Prayer as a means to effect a private end is theft and mean- 

 ness. EM ERSON. 



III. 



ON PRATER AS A FORM OF PHYSICAL 

 ENERGY. 



THE Editor of the ' Contemporary Review ' is lib- 

 eral enough to grant me space for some remarks 

 upon a subject, which, though my relation to it was 

 simply that of a vehicle of transmission, has brought 

 down upon me a considerable amount of animadver- 

 sion. 



It may be interesting to some of my readers if I 

 glance at a few cases illustrative of the history of the 

 human mind, in relation to this and kindred ques- 

 tions. In the fourth century the belief in Antipodes 

 was deemed unscriptural and heretical. The pious 

 Lactantius was as angry with the people who held this 

 notion as my censors are now with me, and quite as 

 unsparing in his denunciations of their * Monstrosities.' 

 Lactantius was irritated because, in his mind, by edu- 

 cation and habit, cosmogony and religion were indis- 

 solubly associated, and, therefore, simultaneously dis- 

 turbed. In the early part of the seventeenth century 

 the notion that the earth was fixed, and that the sun 

 and stars revolved round it daily, was interwoven with 

 religious feeling, the separation then attempted by 

 Galileo rousing the animosity and kindling the perse- 

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