“If we are _wise_ we shall sit down upon the brink and content ourselves with saying what the spiritual world _is not_ and _cannot be._ * * The soul _must_ be entirely ignorant of the second body until it has ceased to use the first. * * The new organs, may be, all correspond in intention and effect to the present ones; but we say that _they do not yet exist._ _They cannot exist_; the ground is pre-occupied.” _John Weiss_, Unitarian Monthly Journal, May, 1866. “Moreover, the satellites of Jupiter are invisible to the naked eye, and therefore can exercise no influence over the Earth, and therefore would be useless, and therefore _do not exist_.” _Francesco Sizzi_, Times of Galileo. “If the Spiritualists would secure the favor of _sensible people_ they must let them see that they are not at war with good sense. * * It were better that very sacred and dear beliefs should go, than that this enemy of all rational belief should remain. Let us prefer to have _no_ other world, than to have another world full of teasing, troublesome, meddlesome beings, who interfere with the rational order of the world we dwell in.” _O. B. Frothingham_, “The Index,” July 8, 1871. “If the new planets were acknowledged, what a chaos would ensue!” * * “I will never concede his four new planets to that Italian, though I die for it.” _Martin Horky_, Times of Galileo. “O my beloved Kepler! How I wish we could have one good laugh together! Here, at Padua, is the principal Professor of Philosophy, whom I have repeatedly and urgently requested to look at the moon and planets through my telescope, which he pertinaciously refuses to do! Why, my dear Kepler, are you not here? What shouts of laughter we should have at _all this solemn folly_!” _Letter from Galileo to John Kepler._ POEMS OF PROGRESS. THE CHEMISTRY OF CHARACTER. JOHN, and Peter, and Robert, and Paul, God in his wisdom created them all. John was a statesman, and Peter a slave, Robert a preacher, and Paul--was a knave. Evil or good as the case might be, White, or colored, or bond, or free-- John, and Peter, and Robert, and Paul, God in his wisdom created them all. Out of earth’s elements, mingled with flame, Out of life’s compounds of glory and shame, Fashioned and shaped by no will of their own, And helplessly into life’s history thrown; Born by the law that compels men to be, Born to conditions they could not foresee, John, and Peter, and Robert, and Paul, God in his wisdom created them all.