40 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



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

 ness. EMERSON. 



III. 



ON PRATER AS A FORM OF PHYSICAL 

 ENERGY. 



THE Editor of the ' Contemporary Keview ' is liberal 

 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 animadversion. 



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 questions. 

 In the fourth century the belief in Antipodes was 

 deemed unscriptural and heretical. The pious Lactan- 

 tius 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.' Lactan- 

 tius was irritated because, in his mind, by education 

 and habit, cosmogony and religion were indissolubly asso- 

 ciated, and, therefore, simultaneously disturbed. 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 separa- 

 tion then attempted by Galileo rousing the animosity 

 and kindling the persecution of the Church. Men still 

 living can remember the indignation excited by the first 



