ut much slower than the marksman travels. Mr. Scott
probably would not like to contemplate the fact that the elephant,
properly speaking, swings round and hits the bullet. To us it appears
full of a rich cosmic humour.

I will only give one other example of the astronomical proofs:

'If the earth were a globe, the distance round the surface, say, at 45
degrees south latitude, could not possibly be any greater than the same
latitude north; but since it is found by navigators to be twice the
distance--to say the least of it--or double the distance it ought to be
according to the globular theory, it is a proof that the earth is not a
globe.'

This sort of thing reduces my mind to a pulp. I can faintly resist when
a man says that if the earth were a globe cats would not have four
legs; but when he says that if the earth were a globe cats would not
have five legs I am crushed.

But, as I have indicated, it is not in the scientific aspect of this
remarkable theory that I am for the moment interested. It is rather with
the difference between the flat and the round worlds as conceptions in
art and imagination that I am concerned. It is a very remarkable thing
that none of us are really Copernicans in our actual outlook upon
things. We are convinced intellectually that we inhabit a small
provincial planet, but we do not feel in the least suburban. Men of
science have quarrelled with the Bible because it is not based upon the
true astronomical system, but it is certainly open to the orthodox to
say that if it had been it would never have convinced anybody.

If a single poem or a single story were really transfused with the
Copernican idea, the thing would be a nightmare. Can we think of a
solemn scene of mountain stillness in which some prophet is standing in
a trance, and then realize that the whole scene is whizzing round like a
zoetrope at the rate of nineteen miles a second? Could we tolerate the
notion of a mighty King delivering a sublime fiat and then remember
that for all practical purposes he is hanging head downwards in space? A
strange fable might be written of a man who was blessed or cursed with
the Copernican eye, and saw all men on the earth like tintacks
clustering round a magnet. It would be singular to imagine how very
different the speech of an aggressive egoist, announcing the
independence and divinity of man, would sound if he were seen hanging on
to the planet by his boot soles.

For, despite Mr. Ward