And this is what we find in Langhorne, the translator of _Plutarch_: “Dionysius of Halicarnassus [L. ii.] is of opinion that Numa built the temple of Vesta in a _round_ form, to represent the figure of the earth, for by Vesta they meant the earth.” Moreover, Philolaüs, in common with all other Pythagoreans, held that the element of fire was placed in the centre of the universe; and Plutarch, speaking on the subject, remarks of the Pythagoreans that “the earth they suppose not to be without motion, _nor_ situated in the centre of the world, but to make its revolution round the sphere of fire, being neither one of the most valuable, nor principal parts of the great machine.” Plato, too, is reported to have been of the same opinion. It appears, therefore, that the Pythagoreans anticipated Galileo’s _discovery_. The existence of such an invisible universe being once admitted—as seems likely to be the fact if the speculations of the authors of the _Unseen Universe_ are ever accepted by their colleagues—many of the phenomena, hitherto mysterious and inexplicable, become plain. It acts on the organism of the magnetized mediums, it penetrates and saturates them through and through, either directed by the powerful will of a mesmerizer, or by unseen beings who achieve the same result. Once that the silent operation is performed, the astral or sidereal phantom of the mesmerized subject quits its paralyzed, earthly casket, and, after having roamed in the boundless space, alights at the threshold of the mysterious “bourne.” For it, the gates of the portal which marks the entrance to the “silent land,” are now but partially ajar; they will fly wide open before the soul of the entranced somnambulist only on that day when, united with its higher immortal essence, it will have quitted forever its mortal frame. Until then, the seer or seeress can look but through a chink; it depends on the acuteness of the clairvoyant’s spiritual sight to see more or less through it.