Sometime: A Poem

WHAT CAN WE KNOW? BY ATTEWALL WOOTTON.

The materialist sayeth in his heart, "There is nothing that can be known only through one or more of the five senses." The man of faith and hope declares that there are sources of light on earth and in the heavens beyond the ken of mortal vision, and truths to be learned which are out of reach of man's puny telescope or microscope, and beyond the wildest imaginings of earth's greatest scientists or philosophers, some of which may be reached through humility, faith, and obedience to laws underlying those truths. The materialist puts in claims for the reliability of sense perception which are not warranted when we take into consideration how deceptive these senses prove in many cases. The sense of sight is the one most relied on for general information, but how often it plays pranks on even the doubting Thomases, who must see or not believe! Who has not at sometime put his hand on relief painting to ascertain whether it was actual or deceptive? Who could undoubtingly believe his own eyes after an evening spent in witnessing the wonders of modern necromancy? Vessels below the horizon have often been seen inverted in the air. The ordinary mirror found in every home performs a deception perfect and complete. These with the various forms of hallucination such as occur in many cases of nervous disorders, should teach at least, that sight perception is not altogether infallible. The astronomer tells us that light from some of the distant stars has been three hundred years reaching us, so we see them as they were several generations ago; while some of them may have ceased to emit light-rays altogether.

522 IMPROVEMENT ERA.

The ear, also, is often deceived by ringing sensations, by echoes, ventriloquism, and of late by the phonograph. By its use the people of the future may hear the voices of their progenitors years after their tongues are crumbled to dust. Many people have been deceived by hearing their names called when it was only the result of abnormal nerve action. To prove that the sense of touch is not always reliable, it is

necessary only to cross the fingers and place them on a small object like a pea, allowing both fingers to touch it at the same time, when the object will appear to the touch as two. The conjuror will press a coin in the palm of one's hand, and, while closing the hand, remove the money, but while the impress remains, one would be almost willing to stake his life that the coin was still there. The mesmerist, or hypnotist, will make his semi-conscious subject imagine any taste or smell desired, and the memory will retain the sensations even after the mesmeric influence has passed off.

Who can tell what conditions surround us, yet unknown to science, that may cause our senses to make false reports of the outer world to the thinking, conscious being within, called self? Man knows but little of his surroundings here below, but the further his mind reaches out in research and investigation, the more limited appear the powers of his senses. The mind is continuously reaching out beyond the bounds of experience and forming hypotheses from which to reason on the products of sense per- Who has ever perceived ception in order to test their reliability. through the senses, the molecule, the atom or the universal ether through which light and heat are supposed to be transmitted? Many truths that are impossible of demonstration through the senses are more positively known to be truths than are the outward phenomena of objects that affect the senses. We can know that space is boundless, better than we can know that grass is green, for the opposite of the first is unthinkable, while our eyes have often been deceived in color; we can know that duration is infinite, better than that our friends are speaking to us ; we can be

more sure of the eternal duration of matter than of the temperature of water by the touch. While men dispute over sense