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Show PHANTASMS OF THE BRAIN. The ancients believed that at the point where man's rule and power over the forces of the world ended, there destiny begin; and if a ship was wrecked at sea, or if a country was devastated by an epidemic, as such catastrophes were clearly not brought about by man's wishes or desires, they thought that they could only be caused by some mysterious superhuman power who meddled with, and ruled over, human affairs. We cannot certainly be surprised that such should have been the views and opinions of persons who were ignorant of the fact that a storm or an epidemic is but a natural effort resulting from natural causes, and that their occurrence is governed by laws as certain and invariable as that of gravitation. In a country where there were supposed to be gods of the sea and gods of the woods, rulers of the winds and deities of the river, there manifestly was but little room in which man's free will could assert itself. But now, since we know that we have in truth only to contend with natural forces, and those too, of a constant and uniform character, we can, by studying their laws, render them subservient to our wishers, and make them become our ministers, instead of allowing them to be our masters. The electric current which, in the form of lightning, was once the fiery sword of ancient deity, has now become the willing messenger of man, and carries his commands to the uttermost parts of the earth. Thus one of the most marvelous and fearful instruments of destiny, as it appeared to the inhabitants of Rome and Athens some twenty centuries ago, has in these later days lost much of its terrible character; and to the great disgust of Jupiter and the other lords of Olympus, little Mr. Dilettante, at his scientific séances, can give you as much lightning as you wish. The fancy and imagination are more powerful and less subject to the dictates of reason in the night than they are in the day-time; the land of darkness may be considered as their proper and natural habitat; and like the bats they are most busy when the sun has left us. Ignorance is a land of darkness, and when mortals had not the remotest idea of what was the cause or nature of an eclipse, and when they knew "less than nothing" about electricity, it is hardly a matter to be wondered at that, as knowledge had omitted to furnish the universe for them with facts and realities, they allowed imagination to supply the deficiency with the first fictions and fancies that presented themselves. World was to them a tabula rasa [unreadable line] thought it. Besides these two causes of fatalism, namely, the existence of evil and the transcendent power and vastness of the universe as compared with man, there is a third to which we may here refer, and that is the existence, or seeming existence, in the world of what we are pleased to call "chance." Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as "chance, " for nothing takes place without there being some cause of its occurrence, although in many cases that case may, owing to its remoteness or minuteness, be concealed from our view. Nevertheless whenever an event happens, of the cause of which they are entirely ignorant, men are want to assume that it has come to pass without being caused at all; or, as they term it, by "chance." |