. Faith and free thought. A second course of lectures delivered at the request of the Christian Evidence Society . uage of geometry, in three rectangular co-ordi-nate planes. From the simplest geometrical con-siderations it follows, that if an impulse travel in thedirection D O, the portions of that impulse which are effective in the directionsof three co-ordinate planesO A, OB, O C, will beproportional to a O, b O,c O respectively, the cosinesof the angles which thedirection of the impulsemakes with the threeplanes. Moreover, it is adamical law that waveswill retain their original direction,
. Faith and free thought. A second course of lectures delivered at the request of the Christian Evidence Society . uage of geometry, in three rectangular co-ordi-nate planes. From the simplest geometrical con-siderations it follows, that if an impulse travel in thedirection D O, the portions of that impulse which are effective in the directionsof three co-ordinate planesO A, OB, O C, will beproportional to a O, b O,c O respectively, the cosinesof the angles which thedirection of the impulsemakes with the threeplanes. Moreover, it is adamical law that waveswill retain their original direction, unless that di-rection be changed by reflection or refraction ; conse-quently, if the nervous apparatus of the semicircularcanals be capable of appreciating the relative inten-sities of the impulses communicated to each, whichis without doubt the case, it is obvious that, by meansof these canals, the ear can appreciate the directionfrom which sound proceeds. The faculty of pcrccixing the direction of a sound,and hence the direction whence danger may be appre-hended, must obviously be a much more wide-spread. EVIDENCE OF DESIGN. necessity in the animal economy than the faculty ofdiscriminating tone and quality of sound ; accordingly,the perfect development of the semicircular canals ismet with as low in the scale of organisation as thecartilaginous fishes, while in the cochlea and theossicles we meet with various stages of progressivedevelopment, each obviously adapted to the exigencesof the individual organism ; and especially in the fishand reptile tribes that do not emit vocal sounds, theconstruction of the auditory apparatus, apart from thesemicircular canals, is exceedingly simple. Can anyone really believe that all these admirable adaptationsresulted from blind chance, or from the necessity ofthe case, unintentioned and undesigned ? But the evidence of design in the ear does not endhere ; and in order to render the sequel intelligible tothose who are unacquainted with phys
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Keywords: ., bookcentury, bookdecade1870, booksubjectapologetics, bookyear1876
