32 
REACTIVE LOCOMOTION. 
therewith, to meet the marfhalled winds of heaven on 
their own battle-field and vanquish and defy them all! 
This, would be true Flying ! 
This, would be the Navigation of the Air ! 
The winged Form-kings conquer by yielding; by 
compromife; by accommodation. This, man can never 
do, for without life in them there can be no wings. It 
is the life that is in the wing that makes it a wing. I 
mean to fay it is life, and life only, that can give wing- 
fundlion. 
And mankind have been experimenting with dead 
planes. 
Is it any wonder that they have failed ? 
Of what ufe the anatomizing of and the philoiophizing 
on wings when it will remain for ever an impofiibility for 
men to ufe wings ? There are no wings for man ! and 
never can be; and this is why “the figure of 8” theory 
and all other theories bafed on the idea of the pofiibility 
of employing wings as wings are a mifiake. 
What could come of dead wings, but “dead failures?” 
It is not wings that we want—but wind-blafls y wind- 
power , wind-flotation ; and wings as wings, as birds ufe 
them, man cannot get becaufe all his imitations are dead— 
dead—dead ! and to be dead is to be without function. 
Is a marble fiatue a man becaufe made in the image of a 
man ? Neither are the things called “ wings,” of man’s 
make— wings . 
