no one has yet suggested the exceedingly simple and obvious explanation that the flash being oblique and instantaneous appears to start from the bottom or top, whichever is nearest to the spectator, owing to the time required by the light to travel over the different interval of space. The top of a flash may be a mile farther off than the bottom.

BEAUTY.

MISCELLANY.

Forms of beauty, whether elementary or complex, are primarily found in nature, but the creative idea is often marred, dross debasing the pure gold. Yet nature strives to purge away impurities, to cast out deformities, and to preserve and develop the normal type; whenever nature reaches her standard of perfection she is beautiful. Beauty constitutes the ideal, and the true ideal in art corresponds to the perfected real in nature. Outward and visible beauty is announced and determined by the response and approval of the mind, the mind being made for beauty as the eye is constructed for light: the inward intuitions planted in man pulsate, as chords of a lyre, to the vibrations or impressions from without. Beauty obtains a twofold sanction when it exists as the perfection of outward nature, and when it obtains the approving response of the best minds. Beauty stands in some undefined relation with truth and goodness. Partial and incompleted beauty often contains an admixture of error and badness, but perfect beauty is without alloy, and lies in continuity with truth and goodness; the three conjoined making an unbroken circuit, each fortifying the other. All beauty becomes the more confirmed when it has been sanctioned and made manifest by the great artists of the world, and when it is embodied in the master-works of the foremost architects, sculptors, or painters. Beauty resides within every true and good work of art, just as the soul dwells within the human body -it is there to a certainty-we have only to find it out. And forms of beauty appear with overwhelming evidence when they obtain, as just indicated, a threefold warranty: when they possess the impress of the Creator in nature; when they have gained the approval of the artist by a place in universal art; and lastly, when they have awakened within humanity an allegiance and a love. And these manifold phases of beauty declare what they are by the pleasure they impart beauty always pleases, and what displeases is unbeautiful; it is her privilege to lead from joy to joy. The worth of any beauty is measured by the dignity of the emotions awakened; the use of beauty is to elevate, adorn, and add to the enjoyment of life.-Good Words.

WHAT IS A COLD BATH ?-The season of the year when very many people who have experienced pleasure and advantage from a daily cold bath have to discontinue the practice has come. Months will elapse before the return of genial weather will allow of their indulgence in what may be termed man's natural stimulant. Among the young and robust there are a large number who are able to bathe even in the depths of winter; the advantage of so doing is, however, questionable. But let it be once well understood what a cold bath really is, and the course by which we can avoid Scylla and Charybdis will be obvious. A cold bath is not necessarily a bath in water of the temperature of the atmosphere. A bath is truly and really cold when it produces a certain physiological effect—a slight momentary shock followed by pleasant and lasting reaction. These effects are for the majority of people most pleasantly obtained by bathing in water about 35° to 40° below the temperature of the body-the usual temperature of unheated water in June and July. Bearing this in mind, we can enjoy our physiological "cold" bath as safely and pleasantly at Christmas as at midsummer, and there is no necessity for the most timid or weakly to discontinue his morning tub because the summer weather is over. When the water sinks below a temperature of 60°, let it be heated to that point and then used, and we shall still have our cold" bath, though of heated water. The daily stimulant effect of such a bath is so beneficial to the great majority of persons, and is of such marked service in maintaining health, that it is very important to have it widely known that a cold bath may be taken all the year round, provided cold is not mistaken to mean

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at the temperature of the outer air." To heat our bath during the winter months is too often thought to be unmanly, while in reality it is truly scientific, and to bathe in unheated water all the year round, whatever the temperature that water may be, is to prove one's self an ignorant slave of outward circumstances. Lancet.

EYE MEMORY.-Look steadily at a bright object, keep the eyes immovably on it for a short time, and then close them. An image of the object remains; it becomes, in fact, visible to the closed eyes. The vividness and duration of such impressions vary considerably with different individuals, and the power of retaining them may be cultivated. Besides this sort of retinal image thus impressed, there is another kind of visual image that may be obtained by an effort of memory. Certain adepts at mental arithmetic use the "mind's eye" as a substitute for slate and pencil by holding in visual memory pictures of the figures

upon which they are operating, and those of their results. In my youthful days I was acquainted with an eccentric old man who then lived at Kilburn Priory, where he surrounded himself with curious old furniture reputed to have originally belonged to Cardinal Wolsey, and which, as I was told, he bequeathed to the Queen at his death. He was the then celebrated, but now forgotten, "Memory Thompson," who in his early days was a town traveller (for a brewery, if I remember rightly), and who trained himself to the performance of wonderful feats of eye memory. He could close his eyes and picture within himself a panorama of Oxford Street and other parts of London, in which picture every inscription over every shop was so perfect and reliable that he could describe and certify to the names and occupations of the shopkeeping inhabitants of all the houses of these streets at certain dates, when Post-Office Directories were not as they now are. Although Memory Thompson is forgotten, his special faculty is just now receiving some attention, and it is proposed to specially cultivate it in elementary schools by placing objects before the pupils for a given time, then taking them away and requiring the pupil to draw them. That such a faculty exists, and may be of great service, is unquestionable. Systematic efforts to educate it, if successful, will do good service to the rising generation; and, even should the proposed training afford smaller results than its projectors anticipate, the experiments, if carefully made and registered, cannot fail to improve our knowledge of mental physiology.-Gentleman's Magazine.

INDIAN IDEAS OF LIGHTNING.-The Indians of America have some curious ideas about thunder and lightning. Recently two Indian women were struck by lightning in the neighborhood of Fort Bufford as they were carrying provisions to the garrison. The Indians could not be induced to stay near the bodies, which they thought to have become the habitation of an evil spirit. The catastrophe was attributed to the presence of whites. Nearly all the Indians of the United States imagine thunder to be caused by the flapping of the wings of a gigantic bird, while the flashes are iron serpents which everywhere accompany this animal. The ancient tribes of the Mississippi valley worshipped thunder in the form of a god, who was to be propitiated with sacrifices; they offered him a dog whenever it thundered, or a child fell ill. This god was believed to produce fires. The natives of Honduras burn cotton seeds on the altar of the gods whenever it thunders. More southern tribes do not offer sacrifices, but prostrate themselves abjectly on the ground on approach of a thunder-storm (which naturally

diminishes their chance of being struck). In Mexico sites for temples are supposed to be indicated by the Deity where lightning strikes. -English Mechanic.

THE ENGLISH; LANGUAGE.
A PRETTY deer is dear to me,
A hare with downy hair;

I love a hart with all my heart,
But barely bear a bear.
'Tis plain that no one takes a plane
To have a pair of pairs;
A rake, though, often takes a rake
To tear away the tares,

All rays raise thyme, time razes all ;
And, through the whole, hole wears.
A writ, in writing "right" may write
It "wright," and still be wrong-
For "write and " rite "
are neither "right,"
And don't to write belong.
Beer often brings a bier to man,

Coughing a coffin brings,

And too much ale will make us ail,
As well as other things.
The person lies who says he lies
When he is but reclining;
And, when consumptive folks decline,
They all decline declining.

A quail don't quail before a storm-
A bough will bow before it ;
We cannot rein the rain at all-

No earthly powers reign o'er it.
The dyer dyes awhile, then dies;
To dye he's always trying,
Until upon his dying-bed

He thinks no more of dyeing.
A son of Mars mars many a sun;

All deys must have their days,
And every knight should pray each night
To Him who weighs his ways.

'Tis meet that man should mete out meat
To feed misfortune's son ;

The fair should fare on love alone,
Else one cannot be won.

A lass, alas! is something false;
Of faults a maid is made;
Her waist is but a barren waste-
Though stayed, she is not staid.

The springs spring forth in Spring, and shoots
Shoot forward one and all;

Though Summer kills the flowers, it leaves

The leaves to fall in Fall.

I would a story here commence,
But you might find it stale;
So let's suppose that we have reached
The tail end of our tale.

LOVE SONG.

My will is gone to sleep, dear,
And only you can wake it;
My heart is in your keep, dear,

To hold or drop and break it.
One day I hold most dear, sweet,
The day when first I met you,
One thing I see most clear, sweet,
I never can forget you.
Daylight without your eyes, dear,
For me all brightness misses,
And most in life I prize dear,
The memory of your kisses.

WALTER H. POLLOCK.

IV.

ON THE LIMITS OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE CONSIDERED WITH REFERENCE TO THE UNITY OF NATURE.

AND yet, although it is to Nature in this highest and widest sense that we belong-although it is out of this fountain that we have come, and it is out of its fulness that we have received all that we have and are, men have doubted, and will doubt again, whether we can be sure of anything concerning it.

If this terrible misgiving had affected individual minds alone in moments of weariness and despair, there would have been little to say about it. Such moments may come to all of us, and the distrust which they leave behind them may be the sorest of human trials. It is no unusual result of abortive yet natural effort and of innate yet baffled curiosity. But this doubt, which is really nothing

NEW SERIES.-VOL. XXXIII., No. 2

more than a morbid effect of weakness and fatigue, has been embraced as a doctrine and systematized into a philosophy. Nor can it be denied that there are some partial aspects of our knowledge in which its very elements seem to dissolve and disappear under the power of selfanalysis, so that the sum of it is reduced to little more than a consciousness of ignorance. All that we know of matter is so different from all that we are conscious of in mind that the relations between the two are really incomprehensible and inconceivable to us. Hence this relation constitutes a region of darkness in which it is easy to lose ourselves in an abyss of utter scepticism. What proof have we-it has been often asked-that the mental impressions we derive from objects are in any way like the truth? We know only the phenomena, not the reality of things. We are conversant with things as they appear,

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not with things as they are “in themselves." What proof have we that these phenomena give us any real knowledge of the truth? How, indeed, is it possible that knowledge so "relative" and so "conditioned"-relative to a mind so limited, and conditioned by senses which tell us of nothing but sensationshow can such knowledge be accepted as substantial? Is it not plain that our conceptions of creation and of a Creator are all mere Is it not our own shadow that we are always chasing? Is it not a mere bigger image of ourselves to which we are always bowing down?

anthropomorphism?"

It is upon suggestions such as these that the Agnostic philosophy, or the philosophy of Nescience, is foundedthe doctrine that, concerning all the highest problems which it both interests and concerns us most to know, we never can have any knowledge or any rational and assured belief.

It may be well to come to the consideration of this doctrine along those avenues of approach which start from the conception we have now gained of the unity of nature.

Nothing, certainly, in the human mind is more wonderful than this--that it is conscious of its own limitations. Such consciousness would be impossible if these limitations were in their nature absolute. The bars which we feel so much, and against which we so often beat in vain, are bars which could not be felt at all unless there were something in us which seeks a wider scope. It is as if these bars were a limit of oppor.tunity rather than a boundary of power. No absolute limitation of mental faculty ever is, or ever could be, felt by the creatures whom it affects. Of this we have abundant evidence in the lower animals, and in those lower faculties of our own nature which are of like kind to theirs. All their powers, and many of our own, are exerted without any sense of limitation, and this because of the very fact that the limitation of them is absolute and complete. In their own nature they admit of no larger use. The field of effort and of attainable enjoyment is, as regards them, co-extensive with the whole field in view. Nothing is seen or felt by them which may not be possessed. In such possession

In

all exertion ends and all desire is satisfied. This is the law of every faculty subject to a limit which is absolute. physics, the existence of any pressure is the index of a potential energy which, though it may be doing no work, is yet always capable of doing it. And so in the intellectual world, the sense of pressure and confinement is the index of powers which under other conditions are capable of doing what they cannot do at present. It is in these conditions that the barrier consists, and at least to a large extent they are external. What we feel, in short, is less an incapacity than a restraint.

So much undoubtedly is to be said as to the nature of those limitations on our mental powers of which we are conscious. And the considerations thus presented to us are of immense importance in qualifying the conclusions to be drawn from the facts of consciousness. They do not justify, although they may account for, any feeling of despair as to the ultimate accessibility of that knowledge which we so much desire. On the contrary, they suggest the idea that there is within us a reserve of power to some unknown and indefinite extent. It is as if we could understand indefinitely more than we can discover, if only some higher intelligence would explain it to

us.

But if it is of importance to take note of this reserve of power of which we are conscious in ourselves, it is at least of equal importance to estimate aright the conceptions to which we can and do attain without drawing upon this reserve at all. Not only are the bars confining us bars which we can conceive removed, but they are bars which in certain directions offer no impediment at all to a boundless range of vision. Perhaps there is no subject on which the fallacies of philosophic phraseology have led to greater errors. "That the finite cannot comprehend the infinite" is a proposition constantly propounded as an undoubted and all-comprehensive truth. Such truth as does belong to it seems to come from the domain of physics, in which it represents the axiom that a part cannot be equal to the whole. From this, in the domain of mind, it comes to represent the truth, equally undeniable, that we cannot know all

that infinity contains. But the meaning into which it is liable to pass when applied to mind is that man cannot conceive infinity. And never was any prop osition so commonly accepted which, in this sense, is so absolutely devoid of all foundation. Not only is infinity conceivable by us, but it is inseparable from conceptions which are of all others the most familiar. Both the great conceptions of space and time are, in their very nature, infinite. We cannot conceive of either of these as subject to limitation. We cannot conceive of a moment after which there shall be no more time, nor of a boundary beyond which there is no more space. This means that we cannot but think of space as infinite, and of time as everlasting.

If these two conceptions stood alone they would be enough, for in regard to them the only incapacity under which we labor is the incapacity to conceive the finite. For all the divisions of space and time with which we are so familiar our days and months and years, and our various units of distance-we can only think of as bits and fragments of a whole which is illimitable. But although these great conceptions of space and time are possibly the only conceptions to which the idea of infinity attaches as an absolute necessity of thought, they are by no means the only conceptions to which the same idea can be attached, and probably ought to be so. The conception of matter is one, and the conception of force is another, to which we do not, perhaps, attach, as of necessity, the idea of indestructibility, or the idea of eternal existence and of infinite extension. But it is remarkable that in exact proportion as science advances, we are coming to understand that both of these are conceptions to which the idea of infinity not only may be, but ought to be, attached. That is to say, that the eternal existence of matter and the eternal duration of force are not only conceivable but true. Nay, it may be our ignorance alone that makes us think we can conceive the contrary. It is possible to conceive of space being utterly devoid of matter, only, perhaps, because we are accustomed to see and to think of spaces which are indeed empty of visible substances. We can expel also the invisible substances or gases of the atmosphere, and we can.

um.

speak and think of the result as a vacuBut we know now that when air and all other terrestrial gases are gone the luminiferous medium enains; and so far as we have means of knowing, this medium is ubiquitous and omnipresent in the whole universe of space. In like manner we are accustomed to see solid matter so dissipated as to be invisible, intangible, and wholly imperceptible; and therefore we think we can imagine matter to be really destructible. But the more we know of it the more certain we become that it cannot be destroyed, and can only be redistributed. In like manner, in regard to force, we are accustomed to see matter in what is called statical equilibrium—that is to say, at rest; and so, perhaps, we think we can conceive the cessation or extinction of force. But here again the progress of research is tending more and more to attach irrevocably the idea of indestructibility-that is, of eternal existenceto that which we know as force. The truth is that this conception is really implicitly involved in the conception. of the indestructibility of matter. For all that we know of matter is inseparably connected with the forces which it exerts, or which it is capable of exerting, or which are being exerted in it. The force of gravitation seems to be allpervading, and to be either an inherent power or property in every kind, or almost every kind, of matter, or else to be the result of some kind of energy which is universal and unquenchable. All bodies, however passive and inert they may seem to be under certain conditions, yet indicate by their very existence the power of those molecular forces to which the cohesion of their atoms is due. The fact is now familiar to us that the most perfect stillness and apparent rest in many forms of matter is but the result of a balance or equilibrium maintained between forces of the most tremendous energy, which are ready to burst forth at a moment's notice, when the conditions are changed under which that balance is maintained. And this principle, which has become familiar in the case of what are called explosive substances, because of the ease and the certainty with which the balanced forces can be 'liberated, is a principle which really prevails in the composition of all