In the author’s opinion these Forces are atomistic agents, endowed with intelligence, spontaneous will, and motion,(404) and he thus, like the Kabalists, makes the causal Forces substantial, while the Forces that act on this plane are only the effects of the former, as with him matter is eternal, and the Gods also;(405) so is the Soul likewise, though it has inherent in itself a still higher Soul [Spirit], preëxistent, endowed with memory, and superior to Electric Force; the latter is subservient to the higher Souls, those superior Souls forcing it to act according to the eternal laws. The concept is rather hazy, but is evidently on the Occult lines. Moreover, the system proposed is entirely pantheistic, and is worked out in a purely scientific volume. Monotheists and Roman Catholics fall foul of it, of course; but one who believes in the Planetary Spirits and who endows Nature with living Intelligences, must always expect this. In this connection, however, it is curious that after the moderns have so laughed at the ignorance of the ancients, Who, knowing only of seven planets [yet having an ogdoad which _did not_ include the earth!], invented therefore seven Spirits to fit in with the number, Babinet should have vindicated the “superstition” unconsciously to himself. In the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ this eminent French Astronomer writes: The ogdoad of the Ancients included the earth [which is an error], _i.e._, eight or seven according to whether or not the earth was comprised in the number.(406) De Mirville assures his readers that: M. Babinet was telling me but a few days ago that we had in reality only eight big planets, including the earth, and so many small ones between Mars and Jupiter.... Herschel offering to call all those beyond the seven primary planets asteroids!(407) There is a problem to be solved in this connection. How do Astronomers know that Neptune is a planet, or even that it is a body belonging to our system? Being found on the very confines of our Planetary World, so called, the latter was arbitrarily expanded to receive it; but what really mathematical and infallible proof have Astronomers that it is (_a_) a planet, and (_b_) one of _our_ planets? None at all! It is at such an immeasurable distance from us, the Apparent diameter of the sun being to Neptune but one‐fortieth of the sun’s apparent diameter to us,