t they come from somewhere
else. Now, in a relative existence, nothing can of itself be either
attractive or repulsive: its effects are functions of its associations
or implications. Many of our data have been taken from very conservative
scientific sources: it was not until their discordant implications, or
irreconcilabilities with the System, were perceived, that
excommunication was pronounced against them.

Prof. Schwedoff's paper was read before the British Association (_Rept.
of 1882_, p. 453).

The implication, and the repulsiveness of the implication to the snug
and tight little exclusionists of 1882--though we hold out that they
were functioning well and ably relatively to 1882--

That there is water--oceans or lakes and ponds, or rivers of it--that
there is water away from, and yet not far-remote from, this earth's
atmosphere and gravitation--

The pain of it:

That the snug little system of 1882 would be ousted from its
reposefulness--

A whole new science to learn:

The Science of Super-Geography--

And Science is a turtle that says that its own shell encloses all
things.

So the members of the British Association. To some of them Prof.
Schwedoff's ideas were like slaps on the back of an environment-denying
turtle: to some of them his heresy was like an offering of meat, raw and
dripping, to milk-fed lambs. Some of them bleated like lambs, and some
of them turled like turtles. We used to crucify, but now we ridicule:
or, in the loss of vigor of all progress, the spike has etherealized
into the laugh.

Sir William Thomson ridiculed the heresy, with the phantomosities of his
era:

That all bodies, such as hailstones, if away from this earth's
atmosphere, would have to move at planetary velocity--which would be
positively reasonable if the pronouncements of St. Isaac were anything
but articles of faith--that a hailstone falling through this earth's
atmosphere, with planetary velocity, would perform 13,000 times as much
work as would raise an equal weight of water one degree centigrade, and
therefore never fall as a hailstone at all; be more than
melted--super-volatalized--

These turls and these bleats of pedantry--though we insist that,
relatively to 1882, these turls and bleats should be regarded as
respectfully as we regard rag dolls that keep infants occupied and
noiseless--it is the survival of rag dolls into maturity that we object
to--so these pious and naive ones who believed that 13,00