES A. STOTHERT.
If the philosophers of the nineteenth century are proud of its scientific character, it is not without reason; if they congratulate themselves on having penetrated further into the secrets of nature than their predecessors, the impartial judgment of future times will confirm the opinion. It is no ordinary age that has, in the first half of its course, produced men of the first eminence in every branch of science, and contributed discoveries, remarkable alike for their intrinsic value, and their influence on the welfare of mankind. The progress of the physical sciences, since the year 1800, has been rapid and unprecedented; some of them have assumed a character and position entirely new, in consequence of the number and brilliancy of the discoveries, and the importance of the principles unfolded in relation to them. Another era in the history of chemistry opened with Dalton's atomic theory, aided by the amazing industry of Berzelius, in its practical application; the labors of Davy, in reducing the number of simple elements by means of voltaic electricity, and Faraday's patient and even-advancing discoveries in the wide field of electro-magnetism, have developed chemical science to an extent, and in a direction, which a former generation would have deemed fabulous. During the same period, geology has been rescued from neglect, and from serious charges of unsound tendencies, and been placed in deserved rank among the sciences by the eminent labors Smith and Buckland, of Sedgwick and Delabeche, of Lyell and Murchison, and Miller. Thee stamp of the age has been put on the science of optics by the discovery of the polarization of light by Malus; by the subsequent extension and perfection of that discovery by Brewster and Arago; and, more remarkably still, by the profound investigations and independent research of Young and Fresnel, on the subject of the wave theory of light. Zoology, especially in its bearing on geology and the history of the earth, has been carried to astonishing perfection, by the intuitive genius and sagacity of Cuvier and Agassiz and Owen and Forbes. In the history of astronomy, the queen of the sciences, the nineteenth century must be ever memorable as that in which was first established the appreciable parallax of some among the stars commonly called fixed; at once spanning the hitherto illimitable abyss which separates the solar system from those distant luminaries, and opening up to human intelligence clear and better defined views of the vastness of the universe. The names of Bessel, Struve, and Argelander, of Airy and Lord Rosse, and the two Herschels, are associated with observations and discoveries, for which future ages will look back to our time with admiration and gratitude. The more recent observations of Herschel on Multiple Stars may be assumed to have established, the existence of the great law of gravitation in regions of space, so remote from our sight, that the diameter of the earth's orbit, if searched for at that distance, through telescopes equal to our most powerful, would be invisible. The circumstances attending the discovery of the most distant planet, Neptune, are perhaps the most extraordinary proof of the high intellectual [{254}] culture of our time. Another planet, Uranus, its next neighbor, had been long observed to be subject to perturbations, for which no known cause could altogether account. By an elaborate and wholly independent calculation of these disturbances, and a comparison of them with what would have resulted from all the known causes of irregularity, two mathematicians, Leverrier in France, and Adams in England, were enabled, nearly at the same time, and quite unknown to each other, to say where the disturbing cause must be, and what must be the conditions of its action. They communicated with practical astronomers, and told them where they ought to find a new planet; telescopes were directed to the spot, accurate star-maps were consulted, and there it was, the newly discovered planet Neptune, wandering through space, in an orbit of nearly three thousand millions of miles' semi-diameter. Other discoveries had been the result of good fortune, or the reward of patient accuracy and untiring perseverance; here discovery was anticipated, and directed by the conclusions of purely mathematical reasoning.
The nineteenth century, little more than half elapsed, can also point with satisfaction to numerous observatories in both hemispheres, where, in nightly vigils and daily calculations, the accumulating observations and details are amassed and arranged, which for years to come are to guide the mariner through the pathless seas, and to furnish materials for future generalization in regard to the laws of the physical universe; where untiring account is kept of those occult and variable magnetic influences which permeate the surface of our globe and the atmosphere around it, to which the distinguished Humboldt first urged attention, and in the investigation of which the names of Kater and Sabine are conspicuous. In chemical laboratories at home, and on the continent, the progress of investigation into the internal constitution of matter is so extensive and so fruitful in results, that as we were lately informed by an eminent chemist, it is hardly possible even for a professional man to keep up to the mark of weekly discovery. The triumphs of steam-power in connexion with machinery; the perfection attained my modern engineering, and the multiplication of its resources; the wonderful results produced by the combination and division of labor, illustrated by the completion of vast works, and the supply of materials for our world-wide commerce; and, not least of all, the application of the electric current to the transmission of messages, originally suggested by a Scotsman, in the year 1753, [Footnote 40] and perfected by Wheatstone and others, the influence of which, in flashing intelligence from one side of the world to the other, is not improbably destined to act more powerfully than that of steam and railway communication, on the future history of mankind; all these valuable in enduring evidences of the scientific preeminence of our age, are no inconsiderable or unreasonable cause of elation and self-congratulation among contemporary philosophers. There never was a time when juster views on the subject of physical science were more generally diffused among the community at large; when a readier ear could be gained for any new and well-supported claims of science; when the public mind thirsted more eagerly for fresh draughts from the fountain of knowledge; or when more competent persons were engaged in providing means for satisfying this universal thirst. Scientific societies are numerous and active; mechanics' institutes, philosophical associations, athenaeums and other reunions alternating kindred nature, are organized and flourishing in every large town in the country, for the purpose of conveying a little rill of this coveted knowledge to the tradesmen and artisans in the short intervals of their daily toil. The very credulity with which some [{255}] unscientific and preposterous theories of motion have been lately accepted and believed by multitudes of educated persons, and which Faraday has the merit of first boldly denouncing, is another proof of the desire of something new in physics, which animates large masses of thinking men, and which is often much more developed than their power of distinguishing what is true from what is false, or empirical, in the philosophy of nature.
[Footnote 40: See Scots Magazine, February, 1753.]
The contemplation of this picture of the nineteenth century suggests a question of some moment: What is the relation of this scientific development to revelation? What influence is it likely to have on the conclusions of faith? A simple mind, or a simple age, receives these implicitly: will the influence of science on either dispose, or indispose it, to similar confidence? Are modern discoveries likely to throw a reasonable doubt on the province of revelation; or are they more likely to reflect light upon it, and establish its landmarks?
This is a question of the last moment. The age is bent on acquiring knowledge; it is justly elated by its progress in search of this precious gift; and, all the while, its dependence on the great truths of revelation is not less than that of a simple age. Faith, if ever necessary, is not less so now, than when all the brilliant discoveries of our era lay in the folds of the future time. They will not, with all their brilliancy, direct and save one human soul, or illuminate the obscure region which lies beyond the grave. If science must dissolve the charm of belief, alas! for the elation of our age at its own high attainments; better had it been for it that the ancient ignorance of physical laws had never then dissipated, than that its dispersion should have been so dearly purchased.
Of course, by revelation, the author must be understood to mean the whole will of God, revealed to the world, and taught by the Catholic Church; as well that part of it which Protestants reject, as the mutilated part of it which the greater number of them are agreed in accepting; all the doctrines peculiarly and distinctively belonging to Catholicity, together with others which it holds and teaches in common with all calling themselves Christian. What relation, then, we ask, has the modern advance of science to this undivided sum of revealed truth? Is it one of hostility or of harmony, of illustration and confirmation, or of antagonism? Is physical science the handmaid, or the enemy of faith?
(1.) Now, a very great number of persons, understanding revelation in the sense in which we have defined it, would answer this question by saying that science is the enemy of revealed truth, as maintained by the Catholic Church; that the more generally scientific and accurate ideas of the laws and constitution of the physical universe are diffused, the more difficult must grow the belief of sensible men, claimed by the Catholic Church for apparently impossible exceptions to those laws. We can even imagine some good Catholics, little versed in scientific pursuits, of the same opinion, and therefore jealous of this general craving of the people for secular knowledge. Among the Protestants of this country it is currently believed that the Catholic Church is as keenly and doggedly opposed to science as science is to her; that her unchanging policy has always been to keep her children in ignorance, so as the more easily to subdue their intelligence to her bidding.
(2.) An answer of a different kind we should expect to receive from a numerous class of friends, and from a few opponents; namely, that the relation of science to revelation is one of indifference, as they belong to spheres of knowledge totally distinct and independent. A few remarks on each of these answers will best introduce the author's own attempt at a solution of the question.
As to the first: well informed and candid inquirers into the truth of things are beginning slowly to perceive that the Catholic Church has been misrepresented, as invariably the enemy of science; especially in the critical and much agitated controversy of the geocentric and heliocentric theories of the planetary motions, which has been chosen as the weakest point of attack. Two writers of the highest eminence in science, with no religious bias whatever toward Catholicity, have given remarkable testimony on this subject. Sir David Brewster in his Life of Galileo has adopted a tone of fairness to the Catholic Church, unhappily rare in Protestant treatment of such topics in general. We do not think he has done full justice to Galileo's Roman judges; but, at least, he has given the Roman pontiffs some credit for their patronage of men of science. We recommend the whole life to the notice of our readers, and shall cite the following passage from it. After mentioning the pension granted to Galileo by Pope Urban VIlI., in 1624, Sir David adds: "The pension thus given by Urban was not the remuneration which sovereigns sometimes award to the services of their subjects. Galileo was a foreigner at Rome. The sovereign of the papal state owed him no obligation; and hence we must regard the pension of Galileo as a donation from the Roman pontiff to science itself, and as a declaration to the Christian world that religion was not jealous of philosophy, and that the church of Rome was willing to respect and foster even the genius of its enemies." [Footnote 41]
[Footnote 41: Martyrs of Science, ed. 1846, p. 68.]
The other writer whom we shall cite is a no less celebrated authority in science than the present astronomer royal, who, while condemning the treatment which Galileo received at the hands of the Roman Inquisition, is free to admit that Rome did not always oppose science; and even this qualified admission, from so eminent a person, is worth a good deal to our purpose. His remark is this: "This great step in the explanation of the planetary motions was made by Copernicus, an ecclesiastic in the Romish Church, a canon of Thorn, a city of Prussia. The work in which he published it is dedicated to the pope. At that time it would appear that there was no disinclination in the Romish Church to receive new astronomical theories. But in no long time after, when Galileo, a philosopher of Florence, taught the same theory, he was brought to trial by the Romish Church, then in full power, and was compelled to renounce the theory. How these two different courses of the Romish Church are to be reconciled, I do not know. But the fact is so." [Footnote 42]
[Footnote 42: Airy's Lectures on Astronomy, p. 85.]
We are not concerned at present with Galileo's unhappy story, farther than to remark, that there is as usual much to be said on the side of his Roman judges, which is perhaps nowhere so well said as in the pages of the Dublin Review, No. IX., July 1838. The views there advanced have never been called in question; we may therefore assume that they are substantially unassailable. As to the general question of the assistance which the Catholic Church has lent, directly or indirectly, to science, we should like to know what other church, or body of ecclesiastics, has done anything in this field compared with the labors and the successes of the Society of Jesus alone. The names of Clavius and Kircher, of Boscovich, De Vico, and Pianciani, may stand for a memorial of the prosperous union of science and Catholic revelation. [Footnote 43]
[Footnote 43: F. Christopher Clavius, S. J., an eminent German mathematician and astronomer, was employed by Gregory XIII. in the reformation of the calendar. His Gregorian Calendar, published in 1581, tardily adopted in Protestant countries, and now regulates our system of leap-years. His collected mathematical and scientific works amount to five volumes folio. He was killed in 1612, page 75.
F. Athanasius Kircher, S. J., also a native of Germany, was a diligent cultivator of science. His works, in twenty-two folio and eleven quarto volumes, embrace learned and original treatises on many recondite branches of physical science; on Magnetism, Optics, Acoustics, Geography, etc., etc. He filled the chair of Mathematics in the Jesuit Roman college, and laid the foundation of its extensive and valuable museum. He died in Rome, in 1680, at the age of 79.
F. Roger Joseph Boscovich, S.J., a native of Ragusa, filled the chair of Astronomy in the Jesuit Roman College for thirty years, and was highly distinguished for the depth, originality, and variety of his aquirements in Natural Philosophy. He published several valuable treatises on the philosophy of Newton, on optics, etc. He is best known out of Italy for his ingenious theory of the molecular constitution of matter: a theory which the increasing knowledge of more modern philosophy has only confirmed. After the suppression of his order in 1778, he was welcomed to Paris, and taught philosophy there for a time; he returned to Italy, he died at Milan, in 1787, page 73.
F. De Vico, S.J., was also an eminent astronomer in the Jesuit Roman College. His discovery of several comets introduced him to the circle of men of science. When the Jesuits were driven from Rome in 1848, he was received with open arms in the United States; but, unhappily for science, he died in London a very few years ago, while procuring instruments for his observatory in the far West. He was highly esteemed and beloved by his pupils, of whom there are many in this country.
F. Pianciani, S.J., for many years taught chemistry in the Jesuit Roman College. He is admired for the simplicity of his manners no less than for the valuable contributions he has made to the nature of chemical science. Besides all larger and smaller treatise on it, he has published a work on the cosmogony of Moses; and we believe, is still preparing other treatises for the press.]
As to the second solution of our question—that science and revelation are indifferent, because entirely dissimilar to each other in nature and objects; it appears to us that analogy points quite the other way. For, (1.) they both have a common origin in the will of God; and it is not unreasonable to expect that they shall exhibit some traces of common principles. And this, especially, if we direct our attention to the difficulties which lie in the way of our acceptance of the conclusions proposed to us by either; if they are actually found to resemble each other in many of these, their relation can no longer be considered one of indifference. Nay, on the principles on which Dr. Joseph Butler constructed his immortal work, if revealed truth proceeds from the author of nature, we may expect to find the same difficulties in it as we find in nature. And, conversely, it is no objection to the divine origin of revealed truth, that its reception implies difficulties as great as the acceptance of the facts and laws of nature presupposes us to have overcome. And, (2.) we may argue from the mutual analogy of other sciences to one another; how dissimilar soever they appear to a superficial observer to be, there is a community of principles, and of general laws, which binds them together, and connects them with their common origin in the divine mind. This idea is, as many of our readers are aware, beautifully developed by Mrs. Somerville in her charming work on the Connexion of the Physical Sciences.
From these preliminary remarks, the author's own solution of the question of hostility, or indifference, between science and revelation may be gathered; namely, that though in their nature, objects, and details widely separated, yet they are linked together by a thousand delicate ties, unperceived by a careless observer, but well repaying elaborate study. Science is the true handmaid of Revelation, doing service to the superior nature, but exhibiting tokens of a commission to do so, imparted to her by the divine creator of both. The author has devoted some attention to this interesting subject; and at some future time, if granted health and leisure, he hopes to state and illustrate his views more at large, and in a more permanent form; meanwhile he proposes briefly to sketch some of the conclusions and trains of thought suggested to him by these studies; confining his remarks entirely to those portions of revealed truth which are the exclusive property of the Catholic Church, and which are generally known in the Protestant world as popish doctrines, such as the Blessed Eucharist; the question of Miracles in general; and all that is supernatural and imperceptible to the senses in Catholic belief.
I. A preliminary difficulty lying in the way of belief in the supernatural character of revealed religion, is the flat contradiction which it apparently gives to the evidence of the senses, the manifest discrepancy between what is alleged and proposed to our belief, and what is seen with our eyes, and appreciated by other sensuous organs. [{258}] Modern science, however, is as inexorable in her demands on human credence, in defiance of the senses, as was ever revelation on the assent of faith. The senses have their empire much restricted by the canons of our philosophers. For, (1.) it is fully established that each organ of sense is susceptible of one class of impressions only, which it passes on to the sensorium, or seat of thought. Thus the organ of vision admits and communicates impressions of light alone; that of hearing, impressions of sound, or of the wave of air set in motion by the cause producing sound, and no others. The organs of taste and smell, in like manner, have their own classes of susceptibilities, which, again, are not the same as those belonging to the nerves of touch. For every other class of impressions than its own, each organ of sense is absolutely inert and useless. The eye can take no cognisance of sound, nor the ear of light: if the eye can feel a touch, it is because certain parts of its structure are furnished with branches of the nerves of touch; and so of the rest. Electricity alone seems to have the remarkable power of exciting in all the organs of sense, sensations proper to the nature of each; in the eye, for example, a flash of light; distinct sounds; a phosphoric odor, a peculiar taste, and a pricking feeling, in the same person at the same time. [Footnote 44]
[Footnote 44: Sommerville's Connexion, etc., § xxix. p. 339. Carpenter's Manual of Physiology, § 932.]
Again, (2.) sensations arising from those impressions are so exceedingly complex, that we attribute many more of them to each separate sense than really belong to it. By habit we have become so much accustomed to associate several of those impressions together, as to be unable, without difficulty, to analyze them, and to separate the simple results of the sensuous impression from the more complicated judgments which experience and reason add to it, and by which they interpret it. The eye, for example, receives and conveys impressions purely and solely of light, and its absence, including those of color, which belong to light. Form, extension, sense of distance, etc., are no part of the simple impression made upon the eye, and through it upon the mind, further than they influence the condition of the light, as by bounding it, shading it, etc. These belong exclusively to the sense of touch, combined with experience, so as to be suggested, without actual contact, by certain conditions of light. An inexperienced eye, looking for the first time at a plain surface, as a disc, or at a cube, or a ball, would see only the color, and the edges where that changed. It could not enable the mind to judge how far the object was distant; nor why the light and shade were differently disposed in each; why the light reflected from the disc was uniform, and bounded by a circle, while that from the ball was softly shaded, though bounded by a circular line similar to the disc; nor why the light coming from the cube was divided and bounded by straight lines and sharp angles. To judge of these peculiarities, and their meaning, touch must come to the aid of sight; and afterward memory will recall the conclusions of former experience; and comparison will enable the reasoning mind to form a judgment regarding the shape, size, and distance of the object. In a similar manner, the organs of hearing convey impressions of sound alone; distance, direction, exciting cause, are quite out of the province of its information. Sight and touch, and experience and judgment, all enter into the complex information, now communicated to a practiced observer. This fact is strikingly exemplified in musical sounds. A skillful musician will tell you the notes and chords composing a series of such sounds, in which an uninformed and unpractised ear will be able to detect nothing but concord or this court. Thus Mozart, at two hearings, was able to note down the score of Allegri's Miserere. Thus, too, there are many substances which we of [{259}] by taste, as it is supposed, but which are in reality operative on the sense of smell. For instance, if the nose is held while eating cinnamon, we shall perceive no difference between its flavor and that of a pine shaving. [Footnote 45] The same fact is observed with regards to many aromatic substances: if held in the mouth, or rubbed between the tongue and the palate, the nostrils being all the while dosed, their taste is hardly, if at all, recognized; but it is immediately perceived on reopening the nasal passages. Thus, too, the wine-taster closes his mouth, and sends the aroma of the wine through his nostrils. Other substances, again, there are, neither aromatic nor volatile, taste very strongly irritates the mucous membrane both of nose and tongue, as mustard does, for example, just as it would the skin, if applied long enough externally. Such a sensation, therefore, as the taste of mustard, evidently belongs to the organs of touch, differing in degree of sensitivity only. Hence we are taught that the substances properly the objects of the sense of taste, are those only which produce sensations purely and exclusively gustative, perceived neither through the nose nor through the nerves of touch, but acting on the tongue and palate only. Salt, sugar, quinine, tannin, and citric acid, types of the saline, saccharine, bitter, astringent, and sour, are said to possess sapid properties. [Footnote 46] From these simple considerations it appears undoubted that the province of each separate organ of sensation, and its resultant impressions on the mind, are much limited, when compared with the wider empire attributed to them by popular language and opinion. Reason is ever correcting and enlarging the simple impression, adding the conclusions of experience and judgment and comparison to the primary suggestions of the sensation; making allowances for what is faulty or imperfect; measuring circumstances, and comparing all the conditions of the impression with each other, before even an approximately true result can be arrived at.
[Footnote 45: Herschel's Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy, § 72.]
[Footnote 46: Carpenter's Manual of Physiology, § 945.]
Further (3.) there is much in nature of which the senses totally fail in giving us any information whatever. "None of the senses," says Sir J. Herschel, "gives us direct information for the exact comparison of quantity. Number, indeed, that is to say, integer number, is an object of sense, because we can count; but we can neither weigh, nor measure, nor form any precise estimate of fractional parts by the unassisted senses. Scarcely any man could tell the difference between twenty pounds, and the same weight increased or diminished by a few ounces; still less could he judge of the proportion between an ounce of gold and a hundred grains of cotton by balancing them in his hands." [Footnote 47] Nay, even in their own proper and peculiar province, the senses are singularly deficient in certain kinds of information, especially when comparison is involved. "The eye," says the same high authority, "is no judge of the proportion of different degrees of illumination, even when seen side by side; and if an interval elapses, and circumstances change, nothing can be more vague than its judgment. When we gaze with admiration at the gorgeous spectacle of the golden clouds at sunset, which seem drenched in light, and glowing like flames of real fire, it is hardly by an effort we can persuade ourselves to regard them as the very same objects which at noonday pass unnoticed as mere white clouds basking in the sun, only participating, from their great horizontal distance, in the ruddy tint which luminaries acquire by shining through a great extent of the vapor of the atmosphere, and thereby even losing something of their light. So it is with our estimates of time, velocity, and all other matters of quantity; they are absolutely vague and inadequate to form a foundation for any exact conclusion." [Footnote 48]
[Footnote 47: Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy,§ 117.]
[Footnote 48: Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy,§ 117.]
Again (4.) there is a large class of phenomena whose causes, and even whose existence, are far too remote or too minute to be revealed to us by our senses. What are telescopes and microscopes, but the means which science ingeniously devises to supply this innate and irreparable deficiency of our organs of sense? Satirists of the middle age, and its scholatic philosophers, have said that they would dispute as to the number of spirits that could dance on the point of a needle. Modern science shows us, in the infusoria, animals of perfect formation, endowed with functions suited to their condition, many thousands of which could pass at once through the eye of the finest needle; a million of which would not amount in bulk to a grain of sand. No less wonderful is the world of minute existence, revealed by the microscope, in a drop of stagnant water. It is a world within itself, an epitome of the earth, and its successive geological races. A variety of microscopic creatures make their appearance, and die; in a few days, a new set succeeds; these disappear in their turn, and their place is occupied by a third race, of a different kind from either of the former—the remains of all of them lying at the bottom of the glass. [Footnote 49] "If for a moment," says Humboldt, "we could yield to the power of fancy, and imagine the acuteness of our visual organ to be made equal to the extreme bounds of telescopic vision, and bring together that which is now divided by long periods of time, the apparent rest which reigns in space would suddenly disappear. We should see the countless hosts of fixed stars moving in thronged groups, in different directions; nebulas wandering through space, and becoming condensed and dissolved like clouds, the veil of the milky way separated and broken up in many parts, and motion ruling supreme in every portion of the vault of heaven, even as on the earth's surface, where we see it unfolded in the germ, the leaf, and the blossom, the organisms of the vegetable world. The celebrated Spanish botanist, Cavanilles, was the first who entertained the idea of 'seeing the grass.' He directed the horizontal micrometer threads of a powerful magnifying glass at one time to the apex of the shoot of a bambusa, and at another, on the rapidly growing stem of an American aloe, precisely as the astronomer places his cross of network against a culminating star." [Footnote 50] Without speculating so deeply in what is distant and hidden, the very atmosphere in which we live and breathe is imperceptible to every one of our senses, except, indeed, when viewed through its whole depth, to that of sight in the blue color of the sky, or indirectly to that of touch, by the resistance which it offers to the hand, or the face, in passing rapidly through it, or when it is set in motion by the wind. We perceive its effects, indeed, in the modifications which the phenomena of light and sound undergo, in consequence of its action upon them; in the barometric column, and in a thousand other physical and chemical agencies which attest the presence of the atmosphere, and the important functions which it performs in our terrestrial economy. But as far as sight or hearing, taste or smell, are affected by it, directly, it has absolutely no existence.
[Footnote 49: Somerville's Physical Geography; II., xxxii. 348, note.]
[Footnote 50: Cosmos, I. 189, 40.]
Modern science, indeed, coming to the aid of the senses, can enable them to attain the results of an almost inconceivable acuteness. Thus while quantity and comparison are inappreciable, or nearly so, by the unaided organs of sense, balances have been constructed with a sensibility so exquisite, as to turn with the thousandth part of a grain, and yet pretend to no extraordinary degree of merit. [Footnote 51]
[Footnote 51: Herschel's Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy, § 338.]
By the aid of an instrument called a spherometer, which substitutes the sense of touch for that of sight, an inch may be divided into twenty thousand parts; and the lever of contact, an instrument in use among the German opticians, enables them to appreciate quantities of space even yet smaller. [Footnote 52] Instruments have been devised capable of measuring intervals of time equal to the 1/1000 part of a second. By the revolution of a toothed wheel, striking against a piece of card, human ear is enabled to appreciate a sound which lasts only 1/24000 of a second, and thus to measure that extremely minute interval of time. [Footnote 53] Wheatstone, in the course of his experiments on the velocity of the electric fluid, constructed an apparatus which enables the eye to perceive an interval equal to less than 1/1000000 of a second of time. The exact value of this almost infinitesimal interval was ascertained and measured by the known effect of a sound of high high pitch upon the ear. [Footnote 54] It is unnecessary to multiply such examples; but so many we have adduced, for the purpose of demonstrating the extent of the world of physical observation which lies forever concealed from the natural organs of sense. We owe this knowledge of their incapacity for more than a very limited range of observation to the inventions of science, applied to remedy and supplement this very incapacity. Thus science tells tales against the human senses, of which a less inventive and informed age could never have even dreamed.
[Footnote 52: Herschel's Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy, § 338.]
[Footnote 53 Somerville's Connexion, etc., § xvi. p. 147.]
[Footnote 54: Ib., § xxviii. p. 325.]
Once more, (5.) the senses are not only restricted in their sphere of action, and incapable of penetrating beyond a certain limit into the mysteries of physical nature, but even within their own proper province of observation their indications are constantly false and erroneous; so that if we were implicitly to receive and adopt these indications, without due correction, our notions of the constitution of nature would be singularly wide of the truth. As they appear to the naked eye, the sun and moon seem nearly of the same size; flat discs, about as large as the crown of a hat. Uncorrected sense teaches us no more; it furnishes no means of measuring either their absolute or their relative distance. But from other sources, we learn that one is about four hundred times further off than the other; that the mass of the one would fill a space bounded by double the orbit of the other; and that the centre of the sun is nearly half a million of miles nearer our eye than his limb, or the bounding line of his disc, a space equal to more than twice the distance of the moon from the earth. The limits prescribed to himself, forbid the author to enlarge on this interesting portion of his subject, which, however, he regrets the less, that any one anxious to follow it out, will find an excellent paper on "Popular Fallacies," in Lardner's Museum of Science and Art, January 1854; a new scientific and popular serial, which has started under the best auspices, and deserves to be widely circulated.
Did space permit, we might illustrate the fallacious teaching of the senses regarding the phenomena of nature, by the corrections made necessary in every scientific observation, as to the position of distant objects, in consequence of the refraction or bending of the rays of light in their passage through the air, which has the effect of making distant objects in space seem higher than they really are; of the correction necessary for the aberration of light, depending on the time taken to transmit it from a distant object in space; together with others which enter into the daily experience of the observers of nature. Other circumstances also materially influence the impressions conveyed through the organs of sense. Thus a person going into an ordinarily lighted apartment from the dark night, will be painfully affected by the brightness of the light [{262}] for a few moments; while another, entering the same room from a brightly illuminated chamber, will hardly be able for a moment or two to see anything. [Footnote 55] If we plunge our hands one into ice-cold water, and the other into water as hot as it can be borne, and after letting them stay a while, suddenly transfer them both to a vessel full of water at blood heat, the one will feel it hot, and the other cold. If we cross the two first fingers of our hand, and place a pea in the fork between them, moving and rolling it about on a table, we shall be fully persuaded, especially if we close our eyes, that we have two peas. [Footnote 56] The other senses are similarly affected by circumstances, so as to convey erroneous impressions. Mrs. Somerville sums up the evidence on this head in one word, when she remarks that, "a consciousness of the fallacy of our senses is one of the most important consequences of the study of nature. This study teaches us that no object is seen by us in its true place." [Footnote 57] And elsewhere she adds, "A high degree of scientific knowledge has been necessary to dispel the errors of the senses ." [Footnote 58] Herschel has the following remark in his Outlines of Astronomy: [Footnote 59] "No geometrical figure, or curve, is seen by the eye as it is conceived by the mind to exist in reality. The laws of perspective interfere and alter the apparent directions, and foreshorten the dimensions of its several parts. If the spectator be unfavorably situated, as, for instance, nearly in the plane of the figure, they may do so to such an extent as to make a considerable effort of imagination necessary to pass from the sensible to the real form."
[Footnote 55: Carpenter's Manual of Physiology, § 93.]
[Footnote 56: Herschel's Discourse, § 72.]
[Footnote 57: Collection of Physical Sciences, § xxv. p. 264.]
[Footnote 58: Ib., § iv. p. 37.]
[Footnote 59: Chap. i. §78.]
There is one form of illusion to which the senses are liable, so remarkable and irremediable as to deserve a moment's notice; we mean their erroneous testimony regarding motion. We have the authority of Sir. J. Herschel for saying, that "there is no peculiar sensation which advertises us that we are in motion. The rough inequalities in the road are felt as we are carried over them, by the successive elevation and falling of the carriage; but we have no sense of progress if we are prevented from seeing surrounding objects. The smoother the road, and the faster the speed, the less able are we to feel our motion forward. Every one must have felt this in night travelling by the railway, or in a tunnel. In a balloon, with a steady breeze, which merely propels, without gyration or oscillation, the motion is described as a sensation of perfect rest. The same is observed on shipboard, in still water or a calm. Everything goes on as if on land." [Footnote 60] To complete the illusion, nothing is more common than apparently to transfer our own motion to the stationary objects around us. This is peculiarly observable at railway stations, when a train first gently moves off. If another training is standing near, and parallel to our own, it is impossible to tell which is moving, our own, or the other in an opposite direction, without calling in the age of a third object, to correct the doubtful or erroneous impression, by the direction in which it seems relatively to change its place; or by examining the wheels of the other training. In the same way, many persons, while witnessing a panorama, are painfully affected by the shifting of the scenes, which conveys to them an impression as if the room were going round, and the picture remaining stationary. It was this illusion of the senses, as to motion, that perpetuated to a very late date the capital error regarding the supposed circulation of the sun and planets round the on moving; the dispelling of which, by Galileo and subsequent observers, was the greatest triumph ever achieved my philosophy over the empire of the senses.
[Footnote 60: Outline of Astronomy, § 15, 16.]
The simple matter of fact is this, that our senses were given us for a certain definite and practical end, not for the acquisition of universal knowledge. We use them thankfully within their own domain, but we should err by inferring that their indications are the measure of the true, or of the whole constitution of things: their teaching falls far short of what exists in the universe of material nature; into the world of spiritual existence and operation they have no mission to enter. Catholic doctrine, therefore, is in no worse position, as regards the contradictions of the senses to the results, than is the great mass of scientific knowledge; to deny the one is as unphilosophical as to deny the other, merely because the organs of sense fail to appreciate it, or afford indications directly contrary to it.