108 THE UNIVERSE 



causing excessive heat in the west, was produced 

 by light rainfall during the previous year, and the 

 harvesting of large areas in Kansas, Missouri and 

 adjacent territories, thus exposing a dry soil and 

 preventing the accumulation of moisture necessary 

 to form clouds. The succeeding summers justified 

 my position and refuted the predictions of the 

 learned professor and other scientists. 



In mentioning these things I mean no disparage- 

 ment to Prof. Serviss, whom I hold in high esteem, 

 and only find fault with the old traditions which 

 he upholds. 



I am a friend to all scientists and regard them as 

 earnest workers seeking the truth. But they follow 

 accepted and antiquated authority too closely, and 

 thus "the blind lead the blind." They are too often 

 one-sided and impracticable. Men who study apes 

 and beetles or atoms and gases all their lives are 

 no judges of angel's faces or of the scope and de- 

 sign of the universe. Prof. Proctor's testimony 

 that "nine- tenths of the astronomers employ their 

 powers in making observations at great pains and 

 labor which are not worth the paper on which they 

 are recorded," is a plain statement of their tendency 

 to be cranky and impracticable. 



Some are so one-sided they think mathematics is 

 everything. Mathematics in its place, like the miser, 

 is good to count gains after they are acquired ; but 

 had man relied on mathematics he would have re- 

 mained as ignorant of the fundamental truths of 

 the universe as the Blackfoot Indians. Newton 

 owed none of his discoveries to mathematics. When 

 his constructive imagination formulated a theory 

 he tried to bolster it up with mathematics. But 



