FUNDAMENTALS
Every life is dominated by a fundamental note, good or bad. All its overtones will ultimately correspond.
The wires strung from pole to pole are set into oscillation by the wind, somewhat as the strings of a violin are set into vibration by the bow. In skilful hands the violin bow can be made to bring forth from the string one powerful fundamental note and several overtones of higher pitch, but in perfect harmony with the fundamental. But the wind is a very skilful performer, and brings forth at the same time not only the deepest fundamental bass note of the wire, but a great variety of overtones, both harmonious and discordant. In fact, the many wires strung overhead, from pole to pole, constitute splendid Eolian harps.—Telephony.
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See [Vital Faiths].
FURY INCREASING STRENGTH
The almost superhuman pluck of certain prize-fighting animals—bulldogs and badgers, for instance—may in reality be founded on a temporary insensibility to pain, and the evident advantages of that negative endowment suggest its development by the agency of natural selection. Individuals gifted with that faculty of emotional anesthesia were less likely to succumb to the terrors of a life-and-death struggle, and therefore more apt to prevail in that struggle for existence which in a state of nature is implied by the frequent necessity of contesting the physical superiority of sexual rivals or alien antagonists. The invigorating tendency of certain passions may have been developed in a similar manner. The formidable and, indeed, quite abnormal strength of infuriated man is so well known that even an athlete will hesitate to try conclusions with an adversary under the influence of raging passions, and in such moments fury-inspired vigor has often accomplished feats which afterward surprized even the hero of the exploit. “The saints do help a man in a desperate plight,” said an old Creole planter, who had rescued his family from the attack of a brutal negro. The same strength-sustaining influence of fury may explain the almost miraculous victories of small bodies of desperate men over large armies of better-armed foes, as in the three murderous battles which the rustic avengers of John Huss gained against the ironclad legions of his enemies, or in that still less expected defeat of an entire Russian army by a few hundred followers of the hero-prophet Shamyl. Religious frenzy has often produced a similar effect, and on any other theory only a miracle could explain the almost constant victories of the Saracens, who, in spite of determined resistance of millions of better disciplined and physically superior opponents, succeeded in less than a century in extending their empire from the Ganges to the Bay of Biscay.—Felix Oswald, The Open Court.
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FUTURE DISCOVERIES
In view of the marvelous discoveries which the last half century has witnessed no one can doubt that there is quite as much that is marvelous to come. The dweller on the planet in the year 2000 will undoubtedly look back on these times with a good deal of the same feeling that we of the present day have for those who lived in the days of the stage-coach and the weekly mail; and it is quite likely that the philosopher of that period will speak of ours as “the good old times.” But however that may be, and whatever the advance they have made in our condition, we may be sure that they will find all their improvements as necessary to existence as we now find the telegraph and railroad and electric. If they have established intercommunication between the planets, they will be just as dependent on those new features as we are on the latest appliances of our civilization. And if the air line to Jupiter should break down in such a way as to cripple the Mars cut-off or the branch to Saturn, the public will be just as much hindered and embarrassed as we are by a wire-disabling blizzard in the commercial metropolis or a fire in a central telegraph office.—Detroit Free Press.