Narrative and Miscellaneous Papers, vol 2 | Page 6

Even a railroad generation, that should have faith
in the miracles of velocity, lifts up its hands with an 'Incredulus odi!'
we know that Dr. Nichol speaks the truth; but he seems to speak
falsehood. And the ignorant by-stander prays that the doctor may have
grace given him and time for repentance; whilst his more liberal
companion reproves his want of charity, observing that travellers into
far countries have always had a license for lying, as a sort of tax or fine
levied for remunerating their own risks; and that great astronomers, as
necessarily far travellers into space, are entitled to a double per centage
of the same Munchausen privilege.
Great is the mystery of Space, greater is the mystery of Time; either
mystery grows upon man, as man himself grows; and either seems to
be a function of the godlike which is in man. In reality the depths and
the heights which are in man, the depths by which he searches, the
heights by which he aspires, are but projected and made objective
externally in the three dimensions of space which are outside of him.
He trembles at the abyss into which his bodily eyes look down, or look
up; not knowing that abyss to be, not always consciously suspecting it
to be, but by an instinct written in his prophetic heart feeling it to be,
boding it to be, fearing it to be, and sometimes hoping it to be, the
mirror to a mightier abyss that will one day be expanded in himself.
Even as to the sense of space, which is the lesser mystery than time, I
know not whether the reader has remarked that it is one which swells
upon man with the expansion of his mind, and that it is probably
peculiar to the mind of man. An infant of a year old, or oftentimes even
older, takes no notice of a sound, however loud, which is a quarter of a
mile removed, or even in a distant chamber. And brutes, even of the
most enlarged capacities, seem not to have any commerce with distance:
distance is probably not revealed to them except by a presence, viz., by
some shadow of their own animality, which, if perceived at all, is
perceived as a thing present to their organs. An animal desire, or a deep
animal hostility, may render sensible a distance which else would not
be sensible; but not render it sensible as a distance. Hence perhaps is
explained, and not out of any self- oblivion from higher enthusiasm, a
fact that often has occurred, of deer, or hares, or foxes, and the pack of
hounds in pursuit, chaser and chased, all going headlong over a

precipice together. Depth or height does not readily manifest itself to
_them_; so that any strong motive is sufficient to overpower the sense
of it. Man only has a natural function for expanding on an illimitable
sensorium, the illimitable growths of space. Man, coming to the
precipice, reads his danger; the brute perishes: man is saved; and the
horse is saved by his rider.
But, if this sounds in the ear of some a doubtful refinement, the doubt
applies only to the lowest degrees of space. For the highest, it is certain
that brutes have no perception. To man is as much reserved the
prerogative of perceiving space in its higher extensions, as of
geometrically constructing the relations of space. And the brute is no
more capable of apprehending abysses through his eye, than he can
build upwards or can analyze downwards the ærial synthesis of
Geometry. Such, therefore, as is space for the grandeur of man's
perceptions, such as is space for the benefit of man's towering
mathematic speculations, such is the nature of our debt to Lord
Rosse--as being the philosopher who has most pushed back the
frontiers of our conquests upon this exclusive inheritance of man. We
have all heard of a king that, sitting on the sea-shore, bade the waves,
as they began to lave his feet, upon their allegiance to retire. That was
said not vainly or presumptuously, but in reproof of sycophantic
courtiers. Now, however, we see in good earnest another man, wielding
another kind of sceptre, and sitting upon the shores of infinity, that says
to the ice which had frozen up our progress,--'Melt thou before my
breath!' that says to the rebellious _nebulæ_,--'Submit, and burst into
blazing worlds!' that says to the gates of darkness,--'Roll back, ye
barriers, and no longer hide from us the infinities of God!'
'Come, and I will show you what is beautiful.'
From the days of infancy still lingers in my ears this opening of a prose
hymn by a lady, then very celebrated, viz., the late Mrs. Barbauld. The
hymn began by enticing some solitary infant