Dec. 28.
Professor J. Arthur Thomson is a noted scientist and has the pen of a ready writer. He dis-cusecs popular science in many magazines and does a useful work in expounding scientific data in terms that can be under-Stood by those who have little or no knowledge of the subject. He has taken for his text in one disquisition, "The sense of the uncanny," and postulates that this sense is universal except in se of two classes of humans: "those of very fine nature and those who are corres-pendingly coarse." This dictum needs a good deal of explanation, There are cultured people to whom music is but an expensive noise and others to hom the grandest scenery in the American schoolboy's phrase, hills and hol: lers." But these people ar2 exceptionable as a chili born with an extra digit or a calf born with six legs instead of four. There are situations in which the hardiest feels a creepy sensation down his spine though he knows there is nothing to be afraid of, he can, with difficulty, refrain from whistling, like a schoolboy pas: ing a graveyard, to keep hi courage up.
To take the first class excluded from participation in the: sense of awesomeness by Professor Thomson, the very coarse, sure: they are to be found chief amongst primitive communities. But it is precisely amongst pr: initive people that we find this sense most clearly manifested. Nature, to untutored man, is a great mystery. The dark forest lures and yet threatens him, the Ming thunder appeals him; it is that terrible thing, the unknown, that daunts his spirit and there is so much that is unknown, It is this fear that prompts the prayer of the Breton fisherman, "Oh, God, help me. Thy sea is so big and my boat is so small.!" Are we not all in the same case as the poor seaman. We are adrift on the sea of life and the sea is very big and our craft is very small; it would be strange, indeed, if we were not conscious at times that there are unknown forces that control our destinies. The ur-expected waits for us at every turning so that "the bestiald schemes of mice and men gary oft agley."
The Chinese, like the Greeks, personalize the great forces of nature, giving thus the surest proof that the spiritual sense of awesomeness is strongly developed in them, It is.often said that Confucius was singularly free from belief in the supernatural and that his philosophy 1s strongly materialistic. But even his robust mind was dominated by a sense of awe. Hearing that the Minister of the Duke of Lu. (the modern Shantung) had offered sacrifice to T'aishan—the sacred mountain—he said, "Does he think that T'aishan has not sense enough to know who should offer the sacrifice?" This being the prerogative of the reigning Duke, the act #howed that the Minister was eneroaching on the priestly rights of his master. But the remark shows that, to Confucius, T'aishan was not a heap of earth and rock but frowning and threatening spirit, well able to discern between right und wrong and eapable of punishing the transgress-
This sense of awesomeness, found in the rudest as well as the most cultured minds, is really the foundation of morality. To the rude savage it is the emergence of conscience} it is a power outside of himself that makes for righteousness, He feels that all his actions are seen and noted by the unseen powers ani that he is somehow on a different plane of life from the dog that follows at his heels when he goes a-hunting. So far from being a mark of degradation the sense of awesomeness is an impulse towards a higher life, There is good and bad in it and the finer spirits begin to separate its promptings and allocate them to good and bad spirits, There are those that tempt to evil and those that beckon to self-denial and rectitude. These are the first promptings towards: religion, and religion has always been the precursor of civil law and morality, But it maybe said we have outgrown all that, The modern scientist has searched infinite space and probed the recesses of the infinitely small and found nothing there that cannot be rationally explained, But has he? It is true that many run to and fro, in these days, and knowledge has been increased. But if the scientist is cognizant of the vastly increased range of our knowledge he is equally conscious of the profounder depths of our ignorance. Years ago we listened to an address in Shanghai on "What can the matter be?" The lecturer gave us men information on the constituency. of matter and the affinities of atoms. If a scientist were called upon to-day to give a lecture ea the same subject he would probably say "There is: no matter. These hills, rocks, metals _etc., have no real existence. They are forms apparent -to such faculties as we possess, but ara only different manifestations of various intangible forces. He knows something of the mode of operation of those forces but of their ultimate essence and primus mobile he knows no more than did the first savage who watched with awe the full moon rising over the sea,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.