240 PETER GUTHRIE TAIT 



" ' Only for another half-century let us keep our hells and heavens and gods.' It is 

 a piteous plea ; and it has soiled the hearts of these prophets, great ones and blessed, 

 giving light to their generation, and dear in particular to our mind and heart. These 

 sickly dreams of hysterical women and half-starved men, what have they to do with 

 the sturdy strength of a wide-eyed hero who fears no foe with pen or club ? This 

 sleepless vengeance of fire upon them that have not seen and have not believed, what 

 has it to do with the gentle patience of the investigator that shines through every page 

 of this book, that will ask only consideration and not belief for anything that has not 

 with infinite pains been wholly established ? That which you keep in your hearts, my 

 brothers, is the slender remnant of a system which has made its red mark in history, 

 and still lives to threaten mankind. The grotesque forms of its intellectual belief have 

 survived the discredit of its moral teaching. Of this what the kings could bear with, 

 the nations have cut down ; and what the nations left, the right hand of man by man 

 revolts against day by day. You have stretched out your hands to save the dregs of 

 the sifted sediment of a residuum. Take heed lest you have given soil and shelter to 

 the seed of that awful plague which has destroyed two civilisations, and but barely 

 failed to slay such promise of good as is now struggling to live among men." 



Racy and instructive though it was, Clifford's review did not really touch 

 the central doctrines of Stewart and Tail's speculations. One of their aims was 

 to show that there was nothing in physical science which denied the possibility 

 of our intelligences existing after death in another universe. They also argued 

 that certain aspects of the modern theory of energy suggested, if they did not 

 demonstrate, the probability of such an Unseen Universe. The reasonings 

 could not satisfy either the extreme right or the extreme left. It was little 

 wonder then that the prophet and the agnostic alike fell foul of the book, 

 the prophet, because the authors strove to bring under the Law of Continuity 

 certain mysteries of his faith, the agnostic, because starting from the known 

 they endeavoured to cross the fringe of the unknown. 



Many of the ideas and speculations put forward by Stewart and Tait 

 were novelties to the vast majority of their readers. These ideas are now 

 familiar as the sunshine. It would be impossible to say, however, to what 

 extent the authors of The Unseen Universe impressed some of their views 

 upon the world, or to what degree they were simply the earliest exponents of 

 thoughts which were gradually taking shape in the human mind. 



The tenth edition of The Unseen Universe was translated into French 

 by a naval Lieutenant A.-B., with a preface to French readers by Professor 

 D. de St-P. (Paris Libraire Germer Bailliere et Cie, 1883). 



In 1878 Stewart and Tait published a sequel to The Unseen Universe 

 under the name of Paradoxical Philosophy. The book was cast into the form 



