It is as though time had no existence for humanity. Space also apparently does not count for much with the race. If the singular facts are true which we hear, two persons separated by a great distance have the same thoughts at the same instant; not the universal thought naturally inherent in the human mind, but entirely personal. Has sympathy--which is as essentially human as it is mysterious--a relationship with electricity, which is a distinctly physical phenomenon? On those who reject such a supposition should fail the burden of finding another. Each of us sees a landscape according to our sight; to the short-sighted (and this is a normal condition) the landscape appears simple; trees here, there houses and streets, men walking; but with strong glasses, as is well known, it is possible to see many more things. Again, the short-sighted can distinguish only the colour, veins and serrated edge of a leaf, but if this were placed under a microscope they would see a surface of green glittering with light, and strewn with gold and diamonds. If there are two ways of looking at a leaf, there are at least three of looking at life; it can be seen from its pleasant or painful side, this is to feel that we live only; then we can grasp it with regard to the duties it imposes on us. This is a right point of view, but it shows one side only; or we may consider it as science represents it, that is its moral, rational, and religious aspect combined. The more we observe and the more we reflect on what we observe, so much the more do we exercise our faculty of understanding things; and according as this faculty approaches or withdraws from the normal type, so it will correspond either with the leaf seen by the naked eye or with it as seen under the microscope. OPPOSITION There are two kinds of opposition. Very often we come upon a true thought in a book which shocks us because for the moment we do not recognise its truth. We also forget that all truths can be viewed at various angles; or we do not understand a truth because it is expressed in a novel way. A manual treating of physics will best explain the reason of our false impression. When a ray of light is transmitted from one medium to another of different density, as from air to water, a change of direction is impressed on the ray, making the straight line appear broken; this change of direction is called _refraction_. Cardinal Newman made a very true observation on this subject. “If an idea is presented unexpectedly to us,” he said, “clothed in words to which we are unaccustomed, it is sufficient to cause us to speak of it as erroneous; this illusion is only a simple effect of the _refraction of words_; that is to say, that in the mind of the writer of this truth which startles us, the idea followed a straight line, but in our mind it became broken.”