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Mon Dec 28 03:13:52 CET 2009

 of things, and at their exuberant independence of our intellectual
standards and our trivial definitions, is the basis of spirituality as
it is the basis of nonsense. Nonsense and faith (strange as the
conjunction may seem) are the two supreme symbolic assertions of the
truth that to draw out the soul of things with a syllogism is as
impossible as to draw out Leviathan with a hook. The well-meaning person
who, by merely studying the logical side of things, has decided that
'faith is nonsense,' does not know how truly he speaks; later it may
come back to him in the form that nonsense is faith. * * * * * A DEFENCE
OF PLANETS A book has at one time come under my notice called 'Terra
Firma: the Earth not a Planet.' The author was a Mr. D. Wardlaw Scott,
and he quoted very seriously the opinions of a large number of other
persons, of whom we have never heard, but who are evidently very
important. Mr. Beach of Southsea, for example, thinks that the world is
flat; and in Southsea perhaps it is. It is no part of my present
intention, however, to follow Mr. Scott's arguments in detail. On the
lines of such arguments it may be shown that the earth is flat, and, for
the matter of that, that it is triangular. A few examples will suffice:
One of Mr. Scott's objections was that if a projectile is fired from a
moving body there is a difference in the distance to which it carries
according to the direction in which it is sent. But as in practice there
is not the slightest difference whichever way the thing is done, in the
case of the earth 'we have a forcible overthrow of all fancies relative
to the motion of the earth, and a striking proof that the earth is not a
globe.' This is altogether one of the quaintest arguments we have ever
seen. It never seems to occur to the author, among other things, that
when the firing and
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