Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/765

 1851 the great experiment of Foucault with the pendulum, showed to the human eye the earth in motion around its own axis. To make the matter complete, this experiment was publicly made in one of the churches at Rome by the eminent astronomer, Father Secchi, of the Jesuits, in 1852—just two hundred and twenty years after the Jesuits had secured Galileo's condemnation.

 

UITE a number of delusions find a common point of origin in the wide-spread belief that our thoughts and actions are to be completely explained by reference to what our consciousness tells us and what our will directs. The equally important realm of the unconscious and the involuntary is too apt to be overlooked. It is true that we are ready to admit that, in some unusual and semi-morbid conditions, persons will show these untoward phenomena; but we are slow to believe that they have any bearing upon the soundly reasoned and skillfully directed actions of our own intelligence. Accordingly, when from time to time there comes to the front some phenomenon diverging from the ordinary experience of mankind and apparently revealing obscure laws, we fly to some unproved and extreme explanation, and fail to recognize in our daily unconscious and involuntary activity the true source of the apparent mystery. While it is very reasonable to trust the verdict of our consciousness, yet it is equally