"I think the apparatus I have described may be useful to many who really wish to know the truth of nature, and who would prefer that truth to a mistaken conclusion, desired perhaps only because it seems to be new or strange. Persons do not know how difficult it is to press directly downward, or in any given direction against a fixed obstacle, or even to know only whether they are doing so or not, unless they have some indicator which, by visible motion or otherwise, shall instruct them; and this is more especially the case when the muscles of the fingers and hand have been cramped and rendered either tingling or insensible or cold by long-continued pressure. If a finger be pressed constantly into the corner of a window-frame for ten minutes or more, and then, continuing the pressure, the mind be directed to judge whether the force at a given moment is all horizontal or all downwards, or how much is in one direction and how much in the other, it will find great difficulty in deciding, and will, at last, become altogether uncertain,—at least such is my case. I know that a similar result occurs with others, for I have had two boards arranged, separated, not by rollers, but by plugs of vulcanized rubber; and with the vertical index, when a person with his hands on the upper board is requested to press only downwards, and the index is hidden from his sight, it moves to the right, to the left, to him and from him, and in all horizontal directions; so utterly unable is he strictly to fulfil his intention without a visible and correcting indicator. Now, such is the use of the instrument with the horizontal index and rollers; the mind is instructed and the involuntary or quasi-involuntary motion is checked in the commencement, and, therefore, never rises up to the degree needful to move the table, or even permanently the index itself. No one can suppose that looking at the index can in any way interfere with the transfer of electricity, or any other power, from the hand to the board under it, or to the table. If the board tends to move, it may do so; the index does not confine it; and if the table tends to move, there is no reason why it should not. If both were influenced by any power to move together, they may do so, as they did, indeed, when the apparatus was tied, and the mind and muscles left unwatched and unchecked."
PRINTED BY HARRISON AND SONS,
LONDON GAZETTE OFFICE, ST. MARTIN'S LANE.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Locke. Of Human Understanding, B. I, ch. 2.
[2] Cousin. Cours de l'Histoire de la Philosophie Moderne, edit. 1847, T. III, p. 269.
[3] Cousin. Op. cit., T. III, p. 368.
[4] Cousin. Op. cit., T. III, p. 370.
[5] Plato. Politicus. Mitford's Greece, Vol. I, p. 84.
[6] "Vain indeed is the life of all men in whom there is not the true knowledge of God: who, from the things which are seen to be good, have not been able to conceive aright of that which is goodness itself; nor, while they viewed the work, to acknowledge the architect: but have thought that either fire, or the wind, the swift air, or the stars in their courses, or the vast deep, or the sun and moon, were the deities presiding over the world."—Liber Sapientiæ, ch. 13, v. 1, 2. Translation by Luke Howard, F.R.S.
[7] An interesting illustration of the tendency of mankind in a state of savageism to attribute striking phenomena to supernatural agency, and deify the means through which they are apparently exhibited, occurred on the march of Cortes from Mexico to Honduras. During a deer-hunt, the horse which Cortes rode was taken ill. "It did not then die, though it would have been better if it had," says the devout but ruthless conqueror, parenthetically. A little while afterwards, having been courteously received by the Itzalan Indians, Cortes "entrusted them with the care of his horse Morgillo, which had been lamed, charging them to take great care of it, and attend to its recovery, as he prized it very highly, and telling them that when he had found the Spaniards he was in search of, he should send for his steed again. It was from no want of care on the part of the Itzaex, but rather from an excess of it, that Morgillo lost his life under their management; for in their anxiety to effect a cure, and regarding the animal as one endowed with reason, they gave him poultry and other meat to eat, and presented him with bunches of flowers, as they were accustomed to do to persons of rank when they were sick; a species of attention somewhat similar to that which the fool laughed at in King Lear, when he speaks of the cockney who for 'a pure kindness to his horse, buttered his hay.' The consequence of this unaccustomed style of medical treatment was, that Morgillo languished and died, and then a worse evil befell, for, observes the pious Villagutierre, "though some people say Canek burnt his idols in the presence of Cortes, there was in reality no burning of idols or anything else in that city of Tayasal; on the contrary, by leaving the horse with the infidel Itzaex, they obtained a greater and still more abominable idol than the many they had before." The meaning of this sentence is subsequently explained by the worthy chronicler informing us that, on the death of Morgillo, the Itzaex raised its effigy "in stone and mortar, very perfect," and worshipped it as a divinity. It was seated on its hind-quarters, on the floor of one of the temples, rising on its fore legs, with its hind legs bent under it. These barbarians adored it as the god of thunder and thunderbolts, calling him Tzinachac, which means the bride of thunder, or the thunderbolt. They gave it this name from having seen some of the Spaniards who were with Cortes fire their muskets over the horses' heads when they were hunting deer, and they believed the horses were the cause of the noise that was made, which they took for thunder, and the flash of the discharge and the smoke of the gunpowder for a thunderbolt."—Fancourt's History of Yucatan. Athenæum. 1854, p. 109.