JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 55 
he did the Copernican cosmogony. At this time the law of gravita- 
tion was unknown. It had not yet leaped Minerva-like, fully armed, 
from the brain of the Jupiter of Natural Philosophy—Isaac Newton. 
Although the elliptical orbits of the planets had been discovered by 
Kepler, the nature of the motive force which guided and retained 
them in their path still remained a mystery. It was believed that 
the planets were whirled round the sun as if by the action of mag- 
netic fibres, a mutual attractive influence having been supposed to 
exist between them and the orb, similar to that of the opposite poles 
of magnets. Milton alludes to this theory in the following lines : 
** They as they move 
Their starry dance in numbers that compute 
Days, months and years towards his all-cheering lamp, 
Turn swift their various motions or are turned 
By his magnetic beam.” 
Milton may have builded better than he knew—may have 
written more wisely than he dreamed. The sun’s “ magnetic beam,” 
in the light of our new astronomy, has a meaning past Milton’s ken. 
Galileo imagined he discovered with his telescope on the face 
of the moon continents and seas, and that therefore the moon might 
be the abode of intelligent life, and so Milton presents this possi- 
bility. Since then the moon has been more closely studied, and we 
have now the theory of the moon being a ruined world—a burned 
out cinder, a derelict in space—acting as the sun’s deputy tide- 
raiser, and filling the office of a large reflector for the solar lamp, 
lighting up the dark earth, and for lovers to swear by and then for- 
swear themselves, and by which almanac mechanics prophesy the 
wind and rain. One would almost believe that in Newton’s day the 
study of lunar possibilities was in the same condition as is now the 
study of Martian possibilities. Pecival Lowell is supposed to have 
as conclusively settled to-day the habitability of Mars as Galileo 
settled the habitability of Luna 300 years ago. Some “ mute 
inglorious Milton” of to-day may loosen his pen and write an epic 
on Mars, based on the investigations of Flagstaff Observatory, and 
some cold, soulless being in future years may criticise the science of 
that epic, as I am now daring to criticise Milton’s line that speaks of 
“rain producing fruits on the moon’s softened soil.” It is possible 
that we need not wait long for a critic, for has not Dr. A. R. Wallace 
