In the "Scientific American," for April 27, 1878, is a full report of a lecture delivered at Berlin, by Dr. Shoepfer, headed "Our Earth Motionless," which concludes thus:--"The poet Goethe, whose prophetic views remained during his life wholly unnoticed, said the following: 'In whatever way or manner may have occurred this business, I must still say that I curse this modern theory of cosmogony, and hope that perchance there may appear in due time some young scientist of genius who will pick up courage enough to upset this universally disseminated delirium of lunatics. The most terrible thing in all this is that one is obliged to repeatedly hear the assurance that all the physicists adhere to the same opinion on this question. But one who is acquainted with men knows how it is done: good, intellectual, and courageous heads adorn their mind with such an idea for the sake of its probability; they gather followers and pupils, and thus form a literary power; their idea is finally worked out, exaggerated, and with a passionate impulse is forced upon society; hundreds and hundreds of noble-minded, reasonable people who work in other spheres, desiring to see their circle esteemed and dear to the interests of daily life, can do nothing better or more reasonable than to leave to other investigators their free scope of action, and add their voice in the benefit of that business which does not concern them at all. This is termed the universal corroboration of the truthfulness of an idea!'" End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of One Hundred Proofs that the Earth is Not a Globe, by William Carpenter