[Illustration: COSMOGRAPHY OF S^(t) DENIS Mid 14th. Century] [Illustration: EGYPTIAN PLANETARY SYSTEM] [Illustration: PTOLEMAIC SYSTEM] [Illustration: TYCHO BRAHE’S PLANETARY SYSTEM] [Illustration: COPERNICAN SYSTEM] [Illustration: THE IRON VIRGIN. Inside View. The unbeliever or heretic was placed upright inside the virgin, and the doors were closed so that the spikes penetrated the victim’s eyes & chest, after which the body was dropped through the floor into the river Pegnitz.] [Illustration: THE IRON VIRGIN. Outside View. Fixed in a vault cut out of the rock beneath the Nuremberg Town Hall, in Bavaria, and used as an instrument of torture by the Christian Church.] INTELLECTUAL PROGRESS IN EUROPE. No scientific student or observer of nature will have failed to notice that all phenomena around him are ever in a condition of progressive change, ever advancing from the simple to the complex, and ever conforming to specific laws. Just as the world in which we live has gradually developed from a condition of nebulous vapour to its present complex form, and just as man has evolved from a simple molecule of protoplasm by wonderful and manifold stages to his present commanding position, so have civilisation, trade, politics, arts, literature, and science all been slowly and gradually evolved from the primitive mind of prehistoric man. A continual change has ever been going on from the simple to the complex, from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous, from the imperfect to the more perfect. This continual progress has been in operation during all time, and will proceed in the future as of old, leaving the present day far behind in its march, as the present day has left behind it the past.