Lanterna Rally

Author: Elizabeth Osgood Goodrich Willard

Publisher: Theclassics.Us

Published: 2013-09

Total Pages: 126

ISBN-13: 9781230466569

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1867 edition. Excerpt: ...aid it and teach it to reach forth its hand and grasp it. Then we hold something a little farther off, and by aiding it, teach it to reach forth its hand a little farther still, until it feels and grasps the second object. Or when the child is old enough to creep or walk, it sees and puts its hand upon a chair, then it moves along to another object, which ii takes hold of, then to another, and so on. In tliis way it learns the relative distances of objects; that is by sight and a sense of forward bodily motion, or the difference of time that it takes to move to and from different objects at different distances, aided by the sense of feeling. A sense 1 of forward bodily motion is a sense of time, because time is a measurement of forward motion. Doubtless animals learn relative distances in a similar way, but by the instinct of transmitted powers from generation to generation, it has become a very easy process for the young of both human and brute animals. Distance itself cannot be an object of perception, because space is invisible. It is the relative sizes of objects, at intervening distances, that give us our ideas of distance, by the experiences of the measurement of time by forward motion. Relative sizes and appearances of form and color are objects of perception, because they belong to the object itself. They are visible, perceptible things; they are apparent, because they are the physical elements which constitute the object and make impressions upon our nervous centers. Different sizes, different forms and different colors make different impressions upon the eye, and these differences are therefore objects of perception. Perhaps we judge of size as much by our experience and knowledge, or judgment of distance by the forward motion...