at is the difference between the soul and the mind?
Is it contrary to the rules of Vegetarianism to eat eggs?
In looking over these questions, which were wholly unprompted, and
have been copied almost at random from the book alluded to, we see
that many of them are suggested directly by natural objects, and are
not such as had an interest conferred on them' by previous culture.
Now the fact is beyond the boy's control, and so certainly is the
desire to know its cause. The sole question then is, whether this
desire is to be gratified or not. Who created the fact? Who
implanted the desire? Certainly not man. Who then will undertake to
place himself between the desire and its fulfilment, and proclaim a
divorce between them? Take, for example, the case of the wetted
towel, which at first sight appears to be one of the most unpromising
questions in the list. Shall we tell the proposer to repress his
curiosity, as the subject is improper for him to know, and thus
interpose our wisdom to rescue the boy from the consequences of a wish
which acts to his prejudice? Or, recognising the propriety of the
question, how shall we answer it? It is impossible to answer it
without reference to the laws of optics--without making the boy to
some extent a natural philosopher. You may say that the effect is due
to the reflection of light at the common surface of two media of
different refractive indices. But this answer presupposes on the part
of the boy a knowledge of what reflection and refraction are, or
reduces you to the necessity of explaining them.
On looking more closely into the matter, we find that our wet towel
belongs to a class of phenomena which have long excited the interest
of philosophers. The towel is white for the same reason that snow is
white, that foam is white, that pounded granite or glass is white, and
that the salt we use at table is white. On quitting one medium and
entering another, a portion of light is always reflected, but on this
condition--the media must possess different refractive indices. Thus,
when we immerse a bit of glass in water, light is reflected from the
common surface of both, and it is this light which enables us to see
the glass. But when a transparent solid is immersed in a liquid of
the same refractive index as itself, it immediately disappears. I
remember once dropping the eyeball of an ox into water; it vanished as
if by magic, with the exception of the crystalline lens, an
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